Becoming a Furry

Then, perhaps, you may want a broader experience.

I'm sure some have come into furry from the "pseudo japanese animorph-porn" angle, but they're hardly representative of furry as a whole. Where's the "yiffistic" in Disney's "The Fox and the Hound" or "Lady and the Tramp"? Or even Disney's take on Robin Hood? Those and other decidedly non-yiffy sources have been mentioned, before, regarding the introduction to furry by some people.

*looks down to see if his chain has just been pulled*

Sometimes you just recognise your essential catness.

Exactly, Miss Linden.

Me, I'm technically a furry, as, in-world, I have a fuzzy body, an anthropomorphic head and a long, long, LONG tail.
I like being a bushbaby when I'm in SL.

Do I want to be a bushbaby in RL? Nope. Is the bushbaby my totem? Actually, a n'anga in Zimbabwe told me my totem was a pool of water, so... um... no.

The way I look at it, I'm in a fake world, a false reality. I can be a cartoon. Guess which cartoons were my favorite? GI Joe? Nope. Fat Albert? I liked, but nope. Looney Toons? HELL, yes. In SL, I get to be as crazy and creative and inspired as I want. My tail? It becomes a helicopter, like Bugs Bunny's ears. It also becomes a chair, a throne, a bicycle, an aeroplane and a sled. I have a MoleGirl AV that burrows underground when she walks, leaving a trail. I have made dolphin and orca AVs that swim through sand.

Does this make me a pervert? Um... no. I don't mess around on SL. I'm not here for sex, I'm here to have fun, make stuff and hopefully sell it for enough money to pay for my account every month.

I have friends who are furry and friends who are not. All of them accept me.

As for Corvus, where to hang out is up to you. *grin*
I generally hang out at home or in one of the sandboxes, mainly the Lost Furest one in Sables dAlliez, but occasionally in Furnation. Look me up some time. We can hang.

The lovely husky I am seeing prefers 'human' areas herself.

Its all really up to you where you hang out. Last ngiht she introduced me to primtionary, I'm looking forward to taking her to play Greedy.

The vast majority of furs were brought into the fandom by two sources, one was Disney's Robin Hood and the other was a comic called Albedo Anthropomorphic. Albedo was what brought me to the dark side as it was groundbreaking in concept. "Funny animals" who were actually intelligent and knew they were part animal. Unlike Robin Hood where the animal form was indicative of their personality, Albedo, a cute mouse girl could be a cold blooded assassin or a wolf could be a babysitter for lamb children. In the early eighties, this was a very novel concept and it basically was the start of the modern fandom. The newsgroup alt.fan.furry was originally called alt.fan.albedo and was later changed to reflect a broader fandom.

As far as shamanistic and spiritual furs, there are rather a large number of them. Unfortunately, SL is not a good place to meet them just like finding a broad sample of different furs in general on SL. The two hefty requirements of having both a relatively modern computer and broadband filters out the majority of furs. A ten mile shift in my current location and I would be stuck on dial-up for instance. Of course too, there are many furs who like furry fiction but not much else who wouldn't be interested in a visual and social venue like SL.

Over the years I've seen this discussion time and again as new folks come into the fold as it were.
I've found this page
http://www.tigerden.com/~infopage/furry/
To be extremly helpful on the explanations and whatnot as it contains the gist of many of the debates about the fandom in general.Its been on the web for a good many years and remains relevant to the subject.

IMO, mental illness must imply that the person suffers due to it. If they're happy, then what's the problem? Simple deviation from the average population can't be considered an illness in itself. Down that path lies madness. For example, lots of people in Spain like soccer. The ones that don't would obviously suffer from some kind of mental illnesss by that logic. Actual mental illness is something very different. When you fear going out of your house because you think there are Nazi stormtroopers hiding in the bushes, even though you know that's nonsense, and you see absolutely nothing out of the window, now that is mental illness. (note: not a personal experience, this is an account from somebody who described what paranoia is like)

There are quite wide variations in how people behave that don't have to mean anything is wrong with them. Introverts like myself are perfectly happy with a mostly solitary life, and a good friend or two. An extrovert probably go mad in the same setting. But they're happy having a wild party at the weekend, while I relax by reading a book. They're just different ways of living a life.

So how can being furry be considered as a mental illness?

Hi! from an Aussie Fur

Ah yes, the Internets, where one can express yourself without apparent fear of getting your head kicked in... I've meet several furs who are actually bi/gay, but play straight in RL.

I'd just like to point out, that if you come across any furs that swear black and blue that to be Furry means you have to be gay, they're talking out of there backsides. I've met furs of every orientation, social economic situation, job, ethnic group, whatever. *THERE IS NO ONE 'MODEL' OF A TYPICAL FUR* It's like saying all cowboys are straight, or all Americans are annoying - we all know this isn't true.

