[adjective][species]

Chicago’s Midwest FurFest took place last weekend. It’s our second-biggest convention (larger than California’s Further Confusion, smaller than Pittsburg’s Anthrocon), with around 3200 attendees in 2012. I’ve never been to Midwest FurFest but many of my friends have, and by all accounts it’s one of the best-organized and most enjoyable conventions.

Last weekend my Twitter feed was filled with those enjoying the convention, easily identifiable by the #mwff hashtag. From many miles away, I vicariously observed a fursuit parade, mutual friends meeting for the first time, a hotel evacuation, and any number of social antics.

Searching for all those on Twitter using #mwff, I watched many furries – largely strangers – explore the convention. I saw expressions of furriness, geekiness, drunkenness, flirtatiousness, and happiness. It was like peering into an alternate reality, one filled with good-natured animal people.

Furry conventions have a culture of their own. The culture is especially strong within those conventions that are able to monopolize an entire hotel or convention centre. When you pull into the carpark or walk through the front doors of such a convention, you enter a different world. It’s a lot like visiting a foreign country.

Arriving at a furry convention can be disorienting. There is a lot of information to assimilate: a different culture, an unfamiliar geography, and new rules. (Where do I check in? Do I need to wear my badge? How do I get to my room? Are my friends here?) It takes some time to adjust to these surroundings, which might be as little as a few minutes (for a seasoned convention-goer) or many hours (for the unsuspecting newbie).

This feeling of disorientation also occurs when you arrive in a foreign country: it’s known as information overload. The human brain does a great job of identifying important signals – human faces, voices, road signs – amongst the noise of the world. When walking into a new environment, such as a furry convention, it’s difficult to determine what is relevant – and so our brain tries to manage more information. The extra demand on our unconscious brain comes at the cost of conscious brain power, reducing our ability to make decisions or think logically.

Information overload can make us feel disconnected from our surroundings. We become less mindful, and we may feel like we are observing ourselves from a distance. This disconnection combined with reduced cognisance creates confusion. This is why furries tend to aimlessly mill around the front entrance on opening day, and why many retailers think a ‘greeter’ provides a positive focus for a new customer who might otherwise be hesitant.

We, hopefully, adjust fairly quickly. In a particularly unfamiliar environment – perhaps your first visit to a furry convention or your first time in a new country – this adjustment can be a slow process. The safety of a hotel room can often be a relief, and courage can be required to open the door and try again.

Once we adjust to the new environment, we tend to accept otherwise novel experiences as a ‘new normal’. At a convention, the new culture is a mix of the exotic and the familiar.

A furry convention is neither high-culture nor low-culture, although there are elements of both. Avant-garde art sits next to pornography; philosophical discussions compete for time with drinking games; ruminations on sexual politics give way to lists of the sexiest football team mascots. The tone is not exactly lowbrow, but it’s not exactly transcendent either.

More tangibly: furry friendships tend to be quite tactile, so there is a lot of interpersonal physical contact, most obviously when fursuiters are around. Friendly (platonic) physical contact at a furry convention might, outside of the convention doors, be perceived as sexual. The physical closeness seen at conventions seems to be tied into a kind of physical exuberance as well, and it’s easy to guess that this is because touching and being touched makes us happy.

There is also a kind of collective delusion at furry conventions, where we tend to treat each other as if we were really our animal-person avatar. Our conbadges supply the picture and name of our alter-ego, and we tend to accept these as true. There is even a tendency for convention-goers to organize by species, and there are many versions of a [species]-only room party. It’s tempting to regard this as trivial, but I think this reinforcement of our furry identity helps us relax the masks that hide our furriness in day-to-day life.

Finally, the outward traits of furries as a collective are on display, for good or for bad. We are very male-dominated (about 80%) and we are largely non-heterosexual (about 65%). We’re also techy, fussy, sexy, obstinate, poorly dressed, and unathletic.

This all requires adjustment, and it’s not always conducive to relaxation and enjoyment.

The cultural differences are not the only challenge. Conventions are, fundamentally, a social environment. It’s important to either have plenty of friends or have the opportunity to meet new people (perhaps by attending a [species]-only room party). Without a large social group, a convention can be a very lonely place. Much like a visit to a foreign country, if you can’t engage with the local culture on some level, your only other option is to retreat to your hotel room. And when that door closes, you find yourself wondering why on earth you came here in the first place. It’s not nice to feel out of place in a situation you’ve spent a lot of time and money to put yourself in.

For those that thrive in the convention environment, it can provide an immersive counterpoint to the real world. The convention culture is one in which we can relax and feel liberated from stifling social norms. Like an overseas holiday, we can temporarily disregard our responsibilities and failures in the real world. However, when the convention is over, we must cross the border and readjust. This can be disorienting, a phenomenon known among travellers as ‘re-entry shock’.

The real world can feel unfamiliar when we return. Compared to a furry convention, the culture can feel restrictive and faintly ludicrous. We may find ourselves feeling slightly disconnected as we leave, just as we did on arrival.

The phrase “you can’t go home again” refers to the feeling experienced by someone from a country town, who returns home after living in a city for a while. The person who grew up in the country town is different from the person who returns: the reality of rural life jars with the rose-tinted glow of nostalgia.

If we find comfort in the culture of a furry convention – the tactile friendships, the connection with our furry self, the acceptance, tolerance, exuberance – we might be unwilling to readily reintegrate into the real world. We may feel some resentment toward society’s norms, even though we had accepted these before the furry convention. It can take time to overcome post-con depression. We have changed. You can’t go home again.

Tonight I test-drove a $40,000 pickup truck. Don’t get me wrong—I never had the slightest intention of buying the thing. As I made sure the salesman knew before I ever climbed in and turned the key, I was actually maybe, possibly interested in a baseline truck that costs about half that. My current plain-jane 4×4 is seventeen years old and has nearly 100,000 miles on it, you see, and the auto manufacturer I work for is currently offering large rebates to the general public and even larger ones to their employees to move the things more quickly, which sparked my interest. But the dealership had nothing but top-end super-fancy (read that “high margin, high profit”) stuff on their lot, so if I wanted to take a test drive it was a $40,000 truck or nothing.

The trip around the test loop was routine, including the salesman establishing who I worked for and thereby learning how much he might be able to bleed me for. I told him, of course—it’s not polite not to. So when we returned to the dealership I was treated to the predictable chorus-greeting from the rest of the otherwise-unoccupied sales staff. “Oh, isn’t that a gorgeous truck?” “I’ve never seen such a wonderful shade of blue!” “I hear (insert local celebrity’s name here) drives one just like that!”

At this point of course I sighed, explained that I was still doing research, and left a terribly disappointed group of middle-aged men behind me. But in much the same way that I’m certain the salesmen, being salesmen, are still reassuring each other that I’ll be back even as I type this, as a writer I find myself analyzing both their and my behavior over and over again.

(Please, give me a little more time. This article will become relevant to furry before it’s over, I promise!)

The salesmen were doing their best to apply social pressure to me, to make it clear that buying a $40,000 truck is a behavior smiled upon by society and sure to make me more popular and celebrity-like. They flattered its new-for-2013 color—I’m sure they could care less, if forced to be honest—and extolled the virtues of a product they knew for fact was a far more expensive vehicle than I really wanted or needed. Some of them—the sales manager and my own salesman—stood to profit financially if I succumbed to the pressure. But most of those doing the cajoling would gain nothing more than a smile of approval from their boss and atta-boys from their coworkers if I’d bought the silly thing.

Sadly, I’m no longer either much saddened or shocked when people treat each other as mere cash cows while conducting business. Greed explains much, and the social status associated with “success” most of the rest. What I can’t get over is that simpleminded, transparent tactics like this continue to work and work and work, not just year after year but century after century. I mean… It wasn’t just obvious to me what was going on, it was sickeningly obvious. Yet the staff wouldn’t continue to behave in such a manner if it didn’t sell $40,000 trucks, and as further evidence I’m forced to acknowledge that an awful lot of my co-workers do in fact park very similar vehicles right alongside my far-cheaper one every day of the week even though they can’t afford them any more than I can. In fact, they often buy them from that specific dealer and tell me afterwards what a nice bunch of guys they are!

People are so stupid, I muttered sadly to myself as I drove away from the dealership in my seventeen-year-old, still perfectly serviceable truck that not one but many salesmen have done their level best to part me from. So primitive and easily led. Then, strictly as a mental exercise, I listed those friends of mine who I reckoned might see through the sales pitch as easily as I did.

Almost every one of them was a furry, I realized with a bit of a shock.

And that’s the realization that led me to pen this column. I’ve long contended that the furry fandom (along with the SF fandom and some others) really is different from the bulk of society in some basic, fundamental ways. Part of it is clearly intelligence—statistically speaking I believe we’re well offset towards the high end of the curve—and one aspect of seeing through traps like the one at the pickup dealer is indeed intelligence. Another, I would contend, is imagination. In order to see the hidden poison behind all the happy-faced affirmation, one must first be able to imagine the possibility that such nastiness actually exists.

I believe, however, that another factor counts for more than either of these: our sense of “outsidership”. The application of social pressure is an ineffective lever at best when applied to a dedicated non-conformist, and is often actively counter-productive. But “normal” people are different. From the outside looking in, at least, their need to “fit in” appears to be one of the most powerful forces if not the most powerful force in the lives of most non-fen. Not only does the vast bulk of the population share precisely the same short list of “acceptable” interests and hobbies with each other, they often grow acutely uncomfortable at so much as the idea of, say, owning an unusual species of pet or driving a car that looks substantially different than everyone else’s in an unapproved way. “Why would anyone want one of those?” they ask. “No one else has one.” And at that point the discussion is pretty much over—no matter how many advantages you cite, they shake their heads and grow increasingly uncomfortable at being confronted with the horror of Being Different or thinking about a New Idea. My own father, for example, was utterly bewildered for years by the fact that I write books about half-human animals. Or at least he was until the recent network series based loosely on Grimm’s Fairly Tales started, which features a lot of anthro characters. “Oh!” he said after it began to air. “I guess it’s okay after all, if it’s on TV.” That’s an exact, word-for-word quote. And while I love my Dad very much, it explains a lot about many things. Including how so many people can so easily end up behind the wheels of $40,000 trucks they don’t even remotely need. Because those are on TV too, you see. So it must be okay.

Sure, there are furs among us who are “easy marks” for skilled salespeople. But they don’t make up nearly as a high a percentage of our population as in the general public, I don’t think. Why? Because not only are we more intelligent and creative than the general population, we also dance to an entirely different drummer. We embrace the new and different while regarding the conventional with at best distrust. Many if not most of us spend much of our free time at conventions (where we happily wear things most people would rather die than be caught in), looking at furry web pages (where we smile at images that most ordinary folks would find confusing or possibly even repulsive) and chatting online with people that Joe Average Truck Salesman would never, ever willingly admit to spending time with.

And that, I think, is the answer to the question of why I instantly thought of furs as likely being able to see through the little sales-charade I was subjected to tonight. At core we furs don’t care what our non-furry peers think, or at least not nearly so much as everyone else does. It’s more a pragmatic sort of caring, in other words, as apposed to the vital life-or-death emotional lifeline that social approval seems to constitute for everyone else. This makes us a lot tougher to manipulate; throwing the conventional levers gets you nowhere or worse. So when the sales staff performed their little number I laughed inside instead of reflexively getting out my checkbook in the hope of making myself more like everyone else in my community. Indeed, their actions made me less likely to ever buy anything from them, ever.

I’m not certain, mind you. So don’t hold me to this. But I suspect that this is the first time ever that being a fur has actually saved me money…

Happy Thanksgiving from Makyo and JD!

No, dog, you can’t have still-frozen, still-wrapped mini-chickens :S

Makyo is on leave until December or January. Please enjoy all the excellent posts by JM, Rabbit, and our guest authors!

The Black Stallion, Carroll Ballard’s 1979 debut feature, is a great film.

It’s based on a series of children’s books but isn’t simplistic or pandering. It’s meditative, beautiful, engaging and – of course – great for any furs with an affinity for our equine friends.

The movie opens with a young boy, travelling on a foreign ship with his father. The ship is carrying the titular black stallion, a beast with a questionable temperament and unquestionable power.

There is a storm. The boy frees the horse from its restraints before both are thrown overboard. The ship sinks. They find themselves on a deserted island as the only apparent survivors, marking the end of the prologue and the beginning of the movie proper.

The first half of the film is a nearly wordless tale of survival. The weathered pastels of the island and the primary blue of the ocean are stunning. This landscape acts as an ancient canvas for the emerging relationship between boy and horse.

Ballard allows the story to develop naturally, with long scenes showing the boy adjusting to his wild surroundings. Such unhurried minimalism is comparable to the quiet, tense scenes of exploration in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968): the boy’s quest for survival has parallels in Kubrick’s apes discovery of tools, or Floyd’s moonwalk to the excavated monolith, or Bowman’s slow discovery of Hal’s treachery. Like Kubrick, Ballard simultaneously evokes tension and wonder with The Black Stallion, although never with the thematic reach or artistic pretension of 2001.

The second half of the film, following the rescue of the boy and the horse, is less effective. But more on that in a moment.

The relationship between the boy and the horse is one of codependence. The boy is saved from probable death twice by the stallion. Firstly, after being thrown overboard from the ship, the boy grabs the horse’s restraints and is carried to the safety of the island. Secondly, on the island, the horse tramples an aggressive snake.

