[adjective][species]

Guest post by Thesis White. Thesis is a writer-artist, cognitive science student, and peachy dalmatian who loves creating their own discourse. (Thesis is on Twitter and FX.)

The furry identity is thought by many to be one of sexual and romantic liberation, where furs can engage in relationships with others, bound by a shared sense of playfulness and fetishism. Not all furries have exclusively romantic interests towards others within the fandom; I myself am mated with a non-fur. However, where there is much literature about sexuality and relationships in the furry world, it is outside of what I’m going to discuss. More interesting and dynamic than our sexuality is the uniquely furry distortions of gender.

The internet facilitates our ability to be furry. For most furries, furryness is an interest and a self-identification through a fursona, but to understand it, we must understand its origins. A legacy of human-animal hybrids throughout mythology and 20th-century fiction is behind us, and in our early years exists televised pictures of Bugs Bunny and Balto. Where originally the mythical monstrosities of human and animal were to be feared as gods and demons in the flesh, modern anthropomorphics are adored primarily by children in an intimate relationship between entertainer and audience.

What types of images did we see, though? Many furry cartoon characters weren’t physically sexed, but given gendered social roles. Disney’s fox, Robin Hood, wore no pants and was explicitly physically androgynous, but still played the role of the masculine hero and saved the princess from the horrid King Richard. As we move into adulthood and gain entrance to a mature furry community, we see both sexed and non-sexed furs. As we reach puberty and onward, we discover that our furry personas can serve a sexuality and character that we adopt to explore ourselves and our interests.

Other than a more sexual attitude towards anthropomorphicized characters however, we also come through adolescence to a more gendered understanding of bodies. As we become more sexually active, we also become more aware of the physical characteristics of the men and women around us. We link together the concepts of developing breasts with wearing dresses and painting nails.

But it begs the question: Other than discovering our sexuality, how do we act furry? Outside yiffing and our playful understanding of furs, how do employ gender in a furry context?

Before I go on, I should explain more about what gender is, academically speaking. We understand gender to be male, female, and other non-binary identities like trans*, agendered, genderqueer and so forth. It is a learned trait. We are born into the world with little inherited information about how we should act, and even less (and debateably, any) genetic predisposition to gendered behaviors. Because someone is born with a uterus, we do not necessarily have to wear bras or have manners; these are learned behaviors. We are taught the boundaries of our gender through what not to do; boys aren’t given barbies often or girls dirt bikes (at least, in my time. It’s becoming more acceptable with each year.)

Gender is a learned identity that we embrace, and we are born into a world of people that have cisnormative attitudes, believing there are only two opposite genders. It is difficult for many people to understand that we are not born manly or womanly, but rather are taught it, and so they believe it is a disorder or mental imbalance when people are trans or non-binary.

Emily Martin, an esteemed anthropologist, wrote about how genderisms in our understanding of life even go so far as to become naturalized in our scientific language; we understand menstruation to be a disposal of “bad flesh,” a purge of bad ovaries, whereas sperm production is heralded as an amazing triumph of the human body. (This is in complete disregard for the fact that usually only a few sperm cells, if any, actually become children. The male body loses more reproductive cells than the female body was ever born with.) The eggs are seen as having a passive role in reproduction that receives the sperm who uses its tail to push up to the egg (where actually its tail flails randomly and has very little propelling power). It is never considered that a woman’s body incubates and supplements a fetus until it’s born, whereas the male plays a role for only a few moments. Gender even penetrates academia and what’s considered “objective”.

Gender theorists have come to the conclusion that these naturalized conceptions are contrary to the truth. Male and female are simply two ways of behaving that are on a continuum of gender. We are told what roles we should play, and most people believe it’s true. We are not gendered by nature, but nurture.

Consider sexual dimorphism. This term denotes the physical differences between the 2+ sexes of a species, where the difference in some is very obvious and in others very subtle. Often it takes specialized knowledge to know one from the other; would you be able to easily tell two parakeets apart? Female and male gorillas are in appearance extremely easy to tell apart, whereas sea horses may not be. We are most familiar with our own dimorphism, but when considering the world of the animal kingdom, our differences between male and female bodies are very minute. Even so, an approximate 1% (ref) of the human population is intersexed, further blurring the lines between sexes.

Furries (and just about everyone else) as children learn what it meant to be male or female. But we affect our gender by taking on non-human characteristics in our furry identities. The bodies that furries adopt in fursonas and characters are of blurred gender; animals themselves are hard to tell apart, it’s the human-like characteristics that are the telling features. Even then, they are fantasized in forms people cannot accomplish in themselves with curves too shapely or brawn nigh impossible. From our tails and colors of our furs to the noses and ears, we explore what gendered forms mean through how we draw furries and, by extension, ourselves. Our furryness puts us outside of a system where being female is simply ‘feminine’ where we extend what womanhood is into paws that humans can’t have.

Many furries go so far as avoiding sexing furry forms and create a body outside of even a furry binary system of male and female. Take Truxton (actually Lapfox), the furry techno musician who put out an album featuring an agendered hell-hound on the cover. Or look at some of the past Fur Affinity banners, where the characters don’t feature anything but a friendly non-human face. These are the fantasies we embrace and love, genders that don’t exist anywhere else that we create.

As an effect of our gendered society, we don’t often recognize that we are doing this. I may go so far to say that my theory may come across as misguided, a queer attempt at bringing furry into the domain of gender identity. I’d like to propose that we challenge ourselves to examine these distortions of gender and try to come to terms with what they mean to us. Undeniably, the majority of Blotch’s work features masculine bodies, but are humans usually that shapely, tall, or flexible? Furry art features a grotesque and beautiful caricature of human bodies in their physical, social, and political uses, but it is that abstraction that allows us to explore ourselves and our ever-changing vision of who our bodies are and what we would like them to mean.

When I was asked to become a regular contributor to [adjective][species], I couldn’t have been more excited. I had been following the site for quite some time, and I thought its approach to discussing the furry fandom was something interesting, unique and long overdue. Thinking about this fandom as a society, a segment of the population the same as any other, elevates the way we think about ourselves, legitimizes our little section of the Internet, encourages us to take ourselves a bit more seriously than we do. I was excited to be a part of that conversation.

So I sat down and thought up a good post that would serve as an icebreaker between us. This was right around Thanksgiving, so I thought using an anecdote I had heard about the first time the Native Americans had encountered the Europeans would work. It would segue into a rumination on perspective, and how we only find the things in the world that we look for. There were some kinks to work out, but I thought it would be a good thing to open our relationship with. With you in mind, dear reader, I opened up a new document and started writing.

Over the days I was working on it, though, I could feel the gears in my brain running down.  The act of focusing became difficult, and the effort required exhausted me quickly. I became frustrated with how quickly I tired, and that frustration used up even more energy. It took more and more time to do less and less, and with work and everything else on my plate just getting through the day took more out of me than I had. That “energy debt” accumulated became this weight on me that grew by the day, and exhaustion became normal. Sleep did nothing; my mood sunk and the daily stuff got to be more than I could handle. But I had to handle it.

http://www.depressioncomix.com/posts/013/

I suffer from chronic depression. I’ve been living with it long enough to know that I was having a depressive episode, and that the thing to do was NOT struggle to get everything done. I knew I didn’t have the energy for that. It was going to take most of what I had to just get through the day, so I focused on that instead. I delayed the posts on my blog for a month, tabled my first blog for [adjective][species], and focused on re-establishing my coping mechanisms. I take Prozac every day, though I can forget sometimes during really busy periods. I try to meditate every day, which trains my mind to be still and improves my focus. Exercise actually helps me out too; a good run makes me feel better about myself. And talking about it helps, though that’s difficult to do. Discussing depression, especially when you’re in the midst of it, can be uncomfortable. It’s hard to make someone who’s never had depression understand what it’s like to be gripped by it. But trying to do so makes me step back from my own head, which helps me reason through it.

Depression is being suddenly trapped in a labyrinth with high walls with no idea how you got there. The walls are so close that just moving through them is work, and so high that it’s impossible to know what the world is like outside. It takes a lot of work at first, but trying to describe your depression is like scaling one of those walls and taking a look at the labyrinth from on high. It might not help you get through it right away, but it at least helps you to see what you’re dealing with.

In any given year, NIMH (the National Institute of Mental Health) reports that 26.2% of the population over 18 suffers from a mental disorder in any given year. This includes chronic major and mild depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders and social phobias. For a bit of perspective, that meant that—according to averages—1,460 attendees at Anthrocon 2013 suffered from a mental disorder this year.

That’s a huge number. And many of those people are going undiagnosed and untreated, unable to find a way to deal with the way their own minds are betraying them. We all know someone who acts a little weird online, says things that make you wonder what they’re thinking, or expresses anger, boredom, sadness or confusion consistently. It’s quite possible that these folks—our friends and fellows in the community—suffers from a mental disorder that for some reason hasn’t been addressed.

The holiday season is an especially hard time for those of us who suffer. There are a wide variety of reasons for this—being with family can be an alienating experience, or being unable to be with family may dredge up a lot of painful memories. This time where so many people are focusing on the connections they have, the pain and loneliness we feel may be exacerbated. It’s difficult to know what to do with that, especially if we have no idea how to talk about it.

I realize that there’s no easy way to deal with someone struggling with a mental illness, especially if it’s gone unaddressed. I know that when I was in the darkest of my depressions I would say and do things that were very difficult for those closest to me to deal with. Even now that I’ve seen a therapist, developed coping mechanisms, take medication to manage my depression—interacting with people while I’m having difficulty is fraught with anxiety. Still, I really appreciate it when people make the attempt. Even if someone isn’t able to express gratitude at the time a gesture is made, trust me—it’s noticed, and it helps. There are some people who helped me through the worst of my depression and never gave up on me, and today I would do absolutely anything for them.

If you’re depressed or helping someone who is, know this—you are not alone, and this is something that happens to many, many people. Even if professional help (therapy and/or medication) isn’t available, there are things we can do to help those around us who are suffering. Here’s a link:

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/living_depressed_person.htm

Depression is a serious issue that we haven’t learned to discuss or understand properly, I feel. It’s very important to know what’s happening to us or our loved ones when they’re in the grips of illness. It’s as real as any other disease, and treatment requires patience and compassion. It’s difficult, of course it is, but that connection can mean the difference between finding your way out of the labyrinth and being stuck there, suffering alone, far longer than you should.

Guest post by Hyshaji Nightdragon. Nightdragon is a biological science graduate, laboratory specialist & fursuiter from Singapore. Rawr!

Three years ago, I was first introduced to fursuiting and fandom. This year, I made my first ‘pilgrimage’ to Anthrocon. With that came the rather intimidating prospect that is long distance travel. You see, I’m from Singapore, so by traveling all the way to the United States, I do mean a really, really long journey.

Crossing borders can be a touchy affair. Deep down, many of us do fear ‘outsiders’. We scrutinize them, question their motives, and sometimes downright reject them from ‘our place’.

That sense of caution is not entirely unwarranted, but in a manner of speaking, it is building a barrier around ‘our place’. As discussed in articles such as Furry Internationalism, the furry culture is helping to break down those barriers.

In many ways, my experience was complementary to JM’s experience, when he travelled from the UK to Malaysia, as he detailed in The Furry Accommodation Network.

The journey to Anthrocon would take me from Singapore, to Japan, then to the United States, visiting Seattle and finally Pittsburgh. Through some work-related circumstances, I later ended up in the UK too.

All over the period of two months.

Several Japanese fursuiters had visited Singapore the previous year for an Anime convention. We’d gone fursuiting together then, but I certainly couldn’t claim to know them that well. However, I still contacted one of them and, with my intermediate level of Japanese, managed to tell him about my upcoming trip.  I expressed to him that it might be difficult to meet because it was a Friday, being a working day, but I was greeted with a very happy reply.

Don’t worry! I’ll take leave!

The result of that was two Japanese furs picking me up from Narita Airport during my 8 hour layover, and taking me out to the nearby areas. A simple, quick shopping and lunch trip. And as a little bonus, the three of us got out our partials and took photographs at a small waterfall in a park.

The language barrier was there and communication was rather minimal, but it was a different feeling. It didn’t feel like I was going to Japan alone; I was going there to meet friends.

My purpose of going to Seattle was to visit a Singaporean who was there for studies, and I was also referred to contact one of the local Seattle furs prior to the trip. I did, and that got me a phone number and a lunch appointment.

Upon arriving in Seattle, I was indeed able to meet up with several local furs, despite having no prior contact with them before. After flying over 20 hours and the trip through immigration, it was a very good feeling to be welcomed by the locals.

Did I mention they dragged me to visit the local zoo on the day I was fresh off the plane? Yup, jet lag be damned! And I had a photo shoot, in fursuit, at a local museum the very next day.

A lot of the anxiety of traveling to a foreign country had faded away.

As for Pittsburgh, it so happened there was a fur from Singapore studying there. I’d only met him briefly once before during one of his visits to Singapore, but a quick online message and I had someone else to meet .

This was in addition to the contacts I’d been speaking to online, and had arranged to meet during Anthrocon. Plus some of the Seattle furs from before, who were also attending Anthrocon. I could probably go on about ‘My First Convention’, but that’s not really the point of this article.

My overseas travels were not to end there however, as I was soon sent to the UK for a work-related training course.

Very nicely, a fur from the UK had earlier visited Singapore and joined one of our meets. We exchanged messages, later phone numbers. And suddenly, the looming business trip to a foreign country, knowing nothing and no one, turns into a trip where I could look forward to meeting people during the weekends. One of whom happened to be JM.

Looking back, this was a completely different feeling from being on a tour group or going with my parents. Rather than follow ‘their’ schedule, I was able to follow my own.

I would have to say that in Asian culture, we are definitely more conservative. Someone, like myself, who is not a seasoned solo traveller, was bound to get flooded with the ‘usual advice’. Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t go and meet random people from the internet; you never know who they could be.

That’s my parents’ generation, and while some of those rules still do apply,  times change and other rules break as a result of that change. As long as it’s done smartly.

To quote JM, “When you first meet a new furry in real life, there is an implicit level of trust.”

I don’t expect things to go perfectly every single time. There will be the good and the bad; that’s just life.

I compare this to when I studied & lived in Australia for two years. When everything around you seems unfamiliar, we tend to gravitate towards the most familiar thing. In this situation, I found there was an Aikido club on campus, a martial art which I practice back home. The people there may have been different, but the feel of the art was still the same. It definitely helped me to relieve the stress in my initial weeks there.

On each leg of my trip, I found myself taken back to that emotion I felt then.

Not only was I able to visit touristy areas and do touristy things, I was able to see how the locals lived and dined. And I got to hear it from them directly: the differences and similarities between our cultures and our countries. I was able to talk to them about how the fandom scene was over there.

The beautiful thing is that I would never have crossed paths with these people otherwise. Our lives were too different, except for that one common interest.

I took back from my journey was the idea that ‘now I know how it feels’. My experience has become another common interest I can share with visitors when I reciprocate for kindness that was given to me. It’s certainly a hope that by spreading this around, others will be encouraged to do the same. This is especially interesting because I’ve always been naturally very introverted, yet the fandom has helped me open up and talk to people. That in turn has actually made me more comfortable with meeting people outside the fandom as well. It’s just a matter tailoring the conversation for the audience.

As a side note, readers, while I can’t really offer a crash-in spot for the night, I’m certainly happy to meet up for dinner. Drop the me or another of the local furs a message if you’re ever in Singapore.

To finish up, I would say that I’ve found some things to be truly international. Public transport screwing up, idiot drivers, screaming kids on planes & trains, McDonalds, the sight of my dragon fursuit making kids cry… and furries.

We’re one of the means to break down the walls that society has set up around us.

Hyshaji Nightdragon on Twitter
Hyshaji Nightdragon on FA

The idea of sudden change is a powerful one.

