what make you a furry is what you think makes you a furry, you define it

Why would people define themselves as furry if there isn't a real definition for it?

becasue some people just feel like being part of a group and thus label themselves

To look out for your friends and to be there when we all need help. Also to help make people happy and bring the community together in times of need. :3 That is what I know about the community. Unless you were talking about something much more specific

For you all kind, selfless and friendly people in the world are furries?

no, I didn't mean it like that way, i meant the community of furries as a whole. Or at least the people I know.

Furry, imo, is having an interest into anthropomorphic animals.
So yes, since you are drawing anthro characters, I assume you like them/have an interest in them, thus making you a furry.

So, there isn't a deep philosophy? Liking and drawing Bowser and the Swat Kats make you a furry?

Well, I guess popular characters like that are somewhat borderline?
But I would say yes, that would -generally- make you a furry, at least if you like Bowser and Swat Kats specifically because they are animal characters.

I just conider myself a furry cuz I have a sona.

There isn't any real definition, but there is common points in being a furry, either enjoy the anthro art (or way of life), or taking part of the community, or seeing yourself as one. It usually comes by pair :)

I share your outlook. I've never really identified with furries, I just feel more accepted here.

I wonder why we feel identified with a group of people but we deny being part of them.

I came here from a different kind of group, which itself is as flaky and flawed as furs are. I'm not keen on discussing it publicly, though.

Furry is as furry does

What does furry do?

Has an anthro character who they identify with.

Honestly, I'm not sure it's all that important. If you feel you're a furry, if you associate yourself with that label, then you are. But if you don't, you're not.

Youre a furry, if you consider yourself one. If you dont, thats fine. There are no real requirements for it and that is what I like about the fandom.
At least that is my personal view.

Mm.. I see. If you believe you are, then you are one. But what is it to be a furry? We are all something that we don't know exactly, something we imagine?

Furry isn't a lifestyle or philosophy, some can make it into a lifestyle, but that's not the base of furry, so it doesn't matter. As for a philosophy....I really want to bust out laughing, because...look around. The fandom can be a great, close knit community at times. But overall, not many furs are deep enough for there to be a fandom philosophy.

What furry is at it's base is 'an interest in anthropomorphic animals'. Individuals can build on that to suit their tastes and styles or what have you. Some may get involved in a specific fandom in this fandom/next to this fandom like MLP, but it's not a requirement. The base requirement is that interest and probably not minding the craziness of the fandom at times. A fursona can be a staple of being a furry, but is not an official requirement because sometimes...people just don't know what fits them and don't want to be one of those people who jumps from 'sona to 'sona.

There are people with that interest who try to wedge themselves away from the fandom because they can't stand how it can be sometimes, or don't want to be wrapped up with the negative stereotypes. And that's fine, to not want a label. But sometimes it's easier to just say 'at the base, yes, I am', and leave it at that.

Does it mean that I am a furry?

I would think that you are, even if only on a minor level, because I think you do enjoy anthropomorphic art, even if only in the creation, and you do seem to have an anthro representation of yourself.

Even with that said, it's a minor thing in the grand scheme of life.

I feel like "furry" is just an interest people have or don't have. But some people take it to the next level and take it as a lifestyle. Other than that, I don't think much into it.

I don't know if being interested in something makes you part of a group. It's like being interested in Stephanie Meyer books and not being necessarily a bookworm. If you call yourself something, then you really need to be emerged on the cause, no? Maybe being a furry is not just being interested in something.

But you're interested in Stepanie Meyer's books. That's the point. You don't have to necessarily be a bookworm to even fit that category in the first place. As far as "groups" go, it's what you just labeled it yourself. It doesn't HAVE to be a group neither, which people will naturally form.
If you call yourself gay, you don't have to emerge on the case (ie. show off or tell the world or ONLY have a gay group of friends).

I respect your point of view though. Each to their own! So do you believe you're a furry? Technically not. So without the technicalities you are not, correct? xD

So I'm a semi-furry? Or a furry in denial? I like Bowser and the Swat Kats and that makes me a full fledged furry? If I said I wasn't a furry, would I be lying to myself?

What to think? 'o'

Your life has been a lie! D8<


Just like the cake..

If ya don't feel that way then ya don't feel that way... an if someone else defines ya that way then that's their definition of ya... yer gonna have very little ( if any) chance'a showin'em otherwise long as ya do what'cha do...

You will always define yerself! an others will define ya by what they feel is the most suitable catagory their minds can accept.

*guruwolf will now return ta meditatin'* ;)

Some people say it's being above average in your interest of fictional creatures/animals (and/or finding them sexually attractive, but I think that's just the deeper fandom.)

for me its all about having fun really. ive been a furry since i was 13 and have seen a lot happen with it. most people see it as a character or alter ego that they can use online and bring it into irl to cosplay it. others are kinda spiritual about it and with my experience they tend to be the more strange ones.