The boy saves the stallion from probable death twice. He frees the horse from its restraints on the ship and again on the island, where the horse becomes trapped in a rocky outcrop.

The growing trust between the two leads to The Black Stallion‘s best scene, where the boy attempts to feed the horse by hand. If I can anthropomorphize the horse for a moment (and I’m sure readers of [adjective][species] won’t mind), I’d argue that this scene shows the greatest acting performance ever by a horse. It is certainly a triumph of animal handling. The horse is clearly nervous as he approaches the boy, pushed and pulled by the competing emotions of anxiety and hunger. His slow approach to the boy’s offering is filmed from a distance: a long single shot. The scene is amazing and natural and joyful.

The boy and the horse, doomed to early death alone, combine to thrive on the island. The horse’s power provides a blunt instrument against the forces of nature, protecting them both from danger. The boy’s resourcefulness helps them survive day-to-day, providing food and shelter. The boy is rightfully fearful of the highly-strung stallion initially but, as the two help one another, respect grows into trust which grows into a tight bond.

The scenes showing the friendship between the boy and the horse are my favourite in the whole film. The two, agents of one another’s needs, start to find island life easy. They play: they swim together and the boy (eventually) learns to ride the stallion. These scenes – the stallion’s enthusiasm and the boy’s laughter – wordlessly depict the joyfulness of their bond.

From a less life-affirming perspective, it’s possible to interpret the stallion as an agent of death. In the film’s chronology, he seems to be the arbiter of who lives and who dies. Ballard’s films often starkly depict death, and this is the case in The Black Stallion, which opens with the death of the boy’s father and presumably the rest of the ship’s passengers and crew.

The boy survives the shipwreck because his obsession with the horse draws him to deck to cut the stallion’s restraints. As the horse jumps overboard, the boy is tossed over by the storm, saving him from the boat’s subsequent explosion. Later, after the boy frees the horse from his tangle in the island’s rocks, the horse saves the boy from the snake. In both cases, the boy’s survival is directly associated with – and arguably caused by – his selflessness towards the stallion. The horse, as Death, shows mercy towards those that show mercy to him.

The same events could, of course, be interpreted as a representation of the power of friendship. However I prefer the horse-as-manifestation-of-Death theory, and I point towards the stallion’s black coat as evidence.

It might be a stretch to suggest that The Black Stallion is an exercise in karmic vengeance, but the horse is shown to be wild, powerful, and dangerous. In an early scene on the boat, the horse is shown fighting against his handlers as they corral him into his stall. The boy is fascinated by the stallion’s power and becomes drawn to him, firstly by supplying illicit sugarcubes, and ultimately cutting him to freedom in the storm.

On the island, the horse is still dangerously flighty. However the boy’s obsession means he does not see the horse as a threat, and his persevering kindness is rewarded. Their friendship endures when the boy is eventually rescued: the horse swims out to the boat, convincing the rescuers to bring the horse on board as well.

Back at home, the boy is reunited with his grieving mother, and the movie becomes a different beast. The stallion escapes from their yard; the boy meets possibly the most egregious magical negro in cinematic history (who comes with magical and totally gay horses); the horse is found in the barn of a retired jockey; they enter into a horse race for no obvious reason other than to give the film a convenient, and clichéd, climax.

The retired jockey is played by Mickey Rooney, who is most famous for hamming it up as a cherub-faced child actor in the 1920s and 30s. His brand of ham has aged poorly, and his scenes in the The Black Stallion are the worst of the film. (Kelly Reno, as the boy, comfortably out-acts one of the most celebrated child actors of all time.) While researching this article, I was shocked to learn that Rooney was nominated for an Academy Award for The Black Stallion. It must have been a sympathy vote. He did not win.

For all the lameness of the second half of The Black Stallion‘s plot, it is still a beautiful film. The small town in which the boy lives is a perfect slice of rural America. And there is a racetrack scene – a reporter is invited to see the stallion go through his paces – set in a night-time cloudburst that stands alongside the best moments of the film.

In this way, the cinematography of The Black Stallion is comparable to the craptactular films of Michael Bay (Bad Boys, Pearl Harbour, Transformers). Bay’s films may be irredeemable nonsense, but they are beautifully shot. A Bay film, randomly paused, will often be composed and striking. (It’s a pity Bay and his team don’t put as much effort into the plot, direction, continuity, or assessment of his audience’s intelligence.) The Black Stallion, even in it’s lowest Rooney-filled moments, is always pretty.

The climactic race scene of The Black Stallion is almost Bay-worthy in its preposterousness. However the horseback scenes, shot largely in close range around the boy and the horse, are vivid and moving in their depiction of the stallion’s speed and power. A similar technique is used in The Club, a 1980 film that follows an Australian Rules team. By filming close to the players and bringing their footfalls to the front of the sound mix, the viewer gets a visceral sense of the footballer (or horse) testing himself to his thoroughbred limits. These scenes, in The Black Stallion and in The Club, share the athlete’s perspective with the viewer like no other.

Notably, and laudably, The Black Stallion is not a coming-of-age story. The boy is shown to be self-reliant from the beginning of the film but is very much a child throughout. His journey, starting with the death of his father and ending in a horse race, is defined by his relationship with the horse.

Both boy and horse are juvenile. They complement one another and help one another survive, thrive, and succeed. The boy is creative and the horse is powerful: they are, each, half a man. Together they are a match for the world.

The Black Stallion, then, is a celebration of childhood. One day the boy will grow and become strong and powerful himself, and he will no longer need his other half, the horse. However this is not the subject of the film. In The Black Stallion, both boy and horse are free to enjoy and explore their childhood, through their friendship.

This is the first of four posts on the films of Carroll Ballard. The other three articles will come irregularly, as I write them. All four movies are great. Choose your species and join us:

- The Black Stallion (horse)
- Never Cry Wolf (wolf): coming soon
- Fly Away Home (goose): coming soon
- Duma (cheetah): coming soon

Furries are a diverse bunch.

Our diversity means that we’re often excluded from the mainstream. This is particularly evident in our sexual preferences – only about a third of us identify as ‘heterosexual’ or ‘mostly heterosexual’ (Ref). Other traits displayed by some furries – gender dysmorphia, heavy internet usage, or even simple geekiness – can also play a part in our diversion from society’s definition of ‘normal’.

Not surprisingly, furries do not closely embrace religion, a societal construct that can embody and tacitly enforce the norms of the mainstream. A little more than 50% of furries are essentially areligious (Ref). This rate is about five times higher than for the wider American population (Ref).

Furry provides some of the benefits of religion – I identify two in this article, loosely defined as ‘spirituality’ and ‘community’ – that provide insight into how mainstream society might react to the challenges of our changing world. Furries embody some of the biggest challenges to religion in the twenty-first century: acceptance of diversity, the growing online world and, most importantly, the increasing rejection of religion altogether.

Religion is rightfully a sensitive and important topic. But before I go any further, I want to make two pre-emptive apologies.

Firstly, an apology to the religious, who may reasonably find this article offensive. I’m making a direct comparison between furry and God. To suggest that something as trivial and fleeting as furry can, and should, be compared to a deity would be ludicrous if I wasn’t so sincere about it. And possibly even worse, I’m also making an unsaid comparison between this article here on [adjective][species] – my interpretation of furry’s morals – and a holy book – a divine interpretation of God’s morals.

Secondly, an apology to the atheists, who may reasonably find this article condescending. Religion is an imaginary construct, so it’s ridiculous to give it any sort of regard beyond lip service. I’m being respectful towards belief systems that are demonstrably false instead of talking directly about the topic at hand.

These competing paradoxical reactions make writing this article potentially a lose-lose situation. It’s also one of the reasons why religion is such a difficult topic outside of conversations with like-minded people. The godly and the godless often see each other as the enemy: they respectively speak in ways that insult the other’s philosophy. It’s fertile ground for misunderstandings and angry escalation.

This article is intended to explore how our ad hoc furry community provides support to its adherents in much the same way as religious communities. I am not exploring theology.

For starters: furry is not a religion. As far as belief systems go, furry is reasonably comparable to totemism, a broad term covering those who believe they have a connection or kinship with a non-human animal. Totemism has been documented largely in indigenous populations in North America and Oceania, and a modern version of it still exists.

Modern totemists will often identify a ‘spirit animal’, with whom they feel a close personal connection. That spirit animal is usually imbued with superpowers that give strength to the totemist. These powers are often described as a result of the animal’s existence in a spirit world, from which they can provide guidance or provide literal physical support to the totemist.

Modern mainstream totemism (sometimes called animism) is considered to be a “new age” philosophy, along with other artifices appropriated from a range of cultures. Your patience for such quasi-spiritual guff will vary: your reaction to the usefulness of dreamcatchers, or perhaps your thoughts on the wisdom (or otherwise) of Chakotay from Star Trek: Voyager, might be a good guide as to whether totemism is for you.

If it sounds like I’m unfairly poking fun at modern totemism, I’m also poking fun at myself. I’m personally inclined towards a lot of this new-agey stuff – I’m vegetarian, I meditate, I’m a hypnotist, I own a lot of ambient music – although I would argue that I’ve appropriated useful aspects of newageism and discarded the dreamcatchers. I’ve read a fair bit on totemism and I wish I could recommend a good reference – probably the least worst is Ted Andrews’s Animal Speak (link), although there is a lot of nonsense to wade through, such as the author’s insistence that his personal eagle totem can disable highway speed cameras. If you can tolerate such intellectual bankruptcy, then the book is otherwise a pretty good reference for furries looking to reflect on their relationship with their species of choice. You could, unfortunately, do worse.

Having said that, totemism and real religions – and furry – help us manage our inner world. The totemists and the religious both provide an ‘other’ – a spirit animal or a God – that allows us to explore the most difficult aspects of the human condition. At the simplest level, using this ‘other’ as a sounding-board makes it easier to negotiate a route towards happiness, or acceptance of mortality, or manage personal failure. The presence of this ‘other’ means that we do not have to carry the mental load of complete personal responsibility.

For the areligious, furry provides an alternative for managing our internal world.

All human beings carry around an internal critic that thinks and acts in a way that is often contrary to the rational, moral being we imagine ourselves to be. We all hear an internal voice that reminds us of our permanent failure to live up to our own expectations. We all secretly struggle with depression, or lovesickness, or anger, or mortality, or whatever our own inner voice’s favourite topic happens to be.

This inner voice is believed to be the cause of auditory hallucinations. People who ‘hear voices’, as is commonly associated with schizophrenia, may simply feel that their inner voice isn’t their own. Among the rest of us, our inner voice can still make itself known. We may find ourselves acting on otherwise repressed impulses when we are in a mentally delicate state, perhaps drunk or under stress.

The struggle to manage this conflict between our inner voice and our desire to be a perfect rational being is, for many philosophers, at the core of the human condition. Some people might over-manage their atavistic impulses and become uptight, while others might under-manage and become emotionally unpredictable.

To a religious person, a deity often represents a perfect and unattainable ideal who rewards those who try to improve themselves. This provides a motive force for the internal struggle, providing meaning as one strives towards self-improvement.

Our furry selves may help in a similar fashion. For many furries, the animal-person alter-ego represents an unattainable ideal, mentally and physically. Other furries may imbue their avatar with desirable qualities, and roleplay as a first step towards self-acceptance. The fact that our avatars are not human may be helpful, in that we can never feel like we have reached our destination, much in the way that a man can approach but never attain godliness.

Furry also provides social guidance. We do not have anything as formal as a set of commandments, but we’re still subject to unsaid norms that inform the boundaries of appropriate behaviour within the community. For example: furries place great value on tolerance; our friendships are more intimate; we talk freely about sex and sexuality.

These unsaid furry standards are explored regularly here at [adjective][species]. However they are difficult to pin down: I suspect that a non-furry reading these pages wouldn’t gain much understanding about what furry ‘is’. In general, we tend to discuss common experiences (Rabbit on Fursuit Magic) or explore unusual phenomena (Makyo on furry’s dearth of women, Eighty-Twenty) but we tend not to try to define ‘furry’.

It’s not through lack of trying, just that we furries aren’t easily categorized. I might propose, for example, that all furries have an animal-person alter-ego, that we create and name a furry reflection of ourselves. However this is neither mandatory nor universal – [adjective][species]‘s very own Rabbit, aka Phil Geusz, doesn’t interact through an imaginary furry representative. (Having said that, his books are very ‘furry’, particularly so if you are inclined towards bunnies.)

We have also explored apparently simple topics, like species selection. Assuming that, say, furry wolves must have different motivations for species selection from furry foxes, we hoped to find evidence in the Furry Survey data. However several creative data-mining attempts have discovered almost nothing. I can think of exactly one significant correlation related to species: furry women are much more likely to choose a domestic cat for their fursona. (Ideas for future searches are welcome.)

The spiritual aspects of religion are difficult to pin down as well. Taking Christianity as an example, the world has changed to a point where the bible has ceased to be a realistic reference for behaviour. (Atheists sometimes suggest that failure to adhere to the word of the bible is proof that it’s at least partly false. I suspect that Christians roll their eyes at this criticism.)

