A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

What, me furry?

The "C.S.I." episode about furries (more specifically, fursuiters) aired this evening and, owing karma for a past-life dog kicking, I ended up watching it. As expected, the show essentially portrayed the entire subculture as horny, deviant geeks (you know when they bring the UV evidence light out it isn't going to be good).

I have little knowledge of the furry phenomenon, beyond a few people I know who are involved in the scene and what I've seen online (which, granted, runs the gamut from "mostly harmless" to "you did what?"). I've heard arguments that the movement is a modern manifestation of Native American totemism, just as it's been opined that it's a manifestation of scary dorks who have suddenly decided to roam among mankind and forage.

When it comes down to it though, they're really just another group of geeks. Sure, they may creep people out more than the average role-playing gamer type, but there are all kinds of fetishes out there, and far be it from a guy with an affinity for talentless pop singers dressed as a certain Amazonian superhero to cast aspersions. At any rate, they've come a long way from the hallucinatory BJ scene in "The Shining" (Kubrick was ahead of his time in more ways than one) to being ridiculed on the most popular TV show in the country. Hold those freaky, oversized heads high, you magnificent anthropomorphic bastards!

I don't even consider furries to be that out there on the weirdness scale. The Thing That Walks Like a Man sent me this link, documenting the geekiest hobbies around. Furries ranked pretty high (though not as high as LARPers, who still scare the crap out of me). But for my money, they fall roughly like so in this incomplete and totally arbitrary spectrum of kink:

Civil War re-enacters
Nun fetishists
Crewcuts
WAM
Dudes who dress like any Sailor Moon character
Coulrophiles
Furries
"Pinnochia"
Vore - for those who were turned on by Quint's death in "Jaws"
Infantilism
"O'Reilly Factor" viewers
Medical fetishists (including enemas but not "naughty nurses")
Menstruation

And on down the line. "Episode I" fans, for example, would be somewhere in the bottom rank with the rest of the extreme masochists. Furries just aren't that odd, relatively speaking.

There's a kink for everything, and sooner or later it'll all be lampooned on a TV show. Better "C.S.I." than "Whoopi," I guess.