We all wish for things to be different, in a big way or a small way. We look inwardly and wish we were different. And we look outwardly and wish the world were different too.

The idea that we might transform into our furry self is compelling, if not actually possible. But it’s an idea we can explore in art: in visual art, and with fiction.

Transformation is a major theme in the novels and short stories of Phil Geusz. His worlds are ones where human people are able to choose, or perhaps be gently persuaded, to become an animal-person. Geusz explores the transformation process and its consequences on a personal and societal level.

Some of you will know Phil better for his non-fictional contributions to [adjective][species] (here). If that’s the case, I’d encourage you to explore his writing through the examples that I offer in this article. Even if you’re skeptical of the value of science-fiction or genre fiction in general (and, personally, I am), Phil’s stories are valuable for the way they will manipulate your furry self, and make you feel a step closer to a world where a furry transformation just might be possible.

I’ve selected three stories, all of which might be categorized as ‘early’ Phil Geusz. Geusz refers to these as TF (as in ‘transformation’) stories, and you can read some background on his universe creation process here.

Cheetah’s Win, short story published in Anthrozine #23 (2009), free (http://anthrozine.com/stry/cheetahs.win.html)
Pelton, short story published in 2003, free (http://tsat.transform.to/stories/pelton.html)
The First Book of Lapism, 2001, (http://anthrozine.com/stry/drama.class.html)

These stories are written by a furry, and for furries. They are well-regarded within furry (Ursa Major nominations abound) but never found the wider success of some of Geusz’s subsequent work, notably the David Birkenhead series. There are a couple of reasons why these TF stories are unlikely to gain traction with a general audience.

Firstly, there are artefacts in the language that betray Geusz’s origins as a TF fan. He uses terms that will be familiar to insiders, but are jarring to those without a grounding in fandom spaces. My biggest gripe is with Geusz’s free use of neologisms like ‘gengineering’ (a contraction of ‘genetic engineering’): it’s simply not a term in widespread use.

Neologisms can have a place in science fiction writing, perhaps most notably employed by some of the post-WWII greats like Heinlein and Dick. But these words are used to help set the scene, to reinforce the values of the fictional universe. (For example, ‘Gengineering’ might make sense, as a term, in Huxley’s Brave New World.) This is useful when the story is set in the future, because it helps the reader understand how society’s priorities might have changed in the intervening years. But Geusz’s work is set (give or take) in the present day and in the real world. I suspect that a strong editor would have gently excised such neologisms.

Secondly, these stories deal almost exclusively with the idea of ‘becoming’ a furry. Phil is a strong enough writer to know that transformation is not a plot in itself, and so his stories take place in a world where furry transformation is something that happens within a wider story. He is then free to explore the challenges faces by our heroes.

Pelton, for example, is about a declining small town that receives a big investment from a furry who wishes to establish a real-world furry community. The story follows the town’s first elected furry mayor, who is torn between his wish to be taken seriously, and his wish to express himself as a furry:

“Yet, this was the first time that I’d ever suited on city time, the first time that I’d ever tried being Mayor while also being a rabbit. It felt wrong, at a very deep level. But then, it also felt very right. The total effect was horridly disorienting.”

 

Cheetah’s Win follows a baseball player who undergoes genetic engineering to save his career, and ends up finding a happier version of himself. He offers advice to a friend interested in undergoing their own procedure:

“It just might be good for you, too. Get you out of your own skin, help you loosen up a little.”

 

And The First Book of Lapism is about a religion made up of people who choose to become rabbit-people:

“Once he had opened his eyes as a rabbit and seen the world through new and gentler eyes, he’d known instantly that the universe could never be the same for him again. As a rabbit, he strongly believed, he was a far better person than he could ever have been as a human.”

 

In all three stories, human characters become furry characters, and the effect is has on them is mental as well as physical. You could call it a spiritual transformation, and it will sing to many furries about their own wishes, their wish to be a better version of themselves.

This is an exercise in wish fulfilment. It’s powerful stuff if you happen to be predisposed towards the basic concept.

There is a good, if unlikely, comparison point with Geusz’s writing: E.L. James’s 50 Shades of Grey. James’s novels also have their origins in fandom, Twilight in her case. Her novels have been tightly edited to remove any direct association with their source material, but they are still geared towards fulfilment of the same wish: the wish of (some) women to sexually submit to a powerful man*. (James, as it turns out, has a slightly larger potential market than Geusz and his furries.)

* as far as I can tell without actually reading the books

In both cases, Geusz and James are catering to a ‘what-if’ instinct, that magical idea that something could change in the snap of a finger. And the attraction to transformation is not limited to furries (or Twilight fans): it’s everyone.

Unfortunately, it is rare for one’s fortunes to turn on a penny. And it can be easy to wish for instant change, and that can make it easy to feel bad about what you have.

The relationship that people have with money is illustrative. The perceived value of money changes, relative to the amount of money you already have. If you are broke, £5 is a big deal—not so much if you’re a millionaire. And if you’re a millionaire, another million means a lot—but it’s trivial to the billionaire down the road.

Everyone wishes for more money. We all think there must be a point where we would have ‘enough’, but there never is. Take for example this article, which looked at five people of wildly varying income: the poorest wished for enough money for shoes; the well-off wished for enough to have a private doctor.

The moral here (other than the potential evils of money) is that there is no such thing as a good place to be. We are happy when we are getting better, otherwise we are unhappy. It’s an unavoidable feature of human nature that we are, by default, kinda sad. It’s probably something that has driven us a species, makes us strive for more even when we are safe and fed.

For another example, consider the challenges of body image. Most people, if asked, are fretful about being in poor shape. In fact, the only people who are happy about their body are those who are currently losing weight, or possibly becoming fitter and stronger.

The incredible thing about this is that body image, positive or negative, barely correlates with actual body shape. Fat people and thin people are generally unhappy with their body… except if they are in the process of improvement, at which point fat people and thin people are generally happy about their body. It’s the process of improvement that makes us feel good.

This, by the way, is why your social media feeds are so obnoxious. They are full of people either (1) complaining about their body, or (2) telling you that their diet is amazing / that they have spent the last two hours at the gym. It’s rare for people to be happy with things as they are.

This means that the causes of personal happiness are usually quite different to the causes of personal unhappiness. Happiness is usually about the process of change, whereas unhappiness is usually about the state of stagnation (or change in the wrong direction).

Transformation literature takes advantage of our desire for instant change. A switch is flicked, and a happier version of the world appears.

Unfortunately, this reinforces the natural (but wrong) idea that, to be happy, something must change from ‘bad’ to ‘good’. Everyone thinks this way, and it can drive depression because the desired change might be something difficult, or something that takes a long time to occur. And so it’s easy to feel helpless and hopeless because the change isn’t foreseeable.

In reality, it’s the process of change that brings happiness, not the change itself. It’s a subtle but important difference, because it means that happiness comes about quickly: it’s about the action, not the outcome.

It’s another—yet another—quirk of our human brains that we must negotiate. It’s not easy, and don’t we all wish for a simple world where we could just be happy.

Sadly such a world does not exist. But we can take joy in stories that allow us to imagine it, if only for a while.

Furry is not a fandom. At least, not any more.

We’re not a fandom because we aren’t fans of some specific piece of art. There is no furry canon.

Fandoms revolve around their canon. The canon provides a permanent reference point for all fandom-related activities. We furries have no such thing, and so furry is defined by whatever we, collectively, decide.

Furry is something that is constantly changing, something that is constantly being recreated by we furries. So, not surprisingly, what exactly makes us ‘furry’ is difficult to pin down.

The biggest common element among furries is the use of an animal-person avatar, our fursona. For most of us, our fursona is a representation of ourself, and we present as our fursona online and in real-world furry spaces.

So, if you meet me online or in a furry space, I’ll say “hello, I’m JM, and I’m a horse“. If you meet me in a non furry space, I’ll say “hello, I’m Matt” (and I’ll think to myself “I’m a horse, hahahaha awesome“).

JM and Matt are, physically, the same, but they are different identities. My furry identity, JM, is an imaginary creation but a personally important one. Lucky for me that all you other furries are have to accept the premise that I am a horse, which reinforces all those nice personal associations I feel about the horse. You make me feel good about being me. (Thanks.)

I think that this identity-play is at the heart of furry.

It wasn’t always this way of course. Furry grew from fandom groups in the late 20th century, and was still largely a fandom/geek phenomenon as late as the 1990s. Then the internet came along, we all found each other, and we created today’s community, of animal-people and art and conventions and everything else.

But I’m simplifying. There are still plenty of furs who consider themselves to be furry fans only, and there are furries who don’t interact through the lens of an animal-person avatar – like [adjective][species]‘s own Phil Geusz, or my old friend Paul Kidd.

Furry is still close to its fandom roots, and reference points like The Lion King or My Little Pony are important for many furs. It’s even evident in the most common term used to describe our community: ‘furry fandom’. I want to make this clear because our readership includes plenty of self-described ‘furry fans’, and I don’t want to imply that they are somehow excluded from our collective furry excellent adventure.

A furry fan named Perri challenged an article here I wrote for [a][s] last year titled The Second Wave of Furry. He said that the article ‘managed to dredge up feelings of being told I don’t belong here because I’m a fan‘. He charged me with ‘trying to paint the whole community with a wide brush, alienating everyone who doesn’t fit into their view‘.

As it turns out, Perri mentioned that he has produced a history of the furry fandom. His history, hosted here, is essentially a long, long list of comics, TV shows, movies, and other media that Perri considers to be ‘furry’. His list is not exhaustive, but it sure is exhausting*. He says that such furry media defines furry, because we are its fans.

* WORDPLAY!

I think that Perri’s history, which is a terrific resource, proves my point. None of his examples of furry media, which starts with Aesop’s Fables and ends with My Little Pony, are furry canon. Some of his examples are important to many furries, but none of them are important to ‘being’ furry today.

Any new furry entering the community today (and for the past decade or so) will find one implied requirement for entry: a fursona. Furry, today, is about identity—not fandom. With all respect for Perri (and Phil and Paul and whoever else), his approach to furry is an artefact of our fandom days. Furry has changed, and—lacking a canon or other point of reference—furry is going to continue to change.

For most of us, furry is an expression in identity. Collectively, we are experimenting with what it means to be a person, and we’re heading out for deeper waters. There are some groups in our wake:

• The fans. Fandoms have long experimented with identity, such as with cosplay. There has been some research on the value of such identity experimentation. One psychologist has likened cosplaying as ‘a form of self-administered mental health treatment‘.

• The catfish. Catfish are people who create a fake online alter-ego, and roleplay as that (human) character. It can go wrong when a catfish forms a close emotional bond with someone, as in the movie Catfish, or the Manti Te’o affair. On a less extreme level, it’s common for people to present a shifted version of themselves online: perhaps more outgoing, or in better physical shape.

There is an element of wish-fulfilment in all of this identity play, and that’s true for furry as well. Furry goes further because we are not constrained by a fandom canon (the cosplayers) or by the requirements of the real world (the catfish). We get to create a persona from scratch.

Not surprisingly, furry has proven attractive to those people who don’t fit into the mainstream world very easily. We have a lot of young people, who may be attracted to furry in those confusing years where they are no longer a child, but not yet an adult. And we have a lot of square pegs: the LGBT, the zoophiles, the fetishists, the borderline autistic, and so forth. All of these are people who might find special value in experimenting with an alternate identity—and so they may be drawn to the furry world.

A further part of the attraction of our community is that there are no rules about what ‘furry’ is, or isn’t. We have no formal structure, and nobody is in change. Those furries who act as leaders essentially do so on merit: they are people who are respected, or perhaps provide a service to the community, or otherwise stand out from the crowd. We don’t always collectively choose the most capable leaders, but it’s a nice change from the real world where people can rise to high positions for other reasons. The furry community is decentralized.

Our structure, then, is quite anarchic. Our community is made up of people engaging in a kind of extreme identity play, and our leaders are organically selected. It’s the sort of structure that is common on the internet on a smaller scale—a group grows around a small nucleus, before imploding and fracturing when it becomes too large.

Small furry groups grow and fracture all the time, but the wider community holds together because of a core, shared idea: we all identify as furries. It’s an environment that promotes wider togetherness, even while drama and chaos often reign on the smaller scale.

This structure—leaderless and decentralized, but strong—occurs in other internet-based communities. The only requirement is that the central idea is compelling enough to maintain continuity amidst the drama. Such groups are often called ‘loose collectives’, and the best example is Anonymous.

Furry and Anonymous share the same decentralized structure. But there is one big difference: Anonymous is driven by a central idea that might be defined as negative, in that it’s a reaction to a perceived wrong—in this case (and very roughly), disenfranchisement from society. Positive central ideas are rare, because it’s always easier for people to bond over a common enemy—Keynesian economics, say, or the Church of Scientology. Furry’s positive focus is rare.

This doesn’t mean that furry is ‘good’ and Anonymous is ‘bad’: there are elements of both in both communities. But it does mean that we act in fundamentally different ways. To generalize, furry is creative rather than destructive; proactive rather than reactive.

The structure of furry is driven by our shared interest in exploring identity as an animal-person. This is a personal exercise, but we are drawn together because we mutually reinforce each other’s animal-person identity. Furry is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Or to put it another way, we are having a voluntarily shared delusion.

Furry, then, is necessarily self-referential. New furries look to fit in, and so they adopt the community’s norms, such as creating an animal-person avatar. This helps settle and define furry culture, while simultaneously we challenge the status quo by exploring the edges of what it means to be a furry. Our growth and change as a community happens unpredictably, as successful furry ideas are embraced (YCH auctions) and anachronistic ideas are discarded (‘burned furs’).

[adjective][species], this website, can be seen as a microcosm of this natural growth and change. The site is subtly changing as we write new articles, and as the readers respond. Successful ideas take on more importance, as they provoke more content from either one of the regular writers or one our growing numbers of Guest Articles. The site has a life of its own, a life collectively defined by the consumers of the site itself. (Even this article was partly provoked by a yet-to-be-published Guest Article that I’m helping to edit. It’s about leadership and penguins and it’s terrific – look out for it.)

Furry will continue to grow and change. Soon enough, the furries of 2013 will find themselves perplexed, and possibly unwelcome, in whatever the new furry world brings, just as Perri-the-fan finds himself today. And some of us will hark back to the good old days of 2013, back when JM was engaging in awesome wordplay on [adjective][species].

The desire for things to stay static is a natural conservative instinct. It’s easy to stay fixed, and to look back on the past with rose-tinted glasses, while the world has moved on. Most furries are young and so will not have experienced this, but all of us will be able to think of someone who refuses to engage with today’s world on today’s terms. It requires effort to look to the future with optimism, not just back at the past with fondness. I, for one, am looking forwards to where furry will take us next.

I lied to everyone who read my “furries from around the world” articles over a year ago. I concluded by assuring that I would post an article for Australia soon. That was, as GLaDOS would put it, “an outright fabrication”, as I moved back to college for the semester literally three days later and was absolutely confident (at least in the back of my head) that I wouldn’t be writing about furries during the school semester.

Then, suddenly, school ended and I had no excuse. I had a two-hour interview with Carnival and Kraden from ACTFur as well as four completed questionnaires, including one from a Midfur staff member. I had everything I needed. I just didn’t feel like writing. Four months bled into about fifteen months. But, I have the information, and it would be a shame to let it stagnate any more. It’s time to write about Australia.

I’m coming for you, you big chunky land mass!

For those who haven’t read any of these articles (or have, and forgot how my sleazy systematic method of hunting down foreign furries for info works), I’ve been accepting survey responses from as many furries as possible from certain countries, asking them a certain set of questions, and summarizing their responses all in the name of getting a more interesting idea of what foreign ‘furry’ culture is like.

One thing I learned from my research for the New Zealand article is that Australians and New Zealand residents (known colloquially as “Kiwis”) don’t like getting mixed up. It only seems fair, since I already wrote a New Zealand article, to give Australia its own article, lest I be beaten to a bloody pulp by a rainbow mob of fuzzy (and scaly and feathery and what have you) creatures with cute accents.