The world is always changing, a process that become very rapid following the industrial revolution some 200 years ago. Huge increases in efficiency and income have led the world’s population to increase from about 1 billion to today’s 7+ billion, largely away from rural communities and into urban centres.

Religion has had to adapt to this change. Before cities started growing in the nineteenth century, people related to their religion at a community level. The church was at the heart of the community, a role perhaps comparable to that of the government today (as illustrated by the Soviet Union’s attempt to enforce universal atheism).

Population growth and the rise of the cities has changed religion. The paradigm of a community church has foundered in the wake of cultural diversity, social diversity, and – more recently – the advent of the internet. Furry is less than 30 years old and so has easily adapted to the twenty-first century. Most religions have centuries or millenia of history: they were once described to me as like an oil tanker, in that they take a long time to change course. By that metaphor, furry would be a speedboat.

While the spiritual aspects of religion haven’t appreciably changed over this time, the community that once centred around a church has. In diverse cities, church-based community will necessarily be relatively monocultural compared to the greater population. This disconnects you from your citymates, a disenfranchisement from society.

If the inhabitants of a city are not engaged with one another, it can lead to weakening of the social contract. This causes problems on a personal level – a city can be lonely – and on a wider level – illustrated by the 2011 London summer riots. The furry community provides a solution, at least on a personal level.

Our mutual engagement in the furry community brings us closer together. The social contract within furry is strong: we freely offer shelter and company to furry strangers (The Furry Accommodation Network); we offer moral support to the depressed (A Rough Guide to Loneliness); when furry strangers pass away, we are personally affected and provide charity (Death in the Fandom). This sense of community is very similar to that traditionally provided by religion, bringing an entire community together, allowing the strong assist the weak.

The communal furry experience is more tangible than the spiritual side. Unsurprisingly, we at [adjective][species] regularly write about the furry community’s actions, and those articles are almost always the most interesting to read. So, if you’ve read this far, thanks – I hope you didn’t just read to the end so you can comment and berate me for being offensive/condescending [choose one].

For many furries, there are big physical differences between their real-world bodies and their preferred avatar. We often act as if our animal-person representation really exists: we might consider the logistics of tails, we might miaow or bark a greeting, we might assume personality traits that reflect our perception of our species.

Such roleplay is central to the furry experience for many people. Online, furries commonly present as their animal-person avatar and will socialize as if everyone else were their fursona. This behaviour translates, to an extent, to real-world furry spaces, from one-on-one meetings through to conventions.

This ‘fursona illusion’ occurs regardless of how closely our real body matches our avatar. For those furries who feel their real-world body doesn’t reflect their self-image, this can be a liberating experience. And for furries who are physically disabled – perhaps wheelchair bound – it has the potential to transcend their disability.

People who are physically disabled have a challenging life. Most obviously, they may be physically restricted by a society that is set up for the able-bodied. However restrictive, this is less of a problem from a mental perspective, and more a logistical puzzle that needs to be solved. This is particularly the case for those who are congenitally disabled, and so experience physical restrictions as ‘normal’.

More subtly, and more importantly from a mental point of view, is that physically disabled people are treated differently by able-bodied members of society. Anyone who physically presents in an unusual fashion – weight, race, clothing, anything – will tend to suffer from the same prejudice, where other people become unsure of how to engage in social contact. This is not to place blame: it is simply human nature. (I’ll discuss the psychology of this prejudice a little further down.)

Research shows that the well-being of the physically disabled is strongly correlated with their sense of community engagement. Efforts to improve the lives of the physically disabled therefore often focus on social aspects. This is the target of public awareness campaigns with slogans like “see the person not the disability“.

Furries pay less regard to physical appearance. We are used to treating fellow furs as if they were their animal-person avatar. The furry world, then, may provide a social environment where physically disabilities are less relevant.

I chatted with three physically disabled furries who were happy to share their experiences inside and outside the furry community. These conversations took place over text and are edited for clarity and length.

BlooCat (IBloo on Fur Affinity) is a UK fur with muscular dystrophy and a wheelchair, who might be described as a garden-variety furry:

“My fursona is just a cat representation of myself. By that I mean she shares my name, age, personality etc. Having my fursona do things I can’t do is fun, but sometimes I don’t like it because it feels less me. My disability isn’t all I am, but it’s also not something I feel that I want to get rid of.”

BlooCat’s physical disability is obviously restrictive, and she finds that people are often unsure of how to react when she meets them. This awkwardness is also experienced by Shorebuck, an Australian fur who is very mildly disabled – he has diplegia, a form of cerebal palsy. He isn’t physically impaired in any significant sense and doesn’t consider himself to be disabled, however his diplegia affects his gait, “giving off the appearance of a limp – or dancing”.

Despite the irrelevance of his condition from a physical point of view, Shorebuck still suffers:

“Socially, it affects a lot. Some people have been freaked out by it, and some couldn’t give a crap. Some people look away when they see me.”

The story is similar amongst the more severely disabled. Nornhound is wheelchair-bound fur with a rare condition called Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (F.O.P.), which causes painful unnecessary bone growth in her muscles.

“To a complete stranger, I am certainly known as ‘the disabled kid/teen/adult woman’, and these strangers treat me differently from an able-bodied person. When I was in my early teens, strangers would automatically assume I had an intellectual disability, and treat me as such. They were often hostile, too.”

This initial awkwardness doesn’t occur in the online world: physical disabilities become invisible and, from a social point of view, mostly irrelevant. The internet also provides tools that can reduce the logistical challenges posed by an able-bodied society, such as online shopping, and opens different employment opportunities. Largely due to these factors, research shows that the internet improves the wellbeing of the physically disabled (Ref).

It’s not all good news. As will be clear to anyone who has spent time reading forums and comment threads, the internet can be corrosively negative. This has a greater than average impact on physically disabled people, because they are more likely to rely on the internet. Furthermore, use of the internet for escapism – such as online gaming – also has a negative impact on the wellbeing of the physically disabled (Ref).

From this research, it can be inferred that the online world provides the greatest benefit to the physically disabled when it is social and enjoyable. The furry community may provide this, and more – the online furry world translates, in part, into the real world, because of the persistent ‘fursona illusion’. If you are physically disabled, engagement with the furry community may lead to a better offline social experience, because furries will tend to see the animal-person alter ego.

BlooCat: “The physical barrier is more easily overcome with furries. I find a lot of non-furries are a lot less tactile with me than they would be with other people. Something that really struck me at a recent convention was the amount of people (even strangers) that would come up and ask for a hug.”

Shorebuck: “I’d say the furs just accepted me [as an arctic fox named Shorebuck] – that was the main focal point. ‘You are this fur, pleased to meet you.’”

The initial awkwardness experienced by many people when meeting someone physically disabled may be less common among furries, but it still exists. This is an unavoidable outcome of our human nature as social beasts.

In the furry and non-furry worlds, social groups tend to act as a kind of meritocracy. We tend to socialize with our peers: people who occupy a comparable position in life. The process of peer group selection is driven by our desire to ‘fit in’ – we tend to change our own behaviour towards the group’s behaviour; outsiders who meet or exceed the group’s standards are welcomed; outsides who fail to meet the group’s standards are rejected.

This phenomenon of normalization is clearly demonstrated by a 2007 study that tracked the incidence of obesity within social groups over a long period (Ref). The results showed that social norms have a very significant impact on obesity risk: essentially, that fat people tend to have fat friends. The results do not strongly suggest (as was reported in the media) that having fat friends can cause you to be fat; more that fat people are likely to find and keep equally generously-proportioned friends.

Such normalization of peer groups occurs everywhere in human society, with the criteria varying depending on the nature of the group. At its simplest level, people tend to have peers that are a similar age. To choose a few examples from the furry world: skilful artists are likely to hang out together, strong programmers are likely to hang out together, and furries with similar sexual interests are likely to hang out together.

This unsaid enforcement of social norms is a natural process, but it can have negative consequences if you are different. Furry is a broad church – geekiness, gayness, intelligence, introspectiveness, etc – and accordingly many furry readers of this article will be familiar with how someone different can fail to ‘fit in’ to a social group. Or, to put it another way: the girl in the wheelchair isn’t going to catch the eye of the captain of the football team.

The feeling of awkwardness felt by many when meeting someone physically disabled is normal. It is rooted in the same psychological phenomena that lead to peer group normalization. When we meet someone unusual, we are unable to draw upon on an unconscious ‘social script’ that we use with our regular peer groups. This causes us to engage our conscious mind: we ask ourselves “what should I say”. This leads us to think about how we are being perceived (psychologically, we become ‘self aware’), which can make us awkward and anxious. It’s the same process that makes teenage boys nervous around teenage girls.

These feelings of anxiety are unpleasant and can provoke someone to withdraw from a conversation. This is frustrating for the physically disabled person, who sees it all the time. Unfortunately there is no easy way to overcome this initial conversational hurdle, no fallback social script.

BlooCat: “I know it would be a lot easier if there could be a set script, but it’s a very personal thing. What I think is okay, someone else may not agree with. Take for example another girl in a wheelchair I know, we had a discussion about how we feel about people touching our wheelchairs when we’re in a bar or something. Her view was that it shouldn’t be touched as it’s your personal space. For me I don’t really mind if someone leans a bit on my chair, it’s just a chair. A fancy bar stool even.

The same applies for when you meet a disabled person for the first time. I think people just need to disregard the disability/wheelchair. Think of it as meeting a person rather than a disabled person.“

[adjective][species] turns one year old today!  Happy birthday, us!  Even though he didn’t show up until later, RandomWolf’s helping celebrate with an enormous, comfy looking cupcake, courtesy of the most excellent Keaira Rinn, AKA Pouchmonster! Lets hope that frosting doesn’t stain too much, hmm?

Candles. Delicious.

Guest post by Geo Holms.  Geo is an excellent raccoon and creator of Loose Ferrets.

Life is too short to worry about the Internet.

Don’t get me wrong, the Internet is awesome. All my best friends are from the Internet. The Internet helped prompt me into writing and drawing and creative adventures. The Internet is just fantastic.

However, the Internet is also huge and amorphous and weird and can sometimes cause people to do dumb things. The Internet is people throwing thoughts into the void. Thanks to things like Twitter and Facebook and e-mail and IM, some of those thoughts are countered with more thoughts, and so forth ad infinitum. That social network of thoughts and counter-thoughts is the foundation of the Internet. 

Thoughts can be written ideas, pieces of art, recorded music, a link to an article or cute puppy GIF. Counter-thoughts (CTs), the reaction to thoughts, which can be in the form of page views, or comments, or replies, or retweets, or follows. For some people, if they do not get those CTs to their thoughts, it means they are failing at the Internet and they must rectify it by any means necessary to win the Game of the Internet.

Spoilers: The Game of the Internet does not exist. All those followers and page views and comments you collect are not points towards anything but some archaic scoreboard in your imagination. If you’re going to use your imagination for something, write a story about a cute bunny with an ax.

Yes, getting CTs from people is nice. I’ve been there.

A long time ago, before I was a northwoods raccoon in Wyoming,  I lived in the middle of nowhere in the North, no friends in Real Life, and the Internet was my connection the outside world. There so many new and shiny things there. I loved a movie, there was a group of people on the Internet who also liked that movie. I enjoyed a book series, there was a group of people on the Internet I could discuss it with (you peeps really need to read the Redwall series if you haven’t already). The Internet, a magical place at the time, gave me a portal to people who were like me.

I thought the Internet brought justification to my existence.  I drew art which I thought was Amazing. I wrote LiveJournal entries that I thought were Poignant. I posted random comments on forums that were Awesome (because random is funny, right?).

Spoilers: I was a dumb kid who didn’t know how to socialize.

This went on for a few years. I refreshed every few minutes to check my page views on deviantArt.  I wrote LiveJournal entries and hoped for comments. I wrote dozens of forum comments and hoped for replies. This went on until I wrote a entry about how I never got any comments and poor-pitiful-me. Then, one of my LiveJournal followers (have no idea why they were following me, come to think of it), came out called me a “comment whore”.

This was the bucket of cold water a dumb kid needed at the time. Some might have brushed this off and thought it was someone mean just saying something mean because they were a meanie head. I took it to heart, and reevaluated my stance on the Internet. I looked at how I was acting on the Internet and realized not only was a jerk, but I was miserable too. I wasn’t even being myself. I was being a creature who was feeding off counter-thoughts, being a self-entitled jerk to all I interacted with.

That was a turning point in my life on the Internet. I realized that counter-thoughts meant nothing in the grand scheme of life. Comments and replies could be appreciated, but they were not necessary for Internet happiness. As long as I could be myself online and put things online I was happy with, that was enough. I look back at my past contributions and think how funny it was that I drew a killer-burrito, rather than thinking how few comments or views it got (I totally should commission a Mexican Wolf with a killer-burrito at some point).

These days I play a raccoon on the Internet, and though I still have dumb raccoon moments, I try to be a good fluffbutt ringtail. Though, as I’ve grown older, and entered the furry fandom, I still struggle sometimes with premise of Internet popularity.

Some people think the goal of the Game of the Internet is to be “popular” and in the furry fandom, some percieve the way to be “popular” is to make “popular” friends. Or, as they are known in the furry fandom, “popufurs” (a phrase that annoys me to no end).

