It seems to me that Furries are somehow inextricably bound up with the changes to childhood since the 70s: the blurring of the boundaries between adults and children; the linking of sex and personal identity; the reorganization of childrearing around the authentic self (versus socialization). Children are thrust into the adult world too soon, and sometimes individuals never break with childish things, to the detriment of themselves and the children they project their own sexual feelings on to. It’s as there are a lot more Michael Jacksons around. It’s a sort of stunted sexuality. And that’s even if it’s adults cavorting naked in their green fox tail. It’s so hard to pass judgement today because that’s become the cardinal sin but I think we should be clear that this is not a lifestyle that should be validated or celebrated even if the people involved in it mean no harm. And I’m not at all convinced that they are capable of respecting boundaries.
It’s probably a bit different for young people. It might be more about having learned that all breaking of boundaries is good coupled with too much time online and too little time in the flesh.
That’s my thinking on it right now— and that leaves aside the whole issue of the aggressive fetishist, which is a serious problem for everyone but especially kids.
I disagree with the linking of child rearing around authentic self. I believe that is an increasingly positive trend when done correctly. But a positive trend was weaponized into the exact opposite- how can an authentic self be a synthetic self?
It’s not so much a question of authentic self versus us synthetic self. It’s the difference between socialization, which is about becoming integrated into the world and to broader purposes beyond the self —and through that juxtaposition between you and others coming to a robust sense of who you are and what you can do — and childrearing that understands the emergence of the self (usually called the authentic self) as the whole point and the highest good not just of each individual but of society as a whole.
Gender ideology is an extreme version of that sort of thinking. There is this gendered self that everyone supposedly has and parents’ job is to affirm that sense of self, even if it is painful and dangerous, because it is authentic.
There’s nothing wrong with aspiring for kids to have a strong sense of self, but when that becomes the over riding purpose of raising kids, as opposed to being is a productive relationship with the world — whether that means being a teacher, baking bread or building roads— it becomes a problem for all sorts of reasons, but most tragically because the self makes no sense except in relation to other people. We really cut children adrift when we tell them to be themselves. You can see how it works when people are challenged and instead of engaging their instinct is to protect the self and “cut those toxic people, challenges, etc out of their lives”, when it’s through the pressure of being social that we grow and thrive.
I do agree authenticity has been weaponized. But the concept is not wrong. Once a value has been weaponized or artificially elevated, discernment is necessary.
I believe- and it is from a spiritual perspective- that each person has a unique gift/purpose to give world. My job as a parent is to help my child develop that gift and be able to bring it to world. Personally I hate word socialization because homeschoolers are/were accused of not properly socializing their children. But I believe my daughter has better social skills because she learned to interact with all ages of people rather than just peers of one age.
I actually agree with that -- and yes, "socialization" is a terrible word. I think of it as simply learning about the world you've been born into so that you can find (or create) your unique place in it. Social skills are a dimension of that, but the really lovely thing is that kids are born being predisposed to learn them through play. And I agree it's really unfortunately how we've segregated kids by age. They need younger and older peers and grown ups.
Anyway, I think the problem is when parents validate their kids to the point where their everything is mediated or only understood in terms of themselves and they come to believe the world should revolve around them and their needs/desires. Insisting that the language change to accomodate random neo pronouns is an example. It's only if you have been raised in an era like ours that something like that is even remotely conceivable.
While I find the whole concept of dressing as an animal baffling especially since from what I understand the costumes are hot and uncomfortable, the furries I've known personally say it isn't a sexual thing, and these people can be uncomfortably open about other areas of their sexual lives so I don't see why they'd lie. So it doesn't necessarily include a sexual component. My experience has been that it's strange but harmless.
I'm in a conservative area and the only time I saw it mentioned around my kids was at a Halloween party. A 9 year old girl had dressed as a cat (cat ears, a leotard and a tail type thing) and two other kids started calling her a furry as an insult until she broke down crying. After the parents got onto their kids for being mean to her I overheard a discussion among some of the older kids about how disturbing furries are and how its not a nice thing to call someone at the schools where my kids go apparently.
