"The Sound and the Furries"

This article I would have to say is my secound most trouble making post, not becuase it upset the school , but becuase of the overwhelming feedback from angry furries who think that in opinion pieces writers look to please everyone... well we don't. I found it a little funny that most of the comments on the Rutgers Observer website pretty much proved me right.

Oringial print 10/9/07

The internet has revolutionized the world, creating the global market place, making contact with almost anyone instantaneously possible, breaking down language and cultural barriers but most people don't care about that. The truth is it gives us a venue to gather around our bizarre sexual fetishes.

Oh, and we all have weird fetishes at least by net standards. I like to have coitus in the missionary position with the lights off with a person of the opposite gender that I have a monogamous relationship with. Shockingly enough, it is pretty hard to find someone with my point of view. I must be the most depraved of all.

My own puritan sexual values aside, I have no issue with the of fetish sites out there as long as they are legal and don't do any harm to people especially children, but there is one community that leaves an awful taste in my mouth: they call themselves Furries.

For those that don't know, the Furries or Furs are people who are enamored with the idea of anthropomorphic animals. So enamored in fact that they want to have sex with them. Yes, you read that right. The basis of Fur infatuation is obsession animal people, not kawaii neko cat girls, but a full on dog that just happens to be able to walk on two legs. Luckily for humanity, there are no dog people so to achieve their dream- Furs sometimes spend hundreds of dollars on "fur suits" so they can unleash their "fursona."

A fursona is what a furry thinks he or she really is. Some furs are quite convinced that they were born with animal spirits and thus construct suits or even go so far as to surgically alter their bodies so they can look more like the fox, wolf or even the griffin they really feel they are inside.

How a person can be born with the soul of a mythological creature is beyond me. I'm sure there is some furry logic that someone outside their fan-dom simply can't grasp, or they are simple bat crap insane. I'm leaning towards the latter. For those that can't afford the suits they settle for text based role play sex and poorly drawn cartoon porn called "Yiff."

I've seen weirder, sicker stuff on the net, but the Fur community is one of the few communities that have adopted a victim complex that is not only baffling; it's infuriating.

While wanting to manipulate your genitals to a picture of a horse man with lactating breasts being sodomized by an anthropomorphic Orca Whale is weird, so is wanting to do the same to a grown woman dressed like a little school girl; the main difference in that the latter is usually done in private or in specialized areas when appropriate. If I, for instance, got my rocks off dressing like a school girl with platform heels and pigtails, I would not expect to be able to do that at work without being penalized or fired. Many furs want their "fursona" to shine 24/7 and if interrupted, many seem to think they are experiencing persecution.

Cruising through one of the many live journal Furry communities, you can read thousands of accounts of alleged "Fursecution." One blogger laments about being fired from his office job for looking at "yiff," and how it was awful that he was fired for simply being a furry.

I'm sorry, but as far back as I can recall, looking at pornography of any kind was reason for termination. If you want to look at Simba and Nala do it people style- good for you, but not on company time, simple as that.

Another blogger writes about how she was forced to take off her "ears and tail" while at work, calling it mutilation. She then has the gall to compare her situation with that of a black co-worker who sports an afro. I can only look at this as innate insanity at its finest.

It is blogs and websites full of rants about the attacks on furs and the rights that furries mistakenly believe they have that have made them the target de jour of troll, ebuamers and various other internet superheroes. No one can really feel sorry for a group that spits in the face of other people that have truly been through persecution. No furry church has ever been torched - Furry is not an organized religion. No furry has ever been beaten and left to die on a fence because of their sexual orientation - because Furry is not a sexual orientation. No furry is being raped or killed because of their nationality, race, ethnicity or class. Being part of the Fur fan-dom doesn't fall under any of those categories. Furry is not a gender. Furry is not a disability. There can be no Furry genocide, Holocaust nor a Fur Trail of Tears.

When Furs seriously compare themselves to peoples that in actuality have been persecuted and continue to be discriminated against, it's laughable to a point and then it's just insulting. I also find it ironic that a group of people that claim to be animals have the audacity to say their basic human rights are being violated. Any Furry that says their freedom of speech is being violated need to re-take Civics 101. No one is saying Furs aren't allowed to say how much they want to have sex with stuffed animals, most just simply don't want to hear about it. Someone voicing an opposing view to yours is not a violation of your freedom of speech it is them exercising theirs. The first amendment is not a do-whatever-you-want card; it simply says that congress will pass no laws prohibiting certain things.

No where in the constitution does it say that if you want to do nutty things that people have to act as if you aren't completely out of your mind. If you make the choice to indulge in a fetish as extreme and bizarre as Fur then you have to prepare for the repercussions. Either deal with the fact that you are weirdoes to the majority of the planet or Yiff in hell, the choice is yours Furries.