Admittedly, I’ve sent things to people that I regret. I’ve sent things to people I admire that I really regret. I understand talking to people you admire is tricky. I still put my footpaw in my mouth every single time I go to a furry convention dealer’s den. Just remember that supposed popufurs are just Normal Fuzzies. They aren’t different than anyone else except they are perceived to be more talented and therefore more popular than you. Most importantly, being friends with them does not make you popular.

It won’t change your life to be friends with a supposed popufur. And you’re not going to be friends if you try to force yourself into being friends with every single popufur you want to be friends with. Friendships are something that happens when they happen. You can’t predict a good friendship. I have met supposedly popufur people who are just really nice people. I have met some who are jerks. I’ve become friends with a very select few furries, and always ALWAYS based on if they are a good person rather than if they are a popufur. Honestly, you’d be happier interacting with a good-natured wolverine who’s obscure in the fandom than forcing yourself to be friend with a jerky platypus because they are a popufur (apologies to any platypui out there).

The friends you have don’t make you popular. You, make you popular. You do that by being yourself, doing something you love, keep going forward, and not caring about being popular. Simple as that.

Popufur or not, just treat furries as furries. Yes, there are jerks on the Internet, but that doesn’t give you the right to be a jerk yourself. Just because there are untold distances and a cute wolf avatar between you and the Internet denizens does not give you the right to be a jerk. You may be a jerk and not know it, like I was, but you can still change. Be willing to take criticism. Sometimes it’s worth taking into account. I’m not saying take someone seriously who calls you a “stupid stupidhead”. I am saying evaluate if there may be some credence to some claims.

Worrying about if certain people respond to certain things in certain ways does nothing. If someone responds: great. But really doesn’t matter in the grand sceme of things. The only thing that’s gonna happen if you berate someone for not responding is drama. And with drama comes a reputation. And I don’t think anyone wants a reputation flavored by drama.

If someone on the Internet does not respond to you it means a few things: either A) they have life and cannot respond to everything B) they can’t think of anything to respond to it with or C) they are avoiding you because you kept berating them for not responding to you because of A or B. I like to imagine they are doing D) having a grand adventure away from the computer. (It’s hard to get angry at someone not responding because they are trying to steal cookies from Santa’s Workshop with the help of a rogue reindeer.)

There are not many people out there who don’t respond with the express purpose of wrecking your life.

There is no Game of the Internet, getting counter-thoughts does not justify your existence; just be yourself and be nice, and you might meet some nice people in the process. If you can realize that the Internet doesn’t matter that much, you might just be a little happier.

This is an edited reprint of an article that first appeared in Anthro #11.

It sometimes feels like I’ve tried to spend most of the last ten years of my life trying to explain the fast-growing Anthropomorphic Animal, or ‘Furry’, phenomenon to outsiders. Yet the trend absolutely begs explanation. Attendance at furry-themed events is doubling roughly every three years, fur-fans (or, simply, ‘furs’) are becoming a highly-visible presence in many online communities, and more and more anthro-themed marketing campaigns appear every day.

So what’s behind the sudden explosion? There have always been anthro-themed ad campaigns, as any consumer of breakfast cereals can testify. Practically all of us grew up with Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam, and Sugar Bear. Nor are anthro characters anything new in entertainment, as attested to by Tom Cat, Jerry Mouse, Pepe le Pew, and Speedy Gonzales. Children have been sleeping with stuffed animals at least since the time of Teddy Roosevelt, and as early as 1922 they were common enough to serve as a powerful literary symbol in the classic story The Velveteen Rabbit. Even long before modern times, humanized animal characters occupied an honored place in the human heart; where would Aesop have been without them?

Yet there’s clearly a new dynamic at work today. Artists have drawn anthropomorphic creatures before, but never in such mind-boggling variety, or to such an appreciative audience. And, more pertinent to the blog you’re currently reading, writers have written tales in which half-animals appear since the very beginning of things. But never before has the usage of such characters been so widespread or executed so skillfully. Never before, in other words, have authors so openly and unashamedly incorporated anthropomorphic characters into works intended for adults, written with an adult level of depth and sophistication. Or, at least, it’s never happened frequently enough to be noticeable as an artform in and of itself.

Which brings us right back to our original question. Why now? Why is furry fiction taking off and growing legs today, after lying near-dormant for so long? Why are the adventures of cartoon-like bunnies suddenly acceptable as the stuff of serious novels, instead of for Saturday-morning-only consumption? There are two important and largely unrelated reasons for this, I think.

Everyone knows that children are very open to the power of suggestion. During childhood the human mind develops like nothing else in nature, desperately attempting to gather and incorporate everything it needs in order to master the environment around it. This adaptive process runs far deeper than merely mastering the art of counting to ten and learning that cows go moo-moo. In one key phase of development, for example, infants become obsessed with the human face and will spend hours either staring at the faces of others or else scrawling increasingly human-like visages on whatever surfaces happen to be handy. During this period the child is among other things learning what is human and what isn’t, not just how to read faces but what a face is and what it represents. The child is, in short, defining itself as a member of a group of others like it. Yet it is during this same key developmental period that children are perhaps most exposed to anthropomorphic animal images in the forms of stuffed animals, picture-books, and animated films. Furthermore, the level of exposure has increased dramatically both in volume and ‘quality’ (via television, DVD player and VCR) over time. Would it be any wonder if, surrounded by more and more anthro images during a critical developmental stage, kids began to blur the lines a little in learning what is human and what is not? Would it take a miracle for a substantial and growing percentage of kids raised in this way to grow up feeling most at home interpreting and understanding the universe through the eyes of half-animal characters? Might children raised in such an environment develop an otherwise inexplicable attraction to anthropomorphic art and fiction as adults? Indeed, wouldn’t it be even more surprising if, exposed to such a saturation of anthropomorphic characters at such an impressionable age, said characters didn’t come to play an important role in their inner lives?

The second key factor behind the new explosion of interest is, I believe, the Internet. For the first time, people who admire serious anthropomorphic art and literature have been able to find one another and share their creations. The pent-up potential is finally being released, and the result is the veritable explosion you see today in the anthropomorphic arts.

Furry art is still not for everyone. However, it does seem to be for more and more of us every year. Given the stratospheric average IQ among the furs I know and their tendency towards careers in professions such as IT and the sciences, it’s fair to say that the cultural impact of anthropomorphic art is not only well out of proportion to the numbers involved but continually rising. Today, for example, ethicists blanch at the idea of merging human and animal characteristics via gengineering. But tomorrow, who knows?

The future may be closer than you think. And it just may be brought to you by a guy who likes to look at pictures of horses walking around on two legs…

Homo homini lupus: man is as wolf to man.

This latin proverb on human nature is neatly inverted by Redacteur’s happy wolves, who treat one other with great humanity.

Redacteur was kind enough to take the time for a quick chat about his art, and share a few of his pieces here on [adjective][species].

Reacteur draws with a minimalist style that captures the essence of life’s happy moments. His wolves – and other creatures – live in an escapist, joyful universe.

He has a graphic design background, where he picked up his geek’s eye for fonts and typography. Less sophisticated is his uninhibited use of lame visual jokes. I asked him to defend himself but he was unapologetic: “I love puns“.

I’d like to say that I find Redacteur’s puns to be flaccid and cheap, but I actually find them delightful. They complement his cheery art, and fit in perfectly with a furry world that freely and unironically uses portmanteaux like ‘fursona’.

His minimalist, non-technical style is not to be confused with naivety, although it’s probably safe to say that he wouldn’t have met the bygone Yerf quality standards. Redacteur’s style is most obviously comparable to the likes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force or Regular Show, but it also reminds me of Henri Rousseau’s paintings, most famously Tiger in Tropical Storm. Like Rousseau, Redacteur uses a deliberately childish style, allowing him to imbue clear emotions in the face of his characters.

You can find Redacteur on his Furaffinity (http://www.furaffinity.net/user/redacteur) and Tumblr (http://outsidewolves.tumblr.com/).

He is also featured in the excellent furry comic compilation RRUFFURR (www.rruffurr.com) along with a few other furry artists working in a similarly positive, intelligent, and introspective vein.

A few years back , I had the opportunity during a large convention to converse with a fursuiter whose talents and antics I admired greatly. Long ago, you see, before furry was much of an organized fandom I was a suiter myself. As we spoke, just a few feet away two dogs and some sort of feline were playing gently with a little boy and girl, whose eyes were as big as saucers. All was going well until another suiter– who I’ll very carefully fail to describe– walked up, took his head off, and asked one of the dogs when the F he was going to come back to the room. And that, needless, to say, ended that. In a flash the moment was gone and the offended parents were dragging their screaming kids away.

“There ought to be a law against that,” I muttered.

“Yeah,” my friend replied. “Abuse of magic in the first degree.”

For fursuits are magical, you know. Anyone who’s ever worn one in public understands this, all the way to the innermost depths of their soul. The human mind is built to function via the complex interaction of symbols, and few objects carry more symbolic weight than a ‘suit. Putting one on messes with your head – and those of others – by eliminating or masking all the cultural symbol-sets by which others understand at a glance who you are and how you fit in. Your hairstyle, your clothing, your posture and gait…even your face, the most important identifier of all, is whisked away. No one can even tell for sure if you’re male or female. All the social markers so vital to everyday hominid life are tossed to the winds, leaving all who see you adrift and in a state of vague unease.

The effect is double upon the suiter himself, however. When he looks in the mirror, he greets a total stranger. A blank slate, in other words, whose duty it is for him to fill out and bring to life. The “mask effect” is well known in psychological circles, so I won’t belabor it here. Suffice it to say instead that a good costume, particularly a whole-body one like most fursuits, is both liberating and exhilarating. For my own part, wearing one had the effect of sort of turning up the “contrast” knob on life. Everything became sharper edged, I grew more aware of my surroundings… Every second of every minute burned itself into my memory. I was alive, in short, fully and completely in a manner that I’ve never achieved in any other way. I wasn’t a very good fursuiter – in fact, I rather stank at it and that’s why I gave it up. Yet…those few hours I spent here and there in suit remain among the most intense memories of my life.

These mental/social identity-softening effects lie at the root of a fursuit’s magic, and also explain why it’s so powerful. Nothing affects how we see the universe more profoundly than our viewpoint, and nothing I can think of short of hallucinogens in massive doses does more to alter said viewpoint (on the part of the suiter and bystanders alike) than a fursuit.

This is particularly true of children, whose grasp on reality is still not yet all that firm to begin with. After all, are their TV screens not alive with capering animals who smile and laugh and play? The jump from reality to fantasy is much smaller for them, so that the mere sight of a decently-made fursuit can transport them into a sort of delightful alternate world.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I can hear my patient readers thinking just about now. “We all know that clowns and such have a special role in society, and that it’s wrong to break the illusion and ruin the magic.” But… As furries, I suspect we’ve grown a bit jaded to the wonder of it all. We tend to forget how powerful our magic is, like the unnamed fursuiter in my opening example, and abuse it with more terrible effects than we know.

Back when I fursuited, the only venues available were kid-related activities. The first major one I “worked” was playing the Easter Bunny at an orphanage for abused little girls. It was a pretty tough gig, because most of the residents were in their teens and thought a guy in a bunnysuit was about the uncoolest thing possible. But one little girl about six or seven years old – I’ll call her “Alice” – met me with wide eyes and asked “Are you a real rabbit?”

“Of course!” I reassured her. Then for the next hour she prattled on and on with me about what it was like to be a bunny while I improvised. “Of course I eat grass! But only cooked grass – I’m a civilized rabbit!” Then the Easter Egg hunt was finally held, and while Alice was off hunting eggs (she won!) the orphanage’s counselors closed in on me en-masse and demanded to know what I’d been talking to her so long and intently about. At first I was angry – it sounded like they were accusing me of something pretty terrible.

“No!” they explained. “It’s not that at all. You see, she was terribly abused about six months ago, and hasn’t said a single word to anyone since.”

When Alice came back with first prize she was still full of chatter, and when I left she was energetically telling her counselors all about me. Half of them were crying.

And so was I.

So… Fursuits are magic of a very special and sacred kind. No one will ever convince me otherwise. Not only that, but they’re potent. Those wearing them carry deep obligations to use their powers responsibly. Far too few seem to understand this, in my book.

And the fursuiter who used the F-word in front of children with his head off in public? He told me to F myself a few minutes later, when I tried to explain my concerns. It’s too bad that every story can’t have a happy ending.

HIV is scary.

This article is going to scare some people. Some will find it difficult to read because it makes them feel queasy. Some people won’t click the “Continue reading” button due to fear.

Fear is a natural response. All people are naturally risk averse. We prefer to pretend that scary things like HIV don’t exist. We prefer to be ignorant. We find the following topics uncomfortable:

• Furries who are HIV positive.
• The incidence of HIV infection.
• The symptoms you’ll experience if you contract HIV.

As Michael Harris, a gay Canadian journalist and author, wrote in 2011:

I live in fear — because HIV is a cipher for everything that constrains my sexuality and my potential for happiness.

 

The furry community is often perceived to be at risk of a HIV outbreak because we are closely sexually interconnected, far more so than a normal social group. There are three main reasons for our close interconnectedness:

• Furries don’t strongly separate along gender or sexual preference lines. So a completely heterosexual furry male (or homosexual female) is likely to have a ‘short route’ for infection via a homosexual male.
• The furry community is relatively sexually active. Consider that the average American, aged 15 to 44, has had just five sexual partners (Ref).
• The furry community is fairly incestuous. This is because most furries socialize within the community where sexual availability is high, and furries often prefer to have sex (and relationships) with one another.

