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It do be that way.
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this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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You're close but coming in from an odd angle. The furry fandom is foremost extremely accepting, especially of people considered minorities or "weird" by normal society (LGBTQ+/autism/anything "cringe"). Putting on a fursuit or a furry avatar online and being able to pseudo-anonymously show the true parts of yourself is very liberating to those that don't feel safe being themselves IRL. As an example, I've seen many trans people first switch the gender of their fursona to see how it feels to present as their preferred gender, and how it feels to be acknowledged by others as the person they are inside. I won't say having a fursona is a mandatory part of being in the furry fandom (there are basically no rules on being included), but for many people that have one a fursona is often an idealized version of themselves and who they wish they could be IRL. So yes the furry fandom is often pivotal in a person's "stages of acceptance", but it has nothing to do with any kind of internalized "masking" and everything to do with the fandom's external supportive community helping them become more comfortable with who they've always been.
I'm with you here. For some it may be a transitional "phase" of getting to know yourself privately in the company of others.
I'm sure there's plenty of other reasons to put on a fursuit or fursona, most of which we wouldn't know about, and would vary on an individual basis. The fact remains that furries shouldn't be excluded because of a minority having some inane thought that they're somehow promoting bestiality. IMO, that's as wrong as saying all trans women just want to get into the ladies washroom for reasons.
This community should well know what it's like to be ostracised, so I would have a hard time believing that the LGBTQ+ community would reject furries because of a few people who have unfounded hangups about it.
In an accepting world I think the furry fandom would still be quite large. The accepting community is why a lot of people stick around, but there are many other reasons for it to exist which aren't influenced by being persecuted. Some people feel like they're inherently furry from birth, like a gay person would, and some pick it up during their life as something they want to be associated with aesthetically or otherwise. You've also got therians and various other subcultures that are heavily based around the furry/animalistic themes themselves without considering any sort of societal values.
I also personally think pseudo-anonymity is healthy even when all of society is accepting, and I suspect there's a large draw in being to socialize and try out different versions of yourself while keeping the option to burn your account and start again if you make mistakes. Now more than ever in our surveillance state, it's nice to leave your identity behind and say things without worrying about it coming back to you IRL. I personally find furry/animal avatars to be a fun way of achieving this without needing to pick something boring and impersonal.
As for gender disparity I don't think this is any inherent aspect of the furry fandom but just how predominantly-online cultures are weighted in general. I'd expect this to change given enough time. You can see recent gender studies here, and I highly recommend checking out some of the other pages from their findings if you're interested in some of the bizarre trends that furries have compared to the average person. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that being furry is heavily biased by specific genetic circumstances, and that the explosion of furry culture is a figurative opening of Pandora's box.
Edit: Also I found this page and the graphs+text have a lot of overlap with this topic.
I think the draw is a lot deeper especially when contrasted against people who don't consider themselves furry. The idea that a person "doesn't feel like they had a choice in the matter of being furry" is actually very common, and I can vouch for that feeling as well. Luckily I don't mind that part of me. I wonder how people that reject it feel about themselves - I suspect a lot of the loudest anti-furry people fall into this category, similar to the self-hating LGBTQ+ right-wing.
This is mostly a matter of practicality and logistics from my understanding. Even with giant eyes it's difficult to see out of them, and the big mouths probably need to be matched to the eye size so it doesn't look bizarre. The full head itself also needs to be big enough to fit over a regular human head. I don't think everyone intentionally wants the costumes to look like they do, but there's probably a handful of factors preventing more realistic costumes from being common, like cost increases for custom designs. I'm not really into the fursuiting part (many aren't), so this is just secondhand info.
From my understanding, they get very very hot. I think the main reason people get them is to have fun goofing off at cons or doing photo op stuff. They cost upwards of 3-4k IIRC and they're handmade, so it's probably something you have to wear carefully.