'Furries'

[pombear]

OK, seeing as everything is going 'pooof' this evening, just one more flag (sorry MNHQ but I think it's important that the connection is highlighted)

this person twitter.com/Feefers has a social media trail back to other activity this board may have concerns about right now.

Hopefully I've kep it so top-level it doesn't warrant a deletion?

I have an aspie older teenager who showers daily by choice (he smells better than I do!) & has a good friendship group. Although he experiences the feelings of social dislocation that come with ASD conditions, he’s no social pariah.

Hmm furries have really changed since I first learned about them. There was definitely no age play aspect.

I wonder if this is linked to the massive increase in people in the bdsm world who identify as "primals". Also known as an excuse to beat women into submission and sex because your "inner animal" took over. It used to be really niche, and banned in most clubs, but now they're everywhere. And I've seen a lot of "old school primals" showing their consternation about just how violent and abusive the newer, larger generation are.

It will no doubt surprise no one here to learn that most female primals identify with an inner prey animal, and most male heterosexuals identify with a predator. Lots of wolves and the like. Despite many people pointing out that wolves in the wild don't batter and beat their mates. And that they form packs with an alpha, almost invariably a male.

I wonder where all this animal identify stuff has come from...

Have a kink or fantasy, give it a name and voila - it's legitimised and protected. 🙄

Okay, I’m involved in a community where there is some overlap with furries at convention type things.

It’s all over 18 and there are lots of women (albeit a fair amount of lesbians). I rarely come across anyone who is trans and if they are it’s usually been FtM.

This isn’t a feminist issue it’s an internet security issue. Yes I’ve come across teens trying to be into this but they clearly need their parents supervising their internet usage.

The infantilism thing is usually 18+ as well, I’ve seen massive uproars and drama when some people have been found out to be 17.

There’s always going to be dark places on the internet but you wouldn’t assume that everyone on the internet or that has a kink is trying to cause danger to anyone. .

Second life being a prime example, lots of weird stuff was on there but it didn’t mean everyone who chose a fluffy character was trying to yif everyone in sight

The ones you are talking about are the furries x ABDL

I’ll admit the mascot costumes actually frighten me, especially the leather hood snout types but each to their own???

I was thinking about this whole autism/ASD connection earlier and I have a suspicion there's a whole lot of self-diagnosing going on in certain groups. Posters above, rightly feeling pretty cross about the assumptions, have presumably gone through difficulties in life and eventually reached a diagnosis in conjunction with professionals.

I do seem to recall as I was leaving uni in the early 00s there was a tendency for socially awkward and geekily-obsessive men to fall down a reddit-like rabbit hole, then announce they had Aspergers. It was used as a "you can't disagree with me, I'm disabled" conversational battering ram and an excuse for dodgy behaviour ("Oh, I can't interpret women saying no as meaning no"). Needless to say I did not spend much time around these folks (who would now be in their forties and mostly in IT ). Has anyone else noticed that, or did i just hit a particularly odd crowd? I'm wondering if the ASD label lost its shine as more women started to be better diagnosed...so other Brave and Stunning labels were required.

Without bringing in personality disorders or learning disabilities (not something I'm qualified to comment on) it's striking how the most vocal transactivists (as opposed to trans people in general) tend to be angry unattractive beta males with a grudge against women. The misogyny just drips off them.

This is great

twitter.com/AlfredBelpaire/status/1033032895160623104

"Could you imagine a 20-yo woman who lived with parents & had never had a job or been to university having her own feature in the Guardian, invited to debate at Oxford Union, advise Stonewall, talk to BBC Woman's Hour, and becoming a prominent spokesperson for a political party?"

We know the answer to that one.

it's striking how the most vocal transactivists (as opposed to trans people in general) tend to be angry unattractive beta males with a grudge against women. The misogyny just drips off them.

Innit pachyderm...

I hate these people for taking/faking autism and turning it into something unpleasant.

I think I need to come off the internet (well, twitter) for a bit - because the whole things making me feel crazy. WTF is going on?

twitter.com/fedupfemme/status/1033180224006053889 just came up on my feed. Again, WTAF?

Dude, you are more werewolf than lesbian.

Then I go outside my door, and about my daily life - and none of this is happening anywhere around me. It's spooky - some seedy underbelly of the internet bringing some very depraved individuals out, and them all validating each other.

Keep your teens v closely supervised on the internet would be my advice.

A few weeks back, Radio 1 had a feature about Furries. It was on in the afternoon and gave info about going to conferences etc.
BBC know their target audiences, so why are they directing young people towards this? The message was acceptance, but did they stop to think about what minors can find in one easy Google search?

Which thread went poof please? Cryptic descriptions ok!

Shamanism where people seek to take on the spirit or qualities of an animal might seem odd to us nowdays, but that would be a way of expanding human experience and knowledge and learning from animals. This furry thing is the opposite nd releis on manipuating human reactions. Its the stuff of psychological nightmares IMO.

As a child (maybe 9 or 10) I once went to a fancy dress disco in an all-over furry teddy bear costume, and loved all the cuddes I was getting from the other kids and head pats from teachers etc, similar to the hapiness I felt when certain relatives visited who were particulary kind and affectionate and full of postive praise, and very different to my close family. I would have worn the bear costume everyday if I could ... but even then I realised that this was because I had a horrible home life and never felt loved there, but that being the bear was not being me or having people love me.

So I can see how someone might have a deeply emotional/ pychological reaction to this kind of stuff or the lack of XYZ, but I don't think the answer is dressing up in bear suits and doing kinky stuff that only entrenches and relives the dysfunction by indulging it and feeding it (any more than over eating or taking drugs is the cure to an empty pit of despair inside); the cure is therapy and creating better life and relationship situations as an adult to heal and move forward.

I am scared for humanity, and women and children in particular. It does make a case for some aspects of organised religion :( Hedonism seems the highway to hell

The feature is here:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bd7z93

Ummm I think it was this one...

Criminal case
Horrible man sent to jail for 22 years
Very unpleasant crimes involving child
Baby dress up fetish
Political arena relative (not main party)
Activist
Hints of 'apples and trees'

(Sorry if I make the thread go poufffff)

Well the Green Party just released a statement.

Then promptly removed it.

Curiouser and curiouser.

What did it say?

There's a screenshot on twitter. It doesn't say anything we don't know already.

You should be able to see it here

Well the Green Party just released a statement

They say they didn't release it...

...

Looks to me (having read the 'not our statement' statement, which was exactly the sort of thing I'd expect) that someone jumped the gun.

How very strange.

This was the link: kualo.greenparty.org.uk/statements/

It was there. I saw it myself.

kualo.greenparty.org.uk/statements/

It's still up.

Yes. So it was definitely put there by someone in the Green Party even if it wasn't "official"

It's still up

That looks like the new version.

The last line is the most pathetic, non-victim-centred statement I've ever seen. I do hope they've pulled it because someone noticed and decided they needed something a tad better.

"Our thoughts are with all those who have been affected as a result of these offences"

Fucking pathetic. A child was tortured and sexually abused.