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I have a friend who hates furries with a burning, irrational passion.  Probably to do in part because he keeps accidentally coming across yiffy things on DeviantArt, and there's a group he runs with online where the consensus is furries are weirdos (it's a D&D group, and with fantasy being the way it is it sort of surprises me that such a large part dislikes furries.  Of course, they also hate LARPers so it may be a "we're geeks but at least we're not freaks like them" syndrome).  Anyway, whenever we hang out there is at least one anti-furry joke or rant.  It really grates on my nerves because he's mellowing out about everything else, he's just so irrational.  And we're close, been friends for years, keeping-each-other-from-committing-suicide type friends, so we're not going to ditch each other over furry.  I'll just hear a lot of "dear god I can't believe your a gorram furry" if I come out to him.

Everyone else will hear about it eventually.  Him to, actually, I can't exactly tell my other friends without him finding out.  Maybe he'll mellow on the subject.

AlexTheSane:  If he's that good a friend, there's a great chance that he'll mellow out about it if he knows.  I was always brought up with the mindset that gays should be shunned from society. This past year, one of my best friends, a roommate, came out to our small group that he was gay.  There were literally 2 seconds of disbelief/negative thoughts about him, followed by complete acceptance.  Doesn't bother me at all, actually.  Just knowing somebody in that situation can completely change your views on life.

Now, only you can know when the right time is to say something, or if it's right to do so at all.  Clearly, we can't all know exactly what you situation is.  I just wanted you to hear my little story, in hopes that it helps you out. Heck, I have yet to listen to my own advice, but I'm slowly getting to the point where I think I'm ready to tell somebody.

i think its all about timing. my aunt & my cousin suspect that i might be a furry from the vids of the suit i just made. tho i havent said anything bout me being one. my dad doesnt like it cuz of the pervy stuff thats often associated with the suits. that pisses me off so much! im not into that crap! i just love gettin into a suit & walkin around town, waving to everybody. if i mention anything related to costumes like that, he gets this unsure smile he always does & chuckles a bit, which means hes uncomfortable. but if it makes me happy, then he says i should go right ahead & do it.

all of my friends have different views on how things should be done, & we accept eachother for who we are. almost all of my friends have diff religions, interests, loves, hates. it would make no difference if they found out im a furry (maybe cuz they dont have comps or just dont use them ) or anything like that. they would crack a few jokes, but it would never hurt.

im this close to coming out of the closet. but im not ready. ill wait till they find out unless this really gets on me nerves. D:

I'm coming out of the closet when my website is finally ready. >.>b

AlexTheSane: Ask him sometime if a furry, like, killed his grandma or something. Don't get defensive, just ask him what's eating him so much about them. Maybe try to find it funny if you can. At least that might be what I'd try. >.> Before telling him anything.

I actually told one of my best friends/roommates the other night.  I'm so relieved to have somebody I can talk to about this now.  Was easy to tell him though.  Turns out he knows another fur or two, and he doesn't care.  I chose him to go to first, because he recently came out to our group that he was gay.  Not that his sexuality makes a difference, but I knew he'd gone through a similar struggle telling us about himself.  And I just kinda knew he'd be cool with it.  Actually, he's jokingly called me a furry before at school due to my obsession with Yoshi.  Needless to say, he wasn't surprised at all when I told him. 

Planning to tell another friend soon, just so I have a couple outside people who know.  Probably will just let the others figure it out on their own. But if they ask me, I'll tell them.

I never told anyone about it, though some people already knew i was. Besides, what i saw on a caht room on another forum last night, i don't think it would be a good idea to come out.

Mm, I've never "come out" about being a furry to my family.

However, all of my close friends do know. Most simply accept it, and other think it's cute(?), so I've had positive experiences with telling people.

I got nothing but teddy bears the past two Christmases. They were wrapped in Boyd's Bear wrapping paper too. They know I like teddy Bears and dogs. They've heard me refer to myself as both a dog and a bear depending on my mood. They know I think of myself as an animal. That's all they need to know. They're used to my wierdness.

So, that friend I mentioned was over the other night.  At the time of his arrival I was reading Jack (webcomic), so he wanders over to the computer and starts reading along.  First thing out of his mouth "are those furries?"  I explained away the anthro stuff by telling him the comic was about hell (which is why I read the comic anyway, so I wasn't being horrendously evasive).  Still, throughout the reading of the comic he kept saying "I don't GET furries".  He must have said this about ten times before he got bored with reading along and went to talk to my sister.  In the rant that followed it seems that he equates furries with really terrible porn and teenage girls who watch too much anime, based on the stuff he's seen on deviantart (I took the opportunity to mention that there was plenty of very good anthro stuff on deviantart, but he's apparently missed all of it).

I'm thinking his problem is mostly that he thinks furries are a bit weird, and likes to she-dog and moan.  I'm going to try slowly introducing him to "furry" stuff that I know he'll like despite the talking animals (hopefully), and see how he takes it.  Then decide if/when I'll come out.

Edit: that was an interesting censor.  I think I'll leave it, it makes me laugh.

