Hello Papabear,
I am a long time reader of your website but this is a first for writing. I hope I can get my issue across clear! I have been an active member of the furry fandom for a huge chunk of my life, starting when I was 10, the fandom being constantly apart of my life since. Mostly my interactions with the fandom have been strictly online and I was fine with that because previously I have been in school and it wasn't a priority. I have since graduated from school and managed to connect with a group of local furs in my area. I am quite young at 19 compared to the average age of furs who participate (youngest being 19 , average 25, oldest 42). At first I really enjoyed my new friends and they even went as far as to take me to my first convention. But this is where things just start to fall apart. My friends are hardly interested in me anymore, and the only interactions I get include nothing but sexual advancements, or relationship propositions. I feel extremely left out, the majority (90%) of our locals are homosexual or bi and prefer men. As I am getting to know them more and more it seems to me that this whole fandom to them is based around sex and how many other furry men they can have relations with. Now their personal lives wouldn't be an issue to me but they consistently make it a public matter. In our group chat they constantly spam hardcore gay furporn. We've had one other who felt uncomfortable with the never ending hypersexuality of our fellow group members , but even this fur (having been friends and with the group YEARS before me) got kicked out. But not until after being called a bigot/prude/asshole. Being bi myself I don't have any problem with homosexuality (albeit the porn isn't my thing) but they have literally said that they can do what they please no matter what anyone else says because they are a minority- which is funny as i myself would be the biggest minority within the group being the only woman who has a preference to women. So this isn't even the case! They just have a male/male sexual fur hierarchy and it's BIZARRE! Not to mention many of these men are sexist as well, having said remarks straight to my face. But no one will say a thing unless it is directed towards the male gender. I really want to just cry thinking about this, as this group is really the only "friend"s I have, and the whole "leaders" doing this are the people who also organize all our local meets. So it's not like I can find other furries in this sad small town. Several of my "friends" even went so far as to ditch me at my first convention because they'd rather (quite literally) go and participate in an orgy with each other while I am sent to the con floor to try and figure out what to do for a few hours. I just feel super alone,isolated and left out because of the fact that I don't fit in with them, I first thought it was because I'm a girl but even so, the women who are welcomed are only welcomed if they're as hypersexual and obsessed with penises as the men are. I'm stuck with my life , I really really REALLY love furry... But the older I get and the more I participate in the fandom the more sex based it really truly seems. I'm stuck papa bear, on one hand I do never want to leave the fandom or even distance myself, but I also don't want to be in a fandom where sex seems like the only thing anyone is interested in. I'm really losing faith as a furry.. It used to be so fun but the majority I come in contact with are completely and utterly ruining it for me. Help! Love, A sad and confused kitten * * * Dear Sad and Confused, I hear you. As much as Papabear defends the sexier side of the furry fandom, lately I’ve become increasingly disturbed by it to the point where I think we’ve become two fandoms: one that simply enjoys the fun and fantasy of anthro characters, and the other that is sex-obsessed. Before I go any further (as I’ve had this done to me before), go ahead and look at my FA favorites and you will see a lot of furporn. Yes, I enjoy X-rated furry stuff. I am also all for making sex fun and indulging in sexual fantasy play, as it makes life more interesting and enjoyable. The difference is, I am mature about it, I don’t shove it in people’s faces, and I don’t make sexual advances on anything that moves. This is called “being an adult about sex,” and there are many “adults” out there, such as in your group, who are not at all adult about it. Sexual addiction and immaturity is also why I have complaints from many furry artists that they can’t make money doing commissions unless they draw porn. It is, frankly, a sad state of affairs. There is something going on, too, where furries are hypersensitized to sex to the point where everything becomes about sex in a very disturbing and humorless way. Example. I belong to a Google furry group (I don’t participate in it much because). Anyway, yesterday I decided to post something in jest. Here it is: I notice many young furries seem to be bored. If anyone here is really bored and would like something to do, you are invited to my house where I will keep you busy with yard work and home improvement projects :-3 You can stay in the guest room. I promise, you will never be bored again LOL [see, the joke here is that I want a free gardener and housekeeper and I’m being cheap—at least, that’s what I thought until I read the below…. Oh, and by the way, it’s quite common in wealthier homes for housekeeping and gardening staff to live on the premises, so the joke here was also that I was some kind of wealthy tycoon, but it went waaaay over their heads.] POSTERS REACTED: That sound creepy and very weird saying No going to a strangers home. "You will never be bored again LOL" That's threatening. It sound more like pedophili to me Me: Good grief, how do you get pedophile out of that? Sheesh. Cause no one really asks for young furries to come to their house and do chores. i agree This is getting a little... rapy... Don't be a pedo... Well even if it a joke that was sound to strange it have kid that only have 10 fez thing before you write something. Also it the way you write it that was creepy. I REACTED: Judging by the reaction to this post, you guys are reading waaaay more into this than there ever was or was intended. This was a joke. Wow. And even if it wasn't, it was never meant to be sexual in nature (I never once mention sex or suggest anything sexual), so interesting you all took it that way. Kind of shows you are