A very good point Sonious; one of the BIGGEST reasons I decided to include the Brony questions in the survey this year was for the same reason I included a question or two about Babyfurs last year (the point of which was entirely lost on furries, it seems): we, as a fandom, cry foul every time someone says something mean or simply ignorant about the fandom ("oh, why don't they take the time to understand who we are?! The vast majority of us have NO interest in having sex in a fursuit or bestiality, so why do they insist on making that gross generalization? Bawwwww!")
Then, what do we, as a fandom do? We turn right around and, with no regard whatsoever for the blatant hypocrisy of it, we do the EXACT SAME THING TO A SUB-CULTURE WITHIN OUR OWN FANDOM. "Babyfurs are pedophiles" or "Babyfurs just like to sit around in diapers and soil themselves... it's some sick scat fetish". We've heard these before, and we know that we do it as a fandom. And many of us do it to bronies as well. No more apparent is this than if you look at the reasons many people give for hating on bronies. "It's silly" says the guy who spent six hundred dollars on a fursuit so they could run around as a cartoon wolf. "It's immature" says the person who pretends to be a dragon in online chat rooms. "They're militant and push it on others" says the person who, thirty seconds later, starts another furry thread on 4chan or posts more furry artwork on their Facebook page.
My point is this: as a fandom, we can't, in one breath, claim to be open and tolerant and accepting and espouse the importance of these as defining traits of the furry fandom while, in the same breath, listing off all the subcultures within our fandom that we can't stand. It's perfectly alright to not be interested in all of these subcultures, but the level of hatred they receive is simply mind-boggling o.o' As Sonious correctly said, a gay person has less of a chance of running into a homophobe in the general public. I point out in our data that bronies are more likely to experience bullying in their current life. Some smart-assedly roll their eyes and say "well duh, they're bronies", as if this is something acceptable or to be encouraged. If that's really the case, then no furry ever has the right to complain about how the CSI episode "got it wrong" or about how unfair Vanity Fair or the Tyra Banks Show was to furries...
A very good point Sonious; one of the BIGGEST reasons I decided to include the Brony questions in the survey this year was for the same reason I included a question or two about Babyfurs last year (the point of which was entirely lost on furries, it seems): we, as a fandom, cry foul every time someone says something mean or simply ignorant about the fandom ("oh, why don't they take the time to understand who we are?! The vast majority of us have NO interest in having sex in a fursuit or bestiality, so why do they insist on making that gross generalization? Bawwwww!")
Then, what do we, as a fandom do? We turn right around and, with no regard whatsoever for the blatant hypocrisy of it, we do the EXACT SAME THING TO A SUB-CULTURE WITHIN OUR OWN FANDOM. "Babyfurs are pedophiles" or "Babyfurs just like to sit around in diapers and soil themselves... it's some sick scat fetish". We've heard these before, and we know that we do it as a fandom. And many of us do it to bronies as well. No more apparent is this than if you look at the reasons many people give for hating on bronies. "It's silly" says the guy who spent six hundred dollars on a fursuit so they could run around as a cartoon wolf. "It's immature" says the person who pretends to be a dragon in online chat rooms. "They're militant and push it on others" says the person who, thirty seconds later, starts another furry thread on 4chan or posts more furry artwork on their Facebook page.
My point is this: as a fandom, we can't, in one breath, claim to be open and tolerant and accepting and espouse the importance of these as defining traits of the furry fandom while, in the same breath, listing off all the subcultures within our fandom that we can't stand. It's perfectly alright to not be interested in all of these subcultures, but the level of hatred they receive is simply mind-boggling o.o' As Sonious correctly said, a gay person has less of a chance of running into a homophobe in the general public. I point out in our data that bronies are more likely to experience bullying in their current life. Some smart-assedly roll their eyes and say "well duh, they're bronies", as if this is something acceptable or to be encouraged. If that's really the case, then no furry ever has the right to complain about how the CSI episode "got it wrong" or about how unfair Vanity Fair or the Tyra Banks Show was to furries...