A tail is like a necktie for your butt.

• Recognized, goldstar furry

Not a furry but I see the appeal. The character design possibilities greatly expand, and they tend to look cute or cool. If it didn’t work, Disney wouldn’t do it so often!

Been friends with a few furries for a while. Can say a lot of the answers I’ve read here encompass what I would say is majority of furries. There’s some that get into it exclusively for kink, it’s okay if they do, but even the furries have a strong disdain for pedophilia, zoophilia, and non-consensual in real life and in most instances drawn art.

Wants to touch on the zoophilia aspect as well, given most interactions of a sexual nature within the fandom are with is dubbed your persona/furrsona, it doesn’t fall under that term. Especially as well nearly all of them are at least human level intelligence but may not be able to vocalize like one. It’s a thin line there but real life practitioners are detested because surprise surprise, people in the fandom have some fairly strong moral convictions.

I’m not.

It’s who I am and basically it’s who all my friends are. It’s a community. It’s a safe space. It’s a counterculture. It’s an overflowing font of creativity and expression and new ideas It’s queer and kinky and holds the fucking line against puritanism and fascism. It’s a rejection of human exceptionalism and solidarity with the beings we share the planet with that so much of humanity is indifferent or even outright genocidal towards.

Furry is so deeply intertwined into nearly every part of my life, because it feels right to me.

Guy I used to date said he thought people would just be cuter with tails.

Ive kinda always liked things related to it (spent my childhood reading warrior cats and redwall, would always choose humanoid animal characters in games over humans when available, because I found humans kinda ugly somehow, etc) but never really considered myself one until after high school because it was considered “cringy” and I had to grow out of worrying about that. Actually was unfortunately rather judgmental towards furries myself at a certain age just out of denial.

Kinda warmed up to it in college after growing a bit and getting away from my old classmates, but it’s difficult to say what the initial draw was because, well, Ive had some sort of a liking for characters designed as humanoid animal people as far as I can remember (or, given that those are pretty common in kids media, I guess I didn’t really stop preferring them because they somehow felt easier to look at and imagine interacting with than more realistic human characters. I do have social anxiety and autism, which I suspect might have something to do with that feeling but I cant say for sure).

I would consider furry generally a subculture. I can see why some people would consider it a kink, given that furry culture seems to have a weaker taboo about sexual stuff than wider society does and that the community makes a lot of porn, but I don’t think it really qualifies as one for a given person unless one is just there for that and doesn’t have some interest in the wider community or furry characters in other contexts. For my part, I tend to imagine or prefer furry characters in any context that would generally involve human characters. Ie, if I draw or write or just fantasize about something, I’m very likely to work furries in regardless of the content, so them popping up in horny stuff is less a matter of finding those characters an inheritly sexual thing, and more a matter of sexual stuff being included in “everything that normally has humans”.

As far as my participation goes, that social anxiety I mentioned does limit me a bit, Ive not been to any conventions for example despite hoping to eventually. It’s mostly limited to art and internet communities for me at the moment, though most of my current friend group are also furries just cause those places are where I went looking for them.

tl;dr it’s a creative hobby

Not a furry per se (yet maybe) but I’m in the same social circles, ymmv. Basically it’s just oc cosplay, and like all hobbies and crafts some people have a more enthusiastic, personal approach to it; and some like it surface level.

Essentially, it’s a joint art style in a large art community. People get to create their own characters and share in that art culture, and for some it’s a very powerful escape and a way to explore yourself in a different way.

Finally someone asking a real question. Been a whole bunch of bots recently.

Crystal in Star Fox Adventure, I’d say its an interest in furry art though as I don’t care to have anything else the scene likes. It mostly seems to form from environmental pressures and experiences.

I said “I’m in a hurry”.

Geeze. Someone’s got a one-track mind.

No, but honestly mostly because I have enough kinks to keep me entertained already. Sweaty anonymous orgies with random people in fur suits is definitely a path I would follow if I was bored enough.

I’ve liked Anthro characters since I was a child. Grew up watching cartoons like Redwall, Rescue Rangers, Ducktales etc. First stumbled upon some furry art as a teenager while “exploring the internet”, as one does. And I guess from that point it was obvious to me that I’m a furry. It’s definitely not exclusively a kink for me though, but a general interest. I just enjoy seeing those characters in pretty much any context. Throw some anthro characters in a video game and I’m at least twice as likely to buy it than if it were regular humans.

Speaking only about the porn, I like drawings, and real images of real people usually make me uncomfortable for whatever reason. The quality and volume of the art has increased dramatically over the years, lots of furry nsfw artists are really, really good at what they do.