I contest that furries are simply a product of capitalist social alienation finding a medicinal solution in wearing animal costumes and/or utilising hidden identities. I don't think furries are strictly about furry-ness but about not being identifiable and retreating entirely into a made up identity.
Social anxiety in many people has grown to the point that they are terrified of expressing the closeness they want with others, they are terrified of the rules that exist in our existing society, for touching others, for being close to others, for general behaviour and more.
Furries have none of these rules. They create their own every day, they break rules and get to experiment in ways that are simply terrifying to do so with your real identity on display.
This is not unique to furries, they just happen to be a very visible form of it. You see this exact same behaviour in other escapist media too. You see it in mmorpgs. You see it on vrchat. You see it at anime conventions where trans people are secretly using cosplay to experiment safely with their gender identity in public.
Taking on a different identity in order to break existing social "rules" without fear of judgement is the reason these behaviours arise.
It is less about the fur stuff and more about the safe feelings that hiding behind a fake identity allows for.
The significant prevalence of physical relationships in a community where social rules are nearly non-existent is not too surprising. I don't think it's that dissimilar to the occurrence of "free love" in other communities where social anxieties were similarly eliminated but through different means.
I think reducing social anxieties would reduce the prevalence. People would no longer feel the need to use fake identities to hide behind while expressing themselves in the truly authentic way they would like to.
Taking on a fake identity among other people also taking on fake identities comes with an unwritten consent between all participants to activities and behaviour that is not what you would usually see. It's an unwritten agreement between all participants that says "you can behave the way you want to behave around me and you will still be accepted for it". This agreement changes slightly between each community, but someone in cosplay at an anime con is generally consenting to other people in cosplay attempting cosplay interaction with them, this unwritten agreement is pretty similar in all scenarios where participants assume roleplay identities.
Right and a scenario where all parties have consented to closeness, touchy feely interactions and things that would otherwise be considered invasions of personal space or outright harassment is attractive.
That's what taking on a fake identity is and joining the community (any of them). It is consent for the kind of interactions that you have already seen that community having and performing with one another.
Nobody minds these interactions because everybody knows that they consented to them when they saw that it was the kind of stuff the community already does and still joined it anyway.
A community of people wearing a uniform or identity you assume in order to take part in them have a set of social rules you can observe before you decide to take part. Each one has slightly different social rules, and each one is attractive for slightly different reasons, consent to the social rules you can observe before joining is a major factor in what makes it attractive.
I think the hottest take I could make on this topic that would upset the furries is that they can be compared to hippies and the free love movement, they behave similarly except they wear fursuits.
Damn. I’m not a furry but I completely identify with everything you’ve described and I’ve had the same thoughts on those being the reasons people gravitate towards that. You pretty much laid it all out perfectly there.
I contest that furries are simply a product of capitalist social alienation finding a medicinal solution in wearing animal costumes and/or utilising hidden identities. I don't think furries are strictly about furry-ness but about not being identifiable and retreating entirely into a made up identity.
Social anxiety in many people has grown to the point that they are terrified of expressing the closeness they want with others, they are terrified of the rules that exist in our existing society, for touching others, for being close to others, for general behaviour and more.
Furries have none of these rules. They create their own every day, they break rules and get to experiment in ways that are simply terrifying to do so with your real identity on display.
This is not unique to furries, they just happen to be a very visible form of it. You see this exact same behaviour in other escapist media too. You see it in mmorpgs. You see it on vrchat. You see it at anime conventions where trans people are secretly using cosplay to experiment safely with their gender identity in public.
Taking on a different identity in order to break existing social "rules" without fear of judgement is the reason these behaviours arise.
It is less about the fur stuff and more about the safe feelings that hiding behind a fake identity allows for.
The significant prevalence of physical relationships in a community where social rules are nearly non-existent is not too surprising. I don't think it's that dissimilar to the occurrence of "free love" in other communities where social anxieties were similarly eliminated but through different means.
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I think reducing social anxieties would reduce the prevalence. People would no longer feel the need to use fake identities to hide behind while expressing themselves in the truly authentic way they would like to.
Taking on a fake identity among other people also taking on fake identities comes with an unwritten consent between all participants to activities and behaviour that is not what you would usually see. It's an unwritten agreement between all participants that says "you can behave the way you want to behave around me and you will still be accepted for it". This agreement changes slightly between each community, but someone in cosplay at an anime con is generally consenting to other people in cosplay attempting cosplay interaction with them, this unwritten agreement is pretty similar in all scenarios where participants assume roleplay identities.
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Right and a scenario where all parties have consented to closeness, touchy feely interactions and things that would otherwise be considered invasions of personal space or outright harassment is attractive.
That's what taking on a fake identity is and joining the community (any of them). It is consent for the kind of interactions that you have already seen that community having and performing with one another.
Nobody minds these interactions because everybody knows that they consented to them when they saw that it was the kind of stuff the community already does and still joined it anyway.
A community of people wearing a uniform or identity you assume in order to take part in them have a set of social rules you can observe before you decide to take part. Each one has slightly different social rules, and each one is attractive for slightly different reasons, consent to the social rules you can observe before joining is a major factor in what makes it attractive.
I think the hottest take I could make on this topic that would upset the furries is that they can be compared to hippies and the free love movement, they behave similarly except they wear fursuits.
Damn. I’m not a furry but I completely identify with everything you’ve described and I’ve had the same thoughts on those being the reasons people gravitate towards that. You pretty much laid it all out perfectly there.