Yes, only a tiny minority of furries are into kinky sex. Similarly, only a tiny minority of ravers take drugs.
For a tiny minority, they're awfully prominent and conspicuous.
It's the drag queen effect. While statistics tell us there are a lot of homosexuals out there, it's the ones who dress and act outrageously that people notice and remember. I'm sure there are many thousands of farm workers who have occasional sex with the animals, the plushys are a minority compared to them...
It's easy to ridicule something you don't understand, Dan, and Andrew (and others, myself included) unfortunately fall for that temptation far too often.
I would like to apologise on behalf of all of us who don't distinguish between "gets off on pretending to be an animal, or some other furry thingamy" and "gets off on pretending to be an animal, or some other furry thingammy, and proceeding to have sex with other furries".
Some of us pretend to be human beings.
Mark: and then there's (c): "actually believes themself to be an animal (or hobbit or anime character or hybrid thereof) on a metaphysical/spiritual/deeper level".
And there's a big difference between laughing at an arguably ridiculous subculture and actually going out and bullying them (as, say, Something Awful advocate doing). IMHO, the former is acceptable (it'd be terribly humorless and politically correct not to), the latter is not. If one's going to go out wearing furry animal costumes/Star Trek costumes/whatever, one should expect that people will think they're a wee bit daft.
http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive.php?s=1010
I think I know a few people who are definately hobbits, although I would never be tactless enough to point it out.
Mark: Apology accepted.
As I understand it there's the large majority of the furry-fandom who just thinks that animal-head people are *nifty*, and draw them, write about them, roleplay them, etc. (The equivalent of the people who watch Star Trek regularly, or have read the LotR series several times and play D&D)
Then there's the minority, who get on TV because they're more interesting, who dress up in costumes, or believe that they have animal souls. (Which really isn't so different than the beliefs of many Indigenous Americans, with totemic animals and suchlike, if one thinks about it)
Then there's the tiny minority who have sex in costume, or hump plushies... which is probably the same size as the people who dress up like Klingons or Hobbits to have sex and get married and such.
If it bleeds, it leads.
Would you stop stabbing out at furries? You really -should- be smart enough to know that the acts of a small subset (i.e., the minority) are not indicative of a group at large. Really. You just come across as exasperatingly ignorant. Do you also get off on other stereotypes?
"All geeks are complete social naïfs, without any redeeming abilities whatsoever. They'll never be successful. And they're all really unnattractive, too."
Yeah. Right.