Furries widely accepted by lgbtq community according to this article. Are they represented in the new flag?

[Moonandstarzz]

https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/02/13/what-are-furries-furry/

The Daily Mail have had exceptional reporting lately. They are identifying the furry ideology that is staring to infiltrate schools.
This absolutely should not be happening. I think the Daily Mail know plenty on the subject {mention:polarpaws}.@polarpaws. They have certainly educated me with their articles!

🤦‍♀️

Many cities have regular fur meetings and the UK has an annual convention.

I recall there was a recent* furry convention in Glasgow, one day of which coincided with a "Let women speak" meet in George Square. TRAs were all over Twitter calling on furries to support their trans siblings and to disrupt the women's meeting. They attempted to intimidate women planning to attend by claiming there would be a thousand furries in town...

Well, there may well have been a thousand furries in town. But not a single one of them turned up to shout at Posie Parker.

*within the last two or three years. I am old and time really does fly.

I am sadly up to date and well versed in furries (I taught about them - to adults - about 8 years ago and followed developments since).

Re the new flag, is it the one with the autism infinity sign on? I can't get over that. What about amputees, veterans, blind people, any other group you can think of naming that is undervalued/recognised, includes humans and therefore can be related to (a)sexuality? I know it's a completely different issue to furries. It's more that it'd be easier to have a flag for the people not covered by Pride, than add anybody else to the Pride flag!

I also had my post about personal experience of furries removed. It was based on my knowledge of dungeons and dragons role playing, larping and cosplay. I have no experience of groups centred around kinks.

I was still deleted.

I believe the inclusion of everything and everyone other than the majority is a way of increasing their numbers to make their weird ideology seem more valid and legitimate.

god knows what will be included next. The autism in very much intentional given lots of young people who are transitioning have been proven to be either gay or having autism.

Honestly, I have to get off Twitter sometimes it’s so disturbing what is happening right now.

The flag should be pure white… which is what you get when you mix equal amounts of every possible colour together!
It is also, coincidentally the colour of surrender…

And this is the issue, a grownup in the room needs to take charge and explain this to young people. At present we have a strange situation where a kid can be given detention for wearing the wrong colour socks but ears and a tail is perfectly acceptable. Teachers need to be empowered to provide guidance and support for their pupils.

At the moment, I really feel for your average, straightforward gay or lesbian person. A lot must feel there is no place for them anymore in the LGBTQ+ community.
Now you've got boring 46-year old gay accountant, Alan, in his 3-bed semi with his partner and pug, in the same gang as bloody furries!

Same. And like you, based on real exposure. Someone, I think maybe Polar Paws (sounds like a furry name to me!) said that there are two groups of furries - the 'normal' ones and the sexual fetishists. Well that may be so but from my exposure the latter is far larger than the former and the path from 'normal' to 'fetish' groups is like a greased slope. I'd say the former are more just people who are new to it than a separate group.

I could post links that would make most members here want to pluck out their own eyeballs but if my very banal descriptions of the furry movement get deleted then specific examples most certainly would.

Ok.

Could you PM me a link? I'd like to know the truth of this as I am confused.

On the one hand it appears that some socially awkward people just like dressing up in cosplay - weird and nerdy, but no more weird than people who attend every comic con, marvel film opening or sci-fi and fantasy conference in costume.

Then there appears to be a sinister side as highlighted on another thread where people are dressed as dogs on leashes with their private bits hanging out.

If I am struggling to get my head around god help the kids. I'm glad I had mine prior the last decade.

My experience was of a body of role players simply wanting to play one of many exotic races, but that the race that most resembled an animal (gnoll = dogs) also had an openly furry contingent and a very specific set of problems that none of the other d and d races (kobolds, elves, dwarves etc) seemed to have. The problems were contained within those that considered themselves to be furries as well as role players. Note the “as well as”. Separating “interests” didn’t seem to be a simple task.

Yep. As far as I’m concerned the alphabet soup community has fuck all to do with lesbian rights.

In other words, even in the very nerdiest of communities, amongst larpers themselves, there is a reputation that furries have that other types of cosplay do not. What possible reason could people who role play as wizards and hobbits have to pick on furries?

So apparently the new tiktok craze is ‘therians.' Rather than furries.

Many videos of teens (mainly girls) acting like animals, some posting their ages and where they live in order to meet others.

I haven't got TikTok and haven't seen this; it was from a tweet.

Obviously wiki has a page on it (modern therianthropy) 🙄

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therianthropy

There was a segment on cbbc newsround recently about an autistic girl who loved ice skating as she found it calming, particularly when wearing her fox ears and tail.

