Quantum Muse - science fiction and fantasy stories and artwork

I'd Rather Go Naked than Wear 'Furre'.
by Rebecca Gallant (Kemp)

A cute campaign term was created by the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals which depicted naked models with a strategically placed banner expressing their distaste for wearing fur coats.

"I'd rather go naked than wear fur." they'd say mindlessly, wearing nothing but their $1,000 an hour smiles. (I saw them strutting down the cat walk a month later in the latest fashionable dead animal.)

But this editorial isn't about animal ethics...or is it?

A seemingly new phenomenon has swept through the fantasy and sci-fi world called "furry". Furry is the slang termed by those writers, artist and fans that love anthropomorphic animals. Animals that walk and talk.

I, dear readers, admit to being guilty as charged. I am a furry artist and a big furry fan. However, the fandom is infected with a sickness. A disease that has tainted all those involved with the fandom.

Someone has taken Disney and sold it to Hugh Heffner. Nowhere else in the genre of fantasy will you find more vile or explicit pieces of pornography, bestiality and other sorts of nasties. Trust me, Heavy Metal won't hold a candle to it. Now before you go rushing off to verify this for yourselves and claiming it as "research", or start pointing fingers at me as a fascist, hear me out.

There are many of us who don't want to censor it, but we also wish not to be associated with it or forced to see it. We just want it in the back room of the video store and not right out in front of nine-year-old Tommy's face.

We just want to be known for the wonderful works of art and literature like the beast-headed Gods of Ancient Egypt or the lessons learned in Aesop's Fables.

For you see folks, "furry" was the original fantasy. Since the dawn of our tool using ancestors, we have always anthropomorphasized animals. Since the dawning of the Internet, we're now a fringe group of perverts at worst and weirdoes at best. People to be ridiculed by Trekkies! By Trekkies, I tell you!

What happened along the way? I honestly don't know. All I know is, I'm not a pervert, so I don't wished to be associated with one simply because I draw a fuzzy person with the head of a cat.

Maybe someday we can proudly wear 'furre' again. It's happening slowly. Movements such as Burned Fur are trying to right the many wrongs with the fandom. They have a long hard road ahead of them.

Until then, maybe I better go put some clothes on at least.....