“Furmeets”, small gatherings of 10-40 or 50 furries, usually at a furry’s house, are popular in America. Do those exist in Australia, and if so, are they prevalent?

The social layout of Australia can be likened to that of America and really any country divided into many smaller regions in that population disparity creates subculture “hotspots”. Kraden made note that, just like anywhere else with small scattered cities, it’s really about how many people live nearby. Australia is bigger than the contiguous United States, but has just one twelfth of the population. That means tons of scatter and unpopulated area, and if you happen to live in a more rural part of the country you naturally aren’t as likely to run into any furries. Or any other people, for that matter. There’s an incredibly relevant XKCD regarding this idea (and not just for the mention of furry porn.)

Perhaps there are furries living on top of this? …unlikely.

In larger cities such as Sydney and Melbourne furries reported that larger (non-casual, regularly-occurring) meets could get upwards of 50-60 attendees. Some even made reference to different activities – sometimes furries meet up and go bowling, sometimes artists gather at a restaurant, things like that. Traditional fare, really. Also, I’m seeing more and more examples of a universal rule: if there’s a place, and it has furmeets, it also has furry bowling. No exceptions. Furries and bowling go together like ice cream and more ice cream.

However, I also noticed the repetition of a trend that’s fairly common in larger areas – there were responses indicating that they didn’t believe meets happened at all. I see it happen all the time on the internet. Someone poses a question like, “Are there any furries in California?” completely unaware that not only are there furries in one of the most populated regions in the world but that, yes, a handful of them even use the internet to socialize. I’d like to take a moment to point out that despite “furry” being a very online-based social sphere a lot of furries seem to undervalue the usefulness of the internet.

Anyways, to summarize, meets are very popular and widespread especially in larger urban areas. This is generally the case for populated first-world areas.

How important is sexuality to Australian furries?

I’m falling more and more in love with this question because it always draws out some interesting thoughts. Before I begin with what might be the obvious perspective I’d like to point out that there’s a pervasive regional difference in how sexuality is accepted. Carnival noted that Sydney is the sort of “gay capital” of Australia and, if I understand correctly, a general rule could be stated saying that the farther south in the country you look, the population tends to be more accepting of alternate sexuality. Since mainland Australia has only six states, it’s noteworthy that generalizing trends by state is much more difficult.

Now, about that obvious perspective I pointed out. Not everyone responds with “extremely”. The responses are completely based on how vested any given respondent’s interest is in the sexual part of the fandom. For example, two responses indicated a rather distant perspective on the subject, with a pretty disconnected “Well, it’s probably the same as elsewhere. People are tolerant and stuff. Also, there’s a lot of gays.” My favorite response was an anonymous one: Well, it’s probably the same as elsewhere, because it’s a big deal. As they said, “Yiff seems to be an important aspect of the fandom no matter where you are.” In short, it’s a significant component to many. There are plenty of furries only in it for the art and the hangouts, but plenty also see it as an expression of their sexuality.

Is there a skew towards gay/bisexuals in the fandom like there is in the American fandom?

There has always been some repetition with this question but I’m certain it’s because alternate sexuality is a notoriously prominent piece of the furry fandom. Most responses are on the same page as far as this notion goes.

Simply, it turns out that furry, with a huge population of semi-adolescent males, has a significant homosexual lean. (If you squint hard enough at some of the surveys over the years, furry sexuality approaches a relatively straight line across the Kinsey scale.) But, the question asks for a direct comparison to America, which relies on the respondent’s own perspective of American furries. Are we all willywashers over here? (Carnival used that word in the interview and I *absolutely* had to use it.) I think it’s a fair question. I’ve only been to one convention in my life, but if I had a dollar for every pair of guys I saw making out at that convention I could buy a pretty fancy sandwich. My point is, we might have a bit of a reputation, and it offers a basis of comparison for foreign furries.

One estimate guessed that maybe half of furries are straight and the rest are scattered across the bisexual/homosexual spectrum. Others suggested that there’s quite the lean towards the homosexual end of things, adding some speculation about the generally mandated rule that furries have to be nice and accepting to each other, thus fostering a welcome environment for alternate sexuality and explaining the rate of same-sex interest. Another noted that homosexuality might not be as prominent as it appears. The range seems to be from “yes, of course” to “well, maybe not”. There hasn’t been much in the way of “foreign furry survey data”, and there could be much to learn in the future.

Ultimately, the perception of the furries one has met versus the seeming “general consensus” is a pretty loaded and tricky question but always does a lot to shed light on the respondents.

How do Australian furries see the American furries? What do they think of us?

Kraden called America’s furry growth as a “trial by fire”, a sentiment echoed by a respondent to this same question mentioned in my Brazilian article. Consider first that the fandom’s growth has arguably been most pervasive in America. Nine of the ten largest furry gatherings in the world are in America. Fifteen of the top twenty are American as well. Large slices of furry activity inevitably lead to issues. (4chan word-filtered “furry” and its variants to the word “drama” for a long time. Technically for different reasons, but still accurate.)

As one respondent said, American furries would possibly be seen as “a bit more over the top, more drama, etc.”

Since America is exploring some uncharted territory as conventions and meets become bigger and more pop up, non-American furries can learn from the shortcomings of American furry activities. Thus, a “trial by fire”. We’re slowly figuring out how to do this whole “furry” thing together.

Do furries in Australia have a strong internet presence? How important is social networking over the internet?

There’s a general agreement that Australia is just as active over the Internet as any other nationality. There were citations of Facebook and FurAffinity groups, though most answers were pretty general. It’s certainly important for communication, but there weren’t any specific or unusual answers.

Kraden and Carnival reiterated this, also noting that word of mouth is important. They mentioned that message boards used to be the active way to get in touch with people (“Shoutouts to Furstralia.”) Finally, between Facebook, Deviantart, and FurAffinity, they claim you can cover just about all furries, thus making it at least relatively easy to maintain contact.

Pictured: The Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, and about $12 billion (USD) in fursuits.

What does the fandom mean to you?

The reports sent back from my Australian respondents seem to echo [what I sort of remember as] the general sentiment from many other places. Your involvement determines how meaningful being a “furry” is to you. What you put in, you get out.

One answer was a flowery chunk of reflection on the deep creativity, brilliant artistic work, and fun-filled meets of furries. Another was less enthused; it’s like reading, like a little bit of escape from reality. One answer called it “somewhere I was meant to belong.” Another said “it’s really just a way of meeting people with common interests.” (One of those previous two responses was from an artist; I’ll let you guess which one.)

The fandom is certainly important to some Australian furries. Though, as always, results vary.

What does the fandom mean to those in your region/locally?

One response noted that the fandom is very important to some Australian furries, though not as much as to the enthusiasts in Europe or America. I thought this was interesting. There are some pretty intensive furry enthusiasts who run conventions, host meets, and partake in everything else that goes well above and beyond what many (like myself) just consider a passive interest. However, Australia still has some pretty dedicated furries. After all, RivFur, Camp Wildpaw, MiDFur (which I learned recently is turning into ConFurgence due to its size), FurDU, FurJam, and FurWAG aren’t going to run (and participate in?) themselves.

However, the same respondent, as well as some others, place some reasoning on Australia’s size. This is reminiscent of the furry meet question. Since furries are scattered around an especially large area in this case those who don’t live near other furries or have any deeper interaction with the fandom may not consider it an involved hobby.

Supposedly, 98% of Australia’s population lives in the white, non-yellowed area. As Carnival said, “crusted around the coasts of Australia”.

Carnival made a point about Australian furries not really drawing Australian animal art or choosing Australian animals for their fursonas. This has been an issue in the past when I wrote my previous articles. For each article about each part of the world I tried my best to find at least a picture or two with some “local flavor”. Carnival/Kraden claimed to know a bunch of dingoes but said kangaroos are hard to come by. Kraden himself is a “WolfCoyoteFoxJellybean”, which are native to Australia. However, I ended up deciding to use some fursuit outing photos from the awesome Atpaw to add some color to the article. I think they work just as well.

How is furry looked at by non-furries in Australia?

One respondent sized it up pretty handily: Some see the costumes and think they’re cute. Others think they’re weird. But, most just don’t really care.

In a way, this is echoed by the other respondents. It’s mostly in the dark, as one answer added. People who know about ‘furry’ and have a weird impression of it exist, but seem to be uncommon.

Ultimately, furry is still its own microcosm. Anthrocon, easily the biggest furry convention, had just under 5,600 in 2013 and only surpassed 5,000 last year. As reference, Anime Expo had 61,000 attendees this year and Comic Con (San Diego) has reportedly had to cap its attendance to around 130,000 for several years. Furry is, like, a thing, *maaaaaan*, but you can’t walk up to just anyone and expect them to know what a fursona (or a sparkledog) is in the same way you can walk up to most people and expect them to know what a comic book is.

What do people do in fursuit in Australia? Community activities? Furmeet activities? Just at conventions?

One respondent simply noted that one reason fursuits are rare (at least in Brisbane) is simply because it’s hot. I can understand. I’m a redhead, so I feel like I’m going to burst into flames whenever I walk to my mailbox. A fursuit seems like a death sentence.

There was some disagreement regarding how popular fursuiting was. One answer remarked that fursuits were only seen at conventions, as far as they knew. However, another answer said that people would get into suit at barbecues and meets as well. I’d like to note that the first respondent implied that they hadn’t been to a convention or possible even a furry meet-up.

The more real-life furry activity going on, the more likely there is for fursuiters to do their thing. Unless it’s hot out. Because the heat is awful.

I did some quick research on how you could fursuit at a beach and not die. April in Australia is autumn, but on the Gold Coast in that time of year it should be around 27ºC, 80ºF. That’s still pretty warm, but not too warm to be a bad dog.

How are fursuits different in Australia from America?

The joke’s on me because literally every answer made reference to the fact that the Australians who do wear fursuits generally buy theirs from overseas. I don’t even have much else to add to this one. I’ve been bamboozled, because it turns out a lot of Australian fursuits *are* American.

Do know, however, that Carnival mentioned a furry called Oz Kangaroo who is a relatively popular fursuit creator from Australia. In addition to that, a handful of people dabble in making tails and other accessories, but for the most part it seems that fursuits are imported.

Anyways, that’s just about a wrap for Australia. I don’t intend for it to be a finish to the series. There are nineteen interviews unaccounted for in my notes from all over the world. I would like to write a large collection filled with some of the insightful things people said in response to the questions. I also have a super-secret bonus plan for one more article that will hopefully happen as well. I’m moving soon (again) and starting a new job, so no guarantees, but I’ll be keeping an eye on [a][s]. Thanks for reading!

A hypothetical question: you are given US$100,000, to be used for the betterment of the furry community. How do you spend it?

The first option is to simply spend the money on furry items. You’ll be contributing to the furry community by strengthening the furry economy.

I’m going to define the ‘furry economy’ as the sum of all furry-to-furry (F2F) transactions, where the good or service exchanged is a furry one. So purchasing furry art from a furry is F2F; purchasing furry art from a non-furry (perhaps a copy of the Lion King from Disney) is not. Purchasing a ticket to a furry convention is F2F; purchasing a ticket to a sci-fi convention is not.

Your $100k is a lot of money, but it’s small compared to the size of the furry economy. The money spent on furry conventions alone, assuming 100,000 annual attendees at an average cost of $200, is in the tens of millions. It’s fair to guess that the money spent on other F2F transactions is also in the millions. So your $100k is not going to make a big difference to the size of the global furry economy.

Still, your money is going to help some furry providers. This is going to make the provision of furry services marginally more profitable, and you might choose to purchase items that can gifted to the wider furry community, such as furry art.

Option 1: Buy Furry Art

Your money will help some furry artists, although it’s just a drop in the ocean and will have little benefit in the longer term. But the art will have secondary value if you allow it to be publicly shared.

You have a secondary consideration here: high art or low art?

Option 1a: Commission Furry Pornography

There is great demand for pornography within furry, a demand which isn’t easily met because the production of furry pornography is labour-intensive. Your commissioned pornography will find an audience and be appreciated, but its value will decline over time: pornography tends to lose its erotic power on repeat viewings. Your $100k worth of pornography will have a shelf life.

Option 1b: Commission High Art

High art, on the other hand, tends to last because it has greater intellectual and emotional heft. So perhaps you might commission some thoughtful pieces. Perhaps your money would allow an artist, or author, to dedicate more time to a project. You are less likely to find a mainstream audience, but you may end up with something that endures.

Here’s another way to add to the furry economy: why not invest in furry R&D?

Option 2: Buy an Experimental Fursuit

You could find a handful of fursuit creators, and spend the money pursuing risky suit ideas. Fursuit commissioners and creators will generally be risk averse, because neither party wants a bad outcome. So maybe you could spend the money in the hope of discovering a new technique or trick, which could then be adopted by suiters and creators worldwide.

Or:

Option 3: Fund a Website

Your $100k will find you developers and managers and testers. Perhaps you could build a website that provides a useful service, meets an unmet need.

Option 4: Fund a Convention

Our furry conventions are largely copycat; they’re based on iterative improvements from sci-fi conventions. Your money might be used to create something risky, unusual. You can afford for your convention to fail, and maybe you’ll create something that succeeds, and can be adopted worldwide.

But maybe you want to go a different route. By spending your $100k on the F2F economy, you’re essentially helping the community through ‘trickle down’ economics: you’re trusting that your money will indirectly help the wider furry community. Perhaps that all sounds a bit capitalist for you; perhaps you’d rather spend your money as a charity.

Most conventions have a charity event, and furries are generous givers. For an example, consider Confuzzled 2013: 872 attendees gave £11,484 to STA Ferret Rescue. Our convention charities are usually (always?) animal-themed, but why not spend your money providing charity directly to furries?

Option 5: Help Needy Furries

Okay, so the drama associated with this option would be off-the-charts. And your money wouldn’t have much of an impact on the furry community as a whole. But you would make a big difference to the lives of a small number of people.

You could always be a bit more targeted with your charity. You could, say, give the money to furries with instructions on how to spend it. There are options here:

Option 6a: Help Furries Travel

You could help furries travel; to conventions, to overseas furry groups. Send a furry group to one of our newer international outposts, perhaps Japan or Eastern Europe. Or gift dozens of furries travel and accommodation to conventions.

Option 6b: Help Furries Buy Art

Or you could help furries pay for their own art commissions.

As it turns out, this experiment is currently taking place on a smaller scale. Fur Affinity user KrisPup is currently running a raffle, where the winner gets $1111 in commissions (that are paid for by Kris).

It’s a compelling idea, and the size of his prize is interesting: it’s big enough to be valuable to those furries without any disposable income, and small enough to be affordable to most people with a full-time job. I wonder if it might be repeated by others. It has generated enough interest to have crashed FA’s creaky servers at least once as furries tried to enter en masse.

(Predictably, Kris’s offer has provoked drama: accusations that his raffle is fake, or that he’s trying to buy popularity, or simple jealousy. I wonder how he will be affected in the longer term, once the money is given and the excitement wears off. The raffle will be open until Christmas or so: see here.)

If the drama of giving charity directly to furries is all too much, you could use your money to subsidize loss-making furry enterprises. There are a few alternatives.

Option 7a: Subsidize Furry Websites

You could offer to pay for hosting and development time for non-commercial furry websites. Most furry websites are volunteer-driven, and most of them operate at a loss. [adjective][species], for example, costs Makyo about US$500 per year (including furrypoll.com). Undoubtedly the costs for larger sites are much higher.

With apologies to Makyo’s bank balance, I’m not sure that this is a good way to spend your $100k. I have no doubt that the help would be appreciated, but you’re unlikely to be helping the furry community in any way. You’ll be saving money for selfless volunteers, but they are already choosing to spend the money without dipping into your pot. So let’s look elsewhere.