To be furry is...to be furry?
I'm not sure myself and it gets hard to explain to my family and "normal" friends what is a furry and what is being a furry. I just knew that I liked more the animal/furry characters more in each media I liked. I found about the furry community. Found some artwork and stories I loved, made friends, and here I am. :)

"What is it to be a furry?"

Nothing at all

Heres the definition of a furry: If you like being an animal.

The definition varies so wildly from person to person that it is essentially meaningless. It's like "art" in that sense.

There is no technical reason of being one. Take me for example, I like furries and I draw them and have a FA acc but I`m not one nor have i drawn myself as a furry character; instead i drew myself as a usual person who enjoys what he does and act like he does rather than saying that I`m this certain character with these certain traits. by that i mean drawing myself and act like the pretend character I play to play a role in this giant act called "a Furry community". Basically what im saying is that if you tend to act like the character you have made up yourself and live just like him/her, people will see you for who you are.

I see you as an artist, Your able to draw what you feel like drawing in the way you so feel it. Yes you draw characters of the anthropomorphic area but its still art. To be a furry is just to label yourself to a part of a group with in the world. Some take it too far others just see it as a cool thing to do or be. There are different levels to the idea of being a furry. I for one love the art of it all! Both musical, and artistic views. Im a dancer, so i like to express myself in dance. I also love the idea of having a character that lives in the world or idea of being a furry i guess. If we could all write a book on the everyday life of our character im sure everyone would have a good a read, some better than others.

You don't have to label yourself as a furry just cause "someone says so" its label that's all it is. But it starts out small and then grows to be a part of who u are in ur everyday life style.

Ummm.... I found an interesting definiton in Urban Dictionary, try checking it out: http://www.urbandictionary.com/defi.....;defid=1002124

I think if you represent yourself as an anthro animal, you're a furry.

Perai, você gosta de desenhar animais antropomórficos mas não se considera furry... não que pelo fato de gostar disso você é furry, mas to confuso agora. Eu gosto e me considero furry, mas muitas coisas que furries gostam eu não gosto. Vish, agora fiquei mais confuso ainda, ahahahaha! XD''

See I feel the same way.
I don't consider myself a furry either, it's just something I do to improve my art, along with liking anthros and plushies. u3u
Can't say I'd ever involve myself in the furry fandom any other way aside from drawing them or getting my own fursuit based on cosplay interests. o~o;

I think what MAKES someone a furry, is whether they actually classify themselves as one on their own. :/

I always described furry to people that aren't familiar with the term as
"someone that likes anthropomorphic or human like animals"

And that's usually about all I need to say. :v

I guess drawing animes makes you an animey!

Finding your way of expression in animals makes you furry? All fabulists are furries?

Yeah that's weird huh? I don't really find myself as a "furry" either. I'm like you I just draw it :)

I have to say i have got the same, i see the charters as what they are, just charters. I even fin fursuiteig kind of weird I understand many people get way more into this stuff and that is hardly a bad thing but i just can not do it.

I have always been interested in mythic beings anthropomorphic or not i found them having lives, Sex, stories and the like was only natural that this made me a "furry" mainly due to the fact i adore werewolves and had given many mack stories and would view them no different as any fictional human.

To me that is a furry if you see anthropomorphic beings as just as normal as another fictional yet none the less human charter you are furry, if you think of werewolves and wookies along side human as a race rather than a species you are a furry to me.

I've always taken the following view:

A furry fan (or "furry" for short) is a person who likes anthropomorphic animals. You don't have to like any specific one and are free to dislike certain characters. Everyone has preferences, it doesn't really matter.

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2418163/

If you have to ask then you are one.

I think, though I cant say for sure-

Being a furry is having an animal[or anthromorphic] persona that you and other such people identify with. Its such a vague term that it encompasses a lot of people in it, and they themselves choose to exclude themselves. the remainder out of that vague definition is a furry.

Its no deeper, than what makes a person who likes anime an otaku, and a person who likes star trek a trekkie.

however, I kind of think of it as going down the rabbit hole- pun not intended- the further down you get the more other people and yourself identify you as such.

it's weird like that. there are only the conditions by which you set, I think. XD but I have no idea.

What it is to be a furry is how you yourself make of it. Lots of people have different ideas of what makes a furry a furry. Liking anthomorphic characters from a series doesn't exactly make one furry. It's okay to draw anthro animals and not associate with furries. But there's nothing wrong with being a furry either... it just your actions determine what will make others think of you. Like with the fursuits, but that's a different discussion for another day...

