[adjective][species]

Of Horses and Men is a 2013 Icelandic film (Hross í oss). The English subtitled version is widely available for streaming, or as a cheap DVD in all the usual places.

It’s a strange film. It opens with a man saddling his mare, and it’s clear from the interactions between man and horse that their relationship is new. The saddling is shot and edited as a seduction: the man is intent on going for a ride, but first he must gain her trust, and she must submit to him.

The subtext running through the film is simple enough: that humans and horses are both animals, slave to our animal desires, whatever they may be. We’re all dumb and self-destructive; we bring misery upon ourselves because we are unable to transcend our very simple animalistic instincts.

Our horseman, who is unnamed but turns out to be one of the film’s main characters, takes his mare to visit his girlfriend. As he woos her over tea, his mare is wooed by the girl’s stallion across a fence. As our horseman leaves, he is humiliated as the fence breaks, and the stallion mounts the mare with no regard for the human encumbrance on her back.

The horses have complicated the blossoming love affair between the two humans by bringing social shame to the man, and by baring their ultimate carnal desires for all to see. On returning home, our horseman shoots and kills his new mare in a calculated jealous act. His girlfriend castrates her stallion. This all takes about 15 minutes, and gives the viewer a very good idea of what sort of film they are watching.

Of Horses and Men is short at 85 minutes, and consists of a series of short vignettes, starting with our horse-human love quadrette. Most of the vignettes will end badly for all concerned, and the horse/human bodycount will grow. (In that way, it’s a bit like Kill Bill.)

The film is set in the remote Icelandic hinterland, a land of volcanic desert and dangerous extremes of climate. The scenery is beautiful, the people are stoic, and the humour is pitch-black: this is an undeniably Scandinavian film.

The obvious point of comparison for Of Horses and Men is The Black Stallion, or at least the first half where the boy and the horse are castaway on a deserted island. (I’ve written about The Black Stallion for [adjective][species] in the past.) In that film, the boy and horse become reliant on one another for survival and companionship, which grows into a close bond.

The Black Stallion‘s sequences showing the development of the relationship between the two is stunning. It highlights the beauty and remoteness of the island, and the best parts of the nature of both human and horse. Of Horses and Men is similarly stunning, and similarly focussing on horse/human relationships, but is much less positive about our shared, inherent animal nature.

The human characters do love their horses, but the relationship is a starkly unequal one. The horses are tools to be used, creatures to be tricked into bondage and discarded when no longer convenient. Any number of indignities are visited upon our horses, including an ocean swim to a Russian ship to buy black market vodka, and one poor creature is sacrificed in a cold snap to save the enterprising human, who uses the same trick as Luke Skywalker on Hoth, cutting open the beast’s belly for warmth.

The horses are entirely resigned to their fate, accepting the wills of their human masters. Undoubtedly this is a far more accurate representation of a real horse-human relationship than the partnership of equals imagined by The Black Stallion, but the cold pragmatism of the Icelanders is still bracing, particularly in the face of the flawed nature of their own animal instincts.

Of Horses and Men emphasises the animal nature of the humans by putting them on the same footing as the horses. So as our horseman from the opening vignette suffers the humiliation of being on horseback for horse-horse mating, a horse will later be tied to him as he and his girlfriend have sex.

The exploration of our fundamental animal nature in Of Horses and Men is, of course why I’m writing about it for [adjective][species]. For myself and for many other furries, I see my furry identity as an exploration of the interplay between my instinctual/animal and rational/human sides. Our animal side is something that gets short shrift in society, because our animal instincts are seen as being lesser. Our society places value on intellectual work, like writing or mathematics, and lower value on physical work, like horsemanship or parenting.

There is a sense that we should transcend our emotions and instincts, as if this would make us more worthwhile human beings. Basic requirements for life are often presented, in society, absent of their base, visceral contexts: food comes pre-made and pre-wrapped; porn comes absent of body hair and odour; sleep is a collection of lifestyle accoutrements rather than a basic act. The simple, animal truth of human need is obscured by a gentrifying, civilizing layer. And, for the most part, it’s bullshit.

There is freedom to be found in accepting your own animal instincts as a personal truth. Once accepted, they can be met in a way that celebrates the good, useful parts and controls the bad or unsocial parts. To put it another way, a gay man can try to deny his animal truth by marrying a woman anyway. Or he can embrace his sexuality, enjoy sex and love, and complain about the fact society values heterosexual marriage more than it does homosexual marriage.

My animal-person identity, my personal horse, is one that allows me to accept that it’s my animal instincts that make me human. I reject the idea that humans are a sort of anti-animal. I can accept and embrace my animal needs, and I can meet those needs in a way that serves my human society in a civil and appropriate way. My furry identity can meet these needs: I am a civil animal.

Every time I see furries presented in a way that mocks our community, I have the same immediate reaction: fuck you. What kind of animal shames another for expressing a shared animal interest—friendship, or sex, or whatever—in the way that suits them best? An uncivil animal, that’s who.

I know from personal experience and analysis of the furry data we collect here at [adjective][species] that furries are a social, happy, caring, tight-knit bunch. We get mocked because we transgress a sharp line drawn by society: that between sexual and non-sexual behaviour. Society places a higher value on non-sexual activity because sex is seen as animalistic. In the furry world, love does not need to be defined by sex, and vice versa. In this respect, we are the greater beasts.

I enjoy films like Of Horses and Men because they deal with the undeniable animal nature of human beings. Our rural Icelanders are in touch with the world around them, and their human relationships are uncomplicated. But the horses are stronger, and their relationships are even simpler. We can be better humans by being more horse, by showing our own strength and friendship and love in the simplest way possible.

If you’re looking for a film to explore your animal-person side then you could do worse than Of Horses and Men, but you can do better as well. It has a few problems, in particular a dodgy “action” sequence (involving a slow-moving tractor), and a couple of cinematic tropes that don’t hold up to even the slightest amount of logical scrutiny.

You can do better by watching Carroll Ballard’s four animal films, and his exploration of human nature therein (which include The Black Stallion; I’ve reviewed them all for [a][s]). Never Cry Wolf is probably the best even given a slightly dodgy opening act. I’d recommend starting there. But if you’re looking for something new, or if you just have a soft spot for Scandinavian deadpan, Of Horses and Men is well worth your time.

Guest article by M.C.A. Hogarth, a writer of anthropomorphics, science fiction, and fantasy. Her fiction has variously been recommended for a Nebula, a finalist for the Spectrum, placed on the secondary Tiptree reading list and chosen for two best-of anthologies; her art has appeared in RPGs, magazines and on book covers. She is also Vice President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

This article was originally published on her blog (Part 1, Part 2).

Let me say this first: Yes, I am the vice president of a professional association of writers. And yes, I believe that artists should be paid, and not a pittance, for what they do. I take that as given.

Having said that, though: if I want to give my work away, I have that right. If I want to sell a $1500 painting for a dollar to someone without the money to buy it at full price, that’s my right. If I want to exchange a piece of art for the opportunity to pet a puppy for half an hour, if I want to jack the price down because I like the editor, the venue, the issue, if, basically, for any reason I want to hand my work over for less than people think I should, I’m allowed… and no, I don’t think you’re in the right when you tell me I’m “de-valuing” art.

You know what de-values art? Pretending that it can be bought for money. You cannot put a price on a book that saves your soul, or a painting that gives you joy, or a piece of music that makes you run faster for sheer elation. There is not enough money in the world. When we put a price on art, we are doing something utterly arbitrary, something that has more to do with what the market will bear and what we need to buy groceries than on the value of the work.

Do I think I have an obligation to my fellow artists? Yes, absolutely. But that obligation is not to maintain an artificial price floor like some kind of union member. My obligation is to educate my audience on why art (all art, not just mine) is worth paying for. To do that, I need to understand the value of what I’m offering (see above: priceless). I need to understand that what I do, as an artist, is important: not easy given a society that gives artists mixed signals. And I need to understand business principles, so that I understand how to price my work and what the market will bear.

I understand the drum beat of “don’t undervalue yourself” is intended to combat a lifetime’s worth of conflicting signals received by young artists about whether their work is worth remuneration. And absolutely, I agree, we need to teach each other that we deserve to eat. But not by vilifying non-artists and not by reprimanding each other for our pricing choices. The answer to this conundrum is not “Have every artist set their prices the same.” The answer is to respect the intelligence and sensitivity of your audience, and give them the tools they need to make informed choices. I can’t count the number of artists who have sneered about “everyone wanting to steal art instead of paying for it” or who have told me that if I trust people to tip me for work I give away for free I am being naive because “no one pays for stuff they get for free.” (Ignoring even obvious examples of this being untrue in the existing world: people pay to get into museums. They don’t buy anything with that ticket except the ability to go in and see the work.) I can’t imagine the world these people live in, where they labor to give the work of their hearts to faceless masses they imagine waiting to starve, rob, or betray them. They must live in dark and terrible headspaces.

Because people do pay me for things I give away, generously, joyously, and eagerly. They do it apologizing for how little they have to give, or happily, sharing their own bonuses, paydays, and windfalls with me. And they do it because I tell them: “Look, this is how the art is made. Let me explain how wonderful it is, how long it takes me, how I make the choices I do, why it took me so long to learn that particular trick. Come into my world. Understand this with me. Experience it with me. And if I have given you joy of it, and if you have the money to buy me bread, I will accept it with a grateful heart.”

You do that, and you will be surprised how many people suddenly look around and say, “All this art is made by people, and now I care about the people as well as the art. Because they cared about me.”

That is the duty I have as an artist, to my fellow artists, and I do it faithfully, every day. If you really want to change the culture, if you want to see more of us earning our livings and fewer people “stealing,” then this is the work you must do.

Art is a communion between maker and audience. If you don’t think the audience is capable of valuing that communion, I question more than whether you’re hurting other artists. I question whether you should be making art at all.

No one is obligated to pay me to do what I want. We all need to work for a living. But what people need might not be what you want to give, and forcing them to pay you anyway is coercion. I don’t hold with it. Is it a sad thing when the world won’t compensate you to do something you’re brilliant at because what it really needs is someone to do data entry? Sure. But complaining about it is childish. If I don’t get paid enough to live off the work that I love, then either I make it without compensation—because I love it—or show people why they should pay for it until I can live off the proceeds. Or both. But I am not moved by artists who think that they should make a living on art because it’s what they want to do and, like Bartleby the Scrivener, they’d prefer not to do anything else. We’d all prefer not to do things we have to do. Doing them anyway furnishes us with the experiences that teach us discipline, duty, patience, and strength.

Taste is subjective. The number one complaint I hear from other artists is, “I don’t know why they earn more than I do/got the contract/are more popular when my work is so much better than theirs!” I hate hearing this. It is demeaning to the person saying it, the person it’s aimed at, and all the people who enjoy that person’s work. Art by its nature is subjective. Your “better” work might not speak to the same people who enjoy someone else’s, and you know, that’s okay. It’s okay for people to like “stupid books written for the masses” and “trash movies” and “cartoons with broken anatomy, why have they never studied a real animal argh.” Your tastes and their tastes don’t align. That’s good. It takes all kinds. Cherish the people who love your work; because the people who like the work you hate aren’t going to magically shower you with their money if that other artist goes away and leaves you the spotlight.

If you want people to understand the value of art, you can’t tell them to value only yours, because they might not be suited to your work. Tell them about all the art that matters so that they can find the work that speaks to them… and your peers will start sending you the people who need your work. Be generous. Any other attitude is poisonous.

Sacrifice is relative. When I was a student I saved up for a year to buy one limited edition print from an affordable artist whose work I really liked. Seven years later, as a tech worker at a software start-up, I made that much “play money” in half a month. If you looked at our relative expenditures on art, it would have been easy to assume that Tech Worker Jaguar was the more dedicated patron of the arts. Yet it was Student Jaguar who sacrificed the most for her print. When someone offers me a dollar, or five dollars, and tells me that’s what they have to give, I believe them. I remember that I once was that person who hoped that someone else would pay for a serial episode to be unlocked so she could read it, or who had to wait four months for the library to finally get me a copy of the book everyone read when it was new. And I remember that the artists who made me feel like my $5 mattered to them are the artists I came back to when I was plump in the pocket. “You understood then. Now it’s my turn to give back.”

That cycle never ends, by the way. I have been Jaguar of Little Means and Jaguar of Significant Means, over and over. The wheel turns. Be kind to people trudging through the dark part of that cycle. If they give you their money, no matter how little it is, it matters.

Ignorance is an opportunity. I said earlier that it’s our duty as artists to explain to our audience why art is worth paying for… because I don’t think artists realize how enigmatic the process is from outside our heads. People think ‘well, they like art, how can they not get how much work it takes?’ But you can enjoy the fruits of something without understanding how it works. Do you need to know the ins-and-outs of surgery to benefit from an appendectomy? Do you have to learn how to farm, catch, or sell fish to enjoy eating one? Construction? But we live in buildings. Languages? But we speak one all the time. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that people enjoy art without knowing how it’s made.

There is nothing wrong with being ignorant; there’s too much to be known in this world for any of us to learn it all before we die. Don’t sneer at your audience for not understanding your vocation. Think of it as an opportunity to share your love and enthusiasm for what you do with people who are eager to hear about it, and be grateful those people are willing to listen.

Anyway. I don’t talk about these philosophical things much anymore, but every once in a while I see a cluster of things floating around the internet and I feel like something has to be said. Here it is: The work is sacred. People are awesome. Conduct yourself like someone worthy of a gift. Be grateful.

That should do it.

At the time of writing, I have just seen somebody posting a picture of a Nick Wilde (the fox from Zootopia) plush they have bought. This is not an uncommon sight in the fandom, at least for those following the furry side of social media. It’s a curious purchase, because the plush was sold based only on marketing.

The Nick Wilde plush exists only in relationship to what is, currently, a promised other product. To me, merchandise comes after the fact, not before. What I mean by this is the following: Merchandise is something you buy having already read the book, watched the film, played the game, etc. Merchandise is, in theory, meant to be a form of memorabilia, and supports the creation of something you’ve enjoyed. Note the past tense of enjoyed. It’s not something bought on the idea of going to enjoy it. And that going to enjoy as opposed to have already enjoyed is my concern with Zootopia (known as Zootropolis in some countries).

