[adjective][species]

Guest post by Howl. This piece appears in Furries Among Us, a collection of essays by several furry writers, recently published in paperback by Thurston Howl Publications. You can read the [adjective][species] review of Furries Among Us here.

Thurston Howl, as he appears in Furries Among Us. Pic by Sabretoothed Ermine.

The name’s Howl. I am a folf dog (fox-wolf-dog hybrid), and I’m here to talk to you about sex! (This sounds like the most nightmarish way to start a sex ed class in high school. For that matter, furries and sex ed should just never mix.) So, many of you may know the term “furry” can hardly be spoken in public without someone assuming you’re talking about a fetish. Furries are people who just like having sex in fursuits, right? I remember “coming out”[1] as a furry to a friend of mine, and he said, “Aren’t those the suits with the holes in the crotch area?” That was a major face-palm (or face-paw) moment for me. Furries definitely have an unwarranted sexualized stigma in today’s society. From my experience, the furry fandom has been about community, belonging, and just friends having a good time. However, there are certainly other aspects, such as art, fiction, music, fursuiting, conventions, and more. So, am I saying that sex is absolutely not a part of the fandom? Well, while sexuality is probably more important than sex in the fandom, I would (and do) argue that sex is a part of the fandom but not a separate aspect.

Let me start this by reiterating that the fandom’s greatest value is its reliance on inclusion and community. No matter what your hobbies are, your favorite films, sports, books, or alcoholic beverages[2], furries will accept you. This goes the same for sexual preferences. Whether you are gay, bi, straight, trans, pan, or anything outside and in-between, furries will be glad to have you around. As they are this accepting, they also are open[3]. Sex and sexuality are simply not taboo topics for furries. No, this doesn’t mean that furries meet at coffee shops and discuss their favorite sex toys, but it means that in private or online, most won’t shy away from making sex jokes, sharing sex stories with close friends, or asking each other questions that their conservative high school sex ed never covered. They even have some unique sexual terms that further separate sex from the realm of taboo. Instead of the colloquial “fuck,” furries say “yiff,” supposedly being the sound foxes make when they have intercourse. “Murr” is another common sexual term that is a general sound of pleasure. One might use it in response to getting a back rub or the like. Also, furries tend to call their significant others “mates” as opposed to “boyfriend,” “significant other,” or the ever-abhorrent “bae.” Note that none of these are terms for new ideas; they are simply animal variants of common sexual ideas. However, sex manifests itself in the furry fandom in more than just its lingo.

As Kyell Gold mentions in his article in this collection, furry literature does something that gay porn just doesn’t: it enables for sex to be integral to a meaningful LGBT relationship, whether it is for young or mature audiences. College-aged furries can read about coming-out and sexual intimacy in the same novel now, something that can be notably harder to find in mainstream fiction. As he also notes, many furry novels have an Adult rating on them even if they have just one adult scene, while many mainstream erotica novels do not have any kind of warning. With that said, one can see how sex, at least in furry literature, functions as an integral, or at least important, aspect of real-life relationships that mainstream literature usually does not capture in the same way[4]. Some sample authors of erotic furry fiction are Kyell Gold and Rukis. I feel no need to expound on furry erotica, as you could simply read Kyell Gold’s article elsewhere in this collection.

Furry art is likewise open. On April 26, 2015, I searched FurAffinity (the main art archive for furries) for the word “fox[5].” Including NSFW (Not Suitable/Safe For Work) images, there were 667,477 results. When I shifted the toggle to Only SFW (Suitable/Safe for Work) images, there were 489,470 results. That means that roughly 73% of all fox images have a General or lightly Mature audience rating. There are several archives for furry art, including FurAffinity, e621, SoFurry, and various tumblrs. I feel absurd for quoting “The Rules of the Internet” here from 4chan (2007). Rule 34 states, “If it exists, there is porn of it.” This is very true even for furries. From The Lion King erotic art to Mickey Mouse nude pictures, if you can name an anthropomorphic character, some artist has probably drawn it having sexual relations with another. However, from my experience, most furries look at this kind of art not as porn[6], but with erotic appreciation. I have looked at furry art with friends, and it becomes a game of who can find the “hottest” art; it’s not an intimate action. Many furries really do just admire the art. It is a sexually open fandom, and that openness plays into their art as well as their literature.

Now, let me address a myth I have definitely heard more than once. Myth #1: Furries like to have sex with animals. Absolutely not. The idea of furry is not “becoming an animal.” It is about a completely new physical idea, the hybridization of human and animal. If such a creature was to exist, would it be ethical to have relations with it? I will not pretend to have the answer, and I acknowledge that many would be against it, but I also know that many would be perfectly okay with it as long as the being possesses human intelligence. Comparing furry to bestiality is akin to comparing homosexuality to bestiality: it just doesn’t make sense. When a furry admires an erotic pose of a feline anthro character, they might say he has a cute tail. Maybe his human chest is very muscular. Maybe his clothes are so tight that they reveal all his muscles, all his curves…I don’t know if I was trying to be evocative just then, but I assure you I could do much better (and have done better, in my last furry work Where Carnivores Meet, #shamelessplug). While the furry fandom is sexually open, this doesn’t mean that everyone in it is sexual. Even if a furry does “paw off”[7] to an erotic art piece, that does not signify the person wants to go into a barn and have intercourse with a horse.

Myth #2: Furries have sex in fursuits. This one is almost laughable. When I hear this, I ask them how much they think a fursuit costs. Usually, they might say two or three hundred dollars. Then, I have the pleasure of telling them it can be upward of two or three thousand dollars. Most furries aren’t willing to cut holes in the fronts of their expensive suits for sex purposes. Fursuits are for social acting (see Keefur’s article). Yes, there are furries who have sex in fursuits, but probably not more than people who have sex in space suits. Yes, fetishes exist, but the furry fandom is not a fetish.

With all of this said, there are two further aspects of furry sexuality I would like to discuss. One is stereotypes. Despite the fact that furries do not rely on sexuality, furries do apply sexual stereotypes to some people based on their furry identity, or fursona. For example, if someone is a fox, they are typically considered to be submissive, hypersexual, teasing, and on the receiving end. Wolves are usually dominant sexually. Bears (as is similar to the LGBT term) are larger in weight and usually hairier. Sometimes, the sexual stereotype is loosely based on existing folklore and/or mythology. With foxes being more cunning in fables, and with “foxy” being a word to describe a lusting female, a fox furry is definitely considered more sexual than others. Other times, as with bears, the fursona describes the body type stereotypically. Note however that exceptions abound. I have seen foxes who are “tops,” bears who are skinny, and wolves who are submissive. Some furries actually get annoyed when they are labeled by their stereotypes, though this is usually a mild annoyance. I would argue that when choosing one’s fursona, it’s important to also understand the cultural connotations for those animals inside the furry fandom

For furries who are interested in anthropomorphic sex outside of art and actually wish they could explore anthropomorphic sex, there actually are options. There are fox tail butt plugs, werewolf dildos, and dragon penetrables. However, sites that sell these items usually label these products with names, such as “Rex the German Shepherd,” “Chance the Stallion,” and “Fenrir the Wolfdragon” (BadDragon website). These kinds of names personify the characters, separating them from animals, and bringing the toys back to “furry.”

Overall, it should be easy to see how sex does exist as an element of the furry fandom, though it is far from an exclusive one. It is tied loosely to different aspects of the fandom. Art and novels don’t require it; it is simply that the furry fandom is just so open with sexuality and sex that it is acceptable to discuss it freely.

[1] Since I’ve already come out of the closet as a gay man, can we call the furry’s coming out “coming out of the kennel?” I think this idea has great potential, and I now lay copyright to it.
[2] For some reason, I still get looks when I’m drinking a mojito, and my colleagues are drinking beer. Mojitos are manly drinks, right?
[3] To those particularly witty furries trying to make a dirty joke here, stop.
[4] To clarify on this, I find that most mainstream novels either entirely skip the sex scenes while alluding to them, such as, “He led me to his bedroom, and I flicked the lights off,” or more graphically describe the sex scene but through derogatory language, making it an unclean or taboo act.
[5] I chose to search for the word “fox” because foxes are simply awesome, and we’re not narcissistic at all.
[6] I say this, but I’m sure there are those laughing, saying, “Yes, we do!”
[7] The furry term for masturbation.

Guest post by Howl. This piece appears in Furries Among Us, a collection of essays by several furry writers, recently published in paperback by Thurston Howl Publications. You can read the [adjective][species] review of Furries Among Us here.

Thurston Howl, as he appears in Furries Among Us. Pic by Sabretoothed Ermine.

The name’s Howl. I am a folf dog (fox-wolf-dog hybrid), and I’m here to talk to you about sex! (This sounds like the most nightmarish way to start a sex ed class in high school. For that matter, furries and sex ed should just never mix.) So, many of you may know the term “furry” can hardly be spoken in public without someone assuming you’re talking about a fetish. Furries are people who just like having sex in fursuits, right? I remember “coming out”[1] as a furry to a friend of mine, and he said, “Aren’t those the suits with the holes in the crotch area?” That was a major face-palm (or face-paw) moment for me. Furries definitely have an unwarranted sexualized stigma in today’s society. From my experience, the furry fandom has been about community, belonging, and just friends having a good time. However, there are certainly other aspects, such as art, fiction, music, fursuiting, conventions, and more. So, am I saying that sex is absolutely not a part of the fandom? Well, while sexuality is probably more important than sex in the fandom, I would (and do) argue that sex is a part of the fandom but not a separate aspect.

Let me start this by reiterating that the fandom’s greatest value is its reliance on inclusion and community. No matter what your hobbies are, your favorite films, sports, books, or alcoholic beverages[2], furries will accept you. This goes the same for sexual preferences. Whether you are gay, bi, straight, trans, pan, or anything outside and in-between, furries will be glad to have you around. As they are this accepting, they also are open[3]. Sex and sexuality are simply not taboo topics for furries. No, this doesn’t mean that furries meet at coffee shops and discuss their favorite sex toys, but it means that in private or online, most won’t shy away from making sex jokes, sharing sex stories with close friends, or asking each other questions that their conservative high school sex ed never covered. They even have some unique sexual terms that further separate sex from the realm of taboo. Instead of the colloquial “fuck,” furries say “yiff,” supposedly being the sound foxes make when they have intercourse. “Murr” is another common sexual term that is a general sound of pleasure. One might use it in response to getting a back rub or the like. Also, furries tend to call their significant others “mates” as opposed to “boyfriend,” “significant other,” or the ever-abhorrent “bae.” Note that none of these are terms for new ideas; they are simply animal variants of common sexual ideas. However, sex manifests itself in the furry fandom in more than just its lingo.

As Kyell Gold mentions in his article in this collection, furry literature does something that gay porn just doesn’t: it enables for sex to be integral to a meaningful LGBT relationship, whether it is for young or mature audiences. College-aged furries can read about coming-out and sexual intimacy in the same novel now, something that can be notably harder to find in mainstream fiction. As he also notes, many furry novels have an Adult rating on them even if they have just one adult scene, while many mainstream erotica novels do not have any kind of warning. With that said, one can see how sex, at least in furry literature, functions as an integral, or at least important, aspect of real-life relationships that mainstream literature usually does not capture in the same way[4]. Some sample authors of erotic furry fiction are Kyell Gold and Rukis. I feel no need to expound on furry erotica, as you could simply read Kyell Gold’s article elsewhere in this collection.

Furry art is likewise open. On April 26, 2015, I searched FurAffinity (the main art archive for furries) for the word “fox[5].” Including NSFW (Not Suitable/Safe For Work) images, there were 667,477 results. When I shifted the toggle to Only SFW (Suitable/Safe for Work) images, there were 489,470 results. That means that roughly 73% of all fox images have a General or lightly Mature audience rating. There are several archives for furry art, including FurAffinity, e621, SoFurry, and various tumblrs. I feel absurd for quoting “The Rules of the Internet” here from 4chan (2007). Rule 34 states, “If it exists, there is porn of it.” This is very true even for furries. From The Lion King erotic art to Mickey Mouse nude pictures, if you can name an anthropomorphic character, some artist has probably drawn it having sexual relations with another. However, from my experience, most furries look at this kind of art not as porn[6], but with erotic appreciation. I have looked at furry art with friends, and it becomes a game of who can find the “hottest” art; it’s not an intimate action. Many furries really do just admire the art. It is a sexually open fandom, and that openness plays into their art as well as their literature.

Now, let me address a myth I have definitely heard more than once. Myth #1: Furries like to have sex with animals. Absolutely not. The idea of furry is not “becoming an animal.” It is about a completely new physical idea, the hybridization of human and animal. If such a creature was to exist, would it be ethical to have relations with it? I will not pretend to have the answer, and I acknowledge that many would be against it, but I also know that many would be perfectly okay with it as long as the being possesses human intelligence. Comparing furry to bestiality is akin to comparing homosexuality to bestiality: it just doesn’t make sense. When a furry admires an erotic pose of a feline anthro character, they might say he has a cute tail. Maybe his human chest is very muscular. Maybe his clothes are so tight that they reveal all his muscles, all his curves…I don’t know if I was trying to be evocative just then, but I assure you I could do much better (and have done better, in my last furry work Where Carnivores Meet, #shamelessplug). While the furry fandom is sexually open, this doesn’t mean that everyone in it is sexual. Even if a furry does “paw off”[7] to an erotic art piece, that does not signify the person wants to go into a barn and have intercourse with a horse.