The best test of furry sexual interconnectedness that I am aware of is the Yiffchart, a social experiment conducted by Tursiae, an Australian furry. In 2007, Tursiae invited Australian furries to list their furry sexual partners, with collated results presented anonymously in a chart. The charts shows furries closely clustered together, with few ‘degrees of separation’ between any two datapoints. The results are particularly striking given the large distances between cities in Australia and the voluntary (and therefore incomplete) data collection method.

You can see the Yiffchart here (http://ofyc.thelair.org/).

There are some HIV positive furries, too. I had a chat with Yama Roo, who is HIV positive and was happy to be quoted publicly here on [a][s] (thanks Yama). Yama contracted HIV through unprotected sex with a stranger outside of the fandom. As he puts it: “It was after a bad breakup, so I just went out looking for fun”.

Yama has found that his HIV-positive status changed his relationships with other furries: “they usually run away when they hear the letters”.

Yama’s experience probably explains why the furry world has never experienced a significant HIV outbreak: our interconnectedness means that at-risk furries are likely to be identified by the community. Yama’s responsible attitude towards disclosure (“Anyone who knows me knows I’m HIV positive.” “I don’t even let [furries] flirt with me online without knowing about it.”) is probably matched by the capacity of furries to gossip.

While furry’s tight-knit community has provided some protection against HIV transmission to date, furries are placing themselves at risk by failing to practise safe sex.

I talked with Biramaye (@biramaye), an Australian furry, equality campaigner, and paid porn actor. He has noted the reluctance of many furries to use condoms, and thinks that furries should follow the gay community’s example and embrace condom usage. As he puts it, there should be “recognition of social responsibility amongst the more promiscuous”.

Biramaye’s point, that sexually active furries have a responsibility to use condoms, is simple and compelling. The need for change is illustrated by this story from Yama (before he was infected), an example of today’s furry world:

“…we had a group of [furry] friends we played with. It was only those guys, and we all played bare because of it. One of them had a scare, and we all stopped playing for a while. He went outside of the group and it angered all of us. Still, instead of learning our lesson, we just stopped playing with that person (once we all tested negative for things) and started playing bare with each other again. It was pretty stupid.”

Such attitudes are common within furry. Yama’s candour is rare (and greatly appreciated), but his sexual experiences are not. As he says:

“[Furries] think that as long as they play inside the fandom, they’re safe. Hearing HIV makes them realise the reality and is a buzz kill, so they ignore it.”

A large proportion of gay men are HIV positive. In major cities in North America (Ref), Western Europe, Australia & New Zealand (Ref), one in five men who have ever had gay sex are HIV positive. Worse, over 40% of these men do not know they are HIV positive (Ref).

This means that, assuming you live in a large western city:

• If you have had gay sex with four men, the chance you have been exposed to HIV is greater than 50%.
• It may statistically be safer to have sex with an HIV-positive man (with a condom) compared with a man who thinks he is negative (also with a condom). Men who are HIV-positive are likely to have sought medical treatment, and therefore have a much lower viral load than those who falsely believe they are negative.

Of course, exposure to HIV – which I define as sexual contact with an HIV-positive person – does not guarantee transmission. The transmission rate from unprotected anal sex is around 1% to 10% depending on viral load, dropping to close to zero if you use a condom.

If you have contracted HIV there are common physical symptoms which will usually occur together, two to four weeks later:

• A very high fever.
• A very sore throat.
• A whole body maculopapular rash, which is like heat rash or measles.

There are a few other symptoms which are common but not universal as the first three:

• aches and pains
• headache
• mouth ulcers and sores
• abdominal pain
• vomiting and diarrhoea

HIV is, of course, very easy to avoid: always use a condom.

Condom usage among gay men has become commonplace in the wake of the 1980s HIV/AIDS epidemic. Today, condoms are much more likely to be used in homosexual intercourse than heterosexual intercourse, to the point that only around half of new HIV infections result from male-to-male sexual contact (Ref). This is despite the much greater risk of contracting HIV through gay sex, and that’s not just because a homosexual sex partner is (much) more likely to be HIV-positive:

• HIV transmission rates are higher for anal sex than for vaginal sex.
• Transmission rates are much higher when the penetrative partner is HIV-positive. This means that HIV transmission from women to men is rare.

Condoms as a normal part of gay sexual contact is reinforced by many facets of gay culture. This includes fantasy representations of gay sex – the porn.

Condom usage is depicted in 80% of gay porn scenes, compared with 3% of straight scenes. Gay porn scenes without condom usage are typically marked as being unusual by the term ‘bareback’, and some gay male audiences regard such scenes as ‘viewing death on the screen’ (Ref).

Such depictions help make condoms an expected element of gay sexual contact. There is an argument that increased visibility of condoms in furry art would similarly normalize their usage among furries. As Biramaye puts it: “most [furry] art is bareback fantasy“.

Yama’s experiences also suggest that depictions of furry sexual contact should include condoms more often:

“As for the furry fandom, it seems for us majority of the fandom works off of innocence. We came into the fandom young, we have cute characters, and cute words for things. We don’t fuck, we yiff. We snuggle, we cuddle, we’re very open about the innocence and the cuteness of it. I think a lot of the fandom chooses not to believe in HIV because it destroys that feeling. We all go off to a fantasy land. Furries (in art and stories mostly) don’t get HIV. They fuck who they want, and they have fun, and they don’t have to worry about consequences.

Most of the fandom is done on the internet, and in the mind. It’s an escape, and it has a world of its own. The unfortunate side effect of that is thinking that a mental escape also equals a physical one. We can choose to ignore the social rules of the regular world all we want, that’s the mental aspect, but you can’t physically remove your body from the rules that govern it. I think that’s where things go wrong, and I think that’s why most furs “choose” to ignore that STDs even exist.”

Furry art, of course, is often set in a world where condom usage would be anachronistic (such as in a medieval setting) or otherwise out of place. However much furry art is ‘real world’ enough to include condoms. Based on a keyword search of e621.net, I estimate that condoms are depicted in less than 1% of penetrative furry porn although, happily, such depictions show condoms in a positive context: either as a fetish item or as a positive part of the seduction process.

Condoms sometimes appear in the written furry world too: [adjective][species]‘s own Kyell Gold uses them at times in his novels, including in the upcoming Out Of Position 3.

Yama goes further:

“I think [increased depiction of condoms in furry art] would only be a small start. One of the main ways furries interact and see each other is at conventions. I think cons should, for one, hand out condoms. The second thing they should do at conventions is have a safe sex panel. Possibly even have someone who is dealing with HIV who is willing to talk at the panel. I think in person, real life awareness, is the first step to getting the word out. The Internet can be ignored, but if someone who you’re talking to has it, and is telling you their stories, it’s harder to ignore. You can’t just turn them off.”

I agree. I started researching this article sceptical of the value of condom depiction in furry art, but become otherwise convinced as I learned more and chatted with other furries – Yama and Biramaye in particular. Free condoms are handed out at many sci-fi conventions, a practice that should be emulated at furry conventions. The logic is compelling: normalization of condom usage will reduce HIV transmission rates within the furry community.

Hopefully this article is a small step in the right direction. I would like to encourage you to share this article among your furry friends and social groups: forums, Twitter, FA, whatever. I’m also curious to hear your thoughts and reactions – you can comment below or contact me directly at [email protected] (email/MSN).

Did you know that I used to read tarot cards? I still have the embarrassingly large collection of decks, books, and other accessories that go along with the practice.  I pull them out every now and then to remember the person that I used to be.  I used to be intensely focused on the subconscious and all of the ways in which it wound itself through our waking lives. I used to daydream about spending the requisite hours necessary for a 78 card spread using every card in the standard deck, even if I only did it once,  At one point, I even vowed to do one reading for myself a day for 78 days in order to write a book about the experience (an idea that crops up with just about every interest I pick up, I should note).

I’ve talked about change before, and I have even laid bare some of the changes I have gone through personally.  Even though my fascination with tarot has waned, I still retain the general interest in the ways in which the subconscious works in our lives, and I can still appreciate the deep symbolism that goes along with it. I would be lying, in fact, if I were to say that there wasn’t some subconscious link tying me to the furry fandom. And, having had a few conversations on that point, I think that the same holds true for a lot of us here.
What, then, might be some of the subconscious reasons for wanting to join in a fandom of like minded individuals, spending hours online or sometimes hundreds (or thousands) of dollars just for the chance to interact in person at a convention? What would pull someone to a loose-knit group of individuals with the general theme-in-common of totally digging animals anthropomorphized to some extent, or perhaps humans similarly zoomorphized?  It is, of course, one of those questions that has a different answer (or perhaps several) depending on who you ask, but I think that they are likely to fall into several loose categories.

First, though, I think it’s beneficial restrict ourselves a little in order to focus better on the task at hand.  There are quite a few reasons that someone might wish to join in a subculture, be around close friends, construct a chosen family for themselves; let’s set those aside, however, and focus on the reasons that someone might be willing to construct for themselves an avatar through which they may interact with others.  While it’s certainly not a universal in our fandom, I do think that character creation and interaction are still quite common, and figure large in the ways in which we communicate, even if it is only to purchase art.

One of the reasons that immediately springs to mind for me is escapism. This requires a little bit of explanation on how I really got into the fandom in the first place, though, and I hope you’ll forgive the brief digression. Around about the second half of 2000, a lot of things happened at once within my mom’s side of the family (my parents having originally gotten divorced when I was quite young), and the tension between my mom and then step-dad grew daily, eventually to the dissolution of that marriage as well. The first of the divorces happened when I was too young to remember, but the second occurred near the beginning of high school.  I had just come out as, at the time, homosexual, as well, and the combined stress led to a strong desire to escape to some sort of place where these issues didn’t loom quite so large.

I think that this was a common theme among several of my friends within the fandom at the time, as well. Although, by virtue of being able to even escape onto the Internet to pretend to be animal people, we led rather privileged lives, we all had stresses of a sort, or own realities looming over us, providing the desire to escape into a fantasy world. I’ve mentioned before the startling banality of a lot of this fantasy in which we took part, with folks hanging out in parks or bars, being students or programmers, and I think that reflects a bit of that escapism: getting away from a hectic life to take part in what your segment of society views as normal. To fantasize about normalcy, even with that element of magical realism inherent in being a fox-kid, shows the need to get away from life as it stands.

Of course, despite the normalcy striven for by the crowd that I hung out with, there are certainly more fantastic elements to the fandom.  With character creation and world building, just about anything is possible, anywhere from simple non-binary gender roles to plant-cats and digital-huskies, from vast changes in financial class and social status to vast changes in size, even whole constructed realms with a fleshed out backstory, rules, or laws of physics. Beyond simply being happily normal, fantasy can satisfy out sense of grandeur.

Many individuals have a need to better themselves in any number of ways: to become thinner, to get rich, to win friends or defeat enemies. Fantasy provides one outlet for this.  Through the process of character creation, one can construct an avatar that fills this need for grandiosity. By becoming, however temporarily or shallowly, a fantastic entity, we can satisfy some of our mythic desires.

This need to better ourselves needn’t be on either extreme, of course.  For many, simply the feeling of fulfillment involved in creating the person that we really wish to be is enough.  For myself, I think this is of prime importance. Now that I’ve grown up, left college behind, and moved away from family (thank goodness), furry has taken on less of the escapist overtones and simply become the place where people can strive to be what they wish to be.  Much of the psychological reasons for this were covered in JM’s previous post on how our fursonas are happier than we are.*

This was hammered home recently when I received word of a good friend’s passing. Although he and I hadn’t had much of a chance to interact in the past few years since he joined the army, prior to that he was someone that I looked up to and trusted in a sort of chosen-family, big-brother way.  In fact, there are several people like that still in my life, those friends, usually older than myself, whom I sort of adopted as people to follow back when I was in that escapist mode. Thinking about this after my friend’s death originally made me feel a little guilty, a little creepy; it honestly made me feel like kind of a sad person for having been raised by a bunch of older gay guys pretending to be animal people in an Internet gay bar.

In the end, though, we all grow, change, and mature over time, and I think that I’ve come out alright. Rather than focusing on living a normal life online, I’m lucky enough to be living something like that in person in my own way, and my interactions with others through an avatar have reflected that. The death affected me deeply due to it being a rather blatant signal of that change, and now I know that I’m using the fandom more to help fulfill my needs to become what I want to be: not a fox person, per se, just my ideal self.  This goal of fulfillment is something that I see in a lot of people within the fandom, too. Beyond simply playing an anthropomorphic animal, they are playing what they wish to become.

These are just a few of the important factors of draw to the fandom, of course.  Part of the whole reason of [a][s]‘s existence in the first place is to try to explore those factors.  I had originally thought that it might have lasted for a few articles and then devolved into a current-events site, or maybe into just reviews of all the wonderful creations out there. The cool part about our subculture, however, is that we truly do become part of it, and for all sorts of reasons. These reasons, these draws, these subconscious aspects of our participation all shape the way we interact with each other through our chosen and created avatars, and help shape those avatars in turn on a very fundamental level. I encourage everyone to consider the subconscious aspects of why they are involved with the fandom: that sort of introspection is always quite valuable.