the ones with sex on the brain, not me. Good God Almighty. Is it because I'm older that you assume I want to have sex with younger furs? I assure you, I have much more of a need for someone to do my yard work and fix up the house. Perhaps this is why furries have the reputation they do. Very interesting, indeed. Back to the letter: Obviously, I joked with the wrong audience. They are too young, uninformed, and preoccupied with sex. My bad. I actually posted this conversation on the Greymuzzle Facebook page to get some input. Most agreed that the cubs were reading stuff into the original post that just wasn’t there, but the fellow greys made some keen observations, too: 1) there are furries with Aspergers who have a hard time understanding the humor behind a post like this and take things too literally; even those who don’t have Aspergers may have trouble with nuance because reading text is very different from telling a joke in person—you don’t get the body language or voice inflections that cue you that it is a joke; 2) there ARE actual sexual predators out there who have been known to try to lure kids in with offers of work or room and board and such, which is very disturbing and definitely not where I was going with this, but we live in an iffy world; plus such dangers as sexual predators are hyped and exaggerated by the media, making people very scared and causing them to be more paranoid than they should be. But, remember cubs, a little common sense goes a long way: don't be going to someone's house if you don't know them and have any reason to suspect their motives. Anyway, all that aside, I will tell you, boldly and frankly, Kitten, you are right. There is a large part of the fandom that is hypersexed, obsessed to the point of stupidity, and unpleasant. Unfortunately, the group near you has created a culture of expectation where sex is the main topic. Sex and sexual innuendo should NEVER be forced upon people; this crime in lack of social graces is compounded by those who ostracize people like you as uncool or uptight if you don’t like it. Actually, they are the ones being buttmunches, not you. And I’m sorry you’ve experienced this. The good news is this: not all furries, by any means, are like that. Many, in fact, actively shun the X-rated side of furry. In your case, it looks like you will have to do a little searching to find such people, maybe even start your own local furry group and invite people in with the understanding that you’re not about that scene. There are so many fun things you can do otherwise, such as going to movies, bowling, picnics…. I’ve done a lot of these both in Michigan and with the San Diego Furries (by the way, I want to say that San Diego furries are way cool). Another case: I have a friend who recently moved from L.A. to Phoenix for the very intense reason that the L.A. furries were driving him nuts with their sex talk. He reports that Phoenix is much cooler (ironically, given the weather—get it? Or am I being too subtle? No, this isn’t code for “I want to sex you up”). What we see here is that microcultures develop in the fandom. A seed is planted (ouch, that could be misinterpreted, too, I suppose, but I'm not talking about semen) by alpha males or females in a group, and this seed can either be one where sex is the dominant feature, or it can be one that is much less intense, more friendly, and more accepting. I’ve seen both occur in the fandom. It is a terrible shame when the groups that can’t keep it in their pants drive away perfectly nice people like yourself, but please don’t give up on the fandom, and don’t give up on being furry (I’m like you in that I don’t relate to a lot that goes on in furry culture [a lot of this, admittedly, has to do with my age], yet I do have lots of furry individual friends). Be furry it because you enjoy it, and stick with it despite the creepy people (apparently, I’m one LOL) who populate it. Don’t worry, with a little effort, you will find friends :-3 Innocent and Furiendly Asexual Hugs, Papabear P.S. Note to all my readers. If I am talking about sex, I will explain very clearly in my column "this is about sex." Such columns will also appear in the Sexuality ans Sex category of this website. This bear is not shy about the topic and I don't hide behind obfuscating language to talk about sex. If I don't mention sex, it is because I'm not talking about sex. I truly hope that only a few of you out there need this explanation and most will see this postscript as stupidly unnecessary and annoying. Thank you.
5 Comments
Charleston Rat
4/18/2016 12:58:00 am
I'm not gonna lie, if I read that comment on that furry group page and had no idea who you were, I'd have thought it was some kind of innuendo. But even so, I'd have also realised it was done as a joke and should never have been taken nearly as seriously as some of the commenters took it (did none of them notice the 'LOL'?!)
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Papabear
4/18/2016 09:51:07 am
My point. I know you don't like mature art--so, have I ever made you uncomfortable about that? I don't believe so. And that's being respectful of other people's feelings.
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Charleston Rat
4/18/2016 01:20:37 pm
Indeed you haven't, and I really do thank you for it. *Hugs*
Something that might help is finding or creating a group of female furs. That has happened in the local fur community where I am and I believe it has helped create a safer space. It sounds to me like you may be dealing with male/female issues regardless of the furry aspect.
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I haven't recently checked up on the Furry Survey results that Gerbasi, et al., have been tracking, but it seems like there's a relatively stable divide in the fandom at large on the subject of furry and sexuality. About a quarter of the fandom says "sex does (or should) have nothing to do with furry" and about a third says "sex does (or should) be intimately entwined with furry". Those numbers don't seem to be changing all that much over time, and they suggest a lasting divide that's not going to be easily addressed. Neither side in this is <em>wrong</em>, inherently, but the two sides don't see eye to eye on a very fundamental aspect of self and identity, and it's very easy for the two sides in this split to make each other uncomfortable.
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