Being a furry is declaring yourself one. You don't even need to like anthropomorphic animals, because who is going to stop you from saying you are one? Certainly, there are no furry police out there! These circus-visiting manchildren certainly possess neither the appetite, care, or wherewithal to expel anything "foreign" to this little online club of their's.

The fandom DOES NOT have a ideological or moral premise. Seriously, there have been multiple serious attempts to give this fandom a direction that only ended in epic failure. Such as the Burned Fur fail to get rid of all the porn and perverts that ended in such colossal disaster, it gave the fandom the impetus to galvanize its hedonism FOREVER. Even Anonymous's attempts to destroy furry fandom were in vain. Anonymous, the final boss of the Internet, could eviscerate the multi-billion corporation of Scientology but couldn't put much of a dent in furry fandom. Anonymous made the mistake of believing furries were WORTH fighting against and they paid the price for their foolishness!

A LONG LONG LONG time ago, when the Internet was a young thing, furry fandom was different. The Internet used to be a difficult thing to get into: and only tech savvy nerds could find, and then, find amusement in hunting down all the little fragments of furry art spread out on individual artists' websites. As long long ago, each furry artist had to make their own webpage. Or share over USENET (even more obscure).

For better or for worse, it took a very specific type of nerd to put up with that much inefficiency and user-unfriendliness of the old fandom. It was a blessing as well as a curse because the annoying-ness and tedium of checking every furry artists' website every week for updates kept the riff-raff out as well as making the fandom extremely cliquish, insular, and self-protective. Furries, who were predominantly tech savvy back then, due to the cumbersome old Internet, found more in common with each other than today's distilled and mass-marketed fandom.

Contrary to what others may say, furry fandom is not what you make it. It's what everyone makes it. That's why people shouldn't take it so seriously anymore. When you mix every color together, you get the black murky waters of indecisiveness and the undefined and the formless. Again, copy-pasted for emphasis, the fandom DOES NOT have a ideological or moral premise.

Some foolish people say it should have an ideal or some goal, but to do that, you have to wrest control of the fandom away from all the nerds to who depend on furry fandom not meaning anything so that they can masturbate to whatever dark fantasies they want to without being guilt-ed that they're spooging all over anything that means anything (I could mention humanity's piss-poor treatment of its own sexuality and false hostile polarization between its sexuality and self-actualization, but that's a never-ending encyclopedia that can never be fully addressed). Read: the fandom is a small eddie just off the coast of the mainstream that people from that mainstream swirl around in for a brief time before heading back out into the morass, yet happens to still exhibit the properties of profound resistance to being defined. Furry fandom has accomplished, to a higher degree than any other subculture I've encountered, of being a custard that refuses to be nailed to the wall.

Furry fandom's rocket fuel is apathy and beer. Enjoy!

Like many before me, I think the answer lies in the grey area. It's just like asking, "How much alcohol must one drink to be called an alcoholic?"

There's no definite measurement of when a person crosses over from non-furry to furry, although I'm pretty sure each person has their own idea of what makes a furry, furry. You may think you're not a furry, but according to another person's measurement, you might already fall into that label.

it's like asking why you draw "kemono" it's just a laber, human being like to label everything and often:

people that draw furry/kemono and have an account on fa/sofurry (or whatever) are, indeed furries,
it doesn't mean that you need to act like a dog (you do, I know) most people at this site acts like their animal choose.

some others are:
cute
kind
jerks
pervs
mad
nasty
sick
cherish
like to be under the spot light
hate to be under the spot light
etc etc in no particular order

Being a furry means drawing furries or making fanfic about furries over doing that with human character. You also tend to like your character and personify yourself through him. The upper lever means wearing a fursuit and going to furcon x3

To me, a furry is a person who
1) has a natural positive disposition towards animals
2) sees the animal world as being superior/simpler to the current human world/society they live in, and
3) expresses that view in artistic ways to a greater or lesser degree through drawing, writing, music, hobby crafts, and is
4) generally a non-common non-conformist individual who fluctuates between being “I’d rather be alone” and a party animal who flits from one group activity to another whether the group is ten people or just a close friend.

I enjoy the creative freedom and open-mindedness that this fandom offers but I really don't consider myself a furry just because I draw anthro porn. A small percentage of my actual overall work (posted elsewhere) is even anthro-related. I think there are a lot of artists who just find this fandom very liberating creatively but don't carry that title around just because they create art that fits it.
If you enjoy creating the type of conceptual art used for video games that doesn't mean you have to be a gamer or even like video-games. You don't have to be a geographer to appreciate paintings of landscapes and natural formations. I view furry the same way. If it's something you enjoy that's fine--some people are really into it and that's cool too-- but theres no law that says you have to take it with you when you log off the site if you don't want to.

don't know for me either... I still draw human sometime (or I can say ALLOT~) but maybe to be A furry, you maybe TOTALY can't draw human...

but since I get into FA and Furry, my human drawing skill is going better, and I learn many poses too...

so maybe I kinda like you, a Furry Artist, but not totally 100% draw furry...

