For context, I’m a furry, and I’ve had fursuits for about 5 years.
I attend my local furmeet (furry meetup) every month, I thoroughly enjoy them and find it refreshing to be around kind and sociable people. I’m acquainted with most of the people there and have even made some amazing friends through the meets, so I wanted to celebrate it with a dedicated twitter post, not super flattering I know but I at least wanted my friends to know I appreciate them.
So I posted on twitter with some of the group photos (because we take a group photo at every meet) and people started flaming for ‘being an attention seeker’, being ‘the most annoying person in a group photo’, and ‘begging for attention’ because I’m always crouched in the front of the group.
My thoughts were that there’s a lot of people to get into one photo, so people are going to have to sit at the front. I’m a perfectly able bodied person, and I know there’s a lot of furries with mobility issues, whether it’s medical or their fursuit restricting their movement. I assumed it would be okay if I crouched at the front because I’m able to, i dont want anyone else to struggle or damage their suit for a picture.
But when I explained this, people said its abelist and I shouldn’t be pushing people out of the picture by being in front of them because they have a disability and now I’m second guessing myself. Obviously I don’t *have* to be in the front of every picture, maybe it is an unconscious bias? Or subconscious abelism? I don’t mean to, but maybe it comes across that way. AITAH?
NTA. You were being considerate