People are already buying merchandise for a film they have never seen, and spending money on representations of things they have not yet experienced.

You may ask, “Well, what’s the problem with this? People are free to spend their money on what they wish? Why does it matter?”

That question deserves an answer.

Definition:

To begin, let me define what I am referring to when I say “hype-culture”. It is important to distinguish “hype,” from “excitement”. For the purpose of this article, hype is the state of mind in which a person is willing to invest in a franchise or product before having direct experience of it, excluding, of course, any investment that may be required to gain aforementioned experience. For example, hype, would refer to buying anything related to a film prior to having seen said film, excluding the cost of the ticket required to see it. To a lesser extent, time can also be considered an investment. If a significant amount of time is spent in relation to a product before direct experience, this could be considered hype. An example of this would be creating fan-art for a film before having seen it.

Hype, can also be distinguished in mind-set. The difference between “being hyped,” and “excited about” is the surety of the quality. Somebody who is excited will be of the mind-set of “I think that this is going to be good, but I readily accept that it may not.” A person who is hyped will be of the mind-set: “This will be good.” The difference is that an excited person is fully aware that the product may not meet expectations, whilst somebody who is hyped will not seriously entertain such a notion.

A note on these two qualifiers (investment—financial and temporal—and surety of quality): Only one of these conditions needs to be met for something to be considered “hype-culture.” If somebody has met the surety criterion, but not invested, this still ought to be considered hype. The same is true in reverse; one can invest without absolute surety, and this to, ought to be thought of as hype.

“Hype-Culture,” a Marketing Department’s Dream

The first issue around hype is the message it sends to companies. It embodies the mind-set of “our marketing is more important than our product.” So long as bums are in seats and toys are off shelves, the quality of the film becomes irrelevant.

People may be joking or serious when they say “the creators care for the fandom,” (or something to that effect) but this is an unhealthy mind-set. The creators want money. Whatever they think of furries does not matter. If they like us, great, but never forget that their eyes are aimed at the cash.

Zootopia is, above all else, a commercial endeavour. There’s nothing wrong with that, commercial endeavours can have artistic merit and/or become beloved cultural works. But as a consumer, you owe it to yourself to remember why the film exists, what the producers want out of you, and to cast a critical eye when you part with your cash. At the end of the day, we want good products, not good marketing campaigns. A consumer’s money should reflect that. My advice would be to wait until you’ve seen the film, and decide whether you enjoy it, before you buy anything other than the admission ticket.

The temporal investment of fan-art is a similar, since it’s essentially doing the job of marketing departments for free. It shows that all that needs to be done is sweep people away with a good marketing campaign, the final product mattering less. If you follow enough furries on social- media, you will see a great many fan-made advertisements for a film which they have not seen. This is an endorsement for something that has not yet been directly experienced. If, after having seen it, somebody decides they wish to promote it in this way, then there’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s good that somebody enjoyed something so much.

This may come across as a cynical view, dampening hopeful spirits, but I would say the reverse is true. It argues that people are smart enough to be active, thinking, consumers, not being taken in by a wave of hype, able to look at a company and say “I’ll give you my money when you show me you deserve it.”

Furthermore, ask yourself this: “How does generating hype help consumers?” The answer is that it doesn’t. Hype exists purely for corporate benefit.

Zootopia in relation to the fandom

My second point is more focussed around the fandom. The furry fandom is bursting with creative minds; artists, writers, fursuit makers, etc. The community would not exist as it does without this creativity. However, the hype around Zootopia feels to me like people are turning their backs on what built the fandom, focussing their attention and giving their money to a large corporate venture. There’s nothing wrong with liking products that exist at the corporate scale of Zootopia, many of those are important to the fandom (Robin Hood, The Lion King, etc.). My issue is that I feel, for a community with humble, home-grown roots, suddenly jumping onto a purely commercial product feels wrong.

The premise of Zootopia isn’t unique (furries have imagined what a society of anthropomorphic animals would be like countless times before Zootopia). It probably won’t be a revolutionary, insightful, cultural classic. Yet furries seem to be holding it up, not because of its quality, but because it’s mainstream. Within the community, more interesting and creative products can be found. In fact, the non-mainstream aspect of furry allows for these more interesting products to flourish.

My concern is that people are pushing aside art and stories created by others within the fandom, based on a belief that Zootopia the first “furry-targeted” film aimed at the mainstream. Liking Zootopia is fine, and it’s likely it will be a decent film; nothing revolutionary, but enjoyable whilst it lasts. However I feel it is important that it doesn’t take too much attention away from the individuals in the fandom.

Conclusion

As companies become better at manipulating social media, and generating a culture of hype around their products, it is the responsible consumer’s duty to look through a critical eye. There is nothing wrong with being excited for Zootopia, or whatever else Disney or other companies produce, but it is important to temper that excitement with the behaviours and spending tendencies that lead to a better, more consumer-friendly environment.

Anti-social behaviour caused problems at three different furry events in recent times. These incidences are rare, and there is nothing to suggest that they are becoming less rare. However the fact that three issues occurred coincidentally has led to many of us wonder about furry culture.

Ultimately, each person has personal responsibility for their actions. Beyond that, furries in general hold a collective responsibility for behaviour and self-policing. And finally, organizers are able to influence the culture of a group event.

So how can organizers of large furry gatherings create a culture that reduces the chance of a problem?

To briefly recap the recent problems at furry gatherings:

• Oklacon, which was held in a public campground, was cancelled after congoers had sex in public the night before the 2014 opening ceremony. This brought a long-simmering cultural conflict between Oklacon and park managers to a head, and the application for Oklacon 2015 was rejected.
• A few problems at Rainfurrest 2015 (which I attended) led to the organizers publishing an open letter to attendees, stating that behavioural problem was putting the con at risk. The Seattle Airport Hilton subsequently cancelled their contract with Rainfurrest.
• A lewd act during a 2015 Londonfurs meet was witnessed by barstaff. The Londonfurs organizers issued an open letter stating that this had harmed the relationship with the venue. Part of the venue was closed to the furs for a few months, although it has since reopened.

The ideas I’m presenting here are based on the Nudge philosophy described by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (link to book). To “nudge” is to present information in such a way that doesn’t place any rules or restrictions on behaviour, but does influence behaviour. The US and UK governments both have “nudge units” that have helped improve the effectiveness of government services, and such techniques are commonly used by private industry as a way of maximizing profits.

An example of a government “nudge”: posters of eyes in areas of high crime have been shown to significantly reduce illegal behaviour. Here’s a picture of eyes in a bike theft hotspot in Newcastle, UK:

This poster reduced bike theft by over 60% in a two-year trial.

For a furry convention or gathering, a successful nudge should be inexpensive or free to the organizers, in terms of both cost and time. It should reduce the risk of anti-social behaviour, but without actually applying any new boundaries. In Nudge parlance, this is “libertarian paternalism”.

That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be boundaries on behaviour. Boundaries, for the most part, already exist as part of the gathering’s rules, and they are enforced by punitive measures.

It’s usually easy for an organization to enforce behaviour using punishment. It’s a simple enough equation: if you do this, we will do that. It’s always necessary to some extent, but it can have negative consequences, familiar to anyone who has helped organize an event. Creating and enforcing rules creates a natural “elite” group, which can quickly escalate into an us-vs-them situation.

Any resentment towards the elite organizing group from the attendees can feed conflict and anti-social behaviour. This can reinforce the status of the organizers as an unwanted authority group, at least among some attendees. So while hard boundaries and enforcement are sometimes necessary, they should be minimized.

The ideas presented here follow that spirit. They are based on successful “nudges” applied elsewhere, and neither place a significant extra load on organizers, nor introduce new punishments.

1. Identify and target high-risk groups

Where possible, organizers should identify and target high-risk groups. This should be done in a way that doesn’t obviously single out high-risk groups, for example by sharing a message that is only of interest to some people. The 6-2-1 message, reinforcing good personal hygiene and health during the con, is a good example of a successful nudge that targets at-risk groups.

The organizers should test their assumptions with data where possible. For example, in a large convention where organizers may be worried about room damage: what rooms are at higher risk of damage? The cheaper rooms or the larger party rooms? Furries who are resident for the whole con or just one night? What about rooms that leave a “do not disturb” sign out for the entire con? Organizers can work with the hotel to identify high-risk groups and target messages accordingly.

2. Take advantage of human social behaviour

The behaviour of people is influenced by those around them. This can be used to reduce high-risk behaviour. For example, if furs who don’t allow housekeeping into their room are at greater risk of room damage, organizers should reinforce the normality of having your room cleaned by spreading a message like “86% of attendees allow housekeeping to clean rooms each night”.

3. Observation is a moderating influence

Overt observation of activity significantly reduces anti-social behaviour. Organizers can make people feel observed by taking photos as part of the registration process (perhaps only targeting high-risk groups). Security should take photos of poor behaviour in preference to creating conflict, wherever possible.

If specific high-risk individuals have been identified, organizers can point this out with minimum conflict by slipping a note under the door of their room. By writing their real (non-furry) name on the note, it will reduce the feeling of anonymity that can come along in a large gathering.

Organizers can expect some controversy in reaction to these measures. Furries are a group that resents observation, on personal liberty grounds. In response, organizers should be clear that covert observation already exists, as part of the registration process and in the hotel in general. All they are doing is making observation more overt.

4. Reward good behaviour at risky times

Security personnel can be armed with small bags of jellybeans, and hand these out to well-behaved but at-risk congoers. This might be drunk people in the bar, pot smokers (where legal), or room parties. This creates a reciprocal social environment: the giving of small gifts have been shown to increase positive community behaviour.

5. Make attendees feel like part of a team

Organizers should minimize use of us-vs-them language, especially in text. Some conventions ask attendees to sign official-looking “no ghosting” contracts at registration. These may do more harm than good, in that they provide positive reinforcement to people who will already play by the rules, and increase the sense of outsiderhood among potential offenders. So called “chastity contracts”, designed to reduce sexual behaviour among teenagers, are similarly flawed.

Social media plays an important role. The con “live” Twitter feed should be manned around the clock, with each tweeter introducing themselves by name. They should directly acknowledge any rumours or incidents, as honestly as possible.

This will help create a feeling of fellowship between attendees and organizers. If people feel like they are part of a team that is working towards a common goal, they are less likely to be disruptive.

6. Make the venue feel like part of a team

This is not a nudge, but a worthwhile step. Dogpatch Press recently ran a piece looking at how large conventions manage anti-social behaviour, highlighting the value of showing the hotel that the organizers take behavioural problems seriously. For the hotel managers, perception is reality – showing them that you are “on their side” will help maintain a good relationship.

Many conventions will, of course, already be applying these nudges in one form or another. Others may have learned from experience that some don’t work, or come at too high a cost. Anyone with experience is encouraged to comment below.

This article has come about, in part, following an in-depth discussion with the chair of a very large convention. He wanted to note that, while the recent problems are outliers, outliers occur at every convention.

The reaction of organizers to problems are a part of the puzzle. As a start, cons should avoid giving problematic people any limelight (positive or negative), and the organizers should learn from inevitable negative experiences.

There are a lot of large furry conventions and gatherings. The recent small spate of problems don’t indicate that furry behaviour is getting worse. But organizers can learn from them, and help create better furry environments.

Originally posted on Jakebe’s blog here.

Further Confusion 2016 will begin tomorrow, and for most of us furries we’re just counting down the hours until we can head to San Jose to immerse ourselves in fandom for four glorious days. I know I’m itching to get there myself. But one of the things that rarely gets talked about at these conventions is how big a disruption they are to our daily lives, and what that disruption can do for those of us coping with mental illness. While the potential is there for a brilliant weekend, the craziness of the convention alone can throw us off-kilter.

For many of us, FC 2016 is one of our only chances to be with people we feel truly understand us; for four days we can put aside the problems of our regular lives and enjoy company and kinship in a way we rarely get to experience. We become so attached to the promise of a non-stop great time that any disappointment or gap in pleasure can send us spiraling into dark places. Unfortunately, downtime and disappointment are both facts of life; we can do ourselves a huge favor by learning to roll with them.

I want folks who are going through rough times at the convention to know that I see them, and I sympathize with what they’re dealing with. I’d like to share a few things that have helped me get through conventions and have made sure I have the best time possible.

Absolutely take care of the basics. 6/2/1 is a mnemonic I’ve seen floating around recently to remind people about the basic things you should do every day during a convention. 6 hours of sleep, 2 meals a day (at least), 1 shower. Making sure you’re well-rested, well-fed and well-groomed can have a profound effect on your mood — this goes doubly so for those of us with mental issues.

If nothing else, making sure you get enough sleep and enough to eat is absolutely essential for managing your mood. Sleep allows the brain to recover from daily stresses, and your body needs nutrients to keep it running properly while you’re awake. And making sure you’re clean and wearing comfortable clothing you feel good about being seen in helps tremendously with self-esteem. Those three things alone are vital, easy things we can do to keep us on a stable footing emotionally.

I know that sleep and showers can go by the wayside pretty easily, especially for those of us stricken by FOMO — the Fear of Missing Out. It can feel like leaving our friends is a guarantee of not getting to see or do something awesome. But it’s important to remember that the convention (and your friends) will be there when you’re awake, cleaned and your hunger is satisfied. It’s a trade-off of quantity of time for quality time. When you feel better, you will have more fun. Trust me on this! I’ve stuck around for things way longer than I should have, when I was hungry or tired, just because I didn’t want to leave. It was miserable.

For those of us who need a little extra self-care, I would recommend sleeping at least 7 hours a day, eating 3 square meals, taking 1 shower and making absolutely sure you take any medications that you’ve been prescribed.

If possible, adapt your routine for travel. One of the ways I manage my mental state is by doing my best to establish a routine. I get up at a certain time, I go to the bathroom, I meditate, take my medication, then get to writing. Doing this every day gives me a nice foundation to center on through the craziness of the day; it’s how I try to put my best foot forward. Obviously, it’s a lot harder to stick to it when traveling, but I give it my best shot and I recommend you do the same.

