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Furry is (not) all about sex
15 years ago
General
A guy on foozzzball's journal http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1764691/ said this:
I've always said that the fandom is hugely sex based, right from the word go, and it honestly bothers me when people try to play it off as "just innocent except for the couple pervs we sometimes get." the only proof anyone needs to see what this fandom really is, is an FA account, with adult material enabled. Sure, going around telling people that we all jerk off to pictures of animal people is a bad idea, but people's outright denial pisses me off. I once had someone make the claim that they don't jerk off to furry porn or partake in the sexual side of the fandom, while at the same time having several porn commissions done, and faving mostly porn. There are times I'd even go so far as to call the fandom a fetish, with the "innocent" furs being a huge minority.
The fandom sucks because of mass ineptitude, and social retardation...the sex isn't the problem, it's the "glue" that holds it all together.
Yeah, okay, there's a lot of hypocrisy around furry sex, but you know what? Lots of people lie about their sex habits or feel insecure about divulging them, and that's because they're none of your goddamn business in the first place.
But let me clear this up for people: FURRY IS NOT ABOUT SEX. No really. It's not. People (with a few exceptions) are not into furry because of the sex. Is there sex in furry everywhere? Yeah, there sure as hell is. So the fuck what? Furry is not about sex.
You know else what you see lots of sex in? Anime. There's CRAPLOADS of it. But anime is not about the sex.
You know what else you see a lot of sex in? Marriages. But go ahead. Try to tell someone his marriage is only about the sex (granted, it MAY be, but that would be depressing).
Furry (and scaley, and feather, and all the various hybridy ilk) is an aesthetic. You could probably fill a book with all the reasons that people got into furry, and you still wouldn't have begun to cover everyone. A huge percentage of us found it aesthetically appealing long before we ever had the inkling of any kind of sexual notion.
So let me state this very clearly and very plainly: PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE FURRY BECAUSE OF THE SEX. PEOPLE LIKE SEX BECAUSE OF THE SEX. There. That's as emphatic as I can get. Look, we are sexual beings. It's by necessity. As far as nature is concerned, if we do not breed before we die, we are a fucking biological failure. So there are two things that we want to do more than anything else: live, and screw. And since most of the people knocking around on these parts of the Internet are red-blooded males, that instinct is even stronger -- and by necessity connected with our aesthetic.
We, as people, are all about sex. And when we want to have sex, we want to have sex with something that is in line with our aesthetic. But that doesn't mean that our aesthetic is defined by our sexual urges. You have it the wrong goddamned way around.
Some people don't have any sexual urges connected with furry at all. But most of us have a furry aesthetic that is encompassing. We like animal people, for whatever reason -- they're cute, or exotic, or expressive, or interesting in the way they interact with the world. Maybe we just grew up with lots of animal cartoons or animal books and so that's normal to us. But that means that we are more likely to like an action story if there are animal people in it, and we're more likely to like our comedies if they're furry-themed, and we're more likely to like our love stories when they're fox meets wolf than boy meets girl because they involve elements we actually like. Why in the hell wouldn't that be true for our porn, too? That doesn't mean that furry is sexual. It just means that people are sexual, and they like their sex to involve things they... you know... like.
And then there's this little quote at the end:
The fandom sucks because of mass ineptitude, and social retardation....
I see this a lot too. This is also completely wrong. People who think the fandom sucks, that it suffers from extreme amounts of drama and social retardation, to me, plainly have all but zero experience with the world outside the fandom.
Seriously, dude. That shit is everywhere. It's not furries that are melodramatic and broken and confused. It's everyone. It's called "people." And in my experience, it has not been any more or any less in the fandom than anywhere else. Sometimes we have slightly different flavors of it, but not in greater quantity. People are dramatic because life is dramatic, because people can be mean and stupid and selfish, and furries aren't special. Go look at any other community online and you'll see the same thing. Look at Facebook, for god's sake; it's like a black hole of personality from which no good qualities can escape. We're not special. We're not different. We're just people. And you'll find the same things wherever you go -- just sometimes better hidden.
I've always said that the fandom is hugely sex based, right from the word go, and it honestly bothers me when people try to play it off as "just innocent except for the couple pervs we sometimes get." the only proof anyone needs to see what this fandom really is, is an FA account, with adult material enabled. Sure, going around telling people that we all jerk off to pictures of animal people is a bad idea, but people's outright denial pisses me off. I once had someone make the claim that they don't jerk off to furry porn or partake in the sexual side of the fandom, while at the same time having several porn commissions done, and faving mostly porn. There are times I'd even go so far as to call the fandom a fetish, with the "innocent" furs being a huge minority.
The fandom sucks because of mass ineptitude, and social retardation...the sex isn't the problem, it's the "glue" that holds it all together.
Yeah, okay, there's a lot of hypocrisy around furry sex, but you know what? Lots of people lie about their sex habits or feel insecure about divulging them, and that's because they're none of your goddamn business in the first place.