I have very mixed feelings about Furries. My 16 year old daughter is a classic ROGD kid, now mostly desisted (knock on wood!) She got into Furries maybe 9 months or a year before announcing her trans identity at 13. Her new "boy" name came directly from the Furry alter-ego she created for herself. I will never know exactly how much her getting into Furries had to do with her trans identity, but there seems to be enough of a link that it is part of what I see as the negative side of Furries. I think the Furry subculture and online presence is very gung-ho trans and some people do become over-identified with these fantasy personas.
On the positive side, it gave her a valuable way to express herself artistically. She made really impressive, professional looking Furry heads and other costume pieces from scratch and even sells some of them online. As a young woman, I worked at many different Renaissance festivals and I enjoy making and dressing up in costumes, and playing different characters, so I understand how much fun and liberating that can be, even if others find it odd.
I even attended a Furry festival with her one time and I would not have missed it for the world! I actually had a great time. However, I also would NEVER have let her attend without me chaperoning her everywhere in the hotel it was being held at. There was a sexual subtext to some of the fan art that I saw displayed and I met some people there that I wouldn't want to leave my daughter alone with. But, again, I have to compare it to my own Ren faire experience, which also has its unsavory side, but overall was a positive experience for me. I think there will just be pervy people in any subculture, unfortunately!
Now, at 16, my daughter considers herself Therian, but it doesn't seem to affect her daily life much. She is definitely not going around on all fours or asking to use a litter box or anything wild like that. She still enjoys making some of the costume pieces, but it seems balanced with other parts of her life. As I mentioned before, she seems to have mostly given up the trans identity (Hallelujah) and is a pretty normal teenager girl.
Anyway, that is my very long story about our experience with Furries. Like everything else to do with gender, I think it bears looking at in a nuanced way.
My daughter got really interested in furries about a year before Covid, then during covid she came out as “non-binary” followed shortly thereafter as “transgender”. She was about 10 years old when the interest in furries emerged. Then during Covid, she got her first period at an early age (11), which was a somewhat traumatic experience for her, as she was not ready for that leap into womanhood. Then, while tucked away and isolated in her room and on her computer, on discord with friends she met playing Roblox online, she was told by these friends that, because she preferred to be a boy character in the Roblox game, that probably means she’s transgender. She eased me into it by first telling me she was nonbinary. Then less then a year later proclaimed she was transgender. It’s a typical story these days… which all started with furries 😅
I homeschooled my daughter based on much from unschooling “child-led learning” and Waldorf (based on Rudolf Steiner’s insights) philosophies. My fist thought comes from Steiner philosophy about not having children play with plastic or anthromorphized toys instead all playthings are of natural materials and ease of true imaginative play. I remember my daughter creating elebrate imaginative worlds even from the veggies in our weekly CSA share. Contrast this with a girl who moved in down the street and came over to play. At first she had no ability for imaginative play at all at 7 yrs old (both her parents played video games all waking hours except to maintain life). She loved coming to our house but could only last for 30-45min. Slowly over time she spent longer periods and began to engage in more imaginative play. I postulate that NO child raised in Waldorf education with a family at least partially following principles at home becomes a furry.
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. Our family was really into Waldorf when my kids were little. My daughter attended one year of Waldorf kindergarten at a private school, then moved on to public school, as that one year was all we could afford. She had very limited screen time before about age 7 and I did everything I could to foster imaginative play. She still got into Furries at about age 12. I have mixed feelings about this (see my comment below), but on the positive side, I think for her it was partly an expression of the very creativity we had been trying to encourage through the Waldorf philosophy.
Unfortunately my soon to be 14 year old daughter went down that whole in parallel with the transgender ideology. It’s one step more messed up than furries - she is a therian. She firmly believes she has been different animals in her past lives and she remembers her past lives. She does “quadrobics” which is walking and jumping on 4 legs, likes to wear a cat mask and a tail. That evolved after binging for hours every day on TikTok this past summer. If you google it, you will find a plethora of teen girls that use her/him pronouns and have different “theriotypes”. They all talk about how the “shift” - they feel phantom tails, feathers or animal features in their daily lives. It’s really scary and it becomes an unhealthy obsession. That mixed with transgenderism has morphed my beautiful girl into an androgynous looking angry child that has lost the spark in her eyes, is deeply depressed and thinks there is no reason to live as the whole world is against her. I can I possibly find the right care for her and feel like I’m losing my child to insanity
I feel so lucky my daughter is a few years older - 22 now- and her 13-15 age obsession online was K-pop. It was an extremely rough time for us. I was very sick and she was bullied a lot. I think the obsession helped get her through that time. At the time I was just glad it wasn’t all the oversexualized American pop music but had no idea about all these other subcultures she could have found herself in.
