This post was written for the August 2026 Midway Menagerie, where the theme is "Where is furry?"

Recently, someone sent me this article by Dr. Devon Price, in which they define queerness not as something you are, but as something you do and the people you surround yourself with. It articulates something I've felt for a while--that "queer" is not just a synonym for "LGBT". "Queer" is counterculture, a rejection of normative ideals. I'm not queer because I was simply born that way, or because I inject the gender juice once a week; I'm queer because I reject normative ideas about gender and sexuality, and because I live in community with others who do the same.

I've been thinking about how this perspective applies to furry. What makes me a furry? Like I talked about last month, it's not necessarily that I innately identify as an animal person.

This month Ån asks the question "Where is furry?", and while I could say that my primary touchpoint with furry is the in-person events--conventions, meetups, Anville, etc.--I think it's worth introspecting about what brings me to these spaces in the first place.

Furry isn't just a fandom; it's a counterculture. It's disproportionately queer and neurodivergent. It's a haven for people too weird to fit in; cringe culture broadly shuns furries^[1] as so weird as to trigger secondhand embarrassment. As my friend Loaf puts it: "being a furry is being gay for gay people". By adopting the label, furries are choosing to own that identity.

I'm furry not because I'm an animal person, but because I choose to adopt the label and everything that comes with it. The way I present in public reflects this.

Folks who know me rarely see me without my collar--a leather collar with a nametag dangling from it. It says "Lark". I wear it pretty much everywhere, sometimes against my better judgement. Most people don't acknowledge it, sometimes I get compliments on it^[2], but wearing it in public has never been a problem^[3].

Folk in the kink community generally read it as fetishwear--that I've been "collared"^[4]. Goths and punks read it as alt fashion. Furries read it as furry attire. None of these explanations tell the full story.

My collar isn't just alt fashion. It's not just queer signaling. It doesn't symbolize my relationship with anyone else. It also predates me identifying as a furry.

My collar represents my relationship with normativity. My relationship with queerness. But most importantly, it represents a commitment to myself--a commitment to own my identity, live authentically, and not let internalized shame direct the course of my life.

When I started wearing my collar out, I was terrified. But I pushed through the discomfort, hoping I would come out the other side of it more resilient. Wearing my collar out started as an exercise in getting over what strangers think of me, but it went on to embody a stubborn refusal to compromise on my identity. I don't hide who I am, because I don't feel like I can be my full authentic self otherwise.

Where is furry? Furry is something I carry with me--symbolically on my body, but also as a promise to be the most Lark I can be. More than just the friends I've made and the events I attend, furry represents growth. Finding myself has been a journey, and I owe much of what I've uncovered so far to this community.