Mainstream society actively cultivates and encourages the creation of furs and furry fandom,
I read the description in our article, and thought maybe we were talking countercultures and subcultures, (like I once did), but instead I got "some people like animals besides furries, too!"
Thanks. I'd missed that.
and then looks down on them when they are produced.
It's hard to look down on something you don't know exists.
strong emotional aftertastes
Aftertastes.
Giggle. Snort.
Furrydom was pretty much the first human social activity
Whoah. Wow. Okay. That's pretty ... Well. Fighting the urge to start skimming, now.
After that, it never went away, being a part of many religious rituals and festivals, down through the centuries, as well as becoming a strong branch of Mummery in the middle ages.
If I can convince one person on this planet that furry DOES NOT equal mythology, I can die right then and there, and feel like I've lived a fulfilling life. Honestly.
Animals are strong brands and fantastically successful trademarks.
Okay, this statement is correct, but also beside the point. God bless our furry hearts, we got one thing right when we insisted we be called anthropomorphic animal fans; we give animals human characteristics, among them, a strong yearning to be unique. Furry characters do not follow classical animal symbolism; neither do they specifically set out to subvert it.
Furry characters are unique; animal characteristics of furry characters are not shortcuts to personality insights. They are purely aesthetic.
No more commentary for a while, as I found nothing either inane enough to mock or insightful enough to comment upon. Until around here ...
that it is somehow desirable that these activities instantly cease at some vague and unspecified age and that continuing to admire someone or something fictional for the positive qualities that they represent is somehow defective;
Here the author approaches the problem of neoteny in "geek" subcultures. Neoteny is the retaining of "juvenile" characteristics into adulthood. The classic scientific example is "cuteness." Really. Young animals are cute (they've all but got a "cute formula"); this causes adult animals to respond to the "cuteness" with "nurturing" feelings. Usually, once juvenile animals pass into adulthood, they can take care of themselves, so they no longer need to be cute. However, in rare circumstances, cuteness can be retained; this is a furry site, so I don't need to even bother providing a link to the Russian tame foxes, where foxes were bred for "tameness," but also retained a high amount of "cuteness" during the taming process, suggesting that "tameness" might also be neotenous.
Now, there are about 2000 different ways to define "geek" and "nerd" (and Wikipedia has the articles to prove it), but one possibly defining characteristic is neoteny; in a nutshell, the continued interest in what some would consider "childish" activities or entertainments, sometimes expressed derogatively with the term "manboy" or "manchild" (I've never seen "womangirl," probably because it doesn't roll off the tongue very well). Most fantastic genres have been hit with the dual criticism of "childishness" and "escapist." Furry, mostly "childish;" in fact, it's probably the uber-example of a genre criticized as childish (the other major criticism being, paradoxically, it's too "adult").
Perhaps the most interesting response to this criticism was C.S. Lewis (one of the original fantasists, and a noted fan of talking animals), who once wrote:
Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
In I believe the same essay, he also quoted J.R.R. Tolkein's response to the criticism of the fantastic genres' use of escapism:
The only people who should fear escapism are jailers.
Which is actually a pretty damning criticism of our culture.
Anyway, moving on.
essentially makes you much the same as the folks who dress up in fursuits at cons and dance to conspicuous Nine Inch Nails tracks; that is: unremarkable … human.
Well, that's just freaking depressing, right there.
Well, let's take a look.
Mainstream society actively cultivates and encourages the creation of furs and furry fandom,
I read the description in our article, and thought maybe we were talking countercultures and subcultures, (like I once did), but instead I got "some people like animals besides furries, too!"
Thanks. I'd missed that.
and then looks down on them when they are produced.
It's hard to look down on something you don't know exists.
strong emotional aftertastes
Aftertastes.
Giggle. Snort.
Furrydom was pretty much the first human social activity
Whoah. Wow. Okay. That's pretty ... Well. Fighting the urge to start skimming, now.
After that, it never went away, being a part of many religious rituals and festivals, down through the centuries, as well as becoming a strong branch of Mummery in the middle ages.
If I can convince one person on this planet that furry DOES NOT equal mythology, I can die right then and there, and feel like I've lived a fulfilling life. Honestly.
Animals are strong brands and fantastically successful trademarks.
Okay, this statement is correct, but also beside the point. God bless our furry hearts, we got one thing right when we insisted we be called anthropomorphic animal fans; we give animals human characteristics, among them, a strong yearning to be unique. Furry characters do not follow classical animal symbolism; neither do they specifically set out to subvert it.
Furry characters are unique; animal characteristics of furry characters are not shortcuts to personality insights. They are purely aesthetic.
No more commentary for a while, as I found nothing either inane enough to mock or insightful enough to comment upon. Until around here ...
that it is somehow desirable that these activities instantly cease at some vague and unspecified age and that continuing to admire someone or something fictional for the positive qualities that they represent is somehow defective;
Here the author approaches the problem of neoteny in "geek" subcultures. Neoteny is the retaining of "juvenile" characteristics into adulthood. The classic scientific example is "cuteness." Really. Young animals are cute (they've all but got a "cute formula"); this causes adult animals to respond to the "cuteness" with "nurturing" feelings. Usually, once juvenile animals pass into adulthood, they can take care of themselves, so they no longer need to be cute. However, in rare circumstances, cuteness can be retained; this is a furry site, so I don't need to even bother providing a link to the Russian tame foxes, where foxes were bred for "tameness," but also retained a high amount of "cuteness" during the taming process, suggesting that "tameness" might also be neotenous.
Now, there are about 2000 different ways to define "geek" and "nerd" (and Wikipedia has the articles to prove it), but one possibly defining characteristic is neoteny; in a nutshell, the continued interest in what some would consider "childish" activities or entertainments, sometimes expressed derogatively with the term "manboy" or "manchild" (I've never seen "womangirl," probably because it doesn't roll off the tongue very well). Most fantastic genres have been hit with the dual criticism of "childishness" and "escapist." Furry, mostly "childish;" in fact, it's probably the uber-example of a genre criticized as childish (the other major criticism being, paradoxically, it's too "adult").
Perhaps the most interesting response to this criticism was C.S. Lewis (one of the original fantasists, and a noted fan of talking animals), who once wrote:
Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
In I believe the same essay, he also quoted J.R.R. Tolkein's response to the criticism of the fantastic genres' use of escapism:
The only people who should fear escapism are jailers.
Which is actually a pretty damning criticism of our culture.
Anyway, moving on.
essentially makes you much the same as the folks who dress up in fursuits at cons and dance to conspicuous Nine Inch Nails tracks; that is: unremarkable … human.
Well, that's just freaking depressing, right there.