My mom doesn't know I'm a furry (noone has asked, and I realized my furriness just after AC was in town), but when the local news did reports on Anthrocon 2011 (which were, to my pleasant surprise, generally positive), she was pretty quick to label those in attendance as "a bunch of freaks", first because she thought it was all about sex, and after I shot that down because "it's just weird". She also didn't seem to enjoy driving downtown to pick up my sister at the bus station when AC was in town, and appears to think that the whole thing revolves around fursuiting, most likely because those wearing them got the most attention on the news report(s) she saw. I told her "Well I guess the Penguins (city hockey team) should get rid of Iceburgh (their mascot) then, if dressing up as a character is so freaky and stupid". She then said that a mascot is fine, because doing it for the sake of fun is... somehow bad. I would have told her that only a fraction of people there were fursuiters, had I known at the time, though I figured it wasn't anywhere near all of them.
I find her stance on it kind of strange because while my mom is a Catholic and all that, she's usually fairly tolerant of things. She has little to no qualms with gays, or hockey players beating the hell out of each other, or driving me for an hour so I can crawl around in the woods and perform combat sims with a few dozen guys who curse like sailors for six hours. And she's even said on multiple occasions that "there needs to be more happiness in the world", which I wholeheartedly agree with. So, I don't understand why she doesn't understand that furries do just that.
I don't intend on telling my dad even if the subject comes up, because, to put it lightly, he tends to be a jerk, and I like to have as little to have to do with him as possible. Good thing I only have to go over to his place two weekends and four nights out of the month.