If you have a small set of activities you do at certain times, find ways to stick to them when you’re traveling — especially if it helps to center and calm you. If that’s just not possible, think of alternate activities that provide you with the tools you need to be mentally resilient through the day. It can really help you through the marathon of interaction that conventions tend to be.

Learn to be OK with being alone or having downtime. This can be difficult, especially if the convention is the one time you get to spend with friends you only know online. But the fact of the matter is sometimes your friends will be doing something else or you’re waiting to join up with someone; you will find yourself alone with nothing to do. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing; there’s an enormous convention happening all around you, with new people to meet and all kinds of interesting things to do.

If you find yourself having downtime — unexpected or otherwise — take advantage of the events being set up by the hard-working convention staff. Take a look at the schedule to see what’s open and where things are; the gaming area tends to be open most of the day and night, and there’s a number of meeting areas that you can camp out in and hang out. If nothing grabs your fancy, pre-planning an “alone time” activity or two to fall back on can help keep you occupied for a while. Take advantage of downtime to center yourself and collect your thoughts. Being alone doesn’t necessarily mean being lonely.

Allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling. Sometimes, despite our best efforts and careful planning, we’ll fall into a bad mental state. That is OK! No one — not even at a world-class furry convention — feels great all the time! Sometimes we’ll be sad, or bored, or angry and frustrated. There’s a huge emphasis on avoiding the negative feelings we have, but that can make things worse. I know for me, I’ll think that I “shouldn’t” feel the way I do and that guilt or frustration (What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just be happy?) just makes things that much worse.

If you’re having a bad time, or you’re feeling low, take a moment to tell yourself that it’s OK you feel this way. It’s a valid emotion to have, and it’s only temporary. It will pass in time, even though it might not feel like it. What’s more, you don’t have to necessarily *do* anything about what you’re feeling. It can be a powerful thing to accept your feelings, even when they hurt. You may not feel better, exactly, but it can ease the pressure that we can feel about our emotions.

Further Confusion is a wonderful con, and I hope that everyone who attends has an amazing time. If you find yourself struggling to deal with emotions, please reach out to someone. You are not alone, even though it may feel like it. But you have to take care of yourself before you can expect others to take care of you.

Make sure you get enough sleep, get enough to eat, and present yourself as best you can. Plan to take care of your needs ahead of time if at all possible. Accept who you are and how you feel. It can be difficult work, I know, but the work is worth it. I’ll see you folks in San Jose soon.

Hey fuzzies! Headed to this year’s Further Confusion?  Be sure to catch the panels that we’ll be hosting!  Updated survey data, safer sex, and a new gender and relationships panel (if you attended last year’s LSF panel, this was mashed in with safer sex, an 18+ panel, this year it’s all ages!)

Exploring the Fandom Through Data

Friday, Jan 15 – 5:00 PM – SJCC: Second Stage

Come join us in figuring out what it means to be a furry and who exactly makes up this wonderful subculture of ours, using six years of furry survey data and ourselves to explore.

Furry Psychology!

Saturday, Jan 16 – 11:00 AM – Hilton: University

You’ve seen his posts here, let Dr. Nuka take you through the weird and wonderful world of furry psychology as he presents the findings of nearly a decade of research on furries conducted by real psychologists on furries all over the world (think Bill Nye, but with furries!) Get educated and suggest ideas for future research!

The Love – Sex – Fur Guide to Safer Sex (18+)

Saturday, Jan 16 – 10:00 PM – SJCC: 133

Interested in what all goes into having a happy, healthy, sex-positive relationship with your partners? Curious on how to stay safe while playing? Come join us in an open panel discussing safe and healthy sexuality.

Gender and Relationships in Furry

Sunday, Jan 17 – 10:00O OM – SJCC: 133

Come join the folks from Love – Sex – Fur in a two-part open panel discussing how to have healthy, happy relationships, as well as gender identity and expression within furry.

[adjective][species] regularly informally collaborates with the International Anthropomorphic Research Project (IARP), a collection of psychologists and sociologists looking at the furry community. We are amateurs, they are professionals. We have the freedom to present anything we find interesting; they are constrained by the usual rules of academic engagement.

Nuka, a furry with a PhD in social psychology, is a long-time member of the IARP as well as an occasional contributor to [a][s]. In conversation about data (the best kind of conversation), he noted a surprising finding from his research:

“The IARP has found evidence that wearing ears (but not other accessories or fursuits) is particularly associated with depression and reduced self-esteem in furries.”

I used this interesting statistical tidbit during an [adjective][species] panel (Confuzzled 2015), as an example of a surprise hidden in the data: something you’d never expect, or think to look for. It provoked a few questions from the audience, which Nuka and I do our best to answer here.

First, a note about data in general. A statistical outlier implies, but doesn’t prove, a correlation. If we are working with a 95% confidence interval, then by definition a sample of random data will show a statistically significant correlation 5% of the time.

We are not making any statistical claims about a correlation between ears and depression. Nuka chooses his language carefully, as befits a professional scientist. He has not provided, and I have not asked for, a formal analysis of the data in question. Our discussion takes place at an intermediate step in the process of data analysis: something has been found but we don’t know what it means.

We ask the reader to accept our starting point at face value—there is evidence that wearing ears is particularly associated with depression and reduced self-esteem in furries—without any further statistical justification.

JM:

Hi Nuka! Thanks for contributing your thoughts.

I brought it up ears & depression in my [a][s] panel for a few reasons, mostly not related to the question at all – it was just something to engage the audience. But over the con several furs came up to me and asked about it, many with personal anecdotes, and it piqued my curiosity. I wondered if you’ve been able to shed any more light on it.

Here is my thinking. If ear-wearing is associated with depression, this means one of four things:

1. A random quirk in the data.
2. Furries who wear ears are more likely to suffer depression as a result of something related to the ears.
3. There is a common root or driver for ear-wearing and depression among furries.
4. Furries who suffer from depression are more likely to choose to wear ears.

I got the impression that furries with depression wore ears as an attempt to put on a brave, positive face to the world. I think they look in the mirror and see themselves with ears, and see that the perky ears have a positive effect on how they see themselves. I think that makes them feel less trapped in the endless grey present-tense of depression, because they can imagine the perky ear wearer being positive and doing happy things.

This fits into category (4) above, and suggests that ear-wearing is a small but positive step for sufferers of depression. And in the way that your research on fursona personality (and also the superhero/cosplay research by others) suggests – the act of dressing up can help people find a path to improved mental health.

Of course this is speculation, and tarred by the fact that all these people attended a furry convention and are probably on the happier/social end of the scale when it comes to current or former sufferers of depression.

A further interesting thought was brought up by a few people: does incidence of depression (or related results) change over time for ear-wearers? That is, is there evidence that ear-wearing is a sign of improvement? I know you’re still early in your longitudinal survey, and may not be asking the relevant questions, but I figured it was worth asking.

Nuka:

JM is absolutely correct that we’ve found a statistically significant relationship between wearing ears and reduced self-esteem in a relatively large sample of furries. JM is also correct in stating that caution is prudent when trying to interpret these sorts of results, for a few reasons, related to what’s already been mentioned above.

The observed relationship occurred without a hypothesis or theory to back it up. Theories are of incredible importance to researchers – they help us to avoid what we call “fishing expeditions”. What’s a fishing expedition? Imagine I had a dataset with HUNDREDS of variables in it. As JM correctly stated above, statistics are based on confidence intervals and probability, meaning that a percentage of our observed significant findings will be simply due to random noise in the data. As such, if I pore over hundreds or thousands of variables, eventually, I’m going to find SOMETHING that reaches a level of statistical significance. Is this a “real” finding, or just noise in the data? How do we tell?

Researchers have two tools at their disposal: theory and replication.

Theory: The difference between a genuine finding and random noise in a fishing expedition can come down to having a theory. If the researcher has a theory about how two variables interact, they create an “a priori” (before the fact) hypothesis – this means that the researcher is predicting a specific relationship between these two variables. This avoids the problem of the fishing expedition: if you find a relationship between those two particular variables, it’s FAR less likely to be random noise than if you were to trudge through hundreds of variables and stumble upon it that way. Theories are usually grounded in prior empirical work, and give researchers good reason to expect a relationship between two variables, making researchers far more confident in a finding if they “called it” beforehand.

Replication: A single study is seldom enough to close the book on a subject. A good researcher likes to be sure about what they’ve found before they consider it fact. As such, if they DO stumble upon something interesting during a fishing expedition through their data, the first thing on their mind is “will this replicate?” In other words, if I ran the study again, would I find the same result? Random noise can be surprisingly predictable. One such predictable trait is something called “regression to the mean” – an abnormally high or low result that’s due to chance will, over time, become more normal. In other words, if a finding was just a fluke the first time, you really shouldn’t see it the second time. In other words, if researchers find something during a fishing expedition and they find it AGAIN when they replicate (re-do) the study, researchers can be fairly confident it’s not just a fluke, but a genuine relationship. You’ll notice this essentially means forming an a priori hypothesis like the one mentioned above for the second round of data collection.

What does all of this statistical gobbledygook have to do with furry ears and self-esteem? Well, a lot, actually! We had no theoretical reason to predict that wearing furry ears would relate to self-esteem. Of course, we can come up with plenty of reasons to explain why these two things might be related post-hoc (after-the-fact), but it’s entirely possible that the relationship was just a fluke. Of course, now that we’ve observed this potentially-interesting relationship, the first thing on our minds is replication – can we find it again, now that we’re looking for it? This means collecting more data on the subject. If, looking at the data, we find the same relationship, then we can be reasonably confident there’s a relationship between ear-wearing and reduced self-esteem.

It’s also worth asking why these two variables might be related: why should wearing ears be related to self-esteem? If we assume that it wasn’t a statistical fluke (which remains to be seen), we see that JM has outlined three possibilities:

a) Ear-wearing causes low self-esteem
b) Low self-esteem people wear ears
c) Some other variable causes both low self-esteem and ear-wearing

Without “temporal” data—data taken at more than one point in time, it’s impossible to establish causal direction—impossible to say which variable “causes” the other to happen. That said, there are rational reasons to expect / predict all of these explanations to be true:

a) Ear-wearing causes low self-esteem: this is perhaps the weakest of the three alternatives, in part because a myriad of variables contributes to a person’s self-esteem, and it seems unlikely that any one behavior would significantly push a person’s self-esteem around. However, it may be the case that owning / wearing furry ears may be an indirect measure of how “out” a person is as a furry (how much they let other people know they’re a furry), and insofar as they’re “out” in a hostile environment (e.g., friends / family that look down upon furries), this may be bad for their self-esteem. However, for this to be true, you would have to ignore other data showing that self-disclosure, in general, is associated with better self-esteem. It’s also possible that, within the context of the furry fandom, wearing ears at conventions may make some furries feel disappointed that they can’t more fully express their fursona (e.g., having a fursuit). This, of course, makes a number of assumptions (e.g., people who wear ears really want a fursuit, and are really upset they don’t have one) that, to date, we have no data to support.

b) Low self-esteem people wear ears: there may be something to this prediction, as JM has already speculated. Past data has shown that a furry’s relationship to their fursona can help us to predict their self-esteem – namely, how “close” they feel to their fursona. Furries who feel a lot of overlap between themselves and their fursonas tend to be better off self-esteem wise, while furries who feel like there is a world of difference between themselves and their fursonas tend to have lower self-esteem. Given this, wearing furry ears may be an indicator that furries felt a lot of “distance” between themselves and their fursona (e.g., I need to wear these ears to feel more like my fursona). There is, to date, no data on this. The argument would be that furries wearing ears would be reminded of just how much difference there is between themselves and their fursona (e.g., looking in a mirror), which may contribute to negative self-esteem. Of course, the issue gets doubly messy when you realize that significant distance between oneself and their fursona may, itself, be caused by low self-esteem (my life sucks, so I’m creating a fursona who’s totally not like me to escape how much it sucks).

c) Some third variable is causing both low self-esteem and ear-wearing. This, I would argue, is perhaps the strongest candidate for explaining this potential relationship. There are numerous third variables that may explain BOTH ear-wearing and low self-esteem. For example – ears are relatively cheap to obtain (e.g., relative to, say, a fursuit, or even a tail). As such, it may be the case that wearing ears (as opposed to other pieces of furry swag) may indicate having less money at one’s disposal. Low socio-economic status may thusly predict BOTH purchasing of ears (as opposed to more expensive furry gear) AND lower self-esteem (people don’t feel good about themselves if they feel poor). Another possible third variable: perhaps ears are one of the first purchases made by newer, younger members of the furry fandom (anecdotally, a pair of ears were the first furry-themed purchase I made upon entering the fandom). It may thus be the case that being a young, new furry in the fandom may predict both buying a pair of ears AND having low self-esteem (questioning whether you belong in the fandom, feeling like a “noob” doesn’t feel very good, possibly still struggling with “coming out” to friends and family).

In summary, while I share JM’s enthusiasm for this neat, unexpected finding, I remain reserved about the findings until they’ve been replicated. At that point, once we’ve established that it’s a consistent relationship and not an anomaly, the theory-building begins: why ears and not other furry accessories? What is the causal direction? Might there be third variables? What does this tell us about the motivations underlying furry participation in the fandom? All questions for future studies!

Dr Courtney “Nuka” Plante is co-founder of the International Anthropomorphic Research Project.

There is a link to a Russian language furry survey at the bottom of this article.

This article is also published in Russian.

The major Russian-speaking countries—Russia, Ukraine & Belarus—all have a vibrant furry community. Russfurence in Moscow is the biggest local convention, with nearly 500 attendees.

Russian-speaking furries are largely invisible to the English-dominated furry world. English is not a common second language in most parts of Russia. In this respect they have more in common with Japanese, Korean, or Chinese-speaking furries, rather than their Eastern European neighbours like Poland and Hungary.