* I should note that, as I was travelling for work, I wrote this on the plane before getting a chance to read JM’s delightful article.  I apologize if this seems a bit repetitive!

We furries, or at least most of us, have multiple identities.

Like everyone, we have our outward-facing human identity, named by our parents and constricted by whatever body it happens to be contained within. Our unique outward-facing identity is closely tied to our position in society and is tied to artificial constructs that crystallize our self into an acceptable bureaucratic package, such as our passports, our social security numbers, or our Google Plus accounts.

Furries usually also create one or more fictional identities. We name ourselves, select a combination of human and animal traits to create a new body, and often a new set of personality traits. Some furries, who create an avatar with interests (or physical dimensions) that do not easily gel with the real world, go further and create a fantasy universe.

Our furry identity is a personal creation, a kind of internal ghost accompanying the human that lurks around the real world. In situations where the real world is less intrusive, like corners of the internet or furry gatherings, our furry identities assert themselves and the human – with its arbitrary name, body, and bureaucratic accoutrements – is pushed to the background.

When the furry self is at the forefront, we experience the world in a different way. And, according to recently published data from the Anthropomorphic Research Project (based at the Niagara County Community College in the USA), we experience the world through the lens of an identity that is more mature, psychologically healthier, and happier than our human selves.

The ARP publishes results from two or three surveys each year. At this year’s Furry Fiesta they performed psychological profiles and summarized the results against the well-regarded “Big Five” personality traits. Cleverly, they asked the furries to answer the questions twice: once for themselves and once for their fursona.

The biggest personality different between ‘human’ and ‘furry’ identity is also the most predictable: the fursonas are much more extroverted. This is due to the well-understood mask effect, a phenomenon familiar to anyone who has spent time on the inside of a fursuit.

The mask effect describes how people change their behaviour when behind a mask: they become less self-aware. The best-known experiment in psychological circles is a much-cited 2003 study that has the subject wear a mask, or stand in front of a mirror, and asks questions related to identity (ref). Participants wearing the mask demonstrate depersonalization and deindividuation.

More directly relevant to furries are studies on cosplayers. Researchers believe that people who attend sci-fi conventions in costume are undergoing “self-administered mental health treatment”. (You can read more here on [adjective][species] here.)

The mask effect allows people who are normally reserved and risk-averse to trial outgoing and extroverted behaviour. While no studies have looked at furries specifically, the same behaviour can be observed in capering fursuiters. Psychologists believe that this helps shy people learn to feel more like their suited self: happy, generous, and more extroverted.

You can read more about research on cosplayers at the dedicated Psychology Today blog: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-superheroes.

The mask effect has other benefits beyond helping people overcome shyness: it can also help us mature. The reduction in self-awareness while wearing a mask (or fursuit) allows us to ‘advance scout’ different personality traits. A fursuiter might, for example, act more flirtatious than the human inside would normally find comfortable, in a low-risk environment. This effect exists whether the mask is physical or virtual: we experience a similar drop in self-awareness when we socialize online in the guise of an alternate personality: our fursona.

Furries, through their fursona, experiment with many different personal traits. Most strikingly, many furries experiment with sexual identity or gender identity through their furry identity. For example, new furries joining the community notoriously tend to re-evaluate their sexual preference, starting heterosexual. There is strong evidence that this is true: data mining performed by [adjective][species] indicates that about half of heterosexual furries will change their sexual preference within their first five years in the community, usually to gay (Re-Evaluating Your Sexual Preference). We have no similar data for gender identity (numbers are too small for statistical analysis), however it is reasonable to assume that many transexuals experiment with a differently-gendered furry character as an important learning step toward eventual self-acceptance.

Aside from the mask effect, which explains why our fursonas are more extroverted than our human selves, the ARP data shows that our furry identities are different in other, more subtle ways.

The ARP data showing Big Five personality traits for furries (ref) is as follows:

* Minor note: emotional stability data is usually reported as Neuroticism in Big Five personality studies.

This data suggests that, perhaps counter-intuitively, our fursonas are a normalizing influence on our personality. This is consistent with psychological theories on roleplaying, where people tend to create a fictional identity that is a positive rolemodel for themselves. This theory, key to some cognitive behavioural therapy methodologies, is usually applied to children roleplaying but also applies to superhero cosplay, and – it seems – to furries as well.

The ARP data also shows that the differences between our human and furry selves are similar to the differences between college age and middle adulthood. That is, our furry selves are also more mature.

Ref Costa & McRae 1992

There is some logic to this. Data shows that personality is in flux until about age 30. Furries are a young group, with a median age of 22 (ref) so collectively, our personalities are still developing.

Changes in personality during maturation occur largely as we become more self-accepting and less self-centred. It makes sense that our imaginary furry selves are less focussed on our own imperfections.

Personality changes as we age into 30-plus adulthood are also correlated with increased happiness and contentment (ref). There is a large body of research on the topic which shows that, as we mature, we learn to trust ourselves and empathize with other people. Between college age and middle adulthood (30-plus again) this translates into “increased well-being” (Mortimer 1928), “decreased alienation and social criticism” (Jessor 1983), as we become “less emotional and better socialized” (Hann 1986).

Our fursonas display many of these traits. They are forging a path of self-improvement: from them, we become more mature, less divergent from others around us, and – most importantly – happier.

The ARP’s website is here – https://sites.google.com/site/anthropomorphicresearch/home. Their most recent publication is a comprehensive analysis of data collected at Anthrocon 2012.

There are two ways in which life can improve: through a change in the outside world, or through personal change. As we mature, we become less self-centred, making it easier for us to self-analyse in a balanced fashion. As we explore our own personalities through our furry identity, we can learn to effect positive change.

It is a sign of maturity to look internally for ways to improve one’s life. We have control over our own actions and our interpretation of the world around us: we do not have control over much of the external world or the people in it.

To put it another way: when exposed to an enraging YouTube comment thread, we can either ignore the comments or engage with them. The more mature approach is to ignore the comments, which brings an immediate increase in happiness as we focus on something else. It is less mature (albeit completely normal) to try to correct the behaviour of the other commenters – as we all know, this is a dark path to frustration and unhappiness.

For another example, I have been exposed recently to a few articles and comic strips titled “How To Treat Your Introvert” (or similar). It’s usually linked by someone who considers themselves to be introverted, in the hope that people will read this advice and accordingly treat them with a greater understanding.

(Language note: this use of the term “introvert” is slightly different from that used by psychologists. It doesn’t easily relate to extroversion as a Big Five personality trait.)

Ref Sveidt on DeviantArt

Ref questionablylate.tumblr.com

In extremis, such advice depicts a pathologically shy person being harassed by a sociopath. This purports to represent the plight of the intovert: they feel victimized by the outside world, preferring to exist largely inside the safety of their own head.

The advice is doubly misleading. Firstly, everyone feels victimized by the outside world. We all find socializing stressful, and we are all haunted by memories of humiliating social experiences. The advice seems profound because everyone feels that way at least some of the time – horoscopes are designed to work in the same way. Secondly, the advice implies that introversion is innate; a fixed aspect of personality. It’s not.

It’s also terrible advice. The intent and spirit of the advice is good – it suggests ways in which we can care for people around us. It’s bad advice because the reader is supposed to identify with the introvert, the person portrayed as a powerless victim of the world around them. (Nobody identifies with sociopaths, not even actual sociopaths.) To hope that the world will change to meet the needs of our introvert is to hope to improve the discourse on a YouTube comments thread through sensible diplomacy.

People who feel introverted can improve their life by looking inwards, and considering things they can control. This is the more mature approach.

A better set of advice might be:

• Be empathetic. Spend more time listening to other people; they will relax if they feel their own social needs are being met.
• Socialize online via your fursona. You will feel less self-conscious.
• Stop hanging around with sociopaths.

Looking inwards to effect change will help our introvert find social experiences that are happy, rather than stressful. After all, that’s what our fursonas do.

Finding contentment in this world is an endless and difficult task. Happily, we can expect to improve as we mature. Even better, we furries have a happy, healthy rolemodel – our animal-person alter-ego – who can lead the way.

Just ask yourself: What Would a Furry Do?

Christopher Smart (1722-1771) was an English poet and satirist. His story is one of art, debt, cross-dressing, drama, and cats. Readers of this article should feel free to draw parallels between Smart and furries, real or imagined.

Smart was an artistic youth with a seemingly misguided romantic focus, writing a poem at age four to challenge a rival for the affections of a twelve year-old. He was also delicate, avoiding physical exercise due to asthma attacks, a complaint widely disbelieved by those around him.

He attended Cambridge University, incurring a substantial debt in the process in the hope that this would be covered by his future career. To that end, he accepted several long-term contracts that tied him to Cambridge and prevented him from easily moving to the burgeoning publishing community in London.

He enjoyed some success in this time, winning a scholarship for Latin poetry, and working as a translator for Alexander Pope on an ad hoc basis. However his income was not sufficient for him to discharge his debts.

Smart gained some notoriety for his satirical plays, where he would act some of the female roles himself. This was considered unusual and led to rumours about his sexuality, a concept continued by today’s critical interest in Smart’s poetry, particularly its perceived gender-bending and phallic imagery.

He moved to London to work in the Grub St publishing scene, a collective of poets, low-end publishers and booksellers. During this time he continued to draw his wages from Cambridge, a ruse that was eventually discovered, cutting Smart off from his main income.

To try to make ends meet, Smart became a prolific writer. He contributed to a variety of magazines on top of his own plays and poetry.

Smart also got caught up in petty personal politics on Grub St, a 1752 equivalent of a flame war. Siding with Henry Fielding against John Hill in a ‘paper war’, Smart spent a great deal of time contributing to the growing vitriol, culminating in his epic poem The Hilliad. While he gained notoriety, such navel-gazing didn’t pay the bills, and Smart foundered in growing debt.

To manage his debts, Smart looked for charity amongst his friends. This led to personal problems as Smart became branded a moocher. Desperately, Smart accepted a 99-year contract to single-handedly publish a weekly paper. In 1756, at age 34, he had a breakdown from the stress.

Smart was interred at St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics on Old St. He fell into a religious mania and was pronounced incurable.

I visited the long-demolished site of St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics, now replaced with retail and a block of post-war flats. (For those who know London, it’s opposite the William Blake pub on Old St, just west of the roundabout.) St Luke’s Church (pictured) stands about 100m down the road. Photo by @bastett.

During his time in the asylum, Smart wrote his two great works. A Song to David was published in 1763 to acclaim that has grown with time, notably through Robert Browning (in the late 19th century) who ranked Smart alongside Milton and Keats.

Smart was eventually released from the asylum, only to be arrested for debt in 1770. He died in prison in 1771.

In 1939, Smart’s Jubilate Agno – which includes the canto For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry – was discovered and published.

Smart sees Jeoffry as godly, an opinion I imagine sat well in Jeoffry’s mind. There can be no doubt that Jeoffry was loved by Smart, to the extent that he sees God in Jeoffry’s morning ablutions. Nowadays, Jeoffry is Smart’s best known work.

The full text of For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry is below.

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider’d God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day’s work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord’s watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he’s a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord’s poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually–Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master’s bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God’s light about him both wax and fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

Hello!

First of all, I suppose I ought to introduce myself since I’m new on this block. My name is Phil Geusz, and I’ve been around the fandom more or less since about 1997. I wrote my first novel that year, and haven’t spent much time not-writing since. I’m one of those people you hear about for whom the discovery of the furry fandom was a life-changing event, and in my case the change was all for the better. Fifteen years later, I’ve either published or am in the process of having published twenty-one mostly furry novels and novellas. The fandom has brought me happiness beyond measure and sparked a creativity inside myself that I’d never have unlocked on my own. I’m grateful to you all, and these columns, like the ones I’ve written for other furry publications, are meant to at least partially serve as a form of repayment. It’s wrong to take, take, take and never give.

That taken care of…

As an author, I’m far more aware than most that we live in rapidly changing times. Even a mere decade ago, when I first began attempting to sell my fiction in a serious way, the publishing world (or at least the significant money-making part of it) was ruled by a handful of editors and agents. These individuals served as “gatekeepers” or “herd thinners”; in choosing who and what was published, printed, and then shipped out by the railcar load to the nation’s bookstores, they effectively controlled the nation’s literary tastes and (much like the record labels) which artists grew rich and famous and which didn’t.

Then, however, came the internet. Anyone could put anything on a web page. And nothing was ever the same again.

For the most part, the internet has been a good thing for society as a whole– certainly its been good for our fandom, which in my opinion would at best be a tiny ghost of what it is today without the interconnections the web has given us. So, please don’t take what follows as an anti-technological rant. I’m no luddite by any measure! And yet…

…sometimes when I surf the unwashed, unedited, ungrammatical, unspellchecked, unstructured and uncensored recesses of furrydom’s fiction websites, I have to admit that I find myself wishing for an old-school gatekeeper or two. I mean, face it. Surgeon’s Law informs us that 99% of anything is trash, and this has certainly always held true for me. Yet… How long and how hard must the average fur search in order to find stories that suit them?

