A little while back on my favorite forum that I frequent somebody made a thread titled, "Furries Are Filthy Sacks of Awful". The thread reached almost 20 pages before I found it, but since I was a long time regular I made a reply.

A few pages in somebody said the following:
"Man I've truly never met a reasonable furry

do they even exist? Maybe we can get The Spaniard in here to provide some perspective." <-The_Spaniard is my alternate web name.

After nearly 20 pages a lot of comments were made, accusations leveled, and questions asked. So I said the following, which you have to remember is a large reply based on 19 pages of discussion and a few of the things I said may be a little confusing out of the context of the entire thread. Just keep that in mind when you read.

"Ask and ye shall receive.

Since I'm a good sport I shall provide my question answering services to this thread.

The problem with furries is that the group as a whole is very inclusive and accepting of people, it's like the nerd group in high school that accepted all the other outcasts. The issue arises when people who are truly fucked in the head and have crazy ideas and fetishes that see how accepting furries are and go, oh boy I want to be one too! So there are segments of the furry fandom that scare the SHIT out of the larger more normal percentage of furries. That and the fact that lots of fetishes mix and people making fun of furries are oftentimes unable to tell that fetishes aren't always mutually exclusive. So there is a huge percentage of completely normal people with just strange interests/fetishes that are looked down upon when they have no business being over things they may have no part of.

There are also HUGE variations and levels of "furry" problem is that it's always the most vocal that people see most clearly. I mean think about gay. What do you think of when you hear the word gay? Any reasonable person in this thread can tell you that the average gay guy is just a a regular person, but most media interpretations embellish for entertainments sake. I mean how often is the leather wearing, peacock, pride parade, lisping homofag thrust in your face when gay is mentioned or shown on TV?

The whole fursuit thing is grossly exaggerated as well, most research puts it at about 18% of all furries even owning fursuits, and those things cost money. Could you seriously imagine spending between 1 and 5 grand on a costume that you absolutely love and then wanting to jizz all over it? There are people that do, but think about it like this. 18% actually own one, and an even smaller fraction of that 18% ruin them with their juices.

Somebody mentioned SA and furry hate, the funny thing about that is that yes a lot of the anti furry stuff online was actually started by former furries or "burnt furs", people that were furries and got put off for some reason or maybe even booted out and now want revenge. They go around trying to spread as much hate as they can and often times blowing things way out of proportion if not outright lying to succeed in their goals.

Now I don't feel persecuted myself, and a lot of you guys are talking about how furries love to baw about how they are, but the truth is that objectively furries really are fucked with pretty hard core. Really look on the internet and tell me if you think that the amount of shit that furries get is proportional to all the other subcultures out there? That people don't go out of their way to make fun of them. People have tried having cities or hotels shut down their cons just out of spite, by calling up officials and claiming all kinds of wild shit. One internet group recently called a hotel the day before a minor con and talked about how this perverted sex cult was coming that was going to do all kinds of debaucherous things in their hotel. I think it got shut down. Other groups have resorted to finding the personal info of furries and start calling up family members and jobs to disseminate info trying to ruin their lives. Hell just look at the geek subculture hierarchy chart.

Some of the people that really hate on furries are disturbingly militant about it, like KKK etc level, saying they wish furries would die, if one ever came near their children they would kill them and so on. A while back I actually had someone from these forums unprompted tell me that I and all other furries are worse than Hitler. He actually pulled Godwin's law on me.

The funny thing is that with all the people talking about how awful furries are, how they wish they would all die, and they are just social rejects that couldn't carry a normal conversation with a normal person or ever get laid to save their life.. Well I'd be willing to bet that I know a great number of furries that have accomplished more in their lives, and even things to further humanity as a whole than any of the people that hate them so staunchly. And I'm willing to qualify that with examples of things furries I know do, and you guys would be shocked to shit and back to know what kinds of jobs some furries hold. Oh and about the social reject virgin part, some furries are as suave and sophisticated as anybody you will ever meet. Most furries also get laid plenty though regardless of how geeky they are, cause think about it.. really think about it.

