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Driven, then, instead of looney. He’s found scary real pedophilic predators in the furry fandom, and is sounding an alarm. He has no idea he’s committing the Cardiologist Criminal / Catholic Priest Pederast / Chinese Robber fallacy because he’s never applied Bayes’ Theorem to the stats. To quote Scott’s tag on the end of the second Cardiologist blogpost:
When confronted with a community that consists largely of men meeting up for sex while wearing animal costumes and is home to at least a few outspoken 'minor attracted persons' and animal enthusiasts, it seems reasonable to forego rigorous statistical analysis of exactly how likely one's children are to get raped and simply keep them away from furries instead.
It's a decision with virtually no costs and potentially large benefits, unlike the decision to avoid heart surgeons or Chinese people.
He misunderstands furries pretty significantly if he models the fandom as something which “consists largely of men meeting up for sex”. Fascination with the anthropomorphic body is not primarily a sexual endeavor, but one of identification. It feels right to many people with autism in a way human bodies feel wrong.
The fascination may become full-blown species dysphoria. As with transgender and apotemnophilia, simply cosplaying may scratch the dysphoric itch, and the number of actual fursuiters is heavily dwarfed by those who use art, fiction, and interactive roleplay to explore their furry identity.
This may be the first time many here have heard of this facet of the furry fandom, at least circa 2002 when I was stolen away from it by pressing human concerns.
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