What it means...

[Runemist]

So, I have a very forward question, and I mean no offense to it. I just am a very forward kind of person...and very curious!
So, I want to know, what does it mean to "be a furry"?
I understand the connection to animals, in various degrees, but is that all that is required? Is there anything else that most or all furries do or have that mark them as furries? I've noticed that many of the people I know who are furries, and also many people on the forum, are people that don't always "fit in" to the social norm. in the way society would like us to. Whether we are of a different religeon, sexual preference, or perhaps just a different kind of person, rather than the bubbly happy girls or the big strong sports-playing guys, or whatever those stereotypes are, we just don't fit in quite right. I know I don't fit into the social norm.
So, without any arguing (please!) I'd like to know your opinions, so that I can understand some different points of view. I don't want people to question each other, just let me know!
Thanks guys!

[DogboyShugo]

Oh wow....There's so many definitions and mix ups.

To me:
It's someone who can really love furry art or a person who loves to role play in a fursuit. Or someone who thinks their close to a certain animal or feels connected. Something around there. There's just so many ^^'''

[Rainbow Wally]

Well for me its my close bond with animals that kinda what makes me a furry, I've always believed when i was a kid to be like an animal (wild, untameable like most children) but I would always like feel like i was one rather than be a human. But as i got older My beliefs changed and I had to conform to societies norms, but after a while I discovered what a furry is and i thought hey thats me in a nutshell. I think being furry is to have a connection with animals, plus most of my art is of anthromorphic animals and i wrote stories with animals in them. so I a sense also my hobbies drew me towards being a Fur.

well thats my bit hope it helps
 

[PyroVulpes]

Stripped down to it's most basic definition, a furry is either an anthropomorphic animal or someone who is interested in anthro's. Nothing more, nothing less.

One of my favourite comparisons for the furry fandom, is the Star Trek fandom. You'll see people of all levels of involvement within both, from the casual to the hardcore fans and the few who take things waaay too far.

Really, furry is whatever you want it to be.

[AshleyAshes]

In the broadest sense of the term, a 'furry' is a person that participates in the furry fandom.  Everything else is meer semantics, however that doesn't stop various furries from argueing with other furries about who's furrier than whom.  Aways fun.

Anyway, as I said in the Hyoomins thread, the furry fandom has a unique trait that seperates it from other fandoms; It's isolated.  Sci Fi, Anime, Comic and other fandoms all have MASSES of mainstream produced media that bring in lots of different peoples to within it's ranks.  The furry fandom has a minimum of works in comparison and very little see's large scale commercial release.  What does this leave the furry fandom with?  A few comics, a few stories but a HELL of a lot of roleplay and other things that are forms of escapism and much of it involves participation from the involved furry.

The furry fandom is very much a place where you can dive into entirely fictional worlds, not just specific worlds from media but your own version of a furry world with as many or as few rules as the person wants.  Myself use more rules and limitations in my creative ideas for a contemporary furry world than many would, including where crossbreeding between members of different taxanomic families high a high risk of misscarriage or deformity.

So the fandom is a place where many can dive into and get the hell out of the real world, maybe for a short trip and some stay a lot longer.  Some want to always escape into the fandom and use their existance in the real world meerly as an unfortunate necessaity to faciliate their RETURN to the fandom.

Escape is a very attractive thing to social outcasts, emotionally damaged people or anyone who's had some problem or another with 'the real world' and want a vacation.

I actually think much of the furry fandom arn't truely in it for the 'talkking animals' thing but got into it for other reasons that found it appealing and that they use the talking animal thing for one of two reaons, or a combination of both: 1) The talking animals are neat, fun, and entertaining.  2) The fursona is the required UNIFORM of the fandom.

[Runemist]

Interesting ideas, thank you very much! I particularly liked the kinship to Star trek...seeing as I am a trekkie
I can fully understand the fandom as an escape, many people have them and sometimes we just don't realize it. Books, music, and other things we have in life, we use to get away from the "fun" of the real world.
So, without any media sticking us together, I'd say it's pretty impressive that so many furries are such good friends, and stick together of our own accord so well.