Actually I told my mom straight up the other day that I was a furry. She wasn't surprised and she wasn't upset. She's seen the CSI episode but is smart enough to know not to believe everything she sees on TV.
She knows I think of myself as a bear and she knows how important my teddy bears are to me.

Actually I told my mom straight up the other day that I was a furry. She wasn't surprised and she wasn't upset. She's seen the CSI episode but is smart enough to know not to believe everything she sees on TV.
She knows I think of myself as a bear and she knows how important my teddy bears are to me.

Good for you. My mom has also seen just the media portrayal of furries, and I don't think she'd be able to see it any other way. I don't feel like she has to know, though I do wish I didn't have to feel like I was hiding it, either.  But I play the conversation over and over in my head, and have decided that it's just something I'd rather not deal with right now. I'll be back at college in a month anyhow...

Yes to relatives, not as bothered with people I don't know / don't talk to much, but not at all with friends.

I want everyone to know that I a a furry, its just difficult to come out when no one knows what it is. So I am going to join a Facebook Furry group and anounce my Furrieness on FB.

I want everyone to know that I a a furry, its just difficult to come out when no one knows what it is. So I am going to join a Facebook Furry group and anounce my Furrieness on FB.

Best of luck to you if you go through with that. But, just a tip: The less you make a big deal out of it, the better it usually goes. If you make a big to-do out of it, people will be suspicious about what's so wrong with furry that you haven't felt able to tell them about it before. But if you just treat it casually and be like "Oh, by the way, I'm interested in this new thing," then everyone else will tend to treat it casually as well.

I want everyone to know that I a a furry, its just difficult to come out when no one knows what it is. So I am going to join a Facebook Furry group and anounce my Furrieness on FB.

Best of luck to you if you go through with that. But, just a tip: The less you make a big deal out of it, the better it usually goes. If you make a big to-do out of it, people will be suspicious about what's so wrong with furry that you haven't felt able to tell them about it before. But if you just treat it casually and be like "Oh, by the way, I'm interested in this new thing," then everyone else will tend to treat it casually as well.

I'm trying that approach at the moment, so far it appears to be working. Those who do know about it, haven't said much yet.

[Pet's name:]

hmmm after a lot of thinking i don't know if i am a furry or not. i mean what makes you a furry. i love the art. and the costumes. but what really makes some one a furry. i need some help with this. and still the yiff part is the biggest turn off for me. some one help.

Well, let's see... you're interested in anthro animals, right?

Congratulations, you just passed the one and only test you need to be a furry!

Beyond that, the only criterion is "if you say you're a furry, then that's what you are." The fandom can be whatever you want it to be. No one ever said you have to look at yiff if you don't want to. Like I said in another thread, you don't have to do anything or conform to anyone else in order to be a furry-- all you need is a desire to be part of the community. So if you want to consider yourself part of the furry community, then congratulations, you're furry.

thanks man well let me think i fit most of those. but i just don't think i am ready to become a full time fur just to much going on right now

Me? nope.

I've been rather open about it. For example, I go around toting a binder or two decorated with my art, I often draw stuff in public (I don't like people starting from behind, but that's a sepparate issue: I do that whenever I'm working, whatever it may be on). I have more of my art on my computer desktops (including my laptops which I do use in public). Sometimes I go out of my way to make it subliminally obvious. At any rate, I don't think I've ever really been harassed at all for anything furry related in RL.
I've raised more than my fair share of eyebrows, but those who know me and are actually surprised, I usually comment "what, you didn't realize it?" with some mild humor and surprise.
The internet hasn't been bad either: most communities I've been active in don't care in the least (with some even having groups of openly furry furs [aside from places that are actually devoted to furryness, like here, but I mean like, gaming forums and whatnot]).
I once contributed to causing a forum war through a grammar error, which caused someone to misinterpret my sentence. It was resolved in a couple days, though it was surprising how many other furries there were on the board who had risen to my defense (we actually outnumbered our opposition! X3)... That guy and I are now friends, especially considering that entire fiasco was a result of our combined errors - in the long run no harm was done and we all had a laugh about that afterwards...

Family-wise I got popular for my artistic skills (mainly with my aunts who seem to find my wolves cute. :3 Just as they should be ^^), my father wasn't to happy about my obsessive compulsion to be furry (mostly out of fear I'd turn into his parents, who triggered his obsession-phobia with their extreme religiousness: he worries about any sort of obsessive tenancies in anyone now...), and my mother only worried about how it might impact me financially (*cough*merchandise/fursuiting*cough* - even though I'm a total bargain hunter. She's the same way about my electronics compulsion... [even more worried for that matter...]). And I turned my sister into a furry (she's WAY more casual about it than I am though... X3), and one of my cousins is an animal lover to begin with.

Moral of all that? Don't stress about it. Just be open about who you are. There might be a few wacko bigots, but they are very few and far between, at least as far as I've seen.

