Gendersaurus: My Gender Journey in the Furry Fandom

Goddess, God, and every deity
of the Earth, the Sky, and the mighty Sea,
to your power I now surrender.
Free me from this thing called gender!
Let me be like the great oak tree,
unconcerned with what humans see,
and from these shackles let me be free!

I've never felt at home in the world of the masculine. I don't like sports (except maybe professional wrestling), I don't like working out, I'm not big on cars, the list goes on. But I always felt like I had to fit in a masculine, man shaped box. I like having a beard, after all. But I have since found out about a lot of different identities on what we know call "the gender spectrum." And my gateway drug was furry porn.

Yes, that's right, I'm a furry, and I'm into it that way. I'm not ashamed. There' a marked difference about fantasizing being a cartoon, anthropomorphic animal and having sex with other such anthropomorphic beings, and from wanting to screw people's pets. I have not been, and never will be, attracted to regular animals. I do, however, like it when animal traits are combined with human ones. I have no idea why, I just do. It's just how I'm wired.

However, I didn't step my toes into the fandom until the last year or so. Embarrassment kept me away, especially because, for me, there was certainly a sexual aspect. My sexuality is something that I still have a hard time accepting about myself. Finally, though, curiosity won over, and I created a fursona. Originally, I was a black cat, and I began interacting with furries on social media. It was then that I discovered posts from transgender and gender nonconforming individuals in the furry fandom. Posts that made me rethink my own gender. And what I found when I engaged with the people who made the posts is that the were very willing to talk to me about what I was feeling. These interactions led me to realize that I did not feel comfortable with being called a man or thought of as a man, but that I still liked some elements of masculinity. Far from rejecting this idea, the furries I met accepted me for who I am.

My fursona has changed since then. I became a  unicorn, then a cat again, then a dragon, then a dinosaur, then a dragon a second time, and now I'm a dinosaur again. My thoughts on gender have fluctuated almost as much. I now Identify as an agender masculine nonbinary person. But you can just refer to me as a dinosaur, and I wouldn't correct you.

Ref sheet by Scoliwings

The furry fandom gets a lot of flack from people who are turned off by the sexual aspect. But the fandom itself embraces sexuality to the extent that it has become a very welcoming place for LGBTQIA+ individuals. We find that we are able to express ourselves to the fullest extent through our fursonas, embracing an idealized version of ourselves that can do things we can't and be things we aren't. It just so happens that sex and kink are a part of that. And if you have a problem with that, tough! Sex is a natural part of who we are and it's time that we as a society embraced it instead of running scared from it.