The problem, you see, is that the internet is “flat”. Everyone has equal access, in the absence of gatekeepers and the like, and therefore everyone’s work has equal prominence. Yet… The fact of the matter is that everyone’s work doesn’t _deserve_ equal prominence. It’s commonly understood by pretty near everyone that in order to become a top-flight athlete, for example, endless hours of hard work and coaching are required. When it comes to writing (and in my experience visual art as well, though I claim no expertise there), however… Somehow would-be authors don’t want to accept that they need as much coaching and dedication as an athlete in order to perfect their skills. Instead they internet-post what in all honesty is often grossly substandard work, where it ends up just as prominent as the very best of the genre. And so, Joe Furstoryreader must wade through what feels like an endless swamp in search of quality stories.

Please, don’t get me wrong here. I’m all in favor of encouraging new writers, and have done more than my share of exactly that over the years. Nor do I have a problem with people being proud of what they’ve created and wanting to share it– I’ve not forgotten where I began myself. But back then I desperately needed a writing coach too– I still do, in many ways!– and my work certainly wasn’t ready for prime time. All I’m trying to establish here is that there’s a crying need in our fandom for individuals willing to read boatloads of furry fiction and then tell the rest of us that work “A” was excellent, “B” sucked, and “C” was somewhere in between. Such individuals are far too rare, especially in the flat, gatekeeperless world of the internet. The ones we _do_ have, however, are worth their weight in gold to our fandom, and in my opinion we’ve done far, far too little to thank them for their often painful efforts.

Fred Patten is such an individual, and my purpose in writing this article is to thank him for the many services he’s performed along these lines for our fandom. Not only did he edit the furry fandom’s first significant collection of short stories (plus two other more recent ones), he can truly be said to be one of our founding fathers. (He also helped found the anime fandom as well. How many other people can claim such a distinction in two disparate fields?) Even today, though suffering from the effects of a severely debilitating stroke a few years back, Fred continues to pound out well-considered and thoughtful story and book reviews like a machine. Thus, Mr. Patten serves as the modern-day internet equivalent of the old-time magazine editor– a reader looking for good stories need search no further than Fred’s bottomless stack of reviews in order to locate the sort of material they seek. In the old world of physical books and paper-publishing, valuable people like Fred were well-known to authors and readers alike and honored and respected accordingly. The “flat” world of the internet, however, isn’t so kind. Only in Australia has Mr. Patten and his multiple contributions to furrydom been recognized; so far as I know in the United States and Europe he’s practically a nonentity.

And that’s a damned shame, or maybe something even worse. It reflects very badly on us indeed.

Every single fur contributes to the furry fandom in one way or another. But some contribute far more than others. Fred Patten has given more to this fandom than any other single individual I can name, yet because his efforts have been focused on criticism in a time and place where the role of the critic often goes unappreciated, well… He’s been under-appreciated too. So much so that I’m dedicating my first column here to pointing the fact out, in the hope that someone somewhere will do right by the man while he’s still with us to appreciate it.

We furs have a reputation for taking care of each other, and seeing that justice is done. I can only hope that someone who is in a position to offer more than mere words will read this and live up to the best traditions of our fandom.

(Author’s note– For the sake of full disclosure… I’ve never met Fred in person, but have corresponded with him regarding various literary endeavors for roughly a decade or so. It should be noted that he’s reviewed many of my works, mostly favorably.)

I seem to be drilling down with this (very spread out) series.  I started out with a general overview of participation mystique in the fandom, narrowed it to some specific uses of words, and now I’m focusing specifically on pronouns.  I can’t say that I have any plans for a fourth iteration, but I’m assuming that it will start going into syllables.  Arf, bark, and the like.  Pretty good syllables, if you ask me.

Pronouns are already short enough as it is, usually only one syllable.  They’re some of the most common words that we use, and for good reason: they help us keep our speech and writing concise and varied by letting us use a placeholder instead of a name or a noun.  They carry a lot of weight for their relatively small size, however. Weight that, I think, can tell us quite a bit about how some people interact with the fandom, or even identify with their personal characters.

A good place to start here, then, is how a pronoun works behind the scenes.  If you were to say: “OtterFace is a river otter.  He enjoys wiggling, fish, and his enormous tail,” you have stated the subject of the statement as ‘OtterFace’, and then referred to him twice using ‘he’ and ‘his’.  I’ve mentioned before that one of the ways to look at how language works is by recognizing that the words we use are signs used to convey meaning.  When we talk about OtterFace or his glorious tail, we’re using signs – that is, words on a screen, sounds coming from our mouths, etc. – to refer to two things that really, truly exist (or so we assume).

The job of the pronouns specifically is to be set up as a temporary sign that refers back to something earlier in the statement: ‘he’ and ‘his’ refer back to ‘OtterFace’ in the previous example.  They’re a sort of sign on top of a sign, in one sense; pronouns refer back to a noun that was already used, which in turn refers to the subject.  They do have a tendency to wear out over time, however.  If I talk about ‘him’ here, you might understand that I refer to our wiggly otter friend, but once a new paragraph starts, it’s usually about time to restate the subject, because him has lost some of its power in referring back to OtterFace.

This is all well and good, really; it helps us keep things flowing in the language that we use.  As I said, though, pronouns in many languages do carry a lot of additional weight beyond just being placeholders for a subject.  The prime example of this, and the one I want to focus on, is the fact that you now know that OtterFace is male, solely based on my pronoun choice. (pronouns also carry a portion of identity with them).  This is part of the burden carried by pronouns: I didn’t have to specify that OtterFace was male beyond choosing and using the proper pronouns.  Pronouns carry great importance, at least in English, by specifying the gender of the sign they replace, helping us to form a better mental picture of what is being described in words.

And here’s where things get a little tricky.

One usually discusses gender with pronouns, but to be honest, “gender” in this case is divided into at least two distinct areas: gender identity and biological sex (three, if you count gender expression).  However, asking a transgender person about pronouns will get you an explanation about all the ways in which that relationship between pronoun and gender is fraught.  There are a lot of connotations that not everyone is comfortable with when it comes to having some things specified by so short a word, and having the wrong pronoun used when one is dealing with gender identity disorder is just one of those terribly uncomfortable things.  The upside, at least in some places in furry, is that you present as your character, which can be of whatever sex you wish, making pronouns all the easier to chose, for those interacting with you.

In fact, due to the fantastical nature of the fandom (that is, of a fantasy nature, though we are fantastic as well), non-binary gender identities have flourished and make up a sizable portion of the population in some locations, far above the 1% of births that show some sort of sexual ambiguity*.  These range through the whole gamut of male and female primary and secondary sexual characteristics, from primarily female to primarily male and everything in between, and various pronouns have been more or less popular in describing various areas on that spectrum.

This article on io9 goes into some of the issues on describing hermaphrodites in terms of male and female, including with pronouns; very much recommended reading.  While some who present as a hermaphrodite with their character in the fandom use masculine or feminine pronouns (“male herms”, those who present as primarily male, with both sets of reproductive genitalia, or “c-boys”, males with a vulva and vagina but no penis, both tend to use masculine pronouns, for example), several use either a gender neutral pronoun set, or one that’s specific to hermaphrodites. One of the more common sets, ‘shi/hir/hirs/hirself’, seems to be fairly unique to the fandom, even, and indeed would likely only be able to flourish in a primarily written environment, due to the relative similarity of the words when spoken to ‘she/her/hers/herself’**.  Others choose pronouns that have shown up elsewhere offline, such as the ‘zie/zir/zirs/zirself’ or other such gender neutral pronouns to represent someone of non-binary gender.

That leads us to non-gendered and neuter pronouns.  The difference between those two terms was succinctly put when I asked a crowd online whether they preferred ‘it/it/its/itself’ or Spivak pronouns (‘e/em/eir/emself’, though the nominative is often replaced with ‘ey’, to prevent ambiguity when spoken with ‘he’).  When I asked this crowd of furs, there were the response was overwhelmingly ‘it/it/its/itself’.  When asked, the three furs who had their gender set to neuter and used ‘it’ for themselves explained succinctly, “I have some friends that use Spivak pronouns, but they identify more as ‘none’ than specifically ‘neuter’.  ‘Neuter’ is a gender, whereas ‘none’ is more of an answer to a question.”  The fandom certainly provides room for the neutrois and the ‘none’s, of course, and the means of interacting online provide a way for that to be expressed as a part of oneself.

So why is this all important to furry?  I think that a lot of it has to do with the ways in which we interact through avatars, our personal characters.   The ability to partake in gender without necessarily involving biological sex is a definite draw to many.  Disconnecting the two and, in some small way, totally presenting as who one feels one should present as in terms of gender is not that far away from presenting as what species one wishes to present as.  It’s no surprise, then, that expressing a different gender with a furry character is no surprise to so many; it’s not that far off from what we already do.  Additionally, it is a prime example of participation mystique: entangling concepts of gender with the fandom, for some, is another way in which we can base a portion of our existences on our membership to the fandom.

Of course, this isn’t something that necessarily holds true for everyone, or even a majority of furries.  It’s not even something that everyone accepts within the fandom.  I do think that it is a good example of one of the ways in which we connect with our subculture, and with each other.  Something as simple as a pronoun used during interaction with another fur can be a sign of how they have made the fandom part of themselves, just as for others the spiritual aspect, or the artistic aspect, or even the sexual aspect can provide a deeply meaningful tie to something as simple as a subculture with a shared interest in anthropomorphic animals.

* This according to the (now defunct) Intersex Society of North America, which defines the term “sexual ambiguity” to include genetic issues such as Klinefelter Syndrome which may or may not present beyond simple gynecomastia in many individuals, which hardly fits the furry herm stereotype; the number of births with truly ambiguous primary sexual characteristics is quoted as being much smaller: “Between 0.1% and 0.2% of live births are ambiguous enough to become the subject of specialist medical attention, including surgery to disguise their sexual ambiguity.” (source)

** A resourceful [a][s] reader contacted me several months ago with a brief analysis on how controversial ‘shi/hir/hirs/hirself’ can be.  Such pronouns can elicit quite violent responses from some individuals.

*** On Wikipedia, Gender-neutral pronouns is an exhaustive list pronouns that are neutral in gender in some way or another, and includes some pretty fascinating information and links besides.  English gets quite the table, even.

Further reading

• Meaning Within a Subculture - Further discussions on semiotics and linguistics.
• Boys, Girls, and the In-Betweens - An early article on non-binary gender.

Again, apologies for the slowness and shortness of articles on my end, and cheers to JM for keeping things running along!

In a recent article, I talked about the importance of language in self-criticism. If you are trying to lose weight, it’s useful to use relative terms (I’m getting thinner) and counter-productive to use absolute terms (I’m fat).

It’s helpful to use language that suggests self-improvement, compared to the language of self-hatred. Even though both phrases (I’m getting thinner / I’m fat) describe the same thought, they imply different things: language affects perspective.

Writing here on [adjective][species], I do my best to use specific and neutral language. But it’s difficult, especially when writing about sensitive topics such as sexuality, or fluffy concepts such as “furry”.

An example of a sensitive topic: I used the term “paedophile” in my article on cub porn. I suggested that a subset of those furries attracted to cub porn are sexually attracted to children. I called them paedophiles.

It’s a strong term. It is regularly used to refer to child molesters, however I meant it to cover anyone with an innate sexual attraction to children. I went on to use the term “gold-star paedophile”, which is someone with such an attraction and the good sense not to act on it.

I used these terms because they are used by the psychologists I cited my article. However I knew that free usage of “paedophile” would colour my post, making it difficult to read and potentially enraging. Ideally, there would have been a term with the same definition, without the implied negative connotation, and less cumbersome than “someone who is innately sexually attracted to children”.

An example of a fluffy concept: gender and sexual identity. A full 25% of furries consider themselves to be neither completely male nor female (link), while less than 50% of furries identify as homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual (link).

This makes data analysis difficult. Here at [a][s], we tend to lump groups into large categories, so that someone identifying as “mostly homosexual” is considered “homosexual”. This is a potentially offensive simplification, but it’s the best we can do.

In the ultra-PC world of sexual politics, the cover-all term LGBT isn’t always considered inclusive enough. This has led to propagation of ludicrous terms like LGBTQIA. While more specific, such terms are not useful: mainstream usage of LGBT includes all people with an unusual gender or sexual identity.

Such limitations of language are one of the biggest challenges of writing for [adjective][species]. There have been very few attempts to discuss the furry community intelligently, which means that there is limited language to draw upon.

A lot of furry analysis occurs in crowd-sourced, informal media such as forums or Twitter, or published in a news-byte format by the likes of Flayrah. This is all great stuff, but it doesn’t generate discussion of sufficient depth to create a new lexicon, a foundation on which we can grow complex ideas.

There is little detailed furry analysis. Journalists barely scratch the surface, and the only scientific study (Gerbasi et al) proposed a “species identity disorder”, interesting but not really relevant to the furry experience.

Here on [a][s], and in other long-form pieces (such as the occasional LJ article or Flayrah editorial), it’s easy to get smothered by linguistic quicksand. Our occasional awkward phrases (like “all people with an unusual gender or sexual identity”) and painfully self-referential articles (like, uh, this one) are partly a product of our limited furry lexicon.

This is all, of course, Makyo territory. He has written around the topic of language on several occasions, notably Doxa (exploring the ideas that make up our community) and On Words (discussing the varied interpretations of “furry”). If you’ve read this far, then I’d recommend a read (or re-read) of both those articles.