But let me clear this up for people: FURRY IS NOT ABOUT SEX. No really. It's not. People (with a few exceptions) are not into furry because of the sex. Is there sex in furry everywhere? Yeah, there sure as hell is. So the fuck what? Furry is not about sex.
You know else what you see lots of sex in? Anime. There's CRAPLOADS of it. But anime is not about the sex.
You know what else you see a lot of sex in? Marriages. But go ahead. Try to tell someone his marriage is only about the sex (granted, it MAY be, but that would be depressing).
Furry (and scaley, and feather, and all the various hybridy ilk) is an aesthetic. You could probably fill a book with all the reasons that people got into furry, and you still wouldn't have begun to cover everyone. A huge percentage of us found it aesthetically appealing long before we ever had the inkling of any kind of sexual notion.
So let me state this very clearly and very plainly: PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE FURRY BECAUSE OF THE SEX. PEOPLE LIKE SEX BECAUSE OF THE SEX. There. That's as emphatic as I can get. Look, we are sexual beings. It's by necessity. As far as nature is concerned, if we do not breed before we die, we are a fucking biological failure. So there are two things that we want to do more than anything else: live, and screw. And since most of the people knocking around on these parts of the Internet are red-blooded males, that instinct is even stronger -- and by necessity connected with our aesthetic.
We, as people, are all about sex. And when we want to have sex, we want to have sex with something that is in line with our aesthetic. But that doesn't mean that our aesthetic is defined by our sexual urges. You have it the wrong goddamned way around.
Some people don't have any sexual urges connected with furry at all. But most of us have a furry aesthetic that is encompassing. We like animal people, for whatever reason -- they're cute, or exotic, or expressive, or interesting in the way they interact with the world. Maybe we just grew up with lots of animal cartoons or animal books and so that's normal to us. But that means that we are more likely to like an action story if there are animal people in it, and we're more likely to like our comedies if they're furry-themed, and we're more likely to like our love stories when they're fox meets wolf than boy meets girl because they involve elements we actually like. Why in the hell wouldn't that be true for our porn, too? That doesn't mean that furry is sexual. It just means that people are sexual, and they like their sex to involve things they... you know... like.
And then there's this little quote at the end:
The fandom sucks because of mass ineptitude, and social retardation....
I see this a lot too. This is also completely wrong. People who think the fandom sucks, that it suffers from extreme amounts of drama and social retardation, to me, plainly have all but zero experience with the world outside the fandom.
Seriously, dude. That shit is everywhere. It's not furries that are melodramatic and broken and confused. It's everyone. It's called "people." And in my experience, it has not been any more or any less in the fandom than anywhere else. Sometimes we have slightly different flavors of it, but not in greater quantity. People are dramatic because life is dramatic, because people can be mean and stupid and selfish, and furries aren't special. Go look at any other community online and you'll see the same thing. Look at Facebook, for god's sake; it's like a black hole of personality from which no good qualities can escape. We're not special. We're not different. We're just people. And you'll find the same things wherever you go -- just sometimes better hidden.
...
No, seriously, I can't think of anything to add to this.
Well, okay, maybe just one thing:
People who think the fandom sucks, that it suffers from extreme amounts of drama and social retardation, to me, plainly have all but zero experience with the world outside the fandom.[/i
God, seriously. Whenever I see people wangsting over how drama-laded the furry fandom is, in their perception, I just want to say, "You've clearly never seen what NON-furry gay drama is like in the real world, have you?"
I AM FULL OF INEPTITUDE AND MASS RETARDATION.
Seriously now, I wish that what tube wrote here weren't such a revelation to so many. The presence of sex and drama is systemic. It's the stuff of life.
I feel you're being a bit disingenuous here. This person you're quoting is saying he takes issue with the mass whitewashing of the subculture by people who want to have their cake and eat it too in terms of publicly indulging in being a furry while not being maligned as a pervert. He even has the good grace of using the qualifier "there are times", where you are content to place your personal perspective into the mouths of all of “us”. I personally strongly disagree with your assertion that "we" do not like furries for the sex. Personally, the fandom has always been a sexual outlet, and the non-erotic furry aesthetic is actually fairly boring to me. There are exceptions, but on the whole I'm into furry because I think it's hot.
I know we've had a few tense altercations in the past, so please don't take this as me trying to cut you down, because it really isn't. I don't take issue here with you feeling that furry is a more encompassing thing that you find pleasant both in erotic and non-erotic forms, I just find it a bit presumptuous the way you so confidently put your personal views forward as a kind of zeitgeist.
I very much agree with your last point, though. Furry is not exceptionally bad among the spheres of subculture, it's just got the normal ratio of terrible-to-good that everything tends to have.
