Q In my native New York, I used to dress as Yogi Bear and have sex with
like-minded women. Now I live here and I’ve met a girl; should I tell her
I’m a ‘furry’?
DR THOMAS STUTTAFORD
A Perhaps you are a man whose furry alter ego doesn’t expect his
girlfriend to join him in mating games in his strange make-believe world.
Even so, you should tell a future partner about your unusual obsession.
It is most unlikely that she will want to spend her Saturday nights sweltering
in a bear suit. Almost certainly she would rather not share a drink with you
at the bar when you and your friends are dressed as ostriches, moose or
dogs. And even if she did join in with the drinking, it is most unlikely
that she would want to take part in the sex games enjoyed by your furry
friends. Known as “skritching”, these involve the bears and bunnies grooming
each other before piling in a great heap on the floor.
The average woman, on reaching the apparent safety of your room, would
probably run a mile to hear you announce that the time had come for a bit of
“yiff”, because you were feeling “yiffy”. Translated from furry-world slang,
this means sex because you are feeling randy. In the list of weird fetishes,
furry behaviour is in the championship – if not the premier – league.
Even if your new-found love is so besotted with you that she agrees to mixing
with you and a menagerie of furry beasts, you still have to tell her that
you are a Yogi Bear fetishist. Don’t be surprised to see her head for the
door.
Obsessions were once defined as fetishist if sexual satisfaction could be
obtained only when the obsessional person was in contact with the favoured
inanimate object. The term is now used more loosely to describe heightened
sexual enjoyment during foreplay or intercourse when touching or feeling
such materials as leather, shoes, silk, fur (usually a coat or rug rather
than a furry outfit), rubber, stockings, underclothing, or a host of others.
It doesn’t include an obsession about some particular part of the body,
usually breasts, bottoms, feet, belly buttons or deformities and
amputations. This obsession is known as partialism.
In some people, psychiatric problems involve more serious anthropomorphic
delusions. One morning I was slipping into my consulting room expecting to
spend a quiet day discussing insomnia, stress, high blood pressure, obesity,
angina and other problems of modern life, when I was told I was needed
urgently elsewhere. Mr Smith (not his real name), an anxious senior
executive, was convinced he was a dog. He was on all fours barking and
growling wildly as he guarded his door. He was threatening to bite anyone
who walked down the corridor. Luckily he was quite friendly when I came and
gave me a welcoming bark before allowing himself to be led to the waiting
ambulance.
On another occasion a patient’s husband was refusing to let his wife go, as
she wanted, to the local psychiatric hospital. Later he told me why he had
such a fear of psychiatric units. When a young man in the 1930s, he was a
butcher’s boy and part of his job was to deliver meat to a mental hospital.
When the butcher’s van drove up to the kitchen it was greeted by a pack of
deranged men barking wildly. They thought they were dogs about to be thrown
a bone.
Delusional states can now usually be treated. Fetishism is a different problem
but if necessary may be moderated by psychotherapy combined with medication.
Dr Thomas Stuttaford, The Times doctor, spent many years working
in a genitourinary clinic
SUZI GODSON
A Rubber? Fine. Leather? Of course. Polyester faux fur? Um, no. Blame
the stiff upper lip but when it comes to fetishes, being tied up and spanked
by a stoic in squeaky lace-up shoes is a much more British cup of tea.
We like our fetish to be restrained – suppression, inhibition, secrecy, pain,
lying back and thinking of England without removing one’s black ankle socks,
that kind of thing. Not for us the flamboyant joviality of dressing up as
teddy bears and making out like rabbits.
To the average British person, dressing up in furry animal outfits is
something associated with theme parks, children’s party entertainers and
charity fundraisers. Running 26 miles on a hot summer’s day dressed as a
chicken is perfectly acceptable, but an erotic interest in Pudsey, the
retinally challenged Children in Need teddy, is not in our cultural script.
And when it comes to women, particularly doe-eyed college girls with baby
voices, never, ever, mistake a penchant for plush with anything more sexy.
Girls like soft toys. But not in that way.
You openly admit that dressing up has a sexual context for you, but,
apparently, being a furry is not necessarily a sexual predilection. In fact,
several of your furry brethren say that they are irritated at the
increasingly widely held belief that “fursuiting” is a sexual fetish.
Furries describe themselves as big fans of animals with human characteristics
– characters who can talk, walk on two legs and use opposable thumbs – and
they dress up in costume so that they can take on the physical and mental
form of their chosen character. As you do. They stress that few fur suits
that are sold have been adapted with sexual features. However, having had a
look at www.fursuitsex.com, it’s clear that one doesn’t need a GCSE in
domestic science to snip a handy set of holes in a Snagglepuss costume.
Under the circumstances, I think it would be naive to unload your furry little
secret and expect your girlfriend to react sympathetically. Unless she is
nursing a fetish of her own, the chance of her volunteering to dress up as
Boo Boo and stroke your Yogi Bear is about as likely as Esperanto becoming a
European tongue. So, unless you feel that she is “the one”, you might be
better off trying to find a partner who has already discovered her inner
fox/bear/skunk. There is a fairly hot-looking female skunk/tiger presenting
herself on You Tube at the moment. She dances provocatively by her double
bed, wearing a pink silk slip over her black-and-white tiger-striped body.
Her skunk face has a knowing smile and her big cartoon eyes stare out at the
viewer in a challenging way. She sits down on the bed, arches her back and
says “Ooooh, sexy”. In a very deep male voice.
Britain’s furry community may be smaller than in the US, but there are people
here who share your interest. UKFur (www.ukfur.org), the main website for
furries in the UK, has more than 1,500 members and they arrange
get-togethers in London and around the country. The website is being
overhauled at the moment but the forums, including all of the regional
forums, are active. The London group gets together every few weeks to
discuss their interests. Apparently, the soft-toy department at Hamleys is a
favourite venue.
Suzi Godson is author of The Sex Book (Cassell, £16.99) and
The Body Bible (Penguin, £16.99)
timesonline.co.uk/love
E-mail your sexual dilemmas to body&soul@thetimes.co.uk or write to Body&Soul,
The Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT
