Hi, I just came out as gay, and as a furry last week! After spending over a decade in the closet...

So, here's a short history of my experience of the Furry fandom.

When I was a young lad (teen), I noticed I felt attraction toward guys, but not girls. Boobs don't really do it for me. I grew up in a conservative christian household, so even those thoughts were considered evil. So, repressing those thoughts along the merry way, I found furry communities online. For the first time, Queerness was not punished. Queerness was not shamed, it was celebrated with art, writing, and "art". The online Furry community was a safe haven where I could imagine a world where I didn't have to repress all those things anymore, and be more of myself.

Now that I'm out (to my close friends), I'm noticing that Queer acceptance is a major cornerstone of furries. Next important thing to me, is the appreciation or enjoyment of the ideas, art, or media. Third is just a dash of Chemical X (weirdness), or more accurately, the courage to be yourself, enjoy yourself, and be cringe.

Yes, there are kinks, but I've heard the quote: "There is pornographic art and room parties, you're out of your mind to deny that stuff exists, but that isn't unique to furries. Think of Anime, Star Trek, etc. These fandoms and cultures don't have sexy or kinky things because of the content, they have those things in it because they are created by (and for) human beings." The furry fandom likely gets more shit for it because of A) the open queerness and B) actually it's probably just the open queerness.

Oddly, I've become slightly less attached to the Fandom, while enjoying it more, if that makes any sense.

There's tons of YouTubers that do documentaries on the stuff. There's like a 1.5h film festival submission that won awards on YT, describing the history of modern-day Furries.

Historically, pictures and stories of animal-people are as old as civilization itself. Even the Epic of Gilgamesh had a Furry character in it, off the top of my head.