There's always been a presence of sex-pests, yes. The fandom aspect has its roots in nerdy counter-culture and underground comics after-all. Yet even from the beginning there has always been an equally if not sreal womanger presence of those pushing in the opposite direction.
https://www.fanlore.org/wiki/Burned_FursTo add, any terminology relating to the early-fandom and even today is not explicitly nor implied to be sexual in nature. "Anthro" isn't sexual, "furry" isn't sexual and "funny animals" isn't sexual.
<Reddit space for a reddit wordwall.
To add, acting silly, hyperbolic and most-importantly dishonest for the sake of the argument doesn't exactly reflect well on your character. I don't think any living being has ever called men wearing diapers in fursuits "based" nor exactly "normal". Coming back to my prior point, no-where is pedophilia or fornicating with actual animals stated nor even implied for that matter.
>inb4
Before you repeat your previous statement about furcacaotry being comparable to lolicon. Children are real, drawings of children in explicit scenarios is revolting, even if fictional. Anthropromorphic animals are not real by any stretch of the imagination, especially depictions of them in most if not all media, where they're portrayed as clearly "cartoony" and exaggerative.