what’s exactly a furry?
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I’m going off what I’ve seen here on reddit. A furry is a person who partially or in whole dresses as an animal in a way to identify as the animal. There are different levels to it and sub communities that take it to a sexual nature with other consenting adults with more accessible outfits or fur suits. It’s a hobby for some people, like golf or video games. As long as no one is getting hurt and it’s all fun, I don’t see the harm in it.
Just a person who likes animals and make believe. They might have an alternate identity they use online that’s a talking animal like in cartoons. Some make costumes that look like that alternate identity.
Typical reddit, down voted when sharing personal experience.
A furry is an animal character with human-like characteristics.
Usually they have fur (hence the name) along with animal-ish ears & noses, but they stand on two feet, similar to humans.
If someone says “I’m a furry”, it usually means that they’ve created or chosen a furry concept to identify with, called a “fursona”. They might dress up or roleplay as this furry.
There are a ton of sub-communities that could be called a “furry” but I think the term is rather specific to people who get sexual gratification from dressing up as animals and have sex with other animal-dressed people.
there are other people who “identify” as an animal, or like to dress up as animals for fun or social engagement, sort of like cosplay, but I think the “furry” moniker really specifically applies to people who are doing it for specifically sexual reasons.
A furry is an individual who dresses up as anthropomorphic animals before and/or during sexual activities. They’re often thought to be enjoyers of bestiality, but which I have no data on their actual involvement in those occurrences. Furries are commonly associated with the LGBT community but dont have their own letter, so far as I know, and could technically be heterosexuals without the need for inclusion.
There are at least 3 types of people that refer to themselves as furries. 1 of them is just a hobby, the other 2 are sexual in nature. Some people enjoy acting and dressing like an animal just for fun. It’s like people that dress up as their favorite anime characters at a convention except they might do it for other events too and they also (often not always) have a personality they like to act when dressed up. It’s their fur-sona. It’s all role playing so it might be more accurate to say it’s like the people that do larp battles at renaissance fairs.
If they also get sexual gratification from the experience of dressing up and acting like an animal, they can also be called furries. Some people have ports in their suits for sexual play, others only partially dress up, and some just get off from humping other furries in the costume. There’s a lot of variety here. Hobbyist furries often get a bad rap because of being compared to sexual furries. People think the ones out in public are the same as the ones doing dirty stuff in the suit which probably isn’t often true. I’m sure there are some that have done the dirty in public in their suits, but I doubt it’s a measurable fraction of the fandom.
The last type are people into pet play. They may not even dress up at all, or just a pair of ears and a collar. Maybe a tail butt plug. Honestly pretty vanilla compared to the category above. It’s tough calling them furries because of how different it is from the other two, but I have seen them referred as such in the past so I include them anyway.
Generally it is someone who prefers to identify as non-human.
As such many can be found in Second Life or other metaverses using animal avatars. Some people also use costumes in real life.
They don’t have to be “furry” creatures per se—they can be dragons, hairless creatures, etc., but they all get lumped in with the bears, dogs, foxes, cats, unicorns, etc.
It’s more a spectrum than a category—some people just make do with a tail and ears hoodie.
Furries are a sub-culture of people interested in anthropomorphic animals or animals with human like characteristics..
For most in the community it’s a hobby, for a handful they’ve made it a lifestyle.
On a low level Furries have a large online community that share stories, artwork, etc and is generally harmless fun.
Many go so far as to create avatars for themselves (referred to as a fursona), characters that represent their online persona within the furry community. For a percentage of furries this may extend to the real world where furries will create elaborate costumes to appear as their Furry persona in real life.
While a small percentage of Furries are known for getting sexual gratification from dressing up in costume and hanging out with other furries.
The Furry community unfortunately has a bad reputation as a result of the actions of a small percentage of the community. The online community is known for being extremely Toxic and due to numerous members being banned from various forums and chat rooms they tend to migrate from platform to platform.
Furries often find themselves marginalized or even barred from sci-fi and fantasy conventions due to their reputation for drug use, sexualization, and general debauchery. Many hotels have gone so far as to outright ban Furry conventions from their premises due to problems in the past.
Parents often take issue with Furries at conventions due to their association with sexual activity and drug use, and because their costumes can be mistaken for mascots or childhood Cartoon characters. While most in the furry community are harmless, a few incidents have marked the entire community.
There are two splits to this. A Furry can either be a person who is a self-identified member of the “Furry Fandom”, or a character designed as an animal with human characteristics, such as walking on two legs. I’ll clarify each a bit further.
A Furry character, rather unintuitively, is any character that is an animal with human-like traits. This applies to furred animals like the name implies, but also covers birds, reptiles, insects, fish, and more as a blanket term. There are specific terms for each if you’d like to narrow things down, such as “scalie” for reptiles, but “furry” covers them all. These characters are usually based on animals (their designs often containing an animal head, a tail, fur/scales/etc, and the like) but have traits such as walking on two legs, standing upright, having forward facing eyes and a facial structure to match, and generally having human proportions. Like any design though, none of these traits are 100% set in stone and can be tweaked or even ignored entirely.
The Furry Fandom, in its most broad definition, is just a fan base of people who like these Furry characters. This can apply to characters from any medium and any age rating. In this essence, it’s no different from how a fan of trains, guitars, or whatever would work. The term “furry” in this case is used to refer to someone who actively identifies with this fan base, often by using a furry character to represent themselves. The fan may also choose to make a furry character of their own, and may then choose to use it to represent themselves. In general, characters used this way are referred to as a “-sona”, from the word “persona”, followed by a word that explains what fandom they represent. For the furry fandom specifically, they would be referred to as a “fursona”. They may even go so far to create a suit in the likeness of their character, referred to as a “fursuit”, so they can act as this character outside of pretend or virtual spaces.
When someone is called a Furry, it’s generally used in popular culture to refer to someone who enjoys furry characters, uses an image of a furry character to represent themselves, and is turned on by furry characters. That last part is due to the fact that the furry fandom also covers a shockingly large amount of pornography, which is always a big draw for people. People who are turned on by this content are referred to as having a furry fetish, and unlike most other fandoms, it’s prevalent enough to warp pretty much all other definitions of “furry” to be associated with it. Due to the relative closeness of the two, the term “furry” may often get lumped in with the bestiality fetish (an attraction towards animals without human traits) when used by people with uninformed or hostile outlooks towards furries.
I hope that helps clear things up a bit, and feel free to ask if you have any questions!
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