It all sounds quite fairy like to me.

I never fully trust wiki but it mentions psychiatric disorders, neurodiversity, gender dysphoria etc

And a now defunct website. So has clearly been "a thing." Online at least.

As an edgy teen I liked websites showcasing the clownery of humanity (portal of evil and the like) and even then, when the internet was young, furries were considered the lowest of the low. The whiff of beastiality, the funk of those mascot costumes with unknown horrors within, the cp convictions of some vocal early adopters - it all just leaves a deeply bad taste in the mouth. I really laughed when the Florida gov came after them.

for me using furry in a mainstream way is like using nonce in a mainstream way. Just wrong

The scary thing about the mascot costumes (seem to be plenty of them at Pride) is that you don't know who is lurking underneath.. Where is it all going to end..

Like in the fairytale The Emporers New Clothes.. What person is going to just take a stand & say "you're not a boy", "you're not a cat" "you're not a fox"... You are a girl & always will be.

The video of the two girls recording the teacher shows it's going to be the next generation who says enough is enough.

Of course not and if we did we would choked with them as part of some blokes threatening kinks.

OldGardinia I saw your post before it was deleted but hadn't managed to reply yet. What you said reminded me of anime culture (where parents think it's all innocent because how scary could cartoons be until you actually look into it and go WTF?).

I thought it was a really important counterpoint you made to the tone of the article and to my and others' posts saying "oh they're just harmless teenage LARPers".

I don't know what about your post upset someone, but the effect of having deleted your post is that PinkNews says "furries are harmless - kids, you should give the furry community a chance", then several of us MNers say "kids will be kids - it's harmless", and there's no counterpoint.

Furthermore, the fact your post about the far darker and more predatory and grooming side of the furry community was deleted makes me believe you even more, because who would care that much about getting what you said deleted unless it were true?

If I were correct in my post below and it was about TRAs being able to dismiss GC as "moral panic", then they would have wanted your post to stay up as it would have been a perfect example of that. The fact someone took umbrage at your experience suggests that you were right and PinkNews are selling a dangerous sexually-exploitative online subculture to vulnerable children and reassuring the parents that it's harmless.

And with the deletion of your post, any parent looking on MN for furry threads to check they're suitable for their child is also going to be convinced that PinkNews is right and they are harmless. Scary.

The thing that's also chilling about furries or having a "fursona" is how it dehumanises people..

Just like transgenderism why aren't mental health services all over this? You cannot be a boy if you're a girl... You cannot be a cat if you're a human.

If all that's being said on this thread is reality it's depressing.

I can't understand how parents should be expected to know how to protect their children from this, as it's difficult to perceive the difference between kids living out an edgy fantasy/cosplay and plain sexually twisted.

It's like the Caba Rave thing, where mothers took their kids to what appeared on the surface to be harmless fun....

@DysonSpheres I must google Caba Rave haven't heard of this.

I just think personally parents just cannot indulge or entertain .. No Missy "you are not a boy", "you are not a cat".. Or whatever else they choose to identify as. It's all figments of the imagination. It's not reality.

Just like transgenderism why aren't mental health services all over this?

Well, regardless of any policy points or guidance (or lack thereof) from the government or medical experts, the main barrier to CAMHS doing anything is being incredibly under-resourced and being under a huge amount of pressure to meet patient needs.

Even if they had a definitive position on "this cultural issue is detrimental to children's mental health and well-being" (which they don't currently), I know that our local CAMHS at least wouldn't have the resources to manage a public outreach campaign on the topic. Obviously they will do their best to see the kids who get really damaged by this kind of thing when they can get to them, but most don't have the resources for outreach projects.

Aside from not having the resources, it's worth remembering that, as PinkNews have pointed out, many furries are also LGBT, so the NHS (which is already well and truly captured by gender ideology in many areas) would be incredibly wary of saying anything that might be construed as suggesting that LGBT people are groomers, etc.

This kind of thing would need to be dealt with at a central government level as NHS and social services are too captured to turn around and say "hmm, that doesn't seem appropriate for children and raises some potential safeguarding issues" at this point, even if individual practitioners might be thinking it.

I think that sex education materials being examined by the government (and being able to be scrutinised by parents and the media) and being put back on track through statutory mechanisms is the way to go with this one, as I'm sure there are probably organisations legitimising this stuff in schools and NHS training similar to the genderbread stuff.

Child safeguarding shouldn't be an issue that mental health services or anyone else needs to campaign about to persuade people - it should be statutory that dangerous and age-inappropriate stuff isn't promoted to kids.