Autism and furries

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Furries (fans of anthropomorphic animal characters) are up to 7 times as likely to be autistic as the general population.

To me it makes a lot of sense. That number actually surprised me because I assumed it would be higher. A big part of the appeal of the furry community is the opportunity to explore different ways of socializing and expressing yourself. Most furries have a fursona, a fictional character that they use to represent themselves. I think imagining oneself as a creature can be a good way to cope with feeling different from other people. It's also nice to have a group of people who share a niche interest, and the furry community is surpringly large and active, with lots of sub-communities.

I've been thinking about this more lately because I'm hoping to go to a furry convention for the first time this summer

I'm a furry artist. I think that's all true.

I don't have a fursona, exactly, but I have a number of original characters. Remi Vitoux the beaver artist/superhero (at right in the picture below) is probably the closest to being like me.



It's interesting to me that most of my characters are large, muscular, powerful and very physical, while I'm not like that at all in real life and those traits don't tend to interest me in real people.

All of my characters have special interests, with Remi's, of course, being art. I wrote a short story about him trying to get along with another superhero, whose special interest is sports, which bores him.

I've never really gotten the appeal of furry art and similar.

Although, I probably shouldn't judge since I like goblins to a similar degree.

Yes I get it, we're all a bunch of freaks.

I loved drawing cartoons as a kid and most of them were animals like in Disney or Looney Tunes. And as a kid I once had a pink bunny costume my mom made me for Halloween, and I loved it and would wear it constantly even when I outgrew it and it got ripped up and stuff. I guess it was my "security blanket" or "lovey" or whatever you all it. But it's really embarrassing and when I got older I did not want to be reminded of it at all.

When I was a teenager I was harassed and bullied for being so interested in cartoons, especially Garfield comics, and that was painful enough. I'm just one cringy photo or video away from becoming a lolcow for that hate site Kiwi Farms.

I am a furry. My parents at first were REALLY against it at first because their first exposure to it was a certain CSI episode. They refused to believe that show took the worst and weirdest aspect of anything for drama. My mother even claimed she saw a show called "My Vacation From Hell" where a family went to a hotel that was also hosting a furry convention in the lobby and they were engaged in all sorts of sexual activates. At a real furry convention if you get caught doing something sexual in the open, you get kicked out. I looked it up and apparently that show never even existed. The closet thing I can find is an episode from a show about parasitic infections that had nothing to do with furries or conventions. My mom does have memory problems originating from a childhood head injury and gets her memories mixed up.
I wanted to get a tail of my fursona. A simple leucistic meerkat at the time. But my mom said I would only be allowed to wear it to my psychiatrist. When I brought it up with him, he actually liked the idea and didn’t see a problem with me wearing it other places as long as it wasn’t going to cause a problem such as knocking things over in a store. I showed him a picture of my fursona and told him about her back-story and he said I should make a novel about her and get it published. My mom was furious he didn’t agree with her. She told me I needed a new physiatrist, she also wanted me to get a new one because he wouldn’t diagnose me with bipolar disorder. My mom was adamant I had that. She also went on a tirade about how he would also tell me its okay to be gay or a lesbian. To my mom, homosexually was the worst thing someone could be. She was convinced being a furry was just a “gateway point” to being gay or lesbian. Eventually she just gave up and accepted it and I changed my fursona from a leucistic meerkat (I was seeing too many other leustitic meerkats and my fursona didn’t look “meerkat” enough for them. Yeah, neither does Timon but you take his word for it!) to an alien species that’s like a cross between meerkats, fossas, lions and Siamese cats. Can’t tell me my made up species doesn’t look like what it’s supposed to be when I’m the one who made it up in the first place.

I'm not one of those numbers in the statistics.

I'm not interested in animals, animal-themed stuff, animal related topics...

At least it's never the common theme of my thought, never goes at the forefront of my mind on a daily basis, and practically never my first choice for anything.

Even in my imaginary worlds -- animals are also rare, barely there at all.


Heck, I rarely get too attached to anything resembled like an animal. Fictional or otherwise.

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I'm a furry. I've been obsessed with animals, especially dogs, from a very young age. It's no wonder I became a furry, really, as I was doing all the things the fandom does (sans any sexuality related stuff) since early childhood. I even wanted my own custom dog costume as a kid, and would have done almost anything to get one.