NZFurs Chat forum: "Furry". A Rant.

First of all, I want to say... hi.
Next- someone is probably going to point out that the majority of this community are into the erotic side of ... "furriness". I'm going by one of "Matthag"'s posts that this place is ... relatively clean.
Thirdly- my rant/essay thing I thought up one sleepless night.

I'm sure many of you are aware about the nature of the term "furry", and the nature of the term "rant". First of all, I am not against furries, but I am not too keen on the term. The term furry or furries is like the term pussy- they refer to completely different things. Pussy can refer to a cat, or it can refer to someone who is scared of something, or - to use another slang term - a wuss.
The trouble with the term furry is that is connections to the majority of the world that are into the erotic art that furry has become associated with, this leads to problems with the small percentage of "us" who prefer to just draw (or create) anthropomorphic characters, and then we have the lack of reasoning with those who label something as furry.

A Canadian friend of mine had this to say about the word "furry".
- "People across the internet have to defend themselves from everything if they are ever called a furry,
The sad part is, the furry fandom really deserves it, considering there are indeed those bad areas of the fandom, and even more seasoned netters out there agree that 95% it is made of X rated stuff. Which makes it harder for us 05%, whom have fur/anthro characters simply because we were raised on Cartoons made of nothing but Funny/Talking Animals, and it's just a part of who we are.
I can't remember anything I watched before 10 years old that didn't have the talking animal in it. Lots of Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry... Hell, even live-action shows like Sesame Street wasn't exempt. If it is such a rooted part of our lives, we have to suffer because some percentage of the net has this one fetish."-
Now let's take one of those examples - Tom, from Tom and Jerry. If I was to draw that cat in a more manga style, it may get called a furry. The conditions for something to be called a furry appear to be the following:
- The character must be standing upright.
- The character must have animal features.
- The character must not be cartoon-like.
My next section will introduce what some have done to try and get out of having their creations named furries.

The internet has become the place to show artwork and works of fiction. Within those there are the sci-fi, and the fantasy genres. Often in these genres are new races. What happens? They get called furries by the readers. Let me bring two examples of web-comics that have been labeled as furry comics, and the authors have been angered because of this. The first one is Inhuman (http://www.inhuman-comic.com). The reasoning behind the anthropomorphic characters in this is that they are aliens. Aliens are, at least when they are intelligent, are bipedal - they stand on two legs.
The web-comic Slightly Damned (http://www.raizap.com/sdamned/index.php) has also been called a "furry comic before. There are no aliens here (or atleast, not yet), but there is a race of animalistic creatures that have similar intelligence to a human.
My own creations have been called furries. My reasoning for their appearance is similar to Inhuman - they aren't alien to our planet, but to our universe.
Let's take this in a different direction. Suppose someone created an evil looking beast, it was like a cross between a panther, snake and... a shark. As you might imagine, this creature would be grinning it's teath, be on all fours (or slithering), and not something you'd mess with. I automatically called this thing a "creature" and "beast" because it had no signs of human intelligence or features. The monsters in Final Fantasy games get called monsters because they have no signs of features that would allow humans (let alone heroes) reason with them. Even the werewolves' fall under these categories, but sadly, when anyone else creates a wolf-man creature it gets called a furry.

What we can conclude so far is that, unless something has no human features, it's a furry (or the variations- scaly, etc.). If it's got the appearance of something that would rather rip your spleen out than have a light breakfast with you, it is considered beastly. Why is it that the generation that grew up with sweaty men in sweaty animal suits, teaching the A-B-Cs; the generation who fought against the first goblins and were-creatures in RPGs, have to cope with the majority of later generations who call something a furry because of what they've seen elsewhere?
It really is rather difficult to complain, because those same generations are also the ones who have grown up with many other new terms, some make parents shake and priests weep, some make other raise eyebrows. It's is quite possible that this term "furry" is something we'll have to get used to, and maybe eventually, people will see us - and our creations as something more.

Concrit/comments anyone? Don't hate more for this. Eheheh... >_>;

EDIT: oh shiz... the system doesn't like... quote marks, apostrophes, tab indents, dashes... oh dear. o.o At least, not copied from Word.
EDIT#999: ... Fixed. x.x

Greetings and welcome!

Interesting rant.

Thanks.

This forum system is tricky to get used to. Different to phpbb and things like that.

Hi there!! and welcome to our little furry camp

Its good to see the odd rant from time to time and i hope you got some sleep that night :P

To comment on..

If you look on the net there are heaps of people known as trolls, they have nothing better to do other than to make life harder for furs, why? i dont know i guess they have no life other than getting a small bit of pleasure from kicking anyone that maybe enjoying them selfs. or ramming there beleafs down other peoples throat's.. so in some case's it has nothing to do with furs at all, but were in the firing line anyway.

Just look at the comments on YOUTUBE etc to see what i mean.
What i ment in my comment was i dont want to start any wars here with trolls.
We are quite lucky here in NZ in that we can go more or less unnoticed by such people and i hope it stays that way!

As with any group of people there will always be an erotic side, ours just seem to be more.. interesting. But im no nutter about it.

Im proud to call myself a "furry" to call it something else wouldnt be right.
But each to there own, to have a brain and to question is a good thing!

Thanks for your time ..Matthag..

Welcome, Jirby.

I think being furry has about as much to do with sex as being human does. Now, that's not a very definite answer, because at different times in our lives sex becomes more or less important to us.

I don't think that self-identifying as a furry means you're lumping yourself in with sexual deviants, but I do think it does make one stand out as "more than a little weird".

As a non-furry friend once said: there's nothing wrong with liking anthropomorphic characters, but joining some community for it and giving yourselves a name? That's weird.

After all, why do you think trekkies are universally mocked? Is it because of Star Treck? No, it's because they self-identify as "trekkies".

Happily weird
Foofox

Edit:
That being said, every time I am exposed to yet one more fettish/sexual oddity under the guise of "furry" I (like you) do feel just a bit ill and wonder whether I fit in at all.

I don't really see any problem with the furry fetish (well I do, but I avoid it), but I see a problem where people think it's wrong (or are all "eww furries") because of what other things they've heard.

Like Matthag said- trolls. (Although I get them in life not online... not yet thankfully/)

I think the problem of furry porn being so abundant is somewhat of a never ending cycle.
Someone draws an erotic furry picture.
Someone sees it, and enjoys it, eventually becoming a new member of the furry fandom, except he/she was not converted by an appreciation of normal furry artwork, but was converted by adult artwork. This leads to them drawing more adult furry.
In turn, this is shown to more people, and more people join under the impression that the furry fandom is mostly erotica-based.

To be honest, I don't think the porn in the furry fandom is bad. I enjoy it. But I believe a healthy balance is required, an appreciation for the porn, but also an appreciation for non-erotic artwork, roleplay, etc. Otherwise, you're using it as simply another source of pornographic material, whether it's furry or not.

Also, IRL trolls are the worst kind. If you can survive those, you're okay for internet trolls.