Don't make a total scene though (as in, going out of your way to shove the obvious in people's face, since they don't like that: going around with a bunch of furry stuff is one thing, but standing on a corner picketing "OMG WURLD! I'M A FURRY! LOOK @ M3!" is annoying. You know why door-to-door advertisers that actually ring your doorbell and those telephone advertisers get a lot of flak? That's why. ("OMG WURLD! I'M S3LLING S7UFF!") yeah - we know that, and we don't appreciate being distracted in the middle of dinner to have to deal with something we could care less about...).
On the other hand, if you try to hide and make a big deal of it, people will think you're trying to hide something from them, and you know how people's imaginations can get and where they can wander off to.

Personally, I'd still say I got off easy. A friend of mine who is pretty much equally open as well was having severe troubles with his mother (who was against him for religious reasons [he's an atheist and she's a devout christian]), though she then began bashing him for being a furry too, even though it wasn't for any real reason (she bashes on him for every difference, claiming its a reason for his atheism). Another friend is very much in the furry closet out of fear of his mother... [What's so weird is the similarity of their family set-ups: both have very strict and devout mothers, lenient but now deceased fathers...]

Wow. It's really interesting to read others' accounts of this sort of thing.  Reading you post, Avan, makes me want to just be completely open about it.  But that's just the late-night me who isn't as extremely paranoid as the normal me.  I mean, I want to feel like I don't have to hide anything. And I know I don't have to, especially with my friends.  But let's just say that I can feel judgment from my parents simply for being on the computer as much as I am.  They don't make me feel welcome to tell them anything about my life.

But I like the approach of just leaving it in the open. I'll try to make myself do that at school. I did make it obvious on another non-furry forum that I was furry.  Kinda hoped I might connect with another one there, but nothing thus far. On the other hand, nobody has said a word about it at all. Even during debates that sometimes turn into personal attacks... not that I get involved in those that often.

X3 you aren't alone in having had experience with too much time spent on the computer annoying parents.

Well, I'm a little less in the "furry closet" than before. My dad actually started asking me about it at dinner. Which was, to say the least, a shock.

...And I didn't answer quite as I would have liked. I got kinda defensive. Mostly because, when my mom was trying to figure out what exactly he meant, he said "he wants to have sex with a raccoon." So, can ya blame me for getting a bit defensive? I mean, calling furries "yiffies" and then saying that? What does he expect me to do, just say "yeah, I do" or something?   

Oh well, I think he really noticed it and started paying attention to it a while back...and I think he wouldn't have said anything, except he noticed and watched a bit of the Funday Pawpet Show I saved on the comp a long while back and never took off.

So, a little more out of the closet, but also a little more defensive...

Mostly because, when my mom was trying to figure out what exactly he meant, he said "he wants to have sex with a raccoon."

WAT.
/uberdoublefacepalmheadkeyboarddeskcry
Wow... where did he ever come to THAT conclusion!? O_o

//edit - hope you have good luck on enlightening him...

WAT.
/uberdoublefacepalmheadkeyboarddeskcry
Wow... where did he ever come to THAT conclusion!? O_o

//edit - hope you have good luck on enlightening him...

Well, I think it was about as sarcastic as it was serious. My family teds to be very very sarcastic in general, so...I just wasn't sure as to what extent it was sarcastic and to what extent it was serious.

But, it would be hard to convince him other wise. He is the stubborn type.

I will say this, while he may not get it entirely, and he may be rather stereotypical in his knowledge, he didn't so much seem to care. Which I was happy about. He even really seemed to want to know what animal I "fantasize" about being (well, may not be quite phrased in understanding, but at least he is curious about my life in some aspect, right?).
Even went so far as to say, if he were a furry, would be a big cat of some sort (cheetah or lion, specifically). And asked if other things, like reptiles, can be furries.

So, I guess he might not care so much at all, afterall. Possibly. But I'll keep on the down low anyway, just to be safe, y'know? Giving him reason to get on my back about anything would be a drag.

Thank God my family is able to joke about stuff and not always over react, though.

Wow, your lucky lol. My mom saw a drawing of mine and thought I had too many teddy bears when I was young (I still have them )

Lucky you. One of my biggest regrets is not having grown up with a teddy bear. I actually get depressed thinking about it sometimes. It's like there's a big hole in my childhood that can never be filled, and all the other things I had are not nearly big enough to fill that void.

[Pet's name:]

Well I have only told 2 people that I am a furry: my mom and sister. My mom was able to understand and not have a problem with me being a furry, however many issues came up with my sister. My sister of course deeply believed in the stereotype that all furries are perverted and gay( I am not saying that being gay is a problem but saying that all furries are gay is incorrect, and it is extremely incorrect and bad to say that we are all perverted). She even looked up articles that supported her claim like this one written by a furry(but I consider him to be a pervert who calls himself a furry). I read the article and it made me want to slap the guy who wrote it in the face. No matter how much I have tried to get her to try and look at other sources that support the fact we are not all perverted but she just ignores it saying that the sources she looked up that tell of the stereotypes are well written and are most likely more true than other articles that argue that the stereotypes arnt true. I have given up trying to convince her and what sucks is that we are pretty close...Damn the stupid stereotypes.