Somebody asked about the sexuality split in the fandom. To answer the question it's about a 70/30 split between straight and gay/bi. It's about the same for boy to girl ratio, though I could be mixing up my statistics, it's been a while.

Another few comments were made about number of furries. Conservative estimates put it at about 200 thousand world wide if not more, with the most densely populated location being Southern California, and the place with the biggest furry to non furry ratio being the UK. I live in Southern California and am surrounded by thousands within I'd say a 100 mile radius.

CSI was brought up. Pretty much every furry on the planet is pretty grossed out by that episode, most agree that it was a shameless Hollywoodization that went way over the deep end also making shit up as it went. Seriously satanic music blaring as a group of fursuiters gyrate all over each other on the ground with security standing outside? Yeah...

People wonder where furryness comes from, it's been a subtle part of humanity since the very beginning. The worlds oldest cave paintings, over 50 thousand years old, were a combination of drawings of humans animals, and anthropomorphic art combining the two. Human animal hybrids were worshiped as gods for thousands of years by many societies and religions. This shit is also a huge part of day to day human speech and sexuality. If you watch how you talk on a day to day basis you really start to notice how common it is. I have to piss like a race horse, hung like a horse, kicks like a mule, shags like a minx, he's a bulldog, she's like a cat/animal in bed, etc. Furries seem to have just taken it to the next level.

When you look at the number and variety of fetishes out there are furries really one that needs to be made that much fun of? I mean really is it that much weirder than mister urinal, guys that like to dress up as women and get spanked, clown fetishists, balloon fetishists, scat fetishists, etc?

A few people mentioned bestiality, most furries hate it, consider it animal cruelty, and will report you to the police if you even mention that you are into it. As a matter of fact the worlds largest furry website will ban you instantly on sight if you mention that you molest animals. It's simply not the same thing.

Oh something interesting, there was a furry convention about 2 miles away from me a few weeks ago and KROQ was sharing the hotel, so Stone Temple Pilots and Smash Mouth were trying to crash the dance because they wanted to party with the furries.

P.S. Many of the replies in this thread have been incredibly heartening, IE "Oh no somebody is into something I'm not into, let's hate them!? Big fucking deal." Yeah!"

So this thread started with somebody trying to badmouth furries like so many others, and as I mentioned at the end of my post, the level of actual support for furries was quite amazing. It wasn't even so much support, but people saying, "So what, just leave them alone." Live and let live. The people replying to my post took the thread to a new level and it was then when I truly felt like I did a good deed for the fandom.

"That is a lot of words that I agree with, but wouldn't have had the attention span to post. You rock for posting them."

"The_Spaniard, you totally killed the thread by making a great, intelligent and good-faith effort.

...Thank you?"

I also received this PM:
"Hello!

This is probably going to sound a bit awkward, but, I'd like to say thank you for the well-written and sensible post you wrote in the furry thread in the whining forum. As you've no doubt guessed from my username here on the PA forums, I'm a fur, but generally have kept it quiet due to fear of ridicule; it's very heartening to read something like yours which calmly rebuts a lot of the misconceptions without resorting to whitewashing.

So, in short, thanks again."

The thing is that many furs get overly defensive or militant, or too graphic when it comes to discussing or defending furryness publicly, but I think more people that can calmly and rationally discuss furryness in this situations without glossing over issues and knowing what hot buttons to avoid would do this fandom a lot of good. And if we had more people like that, maybe one day we wouldn't all cringe at hearing that another furry was interviewed on the news before even seeing it. It's a difficult tightrope to walk, and many people would consider it a damned if you do and damned if you don't proposition to talk furry publicly. But with the right people and level of discretion I don't think that doing it should have to be the kind of scarlet letter that it is in the fandom. I mean we shouldn't have to suffer the threats of, "You will be banned from this convention if you talk to the media." Furries are threatening other furries into silence and it's not right. We aren't a bunch of 5 year olds, and the moment that we all acknowledge that some of us are up to the task and do have some kind of charisma and public speaking skill, maybe this self imposed media blackout will end and more of the positive stories will start airing. We already have a couple of well known and respected furs that are really good at being furry mouthpieces, let's see if we can find more.