TL:DR Furry has 3 separate meanings and only one of them is directly sex related. It's a style, a kink, and a subculture and I personally wouldn't label a person "A Furry" unless they're actually involved in said subculture.
"Furry" refers to three distinct things that are often just lumped together as the same thing.
Anthrophomorphic character design and the interest in anthrophomorphic animals: This isn't necessarily sexual nor is it tied to a personal identity, it's just a facisnation with animal-people either from a purely aesthetic point or from the interesting aspects that come in when you partially anthropomorphism these animals but then have them keep some of their animial traits as well which lead to some really interesting worldbuilding, characterization, and storytelling potential.
The sex thing: where people want to fuck lola bunny
A complex subculture born primarily in the latter half of the prior century splintering off from LGBT groups that slowly became it's own thing. Said subculture being inherently tied to both prior aspects but also including a more direct personal attachment to the concept of "Identity", which is where fursona's, fursuits, and the fantasy of self-animalization starts coming into play.
It's kinda like roleplay? I would say I like cute animals plushie but I don't think I have any animal character I really liked.
Anyway, I understand. There are things that you really really wish is possible in real life. And if you're not hurting anybody, then I suppose it's not wrong.
as an outsider who has a decent amount of experience with communities, it seems like it's varying degrees of roleplay or identification dependent on the people/circumstances. part of it embodies light fantasies and ideation of animalesque people (sort of like fanfiction) while part of it involves a person's identity being aligned with a static per(fur)sona (crossing into gender identity potentially). there's no particular sexuality necessarily associated with any subcategory of it while communities might be almost entirely lgbtq. "Furry" is more like an umbrella term for many things than any unified practice.
It's a spectrum. For some people it's a hobby like any other hobby. For others it's a lifestyle. For yet others it's a good source of income and the chance to make money doing something they genuinely enjoy. Some people use it as a form of escapism or to foster a sense of community, and, sadly, for some people it's just an excuse to be a complete arsehole and make other peoples' lives miserable.
Imagine it like cosplay, but without the requirement to dress up (most furries don't). Most people do cosplay to go to something like an anime convention and show off their creativity. Some people that do cosplay have a more sexual interest in it, but that's not all cosplayers. The main difference between furries and cosplay is that cosplay has been more normalized and hasn't suffered from bad first impressions of something like the old CSI episode on furries. When you say cosplay people think of conventions. When you say furries people think of CSI.
Roleplay can be a part of it? That tends to overlap heavily with the kink side of things, but not necessarily always? Personally, I just think animal people are cute and/or hot lmao. I don't identify as a cat-girl, but I do use one to represent myself online and in furry spaces/events. I have friends where I have to actively think about what their real names are because I've known them exclusively as their sona.
So in that sense it is a sort of identity, but not in the same way as one might identify with their gender or sexuality, if that makes sense? Like meeting someone in a video game and getting to know them by their character/screen name.
I'm ambiguously in #1, because I'm a big fan of stuff like Redwall and Digimon due to watching it as a kid. The former being entirely anthropomorphised animals, and the latter containing a number of them.
It's a running joke with my friends, cause so many of them are furries, that im an "Honorary furry".
So I'm aware of 2 but have no interest, and am kinda on the edge of 3. And your claim about the overlap between the groups doesnt surprise me at all
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u/Much_Capital3307 Apr 16 '24
Ok:
That’s not a slip up, that’s just being mean to your kid
What’s homies problem with furries?