Option 7b: Subsidize Conventions

Conventions sometimes lose money. It’s a double blow for an organizing committee, who spend endless hours making a convention happen only to see that they’ve underestimated attendance or, more likely, total costs. They have to make up the shortfall and, in some cases, the convention closes its doors. So why not offer a safety net?

And speaking of safety nets:

Option 7c: Subsidize Successful Artists

The life of a furry artist, even a successful one, is tough. Many artists simply quit to pursue greener pastures. A bit of extra money might keep our artists in furry, for longer.

Finally, your choice isn’t just between a furry economic stimulus or furry welfare: there is a third way. You could offer a reward.

Option 8: A Furry Art Prize

Your pot of money is large enough to create interest in a juried furry art prize. You could assemble some well-regarded furries and offer a windfall to the creator of a great work of art.

There are already furry awards out there, notably the Ursa Majors. But there is no prize for winning a UM beyond a signal boost, and this for an award judged on popularity. The outcome is that UMs are usually awarded to the best-known entrant, the one least in need of publicity. This is why Kyell Gold declined nominations for the 2012 UMs; he understands that the publicity is more valuable to others.

The Cóyotl Awards are a lower-profile award run by the Furry Writer’s Guild (disclaimer: I am a member). They are different from the UMs in that only members of the FWG are allowed to nominate and vote. There is a jury, however they only determine whether a nomination is eligible for voting. Like the UMs, there is no prize.

A juried furry art prize, perhaps $10k spread over 10 years, would be valuable to our community. It would help the winning artist, and it would shine a light on lesser-known (but high-quality) emerging artists. Your prize would be the Oscars to UM’s People’s Choice Awards.

This list of options has come from a long series of conversations with furries around the world. It’s not exhaustive.

How would you spend your $100k?

(This is the follow-up to the first article, published October 9th, On Advertising: Part 1 – Before which explores the hows and whys of our little experiment in advertising.  Start there if you have yet to read it!)

And so it’s over.  We ran advertisements for one month on two furry sites to try and gain some insight into the way furries interact both with ads and with those sites in general. Those campaigns ended several days ago and we’ve been looking over the data we have available to us, including information before, during, and after the campaigns were over.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

 [adjective][species] Campaign Visits furaffinity 1486 sofurry 174

As with any site with a publishing schedule such as ours, one can expect the spikes around the days when articles go live.  That was true before, as well as during and after the advertising campaign.  In fact, though there is a visible increase in the average number of visitors, and the campaigns do show some activity*, this ad was less effective than both the Love – Sex – Fur and Furry Poll ads.  I think that this was due to the relatively calm and passive nature of the advertisement itself.  While LSF’s ad was also passive in nature, it did happen to include the word ‘sex’ as well as a salacious RandomWolf in red-tinted glasses (ain’t he dreamy?).  The Furry Poll ad, on the other hand, was more of a call to action, using very active language such as “Take part…” and “Stand up – Get counted!”.

However, these numbers aren’t the only ones worth taking a look at.  In addition to the increase in visitors, the [adjective][species] FurAffinity account has gained 81 new watchers (and one spam note offering free anime downloads!), and the Twitter account at least 40 new followers (Twitter will only let me look back so far).  Even more surprising, to me, was that my own personal FA account gained 30 new followers.  JM reports that he has also seen an increase in followers on FA.  The amount of times that we have been contacted via shouts, notes**, and emails has increased, as well.  Several of those who have found us (or perhaps even already knew about us) have some delightful ideas worth exploring within the fandom, it seems!

Love – Sex – Fur

Campaign Visits furaffinity 3440 sofurry 258

LSF‘s activity is, of course much lower than [a][s]‘s.  I have been on something of a sabbatical*** (as I did around this time last year), and JM has been extraordinarily helpful in carrying the burden of [adjective][species], but there hasn’t been as much traffic to Love – Sex – Fur, understandably. Along with 42 new watchers on FA, 24 new Twitter followers, and another note received there, we can more easily see the effect of advertising on site traffic without the spikes of new articles being posted on a regular basis.

The Furry Poll

Campaign Visits furaffinity 3440 sofurry 258

Whoa there!  Although this graph shows pretty clearly the start and end of the ad campaign, the numbers are skewed by the graph’s scaling due to a very large jump on October 29th and 30th.  As far as is visible from the referrers list during that time, the survey was shared in two large furry groups on Facebook (which ones are, of course, not visible to us).

The presence of furries on Facebook has always felt somewhat surprising to me.  I do not shrink from sharing my membership with this subculture in contexts outside of the fandom.  I go by Makyo on work’s IRC servers, I use the same old dapper-fox-drinking-a-gin-and-tonic icon on GitHub, where some of our code is stored, and I’ve even used one of the [a][s] visualizations to prove a point about overwhelming amounts of data during a meeting.  Something about the way that Facebook promotes unmediated sharing and monetizing of information rubs me the wrong way, however.  Perhaps this is a holdover from my early-adopter days, when Facebook was touted as the best way for students to connect and share photos and such with each other, when it was restricted to university students.  For me, the site still feels like the very mundane (in all senses of the term) social media network, focused primarily on staying in touch with classmates.

However, I know that’s not the case, as I’ve seen several incoming spikes such as this show up from links being shared on Facebook.  For those of you who are active in a furry context on Facebook, how do you manage your identity there?  Do you have a separate furry-only profile, or do you mix in all circles with one profile?

And to whomever shared a link to the furry survey on Facebook, cheers!  Of all of the sites included in this exercise, the survey is the one that will benefit the most from increased exposure. It’s important that we get as many responses from all around the world as possible to provide a clearer picture of our community.  Given the single-use nature of the survey site, the dramatic decrease in numbers after the campaign’s end is not too surprising: after all, there’s no reason to revisit the site more than once a year!

Bookmarfs!

 

Campaign Visits furaffinity 1017 sofurry 117

Bookmarfs! is an unrelated project, but one that also needed an advertisement. Additionally, once I noticed that all of our ads followed the same format, I took a different path with this one: no striped background, simple and to the point.  The ad was actually strikingly effective during the period it was shown, given the relatively low initial interest and the (current) rate at which we post: twice a month, usually on the same day – once for the discussion of the past month’s book and once to announce the next month’s book.  We also received 14 new watchers on FA and 10 new followers on Twitter.

Conclusions

I think that the advertising experiment was useful in seeing just how the fandom utilizes advertising.  Judging by personal interactions with friends and through comments here on the previous post, our reaction to advertising is decidedly mixed.  Several people I have heard from have described ads in general to be intrusive and a nuisance, especially on the Internet.  However, I am not the only one who turns off ad-blockers on furry sites such as FurAffinity and SoFurry.  Part of it is that I know that a higher percentage of ads are, by the very virtue of their existence on these sites, targeted toward my interests.  However, and I’m not alone in thinking this way, it’s also good to know that a lot of the people posting these ads are individuals, sharing an interest in common with me, who are doing their best to get by in life doing something they love.

This, in fact, is one of the reasons that I ran these ads only in month-long intervals.  [adjective][species] projects (and Bookmarfs!) are all projects run out of pocket with no profit incentive.  We sell no products or services, and we write because that’s what we love to do.  Our readership is fantastic, and we would love to grow that, but it’s also nice to give the space to the creators who are doing their best to make a living in our little subculture.  Advertising does play a role in our community, and I think that these few examples have shown just how that information is transmuted into a measurable and visible change.  For those out there questioning whether or not their business within furry will benefit from advertising, I think this serves as a fairly strong “yes”.  I placed four ads on two high-traffic sites for a month for just about $130 (about the cost of running all of the above sites except for the furry survey for one year) and the results were immediate.

* The campaign numbers differ significantly from the impressions reported by SoFurry’s advert system (campaign reports 174 impressions, SoFurry reports 429 clicks for [a][s], with similar skews for other sites).  Piwik, our metrics tool, plays nice with AdBlock, Noscript, and other such tools, and so there are likely several more visitors than are actually being reported by these metrics.  However, it was still nice to get an idea of the ways in which advertising works within our community!

Here are the actual numbers from SoFurry:

** In general, notes are a poor way to get in touch with us.  Please email instead!

*** Apologies for the paucity of content on my part!  However, I will be attending Mid-West Fur Fest this year, so if you catch me around, I’d be more than happy to talk shop, furry or otherwise!

Special Note: This column was first written for TSAT Magazine in 2001 (on September 9th actually, if memory serves). TSAT was an early e-zine that focused entirely on transformation stories, that branch of fiction in which one thing is likely to very soon become another. All of my own earliest works as a serious authors were transformation stories and many of them still are, as I find TF to be a superb literary mechanism for examining the human condition via making it somewhat less human. At any rate, I’ve received several requests over the years to republish this column despite its age in a more available forum, and so I’ve touched it up for [adjective][species]. Please note that while the column refers specifically to transformation stories again and again, I believe that what I said over a decade ago still pretty much holds equally true for furry fiction today.

(So why didn’t I just edit the thing radically enough to make it about furry fiction instead of TF? Because for some unknown reason I’m inordinately proud of this piece, and feel that I owe it to both TSAT Magazine and the struggling beginner writer that I then was to keep it in as original a state as possible. Don’t worry; it’ll be just fine.)

Last Labor Day weekend I found myself standing in a hotel parking lot in Memphis, Tennessee with a group of close friends. It was about midnight and this particular hotel was located directly under the approach path of the local airport. It’d been raining off and on for some time, and the clouds hung low and thick.

As it happens Memphis is the home base of Federal Express, the famous overnight parcel delivery service. Chatting quietly and companionably, we stood together and watched in quiet awe as a miracle took place right in front of our eyes. One after another, a seemingly endless line of heavy cargo jets materialized out of the gloom and glided over our heads, their engines throttled back to a near-silent idle and tiny wisps of fog forming at their wingtips in the heavy humidity. Each jet, weighing many tons, passed directly over our heads as if suspended from a dream and then vanished behind the hotel building as it went on to land in a nightly ballet that may very well have no direct parallel anywhere in the world today. What we were watching was not just a series of planes landing, but a multi-dimensional ballet involving hopes, dreams, thousands of years of steady technological advance and even the expression of social and financial systems evolved to a sufficiently high level to allow such a remarkable thing to take place. It was, in a word, incredible.

So, you may well ask, what does FedEx have to with to do with writing transformation stories? The key phrase in the above paragraph is “a miracle took place right before our eyes”.

As a rule there are four basic transformational devices used in TF literature. These are surgical, magical, technological and biological. Magical TF’s can be as unlimited as a writer’s imagination, while surgical TF’s are almost entirely confined to TG stories. Biological TF’s, as epitomized by the well-known “Martian Flu” of the “Blind Pig” storyverse, generally operate under the guise of contagious diseases. Technological TF’s, however, are far more complex and difficult to work with. Creating a technological TF device demands not only that the writer at least deal in passing with the incredibly complex issues of bio-engineering, but also that he seamlessly place these issues within the context of the society that produced such tech. When a writer attempts to write a story with technological TF’s, in other words, he has by definition set out to write a work of science fiction rather than one of fantasy; therefore, in order to produce a credible work he simply must meet the very exacting strictures of a good SF tale. This requires discipline, discipline, discipline! However, the results can exceed in scope and impact any other form of artistic expression on the planet, at least in my opinion.

Genuinely superb SF is in my opinion rarer than hen’s teeth; the vast majority of what I find on the shelves for sale today in fact makes me want to gag. While there seemingly have been almost as many articles written on the elements of good SF as there have been truly excellent SF tales, and many of these articles make excellent points, I have yet to read any of these “authoritative” pieces that really hits the nail on the head regarding the factor that produces quality work of the sort that transcends the boundary between simple storytelling and true art. And that boundary is that the story must make a miracle, a real, genuine, honest-to-God miracle, take place right in front of your eyes.

This is one hell of a challenge for any writer, of course. Ninety-nine or more percent of all SF consists of the simple rehash of old ideas or plots that have been done a million times before. Yet the truly great ones have managed it—from time to time the impossible has been accomplished and the reader led gently forth to touch the living face of God. Heinlein did it in Orphans of the Sky, the very first and original tale about a generation ship lost in space so long that its inhabitants have forgotten they are space travelers. “The universe was three miles long!” declares the blurb on a paperback edition of this work that I own, and for once the blurb-writer captured the inherent truth of the novel. The universe was only three miles long for the travelers because the inhabitants had turned inwards to superstition and violence instead of outwards towards science and reason. Their universe literally shrank to nothing as their minds closed, and when the viewpoint character finally rejects his religion and looks out upon the naked stars in all their majesty… There simply is no more powerful use of metaphor in all of SF. None!

Arthur C. Clarke has taken his readers to see God as well, not once but many times. Perhaps my personal favorite is the story of Alvin of Lorraine in the classic Against the Fall of Night. Alvin lives in a world where humanity is in serious cultural decline, where risk-taking and exploration and even the mere idea of there being anything new or worthwhile to be found in the universe is unheard of. He explores the glory of Man’s past and rediscovers a heritage that reaches far beyond the mundane boundaries of the minds of his people. (Clarke later rewrote and expanded this novel as The City and The Stars, but I’ve always preferred the plainer and less embellished original version.)

Another more modern writer who’s taken me to unexplored heights is Greg Bear. His Anvil of Stars (sequel to the also-excellent Forge of God) is possibly the single most depressing work I’ve ever read in my life, yet it is glorious and miraculous nonetheless. It’s the tale of a group of children sent forth in an alien-provided starship to avenge themselves upon a civilization that has utterly destroyed Earth and almost all of mankind. Their society’s whole purpose for existence is to seek out and kill these evil beings, and as they get closer and closer to their goal their interpersonal relationships warp more and more out of true until we find ourselves utterly repulsed by the mindless hatred and bloodlust of a tribe of revenge-seeking savages and, even worse, recognizing our own reflections much too clearly in their world. In the end it becomes clear that in order to put paid to the murderers of Earth (who’ve killed many other worlds besides ours and will continue to exterminate entire planets full of sentient beings until stopped), several idyllic and totally innocent races must be also exterminated along the way. There is simply no other option. Among all the peoples and civilizations who have faced this dilemma, guess who alone is bloodthirsty and heartless enough to do what is needful and end the cycle of death forever?

Most articles about writing in general, including those about writing SF, tend to focus on the craftsmanship aspects of writing. Don’t repeat words too often, they tell you. Show, don’t tell. Use good grammar, and remember always that the all-powerful and all-knowing Bill Gates put a spellchecker on your computer for a reason. But what they don’t tell you is that to truly transcend the limits of reality in your reader’s mind, you must find and develop a core idea so powerful that it is analogous to plugging a thirty-amp lead into God himself. Even more, your execution of this idea must be in harmonious sympathy with the concept so that your symbols sing and your metaphors match the greater flow of the tale. I would submit that the technological approach to transformation gives you far and away the greatest opportunity to make this happen, though I couldn’t for the life of me tell you why I think this is so. Perhaps it’s that the discipline of thought required by the writing of true SF as opposed to fantasy brings about a pleasing sense of synchronicity on a subconscious level, or maybe when writing about advanced tech we simply have to plan our works better and more carefully. But it’s true nonetheless, at least in my experience. Almost without exception, every TF story I have ever read that could properly be described as being “high art” rather than simple storytelling has been solidly based upon the thoughtful use of a technological-type TF.

