Furry, or Not Furry?

[Andara Bledin]

I think Plaidman really hit it on the head though: 'furry' seems to be a major personal commitment, while wearing an alien cat costume for a couple days because the alien cats are cool is just being a geek.

Except it isn't. At all.

Any more than being a sci-fi geek or an anime fan or a rennie.

Most of what the rest of the world seems to "know" about furries is just utter crap. And mass media isn't helping any because they don't care about truth as much as they care about selling headlines/ad space. For every Stalking Cat, there are thousands of people like me.

At its most basic, it's just another fandom. But where trekkies got mocked, furries get reviled.

^-.-^

[Andara Bledin]

I think CSI did a lot of damage to the furry community by their depictions of what goes on at a furry con, and only served to increase the misunderstanding of furries.

The scary part is that what got on the air was so massively better than their original ideas. One of the consultants for that episode is a local fur and a large number of the non "pretty people" you see walking about are friends of mine. I'm in there, too, tho you can only see the back of my head for one second during the stage show portion.

To me, it's really no different than an SCAdian putting together an elaborate set of Elizabethan garb. It's like putting on a persona...or, in the case of furries, a fursona. You can look at it as a form of cosplay if that makes it any easier.

It is a form of cosplay. It's just that instead of cosplaying someone else's character, most furs cosplay their own.

Funny you should mention SCAdians. When I mentioned Rennies, earlier, I later realized that most Rennies, SCAdians, and LARPers put far more effort into their fandoms than most furs.

It's not about kink, sexual gratification, or any of the negative connotations the media has attached to the community - at it's purest form it is a form of self-expression.

One thing that isn't obvious is that the vast majority of furs don't ever do fursuiting. Most don't even dress up, except perhaps for the typical ears and tail or a little face paint.

And, to really confuse matters, you have people who call themselves furs who aren't really furs at all, but are there for the non-judgmental attitude the general furry community has towards non-standard relationships.

^-.-^