Myth #2: Furries have sex in fursuits. This one is almost laughable. When I hear this, I ask them how much they think a fursuit costs. Usually, they might say two or three hundred dollars. Then, I have the pleasure of telling them it can be upward of two or three thousand dollars. Most furries aren’t willing to cut holes in the fronts of their expensive suits for sex purposes. Fursuits are for social acting (see Keefur’s article). Yes, there are furries who have sex in fursuits, but probably not more than people who have sex in space suits. Yes, fetishes exist, but the furry fandom is not a fetish.

With all of this said, there are two further aspects of furry sexuality I would like to discuss. One is stereotypes. Despite the fact that furries do not rely on sexuality, furries do apply sexual stereotypes to some people based on their furry identity, or fursona. For example, if someone is a fox, they are typically considered to be submissive, hypersexual, teasing, and on the receiving end. Wolves are usually dominant sexually. Bears (as is similar to the LGBT term) are larger in weight and usually hairier. Sometimes, the sexual stereotype is loosely based on existing folklore and/or mythology. With foxes being more cunning in fables, and with “foxy” being a word to describe a lusting female, a fox furry is definitely considered more sexual than others. Other times, as with bears, the fursona describes the body type stereotypically. Note however that exceptions abound. I have seen foxes who are “tops,” bears who are skinny, and wolves who are submissive. Some furries actually get annoyed when they are labeled by their stereotypes, though this is usually a mild annoyance. I would argue that when choosing one’s fursona, it’s important to also understand the cultural connotations for those animals inside the furry fandom

For furries who are interested in anthropomorphic sex outside of art and actually wish they could explore anthropomorphic sex, there actually are options. There are fox tail butt plugs, werewolf dildos, and dragon penetrables. However, sites that sell these items usually label these products with names, such as “Rex the German Shepherd,” “Chance the Stallion,” and “Fenrir the Wolfdragon” (BadDragon website). These kinds of names personify the characters, separating them from animals, and bringing the toys back to “furry.”

Overall, it should be easy to see how sex does exist as an element of the furry fandom, though it is far from an exclusive one. It is tied loosely to different aspects of the fandom. Art and novels don’t require it; it is simply that the furry fandom is just so open with sexuality and sex that it is acceptable to discuss it freely.

[1] Since I’ve already come out of the closet as a gay man, can we call the furry’s coming out “coming out of the kennel?” I think this idea has great potential, and I now lay copyright to it.
[2] For some reason, I still get looks when I’m drinking a mojito, and my colleagues are drinking beer. Mojitos are manly drinks, right?
[3] To those particularly witty furries trying to make a dirty joke here, stop.
[4] To clarify on this, I find that most mainstream novels either entirely skip the sex scenes while alluding to them, such as, “He led me to his bedroom, and I flicked the lights off,” or more graphically describe the sex scene but through derogatory language, making it an unclean or taboo act.
[5] I chose to search for the word “fox” because foxes are simply awesome, and we’re not narcissistic at all.
[6] I say this, but I’m sure there are those laughing, saying, “Yes, we do!”
[7] The furry term for masturbation.

We at [adjective][species] have a wealth of furry data at our fingertips. Our primary source of information is the Furry Survey, an annual survey that has been running more or less continuously since 2008. The 2015 Furry Survey is currently open at www.furrypoll.com.

Makyo and I both run occasional [adjective][species] panels at conventions, which usually start with a broad demographic overview of furry. (From there we dive into certain topics in depth.) Here on the site we tend to mostly talk about specific topics, but it’s the general demographic data that often generates the most interest at the panels.

With that in mind, I thought I’d present some broad demographic data. I’ve adapted this from my Confuzzled 2015 panel. What follows is a snapshot of furry.

First: a note on the data. The Furry Survey is voluntary, which means that our dataset is self-selecting. It’s not possible to perform a census of the whole of furry, so we only know about furries who fill in the survey.

We can make some general comments about the quality of our data:

• Our dataset is large enough to provide consistency year in, year out. We don’t see big changes in furry demographics over time. Importantly this has been the case regardless of how the Furry Survey has been publicized and shared: from LiveJournal back in the day, through to Twitter, Reddit, and advertising on furry websites.
• Our data matches closely with the data collected online by the scientists at the International Anthropomorphic Research Project (IARP), with the exception that they are unable to collect data from minors (under 18).

It’s probably reasonable to guess that we collect data from ‘more engaged’ furries. Furries who are only peripherally involved with the community are probably less likely to fill in the survey. The same probably goes for older furries, because the responsibilities of age—work, family, whatnot—will naturally dilute the influence of furry for a lot of people.

Age

Furries have an average age of 23, with a peak at about 19, and a long tail of older furries.

Age distribution of furries.

The average age increased by only about a year between 2009 and 2013. This suggests that furry is growing, with new young furs joining the community and offsetting the natural ageing of the group. It also suggests that furries drop out as they get older, or at least become less likely to fill in the survey.

We can be confident that furry is growing by looking at the change in attendance at furry conventions.

Data from Wikifur

This growth rate isn’t large enough in itself to account for the consistency in furry’s age demographics over time. Therefore we think that older furries do tend to drop out of the community at a certain rate, which we can estimate: the half-life of a furry is something like 10 years.

Gender

Furry consistently shows an approximate 80/20 male/female split (read more here). This holds true whether you ask about sex or gender:

Furries, 2009 to 2013 by sex

 

Furries, 2009 to 2013 by gender

It’s well known that men and women often experience the same thing in different ways, and this is true within furry. For example, women are significantly less engaged with furry compared with men, and are also much more likely to be artists:

Proportion of furries who are artists, by gender

We also know that female furries are less likely to attend conventions, even considering that women may be a majority in the Dealer’s Den. This varies from con to con, and Anthrocon appears to be an exception, with a disproportionately high number female attendees (23%) in 2015.

Species

We have a terrific species visualization here on [a][s]. You can explore species popularity by sex, gender, and sexual orientation.

Click for interactive species data visualization

Sexual Deviance

Collectively, furries are evenly spread across the Kinsey spectrum, from heterosexuality to homosexuality.

Furries, 2009 to 2013 by sexual orientation – closer to red is more homosexual, blue heterosexual

It’s a remarkably even distribution. As you can see, furry is significantly more heterosexual than homosexual, a fact sometimes obscured by our 80/20 male/female split.

Furry Survey data shows that new furries are much more likely to be heterosexual, with an obvious trend towards homosexuality over time.

Years in the fandom vs. sexual orientation

Furries tend to re-evaluate their sexual preference in the first five years or so of joining the community. Read more about this phenomenon here.

Unusual sexual interests appear to be common in furry. The most striking of these is zoophilia—about one in six furries self-identify as a zoophile—but other sexual interests are also unusually visible.

It’s hard to say whether we are, collectively, engaging in a lot unusual sexual behaviour, or if we’re simply more open about it. I talked about this at my Confuzzled panel and got the same, excellent question from several people – how can we say if data on furry sexuality is unusual if we don’t have this data for the general population? (Alternate phrasing: how prevalent is zoophilia in the Women’s Institute?)

It’s well known that people will to deny sexual deviance when asked – consider that UK government statistical analysis estimates the proportion of homosexuals to be 6%, whereas just 1.5% identified as such on the latest UK census. Tolerance and openness about sex is one of the hallmarks of furry. It doesn’t mean that we are unusually sexually driven.

For example: sex appears to be more important to furry than it actually is. We ask furries about how important sex is to them personally (blue line), and how important sex is to others in the fandom (green line). As you can see, the collective furry guess is way out – sex isn’t as important to (other) furries as it seems.

(Note on the scary red line: this is the furry guess of the importance of sex as perceived by the public. It’s not what the public really thinks.)

Religion

Furries are largely areligious. Most of us are atheist or agnostic, and many more identify with something non-mainstream such as Pagan or as some bespoke “other”.

Furry by religion

About a quarter of furries identify as Christian, the most popular religion by far. For comparison, 71% of Americans, 67% of Canadians, and 60% of Brits identify as Christian.

We asked for more detail when furs responded “other”. Something broadly atheistic was the most common response by far. If you’re interested, you can explore the data (it’s kinda fun) here.

Psychological Wellbeing

The IARP have looked at furries and psychological wellbeing in some detail. This work includes a specific study that was performed at Anthrocon in 2013.

The key conclusion, which is supported by years of research and confirmed by the Anthrocon study is simple enough: “[furry] is not associated with any significant decrements in well-being (psychological, physical, or relationship), self-esteem, or sense of identity.”

(I thought it would be better to quote from the scientists, rather than drawing on Furry Survey data. Their conclusion is a rare one in the world of sociology and psychology, simple and pithy.)

The Furry Survey was founded by Klisoura, also one of the founders of [adjective][species]. The intent of [a][s] was, in part, to host the Furry Survey and be a home for presentation and analysis of the results.

A few things have changed around here since 2011 but that primary goal remains as strong as ever. We still host the Furry Survey, and we regularly publish analysis of data from there and elsewhere. We’re getting better too: the Furry Survey was revamped for 2015, and a peek at early results confirms that we will have a lot of interesting information on furry and furries in the future.

Those of you who attended my panel at Confuzzled will recall that I presented some preliminary results from the 2015 survey. As I said then, we will look at that data in detail here on [adjective][species], but only once the survey is closed at the end of this year. In the meantime, anyone who has yet to complete the Furry Survey can do so at www.furrypoll.com.

You can explore all the results from the Furry Survey, from 2009 to 2012, with our alpha Furry Survey Explorer. Be aware it may take a few minutes to load due to the wealth of data.

We at [adjective][species] have a wealth of furry data at our fingertips. Our primary source of information is the Furry Survey, an annual survey that has been running more or less continuously since 2008. The 2015 Furry Survey is currently open at www.furrypoll.com.

Makyo and I both run occasional [adjective][species] panels at conventions, which usually start with a broad demographic overview of furry. (From there we dive into certain topics in depth.) Here on the site we tend to mostly talk about specific topics, but it’s the general demographic data that often generates the most interest at the panels.

With that in mind, I thought I’d present some broad demographic data. I’ve adapted this from my Confuzzled 2015 panel. What follows is a snapshot of furry.

First: a note on the data. The Furry Survey is voluntary, which means that our dataset is self-selecting. It’s not possible to perform a census of the whole of furry, so we only know about furries who fill in the survey.

We can make some general comments about the quality of our data:

• Our dataset is large enough to provide consistency year in, year out. We don’t see big changes in furry demographics over time. Importantly this has been the case regardless of how the Furry Survey has been publicized and shared: from LiveJournal back in the day, through to Twitter, Reddit, and advertising on furry websites.
• Our data matches closely with the data collected online by the scientists at the International Anthropomorphic Research Project (IARP), with the exception that they are unable to collect data from minors (under 18).

It’s probably reasonable to guess that we collect data from ‘more engaged’ furries. Furries who are only peripherally involved with the community are probably less likely to fill in the survey. The same probably goes for older furries, because the responsibilities of age—work, family, whatnot—will naturally dilute the influence of furry for a lot of people.

Age

Furries have an average age of 23, with a peak at about 19, and a long tail of older furries.

Age distribution of furries.

The average age increased by only about a year between 2009 and 2013. This suggests that furry is growing, with new young furs joining the community and offsetting the natural ageing of the group. It also suggests that furries drop out as they get older, or at least become less likely to fill in the survey.

We can be confident that furry is growing by looking at the change in attendance at furry conventions.

Data from Wikifur

This growth rate isn’t large enough in itself to account for the consistency in furry’s age demographics over time. Therefore we think that older furries do tend to drop out of the community at a certain rate, which we can estimate: the half-life of a furry is something like 10 years.

Gender

Furry consistently shows an approximate 80/20 male/female split (read more here). This holds true whether you ask about sex or gender:

Furries, 2009 to 2013 by sex

 

Furries, 2009 to 2013 by gender

It’s well known that men and women often experience the same thing in different ways, and this is true within furry. For example, women are significantly less engaged with furry compared with men, and are also much more likely to be artists:

Proportion of furries who are artists, by gender

We also know that female furries are less likely to attend conventions, even considering that women may be a majority in the Dealer’s Den. This varies from con to con, and Anthrocon appears to be an exception, with a disproportionately high number female attendees (23%) in 2015.

Species

We have a terrific species visualization here on [a][s]. You can explore species popularity by sex, gender, and sexual orientation.

Click for interactive species data visualization

Sexual Deviance

Collectively, furries are evenly spread across the Kinsey spectrum, from heterosexuality to homosexuality.

Furries, 2009 to 2013 by sexual orientation – closer to red is more homosexual, blue heterosexual

It’s a remarkably even distribution. As you can see, furry is significantly more heterosexual than homosexual, a fact sometimes obscured by our 80/20 male/female split.

Furry Survey data shows that new furries are much more likely to be heterosexual, with an obvious trend towards homosexuality over time.

Years in the fandom vs. sexual orientation

Furries tend to re-evaluate their sexual preference in the first five years or so of joining the community. Read more about this phenomenon here.