We ask nationality in the annual Furry Survey. Russians seem to be 0.5 to 1.5% of total responses:

2009: 0.49%
2010: 0.43%
2011: 0.27%
2012: 0.35%
2013: 1.54%
2015: 0.55%*

* provisional

This places them around 10th in terms of furry population:

Source: 2013 Furry Survey

 

The Furry Survey is, of course, in English. This means that most Russian-speaking furries won’t have been able to participate.

Among Russians, English is most widely spoken in Moscow, which seems to be where most Russian furries live. Even then, as little as one in ten have English skills sufficient to fill in the survey. This implies that Russians may make up as much as 10% of the total furry population.

Not surprisingly, Russian speaking furries tend to congregate around Russian websites, like VK.com and furnation.ru. They also have a significant presence on Wikifur, which manages multiple languages:

Source: Wikifur stats

Here on [adjective][species], Russian is also easily to most common language for non-English readers:

Source: [adjective][species] analyticsWe’re interested in the size and shape of the Russian speaking furry population. With help from a couple of bilingual Russian furs, we have a shortened version of the Furry Survey for our Russian speaking friends. It’s designed for anyone who speaks Russian, whether they have filled in the English Furry Survey or not.

The survey is currently open. We will publish results, in English and in Russian, here on [a][s] in early 2016.

Link to Russian language Furry Survey.

Сам опрос находится в конце этой статьи.

Эта статья также доступна на английском языке.

Большая тройка стран с наибольшим распространением русского языка – Россия, Украина и Беларусь – отличаются весьма активным и колоритным фурри-сообществом. Самый большой местный фурри-конвент, проходящий в Москве – Русфурренция – насчитывает около 500 участников.

Русскоговорящие фурри по большей части незаметны для всего остального фурри-мира, где основной язык общения – английский. Поскольку в большинстве российских областей английский в качестве второго языка не очень распространен, то можно сказать, что в этом отношении у русских фуррей больше общего с японцами, корейцами и китайцами, нежели с их западноевропейскими соседями (например, поляками или венграми).

По результатам нашего ежегодного Фурри-Опроса, русские составляют 0.5 – 1.5% от всего национального состава фуррей:

2009: 0.49%
2010: 0.43%
2011: 0.27%
2012: 0.35%
2013: 1.54%
2015: 0.55%*

* предварительно

Таким образом, русскоговорящие фурри находятся примерно на десятом месте в рейтинге стран по объему пушистого населения:

Источник: Фурри-Опрос от 2013 г

Фурри-Опрос, разумеется, составлен на английском языке, что делает недоступным участие в нем для большинства русскоговорящих фуррей.

На территории русскоязычного мира английский язык наиболее популярен в Москве, где, судя по всему, обитает большинство русских фуррей. И даже с учетом этого факта, лишь один из десяти обладает достаточными знаниями языка для заполнения анкеты. Таким образом, можно предположить, что русские составляют до 10% от общего числа фуррей в мире.

Неудивительно, что русскоязычные фурри в основном концентрирутся на русскоязычных web-ресурсах и социальных сетях, таких как VK.com и FurNation.ru. Также, достаточно большое их присутствие наблюдается на Wikifur, которая доступна на нескольких языках:

Источник: статистика Wikifur

Здесь же, на [adjective][species], русский также является самым популярным языком после английского:

Источник: Аналитика [adjective][species]Нам интересно узнать об истинном объеме и состоянии русскоязычной части фурри-населения. Посему, не без помощи нескольких двуязычных русских фуррей, мы подготовили сокращенный вариант Фурри-Опроса специально для наших русскоговорящих друзей. Он рассчитан на любого, кто говорит по-русски, вне зависимости от того, заполнял ли он английскую версию анкеты или нет.

На данный момент, опрос все еще проводится. Мы опубликуем результаты как на русском, так и на английском здесь же, на [a][s], в начале 2016 года.

Zootropolis (known as Zootopia in some countries) is an upcoming Disney film, led by the creative team behind modern fairytales such as Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph. It’s caused no small amount of excitement within furry, not least because of its embrace of the term “anthropomorphic”.

In furry circles, Zootropolis has few points of comparison. A similar buzz was created following the announcement of a 2004 Simpsonsesque comedy series called Father of the Pride, although in that case any excitement died quickly. While it’s reasonable to guess that Zootropolis will fare better than Father, both have something that makes them stand out—to furries—in a crowd of animated anthropomorphics.

They stand out because they display the ‘modern furry aesthetic’, as discussed by Flip writing for [adjective][species] earlier this year. He identified a shift in funny animal art in the late 1970s, where a group of cartoonists collectively found a different direction for anthropomorphics. That shift would be the seed that led to furry diverging from—and ultimately becoming distinct from—science fiction and other fandom groups.

The first comic identified by Flip as displaying the modern furry aesthetic is in 1977’s Vootie #3, in a short comic by Reed Waller titled Disguise Adroit de Plastique. (It is republished in The Erotic Art of Reed Waller, currently in print.) The comic starts in a typical counter-cultural manner, a bit like Fritz the Cat, but it takes a novel turn when the characters decide to forego the demands of the story and act like animals instead. “All that stuff about ideals might be okay if we were human, but we’re just Animals! All we understand is fucking, and mothering, and killing, and eating!“.

Flip sees this as a seachange in funny animal comics, because Waller’s anthropomorphic characters cease to be near human, and instead reject the idea—or at least aspects of the idea—of being human. The furry aesthetic considers acting like an animal to be instinctually honest. It’s the animal instinct that provides insight to the human condition.

Zootropolis embraces this idea by having human-like animals that have retained their animal instincts. In the first trailer, which introduces the Zootropolis universe, we see an exchange between a fox and a bunny.

The fox trips the bunny and the bunny turns out to be a policewoman. It’s a simple joke, setting up an expectation of who holds the power in the exchange, and then subverting it. So far, so Disney. Then a new variable is introduced: the lights go out, putting the fox at advantage because of an animal trait – good night vision. And then this is again upended due to the bunny’s superior hearing.

The animalistic traits of the Zootropolis characters are what makes this exchange recognisably furry. The furry characters are fundamentally human, in that they live in a version of our modern human world and do mundane things like wear clothing, have jobs, and so forth. The animal traits are a complication, just like the animal instincts (fucking, and mothering, and killing, and eating) of Disguise Adroit de Plastique.

This is in contrast with Zootropolis’s most obvious antecedent, Disney’s Robin Hood. The characters in Robin Hood are drawn in a similar style to those of Zootropolis, but they have very little in the way of animal characteristics other than their animal-person forms. The animators make the most of the most obvious animal features—eyes, ears, tails—to make the characters expressive, but that’s about it. Species and animal instinct are all but irrelevant.

A less obvious comparison is Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox. Towards the end of the film, Mr Fox and his squad of animal buddies find themselves trapped, and decide that they should make the most of their instincts and traits to survive: “we’re wild animals“. However the execution of these animal skills could hardly be less animalistic: each creature is identified by their Latin genus/species, and their escape is executed by a complex and structured plan, all to a military beat. This is a typical Wes Anderson joke: there is nothing wild or animalistic whatsoever about his wild animals. And when they’re done, Mr Fox renounces the risky animalistic ways of his youth and settles into very suburban, human domesticity.

Zootropilis’s gimmick, and the main source of the comedy in the trailers (and presumably the film), is the conflict between human and animal desires. It’s a fairly obvious route for comedy because it allows the creators to set up a simple expectation for behaviour based on one driver, then flipping it using the other. You can see this at work in its simplest form in Family Guy, as Brian the dog acts rational in one moment before sniffing butts in the next.

The challenge for works like Zootropolis is to explore this conflict without destroying the universe in which it takes place. The comedy and drama must be based on a world and characters that the viewer cares about. If the world is untenable, or if the characters change personality depending on the demands of the plot, the movie will become arbitrary and lack narrative tension. This is a real risk where the driving force behind the comedy (and narrative conflict) is inherently contradictory: on one hand, Zootropolis exists in a version of today’s human world; on the other hand it is ruled by animal instinct.

This is a risk for any story that mixes anthropomorphics with today’s world. Speculative furry universes, like sci-fi or fantasy worlds, tend to be more natural because the creator can pre-emptively address any narrative conflicts. When anthropomorphics are placed in the real world, problems can occur.

To give an example, Art Spiegelman’s widely acclaimed graphic novel, Maus, follows the story of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, using mice to represent the Jews and cats the Nazis. It’s a simple but effective metaphor, simultaneously showing the vulnerability of the mice while clearly delineating the two groups. However it fails the moment that a character from another race is required. Spiegelman tries to address this by inserting himself (the cartoonist) into the novel wondering what do to, but in the end his justification is irrelevant to the story, and just makes it clear that his metaphor has failed.

The combination of anthropomorphics and today’s world tends to work best when the artist can avoid being backed into a corner, as happened with Spiegelman and Maus. A successful example is PIES by Ian King, a graphic novel (see the [adjective][species] review here). In PIES, the world barely needs to be explained at all, instead acting a backdrop allowing the artist to show an allegorical journey.

Of course, nobody expects Zootropolis to have any special insight to the human condition, or to tell a complex story. The trailers and teasers released to date give us a good idea of what to expect: an airy, easily consumable comedy.

The humour and story of Zootropolis will be driven by its central gimmick: the anthropomorphism, and the dissonance between human and animal traits. So our rabbit policewoman will rely on both technology and instinct to do her job. Species stereotypes will be subverted, so a cheetah will be fat, or a rhino will be delicate and sensitive, and somesuch. There will be snappy editing and a simple plot, driven by the conflict between the main characters’ human and animal sides. In the end someone will learn a lesson and the various plot threads will be tied into a neat bow.

And then the furries will make it weird.

In this article I will give an analysis of what I believe to be sound principles in the advocacy of content warnings. I will be focusing on the core ideas and rationale behind content warnings, as well as the benefits that they may have to creators, by placing responsibility on consumers for the media that they consume.

[Ed.: this article is a companion piece to our recent point/counterpoint articles looking at trigger warnings and safe spaces within furry, Trigger Warnings, Safe Spaces, and Fandom and Of course trigger warnings and safe spaces are a good thing….]

Content warnings and appropriate behaviour

Imagine that I jumped out in front of you shouting “AH!” in order to surprise you. If we were friends, and I knew you were disposed towards laughing-off jokes such as this, then such an act would likely be deemed as acceptable.

Now, imagine that I am a complete stranger, and you are walking down the street, minding your own business. If I were to jump out and scare you, your reaction would most likely be less than positive. You may feel angry, annoyed, or genuinely frightened. If you were very elderly or feeble, you may even have a heart attack. Hence, this sort of behaviour is not acceptable towards people we do not know, people who have not expressed a willingness, or people who’s likely reactions we do not have knowledge of.

Thus, in the first example, if you know somebody very well, and you can reasonably assume that they will be alright with the joke, there is nothing wrong with it. In the second example, this sort of behaviour is wrong, due the consequences being unknown, and potentially very negative.

To take this further, imagine you are reading something I have written, and, without warning, a graphic scene of something hideous is presented; rape, for example. I do not know you, nor do I know your disposition towards such a thing. It is, in my mind, akin to jumping out and scaring a stranger, in that it is an unexpected event that may lead to negative consequences for them. If somebody has had an experience with rape, from which they are recovering, this unexpected scare could lead to a lot of trauma. For this reason, it is usually important to give people some idea of what they are going to experience, if they read/watch/play a piece of media.

Responsibility

Assuming you have given an adequate picture of what the work will involve, there is no longer any responsibility on the part of the creator for the potentially traumatic or dangerous content. The responsibility is passed to the consumer; if rape is involved in a work, and this has been adequately indicated, then it becomes the responsibility of the audience to know whether they are able to consume it. Think of it like an allergy warning: If, on food packaging, an allergy warning is displayed, then anybody with that allergy can be considered at fault if they eat it (assuming the warning is adequate).

In my mind, a content warning is not a shifting of a discussion, but a way of putting responsibility on the audience. To take an example that I am very passionate about; when thinking philosophically, ideas and opinions are sometimes passed around that are going to make some people uncomfortable. A content warning is, in effect, saying, “If you cannot handle this material, you have no place here”. For example, if somebody is easily offended by topics of religion, then they really have no place participating in any serious discussion on the philosophy of religion. This is, in my view, the best use for content warnings; but also as an indication of where they ought to be, and where they ought not to be.

To go back to my allergy example: If you are allergic to peanuts, you have no right to complain if you eat a clearly labelled bag of peanuts and end up in the hospital.

Why on earth would you want somebody in a discussion who is unable to properly handle that discussion? In this way, a content creator ought not to be held accountable for somebody being offended. If an appropriate warning is provided, the creator allows for more open discussion within the agreed upon space.

The under-appreciated value of common-sense

When it comes to content warnings, there’s a simple principle that I feel is severely lacking: Common sense.

It’s reasonable to expect people to know what may or may not be considered offensive. If it is entirely within the realm of common sense that something might be traumatic, then not much effort is required to put a brief, clear, warning onto it.

Similarly, on the other side of the debate, it should also be a matter of common sense as to what it is reasonable to expect people to put content warnings on. If somebody was terrified of bananas, for example, whilst this may be traumatic, it is such an uncommon and irregular fear that it would be unreasonable to expect people to cater to it, not least of all since, logically, if we warned people of bananas just because somebody might be afraid of them, would we then not need to list every fruit that shows up in a work?

There therefore ought to be a general principle of common sense as to what ought to and ought not to have a content warning.

The limits of freedom, and why censorship is not just acceptable, but occasionally morally required

My final point will immediately smack people the wrong way. The word “freedom,” is tossed around so liberally these days, and people are so willing to fight for this vague concept, that few will recognise its limits.

You do not have complete freedom of speech and you are not free to spread any information you wish. This is a fact. It is illegal and wrong to give out the names of a suspected criminal in a certain case, due to the fact that, if it later turns out that they are innocent, their life will still be negatively effected.

A second example of this is that you cannot openly give people instructions of how to make certain explosive devices. Even if you know such a thing, you are not at liberty to share that information. Most people will agree that this is a sensible limit to freedom.

