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hmpfAfter writing my "Finder compendium" entry, I took my own advice and googled for 'furries'. I did know, vaguely, what furries were, but, interested in the anthropology of strange obsessions and the communities surrounding them as I am, I wanted to find out more. After all, furries are not *that* much farther removed from 'normal' fandom than people with a BDSM fetish are (and I'd argue that *those* are actually not removed at all. They're smack in the centre of fandom, and I know a good many of them. I'm actually amazed there isn't a greater BDSM presence in Farscape fandom, what with all the fetish gear the set and costume designers used throughout the show). So, there's a huge crossover between the circles I frequent, and the weirder realms of fetishism; hence I want to know more about those realms.
I found this article, which is quite interesting:
http://pressedfur.coolfreepages.com/press/vanityfair/
I found this fascinating because it hits close to home for me. The way I see it, fetishism of some kind is almost omnipresent in fandom. It's usually not as *strange* a fetishism as furrydom (or would that be furryness?) is, but it is woven through almost everything we do, if sometimes subconsciously. Also, that feeling of being the only person in the world who's into some strange stuff, and then discovering there's a whole *subculture* of people like you? The feeling of *belonging* that you get only at conventions? I know that. I've felt that way myself.
It's a nice article. It portrays the furry fandom in its full weirdness, but it's not a sensationalistic piece. Instead, it leaves you with a number of giant questionmarks in your mind. What is normal? Why do some people develop really weird fetishes (furries aren't even the weirdest mentioned in the article)? Is there something wrong with following your weirder urges as long as they're not a danger to others? How weird is too weird?
As fetishes go, furryness seems to be one of the more harmless ones. It seems more than faintly ridiculous, but then, I'm the wrong person to throw stones, or even to laugh. After all, I've been known to paint myself blue for conventions. I didn't do that because I have a fetish for being blue, but as a means of attracting attention to our table and our Save Farscape flyers, but I *did* notice the liberating feeling of transformation when being in costume – something I hadn't expected at all and which could easily become addictive, if the makeup didn't take frelling nine hours and caused me strange blisters on the neck. It is interesting, though, that my first reaction, like probably almost anybody's reaction to that article, was to feel that what furries do is actually kind of sad, in a 'these people have no life etc.' kind of way. It's a ridiculous thing for a person of my level of geekishness to feel, I know. But I guess it's conditioned into us all. Anybody who fails to conform (even, or maybe especially at the most intimate level, that of erotic attraction) must be a loser and must be ridiculed.
Reading that article I was weirded out frequently – but I was also aware that those people aren't *that* different from *us*. And mundanes probably get similar vibes of weirdness from reading about what I am up to in my spare time as I got from reading about what furries do. Furries are about as weird to me as I am to a normal person. Which means: similar enough that I can recognise myself in some of their experiences and feelings and some of their arguments, and at the same time different in a disturbingly enough way to make my initial reaction be something along the lines of "No way could I have *anything* in common with *them*!" A clear case of wishful thinking.
Fandom, that is, general fandom, the kind of fandom I am active in, is in many ways exactly what furry fandom is: a harmless perversion, amusing to outsiders, and a complex, fulfilling subcultural community to insiders. My kind of fandom is less sexualised than furry fandom apparently is – I know of no wild sex at the conventions I have been to so far, although it doubtlessly happens on occasion – but fetishisms of various kinds are subliminally present, nevertheless. And I would be lying if I were to claim there is not an element of fetishism in my own fannish obsessions. An element; it's not the driving force. But it's there. Frell, there may even be a tad of furryness there – after all, one of my fannish favourites of the last years was Sirius Black, and he's a dog, more often than not. And yes, that *is* part of his appeal.
And as for other fetishes... well, John Crichton suffers beautifully, especially in black leather.
