What A Difference A Decade Makes

by Simo

Another Texas university has published an article about the fandom: UT club encourages students to find "fursonas", this time, the University of Texas of Austin. The Daily Texan is a student publication that's been around for quite awhile.

Compare this to what happened a decade ago when another university newspaper did an article about Furries: Get Furry: Aggies Unleash Their Animalistic Nature. (Unforch, this article is no longer available on-line. It's something they would rather forget ever happened.) This new article is not a vicious attack piece that slanders Furries. The only thing they have in common is that most of the college Furries seem to be in the "STEM" fields. Is it that kids these days are more mature? Well, no, not really:

"Expressing your furry side is not a very common thing in colleges in general because people are so nervous about how they are viewed by others," Seifert said. "In high school, it's really hard to go out and be who you really are, but we want people to know that, in college, it's totally okay."

High school boys are as nasty as ever, and that hasn't changed, well, since there was such a thing as high school.

Other than that, the new article simply reports the facts. There is no slander, no nasty illustrations, no faculty pile-on about what disturbed individuals these are. There is not even a hint of any sort of furbash viciousness. The article points out the difference between Furries, Otherkin, and Therians. There is still confusion over this, to the dismay of all parties involved. What has changed is that furbashing is pretty much dead. Siefert says he discovered the fandom just one year ago. Joe Seifert and all his friends were beginning grade school when the shitstorms raged. They probably hadn't been born yet when furbashing first got underway.

"A lot of people think that furries are weirdos that don't fit into regular society," Seifert said.

Goes with the territory: have out of the mainstream interests, and you will be seen as more or less "weird". Nothing you can do about that. The PaL is still trained to see interests like this as "kids' stuff" that you should have outgrown by the time you're twelve or so.

"People use furries as the butt of their jokes. People judge it right off the bat and don't take any time to look at the people. We are just people who have this interest and want to be able to express it with others."

You have no idea...