However, this can be taken further, in my mind. Some pieces of media exist purely to spread hate, or to disrupt society. I will give two examples of pieces of media which I feel ought to be censored, followed by reasons as to why:

“Kill the Faggot,” was a game put up on Steam, which was nothing more than a homophobic murder simulator. Eventually, due to its nature, the game was removed from the service. This game’s entire purpose was to be hateful and offensive.

More recently, a photo of a man holding an iPad was edited to make it appear as if he were holding a Quran, with bombs strapped to him. This imagine is, obviously, Islamophobic, and its intent is to generate hate.

To formulate this in a more philosophical way: The question is whether the benefits of free-speech to a society are enough to justify the existence of extreme forms of hate-speech. Famously, Mill’s advocacy of free-speech has been challenged as being contradictory to his “Harm Principle.”

Put simply, the Harm Principle allows government authority to intervene in the freedom of citizens when they are likely to cause harm to one another. It is unclear what exactly Mill meant by “harm”, but, if somebody was exercising their free-speech to persuade others to commit violent crimes against another group of people within society, then it would seem that there is a contradiction between allowing for complete freedom of speech, and censoring certain opinions in order to prevent harm being done to others within society.

Thus, we must all ask the question of whether we want completely free speech, even if it allows for extreme hate speech, and for media which may cause a great deal of harm to others.

In my mind, the ethics of belief play an important role in answering this question.
When we believe something, we take it to be true. Philosophically, it is stated that “belief aims at truth,” vis. Believing P means that P is taken to be true. You cannot simultaneously believe something, yet also think it to be untrue.

If we take something to be true, it is likely that we will act in an appropriate manner. For example, if I believe that it is raining, I am more likely to wear a coat. In the case of these two pieces of media, if people believe that Muslims are more likely to commit acts of terrorism, they are more likely to act in discriminatory ways.

Media alters beliefs. Beliefs inform behaviour. Behaviour effects everybody. The media that others consume, and the beliefs that others hold, are therefore in the interest of everybody. If a piece of media is likely to form untrue beliefs that will lead to severely negative consequences then it ought to be censored. For example, a piece of media that is designed to recruit young people into terrorist organisations by making them believe it is the right thing to do may have severely negative effects for others, and should therefore, be censored.

Ergo, in certain cases, when the effects will be severely negative, it is in the best interest of everyone that certain things be censored. To argue against this is a very difficult challenge, as either one of the two things would need to be show: Either, there is no scenario under which it is more desirable for everyone that somebody be allowed to say something, and that banning that something would cause society more severe harm than the suspension of free-speech. Or, it would have to be shown that a) Free speech has intrinsic worth, and b) that intrinsic worth is always worth more than any consequences it could bring. There is no deontological maxim for free-speech, nor is there a maxim that says content warnings are always bad. Sometimes certain things need to be censored, and, at other times, certain things within various pieces of media require content warnings.

In closing

I’ll close by clarifying where I stand: Content warnings are in the interest of everybody, though they ought not to be treated unreasonably by those who are for or against them. Certain media has no “right” to exist, and other media ought to be properly labelled. Responsibility ought to lay with the consumer where appropriate warnings are provided.

…we furries use them all the time.

We note when something is NSFW. We tag art describing potentially offensive content, so people can opt to ignore it. We write about rape and murder and we make sure our readers are forewarned. Here at [a][s], we mention controversial topics in the opening sentences, giving readers the choice before they click through to the entire article.

A trigger warning on a recent article here at [adjective][species]. By mentioning the potentially harmful content, the reader can decide whether to read on.Sometimes, furry edges into expression of extreme ideas and concepts. And on the whole we do a really good, uncomplicated, uncontroversial job of balancing the desire to freely express ourselves—however bizarrely—without unduly freaking out furs who would prefer not to deal with that right now, thanks very much.

Recently here on [a][s] we published an article by Angriff that worried itself with the potential for trigger warnings and safe spaces to unreasonably impinge on furry freedom of expression. It’s a contrarian point of view compared with most of [a][s]‘s readers and writers, and it generated a lot of discussion – most of it in the right spirit.

Angriff cites a small handful of examples where (non furry) progressive social justice politics have (in his opinion) gone a bit overboard. He feels, like me, that the furry world currently has a good balance, but he worries that we may head in the wrong direction by becoming overly sensitive towards vulnerable people.

He illustrates his point with a hypothetical, where a fursuiter’s accoutrements might be banned from a convention for being potentially triggering. He recognizes that there is a contest of two legitimate preferences: that of the fursuiter to display, say, realistic toy guns; and that of a convention to ban said guns for being potentially traumatic.

Angriff is tilting at windmills. He is comparing the current furry world with a hypothetical one. He doesn’t have an enemy, so he’s imagined a situation where one might appear.

I’m being a bit glib. I don’t mean to impugn the validity of Angriff’s opinion. I am, after all, the editor who worked with him to arrange and polish the article for publication here at [a][s]. Obviously I think it’s an argument worth making, even as I write here that it’s flawed, slight, and perhaps unnecessarily provocative.

Angriff’s argument is, at heart, a conservative one. He sees the way furry balances the competing preferences for maximum freedom and minimum harm and worries about how this may change in the future. He sees change—the progressive alternative—as being potentially negative, and he would like to resist that.

Angriff’s conservative argument—things are good the way they are right now—is the default position for anyone who feels comfortable with their place in the world. (Another formulation is “everything was good back when I was 18 years old”.) It’s an argument that resists change, and it’s no coincidence that the people who make conservative arguments are overwhelmingly those who have the easiest ride in society: they are—roughly—older, white, straight, cis, men.

History shows that progressive arguments tend to be insurgent. They come from a disaffected minority, motivated by inequality or by envy, attacking the values of the majority. Progressive movements tend to be young, and made up—at least initially—of the minority group being repressed. In the last hundred years or so, that would include the suffragettes, civil rights movements, gay rights, and our current crop of progressive activists. Warriors for social justice, all.

People agitating for better trigger warnings and public safe spaces are motivated by the wish to protect the vulnerable. They feel that, right now, vulnerable people are being unfairly exposed to traumatic content, and so they wish for things to change to redress this problem.

The progressive argument is a compelling one, if only because it doesn’t rely on the premise that things happen to be good exactly the way they are. From the conservative perspective, progressive change has gone just far enough, and to go further may tilt the balance to unfairly privilege a vocal minority. But, like a stopped clock telling the right time, that seems vanishingly unlikely. The conservative argument is one based on fear (of change)—things might get worse—, the progressive based on hope: things might get better.

Angriff is right when he says that things are good at the moment. I agree that furry is doing a pretty terrific job of balancing our competing preferences of maximum freedom and minimum harm. But I disagree that we can’t do more to protect the vulnerable. It’s a worthy, progressive, goal to change our world to make it a fairer one, even if we risk overbalancing and tipping the scales the other way.

Change is something to be embraced. We can make our world a better, fairer, more inclusive place.

Which begs the question: why publish Angriff’s piece in the first place?

The first answer is that, in my opinion, it met [adjective][species] editorial standards for style and content. I found Angriff’s first draft to be interesting, and we worked together until it reached a standard where I was happy for it to be published.

The second answer is that I wanted it published because I disagree with Angriff. I like hearing the points of view of people I disagree with, because that is how I learn new things. I usually—not always—have a good handle on the reasons for my own point of view. I learn more by paying attention to contrarians.

I have a rule of thumb when I’m expressing an opinion, or listening to someone else expressing an opinion: if you can’t describe the other side’s point of view—using words they would agree with—then you don’t understand the topic at hand.

(In that spirit, Angriff has read an early draft of this piece, and he is comfortable with my characterization of his argument. He has also agreed to refrain from commenting.)

Articles like Angriff’s are valuable because they add to the diversity of voices here on [a][s]. That breadth of perspective is what drives conversation, and ultimately understanding between divergent groups. Furry is a broad church and the [adjective][species] tagline—the furry world from the inside out—implicitly includes that full range of voices.

That said, there are things that we could have done better, not least presenting Angriff’s contrarian argument in a more positive way. But we will keep seeking and publishing informed and intelligent writing here on [a][s], and accept that sometimes mistakes will happen. We have a lot to talk about.

Hi everyone. It’s with a great deal of pride and no small amount of terror that I begin my stint as editor-in-chief of [adjective][species].

In four years, Makyo has grown [a][s] from scratch to the vibrant site we have today. Everything that makes [a][s] special, in part or in whole, is because of a choice she has made somewhere along the way. I don’t have Makyo’s leadership or inspiration, but I will do my best to fill her shoes in my own way.

I started writing for [a][s] in January 2012. Since then I’ve been responsible for about a third of the site’s content. I’ll continue writing, and as editor-in-chief I’ll take responsibility for site content as a whole. Makyo will continue to work in the background as site owner, hosting, programming, and all those other things that keep [a][s] running and Randomwolf fed and watered.

What’s going to change? Not much. [a][s] will continue to explore the furry world from the inside out, in our thoughtful and intelligent way. I plan to increase the amount and accessibility of results from Furry Poll, which in my opinion is the site’s greatest asset. I also want to address the site’s biggest failing, which is that there is often a bit too much JM. [a][s] has always been a collaborative effort and so I will be on the hunt for new regular contributors, guest writers, and editors.

In that spirit, we are interested in offers of editorial help, submissions, ideas, praise, complaints, or anything. Leave a comment below or email me at [email protected].

I hereby resign as editor-in-chief of [adjective][species].  That title will pass on to JM.

I cannot in good conscience continue to support a site such as this, and it’s become increasingly clear that the editorial decision-making has already shifted from me to JM as my personal responsibilities away from the site have increased.  I will remain on as technical advisor for the Furry Poll, and I may write the occasional article, but my focus will shift to my own personal projects and the life I’m dedicated to living to the fullest.

Thank you for four wonderful years.

Guest post by Angriff. Angriff resides in southern California, where he fursuits in the local furry scene as an imperial Prussian officer-bedecked utahraptor or eagle. He is an Army reserve officer, and his ancient Egyptian fantasy film Eye of the Bennu (trailer here, rent/buy here & here) received two awards at the 2013 PollyGrind film Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. Angriff is on Fur Affinity.

Visit some colleges today and you will see ‘trigger warnings’ on lessons, notifying students the material therein may cause flashbacks to PTSD or other emotional stress. Other professors have simply given up teaching certain subjects lest they ‘trigger’ their pupils (1)(2)(3). Entire public areas on some campuses are designated as ‘safe spaces’ where people can go to escape things that ‘trigger’ them, including arguments that they disagree with. For example, feminist Christina Hoff Sommers spoke at a college where she detailed her objections to certain schools of modern feminism. Afterwards a ‘safe space’ was set up specifically for those who felt ‘harmed’ by her mere arguments, regardless of their merit (4). Yet it is not just institutions of higher learning that are implementing trigger warnings: many websites in various fandoms are doing the same. Some furries are likewise starting to give trigger warnings online, or else informing other furries that certain material ‘triggers’ them.

Given these events, it is likely that soon we as a fandom will have to consider whether or not to put trigger warnings on subject matter at conventions, or else opt to ban certain furry content because it may trigger, or has been accused of triggering, others, in the name of creating a safe and inclusive space for all. It could be an artwork, a fursuit, panel discussion topic, or something else. I would argue, however, that we as a fandom must reject the urge to label or reject furry content on the basis of any claimed ‘trigger’ that up until now has been accepted. People advocating for shielding others from sensitive material do a disservice to the power of human resiliency. According to these advocates, people are fragile beings who are constantly exposed to trauma, and are usually affected by it adversely for the rest of their lives.

Research says otherwise (6): people exposed to severe trauma develop PTSD only about 9% of the time. There are many risk minimizing and protective factors to PTSD such as coping skills and social support that can be learned and acquired. Women are more likely to develop PTSD than men after a traumatic event, especially when it comes to sexual assault; however, of rape survivors, about half recover from PTSD within a mere 3 months of the incident – male and female. People who confront trauma make better and speedier recoveries than those who avoid reminders of the trauma, and those who likewise make their trauma a central part of their identity show less resilience and greater symptoms of PTSD.

At the same time, we find that those who constantly talk about their trauma to psychologists or grievance counselors have a harder time recuperating emotionally than those who “repress” it (7). While this seems counter-intuitive, remember that most human mental processes are subconscious; just because someone is not “expressing themselves” or “opening up” does not mean they are not psychologically processing damaging events in some way. When we do talk about our pain to others (and most people need to do it at least a little), it tends to be close family and friends, rather than grief counselors. For example, counselors were dispatched to New York after the September 11th attacks, as well as after the Asian tsumamis of 2005, but they were largely ignored by people in favor of loved ones (8). The takeaway of all this is that getting over trauma usually just involves living your life unafraid as before, neither trying to relive the events over and over by talking about them to strangers, nor hiding from anything that remotely reminds you of them. Any recovery happens in private such as at home with family or friends. The notion that one’s home should be a safe space is a reasonable one; my issue is extending it to the public sphere. In a furry fandom context, the hotel room is a safe space but the convention floor is not.

This suggests that trigger warnings and safe spaces hurt people’s long term resiliency (measured by susceptibility to PTSD or depression after difficulties, etc.) and well-being, and people who look at life through the lens of their trauma (and perhaps oppression) have a harder time of it. It’s no surprise that the people advocating the former also tend to be the latter.

Beyond the problems with the psychological assumptions underlying trigger warnings, I find them objectionable on the principle of the free exchange of information. After all, the improvement of human knowledge and personal introspection comes from entertaining all ideas and information, not just those that we feel comfortable with. In essence, you cannot have a space that is both safe and allows meaningful discussion of deep subjects to take place. In fact, topics like religion, sexuality, philosophy, and virtue are sensitive precisely because they are so important to us.

