I'm not sure if it's a generational thing as I've mainly noticed this happening with people around my age, but god damn, so many of my friends have just become so open, unchained and unashamed when it comes to their furriness recently. More and more it feels like that innate anxiety of being openly furry has eroded in so many of us, myself included, to the point where it's practically nonexistent. You know how we used to be all like, "Yeah, I'm a furry, pretty cringe huh? Haha! Yeah..." Granted, we're still like that to an extent, but I feel like the degree to which we try to restrain that side of us has diminished significantly. Like yeah, we still acknowledge our weirdness, but in a much much more positive way I feel.
There's still a lot of us who look to the approval of normies like we'd literally die without it, and I certainly used to be one of those people, but I feel like quite a lot of us are finally saying "Fuck that noise." We don't need their approval; never have, never will. The opinions of queerphobic cishets are about as important to us as the approval of fucking mosquitoes sucking the blood from our veins. Fuck them. Fuck them all.
I could be just projecting here, or maybe I'm looking at too small of a sample size to be able to accurately gauge whether or not this is a trend within the fandom itself or merely a trend amongst my friends and acquaintances, but nevertheless, I can't help but comment on what I see unfolding before my very eyes. More furries, myself included, are going to furmeets. Wearing furry-made attire in public. Saturating their social media feeds with more furry content than ever before. We just feel much more present, both as a community and as individuals.
We are everywhere. Some people like to think of the fandom as a white-collar hobby for STEM majors but there are furries from all walks of life, and it's so, so much more than a "hobby" for us. I won't harp on too much about the kind of community we've built; others have done a much more eloquent job of that. I will say this, though; there's something that we're starting to admit now that I feel like we were all just a little bit too scared to say before. Maybe it was because we thought that it's cringe, childish, embarassing or just plain foolish, but whatever inhibition was preventing us from talking about this openly seems to finally be going away. Hell, if you're too scared to say it, I'll just do it for you; cuz you're probably thinking it right now:
We don't want to be human.
As a trans furry, I do relate to Scavenger's post. I don't take it to the literal extent I've seen a lot of furries take it, but I also feel like I'd be more comfortable if I weren't human. I'm not happy with humanity. I create furry art because I don't like the implications that come with characters being human.
But I get not wanting to shut other people out. The most important aspect of furrydom to me is that it's a representation of the idea that everyone should be able to be themselves (with the usual caveat of "so long as it doesn't hurt anyone" and I'm not here to get into a long discussion of what that means, so please take it in good faith). For a lot of people, "being yourself" means "being human". I encourage that as much as any other aspect of being yourself.
I also relate to the idea of "being human" meaning "being yourself in all the complex and artistic ways that humans are capable of being." That used to be my primary definition of what "human" means, when I was younger. So Cay, I want to say I feel like I understand where you're coming from as well.
But as a trans furry, I was forced to face another aspect of humanity growing up, and it was that aspect that made me so afraid to be honest with myself that I didn't even know who I was until far too late in life. And it wasn't any other type of animal that made me feel that way. It was humanity.
It may be that humans are uniquely capable of creating art in ways most other animals couldn't even comprehend (or so it's easy for us humans to assume), but I believe it is also a fundamental aspect of human nature to fear humanity's potential to do this. I believe it is a fundamental aspect of human nature to gather into paranoid herds and rely on each other to establish and maintain predictable patterns, because we depend on these so much as humans, too. And we depend on these to the point where we get angry and dangerous towards anyone who breaks these patterns--to anyone who becomes a strange, artistic individual.
I don't believe all humans act this way, but I do believe that when humans do act this way, it is because they are relying on human instinct. If anyone breaks away from this behavior, it is because they are breaking away from their human instincts. Becoming something more than just human, perhaps even other than human.
I get that it's tempting to define "humanity" as only its more positive traits, because it's tempting to think that humanity as a whole is capable of doing better, and it's tempting to think that we are fundamentally good just by nature of being human. But that, too, is part of that herd instinct talking, that instinct that tells you it's best to seek safety in numbers and trust in the safety and predictability of each other.
And I believe that instinct is also telling you to believe that if someone is drawing a line between furries and normies, it's the furries that are doing it, and not the normies. But for me, I don't see Scavenger drawing that line; I see Scavenger recognizing that this line was already drawn by humans, and knowing which side of the line she and her friends fall under.
I see the line, too, and I don't think it's the non-furries who want to accept all people's individuality with open arms. I think it is furries who want to do that, and stating the existence of the line isn't a rejection of anyone who would do that, it is a proud proclamation of being willing to accept anyone who would do this--humans too, believe it or not.
I feel similarly about the divide between queer and non-queer, as well. I have felt vastly more comfortable in queer spaces than in non-queer spaces, and it's not because I hate non-queer people as an inherent thing. I do, however, hate people who use cishet "normality" as an excuse to silence queer people, to discourage people from being queer, to insult people for being queer, to push queer people into their own isolated groups, and to reinforce the idea that this inherent, instinctual rejection of their fellow living beings should be a part of what being "cishet" means.
(And when I say "fellow living beings" instead of "fellow humans", that is intentional, too.)
And as a result, I see being "queer" as having some level of understanding that this separation shouldn't exist, because being "queer" is just being everything that being cishet isn't, because cishet people have been the ones to reinforce that separation. And yet, this doesn't stop cishet people from joining queer spaces, and it doesn't stop me from liking and feeling comfortable around the cishet people who do; it just means that I recognize that these individual cishet people have also made the individual choice not to reject people for their individuality in this way, and have recognized that one of the best ways to live out that choice is to choose to be with queer people, and to even celebrate queerness along with us.
And queerness, itself, I believe, is even a rejection of the idea that being cishet should be a bad thing in and of itself; a rejection of the idea that it should be defined by all the awful things that so many cishet people are currently reinforcing with the label. But part of rejecting that notion means acknowledging that "cishet" nonetheless currently is associated with all those things, and refusing to be those things for oneself.
So Cay, I think my ultimate point is that I agree with your underlying desire for people to love each other and work together and accept each other, but the way I do it is from seeing things from a perspective that is more similar to what Scavenger describes in her post, which might seem... paradoxical to you, on some level? And maybe it is paradoxical; I find a lot of aspects of living are. But hopefully I've managed to make it make some sense to you.