@doggo_deer
Oh, and about furries! This is important.
Furries have a sort of social apartheid, between some communities that are extreme toxic anti-zoophile and other communities, where a lot of the gray-muzzles and social leadership have been openly zooey for longer than you have been alive. It can sound intimidating, but many zoophiles have made their first non-zooey friends they were open to at furry venues that were more accepting. Furries CAN be great. They CAN be supportive. They CAN be civilized. It is just incorrect to treat them as if they were one group of people.
Furry, while it is made up of many small communities, can be divided roughly into three basic types. Weirdly, the more accepting types of furry-themed communities tend to be either extremely "anything goes, literally anything, the walls are painted with bodily fluids, this is Pandemonium, and Satan just strolled by" or, at the opposite extreme, almost entirely "safe-for-work" (SFW) discussion. The most hateful venues tend to be ones that harbor bland and boring vanilla porn intended for being fed to the ignorant masses. The reason why is that the most influential people at these more vanilla venues are governed, foremost, based on profit-motive, and if you are too weird or too edgy, then they lose business. The more SFW venues are often more accepting simply because there is no money to be made in wholesome coffee-shop discussion and camaraderie. You will notice a trend in all societies: when money is too much involved, then you are not very easily accepted if you do not appeal to the lowest common denominator. If you see a lot of people selling cheap "YCH" (your character here) commissions, then turn and run away: if they see you as a threat to their business models, then they will eat you alive.
Among furries, you should also try to associate more with gray-muzzles, who tend to be more accepting and more open-minded. This is not unusual: most people tend to grow more open-minded and more kind as they get older. By then, they are either confirmed asexuals or sexually experienced enough that they know how sex actually works in real life relationships. Younger and more impulsive furries should be assumed to be "idiot white knights" until proved otherwise: if they are young, they tend to have seriously stilted and naive ideas about sexuality and the nature of consent, and have not yet had enough sexual or romantic experience to understand that the world does not really run based on these sorts of hackneyed notions. Older folks are way more mature and probably already know a few zoophiles.
I suggest more SFW venues because they tend to have the higher proportion of educated gray-muzzles, who usually don't care a flying purple two-dicked fuck if you are a zoophile as long as the main thing you want to talk about is SFW material and friendly roleplay. Gray-muzzle furries that are emotionally well-adjusted enough to be friendly toward zoophiles tend to make great general mentors, actually. The typical zooey ally, within the furry community, is usually older, gainfully employed, educated, slightly left-leaning, and emotionally well-adjusted. I trust some of them more than I do my own family.
Although I can agree with most things you just said, I'd have to add a few things of my own, since I'm a furry for pretty much half my lifetime now and also grew apart from some aspects to it, while staying close to other aspects of it. So I have mixed views of the inside as well as the outside of the fandom.
Of course "Furry Fandom" is an umbrella term for all the furry communities that exist (
with people's reaction to them constently changing), that's why I constantly disagree, when people keep telling, that the "Furry Fandom" goes down the drain, it doesn't, it really, REALLY doesn't. What happens in smaller communities however is something different entirely.
The problem even with some grey-muzzle and adviser type furries is, even they can be wrong sometimes. There was a
furry youtuber named Kothorix for example, who's videos I usually liked to watch. He occasionally did his take on bestiality as well (can't find the video now, probably deleted or unlisted), and while he wasn't liking it personally, he was pretty fair and tolerant towards zoos in general. Unless he had
his breakdown. It's an unlisted video now about how he "left" the furry community, since it failed him. What he described was his run-in with toxic elements of the groups he dealt with and how they altered his perception of furries in general. He pretty much took a shit on the fandom and declared himself to be more aligned with dragon-only parts of the fandom, excluding the majority of furries in general. Also he started to say less favorable things about the zoo parts in following statements. This showed me, that nobody is truely above personal experiences and might at some point collapse and generalize his or her disappointments on an entire community, even if otherwise a fine and respectable person.
This sparked me to actually go to the
biggest, German, furry community online (since I'm German and already a member there) to
ask about the opinions of members regarding their experiences and the reputation the fandom had in their eyes.
Cheetah put it best
when he said (and I translate):
This discussion is repeating consistently every year... since 25 years. Maybe even longer, but that's just how long I am around in the fandom.
The fandom today is as great and diverse as it has never been before. - Artwork, comics, music, dance, puppetry, conventions on every weekend of the year.
It's entirely normal that one cares more about Furry related things when everything is new and exciting, over time the enthusiasm might fade away. As with ALL hobbies or subcultures that one knows about. Some day one finds a niche where one feels comfortable and one stays there. It's the same for me too. But if you want to talk about "THE REPUTATION" or "THE FANDOM" you have to look at our subculture from an outside perspective.
The fandom produces things, that would have ben UN THINK ABLE in the past. The fact something like "
Myre", originating in the furry fandom could become such an international success. Or the fact that
Fox Amoore was able to record music with the
Prague Symphony Orchestra in
Abbey Road. Or the fact that
Willion wins prizes with
Fursuit-videos on festivals.
The number of female furries is rising constantly. Artwork has reached unbelievably high quality standards compared to past times. Fursuits keep improving and look better and better and better, it's amazing. And the approval of the mainstream has never been as positive as it is now.
In fact, we never had a better reputation than we have now.
And if we have a bad reputation somewhere, then it has something to do with squares, for whom "gay" is a swearword, "animals" are something for kids and "foreigners" are a threat and who can't deal with the fact, that we outclass them.
I have to agree with him there. I guess that was one of the best responses I got, most other responses were based on gut-feeling and usually way more negative and destructive, since most people had run-ins with rotten apples, who spoiled the experience of the fandom for them.
So in conclusion I'd say, the difference between SFW and NSFW groups is less imporant than the difference between emotionally stable and grown up adults and adolescent newcomers who have heads full of ideals and little to no experience with the fandom beforehand. That said, one shouldn't make the mistake to separate between age groups either, as some young people can have quite a rational mind and some adults and older people can be human wrecks as well. In fact I currently have to deal with a person on telegram who gets stalked online by his former mate, since he is emotionally dangerously unstable and clingy, but has also been described as being obsessive, toxic when he doesn't get his way, can't take a "no" for an answer, is jealousy bipolar, has a personality disorder and some sort of extreme, manic episodes. As a reminder: We are talking about adults here.
As a general recommendation, when it comes to the furry fandom, I'd say, don't filter people by groups. You wouldn't want to be filtered either. You never know who would be accepting your zoo side and who wouldn't. There are people not liking feral art but still accepting zoos. There are people liking feral art but hate zoos since they are commonly mistaken for ones. There are people you never would have expected to accept you in the most unlikely of places.
Generally I'd say, find people you like to talk to in general. Hasn't to be about zoos or furry stuff. There are many fascinating people with a wide array of hobbies and interests out there, both inside the fandom and out. Find people you feel you'd have common ground with and then go from there. That's the best advice I can give you here.