It gets gayer.

Enough with the fear brigade. I never sensed you were normalising a young adult having sex with a near sixteen year old, Dan. Sharing your life experience, how is that saying everyone should go fo it. You were and are fine with it, that is a discrete story. Nobody should or needs to take that as some endorsement.
Teenages will continue to do whatever the hell they want to do, they are no longer children at fifteen- sixteen, and they can be very clever at staying under the radar.

"partly because of different mental problems that I had not known about, I ended up harassing her and acting terribly"

take some personal responsibility! You 'ended up' harassing her? Passive language like this sets off alarm bells (I mean, not that a 25 year old fucking a 15 year old didn't... 15 dude. An old looking 17 year old I could understand... but 15? That's barely a teenager.

@3 yeah and it doesn't even help the point he's trying to make, he could have been a shitty harassing ex boyfriend just as easily to a 65 year old. I'm sure there are correlations between shitty 20somethings who fuck underage women (the majority of teen pregnancies are fathered that way I hear) and generally abusive controlling partners but this anecdote does not change anything. Yes, dickful thinking can latch onto any affirmation to go ahead and do dumb things, but that is not the circumstance that Dan has long described and that dickful thinking would have found something else to latch onto instead.

I'll second the suggestion that Dan attend a furry convention, lots and lots of fun creative people and some amazing costumes. I'll add to that while the niche kinks are very much in the minority, there is a fair bit of romance that goes on, casual and long term. But it's more or less about shared interests, and not necessarily about the fur scene. Something along the lines of:

Furry #1 "Oh I just love drawing furry comics, and I'll never stop doing that. But my true passion is painting in the Impressionistic style."

Furry #2 "No shit? Me too! I was featured at the West Gallery a couple months ago."

Furry #1 "Oh wow, I didn't realize that was you, some amazing work. Say... you're pretty cute, wanna hook up?"

Furrry #2 "Yeah! Let's go to my hotel room!"

I’ve always had the impression that furry conventions are as much about sex as any other nerd/fan convention. It may not be the primary focus, but it’s definitely going on; it’s also no more weird than hooking up with a guy at Comicon specifically because he was cosplaying as, say, Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Calling it a “kink convention” is not calling it a “deviant convention,” or something else insulting. It just means that people who enjoy a particular thing, often in a sexual way, have gotten together to talk about that thing.

It bugs the shit out of me that Dan Savage's byline says he's "a nationally syndicated sex advice columnist". We get Savage Love in our local print rag, here in Toronto (that's Canada, eh?), but really, there are no countries other than USA.

"the dance competitions, the poker tournament, the charity auctions," So this is like a live-action Dogs Playing Poker painting?

.....And that's EXACTLY why so many people wanted Dan to say he was traumatized and not act so blasé about his experience: so fucking perverts couldn't justify creeping on high school freshman. Stop using the campsite rule to justify fucking naive and underaged teens, assholes. Just because it MIGHT not be traumatic for them doesn't mean you get to manipulate the situation and throw a loaded die.

I now require excellent oral hygiene habits as a pre requisite in any potential partners, after having a boyfriend that didn't for way too long. Never again.

*freshmen. Dammit, I can't write when I'm tired.

Again, I think these comparisons to reckless driving are nonsense. This guy didn’t just have sex with this young woman, but by his own admission, stalked her thereafter. My guess is that from the start, he started getting possessive and obsessive.

Has this furry ever been to a kink event? There are often sessions on relationships, proper used of gear, dancing, and other non-sexual activities.

The how to for women on organizing their own gangbang is spot on. I have seen women do this without difficultly at swingers clubs.

I’ve never been to a furry convention, but I’ve been to other conventions that have a strong furry component and I’m pretty familiar with furry culture. I’m mostly involved in furry stuff for fetish reasons so I might have a biased perspective, but I think the furry subculture is a lot more sexual than some furries would have you believe. They say only 5% of furries are perverts, but really, if you imagine yourself as an animal why wouldn’t you imagine yourself doing sexual things as that persona? It’s just logical. I think it’s like anime conventions, some anime fans will strongly deny there’s anything sexual about being an anime fan but the overwhelming popularity of hentai says otherwise. I think furries are understandably upset about how pop culture portrays them as freaks but there’s nothing inherently freakish or wrong about furry porn so they shouldn’t respond to media smearing by denying that aspect of the culture exists. I find it especially annoying when furries point to fetishists and say they are ruining the furry community. What’s even worse is when people who are in a small niche fetish community claim their interest is not sexual or not as deviant as some other aspect of the community. If you are into furry culture but not interested in the sexual side that’s fine but you don’t have to try to police the rest of us.

Despite the prostetations of those focused on respectability politics, furry fandom IS primarily about sexuality. Furry conventions aren't (generally) giant orgies, but furries are distinct from (also potentially overlapping with) mascots or Disney World employees, who dress up for work, cosplayers, who dress up for art, playful absurdists, who dress up for fun or culture jamming, and people celebrating Halloween. Excepting the (admittedly disproportionately large) asexual subset, furries like to fuck in their fursonae, and the connection to sexuality is a primary part of the identity (as it is for most people of most sexual orientations - sexuality, race - which would include non-human identitification as well as identifying as a human racial caste, and gender are the most important aspects of identity for most people).