Unusual sexual interests appear to be common in furry. The most striking of these is zoophilia—about one in six furries self-identify as a zoophile—but other sexual interests are also unusually visible.

It’s hard to say whether we are, collectively, engaging in a lot unusual sexual behaviour, or if we’re simply more open about it. I talked about this at my Confuzzled panel and got the same, excellent question from several people – how can we say if data on furry sexuality is unusual if we don’t have this data for the general population? (Alternate phrasing: how prevalent is zoophilia in the Women’s Institute?)

It’s well known that people will to deny sexual deviance when asked – consider that UK government statistical analysis estimates the proportion of homosexuals to be 6%, whereas just 1.5% identified as such on the latest UK census. Tolerance and openness about sex is one of the hallmarks of furry. It doesn’t mean that we are unusually sexually driven.

For example: sex appears to be more important to furry than it actually is. We ask furries about how important sex is to them personally (blue line), and how important sex is to others in the fandom (green line). As you can see, the collective furry guess is way out – sex isn’t as important to (other) furries as it seems.

(Note on the scary red line: this is the furry guess of the importance of sex as perceived by the public. It’s not what the public really thinks.)

Religion

Furries are largely areligious. Most of us are atheist or agnostic, and many more identify with something non-mainstream such as Pagan or as some bespoke “other”.

Furry by religion

About a quarter of furries identify as Christian, the most popular religion by far. For comparison, 71% of Americans, 67% of Canadians, and 60% of Brits identify as Christian.

We asked for more detail when furs responded “other”. Something broadly atheistic was the most common response by far. If you’re interested, you can explore the data (it’s kinda fun) here.

Psychological Wellbeing

The IARP have looked at furries and psychological wellbeing in some detail. This work includes a specific study that was performed at Anthrocon in 2013.

The key conclusion, which is supported by years of research and confirmed by the Anthrocon study is simple enough: “[furry] is not associated with any significant decrements in well-being (psychological, physical, or relationship), self-esteem, or sense of identity.”

(I thought it would be better to quote from the scientists, rather than drawing on Furry Survey data. Their conclusion is a rare one in the world of sociology and psychology, simple and pithy.)

The Furry Survey was founded by Klisoura, also one of the founders of [adjective][species]. The intent of [a][s] was, in part, to host the Furry Survey and be a home for presentation and analysis of the results.

A few things have changed around here since 2011 but that primary goal remains as strong as ever. We still host the Furry Survey, and we regularly publish analysis of data from there and elsewhere. We’re getting better too: the Furry Survey was revamped for 2015, and a peek at early results confirms that we will have a lot of interesting information on furry and furries in the future.

Those of you who attended my panel at Confuzzled will recall that I presented some preliminary results from the 2015 survey. As I said then, we will look at that data in detail here on [adjective][species], but only once the survey is closed at the end of this year. In the meantime, anyone who has yet to complete the Furry Survey can do so at www.furrypoll.com.

You can explore all the results from the Furry Survey, from 2009 to 2012, with our alpha Furry Survey Explorer. Be aware it may take a few minutes to load due to the wealth of data.

The International Anthropomorphic Research Project (IARP) have just published their report from their annual Anthrocon visit. You can see the full dataset and read Nuka’s write-up here.

It’s a real grab bag of information this year. The IARP have been around for nigh on ten years, and they have learned a lot about furry and furries. They have been able to build on that knowledge to explore some areas of the furry experience in detail, and this year’s Anthrocon study reflects that. They have looked at PCD (is it real?), the relationship between artists and furry consumers, therians, and other topics.

They have also looked at furry relationship status, and, yep… there are a lot of single guys out there.

Post-con depression

Anecdotally many furries suffer from post-con depression, a down period following immersion in a furry convention environment. Personally, I’d compare PCD with the depression that can follow a bout of the flu: a mild feeling of flatness, as if I’m not quite fully present in the world. The experience seems to be a common one.

But the IARP are scientists, and while anecdotes are useful, hard data is better. So they asked furries at Anthrocon to participate in a follow-up survey a few days later.

The results suggest that, yup, PCD is real, and it seems to last at least a week. Post-Anthrocon furries scored significantly lower on every test of psychological wellbeing considered by the IARP.

Figure courtesy IARP

The IARP will be following up on this in future studies. In the meantime we could all probably use a hug.

The relationship between artists & furry consumers

We know from previous research by the IARP that there are big demographic differences between the Dealer’s Den and the general population at a furry convention. This year the IARP have started to explore the differences between the two groups in more detail.

The biggest difference between the two groups is gender: furry is heavily male-dominated (75 to 80%), while the Dealer’s Den is mostly female:

Figure courtesy IARP

It’s not easy to explain why there is such a big difference. Previous data has shown that female furries, on average, identify with the community less strongly than male furries, and that female furries are less likely to attend conventions (although possibly not at Anthrocon, more on this in a moment). However it’s unknown whether this contributes to the disparity between artists and non-artists. The IARP have flagged this for future research.

Other differences between the Dealer’s Den and the general population are easier to understand. For example the artists are older, which makes sense given the time required to learn artistic skill and gain a reputation.

Interestingly, 35% of the artists in the Anthrocon Dealer’s Den do not identify as furries. This is undoubtedly a product of the size and engagement of the furry community: we are becoming a market. The sale of Fur Affinity to IMVU is another case where the furry audience is perceived to have value to a commercial enterprise.

Another sign that the value of the furry economy is becoming substantial: 32% of the artists in the Dealer’s Den said that their art is their sole source of income.

The IARP are interested in how the two groups – artists and consumers—interact, and they have built on some earlier research about behaviour and entitlement. Without going into detail, the data suggests that artists in furry are treated well. Very broadly:

• Artists feel they are treated reasonably.
• Furries think that artists are treated reasonably.
• But artists think that furries think that artists aren’t treated reasonably.

The last point is interesting, if a bit confusing on first glance. The IARP seem to regard it as being unimportant: on the whole, people aren’t very good at predicting how other people feel about something.

(If you are in any doubt about how to treat an artist with appropriate respect, take a look at our commissioning etiquette guide.)

Relationships

The IARP asked about relationship status, and you guessed it: single furry guys outnumber single furry girls by about a bazillion to one.

Furry singletons by gender. This figure created by me based on IARP results.

Therians

Therians are those who identify psychologically, spiritually, or physically with a non-human animal species*. The IARP have been looking into therianthropy over the past few years, and they have published some simple results showing differences between therian and non-therian populations within furry.

* This is the working IARP definition of a therian. A full 15% of self-described therians said that they “never” identify as a non-human species. So either some therians experience therianthropy differently… or some therians don’t know what a therian is. Like any label applied to humans, it’s imperfect.

The differences they found are about what you’d expect: therians are much more likely to identify with a species than non-therians, and that therians are much more likely to experience a “phantom tail”. This will form the platform for further IARP study.

An aside: one of the reasons I like furry so much is that it’s inclusive. You are a furry if you decide you are a furry. So therians are welcome and a therian can also be a furry. (A non-therian furry cannot be a therian.) Furry is equally welcoming to people from all sorts of disparate groups, from fans of My Little Pony, to puppy play fetishists. People from such different backgrounds and interests all define and contribute to our culture.

Our community is simultaneously broad and welcoming, yet close-knit and trusting. It’s remarkable.

A follow-up on gender

In a previous study, the IARP ran a focus group to explore the experiences of women at furry conventions. That study suggested that many women find furry to be an uncomfortable environment. The IARP were able to explore this further at Anthrocon, with some surprising results.

Firstly, the proportion of women attending Anthrocon is very high compared to surveys of other conventions: 23% female; 67% male; 10% genderqueer or non-binary. This is about 10% higher than at other furry conventions, based on data collected by the IARP and [adjective][species]*.

* Three conventions used for comparison, each with more than 1000 attendees: Furry Fiesta 2013, Eurofurence 2014, and Confuzzled 2015.

Curiously, Anthrocon appears to attract a higher proportion of women than the general furry population. Data collected online (by the Furry Survey and by the IARP) consistently reports than women make up 15 to 20% of furry. Data from non-Anthrocon conventions show a smaller proportion of women attending. Is Anthrocon special, perhaps owing to it’s status is the biggest convention?

Secondly, IARP data shows that men at Anthrocon feel as uncomfortable as women. This suggests that Anthrocon is, at least on a comparative level, a relatively gender-blind environment. That’s not to say that there aren’t issues related to gender within furry—some problems are to be expected in any group dominated by one gender, and furry is dominated by men—but we seem to be doing a pretty good job, at least at Anthrocon.

The IARP data shows one big difference in experiences between male and female furries: pornography. This is predictable, in that porn will mostly be targeted towards the male-dominated furry audience. It’s reasonable to expect that women in furry porn are more likely to be depicted as mere sex objects.

The tendency for heterosexual men to see women as sex objects is sometimes referred to as the “male gaze”. (Homosexual men similarly tend to sexualize other men.) While this isn’t a problem in itself, the idea that women—or some women—might sometimes be treated as mere objects (in real life) is a real problem. It’s understandable that women are less likely to be comfortable with pornography, furry or not, because it’s easy to link the porn to real-world sexism.

This isn’t to say that porn is inherently sexist, just that porn tends to objectify people in a way that wouldn’t be cool in the real world. The relatively modern idea of “porn for women” is intended to provide an alternative to “regular” porn (which by extension is porn “not for women”). I’d be curious to understand the differences in (furry) porn preferred by (furry) men and women, because it should give some insight into the differences between each group. Maybe women like their sex objects just as much as the men do?

The IARP will undoubtedly be exploring this one further. I know from discussions with Nuka that he is interested in how gender informs the furry experience. I’m looking forward to seeing where he and his group go next.

Gender politics can be complex and controversial, and the preceding paragraphs will be read by people with diverging points of view. I think it’s important and worth thinking about, and I’ve done my best to make a fair and flat analysis. If you feel I’ve got something wrong—as I have done in the past—please let me know in the comments.

In that spirit, I’ll close this review with some words from Nuka himself:

It is worth noting, as a final point, that these data are not meant to be prescriptive or to dictate what “ought” to be the case in the fandom. In no way are the data intending to suggest that proportions of men, women, and genderqueer are “wrong”, nor are they intended to suggest that any one group of furries are maliciously attempting to trivialize, stigmatize, or prevent another group from entering the fandom.

 

There is a lot more in the IARP data than I have covered. You can read the whole thing here.

The International Anthropomorphic Research Project (IARP) have just published their report from their annual Anthrocon visit. You can see the full dataset and read Nuka’s write-up here.

It’s a real grab bag of information this year. The IARP have been around for nigh on ten years, and they have learned a lot about furry and furries. They have been able to build on that knowledge to explore some areas of the furry experience in detail, and this year’s Anthrocon study reflects that. They have looked at PCD (is it real?), the relationship between artists and furry consumers, therians, and other topics.

They have also looked at furry relationship status, and, yep… there are a lot of single guys out there.

Post-con depression

Anecdotally many furries suffer from post-con depression, a down period following immersion in a furry convention environment. Personally, I’d compare PCD with the depression that can follow a bout of the flu: a mild feeling of flatness, as if I’m not quite fully present in the world. The experience seems to be a common one.

But the IARP are scientists, and while anecdotes are useful, hard data is better. So they asked furries at Anthrocon to participate in a follow-up survey a few days later.

The results suggest that, yup, PCD is real, and it seems to last at least a week. Post-Anthrocon furries scored significantly lower on every test of psychological wellbeing considered by the IARP.

Figure courtesy IARP

The IARP will be following up on this in future studies. In the meantime we could all probably use a hug.

The relationship between artists & furry consumers

We know from previous research by the IARP that there are big demographic differences between the Dealer’s Den and the general population at a furry convention. This year the IARP have started to explore the differences between the two groups in more detail.

The biggest difference between the two groups is gender: furry is heavily male-dominated (75 to 80%), while the Dealer’s Den is mostly female:

Figure courtesy IARP

It’s not easy to explain why there is such a big difference. Previous data has shown that female furries, on average, identify with the community less strongly than male furries, and that female furries are less likely to attend conventions (although possibly not at Anthrocon, more on this in a moment). However it’s unknown whether this contributes to the disparity between artists and non-artists. The IARP have flagged this for future research.

Other differences between the Dealer’s Den and the general population are easier to understand. For example the artists are older, which makes sense given the time required to learn artistic skill and gain a reputation.

Interestingly, 35% of the artists in the Anthrocon Dealer’s Den do not identify as furries. This is undoubtedly a product of the size and engagement of the furry community: we are becoming a market. The sale of Fur Affinity to IMVU is another case where the furry audience is perceived to have value to a commercial enterprise.

Another sign that the value of the furry economy is becoming substantial: 32% of the artists in the Dealer’s Den said that their art is their sole source of income.

The IARP are interested in how the two groups – artists and consumers—interact, and they have built on some earlier research about behaviour and entitlement. Without going into detail, the data suggests that artists in furry are treated well. Very broadly:

• Artists feel they are treated reasonably.
• Furries think that artists are treated reasonably.
• But artists think that furries think that artists aren’t treated reasonably.

The last point is interesting, if a bit confusing on first glance. The IARP seem to regard it as being unimportant: on the whole, people aren’t very good at predicting how other people feel about something.

(If you are in any doubt about how to treat an artist with appropriate respect, take a look at our commissioning etiquette guide.)

