Since anecdotal evidence can only go so far here’s what a group of researchers say on the topic:

Some seek psychological explanations, suggesting that furries may be people with developmental problems or psychological conditions. Others assume situational explanations such as a broken childhood or a tumultuous, friendless, socially awkward childhood. After all, most furries have experienced significant bullying, and abundant psychological evidence shows that bullying, stigma, and concealed stigmatized identities can be particularly damaging to a person’s well-being. One would therefore expect furries to show evidence of significantly compromised well-being.

Data collected on the well-being of furries suggests otherwise, however. Across several samples, furries and non-furries did not significantly differ from one another on measures of life satisfaction and self-esteem.

Furries did not differ with regard to their physical health, psychological health, or the quality of their relationships, and were actually more likely to have a stable and coherent sense of identity than non-furries.

[Image]

The well-being of furries was also compared across fandoms (see figures above and below.)

Furries did not differ significantly from convention-going anime fans or fantasy sport fans, and were actually higher in life satisfaction and self-esteem than online anime fans, all groups which experience less stigma than furries do.

[Image]

Taken together, these data, in conjunction with the rest of the data in Section 117, demonstrate that furries, contrary to popular misconceptions, are surprisingly well-adjusted. It’s worth noting that this lack of difference in well-being occurs despite the fact that most furries have a history of significant bullying. One possible explanation for this is the ameliorating role of the fandom: given that belongingness and acceptance are both important values in the furry fandom, as is compassion, helping, and global citizenship, for many furries, the fandom is a source of social support. Social psychologists have long recognized the important role that social support plays in building resilience and fostering well-being, and future studies are planned to test whether this mechanism explains furries’ tendency to thrive despite often enduring significant hardship.

https://furscience.com/research-findings/wellness-dysfunction/11-1-wellness/

Funny how one event where the actions of a few fucked everything up must imply something for the whole group, especially since there’s bigger, long-running conventions like Anthrocon that have become part of the city’s event culture like any other festival. But you don’t hear about that because it’s not scandalous.

I agree those things can coexist, but when for a significant portion of the people it is sexual it is going to taint the meaning naturally.

What do you think about other groups then? There’s plenty of people cosplaying characters from media, sometimes in a very tame way, sometimes very much not. Those can be the same people, in the same outfits, minutes apart. You have people cosplaying Princess Leia in basically lingerie, is that alright?

maybe say “I vant to fuck your butt” in a fake Romanian accent, I can work with that

[Insert words of judgement here]

The nazi ones are all blonde dogs? Do they hate people who dress as rats/mice?

Nah, they are just your average white supremacists except they also have a fursona. It doesn’t have to be intermeshed like that.

I’ve seen these sentiments a lot, usually not spelled out like this though. I think the unease often comes from associating anthropomorphic animals with children’s media exclusively. That way it seems scandalous that there is an adult component to the subculture. Pretty much every subculture/fandom has that, of course, but people don’t seem to mind as much when it’s anime, goths and so on.

The fact that they insist it isn’t sexual, when it clearly is at least for many.

In my experience people push back against that characterization because the existence of an adult component seems to make everything else disappear or read as dishonest for some people. There is plenty of perfectly innocent, family-friendly content and we genuinely like it for that, not as a sex thing. Those things can coexist just fine with neither diminishing the other.

feeling like if I saw a dominatrix and her sub licking her heels in a McDonalds

If you remove the sex/fetish stuff from the BDSM community you’d really have nothing left, if you remove it from furries you’d still have a group of people who really love anthropomorphic animal characters, just not also in that way.

Also, ew, who goes to McDonald’s?

The fact that everyone wants to be an animal and for many that is sexual is uhh…not not creepy

If we just roll with that, what do you think about all the people who fetishize vampires, for example? That’s pretty much mainstream now (not just because of Twilight) and it’s literally undead, blood drinking, mind controlling monsters.

"Idk the guy who stabbed me was like…some blue dog or wolf thing, goddammit.” Lol

You’ll be relieved to know that most people in costume can’t see or hear very well, so you’ll have the advantage in a knife fight.

An insignificant portion of furries are actual literal nazis.

Yeah, in open groups with tens of thousands of members you’ll have some bad people, not really surprising is it? Look at anime, comics, warhammer, … anything nerdy and not-so-nerdy, they are there too.

Nazis sauer. Nazis Tagesschau runterwählen.

They do!

X-Strahlen

Window shopping on a hookup site is one thing, it seems a bit like some people have just not gotten the memo that that’s not what a long-term relationship looks like. Superficial stuff is nice but I’d rather find someone I really, really like. Can’t really window shop for that though and it might take a long, long time to actually find out if the feelings match reality.

Apparently a large amount of people are essentially casting someone for the role of partner though. Never really taking down their personality defenses, never just being themselves. Because that’s being vulnerable. 1800s style. I’d rather stay single.

sexual desires are being able to be fulfilled illusionary and in a fantasy world.

Aren’t we pretty much there already? Dating and being together is about so much more than sex, the loneliness epidemic has other causes.

There’s a spectrum going from someone just posting stuff and getting paid to shameless exploitation of vulnerable people through parasocial relationships. The latter can be very lucrative.

Meanwhile I just noticed that my mobile provider (Congstar Germany) will be completely phasing out their online customer center in favor of their app. They already removed functionality from the site, like seeing how much data you have used this month. Why? The answer is in their huge list of third-party cookies I assume.

I’d argue that knowledge is more than that, otherwise books or state machines could also be said to know things.

True, really wish that could just be a them problem though.

I agree, there doesn’t seem to be a good way to make voting not at the very least semi-public anyway so just stop a) pretending the information is protected and b) remove the not-a-disagree-button-but-totally-a-disagree-button. There is a report link for rules violations, maybe a separate one for spam would be good as well, otherwise, I don’t know, just allow people to add an actual poll to comments if they want to?

They convey time instantly, without reading. You don’t even need the numbers for them to work. It’s like showing a progress bar versus just giving the percentage as a number.

Is this one of those hacking tools?

I’m just saying that there’s a reason why this might hurt and make people avoid it. Takes a lot of work to reduce that because it isn’t a conscious reaction you can just decide to not have.

you can just move on with your life

That’s easily said, but if you, for example, struggle with self-image anyway then being ostracized like that can really sting and paralyze. It probably is relatively easy for people who have a lot of self-confidence anyway, but not everybody does, especially in these situations.

This then usually bring up the problem of guys not taking the hint when a woman refuses nicely. It seems to me like the best strategy for a woman who isn’t interested in over-confident/tone-deaf guys is to do the asking herself. Which also comes with lots of potential issues.

Also if it isn’t a random person at a bar you’re talking to but someone you already know a bit then rejection probably also means that any other relationship you might have had is over, maybe even any relationship you had with mutual friends/acquaintances.

There is very little positive guidance, just a sea of don’ts, usually worded as absolutes. And a lot of divisive “gender war” BS from all sides. Really not surprising.

The unease doesn’t come from the word itself being a grave insult but, for example, from being bullied for being “weird”.