I hope that [adjective][species] will help the introduction of new ideas and terms. Language does change within growing communities, notably the appropriation of the word “gay” to provide a non-perjorative alternative to the likes of “queer” or “fruit” or “faggot”.

Many of the articles at [a][s] are merely intended to provide disinterested perspective on difficult topics. As we continue – with our growing army of readers and contributors – we can build on those foundations, grow our understanding of furry, and learn more about our community.

Fantastic Mr Fox, the brilliant 2009 Wes Anderson film based on Roald Dahl’s children’s novel, is driven by two coming-of-age stories.

The first, and more traditional, follows Mr Fox’s 12 year old son Ash. Ash is short, awkward, and prone to theatrical sartorial choices that reinforce his status as an outsider. He is forever comparing himself to his fantastic father and implausibly gifted cousin, Kristofferson. Over the course of the film, Ash learns to make the most of his strengths.

The second coming-of-age story is that of Mr Fox himself. Despite being a husband, father, home owner, and provider, Mr Fox sees himself as a ‘wild animal’, a kind of perpetual teenager who continually needs to prove himself to the world.

In the opening scene, Mr Fox and his wife are caught in a fox trap while raiding a squab farm. Mrs Fox reveals that she is pregnant, and Mr Fox agrees to settle into a safer life for the sake of his family. This brings about an internal conflict in Mr Fox. He retains his self-image (a wild animal), which is at odds with the safe domestic life he makes as a father and newspaper columnist.

Fantastic Mr Fox is a furry movie in that it features anthropomorphic characters. I’d also argue that Mr Fox’s internal conflict has parallels with the furry experience. His internal conflict is similar to the disconnect of identity experienced by many furries: we present one version of ourselves to the real world but have an internal life where our furry identity looms large.

I don’t want to overextend my linguistic gymnastics by stretching for too many parallels between the identity crises in Mr Fox and in furries. However, both we and Mr Fox must find some way to manage our split personalities.

Mr Fox does a poor job of this in the start of the film. He is prone to self-aggrandizement and risky behaviour, as if he is trying to prove his wildness despite his domesticity. He treats his friend, Badger, poorly – physically threatening him after being advised against a risky purchase, and cutting him off mid-speech. Mr Fox does so because he feels he must prove himself as the wild, fantastic animal he imagines himself to be.

Mr Fox’s crisis is resolved in the best – and most flawed – scene in the film: the wolf scene.

Just after the climactic action sequence, Mr Fox spies a wolf in the distance. The wolf is a wild animal: quadruped, mute, strong. Mr Fox, despite his self-professed lupophobia, tries to engage the wolf in conversation. The wolf remains silent. The scene ends with the two making a non-verbal connection, acknowledging each other with a raised paw. As the wolf leaves, Mr Fox says to his son and nephew “What a beautiful creature. Wish him luck, boys.”

It’s a powerful and understated scene. The connection between Mr Fox and the wolf indicates the reconciliation of Fox’s splintered identities. The gesture of acceptance shows the domesticated Mr Fox making peace with his atavistic self. With this acceptance, Mr Fox can find balance between his wild, internal world and domestic, external world. His newspaper column becomes edgier (“Fox on the Prowl”) and his next raid is on a safer target – a supermarket.

The gesture between Mr Fox and the wolf is a moment of personal triumph. It’s something we can all strive for.

Unfortunately, the wolf scene is arguably a racist one. The black wolf stands in counterpoint to the civil world of Mr Fox et. al., and is a representation of the wild.

The black wolf is intended to be a metaphor for Mr Fox’s internal atavistic shadow. However there is a history of blackness in cinema, where it is shorthand for mysteriousness and untamed animalism. This is a fundamentally racist association as it degrades blacks as being more like animals (and so less human). The black wolf is pure animal.

And, unfortunately, the key gesture between Mr Fox and the wolf looks a lot like a black power salute.

There is a long history of film using black characters in a racist fashion, even in otherwise excellent films. Consider Morgan Freeman’s benevolent servant in Driving Miss Daisy, or Michael Clarke Duncan’s “magical Negro” in The Green Mile. Such black characters only exist to act benevolently towards the white main characters, and have little other apparent motivation. Freeman and Duncan, in these films, are playing the stock character of the noble savage. Neither film is intended to be racist, however the characterization of the black characters in anachronistic.

I don’t think that Wes Anderson intended the wolf scene to have any racial connotations. Anderson has form: 2007′s The Darjeeling Limited is about the three Whitman brothers (literally, the White Men) who get lost in the Rajasthani desert. The Indians in the film are broadly characterized, but this is a deliberate device to reflect the privilege of the Whitmans and their unfamiliarity with the world outside their bubble. The Darjeeling Limited is a direct exploration of ‘whiteness’, arguably a theme carried throughout many of Anderson’s films.

Mr Fox is equally privileged and suffers the condition of being white. He is nattily dressed, speaks in a quasi-formal manner that suggests a traditional British-style education, is fluent in French, and is comfortable with Latin. While none of these things necessarily qualify him as white (he is, after all, a delightful shade of orange), it’s a reasonable assumption to make in the context of Anderson’s other work.

Like the black characters in The Green Mile and Driving Miss Daisy, I suspect that the black wolf’s cameo will become anachronistic over time. It’ll remain a small criticism of an otherwise excellent film, at least until the world improves to a point where skin colour doesn’t have associational baggage.

I, for one, would be happier if Anderson had taken a page out of the furry book and made his wolf blue. (Neon green bangs optional.)

First of all, I’d like to apologize for the dearth of articles, recently. It really weighs on me, and I feel that I’ve been neglecting one of my favorite things ever: writing too-long articles about animal people.  Not all of my time was just sitting, twiddling my thumbs, though.  I did wind up with a cool new job, and that panel for RMFC took up quite a bit of my time, actually.  Most of what has been going on, though, at least in my spare time over the last few weeks, has been dealing with a few health problems that had me a little down.

My general solution to the anxiety and emotional weirdness involved with those sorts of things, when they get bad, is to seek out as many positive (pawsitive, if you will) things.  The usual method is to ask on Twitter “what’s awesome right now?”  I love getting the responses, hearing what people think is neat and cool, hearing all the wonderful things that are happening to people.  ”Exciting new development at work for me!”  ”Free bagels.”  ”My coffee.”  As I poke my way through the replies, though, favoriting most of them, I notice that just about every icon has a muzzle and ears.  So you know what’s totally awesome to me? Furries.

A lot of what this site focuses on is not really all that negative.  Zik is exploring the world of furry, JM is peeking into specific aspects of our subculture, and Klisoura is being wonderful by pulling specific data for us. (Kyell is automatically awesome, because fox; and guest authors get a free in, here.)  However, the topics tend to be obviously interesting, and I’ve noticed that we do tend to approach issues from both sides, even if we wind up more firmly on one side than the other.  JM’s articles on Zoophilia and cub porn both take this tack: they start with an  exposition of both sides, even though they tend to come down on the positive side.  It’s definitely a successful method, and it seems that a lot of our readership does appreciate the more exploratory style articles.

I’m going to take a step back, though, and just spend a few words on some blatant positivity.  I really like furries.  I really like  being a furry.  I think we are, all around, a great group of people focused on a few great core ideas, but with plenty of diversity thrown in to make sure that we lead interesting lives.  We are awesome.

There’s a rhetorical technique known as hendiatris, which is one of those things which you will spot everywhere once you know about it.  It means making one point through three statements.  I know that it figures prominently in my own writing, but I see it everywhere.  Especially in this most political of (US) seasons, the hendiatris makes a comeback.  I’m going to use that here, and the reason I’m even bothering to preface that is that I want to note that I try to fit all of my articles into three categories: participation mystique (how we base a portion of our identity off our membership with the fandom), character versus self (the concept of creating and interacting via an avatar), and interaction (what we gain by being a subculture, rather than being solipsistic).

Participation Mystique

Participation mystique is basing a portion of your identity off of membership to a group or participation in some sort of idea.  I’ve written about it before, but it’s worth bringing up again specifically for the benefits that it offers within the furry community.  The idea that we can structure a portion of what we consider ourselves around our membership to this sometimes quite odd subculture is quite impressive.  I know that, for myself. I feel that I would be a less complete individual without the fandom.

That’s part of the issue with anything that uses the words identity, though.  By their very nature, they are things that, without which, we would find it nearly impossible to picture ourselves.  If I try to picture myself without furry, for instance, I come up with a blank for several parts of my day – checking Twitter, relaxing online with friends during some downtime, planning for a convention panel, or even right now, sitting and writing a meta-furry article for a blog with a giant wolf on the banner.  Without furry, would I substitute that portion of my identity with something else?  Would I have taken part in some other participation mystique that would have filled out the same spaces in the topology of my soul?  I’m sure it’s possible.  There are a lot of things that I’m interested in besides furry, to be truthful.  Would I be the same person, though?  Of course not.

There are, as someone mentioned to me on Twitter, inherent ties between the fandom and identity.  It’s not just that I am experiencing this sort of participation mystique, many of us are.  There is a certain sort of subconscious, unvoiced togetherness that we gain from sharing this mystical participation, this joining of ourselves with a group.  It sounds a little cultish, when I write it out like that, but I do think it’s true.  I’ve noticed that, if you run into a furry that you have never met before, there’s always at least one thing you can talk about: the ways in which you base a portion of your Self on your being a part of this larger group of animal people.

Character Versus Self

Character versus self is another theme that I’ve written on before.  There are several ways in which we interact with the world around us, and one of the most important for us within the fandom is through our own characters, those avatars which stand for the core of our being tied with our interest in anthropomorphics, as well as our identity in the fandom.  It came up during the RMFC panel that many furries can even have several different characters, as opposed to just one avatar that they keep.  That we can hold that in our minds, that we can wear a mask to fit our moods and our desires, to be the type of individual we want to be, that is quite amazing, I think.

To paraphrase a friend, we put so much work and creativity into creating something that represents our most intimate of aspects, and then we wear it openly, making that the type of person with whom others should interact.  You all know that I write and care about gender and all of the complexities involved with it (I can think of at least two articles that have surrounded it that I’ve written, after all), and I think that this idea of taking a personal aspect, much more personal than might be normally shared outside of the fandom, and making it a core part of the character that we create is definitely useful.  Gender can often be one of those things, where one can play a character of whatever biological sex, or even gender identity, that they want here in the fandom, and have it be just fine.

Another example, and a good way to tie into the next section, is the ways in which we benefit from having an avatar through which we interact.  There are, of course, varying degrees of introvert and extrovert, and beyond that, varying degrees of social anxiety.  These are things that just about everyone experiences, even if it’s on the extreme far end. I can say for myself that, although I like to think of myself as reasonably extroverted, I have quite a bit of social anxiety, and it takes a lot of effort for me to have successful interactions in the world.  If I’m pretending to be a fox or whatever, though, I can hide behind the fact that I’m doing just that, and the interactions go a lot smoother.  Perhaps it’s just the fact that I’m interacting with other furries, but I do feel that having that layer of Who I Really Feel I Am between me and my interlocutor does provide an additional level of comfort.

Interaction

The idea of a chosen family is not a new one.  I know that, at the very least, it ties into the idea of being kicked out of one’s home, and adopting a chosen family of sorts to help be the surrogates for those whom are no longer in ones lives.  Even beyond that, however, I think that the idea holds true within furry.  There is no one in my family with whom I am closer than some of my friends in the fandom.  The fact that my chosen family here, outside of my normal family whom I still love, can continue to grow and change just tickles me pink, too.  I can honestly say that, within the last two weeks, at least one additional member has been added to this family, someone with whom I am more comfortable talking to than most members of my blood-related family.  This always amazes me: the mutability of who we consider family is odd enough, but within the fandom, just how quickly those relationships can grow.

I’m not alone in this at all, either.  I asked on Twitter, before I started this article, what the most positive thing was that my followers could think of the fandom, and the majority of the answers revolved around the interconnectedness and relationships that spring from it.  ”Made so many good friends,” “Given me [...] a husband,” “that I am not being judged or ridiculed for who I am.”  These are all, to me, true signs of affection for the other members in our subculture.  That we have not found, but created an area where all of these things can be the case is quite singular, to me.  Of all the other subcultures to which I’d consider myself a member – programmers, musicians, awkward people – I don’t think that it’s likely that I would be able to build a friendship quite as quickly.  Sure, in programming, we can debate the (de)merits of PHP, or in music we can talk about preferences for music to perform versus music to listen to.  Neither of those things (thankfully) take up much of my identity, however.

See, here in our subculture, we combine all three of these levels of participation.  There’s the utmost personal level of creating a part of our identity around it, there’s the level wherein we create a front-stage mask that may, in some cases, more closely relate our back-stage personas, and there’s the level where we actively participate in the little micro-world around us.  So many of us have bought into the fandom (many in more ways than one) that it’s become something greater than the sum of its parts.  I challenge you all to do the same and imagine where you’d be without the fandom, try and figure out what theme, idea, culture, or group, or combination thereof, could take its place, and define the borders of furry in your own lives.  We really are pretty awesome.

I really am sorry for ducking out for so long, and I hope to be back soon for more posts-with-too-many-words.  You all are quite amazing in your own right, but by all means, feel free to say in the comments just how the furry fandom has been awesome to you, personally!  We’d love to hear some pawsitive* stories.

* HOLY MACKEREL check out THESE PAWS.