So here’s my challenge to you, my fellow authors. Make me feel the same way that I felt while watching those spectral planes wafting so effortlessly overhead in Memphis, and I will gladly read your works of fiction forevermore. Make a miracle happen in front of my very eyes, and I will be your slobbering fanboy from now until the end of time. For there was something far more magical than mere magic about those planes lined up so endlessly, a sight that even a few short decades ago was absolutely unimaginable and which would have been regarded as the purest of science fiction. TF tech is inherently no more impossible nor unbelievable, I would submit, than Federal Express. Technology is perhaps the most quintessentially human thing in all of the universe, the aspect of ourselves that most clearly defines us as a species. Nothing based in mere material reality is more clearly proof of who and what we are deep down inside than is our tech. I challenge you to take the concept of technology and run wild with it, to wrestle with this most difficult and most rewarding of TF story types and write a true science-fiction-type TF story with all the discipline and limitations that this style of work implies. After all, you never know. In stylistic limitations you may find true freedom, and in the attempting of something truly difficult you may discover inner resources that you never even suspected you had.

Who knows? You might just make a miracle happen.

I’ve been an [adjective][species] contributor since early 2012, and I’m proud to have participated in the site’s growth and success over the last two years.

I’d like to pitch my two cents into the second birthday celebration. I think of myself as a fan of [a][s] first and a contributor second; and so I’d like to revisit some of my favourite articles.

This is a very short list of four articles that I love. None are from the last six months, so hopefully a few people will be introduced to them for the first time. And for those of us who have been following the site for some time, all these articles are worth reading and rereading again.

Makyo’s Kaddish by Makyo, published 21 March 2012

Makyo is a generous and lyrical writer, and this article is one of the best. Makyo calls it a ‘fluff post’ in the introduction, but nothing could be further from the truth. This is a personal story of Makyo’s relationship with furry, touching on personal growth, disenfranchisement and reconciliation, and the feedback between personal identity and community experience.

The article is framed by a beautiful metaphor: the ebbs and flows of Leonard Bernstein’s interpretation of the Mourner’s Kaddish, a Jewish prayer. Makyo starts with early, youthful impressions of furry and ends up by registering adjectivespecies.com: a site that was originally envisioned as “a snarky, burned fur website” (!). To think that Makyo transitioned from that sort of cynicism to become the author of this furry love letter in six months or so is kinda magical.

Art and Money by Makyo, published 11 July 2012

This is one of the first [adjective][species] explorations of one of the most fraught relationships in the furry community: that between artist and client.

Our community is one that we create ourselves. Our art is created by furries, for furries, and the more talented artists find their time and skills in great demand. But how does an artist value their own time? Is furry art too expensive or too cheap? Should the richest furries have special access to the best artists? How does an artist pay the rent?

Makyo wrote this article after interviewing several artists. The research shows: the article is balanced, insightful, and surprising.

Birds of a Feather by Rabbit, published 16 February 2013

Phil Geusz, writing for [adjective][species] as Rabbit, imagines a hypothetical: “Will we, someday, become culturally distinct enough from mainstream society to form a neighborhood or our own somewhere?”

Phil is one of furry’s best speculative fiction writers, and he tackles his hypothetical with his trademark lucidity. He doesn’t deal in abstract comments; he is a writer of ideas. And so he explores the preconditions that might lead to the founding of a real-world furry district, and how that district might function.

Like Phil’s fiction, Birds of a Feather is transporting. The premise is tangible and enchanting. Nowadays, when I walk around some declining corner of an old city, I think about how it might look if it were adopted en masse by thousands of furries. And I smile.

Whiskey Sour by Lunostophiles, published 25 April 2013

Here’s an apple among the oranges: a poem.

Luno’s poem arrived in my email inbox while I was sitting in an airport lounge: wearing a suit, answering work emails, sipping on some insipid too-hot coffee. I started reading the sharp and colourful lines and was jolted from the mundane world.

Whiskey Sour loosely follows a long evening of drinking and socializing at a furry convention. Luno’s lines are celebratory, nostalgic, extreme, faltering, juvenile, regretful, fleeting.

Whiskey Sour is a terrific work of art. It should be performed and celebrated at furry conventions around the world. It should win a 2013 Ursa Major.

[adjective][species] turns two today!  RandomWolf made it to the party, but he kept having ideas he just needed to write down, I guess.  What is it with all these giant candles, anyway?  Art by the delightful Floe, who also did our banner.

*fweeeeet*

Thanks for sticking with us over the last few years!

There is little glamour in writing non-fiction pieces about furry. It takes time and research to write on any topic with authority, and most articles will attract a small amount of attention on publication before sinking without a trace.

But if you keep your expectations in check, it can be a really enjoyable and rewarding exercise. There is the personal pride that comes from your background reading, as you gain expertise in your topic, and you’ll be contributing to the small but growing body of work that is trying to understand the furry community’s place in the world. Your article will help people learn new things and think of the world in a different way.

This is companion article of sorts to Submissive Roles: Writing For Furry Anthologies, where Huskyteer discusses strategies and tips for submitting short fiction for publication. I’ll review the options for non-fiction publication and offer a few tips to make things as smooth as possible.

There are not many places that regularly publish news and reviews in the furry world, and there are plenty of defunct publications. The challenge for each publisher is maintaining continuity of content: if there have only one primary contributor, it’s easy for things to flag. Successful publications (almost) always require a group of contributors, regular and irregular. So unsolicited contributions will be gratefully received, as long as they are appropriate for the publisher.

Let’s look at your options:

Flayrah

Flayrah is the oldest and best source of furry news and reviews. It’s been around since 2001, edited by furry legend Greenreaper (who also founded Wikifur, among many other selfless contributions to our community). If you have a news item, or a review of some furry media (perhaps a book or a film), Flayrah should be your first port of call.

Flayrah operates with an open source mentality, so they will essentially publish anything. Your contribution will be edited and otherwise touched up before it goes live. It’s a great place to make your first public contribution to the furry community, and you can be assured that many people will read your piece.

The open source philosophy of Flayrah means that the quality and relevance of its articles can be variable. At its best, Flayrah disseminates news and dispassionately reports on emotive topics, such as furries who have been arrested or on deaths in the community. They also have regular reviews from Fred Patten, a living treasure who has been around furry since Day One. At its worst, Flayrah publishes slight, trivial, poorly-thought-out nonsense. (But that’s okay, because you can simply skip those articles.)

Flayrah does publish the occasional opinion piece but it’s not really the right venue. But if you have news, a review, or some other easily-digestible snippet from around furry, Flayrah is ideal.

Flayrah like their pieces to be journalistic, which means that you shouldn’t be a character in your contribution. Keep it level-headed, direct, non-judgmental, and informative. They have guidelines for contribution here.

[adjective][species]

We at [adjective][species] have only been around for two years, and I’d like to think that we have become the go-to site for well-informed opinion. We do publish the occasional review or interview or oddity, but in general we’re looking for something relatively in-depth.

If Flayrah is furry’s paper of record, our New York Times, then I’d like to think of [adjective][species] as furry’s New Yorker. Some of our articles are going to be a bit long or boring or highbrow for some people, and that’s okay.

Each writer for [a][s] has their own style, and we tend to have our own areas of expertise. There is no special template to fit; if you have a browse through the site you’ll see that our various contributors write in different ways. There is no specific template, although there are some basic requirements (instructions here).

When you submit a contribution, it gets emailed to Makyo. Usually either Makyo or I will read through and respond, although Makyo always gets the final say. Some contributions are published without any editing, some require minor changes, and others have needed major renovations. It’s rare for us to reject a contribution outright, and we always try to provide positive, constructive feedback—and perhaps suggest a more appropriate avenue for publication.

In-Fur-Nation

In-Fur-Nation is a remarkable site, essentially run single-handedly by editor Rod O’Reily. In-Fur-Nation has been around in one form or another for almost 20 years.

Nowadays, In-Fur-Nation provides notice of new furry-related releases, such as movies, books, games, or anything else that crops up. It’s a great resource and is the ideal place to announce a new (or hitherto ignored) furry project.

Rod suggests contacting him by email (details here) with any items for publication.

Claw & Quill

Claw & Quill is a new online magazine, edited by Watts Martin. They are aiming for content similar to [adjective][species], although with more a focus on profiling artworks and events.

The magazine is due to be launched in the very near future—Tuesday 29 October, i.e. tomorrow. C&Q is intended to be published monthly, with 4 to 5 articles per issue. The [a][s] experience suggests that such a publication schedule is optimistic (it’s a lot of content), and the six-month delay in the launch date reinforces the impression that Watts might have bitten off a bit more than he can chew. Having said that, he has form: he’s written several novellas and short stories, and has plenty of experience editing small publications throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

You can read the C&Q submission guidelines here.

Furry News Network

Furry News Network is a shadow of its former self. At one time it was a news site, similar to Flayrah, with a few nifty regular features. Nowadays FNN simply republishes (arguably plagiarizes) items from other sources, such as Flayrah and In-Fur-Nation. There is little to no original content.

Don’t bother.

Reddit

If you would like to dip your toe in the water, you might consider the furry subreddit. Be aware that the quality of conversation is low, often juvenile, and that intelligent or thought-provoking items tend to disappear from the front page as they get overwhelmed by trivial fluff. But that’s Reddit for you.

Having said that, your item will go online immediately and you will find a large audience. It’s a good option if you want to get a feel how some furries will react to certain topics, or if you want to share something personal and therefore not appropriate for Flayrah.

A Personal Journal

A personal furry journal is always a good idea if you intend to write regularly. It’s a good place to get used to the process of writing, and your items don’t need to meet any special requirements, or be fully-formed ideas, or be subject to third-party editing.

And Some Bonus Tips

- The title of your piece is important. It should make your topic clear, and it should be interesting. For example, here is a good title: Only 22% Of Furries Are Gay, and a bad title: Service.

- Don’t bury the lede. Your first paragraph should be as interesting, attention-grabbing, and important as possible. Your are writing for the reader, and it’s simply good manners to let them know why they are reading the article as quickly as possible.

- Be short and succinct. It’s tempting to use big words or jargon, but you should only use them when necessary. They can make an article difficult to read.

- If you’re an expressing an opinion, make sure you understand the counterpoint. People who disagree with you may read your article, and it’s important that these readers feel you are being fair. If you’re not sure, find someone who disagrees with you, and ask for their help as part of your research.

- Research as much as you can. Keep in mind that you’re presenting yourself as an expert on the topic. For an example of a research failure: I wrote an article about the IARP (International Anthropomorphic Research Project) that was lacking in some areas; so we published a follow-up article by Nuka (one of the furry researchers) where he politely pointed out my ignorance in some detail. Not everyone is going to be as nice or generous with their criticism as Nuka…

- …which brings me on to my final point: expect criticism. People who disagree with you are the most likely to comment on your piece. It’s not easy, but take the criticism in the way it is intended, that of someone who feels they have worthwhile input. Even if they are a bit aggressive, swallow your pride and thank them for their time.

And finally, my background, which is what I’m relying on to position myself as an expert on writing furry non-fiction: I’ve run a personal furry journal for many years, I’ve written more than 50 articles for [adjective][species], and I’ve had a small handful of things published on Flayrah.

My relationship started with [a][s] when I dropped an email to Makyo with a couple of ideas for articles. Hopefully one or two of you will feel encouraged to do the same. I look forward to reading what you have to say.

The number of straight (or bi) male furries far outweighs the number of straight (or bi) female furries. Around 1 in 5 furries are female, and some of those are gay or asexual. We looked at the numbers last year and estimated that about 16% of furries—1 in 6—are women who may be interested in a relationship with a guy. And many of those will already be in a relationship, or otherwise not available.

You can read how we reached that conclusion, along with some discussion in a previous article (which has my favourite title to date): It’s Raining Men. It shows how furry’s gender imbalance and sexual orientation demographics conspire to make it difficult for heterosexual guys to find a relationship with a fellow furry. (It’s even worse if you’re a furry lesbian.)

This article is a guide to how a heterosexual male can maximize his chances of finding a furry girlfriend; without being a stalker, without pulling any pick-up-artistry nonsense, and without being creepy or otherwise contributing to the problem that’s keeping women away from the furry community.

It’s true that women are staying away from public furry gatherings, and they’re staying away because they are being harassed by men who are hoping to pick them up, talk to them, or just make friends. Data collected online (ref Furrypoll) and data collected at large conventions (ref IARP) show this trend: online we’re (around) 80% male; at conventions we’re (around) 90% male.

We furries have the same problem as gamers, cosplayers, and sports fans: if you’re female and wish to attend an event, you have to prepare yourself for the possibility of receiving unwelcome attention. Some women are naturally more able to ignore or combat this attention; other women simply stop going. And so we tend to mostly see women who are happy enough dealing with this nonsense, and we tend to think of these women as normal. It’s easy to hold them up as an example for all women, and to suggest that all women should consider unsolicited male attention ‘in the right spirit’, or as an ‘ego boost’.

Such standards are wrong. It serves to reinforce the idea that women should be able to deal with unwanted advances themselves… and so the shy, the young, and the I’ve-had-enough-of-this-crap crowd stay away.

So the first rule for meeting furry women is to consider a public furry gathering to be a Safe Space. This means that you should never approach a women with the intent of striking up a conversation, and you should encourage your male friends to follow the same example. Furry gatherings are a place for people, men and women, to socialize with friends. If a guy is inserting himself into a social group because he is motivated by the chance to meet someone of the opposite sex, then he is breaking the tacit social contract, and needs to cut it out.

It sounds counter-intuitive to suggest that, in order to meet more furry women, you should avoid introducing yourself at a social gathering. But such non-action is simply respectful and fair, and will save you from being labelled as a creep.

I am suggesting, by the way, that you treat men differently from women. You can reasonably initiate social contact with (most) men. It’s easy to see this as a double standard.

It’s not a double standard, because there is a difference in the experiences of men and women. Women live in a world where sexual harassment is a very real problem, where men being assertive can be perceived to be threatening, and where women feel like they need to be on their guard in case a friendly gesture is misinterpreted. Men don’t have the same problem because the social stakes are not loaded: it’s a lot easier for a man to brush off the advances of another man, and take it as an ego boost.

It’s a similar situation to how you should treat a celebrity, perhaps at a furry convention. People who are well known will be in demand, and they may find themselves constantly interrupted by well-meaning fans. There are opportunities for fans to meet and socialize with the celebrity, but these need to be controlled by the celebrity, otherwise they risk being overwhelmed by the attention. And if the celebrity can’t reasonably control the social demand placed on them, they must leave.

Women can find themselves in a similar situation, with the added pressure of the male-dominated gender imbalance. A single approach, no matter how friendly and well-meaning, can be sufficiently difficult such that it undermines all the good things about being around friends and furries at a gathering.

I feel like I’m wading into the territory of men’s rights here, a mostly internet-based philosophy that suggests that men have the raw end of the gender stick. Men’s rights advocates are usually well-meaning, but are misguided. They would suggest that it’s unfair that there are special rules that apply to men when talking to women, compared to any other situation (man talking to man, woman talking to man, woman talking to woman). They are right that it’s different, but it’s not unfair… not towards men anyway.

The men’s rights movement thinks that the genders should be treated equally. As it turns out, this is a pretty good definition of the goal of feminism. There is a conflict because the men’s-righters are largely ignorant to the challenges that are faced by women (but not faced by men). Men’s-righters suggest that we should be gender-blind, which is the sort of bone-headed idealization of the real world that might inform a high-concept Star Trek episode.

I don’t want to delve too deeply into feminism or the bizarro world of men’s rights here. It’s interesting stuff but it’s not the topic of this article. I accept that some readers might challenge my characterization of men’s rights, and I’m happy to participate in a wider discussion: perhaps in a co-authored point-counterpoint article for future publication here on [a][s]. If you’re interested, drop me a line ([email protected]).

Before I move on, I want to give a modern example of a challenge uniquely faced by women: the concept of the ‘friendzone’. The idea is that if a guy has a female friend, he runs the risk of being seen as only a friend and not a potential romantic parter—he is in the ‘friendzone’. It’s a concept rooted in the idea that men want women, but that women don’t want men. The idea is part misogyny and part self-hatred (it’s self-hatred because it suggests that only women can be attractive). The worst aspect of the ‘friendzone concept is that it implies that the friendship of the woman in question is only worth having because of the possibility of a romantic relationship. It’s a term that reinforces the inferiority of women to men; a male-male friendship would never be debased in such a way.