I think what I'm trying to get at here is this: fandom is open to all kinds of 'perversions' – if you stay in it for a while, you learn to have an open mind. That does not mean you have to develop a fetish yourself, but you learn to sort of shrug and accept other people's. And you learn to acknowledge that even if you're not completely into some particularly weird thing, it may have a certain appeal (if only in homeopathic doses). I like the occasional slash or polyamorous story, and I don't mind Sirius and Remus doing it doggy style *g*. In fandom, I think, you learn to accept that sexuality and eroticism take far more varied and unexpected forms than you ever heard of in the mundane world, and that that is not bad, or wrong – it's simply the way we are wired. Maybe occasional weirdness is a side effect of our, i.e. human beings', brains being so complex – we behave weirdly in other areas of life and think it's normal, so why not in this?
Or maybe sex just *is* intrinsically weird.
Anyway, somehow I refuse to believe that mundanes are less weird in their sexual urges than we are. I think they are probably just less accepting of the weirder parts of their sexuality. Which is kind of funny, considering that we, fen, are usually the ones who are portrayed as desexualised etc.
(Of course, there's also the difference between *talking* about it, and doing it to consider – both in the sense that the fact that we're talking about it such a lot, even if in a disguised way, may indicate that we are compensating for a lack in Real Life, *and* in the sense that for some people, talking or reading about certain 'kinks' may be preferable to acting them out. There is also, on a somewhat related note, the difference between harmless perversions and those that are a danger to others. That cannibal guy recently who could only feel aroused at the thought of killing and eating people - he read, maybe significantly, a Star Trek novel while he was waiting for his victim to die. The line between 'harmless' perversion and homicidal madness can be thin, and it seems to run right through fandom – just like it does through Real Life. This is a disconcerting thought to me because I would like to think of fandom as a somewhat utopian community that, while frowned upon by the outside world, is really a big, mostly happy, alternative family. Yeah, I know, wishful thinking. Not only is there the occasional madman among us (although I don't know if the cannibal guy really was a fan) – we're also pretty good at bickering and feuding. Well, there's stuff for several more discussions here still, but I think I'll leave it at that, for now. Maybe someone else feels like discussing these issues.)
I found this article, which is quite interesting:
http://pressedfur.coolfreepages.com/press/vanityfair/
I found this fascinating because it hits close to home for me. The way I see it, fetishism of some kind is almost omnipresent in fandom. It's usually not as *strange* a fetishism as furrydom (or would that be furryness?) is, but it is woven through almost everything we do, if sometimes subconsciously. Also, that feeling of being the only person in the world who's into some strange stuff, and then discovering there's a whole *subculture* of people like you? The feeling of *belonging* that you get only at conventions? I know that. I've felt that way myself.
It's a nice article. It portrays the furry fandom in its full weirdness, but it's not a sensationalistic piece. Instead, it leaves you with a number of giant questionmarks in your mind. What is normal? Why do some people develop really weird fetishes (furries aren't even the weirdest mentioned in the article)? Is there something wrong with following your weirder urges as long as they're not a danger to others? How weird is too weird?
As fetishes go, furryness seems to be one of the more harmless ones. It seems more than faintly ridiculous, but then, I'm the wrong person to throw stones, or even to laugh. After all, I've been known to paint myself blue for conventions. I didn't do that because I have a fetish for being blue, but as a means of attracting attention to our table and our Save Farscape flyers, but I *did* notice the liberating feeling of transformation when being in costume – something I hadn't expected at all and which could easily become addictive, if the makeup didn't take frelling nine hours and caused me strange blisters on the neck. It is interesting, though, that my first reaction, like probably almost anybody's reaction to that article, was to feel that what furries do is actually kind of sad, in a 'these people have no life etc.' kind of way. It's a ridiculous thing for a person of my level of geekishness to feel, I know. But I guess it's conditioned into us all. Anybody who fails to conform (even, or maybe especially at the most intimate level, that of erotic attraction) must be a loser and must be ridiculed.