A Furry is a fan of anthropomorphic animals, on anything ranging from Watership Down to Disney’s Robin Hood. Anything else (fursuits, yiff, even fursonas) is a bonus. Plain and simple.

< http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1342823/ >

For me the real def of furry is : people who like anthro characters, in every sense, art,tv,movies. If you really like drawing anthro then you are furry, i have some friends who like it XD but they don't know they are furry until i tell them they say -cool i want to be one XD-

I remember I see a first form is Werewolf, now it different other form that Furry. I was thinking of "what is furry?" I just curious to new life style creature. ha ha.

Thats EXACTLY what I've been asking myself :/
My fiend says that its anyone who likes, or draws furry... but thats too large of a range I think.

For me I draw furries, i have a fur character... and yet I STILL dont feel like a furry.
I guess what makes you furry is if you feel furry? Haha maybe?

The Furry Commandments

I don't have a serious answer at the moment. Groggy.

I guess that's something that I haven't really thought of too deeply before. I just thought of it as something someone titled themselves as or not. Some one who has an interest in anthropomorphic characters isn't necessarily a furry to me. I think that if I were to draw a line between being a furry or not is whether a person has put enough invested interest in it that he/she goes so far as to create a character that they feel represents them; basically, in my mind a person is a furry if they have a fursona.

Someone who defines himself/herself or perceive from the eyes that he/she views himself/herself as part animal?

There has been people who only draw furries but they don't say that they're furries. Like, they only like drawing them, but they are not furries in their living. People who draws wolves, but doesn't perform nor act like one, I guess.

I don't know. Being interested in furries does not always make you a furry. Still, it's really difficult to not assume that you are a furry when you have a gallery full of furry drawings.

It depends on the level of how much interested in furries you are, I guess. If you say "you like werewolves = you are a furry", then... many would be, I don't know.

It's really a wide topic in a matter of "interest".

Hmmm
Being a furry to me is seeing that some part of yourself relates to an animal aspect.
For example I'm a werewolf so I see myself as loyal but I also see myself needing to have a pack or friends.
I also want to be strong and powerful.

I think really if you think your a furry well then your a furry but if not well your not .w.

When it comes down to it, most people think of furry as a form of fetishism. No one is really going to complain or label you a furry because you're a fan of Biker Mice from Mars or like collecting Donald Duck cartoons, all the kids have been there.

But with a world of open sexuality, people have started connecting dots they weren't afraid of connecting before. The real question is: When talking about furry, are we talking about a fetish - or what most people who use the term offensively really imply: a disorder?

As with any form of fandom, there are different levels of interest ranging from mild curiosity to extreme devotion. You could own a 'fur suit' and never have viewed any anthropomorphic pornography in your life, but people are still going to think your sexual interest is the difference between you and the people wearing suits in Disneyland for the kids. The extremes are what has set the definition and now people are just trying to draw a line.

As for me, my opinion is that if the term furry is meant to be understood as a fetish, you should weight it against a real fetishism. I happen to have a real fetishism and it might be a form of disorder, but I have never once felt the same way about anthropomorphism. To me, anthropomorphism it is merely a hobby and a fantasy; therefore, I am not a furry.

When I created a blog based on furry artwork, I specifically avoided using the word furry. The word is has just been diluted in the same way as other overused words, such as "awesome". It's just unclear what it really means, and I just use the word "anthropomorphism" instead. While it's a long word it doesn't leave any confusion, such as "I'm an anthropomorphic hobby artist". No unnecessary or unclear implications, it's loud and clear.

A furry is a person who considers themselves a fan of anthropomorphic characters in media. That's what furry is, a fandom. And like any fandom, it's also a community where people can do whatever they want with a source idea.

Like any fandom, you don't have to identify as a member to be a member, and no one should get upset if you deny being a member. It's all for fun.

Being furry is about trying to be your true self

I don't know that I'd agree with that. I don't think anybody could be born a furry. It's essentially a social community that was invented by people so I don't think--from a scientific standpoint-- you could possibly have a natural or genetic predisposition towards it. It's like saying being a Trekkie or a fan of MMO fantasy lands is part of our natural selves.
I think that the feeling many people get about it being their true self actually comes from the modern tendency to confuse the things that you like with who you are as a person. Fandoms can have the same effect that cliques do in high school. . .people begin to believe that the things they enjoy (playing football for instance) are what makes them a unique person and these feelings are amplified (ironically) by the more people just like them they surround themselves with. Just my two cents.

There's no levels of being a furry so it;s easy to think "I'm not a furry compared to..." but outside the community a furry is just someone who liked anthros... so whatever I guess?