Candace takes on: Furryphobia
So a while back, I candidly asked some of my blog readers why people hate furries. I got a myriad of answers, but I was disappointed that a lot of them were fairly general. The most common theme I got was, "People hate what they don't understand." That's great, and it's good for consoling people of pretty much any minority group, but what I was really focusing on was what are these people's "reasons" for justifying their hatred of furry fandom?
A thought occured to me while I was watching my usual lgbtq documentaries. And then I thought about the familiar "Yiff in hell furfags" chant. I think that to most people, furries represent gay people and geek people, two subcultures where people still feel justified to lash out against, and the majority of the popuation turns a blind eye. Some people will tell you that they were born furry, that its not a choice for them, and it just feels right. They say its a lifestyle. Everyone experiences "furry" in a different way. But the same can be said for homosexuality. Some people believe even that is a choice, so while it's widely accepted that you shouldn't hate people for qualities they have no control over like age, race, or sex, its also implied that you are allowed to hate people who make personal choices that make them different from you.
In FagBug, one of the people interviewed made a comment that stood out in my mind. When you tell people you're gay, their minds automatically snap to what you do in the bedroom. When you meet an average person, whom you will probably assume is straight (I even catch myself assuming everyone I talk to is straight until I'm corrected), you probably aren't thinking about all of the kinky and nasty things they do in their private homes.
One time I tried an experiment in my own mind when I went around and thoughgt of everyone I talked to as how they would have sex. Needless to say, I was grossed out. I don't want to think of people having sex, nor should I because at least 90% of their average day is not spent having sex! Nevermind the love and commited relationships, the emotional support that goes on between couples of any sexual orientation, if people feel a strong connection to one another some times they sleep with each other. Like furry, the whole gay label gets packaged up and sent out with gay sex activities, not whose company you prefer to keep. The word triggers mental images in the mind.
I feel like the same thing can be said for furries, only I think its an even sadder realization that if you meet someone who's gay, you can probably assume that at one point or another they had or will have gay sex. But if you meet a furry, why are you presuming the furry business dictates what they do in the bedroom?
That makes as much sense to me as saying someone who designs leather interiors for cars is into leather play in the bedroom. Maybe its because several years ago, a lot of sensationalist media groups took the furry idea and played with it, and now everyone has that in the back of their minds that furry = sex. If you talk to people who have little knowledge about furries, they'll almost always tell you tthat a furry wears funny costume and has sex in it, or they draw cartoon characters with genitals. I'm sure some people do that, but I'm equally as sure that most people don't.
Take it from me guys, I'm actually a furry, and for my own knowledge, I looked for people who did such things and asked them why. I found they were few and far in between. Who are you going to believe? Someone who's actually been there, or what you see on tv and read on the internet, hmm? I know its ironic that I'm writing on the internet, too. I encourage you to seriously consider the source and authenticity of the information you're presented before you make up your mind on the issue. As a matter of fact, if you look for that perverted furry stuff you've heard of, you'll find it. You probably don't know the difference between what's fake and what's authentic furry, though. If you look for actual furry owned and operated content, you might be interested for a minute, but you'll probably be bored once you realize it has a lot to do with writing and artwork, and not sex.
Why is it okay to hate gays and geeks, though? Well, if you remember back to grade school, due to heavy policing and bullying from other children (who seem to be programmed, like hyena cubs, to isolate what makes you different or better and try to beat it out of you), it was almost always okay to pick on that little guy reading a comic book in the corner or the person who excelled at math and science instead of playing sports or making themselves pretty. They rarely were interested in physical activties, and were usually quiet by nature. Therefore, if you picked on them, they were more likely to focus on their studies than relatiate against you. That's enabling in a way, because if they, let alone anyone else, doesn't tell you you're wrong for picking on them, you assume by process of elimiation that it -is- okay to pick on them. Furry is an extension of the geek subculture, and some people will even go as far as to say it developed at a specific comic or sci fi convention in the 80s.
As for gay people, most people turn to the Bible as their defense against homosexuality. One reverend in the documentary Fish Out of Water, makes an interesting observation. Christianity always seems to have a victim. People have use the Bible in defense of such abominations as slavery. Why do people cling to how they interpret the Bible to speak against homosexuality? Maybe because its the last thing they have, because the Bible has fallen short in its defense of everything else. We all know how it goes. Gay people are bad people who are going to hell like pedophiles, sex offenders, and beastializers. They just kind of all get lumped into one category.
randomdiversion raised an interesting point. I'll have to admit its something I've never heard before, but its worth being considered. Is it the whole animal aspect that creeps people out? Why animals? I don't know. Why aliens? Why airplanes? Why bondage? Why garden? Pfft. People are just interested in it. I personally like the artwork, and the surrealist in me loves to consider things that could never be for the very fact that they aren't real. I can't speak for every furry in that reguard. Maybe the lynchpin of what unites furry fandom, that its usually some sort of non human (and therefore animal) character that unites us, reminds people of beastiality. But furries are not animals. They are humans. Even if they do have sex, they're with other consenting human adults. This argument goes right back to making me wonder where the assumption that furry = sex is coming from.
I'm not trying to justify any of these thoughts. I'm not even going to bother making arguments against them. So, I guess what I'm really saying by all of this is people need to get their minds out of the gutter and mind their own damn business before they condemn someone else.