I think there's a little more to it than that. I mean, there's a lot of things I like that I don't want in my sex life (make your own list here). I like fantasy stories with wizards, but I don't want to have sex with Gandalf. I like the aesthetic of dragons, but I don't find them sexually attractive. Like it or not, for many people, furry and sex are kind of interwoven. For some, they're not--I know people who just like funny animals, and they may be completely asexual for all I know, or just not care for furry sex fantasies. But--and granted, my particular corner of the fandom is probably biased--most of the people I know have a specifically furry element to their sexual identity. Identity, not fantasy. And yet, there are great stories being written without any sex in them (I know, hard to believe). I interact with people in my furry identity without a hint of sex passing between us, most days of the week. I pose tailwags and earflicks and all that stuff, and there's no sexual component to that.
There is something about the permissivity and general tolerance of the fandom that encourages openness beyond what we'd see elsewhere (though I agree that the drama and such is pretty much the same outside the fandom, if not worse). I mean, do your non-furry friends, or co-workers, ever point you to non-furry cartoon representations of them having sex? I think that was established a long time ago by the coverage of the fandom, and it attracted more of the same kind of people, but it's also disingenuous to blame the media coverage for creating the fandom. They reported on something that was there.
What percentage of the Star Trek fandom writes erotic stories? What percent of Tolkien fans? Go to adultfanfiction.net and compare the number of stories there--over all fandoms of established media--to what gets uploaded in a month on SoFurry. While I agree with your basic point that furry is not all about the sex, I think it is over-simplifying to say that we just like sex because we're sexual, and we like furry sex because we happen to be furries. I think there is something more than that, whether it's in the furry aesthetic or in the culture of the fandom.
I'm just rambling here, but thinking about other fandoms: it's common to see romances or relationship stories, but those fandoms have existing characters. In furry fandom, we have to make up our own. So we use ourselves and we tell these romantic stories about our avatars, and because they are ours, perhaps we allow ourselves more freedom than if we were trying to write a story about Picard traveling back in time to do Kirk (where Kirk is an ocelot or something). That freedom and openness is something unique, in my experience, and I think it's cool that it exists. I don't take it as far as some people do; I take it further than others.
And maybe that's what I just want people to acknowledge, when it comes down to it: as you say, we're furry fans because we love furry critters. This fandom allows us to be pretty open about sex, which I happen to think is healthy in general. Some people like their furries naked and humping. Some people like their furries naked and posing. Some people like their furries fully clothed having adventures in ancient castles or modern skyscrapers. And some people like all three.
Back to writing for me.
See, to an extent, I think prudish people look at furry, and the open sexuality surrounding it, and are like. 'Something _wrong_ is happening there. That doesn't fit the socio-cultural values I hold.' I have a real problem with that.
I also kind of have a problem with your 'sex doesn't equal the aesthetic' argument. Sexuality is a heavily aesthetic thing, aesthetics tie back into sexuality... I mean, one could make a pretty convincing argument that the gender of human being you find sexually attractive is just an aesthetic thing, you know?
Sex is a funny thing. I think the key thing to take away here is... everyone's got a different set of values about sex, and that's cool. And everyone's got a different set of values about the furry thing... and that's cool. But one thing firmly in your favour is this: There's a lot of popular furry material that's pretty much sexless. Consider Lackadaisy or the majority of the source material. You can have furry without sex, and you can have sex without furry... you just can't have furry sex without both, I think.
I think you missed something else that was wrong with the thesis in the original post too. The idea that there is/should be some glue that holds together the fandom is wrongheaded. Maybe I just have an unusual definition of a furry fan, but to me it is simply this: "Someone who enjoys anthromorphized animals and mythological creatures." See whats missing there? It doesn't say "And goes to furry cons", "Role-plays online", "Fursuits" or even "Communicates regularly with other furries." I don't think that it's wrong that that is missing from the definition. Whats that mean though? There IS no glue.. there is no reason why we do, or should necessarily think we should have a connection with everyone out there. Sure, meet new and different people, make friends, expand your horizons. What isn't a good idea is force yourself to think that you need to form a life-long bonds with people where there isn't going to be anything but friction because they happen to both have similar tastes along this one particular line of interests. Don't think that you need to redefine the fandom because there are elements that you don't want to throw your lot in with. The problem isn't that those people are in the fandom, the problem is people who think that any group is monolithic and that having an interest automatically relates to any number of other things about you. The problem isn't even social-retardation or ineptitude, the problem is still, as it so often is, stereotype and prejudice.
The one thing is that the reason one sees so much drama in the fandom forums as opposed to more general sites like dA is that here we feel safe and are therefore more open about the problems. At least that is my perception.
And the second is that the line of the sexual aestetic of a creation and the sexual interests of the creator can sometimes be completely independent from each other - simply when the creation's sexuality in anatomy and behavior is more based on trying out new ideas than on the question wheter one is attracted to it in the end.
So.. I have to have lunch with you sometime soon or something. Catch up. Ask you about your book. Just see whats been going on in your life. Miss ya and it's been quite some time since I have made an effort to contact any one of my friends for various reasons.