[Riley]

In the Broadest, most casual term. It's someone who likes any one, or combination of the following : Anthropomorphic art, Anthropomorphic Puppetry, Anthropomorphic Writing, Anthropomorphic Costuming, and declares his or herself a furry. Then you get the varying degrees of each category. ( Or other things like Spirituality or. . . fursuit sex

But the simplistic thing to say is that 'furry' is defined by the person, furry is what they want it to be.

And my Fursona is based off of myself in every way except for the Dog thing, and the One Blue eye and one green eye. I'd have to say that I like talking animals, and costuming, and I don't mind puppeting, and I'm an aspiring writer. ( Not to mention drawing )

The Fursona thing is just a neat little character making things a bit more enjoyable, I personally think I'm here for the talking animals, and the community.

Hope I didn't make a fool out of myself.

~Grey

[Aurifer]

This is actually an important topic for me to research, because I need to understand fully what furry means to everyone in the fandom.

The basic definition has been said a couple different ways already, so I'll skip that and go onto myself:
I'm a furry because I like anthropomorphised animals. I enjoy the art, and would love to be one myself. That said, I didn't actually develop my fursona until much later, and it's really only "a golden retriever. With my personality." So, I'm not really IN it like most furs are.

To me, the most important things are the community and the art. The community gives us the skritches and glomps and other fluffy interaction that makes the fandom what it is. The art is important because it brings the entire vibrant world to life in vivid visuals.

I think my involvement in the fandom is an expression of my desires, really.

[Harle]

I prefer it when people self-identify as opposed to having a set of 'prerequisites' that must be met before someone can call themselves a furry. In fact, that's one of the nice things about the fandom. It's not insular. There isn't some separation between 'core' furries and then furry posers. Nobody scoffs at anyone and goes all 'Pfft. You're not a fur. Go read some more anime.'

So I like to approach it objectively; what do all the people in the fandom who call themselves furry, have in common? Well... they like anthropomorphic characters on some level.

I think that is pretty much it.

But as for me, I'm kinda tame. There's nothing spiritual about it, there's nothing crazy really. I like anthropomorphic characters. I find them physically attractive, sexually appealing(ohnoes!), and what have you. I also enjoy playing the part of an anthropomorphic character who embodies aspects of my personality that get magnified into something cute and cartoony.

'Cuz mouses are cute. ^.^

I don't really seek out furriness in everything I do. Movies, television, music... I'm pretty eclectic in my tastes, but fur stuff might make up a sad 0.05% of my entertainment media. =( I enjoy a good movie with furry characters as much as the next fur, but I don't seek it out and make it a big part of my life in that regard. For the most part, being a fur for me is a social and artistic thing; spending time with my furry friends on Second Life, doing a bit of furry drawing here and there, and enjoying the (much better)furry art of other artists.

Oh, and having adorable furry relationships. That is nice too.

[RappyRaptor]

This is the wiki article thats on the Anthrocon website, I think it does a good job:

http://www.anthrocon.org/about-furry

[Benjamin]

I believe that furry is essentially an interest in anthropomorphised animals. To try to define it as something more than that will destroy the validity of the definition, since no one aspect of the fandom truly applies to all fans.
 
There're a lot of different things that furry encompasses, some more important to more fans than others... and some are rather subtle. A lot of it isn't all that purely furry, like the sexuality aspects and whatnot. Things like that are other aspects of life imported into the fandom, and aren't what truly defines the fandom, except to help emphasise the fandom's broad spectrum of diversity. The art, costuming, and literature are fairly unique to the fandom in their sheer importance to it, but most science fiction fandoms have similar creative outlets for their own specific themes.
 