Relationships

The IARP asked about relationship status, and you guessed it: single furry guys outnumber single furry girls by about a bazillion to one.

Furry singletons by gender. This figure created by me based on IARP results.

Therians

Therians are those who identify psychologically, spiritually, or physically with a non-human animal species*. The IARP have been looking into therianthropy over the past few years, and they have published some simple results showing differences between therian and non-therian populations within furry.

* This is the working IARP definition of a therian. A full 15% of self-described therians said that they “never” identify as a non-human species. So either some therians experience therianthropy differently… or some therians don’t know what a therian is. Like any label applied to humans, it’s imperfect.

The differences they found are about what you’d expect: therians are much more likely to identify with a species than non-therians, and that therians are much more likely to experience a “phantom tail”. This will form the platform for further IARP study.

An aside: one of the reasons I like furry so much is that it’s inclusive. You are a furry if you decide you are a furry. So therians are welcome and a therian can also be a furry. (A non-therian furry cannot be a therian.) Furry is equally welcoming to people from all sorts of disparate groups, from fans of My Little Pony, to puppy play fetishists. People from such different backgrounds and interests all define and contribute to our culture.

Our community is simultaneously broad and welcoming, yet close-knit and trusting. It’s remarkable.

A follow-up on gender

In a previous study, the IARP ran a focus group to explore the experiences of women at furry conventions. That study suggested that many women find furry to be an uncomfortable environment. The IARP were able to explore this further at Anthrocon, with some surprising results.

Firstly, the proportion of women attending Anthrocon is very high compared to surveys of other conventions: 23% female; 67% male; 10% genderqueer or non-binary. This is about 10% higher than at other furry conventions, based on data collected by the IARP and [adjective][species]*.

* Three conventions used for comparison, each with more than 1000 attendees: Furry Fiesta 2013, Eurofurence 2014, and Confuzzled 2015.

Curiously, Anthrocon appears to attract a higher proportion of women than the general furry population. Data collected online (by the Furry Survey and by the IARP) consistently reports than women make up 15 to 20% of furry. Data from non-Anthrocon conventions show a smaller proportion of women attending. Is Anthrocon special, perhaps owing to it’s status is the biggest convention?

Secondly, IARP data shows that men at Anthrocon feel as uncomfortable as women. This suggests that Anthrocon is, at least on a comparative level, a relatively gender-blind environment. That’s not to say that there aren’t issues related to gender within furry—some problems are to be expected in any group dominated by one gender, and furry is dominated by men—but we seem to be doing a pretty good job, at least at Anthrocon.

The IARP data shows one big difference in experiences between male and female furries: pornography. This is predictable, in that porn will mostly be targeted towards the male-dominated furry audience. It’s reasonable to expect that women in furry porn are more likely to be depicted as mere sex objects.

The tendency for heterosexual men to see women as sex objects is sometimes referred to as the “male gaze”. (Homosexual men similarly tend to sexualize other men.) While this isn’t a problem in itself, the idea that women—or some women—might sometimes be treated as mere objects (in real life) is a real problem. It’s understandable that women are less likely to be comfortable with pornography, furry or not, because it’s easy to link the porn to real-world sexism.

This isn’t to say that porn is inherently sexist, just that porn tends to objectify people in a way that wouldn’t be cool in the real world. The relatively modern idea of “porn for women” is intended to provide an alternative to “regular” porn (which by extension is porn “not for women”). I’d be curious to understand the differences in (furry) porn preferred by (furry) men and women, because it should give some insight into the differences between each group. Maybe women like their sex objects just as much as the men do?

The IARP will undoubtedly be exploring this one further. I know from discussions with Nuka that he is interested in how gender informs the furry experience. I’m looking forward to seeing where he and his group go next.

Gender politics can be complex and controversial, and the preceding paragraphs will be read by people with diverging points of view. I think it’s important and worth thinking about, and I’ve done my best to make a fair and flat analysis. If you feel I’ve got something wrong—as I have done in the past—please let me know in the comments.

In that spirit, I’ll close this review with some words from Nuka himself:

It is worth noting, as a final point, that these data are not meant to be prescriptive or to dictate what “ought” to be the case in the fandom. In no way are the data intending to suggest that proportions of men, women, and genderqueer are “wrong”, nor are they intended to suggest that any one group of furries are maliciously attempting to trivialize, stigmatize, or prevent another group from entering the fandom.

 

There is a lot more in the IARP data than I have covered. You can read the whole thing here.

Guest post by Mando. Mando is a twenty-something writer slash editor from the land of pizza and mandolins. Music lover and music teacher with a degree in Modern Literature, he’s currently working on the Fragments of Life’s Heart anthology along with Munchkin and enjoying what the furry community has to offer.

Today’s guest post is a data visualization showing a breakdown of submissions to SoFurry! Feel free to mouse-over and explore the data further. It’s embedded below, but if you can’t see it there (some plugins, such as Privacy Badger, don’t play well with iframes), you can follow this link!

Guest post by Mando. Mando is a twenty-something writer slash editor from the land of pizza and mandolins. Music lover and music teacher with a degree in Modern Literature, he’s currently working on the Fragments of Life’s Heart anthology along with Munchkin and enjoying what the furry community has to offer.

Today’s guest post is a data visualization showing a breakdown of submissions to SoFurry! Feel free to mouse-over and explore the data further. It’s embedded below, but if you can’t see it there (some plugins, such as Privacy Badger, don’t play well with iframes), you can follow this link!

Furries Among Us is a recently published collection of essays looking at the furry fandom. It covers much the same ground as [adjective][species], and anyone who enjoys reading this site should take a look.

It’s a sizeable collection, with 16 essays by 16 authors, plus an introduction. On balance, the quality of the writing and editing is excellent, and there are some real highlights. It’s only available as a paperback, although the price is right: $8 in the United States, £5 in the UK, both via Amazon, and €8 in Germany via Fusselschwarm.

The collection has two purposes, which are slightly at odds with one another. It’s intended to be an introduction to the furry fandom for outsiders, and also a deep dive into the community for insiders. It balances these two goals about as well as I could imagine, but any reader is going to find significant parts of this essay collection to be of little interest.

Thurston Howl, the editor, has structured the book roughly into three equal parts. The first third, which is the weakest, is intended to be an introduction to furry and some of the foundations of the community. The second third covers some personal experiences and looks at a handful of topics in more detail. (Any of these essays would be a good fit for [adjective][species].) The final third consists of four essays from members of the International Anthropomorphic Research Project, and it’s this section that is really special, well worth the price of the whole on its own. But I’ll begin with the beginning.

The opening essay, by Nyareon, is titled The Furry Fandom, which she attempts to define and summarize. I know full well from writing many dozens of essays here in [a][s] that her task—define “furry”—is just about impossible. The problem is that there is a counterexample to nigh on anything that you might choose to define as “furry”. Nyareon is stuck with making broad statements that aren’t really that informative: “The word “Furry” not only relates to the characters themselves, but also to fans…“.

It’s easy enough to find technical errors and inconsistencies in Nyareon’s essay—there are a few—but it’s still a good working definition of “furry” and introduction to the fandom. She is tackling a slippery topic, and does a good job of balancing the need for accuracy with the desire to say anything definitive at all.

Nyareon’s introductory essay is followed by a couple more pieces designed to give an overview of furry. Shoji takes a broad look at how furries socialize, and Hypetaph draws a parallel between furry and folk groups.

Hypetaph’s essay in particular is an intelligent and informed look at how many folk groups develop internal norms of language and behaviour, and how furry shows similar traits. However both essays provide background information that is completely unnecessary for anyone familiar with furry. This problem hamstrings most of the articles in first part of the collection: they are written for an audience that is unfamiliar with furry yet interested enough to buy an essay collection on the topic – an audience I suspect doesn’t exist.

I can’t imagine anyone completely new to furry reading much past Nyareon’s opening essay, and if they do they’ll find the following essays to be covering much the same ground. The essays all stand alone but of course they’re not presented that way in Furries Among Us, and so they tend to state and restate the obvious (to a furry insider). To give you an idea, Furries Among Us defines “yiff” three times.

This appears to be a conscious editing decision by Thurston Howl, and I respect his decision to let each of his essayists speak in their own voice. (The changes in tone between each of the essays is one of the strengths of the collection: the variety adds richness to the stories being told.) I’m not sure he could have enforced a better flow from essay to essay without undermining each author’s writing. So the repetition of basic information we furries already know—which is most apparent in these opening three essays—may simply be a necessary weakness of the structure Thurston has chosen for Furries Among Us.

Two meaty contributions follow, [adjective][species] contributor Kyell Gold writes on furry erotica in his usual approachable and friendly voice, and his essay meets his usual high standards. This is followed by Fred Patten’s excellent and comprehensive piece on furry publishing, a reprint of one that appeared on Dogpatch Press back in February (Part 1, Part 2). Curiously, Fred doesn’t mention the publisher of Furries Among Us, Thurston Howl Publications.

Thurston Howl himself contributes the next essay, a slight and lighthearted review of sex in the fandom. This essay feels a bit like a late addition, as if Thurston wanted to broach the topic somewhere in his collection somehow and wasn’t able to find a contributor who would do so. We have all read versions of Thurston’s piece many times before – the Uncle Kage approach, if you like. Basically he shoots down a few straw men then concludes that sex isn’t really important to furry at all. The writing is fine, but it feels a bit cheap next to some of the deeper essays in the collection, and the jocular tone feels a bit dismissive of sex and sexuality, a big part of the furry experience for many of us. ([adjective][species] will be republishing this essay later this week.)

The next essay is a real treat, although perhaps not in the way the author, Takaa, intended. It’s titled My Experience with Furry Online Dating, and true to its premise we follow Takaa through his experiences hunting love, from his registration at Pounced at age 18 to his current 23. His youth shows, and his hopeful if naïve fumblings around various furry websites is charming and delightful. The essay is supposed to be about furry dating, but it ends up being more about Takaa himself. It’s impossible not to smile as he falls in love, has his heart broken, and bravely blunders on. I suspect that, looking back at this essay, Takaa at age 30 will be mortified. One hopes by age 40 he will rediscover its credulous charm.

The real meat of the collection follows Takaa’s piece. The final nine essays are the best reason to buy this collection. The essays in the first half are a little erratic in style and quality, and are not always written with the engaged furry reader in mind. There are no such concerns with what follows: five essays on various topics by furry writers, plus by four excellent essays by the scientists of the IARP.

I hope readers of this piece, and of course the writers themselves, will forgive me if I quickly gloss over the five furry pieces. There is one on art by Zambuka, one on music by Roo, one on fursuiting by Keefur, and one each on conventions by Corvin Dallas & Zantal Scalie. They are all well worth your time, and it’s this part that really demonstrates the impressive collection of writers Thurston has attracted. There is real breadth and depth in these pieces. I will make special mention of the piece on music by Roo (who also chairs Camp Feral and runs the Fuzzy Notes Podcast) – it’s a terrific read, the work of someone with no small writing talent.

The final four pieces are written by the four PhDs who make up the core of the International Anthropormorphic Research Project. There is a short essay by Dr Kathy Gerbasi, who was the primary author on the first formal scientific paper on furries back in 2007, which serves as an introduction to the IARP.

This is followed by a long essay by Nuka, aka Dr Courtney Plante (aka occasional [adjective][species] contributor), giving a comprehensive review of the data he and the IARP team have gathered over the past decade or so. Nuka draws heavily on his discussions already published on the IARP website, so there may not be much value if you’re a student of his work there. If not, this is a terrific review of the current state of furry science. It suffers a little in comparison with what Nuka has published on the IARP website as his Furries Among Us essay doesn’t include any figures, but it is still both readable and comprehensive.

Dr Stephen Reysen’s essay looks at furry from a social identity perspective. This is another terrific piece, full of sharp insights into furry, backed up by research and written in an approachable fashion. Of all the essays collected in Furries Among Us, this was the one I personally found to be the most rewarding. It offers a disinterested perspective on furry values, and the psychology of our group membership. In many ways it echoes Hypetaph’s earlier essay on the genesis of furry community norms, but from an “outside” rather than inside perspective.

Finally, Dr Sharon Roberts has a piece on furry’s status as a stigmatized group. She takes a different tack from her fellow scientists, writing a personal story instigated by the question “How do you know that furries are marginalized?”.

Dr Roberts goes on to discuss a few public examples of furries in the media, and how furries sometimes get treated by outside groups. She contrasts this furries and furry behaviour, which she characterizes as fun, inclusive, and positive. But more interestingly, she tells the story of how she was won over by furries, starting with her first experience in late 2011.

It’s pretty obvious that over the past four years or so, Dr Roberts has become protective of furries, and has become worried about our collective welfare. She is outraged by the lazy sexualization of furries in shows like American Dad and CSI (“Almost all the inclusion of furries in media and popular culture incorporates blatant sexual activity…“); she is quick to liken the chlorine incident at last year’s MFF to terrorism (“…chlorine gas is a banned substance for use in war”); she thinks that furries are treated poorly on Second Life (“…reminiscent of the Holocaust…“); she feels that her research is trivialized by the scientific community (“I was being dismissed potentially because of the nature of the topic…“). It’s nice to feel cared for I guess, but it does feel like she senses more danger than is actually apparent. Or that she wants to give furries a big hug to keep the bad man away. Or to put it another way: it’s okay mum, we’re old enough to cross the road and play in the park on our own. But thanks for caring!

