Its kind of like boobs, some cultures don’t sexualize them, but if you were socialized in one that does, it is an automatic association for most males of that culture.
I have also mostly seen horny furry content just as a side effect of browsing the internet so this image in furry style reads as sexual to me too, even though there is nothing intrinsic about the image that is sexual. It is the cultural context.
It’s not a cultural context, this is not a culture that we’re talking about (“this” being a misguided sexualization of furry art). This is the product oversexualization and objectification created by porn consumption and sweeping generalizations. This is merely exaggerated by the fact that most people don’t understand furries beyond a vague idea that it’s sexual, but there are plenty of parts of furry life that are entirely non-sexual. It’s a harmful generalization that objectifies furries as sexual objects, and fails to recognize that there are things other than sex on their mind in their culture (culture applies here because it is a shared group of people with similar and related ideology and interests that routinely interact with one another in community, not a disjointed, unorganized group of people that share the same misunderstanding of a group).
You know what has a lot of porn of it? Video games. Are you gonna interpret every piece of video game fanart as sexual? Obviously that would be ridiculous. Yet it’s no different than what we see here.
No. What we need to do is punish oversexualization. It is not okay. Fetishization of a group of people is never okay. While I’m not a furry, I am trans, which means I know damn well how horrible it is to be constantly sexualized (also part of just existing as a woman) and fetishized.
Let me put this into perspective for you in a way I hope you understand. Can we both agree on the fact that women do not deserve to be treated as mere sexual objects by men, but often are? Your argument then follows that men’s sexualization of women for just existing should be solved by having more women who are harder to sexualize (i.e. the whole “she was asking for it by what she was wearing” shit). That is not the solution. I should be able to dress how I want to feel confident and beautiful without having to worry about some man taking that as an excuse to touch me, or worse. Furries deserve to be able to live their lives without being hypersexualized, too. The same problem fuels both: men who refuse to take responsibility and would rather blame the victim than admit fault of their own.
I’m not saying to shame women for what they’re wearing, quite the opposite. I’m for changing the culture with more “take back the night” type initiatives.
I’m all for interrupting people when they sexualize something that doesn’t have to be sexual, or for that matter, gender something that doesn’t have to be gendered.
Where you lose me is the not understanding why something is sexualized when it is clear to me why it is.
Its kind of like boobs, some cultures don’t sexualize them, but if you were socialized in one that does, it is an automatic association for most males of that culture.
I have also mostly seen horny furry content just as a side effect of browsing the internet so this image in furry style reads as sexual to me too, even though there is nothing intrinsic about the image that is sexual. It is the cultural context.
It’s not a cultural context, this is not a culture that we’re talking about (“this” being a misguided sexualization of furry art). This is the product oversexualization and objectification created by porn consumption and sweeping generalizations. This is merely exaggerated by the fact that most people don’t understand furries beyond a vague idea that it’s sexual, but there are plenty of parts of furry life that are entirely non-sexual. It’s a harmful generalization that objectifies furries as sexual objects, and fails to recognize that there are things other than sex on their mind in their culture (culture applies here because it is a shared group of people with similar and related ideology and interests that routinely interact with one another in community, not a disjointed, unorganized group of people that share the same misunderstanding of a group).
You know what has a lot of porn of it? Video games. Are you gonna interpret every piece of video game fanart as sexual? Obviously that would be ridiculous. Yet it’s no different than what we see here.
Bigotry is not culture.
Unfortunately, bigotry and culture are very closely intertwined.
Seems to me that to change the culture, we need more non-sexual furry images floating around, just like we need more non-sexual nude images.
There are already heaps of non-sexual video games out there so that’s a perfect example.
There is plenty of sfw furry art? In fact there’s an example here in this post
If there is, it must be more common in your circles than in mine.
No. What we need to do is punish oversexualization. It is not okay. Fetishization of a group of people is never okay. While I’m not a furry, I am trans, which means I know damn well how horrible it is to be constantly sexualized (also part of just existing as a woman) and fetishized.
Let me put this into perspective for you in a way I hope you understand. Can we both agree on the fact that women do not deserve to be treated as mere sexual objects by men, but often are? Your argument then follows that men’s sexualization of women for just existing should be solved by having more women who are harder to sexualize (i.e. the whole “she was asking for it by what she was wearing” shit). That is not the solution. I should be able to dress how I want to feel confident and beautiful without having to worry about some man taking that as an excuse to touch me, or worse. Furries deserve to be able to live their lives without being hypersexualized, too. The same problem fuels both: men who refuse to take responsibility and would rather blame the victim than admit fault of their own.
I’m not saying to shame women for what they’re wearing, quite the opposite. I’m for changing the culture with more “take back the night” type initiatives.
I’m all for interrupting people when they sexualize something that doesn’t have to be sexual, or for that matter, gender something that doesn’t have to be gendered.
Where you lose me is the not understanding why something is sexualized when it is clear to me why it is.