I don’t personally know anyone who engages in this subculture, but I’m uncomfortable with labeling people deviants, groomers, degenerates. It already feels a little too 1933 in the U.S.
I agree that "furries" seem to be an extension of a larger phenomenon. As a mother, I find it challenging to promote pro-social behavior and attitudes in a culture that values individual "identities" and preferences ("authenticity") to the detriment of other people and reasonable community standards. I see this in matters ranging from the insidious coercive aspects of sex "positivity" to drivers blasting their music in a park to, now, students reportedly wearing animal costumes at school. The failure of adults and authorities to set examples and maintain common sense standards makes for a scary, wobbly world for children and teens.
As a child, my daughter was so committed to "being" a dog that she convinced us to walk her on a leash in the neighborhood. She is now a senior at a high school "with a lot of weird people," in her words, but no furries. She is aware of them online, as are her friends, and "we make fun of them." She said that furries "get really defensive" if anyone questions them.
My daughter is concerned, however, that the drawings of one of her cousins are too close to "furry" for comfort. This cousin has recently embraced a group of "gender fluid" teens, most of whom seem to be on the autism spectrum. As a result, my niece has adopted a number of eccentricities of which she seems quite proud. She prefaces her acceptance of invitations with "will I be the object of a hate crime?" as if that would be a feather in her cap. I wouldn't be surprised if she decided to go down the "furry" path, especially since her parents promote "authenticity" and are thoroughly "gender affirming."
I live in a small town where almost all children come from Hispanic, Native, or Filapino families. I can’t imagine anything like that happening here. On opposite scale, my mom teaches religious education at the local Catholic Church. If the kids come early to class she teaches them to knit. All the girls and most of the boys absolutely treasure the knitting and come early every week.
It seems to me that Furries are somehow inextricably bound up with the changes to childhood since the 70s: the blurring of the boundaries between adults and children; the linking of sex and personal identity; the reorganization of childrearing around the authentic self (versus socialization). Children are thrust into the adult world too soon, and sometimes individuals never break with childish things, to the detriment of themselves and the children they project their own sexual feelings on to. It’s as there are a lot more Michael Jacksons around. It’s a sort of stunted sexuality. And that’s even if it’s adults cavorting naked in their green fox tail. It’s so hard to pass judgement today because that’s become the cardinal sin but I think we should be clear that this is not a lifestyle that should be validated or celebrated even if the people involved in it mean no harm. And I’m not at all convinced that they are capable of respecting boundaries.
It’s probably a bit different for young people. It might be more about having learned that all breaking of boundaries is good coupled with too much time online and too little time in the flesh.
That’s my thinking on it right now— and that leaves aside the whole issue of the aggressive fetishist, which is a serious problem for everyone but especially kids.
I disagree with the linking of child rearing around authentic self. I believe that is an increasingly positive trend when done correctly. But a positive trend was weaponized into the exact opposite- how can an authentic self be a synthetic self?
It’s not so much a question of authentic self versus us synthetic self. It’s the difference between socialization, which is about becoming integrated into the world and to broader purposes beyond the self —and through that juxtaposition between you and others coming to a robust sense of who you are and what you can do — and childrearing that understands the emergence of the self (usually called the authentic self) as the whole point and the highest good not just of each individual but of society as a whole.
Gender ideology is an extreme version of that sort of thinking. There is this gendered self that everyone supposedly has and parents’ job is to affirm that sense of self, even if it is painful and dangerous, because it is authentic.
There’s nothing wrong with aspiring for kids to have a strong sense of self, but when that becomes the over riding purpose of raising kids, as opposed to being is a productive relationship with the world — whether that means being a teacher, baking bread or building roads— it becomes a problem for all sorts of reasons, but most tragically because the self makes no sense except in relation to other people. We really cut children adrift when we tell them to be themselves. You can see how it works when people are challenged and instead of engaging their instinct is to protect the self and “cut those toxic people, challenges, etc out of their lives”, when it’s through the pressure of being social that we grow and thrive.
Does that make sense?