Dr Roberts’s piece is a fitting conclusion to a fine collection of essays. It will leave you with a smile on your face.

In general, any criticisms I’ve offered in this review are dwarfed by the quantity and quality of writing on offer. Furries Among Us is, ultimately, a dense, deep and readable exploration of the furry community.

Editor’s note: the following article can safely be considered Not Safe For Work, as it consists of a review of a film with more than a little sex, and includes the cover of the film, which may not be appropriate for workplace viewing.

The Beast, or La Bête, is comfortably the most pornographic non-porn film I have ever seen.

The plot could summed up as “extended dream sequence in which a woman has sex with a monster, plus barely enough filler to make the whole thing make vague sense”. You may decide that description is enough for you to seek out The Beast—it was for me—however I caution you that you will end with more than you bargained for.

I watched The Beast a couple of weeks ago. Since then I have spent most of my time trying not to think about it too much.

Before I delve into the specifics, I’ll add that I watched The Beast following a 3am alarm call that morning, and immediately following the Londonfurs Boat Party. I was tired and drunk, as were the group of furries joining me. I can say that even in my emotionally deadened state, I found The Beast to be genuinely shocking in its content and explicitness, and I know I speak for the grown-up, hardened, seen-it-all-before furries around me.

So there you have it: caveat emptor. Yet I can’t help but think I’ve encouraged more people than I’ve deterred.

Here’s the blurb from the back of my DVD:

“Bestial dreams interrupt the venal plans of a French aristocrat attempting to save a crumbling mansion by marrying off his deformed son to a horny American heiress.”

 

There is a vague threat that our aristocrat will lose his mansion unless his son marries some nominated American by such-and-such a date, at the hand of a certain cardinal. There is an attempt at suspense at whether the cardinal turns up in time. Spoiler: he does, but it’s boring and nobody cares. So it’s a ponderous and actually rather boring race against time (like Speed), interspersed with animal genitalia (unlike Speed).

On arrival, our heiress stumbles across a mating pair of horses. The horse sex is shot very explicitly. This foreshadows what is to come, and it also represents the filmmakers opening gambit in what I like to think is his attempt to walk as close as possible to the line where his film would be outright banned. Can’t show an erect penis? Well then, viewer, enjoy this ejaculating horse penis in ultra-closeup slo-mo.

If you’ve spent much time on a farm, then you’ve likely seen all this before, although you may still be surprised by the attention to detail in the cinematography and editing. If you haven’t spent much time on a farm, you may find this to be all a bit bracing. As a friend said to me the next day: “I didn’t sleep much last night; when I closed my eyes all I could see was pulsating horse vagina.”

Our heiress snaps a Polaroid of the relevant horse bits in action, and casually reviews the photo on a regular basis for the rest of the film. At this point we spend a bit of time with the human characters.

This section is boring, boring even for an arty French movie. The entire film is only 98 minutes long, but this section feels so much longer. Remarkably it manages to be boring despite regular nudity and sex, and some really unpleasant/shocking moments.

Example one: two of the hotel staff have furtive sex, on several occasions, while the woman’s two small children are in the room.

Example two: the priest has an entourage of two young teenage boys, clearly his lovers. Fondling and kissing ensues.

Anyway, after what feels like several hours but must be only 30 minutes or so, our characters get sleepy while waiting for the arrival of the cardinal. While sleeping, our heiress dreams of having sex with the titular beast. The dream continues for some time.

This is the section that skips merrily past any possible boundary of good taste. The beast sports a sizeable animal member, which is basically permanently erect and continually ejaculating.

(I can’t recall ever seeing a film with so much semen. The only contender I can think of is Freddy Got Fingered, which (if I recall correctly) ends with Rip Torn being bathed in elephant semen. Impressive, sure, but that film is basically a tame comedy of manners next to The Beast.)

Our heiress and the beast proceed to engage in a long series of sex acts, again with consideration for what might almost-but-not-quite be illegal to film. So our beast’s penis gets a lot of screentime, as does our naked heiress. They obviously couldn’t quite show penetration (they get as close as possible), so we get just about everything but.

Every few shots, the editor cuts to a shot of wind rustling through foliage. I can’t imagine why they are added, but for the viewer they act as a chance to catch your breath, and give you just enough time to mentally relax before you’re assaulted with another imaginative porny clinch.

Finally it ends with the beast’s death, and the heiress wakes to discover that her betrothed has also expired. She then runs around the mansion naked for a while, before the cardinal finally turns up, the credits roll, and we can all start dealing with the problem of how to make eye contact with our fellow film-watchers.

The general premise behind The Beast seems to be that men are in danger—or perhaps civilisation itself—is in danger if we succumb to our “beastly desires”. The cardinal says as much in the closing scenes, and as far as I can tell this is the unreflective theme of the film.

Women, it implies, are temptresses there to inflame men from a logical, thoughtful state, into a being that is a mere animal. There are three women in the film, and two of them are basically permanently horny (the other is the heiress’s governor). They are turned on by anything male, including the men in the film, the horse at the start, and—on more than one occasion—bed knobs.

The idea seems to be that women inflame the passion of men, leading to the men’s downfall. This might be unprofessional behaviour (in the case of a servant), loss of standing in society (in the case of our deformed aristocrat), or indeed death (in the case of the beast).

This is surprisingly persistent theme in some corners of culture, and I’m sure it’s one of interest to gender studies students. I recall a Harlan Ellison short story called All the Birds Come Home to Roost, written around the time that The Beast was made, in which the narrator meets all his former girlfriends, inevitably culminating in the nightmare of his first, dysfunctional relationship. The reader is left with the impression that the narrator barely survived that relationship, and has recovered over time, but will lose control of his better self in the presence of his ex. (See also: Ron Swanson.)

The Beast doesn’t have the nuance of All The Birds, or indeed Parks & Recreation, and it’s hard to avoiding reading it as a warning against the dangers of female sexuality. It’s a remarkably regressive and moralizing perspective for a film that is as explicit as anything I’m aware of in 2015, never mind on release in 1975.

So The Beast might arguably be accused of being sexist, although it probably gets a pass for its vivid depictions of female sexuality and the era in which is was made. I am less inclined to overlook its racism.

There are two black characters in the film, one of which (the heiress’s driver) I’m going to ignore as he barely appears. The other black character is the male servant who is seen having sex on a couple of occasions. His member is the only human penis on display in The Beast, and undoubtedly the actor was hired (in part) with this in mind. He is seen fully naked and semi-erect a few times, and—as you may have guessed—he is well proportioned.

It’s notable that the only penises in the film are those of our black character and those of the two animals – the horse at the beginning, and of course the beast. Both the horse and the beast are equally black, and it clear enough that our black man is supposed to be more bestial than the logical, controlled white male cast members. And as we all know, the idea that black people are less human than their white counterparts is a persistent racist theme. The fact that The Beast‘s racial politics are a product of their time doesn’t mean that The Beast isn’t racist.

But in the end, while I think that’s a fair criticism, it’s not an important one. The Beast is nobody’s idea of a worthy piece of art, and its probably not worth 98 minutes of your time either. It’s cultural ephemera: curious but pointless. Even with the presence of an animal-person and an upfront attitude towards sex, it’s not interesting enough for me to recommend on any level. Not even to furries.

This article was originally published in June 2012.

There is a lot of cub porn out there.

Discussions around the topic tend to be highjacked by those making the biggest noise, either pro or con. Extreme viewpoints tend to attract extreme reactions, which produces a familiar deathspiral of invective. Such conversations tend to shed a lot of heat and precious little light.

In furry, such drama tends to appear whenever unusual sexual practices or identities are discussed – zoophilia or coprophilia for example. I speculated in a recent article that the haters are often closeted versions of the object of their hate. I think this might also apply to someone who is anti-cub porn, however it’s a more complex issue from a moral, legal, and ethical perspective.

There is certainly a disconnect between the prevalence of cub porn and the level of conversation. On sites where it is allowed (and even sometimes when it is not), it’s ubiquitous. A full 4.4% (out of 650,000) of posts on e621.net* are tagged “cub”. Yet attraction to underage characters is discussed as if it existed in the extreme margins of furry.

* As of July 2015.

The prevalence of cub porn suggests that a significant minority of furries are paedophiles. Or, to use a less inflammatory phrase, many furries are sexually attracted to underage characters.

Paedophilia is considered to be a paraphilia (i.e. a fetish) rather than a sexual orientation. A sexual orientation is usually assessed based on three criteria:

1. Affectional orientation (who we emotionally bond with)
2. Sexual fantasy orientation (who we fantasize about)
3. Erotic orientation (who we prefer to have sex with)

Paedophilia fails on the conflict between the first and third points: to have sex with a child, even consensual sex, you must lack regard for their emotional health.

It is, of course, illegal to be a practising paedophile. Child pornography is also illegal in most countries. The legality of furry cub porn is less clear.

The United States, EU and Australia have bans on simulated child pornography, however the legitimacy of such laws is mostly untested. The strongest flaw with such laws is probably their failure to define at which point an image becomes illegal, as cleverly explained by William Saletan writing in Slate (full article here):

I’m now going to depict an adult and a minor having sex. The adult is represented by the character on the left. The minor is represented by the character on the right. Here is my depiction:

&i

Have I just committed a crime punishable by 10 years in jail?

 

The furry world has reacted to such laws, preventing or restricting the hosting or sale of sexually explicit images with underage characters.

• The administrators of Fchan have banned cub porn based on a conservative interpretation of such laws.
• Permission to sell (the now defunct) Softpaw Magazine had been denied at Further Confusion and Eurofurence, partly due to legal uncertainty.
• The largest furry website, Fur Affinity, had taken a more liberal approach to cub porn until 2010, when their payment processor cited it as a reason to cancel the site’s account.

However the fact remains that cub porn is common and easy to find. Inkbunny is a competitor to FA that has grown quickly in membership in recent times, driven in part by its acceptance of cub porn. There are also dedicated sites such as CubCentral.org*. Publications such as Softpaw are openly available for purchase from vendors such as Rabbit Valley.

* July 2015 update: CubCentral was closed earlier this year following the founder’s death.

There is demand for cub porn, principally, because some people are sexually attracted to underage characters.

Some people are sexually attracted to children too. The silent majority of such people who don’t act on their impulses – the good paedophiles – are often forced to manage their sexual impulses without any support. Dr James Cantor (@JamesCantorPhD), a psychologist, associate professor at the University of Toronto, and editor-in-chief of Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment refers to such people as “gold star paedophiles”.

Dr Cantor has led research that has shown strong evidence that paedophiles are born, not made: MRI tests have shown that paedophiles have impaired communication between different regions in the brain; they perform more poorly on various tests of brain function; they tend to be shorter; they are three times more likely to be left-handed or ambidextrous. As he puts it, one cannot choose to not be a paedophile, but one can choose to not be a child molester. He authored an article in late June 2012 for CNN (here) that gives a good summary of the science.

The struggles of gold-star paedophiles have also been highlighted on occasion by sex columnist and ethicist Dan Savage (@fakedansavage). Savage echoes Dr Cantor’s opinion (this excerpt from his 4 February 2010 column):

We should acknowledge the existence of “good pedophiles,” people who are burdened with a sexual interest in children but who possess the moral sense to resist acting on that interest.

 

Anyone openly identifying as a paedophile can expect hatred. Bruce Rind, assistant professor of psychology at Temple University and high-profile researcher into the effects of child sex abuse, calls it “America’s current insane moral panic”. This panic makes it difficult for paedophiles to seek help and advice, such that they may go through life without acting on their impulses.

For furries with such impulses, cub porn provides a resource for sexual release that does no harm. (This is not the case for anyone consuming real-world child pornography, as they are providing demand for the images. This is true even if the images are ‘free’: as we all know, the cachet provided by attention on the internet can encourage people to engage in all sorts of behaviour.) Accordingly, exposure to cub porn may reduce the risk of destructive behaviour in the future.

There is also a free speech argument for cub porn, as espoused by the FA administrators before their hand was forced by their payment processor. At the core of that argument is that cub porn is enjoyed by non-paedophiles: furries who imagine themselves as the child, or perhaps furries who fondly remember experimenting with sex at a young age.

From a moral standpoint, cub porn is not a special case in the furry world. Many illegal or immoral acts are shown in furry porn for the purposes of sexual gratification. Examples include rape, mutilation, and murder, none of which are objectively worse than the rape of a child.

The ‘stepping stone’ argument – that exposure to cub porn may lead to a fantasy life that may allow a paedophile to consider the real possibility of raping a child – is applicable. The logic is similar to the argument against comics depicting rape (that they provide a ‘how-to’ for prospective rapists), or the argument that cannabis is a ‘gateway’ to more dangerous drugs.

However the ‘stepping-stone’ argument is flawed: people masturbating to images of child sex abuse aren’t necessarily abusers. However abusers will be predisposed towards viewing such images, just as violent people are drawn towards violent video games. In the case of cub porn, abusers and gold-star paedophiles alike will consume the images, which means that a high(er) proportion of cub porn consumers will be abusers. However the images are not creating abusers: as outlined earlier, it’s likely that they are reducing the risk.