The plight of women in furry goes largely unrecognized or unnoticed because of majority privilege. We are male-dominated, and so our collective experience is largely male-centric. Contrary points of view, perhaps like some expressed in this article, are treated with natural skepticism because they challenge the agreed groupthink. And so women who express unhappiness with their social experience are disregarded for being fringe—after all, we have lots of gay guys in furry and straight guys don’t mind getting hit on occasionally, and that’s just the same right? We men don’t experience things from the women’s point of view, so we are unable to empathize.

But we can sympathize. And we can behave in a way that makes furry a welcoming environment for everyone.

So, guys, here is how to meet a furry woman:

1. Furry gatherings are a Safe Space. Don’t approach any woman who is not already a good friend.
2. You are playing a numbers game. You are going to have to meet, and get to know, 10 to 20 people for each potentially eligible woman. Be patient.
3. So be social, especially online. Get to know people, regardless of gender, in different social circles. You will meet new people through the connections of friends-of-friends.
4. Do not pursue a relationship with someone until you are already good friends. You should have known her for months, not weeks or days. You should have met several times in person and be comfortable in one another’s company.
5. If you are interested in someone, ask online or over text (not in person) whether she is interested. Make it brief and respectful. If she isn’t interested, drop it. Forever. Consider this person for evermore to be a friend of yours.

(And if you’re a guy, and you’re interested in a male friend? You can be more direct. The social dynamics are different: if he’s not interested, he’s much less likely to find it threatening or inappropriate.)

Being single can be lonely. It can be easy to think of a relationship as something you need. This is compelling but flawed: relationships don’t come on demand.

So if you are single, take the opportunity to focus on yourself. Work towards meeting your own emotional and social needs, and work towards making your future self as attractive as possible. You can do this by learning new things, broadening your interests, and generally doing things that you know are good for you.

And if you are feeling isolated, have a read of this article geared towards the lonely fur: A Rough Guide To Loneliness.

This article originally appeared on our sister site, Love ? Sex ? Fur on October 5th, 2013.

I’m a very big proponent of the idea that, for the most part, furry is simply a small slice of society at large. We have our skews, of course – the gender skew (towards men), the age skew (towards the 15-25 year old age range), as well as some other, minor skews such as general technical aptitude, or even species selection toward canids – but for the most part, we do not think or act so differently from the “rest of the world” that we cannot interface with it. Our chosen home and family may be more comfortable for us, but we do not exist separate from everyone else.

It’s not surprising in the least, then, that dating and relationships do form a part of our membership with this subculture. We think about it, we write about it, we join websites, make websites, or write litanies against websites focused on dating, relationships and love. It’s part of life, and so it is also part of the fandom. Given the subtitle of “Love and Sex in the Furry Fandom,” it is also part of our repertoire of subjects to write about, and so I think it’s high time that we took a moment to explore dating and relationships inside furry.

Much of what got me interested in writing about such things as this is the propensity of furries to center a good portion (if not all) of their social lives within the fandom. This does extend to dating and relationships as well: a casual observation points to the fact that many (though hardly all) furries seek out romantic relationships within furry itself as part of an aim to build a life within the social group that means so much to them.

This isn’t surprising, nor even new. It is far from uncommon for individuals to build up lives within the smaller communities of which they’re a part. Americans, after all, don’t simply have all of the American population available to them as a dating pool: they’re restricted by geography, of course, but they also tend to restrict themselves further by interest. Sports fans, hanging out with sports fans, are more likely to date other sports fans, and the same goes for gamers, hiking aficionados, dog lovers, et cetera, ad infinitum. That is what helps to build up strength within a subculture: members do not simply enjoy things on their own without communication, but share that enjoyment with others, and grow closer in the process.

In this sense, our membership acts as a sort of attractor in a complex or chaotic system. If we look to furry to form our strongest relationships, and forming strong relationships helps to strengthen furry, then it’s likely that furry will be a more likely place to look for those seeking to form relationships. As with all complex situations, this is not all that’s going on behind the scenes, but still a large part of it: a shared interest gives us something in common, and so we form bonds around that shared interest. The sense of community plays a large enough part, however, that we would be doing it a disservice not to recognize it.

So what do we gain from dating within the fandom? Of course, one of the more obvious benefits is a ready-made dating pool. That is, there are a large amount of visible potential partners out there. The visible aspect is particularly notable, and I think that this ties in with our heavy reliance on electronic communication. In person, a sports fan, gamer, hiking aficionado, or dog lover is not necessarily visible as such – it’s not tattooed on the front of their face nor written across their back (well, okay, appearal aside). Online, however, one need only compare the names and icons on a furry Twitter feed versus one dedicated to, say, tech. The preponderance of animal face icons or species in names is readily visible. We do have our outward signs of membership, and we can often see immediately when we are talking with a member of our subculture.

This is additionally relevant when it comes to learning more about each other. The ability to research our friends and potential partners is an activity that might come off as stalkerish if not for the quick and relatively simple ability to find out more about someone one is interested in via their FurAffinity/Weasyl/InkBunny profile, including even the type of art (or sex, for that matter) that they favorite or content producers that they follow on such sites. This is not to excuse actual stalking, of course, which is still a potential hazard within our subculture, but more on that in a few. The take-away here is that we live our lives publicly by virtue of participating so heavily via the Internet.

Additionally, there is added security in dating within the fandom, as no one necessarily has “that weird partner” that folks talk around rather than about. You know the one. The one that’s, for instance, super into animal people on the Internet. We gain security by starting and maintaining relationships that conform to the expectations and visions of our friends and social groups. That is, a relationship within the fandom is not considered non-conformist, and so we gain all the benefits of social conformity – at least, within the fandom – that go along with a socially conforming relationship outside the fandom.

Of course, the most obvious benefit is that of a shared interest. Interests can do a lot to tie a relationship together, and that goes beyond simply agreeing that you like the same thing. Interests give you something to agree and disagree about passionately, give you a framework for your in-jokes, and give you a means of socializing as a couple outside the context of your own relationship, but still within a pertinent context of that interest. We would all be bored if we shared interests in precisely the same way, for example, but we also would not be compatible if we never shared any interests. Something along the lines of membership to a subculture helps provide the perfect balance of the two.

The means by which we select our partners is hardly some universally positive act, however, and there are a few things in particular that myself and others have mentioned as being worthy of keeping an eye out, particularly in online relationships. The anonymity of the internet does help us in some respects, but it can encourage unwanted attention in the form of stalking and additional privacy concerns. There is, of course a fine line to walk with how much information we provide and how much we hold back, and what we do provide can come back to bite us in the end in the form of unwanted attention.

Beyond unwanted attention, however, is the distance factor, which is a valid concern for many if us, again in the case of online relationships. The reason for the number of these relationships in particular, though, might have something to do with our selection criteria mentioned above. While our potential partner pool is limited by our interests, it’s also further limited by location: if we choose to get into a relationship with another furry, then our local dating pool might be very limited indeed. An informal poll at time of writing showed about half of the participants in long-distance relationships, with the notable explanation that it’s less of an issue with “planes + internet + some planning”. An online relationship might, at that point, seem much more feasible given that that sort of thing vastly expands the pool of potential partners for one.

Another way by in which our limited relationship pool shows is that the aforementioned skews that are evident in the fandom at large show themselves particularly in relationships. The most notable example, obviously, is gender. When I present the data panel at conventions, I often bring this up: we, as a subculture, represent a pretty even distribution of the spectrum from completely heterosexual to homosexual, but given the skew in gender and biological sex, many more individuals wind up in homosexual relationships. With a dating pool consisting of around 80% male furries, it’s not really any surprise that relationships are also skewed toward those involving two male participants, even when those participants don’t identify as completely homosexual. This obviously furthers the visibility of homosexuality within the fandom, to the point where that appears to be more of a skew than it might actually be. Other skews, such as age and species show up as well, of course, though sex, gender, and orientation are the most readily visible ones.

None of these are evidence of a furry-only style of dating, though taken as a whole, they do say something about our fandom. We date within our subculture, using it as a sort of attractor as many do, and we date online – no small amount of effort is spent on dating online, given the proliferation of social sites, social networks, chat rooms, MUCKs, and so on with a focus on sex and relationships – and the skews evident in our subculture show themselves in our relationships. However, that makes it no less interesting: this is who we are, this is how we interact, and this is how we love each other and relate to each other. If furry is a slice of society at large, that’s all well and good, but we are also made up of our individual participants, and, in the end, it is between us where these relationships are formed.

LGBT stands for two things: firstly, a delicious sandwich (lettuce, guacamole, bacon & tomato); secondly a group of people who don’t easily fit into a heterosexual, binary gendered world.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are lumped together into LGBT mostly for convenience. The four groups are discriminated against in a similar way and the political action required for equality are much the same. LGBT people can generally be classified as being ‘queer’ which roughly means that they diverge from a traditional sexual or gender identity.

Of course, there are plenty of people who diverge from a traditional sexual or gender paradigm who are neither L, G, B or T. And so we can continually add letters to LGBT until it spells something awesome like TERABULGE, or we can toss a catch-all Q to give us LGBTQ, an acronym which is gaining traction.

We furries are already accepted within the LGBT community to a large extent, which is at least partly due to our own gender and sexual diversity. But I think that there is a strong argument that the entirety of furry can be recognized as a queer identity, a Q, including the 30% or so (according to the 2012 Furrypoll) of us that are heterosexual and cis-gendered.

Before I go any further, I want to talk about my language and nomenclature. The English language implicitly classifies people by gender, as denoted by gender pronouns ‘he’ and ‘she’. The limitations of these pronouns aren’t limited to the genderqueer; they also reinforce an assumption of heterosexuality. (As anyone who has ever written gay pornography can attest, we don’t have an elegant way of making a distinction between ‘him’ and ‘him’.) The word pair of his/hers, he/she are perfect for talking about a heterosexual couple, and the elegance and utility of these terms reinforces the idea that a couple is comprised of one member of each gender.

The LGBT community has language problems too. When LGBT issues started to come to the fore, they were called gay issues. After some time, the group started to be called ‘gays and lesbians’, which grew into to LGB, and more recently to LGBT. The problem is that all these terms are a ‘whitelist’: they require us to list the identities that diverge from ‘normal’. We’d be far better off with a term that meant ‘everyone who isn’t straight and cis-gendered’, but we don’t have one in wide circulation.

Even the term LGBT doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny, because T (transgendered) is out of place. The other three terms refer to sexual orientation, and many people who are T are also L, G, or B. And if we use LGBTQ, then surely the LGBT become redundant, as they are all Q in their own way.

So, some definitions: I’m going to use LGBT as my catch-all, and it’s intended to include I (intersex), A (asexual), H (hijra), P (pansexual), and who ever else wants to come along for the ride. Further along, I’m also going to include zoophiles and furries.My usage of LGBT means ‘queer’, but without the (slightly archaic) offensive connotations.

Despite the apparently fundamental difference between those with a divergent sexual orientation (LGB), and those with a divergent gender identity (T), all LGBT people suffer from the same prejudice. They all suffer because they are subverting traditional ideas of gender.

The yin-yang dichotomy of masculinity and femininity suggests that there is a strong, active, lead role (the man) and a weak, passive, following role (the woman). This totally unfair basis makes up the foundation of most societies around the world, and it creates a reality where the men are the presumptive leaders. It’s the foundation of sexism.

Any man or woman who breaks the stereotype of their gender can be subject to discrimination, because they challenge this patriarchal version of reality. So women who excel in sports or business may be thought of as ‘butch’, and men who excel in the arts may be thought of as ‘girly’.

Homosexual activity challenges gender stereotypes, in part because of the sex act itself. A patriarchal society demands male and female roles, which can’t work when sex involves two members of the same gender. So lesbians may be seen as ‘less feminine’ and gay men seen as ‘less masculine’.

The implied requirement for gender roles persists even in LGBT circles, especially with gay sex, where the penetrative role is ‘dominant’ and the receptive role is ‘submissive’. The idea that a gay men must choose a role, where the ‘top’ should be masculine, and the ‘bottom’ should be effeminate is no longer the default, it’s more ‘opt-in’ nowadays. And while nominally dominant/submissive roles in gay sex are enjoyed by furry wolves/foxes everywhere, we (happily) live in a world where all sex must be consensual, and any situation where one party is literally all-dominant is rape.

There are plenty of artefacts of the stigmatization of gay sex. In Iran, for example, someone convicted of receptive gay sex is sentenced to death, whereas someone convicted of penetrative gay sex will receive a less severe punishment. In more enlightened society, gay men entering their compulsory military service in Singapore will be asked whether they engage in penetrative or receptive gay sex, with the receptive parties being given more feminine duties. And the idea that a gay couple has a nominal ‘man’ and ‘woman’ still persists all around the world.

Consider a male NBA player, who comes out as gay. He’ll be big news. Whereas a lesbian WNBA player will be met with yawns. Each player is meeting prejudice when he/she challenges the gender stereotype: the man when it’s revealed that he’s gay; the women when it’s revealed that she plays basketball. Make no mistake; sexism is at the heart of much of the prejudice towards LGBT people. Challenging traditional gender boundaries is taboo.

The species boundary is another great taboo. I’ve written about zoophiles here on [a][s] before and I know that it’s a sensitive topic. If you are anti-zoophile, or think that zoophilia is wrong, or that zoophilia is irrelevant to furry, then I strongly suggest that you read my previous articles (here, here, and here) before you read further. I don’t want to repeat myself here, but suffice to say that I think that zoophiles are subject to unfair discrimination comparable to that of gay men in 1950s. (And, no, I am not a zoophile myself.)

Zoophiles are discriminated against because they cross the species boundary. We live in a world where a strong line is drawn between ‘humans’ and ‘animals’, despite the fact that humans are also animals. We care for human life; we eat animals. Human suffering matters a lot; animal suffering matters less.

We furries are crossing the species barrier as well. We, or at least those of us who have a strong furry identity, like to think of ourselves as a hybrid of human and non-human—as animal-people. We do our best to bring our animal-people into the real world: with art, with fursuits, with the way we interact, and with our sexuality. Furry isn’t about sex, but sexuality can be a big part of identity. And so sex plays an important part in our furry experience.

It’s common for people with a passing awareness of furry to be slightly freaked out by the sexual nature of it all. Some members of sci-fi and related fandoms find the sexual component to be repugnant, and this attitude leaked into some of the furry media coverage around the turn of the century, back when furry was more closely aligned with fandom. People react strongly to the sexual component of furry because we are blurring the species boundary: the idea of a Thundercats orgy garners much the same reaction (from anti-furries) as the idea of a Bert/Ernie love-in (from homophobes).

We furries are queer: we diverge from the traditional species paradigm. We belong with the LGBT. Our zoophile brothers and sisters (and Ts) belong there as well. We’re all different, but we suffer from the same source of discrimination: we all cross, in one way or another, a societal boundary that is arbitrarily taboo.

Nowadays, furries are regular and long-time participants in Gay Pride events in San Francisco, Sydney, and elsewhere around the world. Our representation at these events should not be only those of us who are LGBT: we should participate because we want to publicly express and celebrate our queerness—our furry identity—regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.

I’m trying a little bit of an experiment with a few projects of mine.

Advertising.

I am unashamed to admit that I run AdBlock almost all of the time that I’m online. I think that advertising is a shoddy and cheap, albeit necessary way for many online services to derive income, in general. I also think that, in general, ads are effective on a level that is perhaps not in line with the goals of an organization determined to be as introspective as possible, in a lot of ways. That is, they don’t necessarily fit with the goal of the projects I have in mind. Flashy art and animations are great for artists because they show off art and animation skills. They’re wonderful for organizations such as Rabbit Valley and Sofawolf, that offer products for sale because they showcase the products. Even so, I’m left with a few questions about the way advertising works within the furry fandom, and how information is transmitted within a potential audience.