Also, I know a couple of furs who follow a similar Pagan path to the orginal poster. They're out there, as one aspect of a very multi-faceted fandom.

Whaaa??? I have been a fur for 20 years and I haven't been gay...not once. Yeah, anyone who says you have to be gay to be furry is an idiot. It's like saying you have to be gay to be a Star Trek fan.

About 10 years ago, maybe earlier, there was a concerted effort by a few individuals to turn the fur fandom into some sort of fetish, a gay fetish at that. A now defunct convention actively promoted itself as gay-centric and sex-centric and garnered the fur fandom in part its fetish reputation. They basically turned a fur convention into a gay leather-man and gimp mask gathering with few actual furs attending compared to the outsiders looking for an orgy. This reputation stained all conventions since even though most all do not promote this sort of behavior at all. It may take many more years to dilute that stain if ever. That combined with media coverage has made being furry a lot harder.

This discussion of furries being mentally ill brings to mind a slightly related news story from last year...

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3052074,00.html

One is harmful to other people. The others are not.

Hey, it worked for Emperor Norton!

COOLES i am a furry

Actually, that is a very good point. But is being a furry “not harmful” to the person?

My thoughts are that it's like anything else, it depends on how obsessed with it you get. Just like the D&D thing a few posts ago.

Some people are furries just as a fun hobby, like playing D&D or bird watching. Others get into it so much that they don't even think of themselves in human terms anymore, and yes that level of obsession will have harmful effects in some way.

Do I think some of the furries in SL are mentally ill? Yes I do. But then, I think almost everyone in SL is mentally ill to some extent. Hell, I know that I am a total loon!

You know, this whole notion that someone can't have a successful social life unless they're just a casual fan of something is rather tiresome.

As for the "mentally ill" stuff, wasn't that a favorite way for the former Soviet Union to deal with dissidents, to declare them mentally ill because they didn't agree with the ruling elites?

Doesn't seem like the best of precedents, I think...

The only sin is in unnecessarily harming others. Harming yourself is merely stupid, not evil.

Ironically, the furries I've met are among the most balanced and tolerant people I know.

Probably because they've done a lot of soulsearching to find out who and what they are.
They know it much better than the average Joe, that's for sure.

Another really good point.

I know a guy who was raised Catholic, and he is totally messed up in the head. Almost to the point of being non functional.

He could really benefit from some serious soulsearching, but is too paralized by fear to even try. Oh, and furries really freak him out.

Okay.

I admit I haven't read all of this but there does seem to be a load of confusion over what furries "are".

Truth we told we're bound together very loosely, there is no supreme furry leader, there are only ever little pocket groups based around websites... like atoms, with members that go between groups like eletrons in atomic bonds.

I've been a fur for 8 years or so, I started before it was legal for me to buy porn. Given my tour of service heh, I think my viewpoint is pretty valid, I'll go ahead and get into now this preface is sorta done.

The furry culture consists of three groups, all of which pull their stock(members) out of the general internet population.

Furry Artists/Constructors/Community leaders.
Furry general community.
"Furry" Religion.

Furry artists, constructors and community leaders contain people like:
Nexxus(the boss of furnation, in game, and the website)
Dark Natasha (Furry artist, does wonderful work... explicit and otherwise heh)
Thili playfair (A lot of the nice nature builds? Yup, those are hers ^_^)
Tourmal (can't name the website, I think adult sites are against ToS)

These people provide the websites and spaces that furries hang out at and help us all connect, without their combined work there'd be no furry community. I greatly respect those people that realise how much the community provides for its people in an age of self isolation through the internet, and I loathe those that turn traitor and use the community purely for profit, those that would spit on the same people they sell artwork or rental space to.

Next we have the furry community, this includes every single fur. The furry community is nice, we have people in the army, navy, airforce, over seas, goths, vampires, steampunks, wiccans, pegans, shaman, nerds, geeks, gammers, writers, actors, actress, composers....

My point is, one of the things that makes me love the fandom as much as hate it is that we are willing to take just about anyone, regardless of what they beleave as long as they're not hateful over stupid things like skin color, sexual preferance or religion (though, if it is a hurtful religion based on killing or something, we WONT support it or welcome it)

We're a lot like secondlife in that respect... We're accepting... except we dont require a credit card

Finally we have the furry religions... they really aren't ours, they were around before hand and probably in some way or another, gave some life to the furry culture.

It ranges from totemism, therians, egyption(think bast, fertility half cat goddess, anubis, jackel god of death) Indian religions and celtic fokelore.

Basically "furry" does so well here in secondlife because its almost like saying "I'm a virus on a planet where nearly everything is vulnerable to me!"

