So Saturday was the advent of my loss of Furginity!
I have not experienced such a euphoric and bonded feeling between a group of people in my entire life. Despite not fur suiting people wore their tails around the City centre, being the bashful creature I am I was naturally wary of being ridiculed and stared at by people... and though they did stare nothing was really said by anyone. The day went brilliantly and I am proud to be associated with these people who are now akin to family in my mind.
To meet with a group of strangfurs (hurr) and be accepted by so many friendly people, some of who I had not spoken to even online... The experience was amazing.
I took my non-Furry fiancé with me, and I will be asking him to add something to my next blog post, we’ll see if he will. After the meet we talked about how it went. I explained to him that I felt completely safe and sure that this is who I am. And while he respects me, he was still a little embarrassed at the glances and stares we attracted from others. He stayed and supported me and my choice to be myself.
A breaking moment occurred however...
A minority group of five or six young 'men' started shouting at a member of our group (no names mentioned) as we walked, based upon his image (which I will add was fairly normal to the standards of others walking around). They got closer intending to intimidate him and noticed him and a number of the group wearing tails and immediately stepped up their abuse. I and my fiancé were walking behind them, at the lead of the slower members of the group watching what they were doing. Ignorance is meant to be the best policy for these sorts of thugs, right?
Well, their verbal abuse wasn't good enough for them and one of their numbers decided to get right behind and attempt to grab the tail of the guy in our group. Despite my fiancés reservations about our image in public he and I stepped our pace up and shouldered the goon out of the way and stayed on the heels of our friend to keep them at bay. It worked and they soon hung back from us, and eventually distanced themselves.
I cannot understand how a minority group can't grasp the hypocrisy of them ridiculing someone for the way they look and how they felt it appropriate to harass someone based on something so trivial.
This sort of thing was what I was concerned about, the stigma of being 'odd' in a culture that breeds intolerance towards anything out of the ordinary. Whether that be dressing differently, wearing make-up or wearing a tail/partial fur suit.
So, will I do it again?
Of course I will.
Out of all the people in that City centre on a Saturday only one immature group of people chose to single any of us out and firstly it was not based on wearing a tail.
The group of 10-15 people I was with were more than friendly enough to make that minor blip in the day smooth out. And even the one girl who was interested in us all that came up and spoke to us about what we were doing. These things make it worth being true to yourself and being proud about it.
I may be a while before I have as much courage and pride as the people I met on Saturday but I admire them so much for it. And yes I am proud to be a Furry.
**As dear Finnigan said in her last post none of us would advocate meeting a group of people you haven’t met before under the age of 18, if you feel better take someone with you and get emergency contact numbers,
Well; I went on a furry road trip to Oshawa, Ontario. So many lols were had and great memories were made, but something was really special about this road trip!
