• Akuchimoya@startrek.website
    15·
    2 hours ago

    Perhaps someone can help me understand the difference between an anthropromorphic animal mascot (which as a tale as old as time) and a furry? When does one cease to be one and becomes another?

    There are animal mascots all the time in sports. Why is that not weird, but it’s weird to have a sporty animal mascot for coins?

  • Nexy@lemmy.sdf.org
    6·
    3 hours ago

    Oftopic, but lately I started to draw some furry ladys and its pretty fun try to make the fur feel smooth in the drawings.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    436·
    10 hours ago

    So in recent weeks I’ve learned that furries are a lot more shunned than I thought, and it’s one of those things like Bronies where it’s not the subject of their obsession but the enthusiasm they have for the subject of their fandom.

    I grew up with Disney and Warner Brothers classics, read the Albedo comic anthology and a few others, but don’t see myself as a furry enthusiast (contrast my enthusiasm for late 20th century are we the real monsters? science fiction). Furry porn and furry-themed sex fantasies aren’t particularly my scene, but this is true for the majority of furries as well.

    But our society has gotten weird about furries and anthros, which I guess became evident when the US right-wing started spreading the litter-boxes in schools canard. Curiously, in the porn media community, animal genital shapes are a controversy, and mainstream media platforms that sell furry porn will not allow for anthros with canine or equine genitals. I think VISA specifically will not allow transactions for such works, which is stunning interventionism both in its overreach and specificity.

    And then some social media sites have special rules for furry content, that even SFW furry content can only appear inside furry-inclusive perimeters… unless it’s classical like Warner or Hanna Barbara. Wikipedia refuses to acknowledge Freefall (1998-present) one of the long-running fairly-hard-science-fiction webcomics (that gets into space-travel culture and robot culture), specifically because it has an anthro as a main character, more precisely, a genetically engineered wolf, next to a robot and a non-human trader.

    It’s not that furries are weird. It’s that society is weird about furries.

    I had an idea that the paws salute should become the official salute of the new resistance (since furries have been marked as a target for fascist enemy within rhetoric), but then trying to do some basic web searches, I couldn’t find a proper conventional name for the pose, nor easy-to-find art of it, even though I’ve seen the gesture made by catgirls often enough to know it’s a thing, and one of the salutes I might consider when standing before the firing squad.

    In the last few years, I went from being resignedly a man to being enby, having become disgusted with how dudes obsessed with manhood have conducted themselves in our society. Before, I didn’t care that much, and my own notions of what it was to be a man turned into adulting in the 2010s (take care of business; make sure rent and utilities are paid; don’t do violence, especially when nuclear weapons are involved). Now men look like Matt Walsh and Donald Trump.

    I’m not a furry or otherkin (yet), but considering how the furry community is among the untermenschen, I’m half-inclined to develop a fursona for sake of solidarity.

    And I still think the paws salute should be the sign of the resistance.

    • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      1·
      7 minutes ago

      since furries have been marked as a target for fascist enemy within rhetoric

      Likewise, fascists have been marked as a target for furry enemy within rhetoric, more or less since the first furries wearing Nazi shit showed up at a con.

    • Lenny@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 hours ago

      The problem is, I only ever see furries when they’re doing weird kink shit. I go to regional burns, and this last one had a small furry audience, not all from the same group. One day I was exploring on my bike and saw one of them doing a shadowbox strip tease. Later, another one (again, from a different group) wander into our camp wearing a diaper and holding a baby bottle. I know that the burn culture can be a little more sex forward, but I only seem to encounter furries at burns, and furries at burns only ever seem to be doing kink stuff.

      • BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        6·
        2 hours ago

        Well, you’re only seeing a small subset of the culture. Most furries don’t do fursuits or cons or any of that stuff. Most are invisible, just like a brony or a Harry Potter fan or a comic nerd or whatever. It’s just an interest or hobby that you wouldn’t know about unless you knew the person.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 hour ago

          I know someone who is into the general aesthetic of SFW “furry” stuff but is a bit weird about it because one of two things happens if she shares some content she likes:

          • People turn away because they think she’s into that stuff sexually
          • People get way too into engaging with her because they think she’s into that stuff sexually.

          Feels like there needs to be some better nuance between “I like furry style SFW art” and “I’m all into furry in the the way people guess”. Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter, but it’s certainly something you should have to explicitly opt into rather than an assumption based on liking or doing a drawing or like wearing an animal ear headband or non-plug tail or something similarly innocuous.

    • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.netEnglish
      234·
      8 hours ago

      I read somewhere that someone’s attitude to furries is a great litmus test for how tolerant that person actually is (assuming that person isn’t a furry, of course). I’ve always found myself mildly confused by furries (and I used to be somewhat weirded out because I mainly knew of furries because a friend bought a house from drawing furry porn). Hearing the litmus test thing helped me to chill out a bunch and recognise that seeing lots of furries in and adjacent to my community was a sign of a healthy social ecosystem, so to speak

      • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
        7·
        3 hours ago

        I don’t understand them. I doubt I ever will. But I know I do not hate them. They’re doing nothing wrong, hurting no one, leave em be. Simple.

    • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
      512·
      3 hours ago

      Sorry, furries are weird and will continue to be weird. Not the people who watch furry porn or cosplay furries, but those that actually think their furries and act that lifestyle, or the new buzzword, “identify” as such. It is cringe and indicative of mental health issues.

      • SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world
        3·
        55 minutes ago

        Yeah! You know what else is weird? You. For picking out a tiny subset of an already tiny community and picking on it like it is at all the norm. I can rip out a million tiny subgroups of groups and say “group” is and always will be weird because of “insert small subgroup here”.

        It’s like people who say “I don’t like abortion because it shouldn’t be used as a birth control” like bokay, no one was doing that. Why are you fucking mentioning it?

    • angrystego@lemmy.world
      103·
      10 hours ago

      Yes, furries seem to be the new group everyone is ready to hate no matter the political inclination. Gays are accepted more and more, trans people are far from safe, but at least have allies, furries seem to be the easiest target now. I need to learn the paws salute.

        • chaonaut@lemmy.world
          71·
          2 hours ago

          Tell me you don’t know queer subcultures without telling me you don’t know queer subcultures. Would you like to complain about drag shows while you’re at it? I hear it is very in vogue at the moment.

        • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          93·
          5 hours ago

          Why? If someone’s identity as a furry is as much a part of them as your identity as gay, or for that matter, Marcus’ identity as black, isn’t it similar enough a violation that society deems you can’t be that and be a full equal?

          This, to me, is the problem. Mystique shouldn’t have to hide her mutant status even though she could.

        • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
          214·
          7 hours ago

          While furries aren’t a marginalized group, 99% of furry hate is a proxy for queerphobia and ableism, the criticisms are almost 1:1 with the shit those same people say about queer and autistic folk.

            • angrystego@lemmy.world
              171·
              8 hours ago

              I see a huge potential for them to become an at risk minority. Why shouldn’t I defend a group that I think is innocent and under threat? I don’t want them to be next. Bullying of groups of people who do no harm, just want to express themselves in their own way, makes me sick.

              • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
                516·
                6 hours ago

                Because being a furry is a hobby, engaging in a hobby doesn’t make you a minority.

                No matter what happens, you can always stop looking at cartoon animals on the internet, can’t really stop being gay or trans.

                • PyroNeurosis@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                  2·
                  2 hours ago

                  This reads to me a lot like “I don’t care what they do in their bedroom, but why do they have to be that way in public?”

                • angrystego@lemmy.world
                  7·
                  3 hours ago

                  Let’s not tolerate narrowing the spectrum of ways people can enjoy their lives. That’s what totalitarian regimes do. They prohibit this and prohibit that, and in the end, you are only allowed to watch the approved movies, listen to the approved music and wear the approved clothes. You can stop expressing yourself, you can stop engaging in your hobbies, you can stop living the way you want to live, you can survive. But it sucks all happiness from your life.

    • Atlas_@lemmy.world
      631·
      4 hours ago

      SFW furry? There’s kinda no such thing.

      If it’s identifiably furry then it tells me something about you and your sexual preferences that I didn’t want to know. The same if you had a Bad Dragon sticker or an Ahegao sweatshirt. Just because it doesn’t have explicit nudity doesn’t mean it’s not sexual and doesn’t mean it’s appropriate.

      Y’all want to do things anonymously on the internet, great. Y’all want to have conferences or get together in spaces that support that, also great. You should absolutely have those spaces. But so many furries that I’ve met overshare about it. Don’t use your fursona as your work profile pic. Don’t tell me you’re a furry when I didn’t ask anything remotely related. Don’t openly thirst over Judy Hopps. Ain’t nobody going around saying “I like tentacles and I’m proud of it” - take a note.

      • SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world
        21·
        52 minutes ago

        I know multiple furries personally who are asexual. You are speaking out your ass and fetishizing furries out of your own sexual repression.

      • Dragonstaff@leminal.spaceEnglish
        273·
        5 hours ago

        SFW furry? There’s kinda no such thing.

        You realize that you’re the one sexualizing them, right?

        There absolutely are people who have a fursona or participate in the fandom in completely SFW ways. A fursona tells you exactly nothing about their sexual preferences. Honestly you sound exactly like homophobes insisting that two boys holding hands is obscene. Just because you equate a fursona with sex doesn’t mean that every furry thinks the same way.

        • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          10·
          3 hours ago

          Your point comparing furry haters to homophobes struck true to me. I don’t know much about furries, but I live in the home of anthrocon and the annual furry parade is one of the most wholesome things this city has. Families and kids love to see all the costumes, and furries are some of the nicest folks I’ve met. I’m always a bit taken aback when people call them perverts - it seems like a harmless hobby to me.

        • Atlas_@lemmy.world
          88·
          4 hours ago

          From Wikipedia:

          Another survey at a furry convention in 2013 found that 96.3% of male furry respondents reported viewing furry pornography, compared with 78.3% of females.

          I don’t have an issue with gay people. I don’t have an issue with anybody existing or being who they are. I have an issue with repeatedly learning sexual things I didn’t want to know about people, which has happened multiple times with furries specifically. Maybe I’ve been unlucky or something, but my experience has been that furries far more than other groups overshare and don’t respect reasonable boundaries around this.

          • jj4211@lemmy.world
            21·
            1 hour ago

            There’s some self selecting bias there, going to a ‘furry convention’ is a rather steeper level of engagement than just, say, looking at a webcomic featuring art like this mascot here.

            Those more hard core sexual furries scare off casual furries as well as folks a bit timid about being associated with the most… Forthcoming portion of the fandom.

            It’s rough on some as they want to engage without sexual interest in the aesthetic, but as a result get grouped in with those with a sexual interest. They want to identify as something, and furry is closest, but they aren’t into the sexual facet and struggle with that broad association.

          • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            8·
            3 hours ago

            People who read a lot of books often enjoy the occasional smut. People who watch anime are probably more likely to watch hentai. It’s not really surprising that people’s passions and hobbies leak into their choice of pornography.

          • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
            51·
            3 hours ago

            What in the useless statistics Batman? So because a large percentage of people who identify as furries have viewed (not actively view, not prefer, quite simply have viewed) furry pornography, the entire furry community must be a sex thing? That misses more than a few possibilities. Fuck, I’ve seen gay porn, and I’m not gay. As far as “learning something sexual about someone”, unless you’re calling learning someone has a fursona learning something sexual about them, this whole thing is a non-sequiter based entirely on anecdotal experience.

      • Nexy@lemmy.sdf.org
        51·
        3 hours ago

        I like Dusk: an elysian tail. Its a nice game with fun mechanics. And is a SFW furry game, just the people its animal like.

      • Scribbd
        6·
        5 hours ago

        What about people proudly showing things like this: 🏳️‍🌈

        • Atlas_@lemmy.world
          37·
          5 hours ago

          Sure. Lots of people do that as allies too and it’s just a flag.

          Now say you did a rainbow flag shaped like a penis - that I would take some issue with.

      • chaonaut@lemmy.world
        22·
        2 hours ago

        Another day, another sensationalization of the sexual aspects of a queer subcultures. If it’s not the “inherent sexualization of discussing gay people”, or trans people as "autogynephillia and autoandrophillia’, it’s furries or kink at pride. It’s really disheartening hearing the same tools of oppression being deployed over and over again.

  • Draconic NEO@pawb.social
    1193·
    18 hours ago

    What’s wrong with having a furry mascot exactly? I mean the Japanese Air force had a furry mascot for one of their bases, not only is he a furry but also a femboy. His name is Omaneko (おまねこ)

    Omaneko images

  • CameronDev@programming.dev
    53·
    16 hours ago

    Bizarrely, I had never heard of this before, and I am Australian. So maybe it was released, but maybe quietly swept under the rug?

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
    13·
    13 hours ago

    I remember when this happened, and I remember that post on particular from the artist. I’m not certain they swept it under the rug on purpose, but we certainly haven’t seen them since.

    Side note, the Paralympics mascot is fine and I’m only a little bit fur-curious, lol.