Sometime, somewhere, an activity you like will also be liked by a furry... and you might become a good friend of theirs, you might get introduced into gaming, scifi or anime, music, whatever. You'll become a friend, and one day they might offer you a look into the rest of their free time.


Traditionally, furries have been gay... thats the flat truth of it, up until very recently (within my generation)

The reason for this is computers were a work tool, work was sexist, the internet was most provalient in nations that had sexist views. Women in most cases were the victims of such negative sterotypes...

As a result, most cultures that were 80% or more purely online based became gay or bi biased. Very recently, within the last 10-25 years there has been a large growth in female users, especially with the kids turning just old enough to, you guessed it, join secondlife, in fact most of these kids grew up using the internet and are natural self isolationists... so of course, they look to chatrooms and SL to socialize.

SL also has the biggest pull on female gamers and computer users that I've EVER seen... its nearly shocking.

So basically, I'd say that no, not every fur is a gay guy.

(Divider here because being gay isn't bad)

Not every furry is fat, not every fur is nuts... we just get bad press based upon the worst examples in the community.

If you want to be a furry just pick your favorite animal and mix its traits with that of a human, be as free or liberal as you want in your roleplay, have fun with it, be you.

I'd say the sexual attraction among furries is easy to explain. People pretend to be half animal, people want to have sex, people pretending to be half animal want to have sex...

People scream beastiality but its not, our characters are fully sentient for one, just like Elves, Dwarfs and whatnot... so unless you're going to acost all the romance novel writers that make use of fantasy settings, don't jump on our backs because that'd make you hypocritcal.

Oh, and just to double underline that. We're not into beastiality, having sex with unthinking animals is viewed as wrong by a whole lot of us, the furs that do want to are termed "Zeta furs"

Not all furries are actually in SL to have sex, quite a few furries just want to read/write/draw innocent furries doing grand things, just like JRR tolken wanted to write about hobbits, but not hot, dirty halfling sex. Luskwood is a prime example of this fact.

One final note... we do have a lot of sicko types I'll admit... but I said furries are accepting, I should replace that with the word "tolerant"

Some fetishes we DO NOT like at all, but we have to put up with because they use the same defense we do as in "Hey, its all pretend" so sadly our hands are tied and a lot of cowards hide behind our fandom... I could name more than a few groups in fact.

Keep in mind, if people are sick and depraved before they meet up with the furry fandom, chances are that baggage stays with them once they've put themselves in.

We dont have a doorman, we dont have a pope, we dont have a set of rules like the gorean sims.

Use your head, judge us person by person.

(yeah, that was a little defensive, I apologize... its just usually the same speech I give out in the newbie areas in an IM to IM basis, as I often sit there with a titler that says "Ask me about furries if you're curious about my avatar"

and most often... they've been to somethingawful.com, or seen something absolutely dreadful about us on the TV like CSI's fur and loathing episode.)

Having been a furry for over 20 years I can unequivocally say that in the beginning, furry was not primarily gay. Furry did not start as an Internet phenomenon. It started as an offshoot of Sci-fi back in the mid-seventies and had very little to do with porn. It was, for a very long time, a comic book based fandom with some TV and Movie influences. Unfortunately, about the time furs actually decided to break off from Sci-fi and become its own fandom, many of the prominent artists at the time refused to have any influence on the direction it should take. Steve Gallacci, artist and creator of Albedo actually held the furry fandom in contempt even though he basically created the modern fandom with his comic.

If you are a furry and you never heard of Albedo Anthropomorphics, there is a good reason. Mr. Gallacci made a very concerted effort to remove any fan art related to any of his artwork and threatened lawsuits. He got all the major art sites on the net to refuse posting of anything that even remotely had anything to do with him, even just stating an original art piece was influenced by him would have art rejected. So, before long, sales of his comic dropped to near zero and most don't even know it existed.

Then too, once the internet fandom took off and porn became easily available online, many of the original founders of the fandom left since they had to divorce themselves from a fandom that went from a harmless branch of Star Trek conventions to a porn based fetish. There were some professional artists who dabbled in furry art who suddenly found themselves harder to employ. Then when the magazine articles and the documentary came out that portrayed the furry fandom as a bunch of damaged gay fursuit fetishists and plushie humpers, the vast majority of straight and non sexually based furs simply had enough and left the fandom. My involvement dropped significantly as well at the time. Some tried to fix the problems with "Burned Furs" or tried to distance themselves from the creepy side by branching off with "Anthro Fans" but they both died twisted deaths.

Since then the furry fandom grew significantly, many attracted by the prevalent gay and deviance accepting lifestyle portrayed in the media even though it isn't a reflection of reality. A lot of people think fur is all about fursuits and fursuit sex but there are likely less than 100 actual, con going fursuiters out of perhaps 5,000 furs that make up the core fandom(largest attendance at a furry convention was a little over 2,000).

