by Quentin Long ©2006 Quentin Long |
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The furry subculture is all about an appreciation of animals with human-like chracteristics. But some members of the subculture take it a little farther than that; they dont just appreciate anthropomorphized animals, they want to be anthropomorphized animalsfor real. Of course, this sort of transformation necessarily means youre giving up certain aspects of humanity, trading them in for the corresponding aspects of whatever-it-is youre becoming. And some members of the subculture take this desire to its logical extreme: They want to be plain old, standard, garden variety, 100% human-qualities-free animals.
Is it just me, or do these guys suffer from honkin big helpings of self-loathing?
That was a rhetorical question. Of course they suffer from self-loathing! Regardless of what they want to be, what they actually are is human beingswho are perfectly willing (if not downright eager) to exchange hands for paws, intelligence for instincts, and speech for inarticulate noises. Yeah, I just cant wait to get my hands amputated and lose 60% of my brain! Really, how could these guys not despise themselves?
The good news is, the I-wanna-be-a-dumb-animal types are not representative of the furry subculture as a whole. The bad news is, what makes them nonrepresentative is not the simple fact that they hate themselves; rather, its the intensity of their self-loathing. Your average furry on the street may not want to dispense with any and all aspects whatsoever of their humanity, but to the extent that their preferred corpus is something other than baseline human, they sure as hell want to distance themselves from humanity, to a greater or lesser extent! And how about those guys who write stories in which all the human characters are rabidly bigoted scum who embody all known vices while, at the same time, all the anthropomorphic characters are purely, unquestionably virtuous and innocent victims of the vile humans? Does anybody want to seriously claim that the human beings who write that stuff dont loathe themselves, if perhaps to a lesser degree than the I-wanna-be-a-dumb-animal types? Yeah, didnt think so.
Folks, Im here to tell you that human beings are not the Irredeemable Scum Of The Universeand animals, likewise, are not the Stainless Embodiment of All That Is Right And Good.
My point is a simple one: Humans are not any worse than animalsand likewise, animals are not any better than humans. Were different, sure, but since when has different ever been a synonym for better or worse? If you want to admire animals, be my guest; all I ask is that you not view animals through rose-colored glasses, or humans through black lenses.