The cool thing about the furry fandom, at least from where I'm standing, is that it isn't even really a fandom, at least not in the traditional sense. Rather than fans bonding over a shared interest in some piece of media (though that can be part of it for some), furries are in effect fans of each other, bonding over a shared experience of naked and gratuitous self-expression. And by the very nature of what the fandom is, its members present themselves with faces and names entirely of their own choosing. In no other community like this is crafting your own identity such a fundamental part of the experience. When I think about all the furries I know, their fursonas, their chosen names and identities, crafted entirely from their own imagination, feel more to me like a true representation of who they are than any "real" face or legal name. Add to that how furry is such an unapologetically queer subculture and one of the few remaining queer spaces that hasn't been infiltrated by corporate interests and sanitized to all hell (though they do still try). I won't say it doesn't have problems and drama (every social space does), but ultimately this leaves furry as a community defined by radical queerness, immense creativity, and the encouragement of profound self-exploration.
I struggle to think of comparable fandoms, and the closest might be the My Little Pony fandom, which feels like a hybrid between what furry and traditional fandoms are: still cemented to an intellectual property at the core, but easily accepting members creating new identities that aren't necessarily tied to that property, and also spurring an explosive level of creativity that rivaled the furry fandom's diversity for a brief moment in time before G4 burned itself out, and G5 literally had to open with its creators saying "fascism sucks, okay? Knock it the fuck off"
It can't be stressed enough how weird furries are. We're at the point where we have to be extremely careful in how we evaluate this sub-culture that may or may not be a full-blown culture on its own. Though many see it as "just a hobby", it drags in serious questions about what identity really means. Furry is often seen as a queer fandom, but some of its members feel the need to go one extra step, and "come out" as furry, which is an incredibly fascinating thing for me to see.
Here I must be a bit pedantic, because language matters a hell of a lot when you get into the weeds of it. I've seen some observe that the furry fandom is a "transhumanist" culture, and that's not entirely correct. Transhumanism really focuses on improving what's already there: augmentations through genetics or machinery to achieve a kind of super-human status. The point is still to be human, just better. It's pretty much what a lot of techbros want.
Furries, on the other hand, start straying into what is effectively post-humanist territory. Although many still hold to a humanoid figure or absorb transhumanist concepts, they've ditched the human form specifically as being the ideal form to express themselves through. Additionally, the small but growing contingent of therians and otherkin are at the bleeding edge of post-human thought. They've come to the realisation that even in meatspace, "human" is not a correct descriptor of their internal experience, and they're struggling to navigate a world that is hostile enough to trans people, never mind people who aren't the same species as humanity (see humanity's treatment of cetaceans or elephants, for example, and just wait until fully self-aware AI show up on the scene, hoo boy).
Therein lies the danger of description, because it really is, if you'll pardon the word, a furball of a problem. We're seeing new and old intersections of belief and oppression; there were plenty of cultures who didn't blink twice at the blurring of human and animal identity, and it's accurate to say that forms of therianism or otherkinism were stamped out by colonialism, so reclamation is therefore part of the struggle. However, we can't have that same colonialist culture running around blindly appropriating deeply religious indigenous beliefs.
Moreover, there is a perception or understanding that there are plenty of groups that are already at the head of the oppression line, so to speak. Although being a furry can lead to a lot of strife, can we really compare that to what Blacks have faced, or Jews? Except given that furry is visibly queer, furry hate also tends to be queer hate, so how much of the struggle do we really own? We are at a unique point in history where a new post-humanist culture is coming into its own, carrying ideas both ancient and fresh, containing members from all walks, races, and species of life, and battling its own internal colonialist baggage with problems of racism in the fandom really blasting into view in the past few years.
And now furries are on the radar of the American conservative terrorist group known as the Republican Party, or GOP. Similar ideas of targeting furries have popped up in Russia as well. The next several decades are going to be both fascinating and terrifying as the furry fandom/culture/movement/??? evolves and resolves conflicts both within and without.
Fuck, man, we better get awesome tails out of all of this. :/