I do agree authenticity has been weaponized. But the concept is not wrong. Once a value has been weaponized or artificially elevated, discernment is necessary.
I believe- and it is from a spiritual perspective- that each person has a unique gift/purpose to give world. My job as a parent is to help my child develop that gift and be able to bring it to world. Personally I hate word socialization because homeschoolers are/were accused of not properly socializing their children. But I believe my daughter has better social skills because she learned to interact with all ages of people rather than just peers of one age.
I actually agree with that -- and yes, "socialization" is a terrible word. I think of it as simply learning about the world you've been born into so that you can find (or create) your unique place in it. Social skills are a dimension of that, but the really lovely thing is that kids are born being predisposed to learn them through play. And I agree it's really unfortunately how we've segregated kids by age. They need younger and older peers and grown ups.
Anyway, I think the problem is when parents validate their kids to the point where their everything is mediated or only understood in terms of themselves and they come to believe the world should revolve around them and their needs/desires. Insisting that the language change to accomodate random neo pronouns is an example. It's only if you have been raised in an era like ours that something like that is even remotely conceivable.
Ps some artsy types I know wear tails and seem to be into it, but no teens doing it openly.
While I find the whole concept of dressing as an animal baffling especially since from what I understand the costumes are hot and uncomfortable, the furries I've known personally say it isn't a sexual thing, and these people can be uncomfortably open about other areas of their sexual lives so I don't see why they'd lie. So it doesn't necessarily include a sexual component. My experience has been that it's strange but harmless.
I'm in a conservative area and the only time I saw it mentioned around my kids was at a Halloween party. A 9 year old girl had dressed as a cat (cat ears, a leotard and a tail type thing) and two other kids started calling her a furry as an insult until she broke down crying. After the parents got onto their kids for being mean to her I overheard a discussion among some of the older kids about how disturbing furries are and how its not a nice thing to call someone at the schools where my kids go apparently.
I have very mixed feelings about Furries. My 16 year old daughter is a classic ROGD kid, now mostly desisted (knock on wood!) She got into Furries maybe 9 months or a year before announcing her trans identity at 13. Her new "boy" name came directly from the Furry alter-ego she created for herself. I will never know exactly how much her getting into Furries had to do with her trans identity, but there seems to be enough of a link that it is part of what I see as the negative side of Furries. I think the Furry subculture and online presence is very gung-ho trans and some people do become over-identified with these fantasy personas.
On the positive side, it gave her a valuable way to express herself artistically. She made really impressive, professional looking Furry heads and other costume pieces from scratch and even sells some of them online. As a young woman, I worked at many different Renaissance festivals and I enjoy making and dressing up in costumes, and playing different characters, so I understand how much fun and liberating that can be, even if others find it odd.
I even attended a Furry festival with her one time and I would not have missed it for the world! I actually had a great time. However, I also would NEVER have let her attend without me chaperoning her everywhere in the hotel it was being held at. There was a sexual subtext to some of the fan art that I saw displayed and I met some people there that I wouldn't want to leave my daughter alone with. But, again, I have to compare it to my own Ren faire experience, which also has its unsavory side, but overall was a positive experience for me. I think there will just be pervy people in any subculture, unfortunately!
Now, at 16, my daughter considers herself Therian, but it doesn't seem to affect her daily life much. She is definitely not going around on all fours or asking to use a litter box or anything wild like that. She still enjoys making some of the costume pieces, but it seems balanced with other parts of her life. As I mentioned before, she seems to have mostly given up the trans identity (Hallelujah) and is a pretty normal teenager girl.
Anyway, that is my very long story about our experience with Furries. Like everything else to do with gender, I think it bears looking at in a nuanced way.