One thing that sets furry apart from other fandoms is that it's not based upon one single media entity... like Trekkies and their lust for Star Trek, or fans of specifically Babylon 5... or other sci-fi series like that. In furry, we have a very broad theme of "anthropomorphic animals" and we adopt whatever the media produces into our culture, and we produce a ton of our own material to feed our own needs. There are general science fiction fans as well, of course... but furry is often considered to be a specific sub-section/category of science fiction. From what I've seen, we furry fans tend to generate a lot of our own material, unlike Trekkies which have a lot of mass produced material produced by large manufacturers, publishers, and whatnot. While we adopt a lot of stuff that is mass produced, you can go to furry conventions and see that the majority of our media (art, costumes, and literature) is produced by fellow fans. I feel that that's one thing that sets furry apart from other subcultures and fandoms.
 
Benjamin

[Runemist]

Wow, some amazing stuff, guys, thank you! I think, after all of this, I would indeed continue to consider myself a furry. It shows up in my writing, and drawing, and in much of my life. It's interesting for me to hear so many different ideas, though one main one seems to come up very often: The fandom is what it is because it is so diverse, and there isn't one type of media or expression of your "furryness." I think that's really touching, that people can get together because of one abstract idea or preference and all get along. I know lots of other fandoms out there, including the one of Star trek, that don't always get along. Some prefer the older series' and some the newer ones, and they argue about it.
I'm beginning to see why the furry fandom works so well!

Thanks guys! 

[DogboyShugo]

Some of things some furries do creep me out. I've seen people do things that would give furries a bad name or just get people to stare at you.

I've seen someone howl at a moon because they were convinced they were a wolf
I've heard someone say that they need meat after two days or they will start to go crazy and need to gnaw on people's arms.

There's others too. It's stuff like that that creeps me out and doesn't define that as furry. I think that defines as creepy

[RappyRaptor]

Creepy because its different to you.

[Mobile Suit Bunny]

Oh dear, there goes the lid off the can of worms. Now who's going to clean all this shit up?

Pedophilia isn't creepy. You just don't understand it. Wow, we can justify all -kinds- of social deviancy that way.

Not to say furriness is a social deviancy, but there is such thing as taking something too far. We're all human in the end.

[Buun]

Fury to me, is just having fun. Being accepting. Making friends.
I cant draw animals too well, but I admire other peopels anthro art.

Mind you I really have only been around the fandom for a couple of weeks now.
My version may change. Who is to say *shrug*

[DogboyShugo]

Oh dear, there goes the lid off the can of worms. Now who's going to clean all this shit up?

Pedophilia isn't creepy. You just don't understand it. Wow, we can justify all -kinds- of social deviancy that way.

Not to say furriness is a social deviancy, but there is such thing as taking something too far. We're all human in the end.

exactly

[DogboyShugo]

Creepy because its different to you.

It's not different to me. Seriously, just what Mobile Suit Bunny said, were all human in the end no matter how much you feel you have a connection to something. Howling at a moon, well that I can kind see but chewing on someones arm is um just a tad bit odd in my book

[Seamus]

well there's different levels of deviance.  Theres extremes and subtle things.  Physically thinking your something you aren't and acting it out would be an extreme, Howling at the moon for fun is more on the subtle end.

To me furry is nothing.  Furry cannot be defined because it's redefined everyday by hundreds of people, and never came from one source.  You could pretty much say you climb to the top of buildings and yell at people in the streets because you're furry ("I'm a giant gorilla fur or some BS like that), and nobody would be able to say you were wrong because there is no singular definition of the word.

[DogboyShugo]

well there's different levels of deviance.  Theres extremes and subtle things.  Physically thinking your something you aren't and acting it out would be an extreme, Howling at the moon for fun is more on the subtle end.

To me furry is nothing.  Furry cannot be defined because it's redefined everyday by hundreds of people, and never came from one source.  You could pretty much say you climb to the top of buildings and yell at people in the streets because you're furry ("I'm a giant gorilla fur or some BS like that), and nobody would be able to say you were wrong because there is no singular definition of the word.

Just to put this out there. He wasn't howling for fun...