Returning to the furry fandom specifically, I think the real danger of trigger warnings and safe spaces is they would inhibit and damage the diverse aesthetics that draws so many to fandom in the first place. Furry is about the human experience filtered and processed through the symbolism of animals (both real and imagined), so any and all aspects of our existence—joyous or horrific—should be fair game. Human cultures and subcultures portray the gamut of experience precisely to integrate it into the understanding of our lives and the world around us. Even more immediate, any good story—be it a movie, comic book, or the written word—requires conflict to drive the plot, and flawed characters that improve themselves and grow. By definition, conflict (and personal growth in general) can be uncomfortable, and in fact the most compelling stories often have strikingly awful things going on. It’s one thing to not read or see art and literature that is not to one’s liking, but it should not prevent others from enjoying the same or even being able to do so without feeling like they are sinning by consuming it.

This works for fursuiting too, perhaps even moreso since fursuits (and the suiters therein) are not just abstract ideas on a page or screen but embodied symbols that are usually expressions of the owner. If anything, trigger warnings and safe spaces are especially dangerous to fursuiters for this very reason. My own fursuit has a sword; others have fake guns or are simply meant to be scary. Given that weapons or blood in the context of costumes have been accused of being triggering by some people with emotional disorders already (5), how long before even one furry finds fake blood, toy guns—or even my toy sword—to be emotionally stressful for whatever reason? At that point you have a contest of preferences: the suiter and his or her fans’ ability to enjoy the suit, and the person claiming to be triggered and their ability to enjoy the convention without feeling unsafe around a fursuit that could pop up at any time. In this case, I would still default to the suiter, not just in the interest of promoting strength of character on the part of those claiming to be triggered, but because in any large enough group, someone is bound to be made uncomfortable by something. If we banned something on the basis of one complaint, furry would be quite bland: excitement sacrificed in the name of comfort, pleasing no one by pleasing everyone.

Furry writer Phil Geusz has also noted that trigger warnings “remove one of a writer’s most profound and important literary devices—surprise—from his toolbox.” While a simple synopsis on the back cover (common to most novels) can hint at what is inside for an audience, trigger warnings would necessarily be far more in depth in what they reveal. Not only would this give away vital plot details, but also lessen the impact of unexpected (and hence profound) actions taken by the characters that help provide a deep, rewarding experience. In essence, trigger warnings would remove much of the enjoyment of consuming entertainment media.

A natural objection is that we judge a society by how it treats its weakest members, hence we must honor someone’s request to remove from a convention or furry space anything that makes even one person uncomfortable in the name of inclusion. I would argue first that there is no support for this theory of ethical inclusion, but also that treating our weakest members well includes taking steps to make them stronger. From this standpoint, fursuiters who are potentially triggering must be allowed in our fandom to help the traumatized bring themselves back to normalcy.

Another defense of trigger warnings is that they support free speech by preparing us to discuss sensitive material. Yet there is no courage in talking about a topic you were going to talk about anyway; trigger warnings only give another excuse to avoid the issue, and of course safe spaces disallow the topic or subject matter entirely. Life events do not come with warnings of their own, so it may be best to prepare individuals for such a life where they must be both mentally resilient and adaptable. Besides, in college especially, the assumption has always been that the students are mature enough to handle difficult, controversial subject matter; why else go to college?

We like to think of trauma and PTSD as something everyone has an equal chance of getting, as if we are standing under hail of arrows being let loose randomly, when in reality this is not the case. It’s also not the case that trauma survivors are forever scarred by the events they experience. The protective factors against PTSD (and their uneven distribution), lend themselves to uncomfortable implications for some in this modern age, but it also means we need not be psychological slaves to the slings and arrows that life inevitably throws at us in quantity. Rejecting trigger warnings and safe spaces to the extent they have lately been popping up in the public sphere is to ultimately help people become stronger human beings. As Nietzsche said, “that which does not kill me makes me stronger”; or if you prefer someone with a bit less edge, recall the Confucian philosopher Zhang Zai who wrote “Riches, honor, good fortune, and abundance shall enrich my life. Poverty, humble station, care, and sorrow shall discipline me to fulfillment.” Amor fati indeed.

CITATIONS

1. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
2. http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trouble-teaching-rape-law
3. http://chronicle.com/article/Sexual-Paranoia-Strikes/190351
4. http://time.com/3848947/dear-universities-there-should-be-no-safe-spaces-from-intellectual-thought/
5. http://daisiesandbruises.com/2013/10/28/halloween-trauma-triggers/
6. http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/hazards-ahead-problem-trigger-warnings-according-research-81946
7. “One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance”, Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, St. Martins Griffin Press, 2006
8. Ibid.

Editor’s note: comments have been closed on this article for the time being. Several comments have also been deleted at request of the original commenter.

 

This is a roundtable review of Bonds of Silver, Bonds of Gold by Kristina Tracer, which is available as a paperback from Furplanet or as an ebook from Amazon. Your reviewers are Miriam “Camio” Curzon, and [adjective][species] regular JM.

Camio is an academic writer first and writer of fiction second, with a graduate degree in gender studies. They specialize in queer theory and popular media studies, and recently became a member of the Furry Writers’ Guild.

JM

Camio, thanks for participating in this roundtable review of Kristina Tracer’s Bonds of Silver, Bond of Gold. I’m sure we’ll have plenty to talk about.

Bonds is a furry fantasy novel, following the travails of a young slave who ends up being instrumental in the resolution of a conflict between two neighbouring lands. The basic plot is breezy and fast-moving, but the real meat of Bonds is the exploration of sexual slavery. It’s challenging stuff.

Before we go any further, I’ll warn readers that our discussion will include spoilers. Bonds also has many explicit rape scenes, and we’ll be talking about those too.

Bonds starts with a young male rabbit named Stannis, who sells himself into slavery for the good of his family at the beginning of the book. It’s the first of what will be many selfless acts. Stannis has his gender changed, or possibly annulled, to become Taneh. Taneh has a vagina where Stannis’s penis used to be, and has gender-neutral pronouns to indicate that the change is more than just cosmetic.

(I’m going to refer to our hero as Taneh from here on in.)

Taneh’s gender re-assignation is non-consensual. Taneh is also raped by just about every single character in the book, and beaten nearly to death. The people who beat, rape, and mutilate Taneh are—in the universe of Bonds of Silver, Bonds of Gold—the good guys.

It’s suggested that Taneh is a ‘natural’ slave and therefore happy to deal with this punishment. Taneh’s gender re-assignation leads to horniness, they enjoy being raped, and they’re very quick to make apologies on behalf their assaulters. It all seems to come down to negation of identity, that Taneh accepts that their life, as a slave, has little or no value.

This, by the way, is why I suggested that Taneh’s (new) gender is closer to null than gender-neural. Nullation of gender fits better with the theme of the book, and the way Taneh is treated (and enjoys being treated). Yet Taneh is very much a sexual being, and continues to enjoy sex, is often horny, masturbates, climaxes from time to time, and so forth.

I’m curious as to your thoughts on this, Camio.

Personally, I found the gender and sexual politics to be genuinely challenging. Taneh is raped by a cook early in the book, and this is seen to be an important, positive step in the cook’s mental wellbeing. Taneh is all but beaten to death by the baron later on, and everyone is quick to agree that it was inevitable because the baron was having a rough time in court. And so on, and so on. My moral compass took a real battering.

This was the most striking aspect of Bonds for me. I found it to be really quite shocking.

Camio

Thank you for inviting me to participate in this discussion.

The sex in Bonds takes place within the context of the Tracer’s world, a medieval feudal society with some capacity for alchemical magic. The text never addresses the existence of any taboo, except some minor taboos surrounding cross-species breeding. Tracer goes as far as to tease Taneh with incest. In many ways, sex, gender, and sexuality does not matter in this world. The Baron is the son of a wolf and a rabbit, created through alchemical magic. I assume, likewise, same-sex couples would also be able to conceive in such a system. From this direction, I see Taneh’s becoming as not a transformation of sex, but evolving into a creation beyond anthro/humanism. Taneh becomes a pet, whereas Stannis became a slave. As a pet, Taneh acts as a blank slate, able to adapt to their master’s every desire. Ey is there to take control when their master needs a dominant. In that respect, Taneh exhibits more of a fluid identity.

The sexual politics of Bonds is problematic as it exists in between erotic fantasy and realist horror. It features rape that is not rape because the character asks for it and consented to become a slave. We cannot ignore that much of the non-violent sexual acts represent fantasies that are enjoyed in our reality. But it is difficult to ignore the systemic violence of a system that allows slavery, even the freedom to choose to be a slave. However, if read completely as a work of erotic fantasy, in the same context as Kyell Gold’s Argaea series, then it doesn’t matter. Bonds will be arousing for some, for others not, and there are probably some people who would be better off avoiding the book. It’s complicated, not necessarily because of Tracer’s writing, but because these lines can get muddy in real life. You can’t please everyone.

JM

I can see why you use the phrase “erotic fantasy”. The sex is explicit, in that Tracer fully describes the act from start to finish. It doesn’t leave much to the imagination. I tried to think of a non-porn book I’ve read with so much sex, and the only thing I could think of was Oscar Hijuelos’s The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love—a book that is in many ways a love letter to the joys of (heterosexual) sex—but that doesn’t go nearly so far in its blow-by-blow descriptions of the mechanics of sex.

Early on, there are similarities in Tracer’s descriptions of sex and the trappings of slavery. She is interested in the mechanics of the physical bonds of slavery, and she similarly suggests that it’s best to accept one’s fate, be that as a slave or as someone being raped. Like you say, Taneh as both a pet and a sexual being acts as a blank slate for the desires and needs of their master.

Tracer drops the comparisons with the bonds of slavery once the point is made, but the sex continues. After a while I accepted it was going to be an ongoing part of the book. Even when Taneh & co are in mortal danger they find time and the emotional headspace for sex. It’s obviously a deliberate choice on Tracer’s part, and I think that it’s supposed to be arousing for the reader. It ends up feeling pretty porny.

The sex writing itself is pretty good. Tracer uses a few cutesy terms like “shaft” and “pucker” that come across (to me) as a bit childish, but maybe that’s the furry norm. Furry readers, if nothing else, read a lot of erotica. Tracer’s sex writing is certainly better than the few other (published) furries I’ve read, but certainly worse than the non-furries – think Proulx and Brokeback Mountain or Pynchon and Against The Day.

I didn’t read Bonds as an erotic fantasy, and maybe that’s why I found this to be a stumbling block. I can’t help but feel that putting a primary focus on the sex sections undermines the complexity of Tracer’s exploration of gender issues, to say nothing of the fantasy world that drives her plot. I think that there is a lot to like outside of the sexual aspects of Bonds, although I guess I can go into that later on.

Do you think that Tracer got the balance right, or is she trying to serve two masters by combining erotica with her more complex ideas?

Camio

My introduction to specifically furry published work, and for many of us I’m sure, was Kyell Gold’s Volle, which featured quite a number of detailed erotic scenes. I admit that Tracer’s was not as distracting as Gold’s. Tracer manages a fantasy novel with kink oriented sex scenes with just enough finesse that it does not become fetishistic or overly objectionable. I would certainly be interested into see how specific kink communities respond to this text because this is difficult subject matter to put out for wide consumption, particularly if Tracer wrote some of those scenes with the intention of appealing to those communities.

I do feel that some of the world building suffered at the benefit of the erotic content. Taneh represents one of those loopholes that allows for limited development. Without a mind of their own, we can’t expect the same detail as any of the other characters. In this case, though, I would say, more than likely, the detail was absent to benefit Taneh’s characterization rather than an excuse.

Admittedly, from the start I read Bonds as an erotic/fantasy novel simply because of the categorization of the work on online stores. I also recently finished (Catherynne M. Valente’s) Palimpsest, which contained a considerable number of sex scenes. When it comes to word choice I will say “shaft” is a favorite and one I use in my writing, but “pucker” makes me shiver and I don’t recall ever using it.

I wanted to see more about the world because so much we didn’t get to see because we were trapped by Taneh. As a result I find it difficult to fully understand Taneh’s context in the world. Is Taneh and their pet the only two of their kind? How wide spread is alchemy practiced as a magical science? How does slavery fit in with the culture of either province?

Two masters is hard to manage. There is no line distinguishing a well written sex scene and erotica. I have a political investment in proliferation of sex in stories in wider media. Depicting life in any amount of realism depends on sex as that is a truth of existence, no one would be here otherwise. So I would rather see someone serving two masters than serving either one, solely, perfectly.

JM

Like you, I also wanted to see more of Tracer’s world. We only see what Taneh experiences, and it did feel like there was a large and well-formed fantasy universe surrounding and informing Taneh’s story.

It probably says a lot for the provocative nature of the sex and genderfuckery in Bonds, as we haven’t really talked much about the main story. It’s linear, in that everything happens in chronological order and very little occurs off-screen. It has a lot of energy as well, it zips along like good stories do, and doesn’t ever feel rushed or bogged down. The (apparent) richness of the universe gives Taneh’s story breadth.

There are a handful of action set pieces, all of which were well done. I particularly liked the magical hypnotism sequences. It’s obvious that Tracer knows what she’s on about. It’s something that’s rarely done well.

Bonds also has real character development. It works two ways: in some cases Taneh learns more about people through their actions, and in others the characters grow over the course of the book. This felt real to me, particularly given the high stakes of the primary conflict, which would put the characters under a lot of personal pressure. The true selves of the characters came out when they were under stress.

However it’d be wrong to say that I liked everything. In my opinion, Bonds has some problems. For starters, Tracer uses inconsistent imagery. To take an example from the first paragraph of the book: “Everyone else walking past gave the entrance a wide berth, as though standing too close invited the attention of the occupants.” There is an inconsistency here between “walking past” and “standing”.

There are a small handful of typos in the book as well. The worst is in a late, key, action sequence, where a mace’s action is mistakenly described as “decent” rather than as a descent.

These sorts of errors are to me the biggest difference between this book and a professional publication. I suspect this has as much to do with the quality of the editing as the writing. I’ve yet to read a furry book that comes across as a professional-standard product. (I’ve had similar problems with non-furry books from small publishers.)

Still, there is a lot to like and respect about Bonds and Tracer’s style. Like you, I think her willingness to approach sex and kink in such a positive and straightforward way is laudable. And I really like that she starts the book at the moment the story begins, at the door of the Slaver’s Guild. Tracer allows Taneh’s backstory to come up naturally as it becomes relevant, rather than bogging us down with a scene-setting opening chapter or two. As a reader, I find that a generous move, focussing on what makes a book interesting to read (the action) rather than what makes a book interesting to write (the characters). Bonds is written with the reader in mind.

