dietpeachsnapple said:
Puppies and kitties are some of the most playful and affectionate people I have ever met. Attention happy perhaps, but well meaning. =^.^=
As for this:
"There is no evil furry cabal plotting the overthrow of all your childhood memories."
:33 I am half tempted to take a chance and joke that there IS some sort of cabal, but I have already sworn to keep this thread as mature and level headed as possible.
"His kink doesn't affect me in any way"
Ignoring the sexual connotation of the word "kink," it is fancifully appropriate for this genre.
"He's not trying to coax me into ears and a tail, and he doesn't crawl around and bark in my presence,"
Conversions are not a matter of normal fare, and those that do push the matter are looked down upon from both sides of the fence.
"though once in a while I will give him an affectionately teasing skritch on the head."
You are most kind for offering the occasional skritch, and I can assure you, he appreciates it more than you might imagine.
Thank you for your impassioned and reminiscent comments, and your respect for other's inclinations.
In my friend's case, he is, in fact, a kinky person, though I don't think that being furry is actually a sexual kink for him. But even if it were, my point stands. He's a furry, he might even be one of "those kind of furries," but why would it matter to me? I remember going out for drinks with him once and a couple of his furry buddies came along. I would have never known but Morris asked me ahead of time if I would mind, which I didn't. One of them was wearing fox ears, but he was also wearing a cape. A cape. Clearly, the guy was just one of those geeks who is unapologetically, publicly weird, and the fact that he was wearing fox ears was incidental. He could have been wearing Spock ears or elf ears or stick-on vampire teeth. The point is that, really, the guy wasn't a furry so much as he was just a weirdo. A very polite, quietly outgoing weirdo, and very pleasant company.
In fact, especially for people who ARE "that kind of furry" these arguments make even less sense. They
really never intended for other people to see their drawings, etc. in most cases, and you can't blame them if it's some troll's idea of fun to go digging through their forums and webpages, collecting the material they produced for
each other and splashing it up all over non-fur websites as some sort of joke. They get their privacy invaded by trolls and then they get blamed for it by people who, in most cases, willingly clicked on the "look at this furrie shit their so sick lol!" link someone posted on some website or forum. You don't get to deliberately go look at someone else's stuff for the purpose of point-and-laugh and then turn around and get mad when you "can't unsee" stuff you very deliberately looked at in the first place. The furries aren't determined to spoil things for other people, the trolls who expose them for teh lulz, however, are.
People enjoy different things. Some people enjoy
really different things. After 20 years of hanging out with freaks, geeks, spazzes, kinksters, and weirdos of all stripes, I can tell you that this "Ewww! Kill it! Kill it!" reaction (and seriously, with all the fucked up people in the world, the
furries are the ones you want to put up against the wall? Perspective much?) is going to cost you the friendship of some of the sweetest, most upbeat people you will ever meet.