What I feel being a furry means:

1. Pick an animal aspect that you like or means something to you.
2. Shed on the couch.
3. *HAVE FUN*

That's it.

All the labels, generalizations, and genre anthropology, in my opinion, just get in the way. Life's too serious and sucks too much as it is. Just have fun and enjoy yourself. Go bark up the wrong tree, find a pretty yarn ball, generate some static cling with another. I don't care what someone else is doing, I'm a furry because I enjoy it, and noone's going to stop me from doing just that.

oops, should post something OT too: "Now what?" as abovce, I reccomend finding an AV that sings to you. Then spend some time personalizing until your AV says "This is me, Corvus Drake." Then go out and have fun. Don't worry about what people think. If they don't like it, they aren't worth your notice. If they want to label you, that's their weakness.

Just
Have
Fun

Oh and smile while you're at it. Sharp teeth make for better nibbling.

Kath.

Come on man...

Furry in its current form compared to what it used to be prior to the net is so vastly differant its a lot like cats and dogs... while they share a common ancester, its not fair to say they both have the same origins unless you want to go back into the infantsy of the world(fandom)

There was a definite branch from mascotting and the like, and the furry internet IRC, mud, muck and forum based branch off.

I'm well aware it had roots prior to the net, all I'm saying is that it really came into its own because the internet gave us all a meeting place, and as computers were work tools and being that computers and the net were mainly used by men to start with... well, you can see the link there.

I'm sorry to disagree because it seems you hate anyone thinking there is a gender-sexual preferance linked bias in the fandom due to the growth direction it took but honestly it doesnt need you or I to argue the point, its just the simple truth.

It was shown off as a culture of people who accept social deviants.

Thats pretty much the sum of why things are the way they are... the new wave of furries, on the other hand, come from all walks of life and just starting to hit the public sector... I wouldn't be surprised if there is a surge of furry material in the next 6 years or so as long as bush doesnt make a law against it heheh!

But yeah I'll agree, we are NOT a bunch of fursuit sex humpers, most of us like to only roleplay sex as anthro characters if we roleplay sex at all, in most cases with real life sex, its bare skin on bare skin, period... not differant from anyone else.

The worst PR I've seen is CSI's episode where they lampoon a "dead dog" party as a sex orgy.

Dead dog parties actually come from Sci cons, as people say "my dogs are barking" when they had tired feet. Dead dog parties come at the end of cons because people are dead tired from all the walking around, heavy costumes or carrying around a lot of junk they bought, or being part of shows.

Dead dog parties also serve as a cool off period where sci-fi, fantasy, furry or everquest nerds reaclimate themselves to the more boring life they get to enjoy for another year

(And just so you all know, CSI is paid by the united states government to write about topics, and in a light they choose, the rash of torture related stuff on it and the "24" series was no accident. this is actually admitted to openly, its not a big secret or conspiracy, it just doesnt make the news to warn people that its propaganda)

To summarize:

Ask 5 people into furry what "furry" means to them, and you'll get at least seven answers back.

Slightly less flippantly, just like eating a Reeces Peanut Butter Cup, there's no wrong way to be a furry.

(Or for a totally serious comment, see my post here instead of cluttering up this thread with it or repeating myself.)

Well, just as they talk about the old Navy, I get to talk about the old furry since I was there. I suppose that since your experience with the fandom is internet based and only 8 years old you have the perspective that anything before your time is irrelevant, I just disagree. I also feel that those who don't know where the roots of the fandom lie look like total greenhorns when they try to pontificate about what they think the fandom is about. There are many more furs in the world than there are on the internet. The internet is not universal just yet and what you see on the net is not the entire picture.

Much of what you describe furs as coming from is the younger furs, and the lifestylers. Many of us older furs came from more literary backgrounds and cartoons. My personal introduction was LONG before the internet and the furry culture through sci-fi books, a couple cartoon series with anthro aliens (The original Flash Gordon, Baron Thun, lionman and Star Trek, the Animated Series, M'ress) and role-playing games (The aslan in the original Traveller RPG).

There is a clear and DEEP divide between the younger lifestyler furs and the shamanistic furs and the rest of the fandom. Personally, I find the lifestyler's utter lack of respect for community standards (I may not like the rules of various areas or society, but I try to conform to them out of respect to others I share this world with) and tendency to play 'freak the mundanes' to be reprehensable at best. The Shamanistic crowd, I flat out do not understand (since I am atheist, so spirituality is bizzarely incomprehensable to me.

So, no...we're not all japanimation and yiffistic-based.

You are incorrect. It mostly has to do with who you hang around with. Not to mention, who has the loudest voices. I've been around a tad longer than you have, and been around... LOTS of different groups. It's been much more varied than you think.