Of course all that is only one reader’s opinion. Camio, what did you think of the story and style? And what about the “furry” content of the book – do the animal people populating the universe of Bonds serve a narrative purpose?

Camio

I have a hard time believing that Bonds would be publishable outside of the furry fandom, not as an issue of quality, but in content. The extreme aspects of the content are okay within furry community constraints, but would likely be thrown aside outside of furry. Had this been about human characters, the sex and violence (and violent sex) would be extreme and controversial, particularly mirroring race and conflict. In that sense, I do not see this book working without the “furry” content, which allows for more nuanced readings from the disconnect between human and anthro. In a similar way writing on Japanese anime has addressed the affective power of a medium that has no live human actors.

There is a reason why I have a copy of a Game of Thrones trade paperback from 2006 that remains unread, or why I skipped half of The Two Towers. There is something that makes straightforward narratives like Bonds far easier to consume than other works of fantasy. Flashbacks as backstory, elaborate world building, and overarching grand narratives remove a lot of the tension and immediacy of fast paced, high stakes fiction. I don’t place much faith in grammatically perfect manuscripts in part because I tend to miss small things with brain auto-correct. I have stopped reading some things published in the fandom because of the poor grammar and typo problems.

For example, in your walking past/standing example, I understood (or interpreted) the gist to be similar to those beauty stalls in malls with employees that chase people down to try their product. Stand nearby, make eye contact, walk too close or too slowly, and they target you.

My personal hang up with Bonds is I found Taneh’s reasoning for entering slavery weak, which is later exacerbated by the appearance of their brother as a guard. The decision felt like the most extreme solution to a problem that had multiple solutions. It just felt jarring, like jumping from point A to point C, skipping B. Like Fantine’s descent into prostitution in Les Miserables, she didn’t immediately go from gainful employment to prostitution, but sold everything else of value until all she had was her body. This could be a matter of missing something as a reader.

I just felt there needed to be more justification for such a lifelong and severe decision. But that is my personal feeling and not one that impacts the narrative as Taneh starts as not necessarily the brightest or strongest character. Additionally, I had some issues with the gender/sex based humiliation, but I understand that it is part of the approach towards sex in the book and my objections are more politically based, which is possibly why I read the book as kink oriented. Reading the humiliation as kink rather than political removes the problematic nature of gender humiliation.

JM

I was all ready to jump in and complain that Tracer’s animal people serve no purpose. As a reader I expect the author to make decisions for a reason that adds to the book. I don’t think it’s enough to say that a book has furries because it’s written by a furry, for a furry audience. I understand that a furry book has to have furries in it… but I still think they need to be justified on some level.

I lost track of the species of many of the characters in Bonds. That didn’t affect my understanding or appreciation of the book, so therefore why include animal-people at all?

Yet I’ve been turned around by your argument. You are spot on that the furriness of the characters does remove them a step or two from humans, which frees Tracer to explore the morals of her universe without being constrained by the real, human world. As you say, she couldn’t have done it with humans.

I think we’re just about at the point where it’s time to wind up this roundtable. We have talked a lot, and there is a lot to talk about with Bonds. It is hefty, in terms of its content, without being overlong or difficult to read.

Still, the combination of furries, a fantasy world, the genderfuckery, and of course the endless extreme, violent sex is an unusual one. That leaves me with a final question: who is this book for? To whom would you recommend it?

Camio

Bonds is yet another entry in the expanding stable of fantasy genre furry erotica novels (Cyanni, Kyell, Alflor), but is the first that I am aware of that broadens the sexual experiences depicted. The level of muck and mire contrasts with the more romantic lenses of most other options. I think this books is, first and foremost, for a kink audience. The extreme sex and acts are a far stronger audience marker than the furry content. In the same way Kyell Gold has found some readers from outside the fandom, Bonds feels like a book that would be particularly enjoyed by an audience not limited to the furry fandom. At the same time, I feel it is a book worth reading for more adventurous readers looking for something different, for something beyond the traditional romance, gay or straight.

Being an old curmudgeon, I tend not to put a lot of credence in the opinions of others until I’ve established who they are and what they’ve accomplished. I don’t accept medical advice from non-doctors or nurses, for example. Similarly, should I ever experience legal difficulties I’ll spend the money to see an actual lawyer, not ask the patrons of a local bar what they think about the matter. Credibility, in other words, is an important aspect of human existence, and has been ever since we learned to communicate. It’s important, something we weigh and evaluate constantly while going about our everyday lives. Doctors and lawyers are pretty credible as a rule, in part because they belong to professional associations and go through certification processes that at least attempt to keep them that way. But… Is the car salesman who claims you can easily afford what seems to be an outlandishly high monthly payment entirely credible? Or, for that matter, a politician seeking your vote? Just possibly not.

In keeping with the above theme, let me therefore establish my own credentials and perhaps earn a bit of trust in my own right. I’ve been writing furry fiction—mostly transformation-themed—since about 1997. That’s a literary career of almost twenty years and counting. To clarify, I don’t mean that I’ve been poking around at writing for that long, or that I’ve written a story here and there over that period of time. Rather, I’ve been a serious, high-output furry writer for almost two decades, having written roughly twenty-five published novels and novellas, probably about the same number of short stories, and maybe another hundred mostly “internet storyverse” works of various lengths. Accomplishing this— alongside maintaining a full-time job and owning my own home— has required me, in essence, to think about furry fiction and very little but furry fiction and the furry characters which define it for many hours a week, over a span of time that constitutes most of the history of the fandom to date.

Perhaps the thing I think about the most is, why should a given character be furry in the first place?

As mentioned above, I’m mostly a transformation author. When you approach the problem from that angle, the need to ask the “Why?” question is perhaps a bit more obvious. If you start with someone as human and want them to end up as something else, well… That’s something clearly out of the ordinary and the need for a credible explanation is glaringly obvious. Having written so much along these lines, I’ve come up with more different rationales than I can possibly list here. Sometimes, in science fiction settings, it’s been for a movie role or to perform in interstellar circuses or for animal research— I can’t possibly list them all. Other times, in less scientifically rigorous settings, my change agent has been an implausible virus or even outright magic. The bottom line, however, is this— If you’re going to start with a human and make any sort of ex-human out of him, there must be some sort of justification or else the whole thing is pointless. It’s almost inconceivable, even. As I type this I’m trying to form of a coherent picture of how I’d even approach writing such a piece, but my brain-boggler is spinning twice as fast as my imaginator; I can’t gain sufficient traction to get anywhere. A coherent transformation story lacking a credible reason for the Big Change is virtually inconceivable.

Somewhere along the way, while writing all these dozens of works of transformation fiction that required a justification for the transformation, I slowly came to a realization. Not only was coming up with a plausible explanation for the TF vital to the work’s credibility, but it improved the story in myriad other ways as well. For one thing, it often in and of itself suggested a plotline. Take “man goes anthro to make a movie”, for example. What an enormous treasure-trove that gives you, as an author! You’ve got your protagonist and his motivation right there, handed to you on a platter. A setting too, if you want to use it— the movie-set itself! You have a bajillion and six sources of potential conflict— rival co-stars, directors, funding, the actor dealing with his new shape…. You can go anywhere! In my own case, I decided that the movie would never be made due to world financial collapse. The protagonist was instead forced to pioneer an entirely new kind of life, working out new ways to leverage and explore his innate talents and gaining new insights via surviving a series of not-entirely-human adventures. Eventually he grew to the point that when what amounted to God was about to be born via the same technology that enabled his own transformation, my protagonist was there ready and waiting to make it all possible. Thus, my first novel practically wrote itself.

All of this originated from “How can I justify this transformation and thereby make it credible to my readers?” If you had a few hours, even all these years later I could still relate almost every step of the process. Indeed, these are among my happiest memories.

It never ceases to amaze me, how powerful this magic is— I’ve thought about it rather a lot, since first figuring it out. My current working theory is that creating credible transformations (and please be patient, Dear Reader— we’re going to work our way back around to mainstream furry, I promise!) not only does away with half the actual work of storywriting, but also and more importantly forces the would-be author to introduce a bit of badly-needed discipline into their own thinking. Take the example above— in order to created a transformed movie-star, I had to devote considerable skull-sweat to the technology required. After all, for the transformation to be truly credible it couldn’t just be a magic box. What might the world that created such tech look like? What might its other capabilities be, and how might they be abused? How would my protagonist’s life— or even his entire world— be affected by such factors? Most importantly of all, how much of this has real story-potential and how much much “fictional oomph” can be extracted from it?

Lots, usually! Tons and tons! More than you ever dare dream of, going in.

All of this is of course familiar territory to students of science fiction. In a sense, my “sudden insight” as to the importance of a credible transformation mechanism in writing TF stories was nothing more than a not-so-original variation on SF’s “what-if” premise. (Indeed, being a long-time science fiction fan myself, I’m a bit ashamed it took me so long to perceive the connection.) It’s almost not going too far to say that the entire SF genre is built on postulating an important change in the status quo— technological, sociological, environmental, even sometimes cultural— and exploring the ramifications thereof via the adventures of a protagonist. While my flavor of transformation fiction doubles down on this— not only has the status quo changed, but the lens through which the protagonist views it as well— the connection is obvious. Establishing credible explanations for why my characters became something other than what they once were practically forced me to tap into the same mechanisms and conventions— and employ the same rigorous creative discipline— that’ve made science fiction the enormously popular artistic success that it is. Even when employing magical or mystical causations, the very act of providing a defined causation at all, a reason why and a mechanism by which it all happened— and then rigorously incorporating this into all that follows— lends my work an air of confidence and, even more importantly, a sense of credibility and therefore believability. And how immensely grateful I am for it!

For… Isn’t willing suspension of disbelief the very first hurdle an author must conquer?

By the time I finally got around to writing significant amounts of “conventional” (by which I mean non-TF) furry fiction, I’d already long since taken this lesson to heart and incorporated it deeply into my writing process. Therefore, it’s natural that long before ever touching my fingers to the keyboard I firmly establish in my head why my characters are anthropomorphic. I’ve not yet written nearly as much conventional furry as TF stuff, so I haven’t explored nearly so many justifications. Despite this, precisely the same creative pattern has emerged. Once I work out why there are anthrocreatures in a given setting, the who, what, where and when become relatively simple and practically take care of themselves. Why is the only real toughie, and I think that’s the reason it’s such a stumbling block for so many authors.

The problem is that, unless you’re writing strictly for a furry-fandom audience, and not even all of that, it’s also a world-class stumbling-block for readers. Even I—and, I assure you, I’m a fur to the bone—can’t read a furry story in which the anthros “just are” without at some point wincing. While someday this may no longer hold true as we insinuate our soft, furry flexibility-of-viewpoint ever deeper into the soul of mainstream culture, for now and for many years to come unjustified anthros are and shall for most people remain absolutely lethal to willing suspension of disbelief. If an author seeks to be read outside the fandom, this becomes a huge factor. If after writing a million words of mostly-furry fiction (and probably far more) I still need some sort of justification in order to suspend my disbelief, then how can Jane and Joe Averagereader be expected to react? “Huh?” and a blank stare immediately followed by a search for something a bit easier to swallow is about the best one can hope for. And, as we all know but seldom admit, the reaction is usually even worse. Cartoons and such get relatively a free pass on this subject, yes. There’s something fundamentally different about how stories presented in a visual versus written medium are perceived— I suspect it may have something to do with the principle that being presented with a ready-made visual image is less mentally taxing (and therefore engenders less critical thought and mental intimacy) than constructing something from scratch in one’s own mind. If I want my literary work to be taken seriously, however, at some point I must not only explain why my bunnies are bunnies and not either ordinary people or many-tentacled octopods, but also smoothly incorporate said reason into the larger work. Not only must it be justified factually, but artistically as well. Even the work’s overall theme must reflect its innate anthropomorphism, or it’ll fall flat on its face and never be read by more than a handful.

(Unless it’s furry-porn, of course. Though, I’d submit, even there the existence of the anthropomorphic characters in a sense logically justified. Not in the author’s work, mind you. But rather, in the reader’s mind and libido. In this highly-specific case it’s a safe assumption that no further explanation is required.)

Given the overwhelming story-structuring and audience-widening benefits that almost automatically accrue from writing credible furries— whether scientifically/magically or (less commonly, and potentially the subject of another furry-literary essay entirely) through subtle shadings of symbolism a la Richard Adams and Rudyard Kipling, I often wonder why more authors don’t take advantage of the practice. Is it merely a matter of stylistic difference? Does it perhaps seem like too much work? Or… Perhaps many of our writers have descended so far down the rabbit hole in the furry sense that they’ve lost touch with the artistic sensibilities of “normal” people?

It’s not for me to say, any more than it’s ultimately my place to judge what does and does not constitute a good story. In the end there’s no right or wrong way to write, or for that matter to create any other sort of art. Personal taste is in the end its own utterly inexplicable justification. As my grandfather used to point out, they paint some cars red and some green. Certain people won’t own anything but green, while others insist on the exact opposite. In the end, even though neither group can justify themselves logically, the manufacturer has to offer both in order to please everyone. And yet… As a writer of considerable experience it is, I think, proper for me to point out the advantages of thinking things all the way through and establishing the existence of your furry characters as both credible and believable. It really does, in my experience, tend to create stronger, more thoughtful and better-reasoned works, while in the long run requiring only a fraction of the effort. Ultimately it’s also the secret of how I’ve been able to average well over a novel a year plus write tons of other stuffs over such an extended period of time.

Sweat the details, is what I’m trying to say. Justifying your furryverse may appear difficult at first, but in reality the justifications are as limitless as your own imagination. Who knows? You may find the benefits to be…

…In-credible.

In 1974, the philosopher Thomas Nagel first asked “What is it like to be a bat?”[1] Whilst originally an essay concerning the interaction between mind and body (and something highly worth reading for anybody with even a passing interest in the philosophy of mind), Nagel may have unintentionally left something important for the furry community to consider.