When I was younger, the men in their early to mid 20s who fucked girls still in high school were not (as far as I remember in my own experience) manipulative masterminds looking for easy pussy. They were instead just losers who still hung out with teenagers because people their own age had jobs and families and responsibilities and hobbies and they could not keep up with their peers. If this is more generally true (and not just something that tended to happen in my own neighborhood and social circles) then I wonder if the correlation with unintended pregnancy (the teen girls getting knocked up by the older guys) has more to do with just general immaturity and irresponsibility- these guys were ALREADY that way and so teen girls who were attracted to them were frequently more naive and immature themselves.

I mean, look at the letter. Aside from the fact that he has mental problems and that he manipulates and harasses the women he dates, he's also a 25 year old who still parties with 15 year olds in the first place. I just figure that like usually attracts like- a woman his own age is just as likely to be carrying baggage as he is so I'm not saying he can't find women his own age who would date him. But I assume that there are fewer 25 year old women who have their heads screwed on right and who are not interested in drama who wouldn't filter him out than there are responsible mature 15 year olds. In short, his age gives him leverage with very young girls that he doesn't have with women his own age.

As someone who's been regularly attending furry conventions for the last couple of decades, @6 basically has the right idea.

To be fair, sexuality is a big deal to furries, but that's because it's a big deal to people. Furries, by and large, are very accepting of a lot of folks' kinks, quirks, baggage, etc., sometimes to a fault, and that means you might have a slightly easier time getting laid at a furry convention than other fandom events. And that's influenced somewhat by the fact that a lot of us have had to repress ourselves because -- as pointed out -- the majority of the fandom is somewhere in the QUILTBAG, and we indulge a bit more at conventions because we couldn't/can't back in 'real life.' But furry conventions have more in common with a Star Trek convention than the Folsom Street Fair.

@14 -- You don't know what you're talking about, and it shows. Fursuiters are a subset of the furry fandom, not the entirety of it. Very few of them directly incorporate their fursuits into sex play (for one thing, it's uncomfortable as hell), and most of them are into fursuiting for the same reasons as other people who dress up at conventions and in fandom spaces, some of which you mention: Some are cosplaying (there are fandom-made Zootopia fursuits that are better than the official Disney mascot costumes), some are doing it for the art, some are 'playful absurdists' (which is a nice turn of phrase, everything else in your post aside), and some actually do it for work (some fursuiters do mascot work for businesses, and many do charity events in suits). You come very close to seeming like you know what you're talking about, but I've got 20+ years of personal experience that says there's far more you don't know. Saying that those few people who do incorporate their suits into their sexuality are representative of the fandom as a whole is like saying Star Trek nerds are entirely represented by the dentist from the Trekkies documentary who tells Denise Crosby about how he and his wife roleplay being Tasha Yar and Data in the bedroom.

I agree with recommendations others have made, that Dan should hit up a convention for a day or so. If not one in/around the PNW, then perhaps one of the bigger ones like Midwest Furfest (in Chicago), Anthrocon (in Pittsburgh), or Biggest Little Fur Con (in Reno). Really, I think most folks should check out a convention at least once, especially if you're interested in independent art, animation, writing, and music. All of these things can be found in abundance, especially at the larger conventions, and dropping a few bucks on a day badge and spending a few hours wandering around a convention hall and/or hitting up a concert or two is going to give you some stories to tell.

Mythic Fox, I have no knowledge nor opinions on this subject, but JH did not say they fuck in their suits. He said they fuck in their personas. From an outsider point of view, I'm mildly curious how much of being a furry is about sexuality. It sure does seem from short google searches that there is an abundance of furry porn- far more than I've seen for other cosplay or fandoms. It seems a stretch to say that a similar proportion of the furry fandom incorporates that into their sexuality as in the Star Trek fandom. Certainly a quick glance at the art from the various fandoms does not support that comparison.

I fucked a lot of older guys when I was in my teens.

And something which was going on, which I half understood at the time and see quite clearly now, was that them not being high school guys was a lot of the point.

To them, all the minute status indicators that were so vital in school didn't matter. that I wasn't wearing exactly the right pair of jeans, or that my hair was not feathered in just the perfect way. Their own high school days were far enough behind them that they weren't tuned in to exactly what was cool and what was hopeless, to a kid my own age. They also lived in a bigger world, where that stuff just mattered less. To me, it was like a promise that eventually I'd get to that bigger world myself.

This applied to interests, too - they were that much more likely to not find it weird and offputting that I wanted to talk about things I was interested in. I learned later that nobody is such a good listener as the guy who is planning to get in your pants later that evening - at the time I was just so pleased that I could talk and not be shut down.

And they tended to be better lays - more experience, and probably some of it with women rather than girls, who were more likely to ask for what they wanted, made a difference.

So, I dunno what those guys got out of the encounters - whether they were opportunists, or users, or losers, but for me, I was getting something I wanted, and that I was not getting from boys my own age.

