Earlier this month, Pittsburgh hosted a rather unique ‘fandom’ when the Furries came to town for Anthrocon 2011.
I work a few blocks from the hotel and convention center downtown where all of this took place. I had been seeing these people all week walking around in varying degrees of animal attire. It sparked lots of conversation in our office and among my friends.
Judgment of Furries has ranged from ‘creepy’ or ‘scary’ to sad, pathetic, and socially awkward. I was leaning toward the latter camp. Honestly I’ve never really felt the attraction of creating a fantasy persona and always seemed a little lame, but everyone is entitled.
On the Friday of the convention, the office was buzzing about the Furries. One of my colleagues did some research and was telling me about how essentially harmless and actually interesting it all was. So I did my own Wikipedia research, and while I may not understand, everyone is entitled. Check out the article.
Another coworker was curious, so she and I took a walk down the street. We found our way into the hotel and just kept walking until we were actually inside the convention itself.
I won’t pretend like I wasn’t a little uncomfortable. (True confession: I’ve always been weirded out by people in mascot costumes.) But it was incredibly enlightening and humbling to be the weird kids in the room. We all work so hard to fit in and be normal and here was a group of literally 3,000 people who created their own normal and have a really vibrant community. Not to say that I’m the coolest kid around, but for the first time in a long time I felt like the odd man out. I just didn’t fit in and everyone around me knew it.
I give so much respect for the Furries who saw us and knew we didn’t belong. Several people approached us and answered our questions and were so excited to tell us all about what they did and how the conference worked. They knew what they do is not generally accepted and were so eager to tell everyone about it.
The lesson I took from this is to not create a ‘normal’ and not to treat people differently if they don’t fit into your box. You never know when the tables could be turned and you don’t want those ‘weird’ kids to treat you badly just because you don’t fit into their ‘normal box’. I think this is a lesson for our broader community and can apply to so many things.
We need to think about how we treat people who don’t do things or believe things exactly like we do. That Golden Rule that we all learned way back when applies to everything we do: Treat others the way you want to be treated. We take away rights of certain groups or don’t give them the respect they deserve merely because they don’t fit into what someone decided was the ‘right’ kind of ‘normal’. But, no one stops to think how it would feel to be treated thus, and the reaction that would get. I hate to use another cliché, but how would ‘normal’ people feel walking in someone else’s shoes? So just because someone wants to dress up like a tiger and play the piano (I saw it happen…in real life) or wants to marry someone who has the same kinds of body parts as they have, we have no right or reason to treat them differently. Food for thought: if one of those people who make fun of the Furries or tell gay people they can’t get married were treated the same way, would they just accept being treated as an outsider in society because someone else said they are?