How does one advertise a blog that offers nothing for sale and provides a non-essential service?

How does one advertise for a survey, and in what ways does that impact the results gained from that survey?

Does animation play a role? If so, how much?

What difference does wording make, particularly when it comes to key words such as ‘sex’? For that matter, how does an advertisement that mentions sex differ from an advertisement that does not?

These are hardly deep questions. Ask any advertising agency or the like and you’re likely to come up with some quips about what does and does not work, as well as what works best for what type of product.

If you look at us, however, as well as our sister project, LSF, we are, at best, irregularly-publishing magazines filled, almost entirely, with opinion articles. The articles often have basis in statistics pulled from here or there, but for the most part, the pieces are written more as introspective or observational explorations of the act of participating in a subculture. For us, these questions bear additional meaning, as this advertising experiment is taking place almost entirely within the subculture itself.

Here’s what we’ve done:

1. I’ve set up four advertisements on two different sites, FurAffinity and SoFurry. These ads are for four different projects: [adjective][species], Love – Sex – Fur, The Furry Survey, and an unrelated project, Bookmarfs!.
2. All four advertisements have slight differences:
   • All ads except for Bookmarfs! are animated.
   • The ad for LSF contains the word ‘sex’.
   • The ad for [a][s] and for the Furry Survey contain text other than the subtitle of the site.
3. The ads should rotate fairly evenly among other ads on both sites (though Dragoneer and Tourmal are invited to comment on the advertising systems in place on their respective sites).
4. All four ads have campaign data indicating their source. These only show up once per click, of course, so we’ll only see these as unique visitors. That is, there’s no way to bolster the numbers by simply clicking on the ads a bunch of times!

Just to start things out, I’ve taken snapshots from before the ads went up of how traffic looks.

[adjective][species]

You can see, here, just how the traffic generally looks for this site in particular. You can see, for example, when articles go live, and even when an article that winds up becoming particularly popular or contentious goes live as compared to one that doesn’t: JM published an article on introversion on Monday the 23rd that became the subject of heated discussion, and I published an article two days later that was largely neutral (this is the way of things, we’ve decided: I write introspective pieces, JM writes more provocative pieces). This is a pretty standard few weeks for us, and we’ve had few deviations from that. One can see the effects from conventions at which we have panels or advertising, as we did for Anthrocon one year.

Love – Sex – Fur

LSF has been quiet of late, due to my personal schedule, and so you can see a similar graph, lower in traffic, to the time between articles on this site. Visitors come in from various places, usually search engines and old Twitter links (the t.co link-shortener shows up as the referrer in these cases).

The Furry Poll

The Furry Poll, not having any changes over time within the year, shows bumps primarily from links in from outside, such as on this site, or other forums where others post the link. Reddit, FurAffinity forums, FurBase.de, and so on are all sources of the second bump, for example.

Bookmarfs!

Bookmarfs!, on the other hand, gains traffic at regular intervals from posts at the beginning of the month (when that month’s book is announced), and at the end of the month (when that month’s discussion occurs). Full disclosure: although Bookmarfs! is not related to [a][s] at all, I do help out with them in a technical capacity.

You can also see the advertisements that we placed, above. These are the different paths that we’ll be investigating as inroads that advertising provides. What it is that we hope to see is how information spreads within the fandom in terms of something sort of neutral and random such as these advertisements, organic social sharing, such as retweets or links provided to friends, and from followers who catch us on FA journals, Tweets, or G+ posts.

Working within a subculture such as ours, I will posit that, while advertising drives some traffic to sites such as these, the majority of our readership found the site through sharing, due to the nature of our content. However, given that these ads will all be live for about a month, I’ll pull statistics again in a few weeks and see just how things have changed – or not!

We’re interested to hear how you found this site (and if you found the others, how), as well as how you think that this little experiment will play out. Will members of the furry community pay attention to the ads? Will they largely ignore them? How do you feel about advertising in general, and on furry sites? Do you treat them differently? Let us know in the comments!

(Note: [a][s] and related projects are, of course, run totally out of pocket, and we have no ad revenue of our own; we stand to gain nothing but information from this little experiment, all of which we aim to share with you!)

This is my final article looking at the great animal films of Carroll Ballard. The other articles are on The Black Stallion (1979), Fly Away Home (1996) before, and Duma (2005).

It opened the way to an old—and very naïve—childhood fantasy of mine: to go off into the wilderness, and test myself against all the dangerous things lurking there. And to find that basic animal that I secretly hoped was hidden somewhere inside myself. I imagined, at that point, I’d become a new man, with a strength and courage I’d never known before.

 

Tyler is a nerdy biologist who has accepted an unusual task: spend 6 months, alone, in the Canadian arctic to observe the behaviour of local wolves. Never Cry Wolf follows Tyler from spring’s thaw to the first snowfalls of the coming winter. It’s a curious film: subtle, slow, and moving. It is also a masterpiece.

The story is of Tyler’s relationship with wolves. Over the course of six months, he starts as a detached scientific observer, and learns to embrace his inner wolf as time goes on. (The quote at the beginning of this article is from Tyler’s voiceover narration in the first few seconds of Never Cry Wolf.) This film is about the furry condition.

Never Cry Wolf was filmed and released in the early 1980s, years before furry coalesced into a discrete group. In the early days of furry, it was largely a cartoon animal fandom, based around pre-existing works of art such as Disney’s Robin Hood. Nowadays, furry still has plenty of fandom elements but is more about personal identity: we choose to think of ourselves as animal-people, and we spend time in a virtual world filled with our fellow animal-people.

Tyler is an animal person: he is, essentially, a wolf furry. Over the course of the film, he learns to think of himself as an instinctual animal, rather than a purely logical being. He even has an (imaginary) wolf physical form.

Tyler is expressing a personal connection with the animal world. He is exploring something that has been a part of human spirituality for at least dozens of millennia. We furries are merely the newest manifestation of this spiritual thread.

Tyler’s furriness starts to blossom when he is introduced to some concepts of Inuit totemism. Tyler doesn’t co-opt Inuit beliefs or tradition, rather he uses some ideas as a template to create his own, personal relationship with his inner wolf. He remains a scientist and a skeptic, but slowly sheds the protective baggage he carries with himself. (Metaphor alert: some of his baggage is actual, uh, baggage, and he even hides in his baggage from some wolves early on.)

Tyler begins his personal journey after being dumped, alone, in the wilderness along with supplies for his study. The Canadian arctic in early spring is harsh and deadly. In all of Carroll Ballard’s films, there is a sense of malevolence about the natural environment: the deserted island of The Black Stallion, the flight in flimsy ultralights in Fly Away Home, the South African wilderness in Duma. And so it is in Never Cry Wolf; faced with the likelihood of exposure in freezing temperatures, Tyler makes a series of bad decisions: he defrosts a beer, types out an angry letter (in triplicate) to his superiors, and rides out his first night huddled in an upturned canoe. It’s hard to tell if he is ignorant of death’s approach, or resigned to his fate.

Tyler is eventually bundled into shelter and temporary safety by a passing Inuit. Here he dreams of being devoured by wolves, a moment that signifies the birth of his inner animal. The dream is terrifying on first viewing, but over the length of the film it takes on a mythical quality as Tyler, wolf-person, grows.

Soon after Tyler awakens, we see the first evidence that he has changed. He falls through thin ice, and saves himself through a combination of intelligence and instinct. He dries himself, and his clothes, by a fire, and we can sense that his internal journey has begun. This scene is a key turning point in the film as well.

For starters, this is the first time we see Tyler naked. It’s initially played for tittilative laughs (as in: tee hee I can see his bum), but the scene stretches until his nudity is a comfortable, natural, default state. Tyler is shedding more of his uptight human baggage, and he starts to relax, to feel at home in the wilderness.

From this moment on the film becomes hazy, soft, and beautiful; Ballard’s direction encourages the viewer to share Tyler’s surrender to the natural world. This stands in obvious juxtaposition to the tone of the preceding part of the film which is rushed, full of unconvincing danger, and a bit hammy. It’s clear that Ballard wanted to spend as little time on the preamble as possible.

Soon, Tyler comes across a wolf pack and he starts his study. He tries to hide his presence from the wolves, and fails miserably against the wolf’s senses. He quickly abandons any attempt of subterfuge, and eventually negotiates a wolf-approved territory within observing distance.

His time observing the wolves is the heart of the film. There is little action and Tyler is alone for much of the time, save for a developing friendship with two Inuit. There are two parallel stories: Tyler’s growing relationship with the wolves, and Tyler’s growing relationship with his personal, inner wolf.

This long section of the film is, to put it mildly, remarkable. Respect grows between Tyler and the wolves, to the point that they are eventually able to vocally express their fellowship, the howling of the wolves mirrored in Tyler’s bassoon. And Tyler’s inner wolf becomes more real, gaining a physical form and a personality: strong, quiet, intelligent, and protective.

The film’s high point takes place on a hazy late-summer afternoon. Tyler has reached a peace with himself and with his environment by this point, and is dozing in the sun when a herd of caribou thunder past. He becomes wondrously lost in the stampede, as the wolves gather to corral the more vulnerable members of the caribou. It’s wordless, visceral, and complex.

The flow of Never Cry Wolf is that of the seasons. Tyler is vulnerable and naïve in the spring; learns and grows through the summer, before the contentment of autumn. His internal journey is reflected in the changing landscape and in the growth of the wolves’ family (no Ballard film would be complete without the odd cute baby animal scene). He starts as an observer and ends as a participant; his trimmed moustache grows into full beard; he begins with bureaucracy and ends in ecstatic nudity.

From a furry perspective, Never Cry Wolf is something very special. If you feel or imagine a connection with your furry species, especially if you’re a wolf, you should take the time to track down this film. (That advice does not include anyone who identifies as a mouse. It does not go well for mice in Never Cry Wolf.)

But even for non-furs, Never Cry Wolf is a great film. It’s the antidote to patronizing bullshit like Dances With Wolves or doco-lite snoozefests like March Of The Penguins. It’s thoughtful without being moralizing, complex without being complicated, and moving without being melodramatic. As the late Roger Ebert put it, Never Cry Wolf is a classic.

Final notes:
- There is a lot of male nudity and alcohol consumption in Never Cry Wolf. It’s unthinkable that such a film would get a PG rating in America today.
- Charles Martin Smith, who plays Tyler, went on to direct Air Bud, which is a live-action film about a dog that plays basketball. From the sublime to the ridiculous.

Never Cry Wolf is available on iTunes.

This is the final of four articles on the films of Carroll Ballard. All four films are great. Choose your species:

• The Black Stallion (horse)
• Never Cry Wolf (wolf)
• Fly Away Home (goose)
• Duma (cheetah)

Last week I wrote an article titled Are You an Introvert or an Extrovert? It was written partly in response to a new definition of introvert that has cropped up in the last five years or so, where introverts are loosely defined as people who ‘gain energy’ when alone and ‘expend energy’ when around other people.

It’s a compelling way of looking at things, and it’s helped people shift books with titles like Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. The author of that book (Susan Cain) gave a TED talk exploring the idea, and it’s been loosely adapted into webcomics and other sharable media. It has been a successful meme.

People find it easy to identify as an “introvert” using this new definition. My article was about how such self-diagnosis can be harmful, but I don’t want to repeat myself here. I think that labels are important, but that some labels are damaging. (Previously, I tackled another potentially harmful label, which is also subject to rampant self-diagnosis within the furry community, in an articled titled No, You Don’t Have Asperger’s.)

In my enthusiasm to talk about labels and self-identity, I failed to define what “introvert” actually means. This article remedies that oversight, and talks about how introversion ties into the furry condition. And, yes, there is a simple one-question quiz at the end which will help you understand where you sit on the introvert-extrovert spectrum.

In general, introversion is a tendency to be internally focussed, as opposed to externally focussed. So if you are lost, consulting a map would be an introverted act, whereas asking for directions would be an extroverted act. People who are introverted can be shy (and extroverted people can be outgoing) but this is not always the case.

Modern psychology uses a personality model that originated with our good friend Karl Jung. Personalities are measured using a model called the Big Five, which considers there to be five key, measurable personality traits, one of which is Extraversion*. People fall somewhere on a spectrum, with “very introverted” and “very extroverted” at the extremes.

* Blame America Dept.: In American English (which is the basis of Big Five jargon), “extrovert” and its derivatives are spelt** with an “a”, as in “extravert”. I accept that there are spelling differences in American English (and that American English is often more logical) but why oh why change “extrovert” but not “introvert”? It makes no sense.

** Note to Americans: this is what the rest of the English-speaking universe uses instead of your provincial neologism “spelled”.

Anyway. Deep breath.

Researchers prefer the Big Five because the measured personality traits (of a single person) don’t change much with mood, time of day, or any other factor. People change in personality up to about age 30, and are pretty much fixed beyond that point. (Clinical research on personality is underway with furries as well: the International Anthropomorphic Research Project uses the Big Five.)

The Big Five has replaced Myers-Briggs as the personality model du jour, but the difference is only really important if you’re a researcher. Most people are more familiar with Myers-Briggs (that’s the one that tells you you’re INTP, or whatever), and there are a lot of simple, free, multiple-choice Myers-Briggs quizzes hosted around the internet (like here). These quizzes are reasonably useful: no substitute for an assessment by a professional, but better than, say, a quiz on OkCupid titled Which Power Ranger Are You?

None of these personality models make any reference to gaining/expending energy in social/non-social situations. The idea that an introvert, say, expends energy in social situations and then must ‘recharge’ has nothing to do with personality, as least from a scientific point of view.

We humans are social beings. Yet socializing, or even being around people, can be stressful. Non-verbal communication is a huge part of the social experience, and we rely on body language and other subtle social cues, which require mental processing and accordingly a lot of conscious and unconscious effort. It can be exhausting, and it’s worse if we’re somewhere unfamiliar, or if we’re feeling anxious. So meeting new people in a foreign place can be tiring, while watching TV at home with a close family member is usually easy.

It’s worth adding that all humans have a need to socialize, to some extent. The amount of social contact required for mental health varies from person to person. Happily, we live in a world where social contact is easy enough to find (online, for example), so it’s rarely a problem, at least among the computer literate.

The idea that we expend energy in social situations isn’t clinically meaningful, but it is useful as a tool to help us think about ourselves. There is a lot of value in thinking about ourselves and our own behaviour; this is one of the ways we grow and improve. I think that the “energy model” of socializing helps us understand our unconscious motivations (although I think that “introvert” as a label can be harmful).

We consider ourselves to be furries, which means that (for most of us) we perceive ourselves as animal-people. We create versions of ourselves from scratch, each of us with at least one (virtual) physical body and (virtual) personality. And research from the IARP (link) suggests that our furry selves are significantly different—indeed, happier and more mature—than our non-furry selves. I think that furry can be seen as an exploration of who we really are. I think that we are, collectively, doing ourselves a lot of personal and mental good.

A therapist will often use a simple personality test as a tool. This might be a Myers-Briggs test, or a question like “if you were an animal, what animal would you be?” The therapist’s intent is to get the client thinking about themselves: a follow-up question might be “what is it that attracts you to wolves?”*

* Furry joke answer: “foxes, duh”.

In a therapeutic environment, there isn’t any real value in personality profiling. The therapist doesn’t care that you’re ENTJ, or that you feel you would be a macro silver wolf centaur with thunderbolts in your fur and teardrops that taste like Irn-Bru. It’s just a conversation starter. Yet it’s a very useful tool in the therapist’s kit: therapy is a lot more than “just conversation”.

Furry gives us a framework to continually converse with ourselves. We can challenge ourselves with new ideas, we can road-test behaviour, we can think and rethink who (or what) we really are. Furry can be a kind of self-administered therapy. We can think about it ourselves (if we are feeling introverted) or we can chat with others (if we are feeling extroverted). We’re a group of very lucky animal-people.

