yes I wear a tail,not all the time but alot.I like my tail.I have several in different colors and fur types.
There are animal identified people out there. You personally might not know any, but I do. I know several. Some are cats,wolves,birds,and other-kin .And they are my friends.Some are acquaintances.Some are furs I have seen around.Some I know only on the web..The thing furs and GBLT's have in common is we are not happy in the mainstream,some people cannot find happiness in the mainstream. We make an identity that suits ourselves instead of sitting around in the closet drowning in the mainstream.
Accepting others with identities you don't relate to is not a matter of striking a balance between a few limited perceptions. It's about simultaneously relating to many kinds of identities in order to see stereoscopically into the complexity that identity potentially can be in a society that could be free..It is also aknowleging that anyone's identity does not have to be limited by sex,gender or even species. Gender queer means your gender is not male or female,or androgynous,It is ambiguous and changes.That flexibility is arrived at by seeing a bigger reality ,of what identity means and it's potentiality as a thing of liberation relating to it's complex and unique ways in a web of identities in relation to other identities together.
Humanity has mindlessly clung to a destructive meta narrative,A well accepted fantasy where people have put humanity itself as the pinnacle of creation,as the lord of the world , believing on a core level humankind is so much better than mere "dumb" animals.. And if you think defending animal identified people is pointless you might need to learn more about why some forms of human culture is so toxic to life, so in denial, so stubborn in it is compulsive categorizing labeling ,And it's destructive hierarchy games, and the toxins and fears is what makes a culture that destroys the world as it fears ,derides and crushes things it cannot control or understand rather than risk finding a piece of themselves in that de-legitimatized 'other'.
Culture is nothing more but a web of individual identities in relationship to each other it can be big like the entire country or smaller like the gblt group here.
Beliefs about what should be or shouldn't be are fears that people absorb from many sources in their lives while living inside their culture.Beliefs shape alot about how people in said culture choose to interact with others that have non mainstream identities.It shapes whether they can even SEE them self in anyone else or not.
If you cannot see yourself in someone else who may have a very different identity than your own or you refuse to , you can easily "other" them, to the point they are objectified into scapegoats or "threats" or weirdoes to be rejected or scapegoated.. Defined as that other,a person and their identity as well is being rendered into an object of derision.
A person or a whole culture than can rationalize being mean to them, excluding them, and encourage the rest of the culture of like minded individuals to also hate and continue alienating further the objectified identity of a person or people or entire other culture, by refusing to be queer about it..
If everyone is potentially queer, and queer freedom is in everyone's interest, then it is obvious that we should all be fighting for queer liberation side by side, regardless of sexuality or gender.
Queerness is an ability and choice to relate to identities of all kinds and recognize it as part of themselves.
It is so easy when you are queer to see how differences can become other-ed,and identities thus other-ed to be objectified.Because being queer you run into it everywhere there are people that want to"other" you.
That disengagement of relation is what is allowing them to be bashed and the culture of individuals who cannot see themselves in the person's identity,be they black, gay, trans or feline,the 'mainstream norm followers will feel no shame in doing cruelty to that other-ed objectified person because they refuse to see them as an equal to themselves because they refuse to see a piece of themselves in them.
However, as Lindsey puts it, perhaps through interacting with her project, others'(furries trans-genders) "perspectives on the dominant culture will have been queered, as they look for themselves in the other, and find the other in themselves."
http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/kitchenslarkin/instructor.htmlI am Queer that is why I speak up for furries and for animal identified people,fat people,gays,body modified people, trans-genders,cross dressers,drag kings,gender queers,freaks,mentally ill people,or any other social scapegoats that are not harming anyone but are get bashed for being what they are. I seek the panther qualities in all of you to find the panther qualities in myself that makes me queer.
That seeking of identity by relating the self to other selves is the deeper meaning of what queerness is about at it's core.And being queer to others is the very thing that removes the sickening cultural oppression of different kinds if people and the denial of their rights to identify as who they are for whatever reason by the culture that refuses to see themselves in what they can't understand or tolerate in other people.
I am interacting as I truly am a Queer feline identified transgender because I seek to relate and embrace the other to find the self in relation within the other and the other within me..
And Like all of you, I too seek Liberation from the pain of being out-casted and other-ed by any culture that refuses to see me as part of itself,another variety of valid living being with an identity as valid as their own identity is to themselves.
We cannot be free beings if part of us is still not free. And I can't think of a more political reason to do what I do than that.
http://www.petertatchell.net/Equality%20-%20Limits%20and%20Deficiencies/beyond%20equality.htm