The ‘stepping-stone’ argument is a simple case of confusion of cause and effect. Paedophiles are attracted to cub porn; cub porn does not create paedophiles.

The legality of cub porn is a grey area in most parts of the world, and I am not qualified to give legal advice. However I see four ethical arguments for the continued existence of creative, artistic, and explicit cub porn:

Firstly, there is no evidence to link illegal behaviour with consumption of art depicting illegal behaviour.

Secondly, a ban on cub porn would deprive the responsible consumers of the art.

Thirdly, the art may reduce the incidence of child molestation by providing an outlet for those who are sexually attracted to children.

And finally, there are already ad hoc communities of cub-porn lovers brought together around sites like CubCentral. If such groups are rejected, they will demonize the mainstream using the sort of language common to any flamewar on the subject. This language will become normal within the group, emboldening more extreme members. And in an environment where extremists are tolerated, destructive behaviour – such as consumption of real-world child pornography – is more likely to be accepted.

Groups of cub-porn lovers will be exposed to a broader and more moderate range of opinions as happy members of the general furry population. Extreme behaviour in such a moderate group will be discouraged, and more vulnerable members will find it easier to resist potentially destructive behaviour. More paedophiles will keep their gold star.

Acceptance of cub porn makes for a better furry community.

 

Further reading on [a][s]:

• A review of the legality of cub porn

Around the end of last month, Fur Affinity updated its advertising policy to include “mature” ads on pages that included adult art and writing. The backlash came immediately, which is par for the course whenever FA rolls out something new. Some users and artists distanced themselves from the site—if they didn’t leave outright—and more than a few furs tweeted their displeasure. The Fur Affinity staff responded by rolling back the ads to retool the mechanism that serves ads, and eventually dropping the program entirely. I think this is a good thing; it’s very unlikely they would ever get the community on board with hard-core porn banners with explicit language.

It’s fascinating to me that after all this time, most websites still haven’t found a better way to make money with their content than ad revenue. I have a ton of sympathy for websites struggling to be profitable, but I also have absolutely no interest in being forced to see a bunch of advertisements for stuff I have no intention of buying. This goes double for ads that include flashing bright colors, sound that can’t be turned off, motion or any other mechanism they can think of to force me to pay attention to them instead of the content I’m trying to view in the first place.

Fur Affinity (and IMVU, its parent company) is going to be in trouble if their decision is to be more aggressive with their ads in the future. It does nothing to dispel the notions that many furs had about FA being acquired in the first place—that the site has been taken out of community hands and put into the control of outside interests that see its users more as commodities. Of course IMVU needs to find a way to at least make FA cost-neutral; they’re in the business of making money, and I doubt they’d tolerate any venture that couldn’t at least pay for its own operation. I totally get that.

However, it’s my opinion that a website that relies on advertising revenue to make its profits compromises the value of its content by making it increasingly painful to view it through a thicket of revenue-generating distractions. This might be a slippery slope argument, but I could see Fur Affinity quickly becoming more trouble than it’s worth to navigate, stuffed with annoying (at best) and virus-laden (at worst) banner that make it almost impossible to have a good experience viewing community-generated adult material. Forcing users to tolerate ads they find distasteful and irrelevant is no way to make a living.

Here’s the thing, though. We browsers tend to forget that we live in a capitalist society where nothing is really free. If we’re not paying for sites and services on the web with money, we’re paying for it in some other way. Our payment could be the time it takes to navigate around pop-up or pop-under ads. It could be the attention banner ads draw from us. It could be the personal information we give those sites, where the owners turn right around and sell it to third parties who use that data to target ads much more efficiently.

It would be a good idea for us, as readers, to think about how we pay for the sites we visit. Every website has to make its money somehow—through charity donations, or a paywall, or ads, or our information. Once we figure out how a website charges for its services, we can then make an informed decision on if we think that payment is fair.

Like most Internet-savvy people, I fortify my browsing experience with Flash blockers and anti-adware apps. I’ve been burned before by Flash ads that automatically download viruses to my computer and I’m not interested in taking chances with that anymore. If a site shows me unobtrusive and potentially interesting ads, I consider it fair payment for the content. The Ad Blocker comes down. In some cases where I feel like I get enough value from a site and I’m given the chance, I’ll just pay for access.

That’s what I did with writing.com, a site that had plagued me with viruses a few time. I can’t direct people there in good conscience, even though there’s a small community of good writers and fun stories in their choose-your-own-adventure section. That part of the site is the dirty sewer though, and the operators can only get fairly disreputable businesses to run ads for those pages. Because the content is so fetishy (really, SO fetishy), only porn sites and questionable businesses will pay to advertise there. It’s either put up with those awful ads or pay for access; since I love the interactive stories and I’ve been going there for years now, it’s a better choice for me to pay with my pocketbook.

I believe FA is in much the same position here. There are all kinds of terrible stuff in the adult section, from hard vore, watersports, scat-play and Sonic fan art (just kidding, please don’t hate me Sonic fans). I’m fairly sure that they would have a lot of trouble getting companies outside of the community to advertise on those pages, and home-grown services probably can’t match the ad rates they would get from “professional” places.

So they’re stuck. If FA is going to be a furry site run by a non-furry company with the aim of making at least enough money to break even, it’s either going to have to roll out a formal payment plan, step up an aggressive advertising policy or trade our personal information. There might be other options, but those are the three I see being the most viable.

Instead of reflexively shouting down any attempt FA makes to raise revenue, maybe we should sit back and think about what we would be willing to pay for our porn-browsing experience. A small monthly fee? Ads that aren’t so terrible? Our sensitive data? Once we have an answer, it might be a good idea to let the FA staff know so they can make better decisions. We actually have the chance to barter with the site operator for what we think the service is worth; that’s not something a lot of audiences get. Using the opportunity to make the site better would be the best thing to do.

I know that Dragoneer has his detractors, and I’m sure they have good reasons. His handling of the site has not been perfect. But I have a lot of sympathy for him; it can’t be easy to answer the mandates of IMVU and deal with a base of users who are vocally hostile. He’s suddenly found himself in between the demands of capitalism and a user-base that could care less about them. It’s going to be very difficult to navigate a way through it.

Furry is still young, but we’re all getting older, year by year.

Doug Winger’s death from emphysema last week was notable not only for his cherished and unique contributions to furry, but also for the fact he died from an age-related illness. In this he is, as he always seemed to be, ahead of the curve.

Furry and furries are ageing. In the coming years and decades, age-related illnesses and deaths will cease being rare or notable. If furry became a unique phenomenon somewhere around the late 1970s, then the young adults who founded the fledgling community are well on their way to becoming senior citizens.

Doug Winger, at 62 years old, died young. He was a couple of decades younger than the average life expectancy for an American male. He isn’t the first high-profile furry to die of an age-related illness, but he’s one of only a handful.

If we look at some of the (living) high-profile founding members of furry, we can get an idea of the upper end of the furry age spectrum:

• Fred Patten is 74
• Mark Merlino is 62
• Rod O’Riley is 50
• Reed Waller is 65

Your humble correspondent, for the record, is 40.

Forty is about the age where the likely cause of death changes from misadventure or suicide, to heart disease or cancer. It is also, traditionally, the point at which someone might have a mid-life crisis.

A mid-life crisis is essentially a mortality crisis, and you can enjoy one at whatever age suits you. It can occur once you are emotionally mature enough to understand that life is short and death is inevitable. It might be helped along by a reminder of death: perhaps the slow failing of your own body, perhaps the news of the death of a member of your community.

A mortality crisis, at mid-life or elsewhere, is not necessarily a bad thing. I’d argue that it is usually a good thing, although of course this depends on the person. An older person might try to reclaim their youth, perhaps by buying a sportscar and running off with the secretary (the bad version), or maybe by finding a new enjoyment in life on the basis that it’s fleeting (the good version). The good versions are much more common than the bad versions, but of course you tend not to hear about them.

I’ll give you an example of a good mortality crisis: a furry friend of mine, upon reaching midlife, realised that good physical health isn’t permanent. He had always liked the idea of gaining serious amounts of muscle, and figured that it was now or never. Fast-forward a few years and he’s deadlifting some 400 lbs, is feeling much happier with himself (and has undoubtedly picked up a few admirers along the way).

Life is, essentially, a struggle. It’s not realistic to expect to be able to snap your fingers and change, and it’s very easy to float along without really asserting yourself on the world around you. A mortality crisis, for many people, is a helpful force.

We furries are lucky, because our community is diverse enough to include both young and old. It used to be that way for all humans, until the industrial revolution came along and we started to congregate in big cities. Now, most people create communities of peers, meaning that as they age they hang around an extended group of friends from their school or university days. This means that their peer groups tend to be monocultural: same socio-economic background, same beliefs, same age.

There is a lot of research showing the extent to which we are influenced by our friends. Famously, we are much more likely to be overweight if our friends are overweight. In a monocultural peer group, it’s easy enough to imagine how this might happen, and this is confirmed by the research: we copy our friends’ habits and lifestyle. It’s difficult to be the outlier, and so we tend to regress towards our peer group’s mean.

I’d argue that a monocultural peer group inhibits personal growth, because such a group innately lacks heroes and role models. If everyone is at around the same level, there is limited peer-group influence to improve. And a lack of exposure to different age groups is also limiting: those without young friends may fail to understand the struggles that young people can face, and those without old friends may never learn to approach death in a positive way.

In a group where everyone is the same age, everyone starts to suffer from age-related illnesses at around the same time. If members of the group haven’t been exposed to ageing and death to any significant extent, then they may lack the resources to manage their new exposure to mortality. This can lead to the bad, running-away sort of mid-life crisis, as well as creating a whole bunch of other personal challenges.

We furries are, collectively, exposed to age-related illnesses through the older members of our community. Doug Winger’s death is in no way a good thing, but the inevitability of some furry community death is a good thing, at least because we are exposed to death’s realities and inevitability.

Doug’s art, for better or for worse, couldn’t fail but touch anyone who saw it. For most of us, this is the only relationship we had with him: completely impersonal and one-sided. For us, his death serves a useful function, in that it reminds us of the value of our community, that we all get to spend exactly one year at every age, that we are the oldest we have ever been right now, and that we will never again be younger than we are right now.

For those who knew Doug personally, I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say that I’m sorry for your loss. We understand that your life has irrevocably changed, and changed for the worse. And we understand that we, too, will eventually also lose our loved ones. We promise to make the most of the short time we have.

Vale Doug Winger.

No pressure! (Art by Mandi Tremblay)

Hey folks!  Have you taken this year’s Furry Poll?

If not, you still have quite a bit of time, the year’s only half over!  Remember that you can take it once every year.  If you’ve already taken it this year, relax: no need to face RandomWolf like that again.  If you haven’t yet, don’t worry!  It’s a painless process, promise.  And remember, there are no wrong answers :o)

Click here to head to the survey!

This article was originally published in March, 2012. In the wake of another death of a member of the fandom, we’re reposting a few articles on remembering our lost.

If we accept the fact that the furry subculture, the fandom as a cohesive group of somewhat like-minded individuals, has only existed for about thirty years, then we have available to us a growing and expanding membership at the beginning of what I hope to be a long thread of human society. We’re still in that bright, almost expansionist era of our creation where we are doing out level best to create more than we can consume. We bring in new members not only through the shared interest in anthropomorphics, but also through both the vibrancy of our existence and the social currency of our creative output. Furry, such as it is, is on the rise.

We are still young though, there’s no getting around that.

Thirty years, in the grand scheme of things isn’t really all that long of a time. The United States has lasted eight times that long, Christianity approaching 70 times, and, according to some, the universe almost 200 times that long, and that number is considered very, very small by many others. Our vibrancy and social currency is strong, but we are not the only group on the rise out there. In western culture, the anime fan base is taking a similar track, as have countless other subcultures and fandoms before it. Our output is copious and so, in turn, is our social currency, but they are not out of proportion.

Our fandom is young, and given the median age of about twenty years old, we are a fandom made up of many, many young people. Really, then, it’s no surprise that a single death among our ranks affects so many of us so greatly.

As I mentioned last week this article was one that has been in the works for a bit, and was intended to go live last week. I, like JM, like to get the article done a day or so ahead of time in order to make sure everything is set to go off without a hitch. Unfortunately, while I had this article halfway done, I heard the distressing news of the loss of two furries via several posts on FA. I waffled for a few days about whether to continue on with the publication of this post in tribute or to hold off out of respect, and, at the last minute, wound up coming to this compromise of a weeks delay for a respectful entry.

Death and the larger concept of mortality have been our fixation for almost all of recorded history. It’s arguable, really, that death and mortality have been the fixation of life for its entire existence here on earth. It’s something of a milestone in life when we start to realize that we’re mortal, that we will end and that at that point, something fundamental about our existence will change, whether it’s entering into heaven or simply the same unknown we return to that we were a part of before birth. For me, it was about the time I turned eight or nine and, leaning against my mother’s front while watching TV, I heard her heartbeat and it hit me, in a very logical fashion, that at some point that heartbeat would stop and my mom would be no more. I suppose it happens to everyone now and then, but from an individual’s perspective, the idea that life will eventually come to a stop is something that focuses the mind and all but forces introspection.

