A Few Points of Clarification

I want to make clear: I respect Grognardia and most of what James Maliszewski writes there. I wouldn't have linked to him or taken the time to respond to his post if I didn't. I take issue with the specific comments he made because of the atmosphere they encourage. Furries get flack from everyone, I personally don't feel any need to add to it, and I wish more people felt the same way. The anger in that post was triggered more by the comments than the post itself, which, yeah, isn't entirely fair to Maliszewski because his comments section is usually a mess anyway.

They Came First For the Furries...

I suppose going "Ew! Ick! Furries!" isn't quite as troglodytic as going "Ew! Ick! Gays!" but it's pretty dang close. Seriously, people. There are folks out there who like pictures of foxgirls and catboys. There are folks out there who like dressing up as pandas and unicorns. There are folks out there who like roleplaying as otter-kin and lizard-folk. There are, as far as I can tell, rather a lot of them. I've yet to understand why this is a problem.

I know, I know. The fur suits. The yiffing. The stuff that the nightly news and Law & Order and all that other junk that normal people with nothing better to do use to fill their lives hold up to tell us, "This is weird. These people are not okay. Be normal." So sure, go ahead. Freak out about a couple of pictures in a roleplaying manual because it's "adult entertainment." Then go back to your basement and pretend to be an elf, secure in the knowledge that you're safe, because you've done your part to shun the wrong kind of weird people.