Times have changed, the culture has changed, and I'm not saying that I think it's a good idea for there to be open season on 14 and 15 year olds. But I think ignoring the sexual agency of teens dioesn't get us anywhere. It didn't work back in the fifties when everyone pretended to be shocked and horrified to find that teens were fucking, and it doesn't work now.

I think @18/agony provides more valuable insight into these sexual encounters, in particular, that this happens regularly and the reasons that make these encounters enjoyable. This isn’t an argument for these sexual relationships, but hearing someone discuss their own experiences at a similar age is more meaningful than the generalized, and rather overwrought comments that moralize against these encounters.

@17 You are correct, it's nothing at all like the Star Trek fandom. A lot of furries are not just "fans," they ARE furries, it is their identity in a way that is not common in other fandoms. I'm sure there are Star Trek fans who identify as Star Trek characters but it's uncommon enough that it would be regarded as a little nuts by the community. Furry culture is unusual and I don't see the point of denying it is. In my experience most furries are well aware of the unusual nature of furriness though.

Here's something from Wikipedia about furry sexuality.

"Sexual attraction to furry characters is a polarizing issue. In one survey with 4,300 furry respondents, 37% answered that sexual attraction is important in their furry activities, 38% were ambivalent, and 24% answered that it has little or nothing to do with their furry activities.[41] In a different online survey, 33% of furry respondents answered that they have a "significant sexual interest in furry", another 46% stated they have a "minor sexual interest in furry", and the remaining 21% stated they have a "non-sexual interest in furry". The survey specifically avoided adult-oriented websites to prevent bias.[14] Another survey found that 96.3% of male furry respondents reported viewing furry pornography, compared with 78.3% of female; males estimated 50.9% of all furry art they view is pornographic, compared with 30.7% female. Furries have a slight preference for pornographic furry artwork over non-pornographic artwork. 17.1% of males reported that when they viewed pornography it is exclusively or near-exclusively furry pornography, and only about 5% reported that pornography was the top factor which got them into the fandom.[46]"

It's interesting that less than half of furries say sexual attraction is an important part of their fandom but an overwhelming majority of furries look at furry porn. I think the kind of porn you choose to look at matters.

@3 Agreed, this person seems like a narcissist at best and a psychopath at worst. You don't get to claim that you had some very nice sit-down Campsite Rule discussion with the young lass when you then spent the next month harassing you. He is viewing that meeting through rose-tinted glasses.

@9 You're right, that Campsite Rule is really a tricky thing. I think Dan's concept is hat someone in their late teens/early 20s is aided by being nurtured by someone in their 30s/40s. But every a-hole who wants to pretend to be sex-positive uses it to justify their sketchy behavior. A solid rule is that if the person lives at home and all of their peers live at home, they're not a candidate for the Campsite Rule. You have to be out in the world, living and learning.

"Months after an amicable breakup, partly because of different mental problems that I had not known about, I ended up harassing her and acting terribly." Yup, how many times have I said: Any adult who will have sex with a teenager has serious issues around their own maturity. It's like the thing with not wanting to be in any club that would have you as a member: Any adult who'd fuck a 15-year-old is not someone you want to fuck.

To the Berlin tourist, you were probably being mocked for being American. Sorry.

Is being a furry a kink? Y/N. If Yes, than a furry convention is a big kink event, even if all the programming is SFW. A munch is a kink event, even though there is no BDSM play involved. It is people meeting up for the sole reason of their shared kinks. So is a furry convention, ergo it is a big kink event.

BDF I had a similar reading of the Berlin tourist's account. Strip away the details about sexuality and what happened is an American overheard Germans speaking German in German, assumed they were talking about him (the American) and asked them (the Germans) in English to tell him what they said in English. Which really is bad form anywhere you travel, right? If he doesn't speak German, how does he know the jokes were about him? And moreover, that "sense of superiority" thing- I'm not so sure. American service industry workers are expected to be super polite, kiss customer ass, say all sorts of please/thank you stuff, be very attentitve, etc. This is just not the norm (in my experience) in Europe- it's often hard to find good service and no one expects super politeness and friendliness to strangers. So maybe the bartender was acting superior and making fun of the American. More likely, the bartender was just giving rather aloof or shitty service which (ime) is how German bartenders pretty frequently act, and the American was thin-skinned, easily offended then demanded the German to speak English which (ime) is how American tourists pretty frequently act.

But sure- I agree it probably has more to do with him being American than him being straight. I have rarely met a German man who didn't feel the need to tell me what he thinks of Americans.

"an American overheard Germans speaking German in German"

should say in Germany of course

EmmaLiz @23: Exactly. Only an asshole tourist would demand that someone speak the tourist's language in the native's own country. You're also correct that "the customer is always right" is a distinctly American attitude. I like to joke that it all evens out when Americans who haven't clued themselves in to the fact that customs are different elsewhere come to Europe, get what they feel is terrible service because the wait staffer isn't topping up their water and asking how their meal is every two minutes, and decide to leave a "small" 10% tip as revenge. The joke of course is that 10% in Europe is a standard tip for the standard service provided, so everyone is happy in the end.