this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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Simply put: It's a fetish.
It's pretty common to not understand why some people like the things they do in fetishes. Most people don't find feet attractive, but some people become just as aroused seeing feet as others do seeing breasts.
(Some furries will insist up and down that it's not a fetish, and those people are lying. They'll claim it's about a ton of different things, but it's pretty easy to tell. Because the ones who deny it are the ones who like to push their fetish onto others.)
Because it is not just a fetish. We claim it's about a ton of different things because it is about a ton of different things to so many different people.
Some people identify as their fursonas and are comfortable in that skin; some people think they're reincarnations of certain animals; some people like to write stories about furry characters; some people think furries are cool; some people just have a favourite anthro character from games or TV shows; some people sexualize them; some people are in it for the community interactions and safe spaces; some people are in it for the lucrative furry art commissions.
None of those are mutually exclusive. One can find Veezara from Skyrim cool and hot. One can do art and enjoy the communal support without having a fetish for it. Being a fetish is just one part of furry culture.
To reduce an entire community to "it's just a fetish" is such a gross generalization. It's like saying "anime fans are perverts" just because a non-insignificant amount of anime feature sexualized depictions of girls.
Look, I understand if your immediate reaction to "furries" is "it's just a fetish"; there is a lot of furry porn out there! However, there's a problem with that view: you're so focused on the "furries just have a fetish" part that you're ignoring the mountains of regular human porn floating all around you.
That's too simple, you could subtract everything adult from the furry fandom and quite a lot would remain. If you did the same to an actual fetish-based community you'd have little left, if anything.
Furries like anthropomorphic animals in multiple ways. People tend to focus on (and scandalize) the sexual part when sometimes it's just cute, funny or invokes all sorts of other feelings. It's a full-spectrum interest.
As a response to you
Would you say that someone "thinking cats are cute and liking them" is just a fetish?
There's more dimensions of liking something and wanting to engage with it than just sexual
I think cats are cute and babies are cute, and never once has it occurred to me to role play as one? Or to actually invest in roleplaying as one?
I won't yuck your yum, but I think "there are more dimensions", doesn't mean it's NOT a common dimension.
The definition of fetish includes non-sexual things, which is why officially we also have "sexual fetish" and "kinks".
There's also fetishism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetishism
..do you really think the other commenter meant it in that way, though? And is that how fetish is used in common parlance?
Well, I hope so, because I do
Fursuits have magic powers? No wonder they're so fucking expensive!
So your definition of furry is exclusively someone who wears fur suits in public? Because that's not most people's definition of that term. But either way, is it just beyond you that someone could like doing something others see as weird for any reason other than sexual gratification?
Also, why do you use breasts are your "sexual but not fetishized" example here lmao are you under the impression that the western sexual fixation on breasts is not fetishistic