It really is a sign that someone can’t tolerate someone for being different from them, furries are harmless, so anyone who hates on them is certainly wishing they could express their hate for other groups more openly.

This. It’s always interesting to see furry come up in leftist spaces because it brings out reactionary thought. You get the “well, they can do what they want as long as I don’t have to see it and they don’t shove it down my throat” comments which, as a gay dude, is nearly the same thing I heard from chuds my entire life about gay people.

the only thing I’ve heard of that’s even close to a legitimate criticism (not of furries in general but of fur suits specifically) is that fur suits rely heavily on exploitative supply chains. But yeah, pretty much anything else is a proxy for queer hate like you said. It’s no surprise that furries were and still are often called fur-f-slurs on the internet.

Like every fandom in the world, there are post-ironic contrarian edgelords who fall into that downward spiral of self-loathing which manifests into outward loathing of others. It does exist no doubt, but those kinds of people are auto-banned from major conventions and are ejected if found.