Reading that article I was weirded out frequently – but I was also aware that those people aren't *that* different from *us*. And mundanes probably get similar vibes of weirdness from reading about what I am up to in my spare time as I got from reading about what furries do. Furries are about as weird to me as I am to a normal person. Which means: similar enough that I can recognise myself in some of their experiences and feelings and some of their arguments, and at the same time different in a disturbingly enough way to make my initial reaction be something along the lines of "No way could I have *anything* in common with *them*!" A clear case of wishful thinking.
Fandom, that is, general fandom, the kind of fandom I am active in, is in many ways exactly what furry fandom is: a harmless perversion, amusing to outsiders, and a complex, fulfilling subcultural community to insiders. My kind of fandom is less sexualised than furry fandom apparently is – I know of no wild sex at the conventions I have been to so far, although it doubtlessly happens on occasion – but fetishisms of various kinds are subliminally present, nevertheless. And I would be lying if I were to claim there is not an element of fetishism in my own fannish obsessions. An element; it's not the driving force. But it's there. Frell, there may even be a tad of furryness there – after all, one of my fannish favourites of the last years was Sirius Black, and he's a dog, more often than not. And yes, that *is* part of his appeal.
And as for other fetishes... well, John Crichton suffers beautifully, especially in black leather.
I think what I'm trying to get at here is this: fandom is open to all kinds of 'perversions' – if you stay in it for a while, you learn to have an open mind. That does not mean you have to develop a fetish yourself, but you learn to sort of shrug and accept other people's. And you learn to acknowledge that even if you're not completely into some particularly weird thing, it may have a certain appeal (if only in homeopathic doses). I like the occasional slash or polyamorous story, and I don't mind Sirius and Remus doing it doggy style *g*. In fandom, I think, you learn to accept that sexuality and eroticism take far more varied and unexpected forms than you ever heard of in the mundane world, and that that is not bad, or wrong – it's simply the way we are wired. Maybe occasional weirdness is a side effect of our, i.e. human beings', brains being so complex – we behave weirdly in other areas of life and think it's normal, so why not in this?
Or maybe sex just *is* intrinsically weird.
Anyway, somehow I refuse to believe that mundanes are less weird in their sexual urges than we are. I think they are probably just less accepting of the weirder parts of their sexuality. Which is kind of funny, considering that we, fen, are usually the ones who are portrayed as desexualised etc.
(Of course, there's also the difference between *talking* about it, and doing it to consider – both in the sense that the fact that we're talking about it such a lot, even if in a disguised way, may indicate that we are compensating for a lack in Real Life, *and* in the sense that for some people, talking or reading about certain 'kinks' may be preferable to acting them out. There is also, on a somewhat related note, the difference between harmless perversions and those that are a danger to others. That cannibal guy recently who could only feel aroused at the thought of killing and eating people - he read, maybe significantly, a Star Trek novel while he was waiting for his victim to die. The line between 'harmless' perversion and homicidal madness can be thin, and it seems to run right through fandom – just like it does through Real Life. This is a disconcerting thought to me because I would like to think of fandom as a somewhat utopian community that, while frowned upon by the outside world, is really a big, mostly happy, alternative family. Yeah, I know, wishful thinking. Not only is there the occasional madman among us (although I don't know if the cannibal guy really was a fan) – we're also pretty good at bickering and feuding. Well, there's stuff for several more discussions here still, but I think I'll leave it at that, for now. Maybe someone else feels like discussing these issues.)
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Re:
Date: 2004-02-16 01:00 pm (UTC)(Note: I do not fantasize about being buried in fire ant mounds)
And now back to hmph's regularly scheduled discussion.
Hey there.
Date: 2004-02-17 05:33 pm (UTC)Uhm... I may have to friends-lock this journal sometime if I continue thinking along those lines... *g*
Oh, and let me clarify that...
Date: 2004-02-17 05:34 pm (UTC)Re: Hey there.
Date: 2004-02-17 09:03 pm (UTC)Re: Hey there.
Date: 2004-02-18 12:25 pm (UTC)> thinking along those lines... *g*
:-(
MSB