remetheus

I personally see furry as inextricably linked to queerness because Fursonas are an implicit declaration of radical autonomy over one's own identity and how other people see you.

It's impossible to separate queerness from furry as long as that's the center of it.

Furry has ever been a space where you can make yourself a rainbow-haired hermaphrodite sparklevixen and not only will everyone accept that as your identity, some people are going to be into that, and you'll find them.

Furry also introduced me to the idea of non-binary pronouns, and we all accepted them without question. That's always been why I'm so confused to see transphobic furries.

You're existing in a space where people have been using five different sets of custom pronouns for hermaphrodite characters since the 80s, and you're complaining about someone deciding they're a girl? Make it make sense.

I don't understand the anti-trans transhumanist techbros out there either.

My dudes, the entire point of transhumanism is radical bodily autonomy.

If you're hung up on what someone's original meatsack was, you're gonna have a bad time in the transhumanist future you're after.

one thing that i find really interesting about furry is how it externalizes / makes explicit the creation of the ideal self. i would say that most if not all people do actually create such an idealized self, but do it unknowingly, which creates a painful tension whenever they reflect upon themselves. there are unfullfilled (and unfullfilable) desires as a result of the permanent gulf between who others see us as, who the world EVIDENCES us as being, and who we percieve ourselves to be.

by making this an explicit act, by creating a character that is also me, that tension is somewhat relieved. once i do this i'm not burdened by not -being- my fursona in the world, because -of course- i'm not my fursona in the world. my fursona does not exist in the world by it's nature. but nonetheless i am my fursona. i don't need the evidence of the world or the opinions of strangers to affirm that, because that's not where i ever expected my fursona to appear. that self isn't the "self" that appears in the mirror or in the perception of others. i think queerness ties into this by -just how poorly- the mirror or the perception of others reflects our selves, which we overcome in various ways but at least partially by growing to treat the reflection as something seperate and imposed, rather than pleading with it to conform.

i think most non-furry and non-queer people would live happier and more comfortable lives if they made this leap and recognized that they are ALREADY creating such a character for themselves, and by doing so without acknowledging it, they are making a psychic wound in themselves. they are expecting this world to echo back to them who they are, and even for the most conformist of people it never ever can.

but here we've learned that this isn't what the world does, and yet, we are who we are anyway.

Since people's lives don't live up to their desires because we live in this.... All this... When sharing on social media, most people's public facing accounts are trying to hide everything that isn't like that internal self image, and promote the things that are. But because they have so little really interesting material to work with, they usually end up with a very sad and small imitation of the image they're going for.

A fursona or other illustrated OC is limited only by the creativity of writing and still of artistry devoted to bringing them to life. These metaperson images are beautiful not least because they are honest, but also, they can be unrestrained. The thing is, there isn't actually a functional difference, in human relations, between spiritual and human affairs. The things we believe about a character we pour our souls into, we are able to imagine about ourselves with less difficulty. The relationships we enter as these characters have another real human on the other end.

Creating these characters lets us redefine social rules. And that's a power we badly need.