lupestripe: (Default)
lupestripe ([personal profile] lupestripe) wrote2009-11-30 11:45 am

Explaining The Furry Thing

Yesterday, when walking around the Christmas Market in Manchester, a lady selling overly-expensive pork pies asked me why I was wearing my collar. My collar is an important part of me - it symbolises my relationship with Wolfie more than anything else, as well as me being furry. It's something that I enjoy wearing on a day-to-day basis and to me it's like a ring, necklace or bracelet.

However, I also have to accept that a 27 year old man wearing a dog collar is going to draw some funny looks and questions. I couldn't really answer her question really - I can't go into the whole ownership D/s thing and I can't really extol being a furry to people who probably wouldn't understand. I also can't really say I am a goth as goths tend not to wear tags on their collars and I rarely dress in all black.

Apart from "it's something I enjoy doing", which is somewhat of a limp reason, what else can I say? Granted, I am not answerable to anyone but I don't wish to be rude. Any ideas?

P.S. A collar does make a really nice scarf as it does keep your neck warm when it's cold :-)

[identity profile] schnee.livejournal.com 2009-11-30 01:45 pm (UTC)(link)

I couldn't really answer her question really - I can't go into the whole ownership D/s thing and I can't really extol being a furry to people who probably wouldn't understand.

Why not?

Put another way, can't you, or don't you want to? It's OK to not want to, of course, but I think doing it would actually be relatively easy — if you said "it's an SM thing"[1], chances are that even though she'd not really understand the specifics of your relationship power dynamics etc., she'd have a general idea, at least: the question "why are you wearing a collar" would've been answered.

Of course, it's hard to predict how she would react. It's quite possible she wouldn't accept it, but then, you don't know her, and as long as YOU accept it, the opinion of a random stranger needn't concern you, right? :)

Put another way — it's part of you, and it's a part that's good and fine and that you can be proud of. There's nothing shameful about it, nothing that would need to be hidden or lied about; you can hold your head high and say "this is who and what I am", and if anybody doesn't accept that... well, then that's their problem, not yours.

  1. Yes, you and I both know that "BDSM" is really the correct term, but random people on the street won't, and you gotta speak their language. :)