Death is always a tricky subject, but especially so in a societal context.  Death has become an industry in Western culture; not just dealing with the remains of our loved ones respectfully, but also the industry of delaying death and the industry dedicated to bereavement.  Whether or not the concept of the end of one’s life is cause for introspection, it’s something that society has grown up to deal with.  There are arguments to be made for the fact that death – or at least protection from early death – is at the center of society and governance.  The sharp contrast between life and death is often at the center of much of religion and art as well, both social concepts.  It makes sense, then, that a subset of society (and of religion and art, if you look at furry that way) would also have its collective mind so focused by loss.

We have at least two benefits within furry, however.  First of all, we’re still relatively small.  The Tucholsky quip that “The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!” would be difficult to hold true in our subculture of one or two hundreds of thousands (an arguable point, I’m sure).  For us, one death is a tragedy, but given our small size, any number of deaths would likely be as much a tragedy.  Much of the basis for this quote has to do with Dunbar’s number, the suggested limit of stable relationships one individual can maintain; with a community of our size and a rough estimate of perhaps 150 for Dunbar’s number, that means that, no matter what, in the event of a catastrophe, the chances of one being directly affected, either through personal involvement or a personal relationship, are much, much higher.

The second, and perhaps more important benefit is that furry is based around a willful membership.  We identify as furries, whether or not the interest in anthropomorphics is innate, whether or not we feel a connection with animals.  It is a choice, much more than skin color or biological sex could ever be.  Our membership in the subculture comes primarily with the benefits of social currency and standing within the smaller group, and in a limited setting with such a friendly group, it’s hardly surprising to see loosely connected people paying their respects to the dead and the bereaved.  On the FA profile page of any deceased or grieving member of the fandom, one is likely to see that nearly every shout or comment on a journal is another fur offering their sympathies.

The interesting side of this is that many, if not most of those leaving their shouts and comments do not actually know either the bereaved or the deceased.   They have found out about it through their own social networks.  In our socially oriented fandom with a relatively small mean degree of separation between individuals, news about anything travels fast.  If one sees a friend grieving over a loss, and makes one mention of it, chances are good that someone not even involved will feel moved and may even leave their own note.

Nothing is ever quite so simple, of course, and there are a few downsides and negative aspects to our relationship with death.  Primarily, just because we know or know of someone does not necessarily mean that we like them.  Many simply keep their peace in such situations, but some have noticed that individuals will occasional create puppet-accounts on social sites in order to post a negative comment or two, or even use their own account to rail against the deceased or their loved ones.  I feel that much of this is likely due to the anonymity provided by interactions on the Internet, but I could be wrong.  Perhaps there is an additional aspect to our social nature or our tightly-knit web of relationships that makes it easier for one to express their views, both positive and negative, but that said, I hear far, far less about this happening in person than online.

An additional factor to take into account is that the fandom is growing, and at quite a clip.  There seems to be hundreds of new furries each day.  Dragoneer, the owner of FurAffinity, recently mentioned that, in 2011, there were anywhere between 300-500 new accounts created per day for a total of 145,787 new accounts in that year alone, most of which were estimated to be unique, non-group accounts.  Along with the growth of the fandom comes a greater chance of losing one’s individuality in life and not being noticed quite as much in death.  However, even if the number of random strangers comforting us in our grief declines or the number of shouts from those who didn’t know the dead starts to decrease, our membership still gets us a caring family and many ready friends.

In the end, however, death within the fandom is still something that strikes us strongly. Perhaps it’s due to our small size, or our tightly-woven net of interpersonal relationships, or even due to the online nature of much of our interaction, but no matter what, it’s comforting to know that there are those out there who, whether or not they knew us, would feel our loss. So let this article stand in memoriam of FirePyro and Athus, Waarhorse and Randomonlooker, Ponybird and Loki, and all the others who have entered into our lives through furry and then gone.

Hey there, folks!  Some issues with the way that we license our works from authors came up recently, and I figured it was probably about time that we make all of that as clear as we can!

Everything on the [adjective][species] site, including its sub-sites such as the visualizations and, to a lesser extent, polls, is licensed from the author. All we do is ask the author for the rights to post their content under a certain license. They can choose not to accept that license and opt for something more or less restrictive if they want, but so far, that’s not been an issue. The license that we use is called the Creative Commons license. This is a very liberal license that allows work to be shared freely on the internet. The CC license comes with a few different ‘clauses’ that can be added on to modify the terms of the license. In our case, we use the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 version (we’re currently looking into upgrading to the 4.0 version).

What does this mean?

This means that anyone – including you, and including syndicators, such as Flayrah, who syndicates our articles through RSS – is free to take the articles on our site and share them, remix them, use them for your own purposes! Totally free. We make no money off anything at [a][s], so we’re not about to start clamping down for any reason.

So what does the BY-NC-SA stand for?

• The BY portion means that you can repost or remix any of our content, so long as you attribute it back to us.
  
• NC stands for Non-Commercial. That means that you can share, mash up, or use any of our content, so long as you aren’t making a profit on it. We want our articles to be free for anyone, inside the fandom or out, to read. This means not posting anything behind a paywall.
• SA stands for Share-Alike. What the Share-Alike clause means is that you can share our content however you like, EXCEPT that it must be licensed under the same CC BY-NC-SA license, which just means putting that somewhere around the article.

So, to reiterate, you may post anything we license out on the web, so long as you

1. Credit the author (or, failing that, [adjective][species])
2. Release it for free
3. Put “This article released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 license” somewhere, such as at the bottom of the article or after the attribution.

I do apologize for the complexities of licensing, but [adjective][species], as a business, does bear some of the legal, not to mention ethical, burden of ensuring that our writers are fairly recognized as fantastic contributors to the furry subculture, and so we really do try to make sure that that is the case.  If you have any additional comments, you can feel free to respond here, or, if ever you want, email me at [email protected]

All my best,

~Makyo/Madison Scott-Clary

I’m not really sure how I wound up getting involved with the postfurry community.  I mean, I can point to the moment that I found furry itself and how what went from a curious interest built into something decidedly more (a passion? an obsession?), but the same isn’t necessarily the case with postfurry.  If I start tracing the lines backwards, rather a lot of them converge on one critter in particular, Indi.

Indi (art by Cinna)

Indi has been a friend for quite a while now, actually.  Ve is most often seen around as a synthetic coyote-otter hybrid – a coyotter, or simply yotter – with glowy markings that range from cyan to blue to purple.  Indi, being synthetic, along with ver gender identity, is the source of ver pronouns, ve/ver/vis.

I think I’ve known ver for about two or three years and we’ve connected on a lot of different levels, from our shared interest in mead and other tasty drinks, to our paths along the road to genderqueer identities that share many similarities.  We’ve acted as part of a support network for each other with some frequency, and that, probably more than anything else, served as what passes for my entry point to postfurry.

The Vixen Who Was A Lava Lamp

Years before, I remember telling a friend of mine that I felt more like a post-furry, not knowing that the term was already in use.  I had meant post-furry in the sense that post-rock is (often) an intentional dissection of rock, or that postmodern art is (often) an intentional examination of art.  Something meta, something self-referential.

“Oh god,” was his response.  “Not, like…really a postfurry, though?  They’re all toasters or lava lamps or something.”

Sure enough, an initial Google search turned up a lava lamp vixen (which is currently the featured image on the Postfurry page on Wikifur).  I didn’t experience the eye-rolling that my friend perhaps expected; furry isn’t exactly the internet punchline it used to be.  I was hardly leaping into the scene, much like how I leapt into furry itself, but neither was I dismissive.  Something about the combination of aesthetic, ethos, and community that was attached to what I found kept cropping up in things that I enjoyed and people that I talked to.

Similar to my inability to place my entry point into this sector of our subculture, I find it incredibly difficult to pin down exactly what postfurry is.

The funny thing about social – anthropological? sociological? – research is that you often wind up with at least two kinds of data: descriptions or observations of a trend, and descriptions or observations of reactions to a trend.  This is often the case with fashion trends, as well.  For instance, ‘hipster’ and ’emo’ are burdened both with a complex internal definition, and a complex external definition, the latter of which is often used to other the subject or subjects.  As an acquaintance put it:

‘[E]mo’ is an essentially meaningless way to say ‘that is too coded-gay for me but I’m not actually gonna risk censure for saying something overtly homophobic.’

Similarly, I found the external view of “postfurry is a bunch of weird toaster cats and lava lamp vixens” to be as much, if not more coherent than the complex internalized definition of postfurry itself.  That’s not to say that there isn’t some truth to this viewpoint – certainly there’s evidence already of lava-lamp critters, but the more I delved into it, the wider variety of individuals I met, many of whom were indeed synthetic, but also several who tested the boundaries of the organic or spiritual.  Many who viewed postfurry from the outside had much more concrete ideas of what is involved in the community, almost to the point of caricature.

Equations

On the surface, it seems that the ethos of postfurry can be described by an equation:

furry × ((posthumanism + transhumanism) / 2 + postmodernism)

Meanwhile, the aesthetic tends towards:

furry × ((cyberpunk + magical realism + rave wear + fetish wear) / 4)

Equations like these are, of course, patently meaningless in any mathematical sense, but they serve as pretty good analogies, as well as a way to demonstrate the complexity of the internal definition of postfurry.

I think that it’s important here to note that ethos and aesthetic are worth defining separately, as well as together.  Just as with ‘hipster’ and ’emo’ above, the two are often lumped together.  Hipster, for instance, is often shortened to ‘dressing ironically’, when, in fact, the aesthetic revolves around very specific fashion trends and the ethos is more about enshrining irony rather than simply being ironic.

Similarly, I think it’s worth looking at the way postfurry treats the disposition of its community as separate from (although related to) the things that inform the way the community members look.  The fact that transhumanism – that is, moving beyond what it means to be human – informs a lot of the cyberpunk look is undeniable, but the two are also separate in their own way.  Of course, there are other things that draw those with an interest in a cyberpunk aesthetic to postfurry beyond just the transhumanist leanings, and ditto with magical realism and postmodernism, and so on.

The postfurry aesthetic is more nuanced than simply “grim middle-future with lots of neon”.  There is some of that, to be sure, but that’s not the whole.  The second equation mentions rave and fetish wear, and both of those do indeed play a role in building up the look and feel of postfurry.  These, I think, are analogues for a much broader interest in sensory excess.  The bright colors; the cuffs, collars, and corsets; the furs that smell of vanilla, taste of peppermint, or whose aroma changes with mood; all of these bespeak more than an interest in the senses, but a reveling in the myriad ways with which we interact with each other.

Making Oneself

Another way to look at it, however, would be the relationship between self-actualization and an extension of furry.

One thing I’ve noticed that figures large in the postfurry community is the idea that there should not be anything that stands between who you are and who you want to be.  I know, that’s a really vague sentiment, and it really is sentimental, but just as the hipster ethos enshrines irony, so to does postfurry tend to enshrine self-actualization.

A good example of this is shown by what is happening with ideas surrounding identity in the postfurry community.  An informal observation shows that postfurries tend to be queer, tend towards polyamory, and tend to explore gender far more than the population at large, and even more than furry as a whole.

More specifically, I would estimate that a good seventy-five to eighty percent of the postfurry community is transgender, non-binary, or otherwise genderful or genderless.  In fact, within the postfurry Slack* community, there are no less than three different gender-related channels focusing on various aspects of gender identity, expression, and the intersection with sexuality.

This trend even has a name within the community, the Gender Cascade (though ‘transpolsion’ was also suggested).  In fact, this surrounds much of how Indi and I began talking in earnest.  As we both of us began to explore gender identity and expression, we began sharing with each other the steps we were taking, encouraging each other and showing each other how easy various things were.  Ve even helped me with portions of the Furry Poll, designing and implementing the gender coordinates widget there.

Becoming Oneself (art by Mandi Tremblay)

That tendency to pull together into a community is what helps keep this Gender Cascade cascading.  When others see that androgyny is not out of reach, that becoming oneself is not impossible, they too begin exploring, and encouraging others.

This is all in person, I should note.  I know that’s a distinctly furry problem to have, but none of what I’ve mentioned so far has pertained to the avatars which members of the postfurry community construct for themselves.  Or, rather, none of it *solely* pertains.  For many of the members of the community, it’s an all-that-plus-more sort of situation.  There’s a distinct focus on self-actuation through storytelling and world building.  It’s the rule, rather than the exception to it, that members of this community-within-a-community have a story to go along with their character, a world within which they live, and a manual (however informal) for how to interact with them, whether that’s in character or out of character.

This is hardly unique to postfurries, of course – I don’t mean to claim such.  One need only look at the extent of the world building that takes place on Taps or any other general-purpose furry venue to see that that’s not the case.  What I’m trying to get at, however, is that the intensity with which members of the postfurry community build their characters, story, and world is unique.  It is transgressive in that it readily crosses the boundary between character and player.

As I mentioned before, there’s another way to look at postfurry, focusing more on the aesthetic, and that is as an extension of furry.  This fits pretty well with several other trends that start with ‘post-‘.

It’s easy to see how postfurry could have started as gently mocking the furry fandom and its prevalent aesthetics.  As Flip mentioned in his dissection of the modern furry aesthetic, much of the contemporary furry style has its roots in the styles that accompanied late golden-era science fiction and fantasy from the seventies, which was in turn influenced by the golden age itself.

