A Frank, Post-Zootopia Discussion About Furries

The latest Disney film Zootopia has been getting so much buzz, and not just because people have been going on and on and on about its political relevance. Besides kids, families, and obsessive college students like myself, one particular group is excited for the movie: furries.

Groups around the country have organized to watch screenings en masse, including in my home city of Fort Lauderdale. Enthusiasts started making costumes, known in the community as “fursuits,” based on the leads mere days after the teaser trailer. Furries and non-furries alike have dedicated a surprising amount of time to theorizing whether or not the film is catering to the community in its marketing – and according to BuzzFeed News Reporter Katie Notopoulos’s extremely belittling article, it may be true.

To say the least, mainstream media has not been kind to furries. They are almost exclusively talked about as sexual deviants who fantasize about bestiality and engage in sexual activity while wearing animal costumes. Some people assume that they are all sick in the head and actually want to be animals, or even see themselves as animals born in the wrong bodies. As a result, some people are afraid that this will cause “furry awakenings.” Indeed, it seems it already has. So, should parents be worried about massive orgies breaking out at the movie theater in front of their children’s eyes?

Is this adorable animated children’s movie how the end of civilization as we know it begins?!

Well, no. I know this is just a droplet in the ocean of online articles, but let me put in my own two cents.

First off, let me address those old stereotypes, the things that society knows and believes are all we need to know about furries. This is a website for college students, meaning we’re all adults here, meaning surely we can talk about the NSFW side of all this for a brief moment. Is sex a part of the community? Of course. Do some people actually have sex in costumes? You bet. So this is messed up, right? Not necessarily.

Surely it’s not controversial to say that sex is a natural part of life, and that lots of people in the world like sex. It’s also well-known that people find different things stimulating – some people have a predilection for butts, and some people like wearing costumes. Sex is a part of the furry community, but man, it’s part of just about any community. We live in a more enlightened age where shaming someone for their sexuality is considered backwards, so many people are fighting back against “rape culture,” and the universal law of the internet is “if it exists, there is a porn of it.” At this point, two consenting adults having sex is the opposite of a problem.

Furthermore, there’s so much more to furries than what they do behind closed doors. It may be surprising to hear that many furries consider themselves to be a fandom. Unlike the Trekkies of Star Trek or the Superwholockians of Tumblr, this fandom is based not on an existing franchise but on a mutual interest in anthropomorphic animals, called “anthros” for short. They still do other things common to other fandoms, such as creating artwork and attending conventions in cosplays, except that there is an emphasis on original characters. Many furries create their own anthro personas, called “fursonas” (ugh, all these puns), and they make drawings or comics or even costumes based on them. There are people who make a decent living off of making commissioned artwork – especially with fursuits, which can cost thousands.

Pictured: people in fursuits created by Autumn Fallings, a company that makes them. Not pictured: sex.

Really, furries are people with a hobby. Some people enjoy football and invest a lot of time and money in that interest – playing with friends, practicing daily, buying jerseys of their favorite teams, watching those long matches every week. Furries also enjoy their own interest and invest a lot of time and money in it, in all the ways I described and more. The overwhelming majority don’t even believe that they’re animals: they’re actors, who like to pretend and act.

Man, I’m not even saying all this in my own defense. I’m not a furry, and I feel no inclination whatsoever to become one. I just know better than to judge an entire community by entrenched stereotypes – which, by the way, is the entire message of Zootopia. People are quick to praise the movie’s anti-prejudice lessons when they apply it to the ongoing national discussions of racism and feminism, and people can be pretty quick to praise themselves for being inclusive enough to not care about people’s skin colors and genders.

But when other people have tastes or lifestyles extremely different from their own, they’re suddenly a lot more hesitant to talk and a lot quicker to hate. As research for this article, I asked friends of mine if they knew any furries or if they identified as one themselves, and when a simple “no” would have sufficed, they would furiously deny ever associating with anyone like that. To my shame, I can see where they come from: I used to believe what little I heard and dismiss them as freaks. It was only in 2014, when a gas attack on a Chicago convention left 19 furries hospitalized and one Morning Joe anchor couldn’t stop laughing, that I wondered if I was ignorant. As Judy Hopps discovers in the best part of Zootopia, it’s always a shock to realize how prejudiced you can be.

This is a picture of that reporter leaving the room so she could laugh it out. She is supposedly a professional.

Just yesterday, reports came out about how Syrian refugees to Canada were given temporary housing in the same hotel that was hosting the VancouFur convention. Apparently, they loved it, especially the kids, and what could have been a serious culture shock turned out to be a great time for those involved. Things might be much nicer if we could all be this open and see furries as, well, people too.

EDIT: Someone pointed out to me that I completely neglected to mention that the furry community is big on charity work. Yeah, that is something worth mentioning when talking about why the community is a positive force.