Sexy Beasts accused of being "very exploitative of the furry community"

Slate

Joe Strike, a veteran furry who wrote the book Furry Nation: The True Story of America’s Most Misunderstood Subculture, says of the animal-themed Netflix dating reality show trailer: "I watched that trailer, and oh, boy. I think it’s very exploitative of the furry community. It’s going to get a lot of attention, a lot of notoriety. I was already reading the comments under the under the trailer, and there are still a lot of furry haters out there, and they let their feelings be known in those comments. Some of them were pretty nasty. I don’t know if anybody from the community is involved in the creation of the show, but I’d be surprised if they were." Should Netflix have consulted with a furry? "I think Netflix knows exactly what they’re doing, and Netflix knows exactly what they want," he says. "There is a very widespread awareness of furries, and a lot of it is from a negative perspective. I think that even if they don’t come out and use the F word, they are hoping that people, critics and viewers, will throw that in there just as some of those comments did on YouTube. There’s always been a 'Oh, look at the weirdos' kind of thing. I think this is definitely playing into that. But this is not going to shame furries because we’re used to getting this kind of reaction, to a lot of people looking at us this way."