Picture from Robert Hill.

Any man or woman you interview will tell you : yes, i love the body of men or women. But they will also tell you their like a particular part of their body, a particular attitude, or a particular way to dress. None will tell you : i like everything. If it was the case, we would fall in love with everyone. Fetishism is monotheism. We have always considered monotheism was a progress of humanity, isn't it ?

[Journalist] So, for you, we are all fetishists ?

[Journalist] People often associate fetishism and sadomasochism. Why is it so ? [Streff] Fetishism and sadomasochism are both linked to childhood and [the concept of] game. SM people will all tell you the most important thing for me is the scenario they define in advance, in which they establish exactly who is going to do what during the "session". It is a role playing game, exactly like when the children are playing being a merchand or a doctor. Wether you ask fetishists or sadomasochists, the latter being also often the former, they will all tell you they need to escape reality in order to join an imaginary world in which they can fulfill their most secret, eccentric, and socially incorrect fantasies.

[Journalist] Are fetishist happy people ? [Streff] Yes, because they have the possibility to make themselves happy with their fetish rather easily. As opposite to the cliché of obsessed people, that are often seen as slave of their own obsession, all fetishists that i know are rather well adjusted [socially]. The object of the fetish is something always available to them, which will not turn you down in the bed. It offers the fetishist the pleasure of seeing himself invested of his own desire, and the joy of knowing he can accumplish his fantasy.

She was saying : "When i pet him, it feels like i'm caressing a dog's belly." It was making her very happy.

[Journalist] Are furries fetishists ? [Streff] You are telling some furries are rejected the idea of sex. But for some people, fetishism is not necesarily linked to sexuality, it is invading their entire life. There are also some kinds of fetishism that are not very sexual. Furries are reminding me of this woman i interviewed when i was writing my book Extravagancies of Desire. Her greatest pleasure was to disguise her lover as a dog by wrapping him in yarn. She had knitted a sweater in a way that it was imitating animal fur.

[Journalist] Do you have a definition? [Streff] Fetishism is linked to the first sexual emotion. This is what have explained all the psychanalists, Freud being the first. A fetishist is stuck on an item or situation he associates to a pleasure from his childhood. This is why there is often the shoe [foot fetish ?] : this is what a child sees at first, from being smaller, before looking up and seeing under the skirts. With latex, one can rediscover things from their infant period : an enveloping and warm sensation. But this "first emotion" can be associated to an amazing variety of things : items, body parts, materials, situations, clothes, attitudes... Fetishism is a human thing : it is the triumph of imagination and idealism.

Scenarist and writter, Jean Stress is the author of the most exhaustive (and the most entertaining) book about fetishism : Treaty of fetishist for the use of younger generations [directly translated]

Fetishism is the triumph of imagination and idealism.

Confusions. "The paradox with furries, is that they are seen as unhealthy [criminal] people, while the only thing they are looking for is spontaneity and innocence", Katharine Gates deplores. "They are traumatized by the confusions done by some medias", Agnès Giard, journalist and author of the book Le Sexe Bizarre [The Strange Sex], adds. "They feel compeled to repeat they are neither pedophiles nor zoophiles, that it is a totally different thing". On his internet site, Fox Wolfie Gallen, a furry and plushophile, is hammering it : "I am not attracted by [human] skin, weither it is the one of an adult or a child. I am only attracted by plushies." After these precisions, he proposes a poll : "Which plushie odour do you prefer ? Do you prefer making love to your own plushies or the other people's ?" On the result page, we find out that 76% of the people who answered are attracted by "people making love in an animal suit", while only 9% by "plushies making love with each love."

"We have been the first ones to wear fursuits (name of the furry costumes). When you wear them, you're becoming someone else. As we can barely talk, in order to communicate we are touching, caressing, clawing each other..." Today, being an illustrator, Robert escapes [reality] by drawing furries. "I am becoming Robert the Bear. I like to draw sexual stuff, in which a big muscled wolf is forced to play a woman role." A hobby which, he says, doesn't prevent him to have a normal social life.

...he got as a present at 4 years old. "I was going everywhere wearing it, i didnt want to take it off anymore." After that, i felt in love with Baloo the Bear." During many years, Robert worked at Disneyland as the "characters" walking around in the park. "I've done them all, Mickey, Pluto, the Three Little Pigs... but they wanted to promote me to manager, so i left." A bit later, in the end of the 80s, he founds the first conventions with a bunch of friends.

to the sodomite ferret, this american fetishism specialist has met many furries. "Most of them have started very young to associate pleasure with plushies and cartoons", she tells. "After that, they often met a family context in which sex was considered a bad thing, so they kept projecting their fantasies in this universe". For Robert, everything started with a lion suit...

Lion suit. Robert, as you understood, belongs to the 2nd category. "It's a reassuring universe, in which you can express all your fantasies without feeling like doing something dirty", he explains. "Most furries are attracted by the concept of a sexuality turned as a game and a feral act, and therefore stripped of guilt", confirms Katharine Gates, author of the book Deviant Desires. From the transgender marmot...

Because it is a community we are talking about, as astonishing as it is. On internet, you can find several thousands members, english, german, spanish, swedish, french furries. Several times a year, in Europe and USA, they are gathering at convetions. By the end of July, the inhabitants of Nuremberg, in Germany, have seen hundreds men and women disguised as wolves, lions, weasels... In a way, an International [association] dedicated to furs. Except that furries are forever divided in 2 categories. Those who followed the chastity ideals depicted in cartoons and are rejecting any sexual ideas. [lol Christian furries] And those who, in the contrary, have their interests entirely revolving around the "yiff", or "yiffy" (furry terms refering to sexual acts).

Four years ago, the american magazine Vanity Fair published a long article featuring Fox Wolfie Gallen. The journalist Georges Gurley attended one of the convention, the Midwest FurFest, near Chicago, and discovered the unsuspected joys of Skritching (the act of scratching each other while... [article goes on next page]

Hilda, the vixen.

Jean Streff has written a book about fetishist habits.

tiger, coyote, fox). They are cuddling, scratching [each other], "or much more". Robert, a bisexual, appreciates the contact of plushies, even if, as he insist "i am not a plushophile". This term, originating from America, refers to those who have sexual relations with their plushie animals, they are a small sub-category of the furry community.

LIBERATION (french leftist newspaper) Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 August 2005