In his essay, Nagel wonders what it would be like to be a bat; what it would be like to see, hear, and experience the world from the subjective point of view that bats posses. He concludes that, as much as we may know about the brains of bats, about how echo location is supposed to work, and how they live day-to-day, we will never be able to understand exactly “what it is like to be a bat.” Despite our knowledge of echo-location, for example, without directly experiencing it, we can only imagine how it would feel to use it, and what we imagine would be conjured in relation to our experiences, not a bat’s. There is therefore an “aboutness” to being anything, a “how it feels to be X”, to everything conscious. This would hold true for every non-human creature, (as any bat furries may be pleased to hear). Therefore, when we identify as an animal, it can never be said that we have the “full picture” of it; only what we can observe, vis. You may identify as a wolf, but you are only identifying as the observable behaviours of wolves, and any inferences made from those, not as what a wolf actually experiences or thinks.

Now, consider “anthropomorphics.” Across multiple dictionaries, the consensus of the definition is “to ascribe human properties to something non-human”[2,3,4]. For example, we would be anthropomorphising the wind if we were to say “the wind is angry”; anger is a human emotion, but we are prescribing it to something inanimate. Similarly, when we attach human traits to animals, we are anthropomorphising them, such as when we imagine that a raven is cunning, or a pig is lazy.

What we must remember is that the pig is not actually lazy; we are merely taking what we call “laziness” in humans, and prescribing them to the pig. For all we know, from the pig’s point of view, it may be working very hard at whatever it is that it’s doing.

What I’ve said hitherto may seem like common sense, and, hopefully, it has. But consider what a person does when they create a furry character or fursona. Ordinarily, people believe that they are taking the animal and applying human features to it (anthropomorphising). However, it’s worth taking a look at the process of choosing.

Some choose an animal they like for an aesthetic reason, for example, “foxes look cool” (Result from the 2013 Furry Survey). Whilst others make their decision based upon perceived traits that an animal has: “Foxes are clever, and dignified” (Result from the 2013 Furry Survey), and “Real canines repay all the love and hate they receive in droves, which I admire, and represent the frank, sometimes ill-informed, honesty and loyalty that I exude” (Result from the 2013 Furry Survey).

The two attitudes can be categorised as either “aesthetic” or “personal”, the former being born from taking pleasure in the way an animal looks, the latter being formed by identifying with the subjective understanding of the already anthropomorphic traits the animal has.

In the case of the aesthetic, we can safely say that they have anthropomorphised; they have looked at an animal, and applied human features to it.

But in the “personal” category, something much more complex has happened. A person has taken the already anthropomorphic traits ascribed to an animal and used that as their “base”. For example, a person may have chosen a coyote due to the animal typically being thought of as “cunning”. What has happened here is not about the animal at all, but the representation, vis. the traits applied to it (which it does not intrinsically posses). The identity is with the “cunning” attached to the coyote – a purely human notion. Afterwards, due to it’s association, the coyote becomes a representation of “cunning”; it is used as a symbol to convey human thought, having nothing to do with actual coyotes. We cannot know “what it is like to be a coyote”, thus, we cannot say we identify as them on any level other than the one of which we understand them.

The term “zoomorphic”, generally, means “to use an animal symbolically”[5,6,7]. I believe that in the case of the “personal” category of choosing an animal character, this term is superior to “anthropomorphic”, for there is nothing to be made human; there is an identity with what is already human represented through an animal. The animal is symbolic; used to show something human, as opposed to existing independently of human perception, and having human traits applied to it.

This can be furthered through fictional entities, which can be argued to exist as embodiments of human concepts and ideas. A dragon, for example, does not exist independently of human imagination; it is a creature created as pure symbolism, although it may be representing different things across different times and cultures. Dragons, and other fictional entities, are human symbols, embodying various traits. To bring us back to earlier, there is no “what is it like to be a dragon.” It is impossible to apply human traits to something that already exists as human traits and say you have created an anthropomorphic dragon; the creature was already human, you have merely changed what it represented.

Where does this leave us? Personally, I feel that the clarification is more than just applying the appropriate term. It helps us to understand what we are doing, and what our characters mean, as well as what those around us are trying to achieve. If nothing else, I hope that this article has given you something to consider the next time you create an animal character, and what it really means.

[1]T. Nagel, What is is it like to be a bat? “The Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4 (October 1974)”, Pp. 435­50.] http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf

[2]Merriman and Webster Dictionary: http://www.merriam­webster.com/dictionary/anthropomorphic

[3]The Free Dictionary: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/anthropomorphic

[4]The Dictionary Online: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anthropomorphic

[5] Merriman and Webster Dictionary: http://www.merriam­webster.com/dictionary/zoomorphic

[6]The Free Dictionary: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/zoomorphic

[7]The Dictionary Online: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/zoomorphic

I’m 40 years old and I have a collection of stuffed animals.

Among furries this is pretty much par for the course. If you visit my flat I’ll probably invite you to browse my collection; if you stay overnight on my couch I’ll probably offer up one or two as sleeping companions.

I usually hide them when non-furries are visiting. Not so long ago a non-furry type visited, in an otherwise furry group. He’s furry-aware and furry friendly, but reacted with no small amount of shock and bemusement when I emerged from the bedroom with a handful of zebras to share around. Photos were taken for the amusement of others: look at this weird thing these adults are doing.

Stuffed animals, by arbitrary societal norms, are both childish and feminine.

My friend’s reaction was okay, partly because it was knee-jerk and partly because I wasn’t risking my adult/male status in his mental social hierarchy. I’m safe in the adult/male mainstream, and so my failure to meet some social expectations—being gay or having stuffed animals for example—are seen as eccentricities rather than unacceptably childish or effete.

I keep stuffed animals, despite the small risk to my social standing, because they’re important to me. This editorial is my attempt to explain exactly how and why. (And I promise to talk more about the zebras shortly.)

My life had an upheaval in the 2005. We all know the story: supposedly straight male furry falls for another male fur, everything goes wrong.

In my case I broke up with my girlfriend of four years and the furry gent in question turned out to be straight. All this happened away from all my support structures in Australia, as I’d accepted a cricket-playing gig in the UK for the northern summer. And I quietly took an office job on top of the sport responsibilities. And what else… I spent my weekend nights at gay bars & clubs in Soho; injury meant I needed an ankle reconstruction; I was dating three guys simultaneously at one point; and many many other things that are making me laugh/cringe as I write but aren’t worth getting into right now.

My luggage for the five months in London was basically my cricket gear plus a few changes of clothes. Due to a difference of opinion with my rental agency, I ended up living in a completely unfurnished flat: no internet or TV, just a bed and a chair (no table). It would be fair to call it spartan living.

Early on, I went to see an exhibition at the National Gallery, who were running a collection of George Stubbs’s horse paintings. (His masterwork, Whistlejacket, is on permanent display in the free part of the gallery: go see it if you can, it’s amazing.) On the way out, I picked up a small stuffed tiger from the gift store, supposedly based on Rousseau’s Tiger In A Tropical Storm (also on permanent/free display) but actually just a small, well-made tiger with satisfying heft and cute fangs.

Travelling Tiger became the first stuffed animal I made a personal connection with. He quickly became a friendly presence in my busy, and perhaps slightly out-of-control life. He was never a replacement for social contact—goodness knows I had enough of that already—more an introspective reassurance that I was still myself. His presence was enough to help me escape the spiral of my own thoughts: I could talk to him, but more usefully he was there to cheer me on when I needed to look after myself, maybe eating some food or getting some sleep.

There is a delightful short piece recently published in Cosmopolitan, about a couple who suffered a miscarriage and found themselves coping with the help of a stuffed sea otter. Their otter friend helped them grieve for what they’d lost, by acting as a focus for their hopes for their lost child. A bit like Travelling Tiger, their otter—Sally—helped them cope by allowing them to acknowledge the challenges of their situation.

I returned from my trip to the UK in good mental shape and with a tiger-shaped seed for a stuffed animal collection. By the time I moved back to the UK—permanently this time, with a functional relationship and good prospects—I had amassed a few stuffed friends.

Moving country is difficult, but there was no question whether my stuffed animals would be coming with me. They got packed into boxes along with my books and other possessions—in hindsight we should have packed the books and animals together rather than separately (some boxes were very light, others too heavy to lift)—and put into a sea container to arrive a few months later. In the meantime I went shopping in London for some new friends, and soon enough the two collections were joined.

A friend of mine tells a story about moving a large stuffed animal collection. Lacking space, the animals were gutted, unstuffed, and packed into a large vacuum-sealed plastic bag. I’ve heard the story several times over the last ten years or so, but I always pretend that it’s new to me, because I want to reimagine all those empty stuffed animal heads pressed up horrifically against the plastic.

I love the story, but I could never do such a thing to my stuffed animals. I could never put them back together quite right. What if I overstuffed a head, or used the wrong stuffing altogether, or forgot who’s crucial bean-bag-hoof belongs to whom?

Old Man Lion has a greying mane and distinguished face, and also a weighty beanbag that’s supposed to rest in his belly but has partly slipped down one of his legs. It’s okay, because he’s old, and even old lions have dodgy hips sometimes. I could never put him back together just so.

Stuffed animals should have some weight to them, and like Travelling Tiger and Old Man Lion that normally means internal beanbags, usually keeping the centre of gravity towards to back end: the legs, the crotch, the belly. They should be understuffed. The right size is maybe 24″ to 36″, weildy but big enough to hug and sleep alongside. The design of the face is most important.

They should be animal-shaped, anthropomorphic only in the human names and qualities one might give them. Absolutely no big eyes, non-natural colours, or embiggened ‘cute’ features. They should not be posed or posable. No internal wires or support. They should be floppy, ideally looking a bit like a smaller, deflated version of the real thing.

Your best options for stuffed animals in the UK are in London: Hamleys usually has a few among a lot of dross, and the Rainforest Cafe just down the road is great. Old Man Lion came from Hamleys. I’ve bought several big cats from the Rainforest Cafe—it seems to be their speciality—including a pair of cheetahs named Goldust and Stardust. Goldust was my first purchase when I moved from Australia and, naturally, is both several years older then Stardust as well as being everyone’s favourite of the two.

I have found some delightful stuffed animals in France, in person and online at Mes Peluches. Note: email updates from French stuffed animal stores is the best spam imaginable.

In Germany, there is a great store near the railway station in Munich. I don’t know the name but I’m sure I could find it in minutes if required. And the former East German state stuffed animal company, Plüti, has somehow survived and today make the best big stuffed animals I’ve seen (if a bit overstuffed). You can’t buy their products online but you can download the catalogue, order via email, and send money direct to their bank account. If that sounds like an unreasonable risk, well, you haven’t seen Giant Mister Donkey.

In Australia, the only good place to buy stuffed animals I’ve ever seen is The Teddy Bear Shop in the Melbourne CBD. Although I once did buy a puma in David Jones, but it didn’t have a pricetag or any sort of label. The cashier and I negotiated a bargain. (In hindsight I guess it’s possible I bought some child’s treasured, misplaced toy.)

Your best stuffed animal buying, however, is via US-based specialist websites. You can’t buy from large retailers like Amazon because quality is important, and their algorithms favour products that compare well on price. Instead you’ll want to visit the treasure troves at stores like Stuffed Ark, All Plush, This Place Is A Zoo, and The Jungle Store.

Be aware that shipping costs are astronomical. Many US-based stores don’t ship overseas, which means you’ll need to use (and pay for) an international mailbox company like Bongo (www.bongous.com). This, plus the fact you can’t try-before-you buy, makes international stuffed animals a bit of a crapshoot. It makes sense—from a fiscal and risk-of-total-disappointment perspective—if you save up and buy a lot at once. I once bought a few stuffed animals from a store/maker that I trusted, but failed to consider the size. They were all too small, so I gave them away to random furs at the following Londonfurs meet.

My first zebra, Zzzzzz (pronounced as a one-syllable word), was one of my first international stuffed animal purchases. Several years later I noticed that my zebra supplier was out of stock, and I had a minor crisis as I imagined Zzzzzz disintegrating with age, or being left behind at a convention. Some months later, I noticed that zebras were back in stock. I was drunk at the time, which I took as a sign, so I ordered four more. I regret nothing.

My stuffed animals are something that makes our flat a furry space, a safe counterpoint to the non-furry world. I keep them corralled in a pen designed to keep toddlers or small dogs safe while camping, with a handful at large: on the bed or scattered around our living area. As time goes on I will buy more, and I’ll get rid of some too, either because of age, quality concerns, or the fact I never really bonded with them.

I suffer, sometimes, from friends who see my collection and take it upon themselves to buy one as a present. Please do not do this. I appreciate the thought but it’s a dangerous game. I don’t want to be in a position where I’m disposing of a gift. Happily I have found uses for those given to me —I have a couple of small horses I use as bookends—but that’s luck rather than design.

Since 2005, I have never once managed to find a good stuffed horse. I have several that are mediocre, but none that compare in quality to my bushel of zebras. I’ve been burned too many times to buy another online. Does anyone know of stores I should visit?

Visualization of Fur Affinity, Weasyl, SoFurry, InkBunny & e621 site content by Garek Maxwell.

Click for full-sized version

Data sources:
FA submission map 2015-01-14
FA submission map 2014-04-24
FA submission map 2012-01-11
FA submission map 2011-04-29
FA submission map 2010-04-29
FA submission map 2009-01-27
FA Statistics 2011 (FA forums link no longer active)
FA Statistics – 2014
Weasyl Statistics – (Accessed 12-31-2014)
SoFurry Statistics – (Accessed 12-31-2014, June 2013)
InkBunny Statistics – (Accessed 12-31-2014)
InkBunny Additional Statistics

e621.net – Data sources: Safe/General; Questionable/Mature; Explicit/Adult; Species Tags, In Descending Order

Traffic Statistics, mostly for Weasyl and SoFurry:
http://statstool.com/
http://www.freewebsitereport.org/
http://www.hypestat.com/
https://www.compete.com/