I’ve found that a good way to check for actual tolerance in a group is how they treat their furries.

Also, the furries make the internet work. plz. I need the furry hacking power in the world.

  • Anthros are characters that are somewhere between a given animal and human.

    But to me this raises an interesting supposition:

    Narnia features animals with human intellects, such as Phillip, the horse or Mr. and Mrs. Beaver who were part of the underground railroad and contacts for the resistance. And there was Mr. Fox who they wouldn’t fully trust because he was related too closely to the White Witch’s wolves.

    Now imagine someone were to write a Narnia fanfic about a romance between a beaver and a fox. It’s quite dramatic, since the Beaver clan is social conservative as it is, and think folk should keep to their species, and foxes wily like coyotes and can’t be trusted. But the beaver girl loves her foxy beau and he seems to reciprocate despite any dispositions otherwise, and the couple considers eloping.

    Is that bestiality, or rather is it wrong the way bestiality is wrong?

    If not, then its not the genitalia that are the problem, its the capacity to give informed consent.

    (Not that US society believes in informed consent regarding anything non-sexual such as large purchases, leases or political decisions, but that’s a different rant.)

    • lugal@sopuli.xyz
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      5 days ago

      I can answer you on more than one level so why wouldn’t I.

      First let me apprecheate how fleshed out your example is! You could have kept it simple but you did a great job.

      In universe, this wouldn’t be anything like beastiality but more like mixed race or same sex couples. Totally fine and none of their business.

      Out of universe it is a bit more complicated. Sure, giving consent is important, but there are things that are in real life beyond consent and you would normalize them by creating a universe where consent is possible if that makes sense. You can always say “he killed her but she will be reborn and they had a safe word” or “she has the body of a child but the mind of an old woman so she could give consent”. Iirc this normalizing effect is the reason, even in drawn or written form, depicting sex with minors is illegal.

      So is your fanfic about the romance of a beaver and a fox normalizing sex between humans and animals? Is it an allegory for mixed race or enemy families? Is it a furry fantasy? I would say in most cases, it’s one of the latter and therefore not a problem. If the genitalias are too explicitly non human, maybe it’s the first.

      About anthros: If they are between humans and animals, I assume they have human genitalia and therefore not part of the rule. You could argue they aren’t fully human and therefore do not have human genitalia even tho they look the same, but than this applies to elves, vulcans, (olympic) gods, …

      If the rule is interpreted arbitarrily in this unnecessarily strict sense, I would give you “not actively discriminated against but forgotten” which is bad enough and reading the rule that way is active discrimination, but not on the side of the people who wrote the rule but by those you enact it. I hope I’m making sense. I donated halve a liter of blood today so I blame anything on that.