***

Are You an Introvert? A One-Question Quiz

Question 1

Think back to a time where you emotionally reacted to a negative event. This may have been a break-up, or the death of someone close to you, or a sudden health scare. Pretend you are watching a video of yourself during this difficult time.

Watch the video and observe how you cope. Do you spend time on your own, trying to manage your thoughts? Or do you look for support from other people, in person or online?

Undoubtedly you did both. Both are always required, for all people.

If you (mostly) unplugged your internet and refused to answer your phone, you are more introverted. If you (mostly) sought help from others, you are more extroverted.

The idea that furry is a slice of ordinary society is one well worth keeping in mind. I wrote about it as my very first article on this site, even. It’s important to consider the ways in which we, as furries, are not somehow separate from the rest of the world; furry does not take place in a vacuum, as I believe I’ve said before. We are all members of our own social structures both within and without this subculture, and it’s that mixture of individualities and social ideals that belong to its members that help to make us who we are as a fandom

The very phrase ‘social structures’, however, is telling, in that that is precisely what some of us seek to escape by means of our membership to this social group: structure. For many, furry is seen as something apart from the social structures that surround them in their day-to-day lives. That has come up several times before here, of course. I wrote about leadership in a decentralized subculture, and JM and I have both written about the intersection of furry and the wider cultures to which we belong, both in terms of conformity and non-conformity. This puts us in something of an interesting – and ever-changing – space, as furries. We exist somewhat apart from the wider cultural contexts of which we are a part, though at the same time we cannot escape the connections entirely, for they inform a large portion of the way our own social group works.

This tension between conformity and non-conformity, belonging and not belonging, being a part of society or rejecting it, is a type of liminality, exiting between states, on the threshold, and certainly worth taking a moment to explore.

Let’s take a step back and figure out what liminality is, along with the closely related concept of marginality. Liminality (from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold) began as an anthropological term to describe the process of ritual, wherein those involved enter as part of the social structure, become something separate outside of but on the threshold of that structure, before returning to society. This can easily be seen in a simple ritual which has continued until today such as marriage: those who are to be married enter as separate people, and through the process of ritual, are socially, even legally, set aside from the social structure during the ceremony, before they are re-inducted back into society, this time as a single social (and often legal) unit.

I noticed this myself recently with my own civil union ceremony: JD and I entered as two separate people, and then, even though we were simply signing papers for five or ten minutes, we entered a ritual sort of liminality where we were not separate, but not together – one step removed from society – before we were welcomed back by the county clerk as a single, legally recognized couple, complete with an announcement that got a small round of applause from the few others in the room.

At that point, following Victor Turner’s definition, we were liminars: liminal entities wrapped up in the process of ritual. However, the concept of liminality has been extended beyond the idea of ritual in several ways since then. This delightful essay describes the ways in which the concept can be and has been applied outside the context of ritual. Liminal states are all around us, and a regular part of life. The author of the essay takes liminality far beyond the ritual, as have others, and elevates it to state valid in life, or even within aspects of life. There are ways in which we are betwixt and between that tie into our lives quite a bit, setting us somewhat apart from society into a sort of anti-structure.

This anti-structure, as a lack of the wider social structure, is described as communitas, which is a social anti-structure that places emphasis on humanity, equality, and togetherness rather than the hierarchies and strictures of society’s more standardized forms. This is evident in many social movements, such as feminism and the gay rights movement, where, by virtue of this status of being set apart, elements of – if not all of – social structure are set aside in favor of communitas: a sense of “we’re all in this together” and yet “we’re still all human.”

In some sense, then, liminality is very similar to marginality, and there are certainly discussions worth having on both subjects, but I think it’s important to first differentiate between marginality and liminality as outsidership. I mentioned in the previous paragraph that this often happens with social movements, and I think that this shows a good example of marginality, in a way. Those at the edges of society who, by their very existence, are set apart from society in some way experience outsidership just as those in a liminal, between state do. However, there is an important distinction to be made, and that’s one of choice. While liminality is often a something that one can choose to take part in – the author of the aforementioned article chose to accept his job in a foreign country, setting himself up in a state of not-quite-beloning to both his native, western culture as well as the Korean culture in which he was embedded – whereas marginality, as a social sciences term, generally refers to those statuses which place one outside of social structures through no choice of their own, such as race, class, sexual orientation, and so on.

Of course, I’m sure you can see where I’m going with all of this. In a way, furry itself, like many subcultures, is a form of outsidership, and thus something of a liminal space. We experience our own communitas within the fandom, and I think this is evident in a few notable ways.

The characters that we create for ourselves are, in a way, liminars – items betwixt and between the two worlds of the imaginary and the real. Yes, they are fictional constructs to many of us. There is no Makyo, per se, only Matthew Scott and this idea of Makyo. And yet they are expressed in the real world in several different ways. Art, fursuits, role-play, and even just plain talking about characters (as in the species selection and character creation panel at RMFC) is a way in which we bring them closer to what we consider real. They are on the threshold of both purely imaginary and totally real.

On a similar note, conventions are another good example, and a more complex one at that. Cons are liminal spaces, wherein we, as a subculture, experience our communitas more completely than perhaps we might outside of them. We try to build the world that we want Furry to be for a few short days, and we often do a pretty good job of it. One of the aspects of communitas that I find interesting is that, by virtue of this anti-structure, even leaders are still members, and so it is in most cases with con staff and board: they are furries there to enjoy the convention as well. And yet all of this takes place in the middle of San Jose, or Pittsburgh, or Magdeburg. All around the convention, keeping us from transitioning entirely to some other, more furry state, is the rest of a bustling city that is not partaking in this communitas (and indeed, often rejects it outright).

This applies to time as well as the space around conventions. While conventions get closer to Turner’s ritual definition of liminality, a ritual setting aside of social structures in favor of communitas, so to does the ritual of traveling to and from conventions. This year, on the way to Further Confusion, I just happened to run into a few furries by pure chance in the San Francisco airport. We even wound up on the same train down to San Jose together. This, and so many experiences like it, help to show the ritual nature of travel, the setting aside into a space not quite society, where hierarchies are blurred and you’re all just Passengers, Travelers, or Pilgrims.

As I mentioned before, however, subcultures are their own kind of outsidership. All of these things are not strictly furry, not even the conventions. Any other group that gathers around a central idea such as this has the chance to set themselves apart and yet still on the threshold, in that between space. The anime culture has their own conventions, interests, and communitas, as do so many other social groups out there.

So how has furry changed over time?

A curious question that came up in the process of researching this post is that, while it’s understandable that the difference between marginality and liminality is one of choice, how exactly that choice works. That is, are there aspects of marginality to our fandom? Is it marginal to be into something by virtue of personality, or not understand the outsidership role interest plays in our lives? This is a question that JM has touched on before, and I think it’s worth at least a look.

In some ways, geek culture as a whole, but also our furry subculture, has been making a slow shift from marginality to liminality. No small amount of words have been spilled over the topic of how nerds are in, it’s chic to be geek, et cetera ad nauseum. However, that it is so obvious is, I think, a sign of the roles that interest play in choice. Is it a choice to participate in a subculture such as this? Of course. One need not partake in the social aspects of interest to simply be interested. Is interest a choice though? That is a tougher question, I think, and I would hesitate to say so. It shows, then, that as participation increases, the liminal aspects of interest – those based around choosing outsidership – grow in their perceived importance, even as the marginal aspects – those based around having outsidership forced upon one – shrink.

This is simple membership draw, of course, and nothing mystical, but interesting all the same, notably in the ways in which one reacts to having one’s outsidership acknowledged, or even challenged. There is a great lead into this article about what it means to have sexual orientation (a marginal state for some) acknowledged, and I think that similar reactions can be seen in furry. The ways in which we reacted to MTV’s Sex2k episode, or the Salon article are different than the ways in which we react to Maxim’s recent nod to furries, and I think that, too, is a sign of us feeling less marginal and more liminal: it’s easier to feel proud of outsidership that is freely chosen, because, to us, that outsidership is eminently enjoyable, or even a core part of our lives.

This brings me to my standard conclusion (since I’ve already tackled “is it furry?”): what does this get us? Liminality is a part of life, whether we notice it or not. Often we do not, but it does form a core of who we are: the ability to step outside, to gather in this communitas with our equals, and to set ourselves outside social structure on the threshold of real and imaginary, even if only for a time. Intentional liminality such as membership in a subculture can help or harm depending on the individual and how it’s used, of course. We all know of the trope of the furry so entrenched in the fandom that they cannot hold down a job, pay bills, or interact well in social situations outside of furry by virtue of their membership. However, furry is certainly of incredible importance to a great many of us, and the form of escapism involved in it is hardly unhealthy. We’ve created ourselves a space neither here in society at large, nor, by necessity, there, in this fictional world of our zoomorphized selves. It’s a safe space, a space of communitas, that draws us in.

There is a display of religious pamphlets outside Liverpool Street station, which I pass on my stroll into work each morning. A recent pamphlet title: Pornography: Harmless or Toxic?.

The pamphlets are being peddled by Jehovah’s Witnesses, a well-funded American-based group that attempts to practise Christianity as it was 2000 years ago. They are probably best known for refusing all blood transfusions, including those that might be life-saving, because “the Bible prohibits health treatments or procedures that include occult practices” (ref jw.org).

I, like most people who don’t subscribe to the JW’s very special brand of stupidity, am pro-pornography. So I think to myself “pornography is harmless“. But I’m wrong, because I can immediately think of examples where pornography is harmful. And so I wonder if the JW’s might be on to something. (Spoiler: they are not.)

I’ve been caught into a logical bind because I’ve tacitly accepted the premise of their question. They have cleverly phrased their title, drawing on a trick used by salesmen and interviewers everywhere: by offering up two competing categories, people are drawn towards one or the other.

And so it is with the title of this article: Are You An Introvert or an Extrovert? You, dear reader, almost definitely chose “introvert”. You did that because I wanted you to. In reality, the label of “introvert” can be a harmful one, and it is probably a label you should reject. Let me explain why.

Labels are useful things because they help us understand ourselves, and help us explain ourselves to other people. On the downside, they do not always allow for nuance or change.

We furries like to label ourselves. We often do so in an online profile, perhaps in a Twitter bio or Fur Affinity userpage. I encourage you to take a look at your own labels before you continue.

Here’s my profile, which I wrote, from the [a][s] About page:

JM is a horse-of-all-trades who was introduced to furry in his native Australia by the excellent group known collectively as the Perthfurs. JM now helps run [adjective][species] from London, where he is most commonly spotted holding a pint and talking nonsense.

 

I’ve labelled myself three times. I am a horse-of-all-trades, commonly spotted holding a pint, and commonly spotted … talking nonsense.

I know that labels are important, and so I’ve refrained from being too direct. “A horse of all-trades” is pretty vague, and my other two labels are qualified with “commonly spotted“; they are things that I do, not things that I am.

Now let’s look at Kyell Gold’s [a][s] profile:

Kyell is a fox, a writer, and a California resident. He likes to write stories of varying lengths, often (but not always) dealing with gay relationships and foxes.

 

Kyell is much more direct. He has applied three strong labels to himself: fox, writer, and California resident. I suspect that these terms are internalized, which means that Kyell considers them to be part of his identity.

A “fox” is a good label, because Kyell is free to make and remake himself in that image. A few weeks ago, Makyo and Klisoura did some datamining and published the results here on [a][s], exploring the words that people use when describing their fursona. As you might expect, they vary considerably, although there are some trends. When foxes describe themselves, the most common terms include cunning, sly, and cute. And so we can guess that Kyell might use such terms to describe himself, but in the end he will have a unique relationship with his foxly self.

I’m not sure that “writer” is a good label for Kyell. It’s certainly accurate, but this might change in the future. If Kyell were to, say, experience an extended bout of writer’s block, he might find this label—this identity—to be problematic. How often does Kyell have to write for him to identify as a writer?

The same goes for “California resident“. Again, it’s mostly accurate, but what if circumstance sees Kyell spend an extended period of time out-of-state? This label may be a mere statement of fact rather than important to Kyell’s identity, although I wonder if Kyell the Oregonian would feel quite right.

When a label becomes part of your identity, it can be limiting. Kyell, for example, might be inclined to turn down an otherwise positive relocation to Oregon, because it could force him to rethink his own identity. A bad label can be self-limiting, and it can provoke an identity crisis.

To use an example that isn’t Kyell, consider a brand new furry who considers himself to be straight. Let’s call him Straightfox. Straightfox finds furry to be an environment that doesn’t have society’s stigma on homosexuality, and he—like so many of us before—is interested. But Straightfox, because of his identity as heterosexual, has a problem. He can either:

1. Refuse to participate in any homosexual activity, or;
2. Rethink his identity.

Neither of these options are easy for Straightfox. Those many, many furries who re-evaluated their sexual preference after discovering furry (a group which includes me) know how difficult it can be. Straightfox, like all before him, would have been better off if he never considered his sexual orientation to be important to his identity.

There are similar problems if you identify as an “introvert”. It’s an attractive label, but it’s self-limiting.

“Introvert” is an attractive label because it’s in opposition to the unattractive label “extrovert”. If asked to conjure a mental image of an extrovert, most people will think of someone acting like a Dallas Cowboy in the 1990s: hyper-social, overbearing, and lacking any sort of introspection or internal narrative.

Furries are especially prone to this because we tend to be analytical, with lively inner lives. Furries are thoughtful, creative, and often a touch depressive. It’s easy to look at other people, especially other people in a social environment, and wonder if they have any personal doubts and fears. It’s easy to conclude “I’m not an extrovert like all these people”.

Extroversion, then is about actions, especially social actions. And introversion becomes a label about inner thoughts. We, each of us, know that social actions make us anxious and uncomfortable and scared. Everyone else, even a coked-up Dallas Cowboy in the 1990s, is also anxious and uncomfortable and scared. But we aren’t privy to anyone inner world except our own.

(As an aside, I think that there is a clue to the furry condition here. We are a group of individuals who are prone to feeling alienated from society. This doesn’t mean that we are necessarily rejected by the world, it means that we are made to feel as if we are different from those around us; as if we were a different species.)

Someone who identifies as an introvert is tacitly accepting the premise that they derive limited enjoyment from social activity. They may decide that the stress of socializing always overwhelms the positive aspects, or that they simply do not have the social knack. Both of these may be true, but such an identity doesn’t allow for nuance or personal growth.

In reality, social skills improve with practice. Nobody enjoys small talk; nobody finds small talk natural. But we engage in it because it provides a non-aggressive entry to conversation, and we get better at it with time. Someone who thinks they are introverted might assume that they will always fail at small talk, and so they stop trying, and never learn the skill.

The marketing world has picked up the popularity of “introvert” as a label. It’s now a sales pitch, along the lines of “if you are introverted then you must read these three tips on how to improve relationships with your workmates”. It’s the same marketing premise as diet books, except that it’s aimed to the socially anxious rather than the body-conscious.

Here are a few examples, all books marketed towards people who label themselves as an introvert. Notice how the titles encourage you to identify as an introvert, by suggesting that “everyone else” is an extrovert:

Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking
Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life is Your Hidden Strength
The Introvert Advantage (How To Thrive In An Extrovert World)
Introvert’s Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World
Quiet Influence: The Introvert’s Guide to Making a Difference
Energized: An Introvert’s Guide to Effective Communication

And the books marketed towards extroverts? There aren’t any. Nobody identifies as an extrovert. Not even a Dallas Cowboy in the 1990s.

The supposed dichotomy between introversion and extroversion is false. They are not mutually exclusive; you do not need to “choose one”. In my Jehovah’s Witness example, pornography is not always harmful or always toxic; there are elements of both. Similarly w?e are all introspective to some degree; we are all social beings to some degree.

Labels are important, but “introvert” is a bad one. You can be introspective without undermining your ability to socialize.