My daughter got really interested in furries about a year before Covid, then during covid she came out as “non-binary” followed shortly thereafter as “transgender”. She was about 10 years old when the interest in furries emerged. Then during Covid, she got her first period at an early age (11), which was a somewhat traumatic experience for her, as she was not ready for that leap into womanhood. Then, while tucked away and isolated in her room and on her computer, on discord with friends she met playing Roblox online, she was told by these friends that, because she preferred to be a boy character in the Roblox game, that probably means she’s transgender. She eased me into it by first telling me she was nonbinary. Then less then a year later proclaimed she was transgender. It’s a typical story these days… which all started with furries 😅
I homeschooled my daughter based on much from unschooling “child-led learning” and Waldorf (based on Rudolf Steiner’s insights) philosophies. My fist thought comes from Steiner philosophy about not having children play with plastic or anthromorphized toys instead all playthings are of natural materials and ease of true imaginative play. I remember my daughter creating elebrate imaginative worlds even from the veggies in our weekly CSA share. Contrast this with a girl who moved in down the street and came over to play. At first she had no ability for imaginative play at all at 7 yrs old (both her parents played video games all waking hours except to maintain life). She loved coming to our house but could only last for 30-45min. Slowly over time she spent longer periods and began to engage in more imaginative play. I postulate that NO child raised in Waldorf education with a family at least partially following principles at home becomes a furry.
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. Our family was really into Waldorf when my kids were little. My daughter attended one year of Waldorf kindergarten at a private school, then moved on to public school, as that one year was all we could afford. She had very limited screen time before about age 7 and I did everything I could to foster imaginative play. She still got into Furries at about age 12. I have mixed feelings about this (see my comment below), but on the positive side, I think for her it was partly an expression of the very creativity we had been trying to encourage through the Waldorf philosophy.
Unfortunately my soon to be 14 year old daughter went down that whole in parallel with the transgender ideology. It’s one step more messed up than furries - she is a therian. She firmly believes she has been different animals in her past lives and she remembers her past lives. She does “quadrobics” which is walking and jumping on 4 legs, likes to wear a cat mask and a tail. That evolved after binging for hours every day on TikTok this past summer. If you google it, you will find a plethora of teen girls that use her/him pronouns and have different “theriotypes”. They all talk about how the “shift” - they feel phantom tails, feathers or animal features in their daily lives. It’s really scary and it becomes an unhealthy obsession. That mixed with transgenderism has morphed my beautiful girl into an androgynous looking angry child that has lost the spark in her eyes, is deeply depressed and thinks there is no reason to live as the whole world is against her. I can I possibly find the right care for her and feel like I’m losing my child to insanity
I feel so lucky my daughter is a few years older - 22 now- and her 13-15 age obsession online was K-pop. It was an extremely rough time for us. I was very sick and she was bullied a lot. I think the obsession helped get her through that time. At the time I was just glad it wasn’t all the oversexualized American pop music but had no idea about all these other subcultures she could have found herself in.
I don’t personally know anyone who engages in this subculture, but I’m uncomfortable with labeling people deviants, groomers, degenerates. It already feels a little too 1933 in the U.S.
I agree that "furries" seem to be an extension of a larger phenomenon. As a mother, I find it challenging to promote pro-social behavior and attitudes in a culture that values individual "identities" and preferences ("authenticity") to the detriment of other people and reasonable community standards. I see this in matters ranging from the insidious coercive aspects of sex "positivity" to drivers blasting their music in a park to, now, students reportedly wearing animal costumes at school. The failure of adults and authorities to set examples and maintain common sense standards makes for a scary, wobbly world for children and teens.
As a child, my daughter was so committed to "being" a dog that she convinced us to walk her on a leash in the neighborhood. She is now a senior at a high school "with a lot of weird people," in her words, but no furries. She is aware of them online, as are her friends, and "we make fun of them." She said that furries "get really defensive" if anyone questions them.
My daughter is concerned, however, that the drawings of one of her cousins are too close to "furry" for comfort. This cousin has recently embraced a group of "gender fluid" teens, most of whom seem to be on the autism spectrum. As a result, my niece has adopted a number of eccentricities of which she seems quite proud. She prefaces her acceptance of invitations with "will I be the object of a hate crime?" as if that would be a feather in her cap. I wouldn't be surprised if she decided to go down the "furry" path, especially since her parents promote "authenticity" and are thoroughly "gender affirming."
You can take my litter box….but you can’t take away my freedom!!
In all seriousness I think this is particularly relevant for younger kids and those with ASD traits.
Have you all seen this in your kids’ schools?
I’ll check back in later to see what people are sharing here!
I live in a small town where almost all children come from Hispanic, Native, or Filapino families. I can’t imagine anything like that happening here. On opposite scale, my mom teaches religious education at the local Catholic Church. If the kids come early to class she teaches them to knit. All the girls and most of the boys absolutely treasure the knitting and come early every week.