Furry Planet, my second book about the furry community (after 2017’s Furry Nation) is due to be released August 22. The publisher’s media person asked me to write an op-ed style piece they would offer to newspapers and/or websites to help promote the book. No word yet if they’ve placed it anywhere, but it’s my most succinct attempt at describing our community and anthropomorphism’s appeal:
Florida governor Ron DeSantis, fuming that the Disney organization is opposing his iron-fisted attempt to turn gay, transgender and cross-dressing people into “non-persons,” may not realize he is also attacking another group challenging long held assumptions about gender…and species: furries.
Full disclosure: I’m one of them. Furries like me are people fascinated by anthropomorphic animals: imaginary and appealing beings who combine human and animal appearance or abilities. They may be storybook animals, mythical ones like dragons and in particular, cartoon critters—and Disney’s animated menagerie inspired so many of us to become furries.
There’s a mock “inspirational” poster online depicting a leggy female mus musculus from The Great Mouse Detective in a coquettish pose above the caption, “Disney: Turning kids into Furries for over ninety years.” Many Generation X furs credit the studio’s charismatic Robin Hood, a daring and dashing fox for inspiring their furriness—a veritable cartoon influencer!
DeSantis’ overly broad and likely unconstitutional child “protection” laws forced Florida’s long-running Megaplex furry convention to restrict attendance to over 18 year old furs, even though furry is a youthful community with many of its participants high-school students or younger. Older furs (like myself, a furry since its earliest mid-1980s days) are considered “greymuzzles”—and the Facebook greymuzzles page is open to anyone over a mere thirty.
Meanwhile, just before July 4th Pittsburgh welcomed Anthrocon, a long-running convention (and currently the largest of the dozens of furry gatherings held around the world) that has made the city its home since 2006. Over four days 13,644 furries (including more than 2500 wearing the elaborate fursuits we’re known for) delighted a city that has warmly embraced the furry community. Hundreds of residents come downtown to watch the annual fursuit parade, whose participants pose for photographs alongside beaming locals in the post-parade block party. (Those locals may also be beaming in gratitude for the millions of dollars Anthrocon injects into the Pittsburgh economy every year.) A middle-aged woman approached one fursuiter and told him how happy she was the furries were in town. “Every year you turn the city into a fantasyland—and it’s something I really needed right now.”
Those fursuits are handmade (and expensive!) wearable works of art, custom-created by furry artisans to make tangible the “fursonas,” the animal alter-egos furs have invented for themselves. The ludicrous misconception that furries have sex inside generic animal suits is slowly giving way to the realization that for a few days fursuiters can take a vacation from the human race and transform into someone else, a grander self of their imagination: swashbuckling foxes, dapper rabbits, bon vivant walruses, multi-colored felines, feathered avians…during conventions I become “Komos,” a sinister yet strangely alluring Komodo dragon sporting a boutonniere on his tuxedo lapel.
Every few years a new, imaginary “menace” comes along to purportedly endanger children. In the past it was comic books, rock music or video games; today it’s furry, supposedly encouraging kids to “identify as” animals and use sandboxes in place of toilets. In reality, the furry community is home to many gay, transgender or autistic children and adults who experience the support, validation and acceptance denied them elsewhere.
In the meantime, Governor DeSantis continues his heavy-handed attempt to turn himself into Disney’s next cartoon villain; I wonder if his real issue with Disney is when Prince Phillip kissed Sleeping Beauty’s Aurora, she became “woke.”