One of the joys of parenting in our connected world is explaining the latest street drug or niche sex practice to your sixth-grader. Bathsalts, fisting, fentanyl, gerbiling — yes, it’s a heady potpourri in today’s middle-school discourse. Some topics prove too ridiculous to discuss, some end up deepening your connection. And very few somehow manage to do both, which I found to be the case with “furries.”
In case you missed this latest culture-war distraction, here’s the definition that I found in, of all places, WebMD: “Furries are people with an interest in animals that have human qualities (think Bugs Bunny). Some may wear animal costumes or paraphernalia like ears or tails. Some, but not all, enjoy furry-themed pornography or having sex with other furries (not necessarily while in costume).”
So. Usually when your kid consults you about some strange or illicit behavior they heard about, the first task is deciding how much ignorance to feign. That is, how puzzled you should pretend to be about this disgusting, harmful, or ridiculous practice that you’ve certainly never done and can scarcely imagine someone doing, but might have … well, read about in one of those obscure psychoanalytic journals you’re always carrying around. I didn’t have to do that here.
To be honest, this fetish has floated in and out of my consciousness for the past 30 years without my ever being sure its adherents weren’t just trying to crack me up. I know this is small-minded of me, but I’d always half-assumed that actually engaging in furry-dom — that is, dressing up as a cartoon-cute animal for sexual congress — was, despite one memorable tableau in The Shining, more like those one of those picturesque slang-coded sexual practices that exist more to epater le bourgeois than provide actual pleasure to anyone. Or as director John Waters said of one baroquely unsavory sex act, “Look, I know a lot of perverts. But I don’t know anyone who’s actually done that.”
I’m no Alfred Kinsey but I’ve been around a bit and guess I always felt that genuine sexual fervor — “interest,” let’s say — was more discernible, guarded, and less Instagrammable than folks adopting “fursonas” to engage in “fursuits” at conventions around the country that sound like less poorly funded ComicCons.
Decades ago, I was friends with a highly-paid dominatrix here in New York, and spent many Saturdays at the Tenth Street Baths (wearing trunks, fwiw), listening to her and and two colleagues as they discussed the various needs of their clientele, some of whom were quite famous, many of whom paid for acts most observers wouldn’t actually perceive as sexual at all. Other acts they engaged in clearly were, and a few struck me as dangerous, but all were in some sense legible — involving taboo, power relations, or, poignantly, replaying or reframing early-childhood trauma — and they were all conducted in a long-term relationship any outside observer would have to call deeply respectful if not actually loving.
Which makes that WebMD definition worth a second read. Again, the diagnostic criteria include an “interest in animals that have human qualities (think Bugs Bunny).” It says “some, but not all” furries are into furry-related pornography and that some, but not all have sex with other furries, though ”not necessarily while in costume.” If that’s the case, how are you supposed to know if you had sex with a furry? How circumspect do I have to be about my keen interest in Bugs Bunny? And more to the point, what is the actual difference between these supposed pervs who dress up as cartoon animals and attend conventions and your garden variety dork?
As far as I can tell there’s one: your garden variety dork isn’t politically useful. Two months ago, Oklahoma House Rep Justin Humphrey straight-facedly authored a congressional bill that states: “students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly known as furries at school shall not be allowed to participate in school.” He added the whimsical suggestion this measure be enforced by calling Animal Control.
Naturally, this bill was inspired by a clear and present danger: hearsay “reports” Humphrey claims to have received about students, including “the grandchild of a friend,” who have engaged in animal-like behavior at school (as opposed to where this behavior belongs, in Congress). So in what seems a stretch even for them, today’s hard-right culture warriors have seized on this cute-animal subculture for a bit of the old stochastic terrorism: fomenting disgust for a perversion they hope to link to an entire class of people they can’t quite attack directly.
Surprise, surprise, many enthusiasts of the furry subculture are LGBTQ or neurodivergent, people who feel liberated or united by this kind of cosplay, and perform other identities in public. I assume that this effort to imbue furries with creeping sexual menace is part of what brought this hapless subculture to my kid’s school group.
I confess I’m a bit tired of defending silly, harmless dress-up games by grown-ups because they’ve become ammo for a domestic authoritarian movement. But you know, first they came for drag-queen story-hour, and I said nothing, so here we are. But this one also hits me where I live. And I think its casualties are much closer to home than anti—woke crusaders think.
As with most contrived moral panics aimed at enforcing strict gender roles, the authors’ figleaf for their attack on vulnerable Americans is an abiding concern for “the children.” And on this front, they can’t be wronger. In fact, there’s something about this whole thing that kind of breaks my heart.
Some of the pain comes from how we’re always side-eyeing each other, looking for deviations, errors, or fails, smartphones at the ready, half-hoping to score points off some benighted stranger’s transgression. Some of it’s how quick the bored or callous are to impute some deviance or kink to a quirky hobby or a relationship that they find inscrutable. How common it is to suspect prurient interest where there’s interest, kinkiness where there’s enthusiasm, “grooming” where there’s care.
My son’s at that perilous threshold between childhood and early manhood. He’s hungry for the salacious, the scandalous, the “suss” — and, boy, do furries deliver — but he sleeps in a room surrounded by stuffed animals, furry ones, and these creatures are endowed with love. I actually believe this to be true. I take The Velveteen Rabbit as revealed scripture. And I don’t think I’m wrong to feel this whole paranormal sphere of love and closeness to be under attack by those who ban this kind of life-sustaining imaginative play, even among grown-ups.
With my wife traveling for the past week or so, I’ve been solo parenting the day our household processed the furries question. That night, I sat by dude’s bed and we chatted a little. Often a rather discomfitingly tough kid, he asked me about my own history with stuffed animals: Did I used to have a teddy bear?
As I turned off the light, I relayed the account I’d gotten from my folks, who’d shared the episode in the breezy, barstool mode of conversation whereby tiny tragedies become anecdotes, and boys become straight men.
I did have a teddy bear, I told him, but I don’t really remember him. Apparently, when my mom put him through the washer and dryer, his eyes came off. So when they gave him back to me, I kept turning him over and couldn’t find his face.
“I was like, ‘Where’s teddy?,’” I told him, miming flipping the bear over. “‘He’s not here…. He’s not here...’ I didn’t have any stuffed animals after that.” No more anthropomorphic animals in this kid’s room.
At which, my apparently heteronormative American son promptly burst into tears. Just racking sobs, right next to me.
And the two of us stayed like that in the darkness. Holding each other. But not for too long.
Free the furries.
Thanks so much! Means a lot to me.
Adore this. Thanks for sharing.