With this in mind, it’s not hard to see the general progression of furry to postfurry following similar lines as the progression from golden-age science fiction to cyberpunk, only a few decades later.

From that progression come the relevant next steps of irony, and irony subverted into a desire for authenticity, trending heavily toward the latter, even elevating earnestness itself.  In this sense, a lava lamp vixen makes perfect sense early in the history of postfurry, as does a neoprene robot otter with an intense backstory later on.

This can also be seen as tongue-in-cheek subversions.  For instance, the postfurry aesthetic might be described as a response to the dominant furry aesthetic of the time.  While the dominant aesthetic might have been a posed pin-up of a fox ready for The Sex, the postfurry version would have the same fox in the same pose, but he’s there because he’s been hypnotized.  In this sense, postfurry can be seen as a sort of self-aware casting of furry, beginning as tongue-in-cheek mocking, moving through parody, into a turning into a legitimate deconstruction.

Fucking Sparkledogs, now in handy cross-stitch form factor (by Lunostophiles)

Of course, the transmission of knowledge works both ways.  For me, years ago, a lava lamp vixen was something totally out of the norm – and indeed there is much wariness of the normative even today within postfurry – but such things have made their way back into the wider furry aesthetic of today, to the point where we can even say things like “fucking sparkledogs” with the same gleeful irony one might use when uttering “fucking hipsters”.

All of these points, and more, were brought up over the course of a week or so of heated discussion among members of the postfurry community on Slack, Twitter, and one-on-one.  It’s both the varied responses to “what does it mean to be a postfurry?” and the intensity with which the respondent answers that helps to enumerate the fact that, even though it has more specificity than furry as a whole, the postfurry segment is just as fragmented

In context

Although this article has been in my docket for quite a while, the thing that finally got me off my excessively fuzzy backside to write it was Mike Rugnetta’s talk at the XOXO Festival in 2013.  I’m not even going to hide this in a link, as I think it’s far, far too important to the topic at hand to ignore.  I’ll just wait here while you watch it.  Go ahead, I’ve got time; I’m a fictional fox on the internet.

Watched it?  Good!  I’m glad, it means a lot to me!

There are three related things that I want to cover as I wrap this up, and I think that they’re all related.

The first is the concept of desire paths and how that relates to fandom.  There are times in life when you take a short cut simply because it will get you there faster.  That’s different from a desire path, though.  A short cut is a less-travelled route that will get you somewhere quicker, but a desire path is the way you take that fits your own needs and wants.  Sometimes they’re shorter, but often they’re not.

I think this idea is important on all sorts of levels.  It’s important to identity as a whole, for we often do things to help match our reality with our identities.  It’s important within furry, as well, but more so, it’s important to postfurry within the context of furry.  This is what I mean by the intent inherent in postfurry: it’s not simply following the route of furry, just as furry is not simply following the route of mundane life.  Instead, it is going out of one’s way to follow the path one desires whether or not it lines up with the one that is accepted more widely.

This brings me to point number two: disintermediation.

Disintermediation is the act of removing an intermediary that had otherwise been required to complete an act.  It’s often described as “cutting out the middle man”.  Often this is intensely visible.  For instance, there could be a service that delivers groceries to your door, but then your supermarket starts providing that service for themselves, thereby obviating the middle man in the cycle.  That is disintermediation.

In a lot of cases, however, this is less visible than we think.  There are aspects of fandom that rely intensely on canon.  Someone’s gotta write and illustrate the comic books, someone needs to hire the cast and crew to film the show, someone needs to write the novels.  All of this needs to take place before fandom can happen, before fanfiction and cosplay become a thing.  Furry sidesteps a lot of this – it is disintermediated – by not having many of the characteristics of a fandom without having a canon or anything to really be a fan of (this is why I often say “furry subculture” instead of “furry fandom”).

Even so, as the quip goes, furries are fans of each other.  This leads to a set of unspoken behaviors and an ethos that are considered normative.  And just as canon can lead to head canon – alternative, transgressive, or subversive stories come up by fans to explain or change aspects of canon to fit their own narrative – a normative culture leads to alternate, transgressive, or subversive takes on that dominant ethos driving subcultures within it.  I should note, this does not mean that postfurries are separate from furries – they are still furries in that they’re all fans of each other, even of the wider culture of furry – but rather that, in an attempt to be more true to their engagement with the interest, they have removed the intermediation of the dominant ethos of furry to create their own.

Finally, a lot of what this leads to – the payoff, for lack of a better term – is that postfurry has developed into an intentional community.  This has evolved over time, to be sure, from the interactions on Puzzlebox MUCK, to the construction of Transliminal, to the creation of the Postfurry Muck, the establishing of the Slack community, and so on.

Almost two dozen postfurries live within the bounds of this map, at about 7 miles on a side.

Transliminal is the important bit here that I want to bring up, though.  More than simply creating their own spaces within the furry space online – something which takes place in any community large enough to support schisms, fractures, and sub-subcultures – the postfurry scene has started to coalesce into a very literal interpretation of ‘intentional community’, a sort of furry collective known as Transliminal**.  At time of writing, there are something like eight postfurry households (plus even a business or two) with nearly two dozen furs on the map, all centered around the city of Seattle.  Cascadia, it seems, has become at least one stronghold of the postfurry world, but Transliminal is hardly the only instance of such, with others showing up elsewhere, such as Boston and the Bay Area, each with their own characteristics.  This goes beyond simply “there are a lot of furries in the bay area” and into the realm of “we all identify with this, so let’s take the next step and make something neat.”

It’s been a few years since Indi and I have gotten to know each other, and even as ve has shown me more and more about the idea, the aesthetic, and the community that is postfurry, I still find myself learning more about it.  Sure the same thing can be said about furry as a whole.  I think that part of the reason that postfurry feels more slippery to me, however, is due to the mixture of the intentional nature and the varied viewpoints, the former stemming in a large part from the postmodern aspects and the latter from the necessity of being made up of a community of individuals.  As such, this could hardly be an exhaustive guide, but it was still well worth the exploration.  The synthetic coyote toys, the glowing neoprene otters, the dolls come to life, though, which make up the community within the community, continue to drive its ethos, and make it what it is, whatever that may be.

* Slack is a team communication service that works similar to IRC: there are channels, you can talk directly with individuals, and so on.  The main difference being that since the conversation history is managed server side (rather than client-side, like with IRC), you can see the conversation from any computer or device.  It fits in well with the organizational ethos of postfurry.  And that is a very important aspect of the community, worth noting.  Postfurries have adopted Slack, Trello, MediaWiki Hastebin, and other means of organizing and displaying organized thoughts with gusto.  See [Postfurry.org](http://postfurry.org) for more information.

** Occasionally, Transliminal is refered to as a ‘commune’ by some of its members, and this isn’t entirely inaccurate: the original intent behind the project was to construct basically that.

I don’t normally do an acknowledgement section for articles, but as so many individuals helped me, one is definitely needed.  Endless thanks to the members of the Postfurry Slack community, who provided more insight into what makes them uniquely them than I could ever muster.  Indi, of course, and Rax, Peach, Buni, Krinn, emanate, Djynn, and Trouffee, through their discussion, have helped me understand this thing I now find myself a part of.

Guest post by Dain Unicorn. Dain is a nascent novelist, frequent NaNoWriMo participant, occasional Convention attendee, absent-minded blogger, old school shutterbug, and full time dreamer.  Born and raised in Arkansas, he was infected with a severe case of Wanderlust as a foal, which has led him to a career in truck driving, as well as many great adventures on the long road home. This article was originally published in the Further Confusion 2014 con book.

It was dark, hot, and the world around me was muted softly. I could feel my breathing and hear my pulse. Blacklights spread over the room made the white fur on my suit’s muzzle glow, casting a fun blue tint across my limited field of vision. Pounding music started to drive me as the dancing started. Spinning around to the soundtrack of my misspent youth I was living a dream years in the making, I had finally fursuited Further Confusion.

That was me in 2011 at the Dead Dog Dance, traditionally the last gasp of Further Confusion. I had been to Further Confusion previously but never with a Fursuit. It felt wonderful. It felt magical. I didn’t want the Con to end. It felt like I had finally made it, and included into something that I had only seen from the outside looking in. So how can I express to you what it’s like to don a suit and change who you are on the outside? I might have to bend the magic a little; I’ll try not to break it completely.

So what’s the difference between a fursuit and a common theatrical costume? In truth, not much except for the character it emotes. Fursuits have a personality. Does the suit look like a friendly face or a scary one? Do you want to run up and give it a hug or run away in panic? Can it inspire you? Does it show you what it’s feeling? All of these little things go into a suit’s creation. It is what the world will see when the performer wears it.

This is what I mean: an actor could not get on stage with a frown on their face and perform ‘happy’ believably. The audience sees the frown and will focus in on the performer’s real attitude. Putting on a fursuit envelopes you, covering your own emotions for the emotive qualities of the fursuit. In effect the fursuit becomes both a stage on which the fursuiter can perform, and a shield to hide behind during the performance. Refuge and excuse all wrapped into one.

The ‘Fursuit’ might be as simple as a mask with concealing garments or so complex to include stilts arranged to allow for quadrupedic movement. The common theme in all of these costumes is to make the wearer look less human and more of — well whatever they wish. High tech materials, servos, LEDs, fans, battery packs, advanced puppetry; all sorts of things can go into these amazing costumes. A complex suit can cost several thousand dollars and represent untold hours of work. That is why it is important to show respect for these fursuits and ask for hugs or other physical interactions, rather than assuming they’re okay. All of that hard work and expensive materials might be too fragile to permit horseplay—ahem—human-play.

One of the most persistent things about ‘Furries’ is an intense need to live vicariously: through a favorite character, a favorite creature, or even a favorite story or fable. Be it a means to protect yourself from a harsh reality, or exploring parts of life that are impossible for a mere human to appreciate on their own; living vivariously becomes a way around the limitations of reality. Fursuits are but one means of doing this.

Dain you fool, sounds like your talking about a religion here, cut to the chase and tell us what does it feel like to wear one. Ok, I will. Can you imagine bundling up in the heaviest winter clothes you have? Its a little hard to move around, isn’t it? Can you imagine putting on a tight fitting hat that keeps the sun out of your eyes? Can you still see that menu at the fast food joint without tilting your head? Can you imagine wearing thick mud boots? Keeping to the ramp rather than take the stairs? After all of these silly questions you might now have an idea of what its like. Fret not, I shall probe a little deeper.

Vision is restricted to the point where the performer probably qualifies as legally blind. The area that can been seen varies from head to head, but most heads eliminate more than half of ones peripheral vision, limiting vertical range and the viewing area that your eyes can normally track through. In addition to the limited aperture of the fursuit head’s eyes, the material with which eyes are made can make it hard to focus on the world as well, leaving the performer to ignore fine details in favor of a general impression of the world around them. This is especially true with ‘mesh’ eyes as you have to force your eyes to focus on things past the mesh, which becomes difficult for the nearsighted. Some fursuits put the performer in odd places inside, and they might not be looking out the eyes at all.

Pro Tip: Don’t be offended if a fursuiter does not react to you; chances are very good they cannot see you.

The more wonderfully artistic that fursuit head looks, the more likely it is to have poor air circulation inside. Between the fur and other coverings, any electronics inside, and the performers own breathing the fursuit head can quickly become an oven. These days it is common for most fursuit heads to come equipped with one or more small battery powered fans like the ones in your computer at home. These fans move air in or out of the fursuit head and allow the performer to breathe fresher air. Having fresher air to breathe results in allowing the performer more time in fursuit. If you find yourself sharing an elevator with a fursuit performer and hear a little buzzing, its not the elevator about to breakdown.

Pro Tip: Be polite and pretend you cannot hear that noisy fan in a fursuit.

While I’m talking about fans, some fursuit heads are so elaborately padded that hearing the world around the performer becomes difficult, with a fan blowing white noise and fresh air into the fursuit head can render the performer effectively deaf. That said hearing is perhaps the least restricted basic sense.

Fursuits are hot. Really, really hot! No, really, the fursuit covers so much of your body that it makes getting rid of the heat generated by dancing, performing, and even just walking around difficult. The human body uses evaporating sweat as its primary means of cooling down. The fursuit keeps the sweat from easily evaporating and this keeps the performer hot inside. Most full-suit performers use a base layer garment (often spandex or similar high tech athletic fabric) to help trap the sweat and keep the fursuit clean. Some performers wear ice-vests and cooling packs to extend their time in fursuit. Getting a hug from a fursuiter after the parade or a dance is likely to be a rather warm and damp experience. Performers need a lot of water to help avoid dehydration. Water stations with cups and often straws are setup all over con spaces to give the fursuiter a chance to take a sip without making it back to the headless lounge. While I’m discussing the need to stay hydrated forgive me a brief sidebar on Heat Stroke.

Heat Stroke is a serious danger for a fursuiter. I have discussed above some of the ways the performer disassociates their self from their character. Now it becomes a serious disadvantage. The fursuit makes it much more difficult for an outsider or handler to see when the performer has hit their limit. Should you see a fursuiter, without a buddy or handler, looking out of sorts, its ok to ask them if they are ok. Most of the time the performer only needs a little water or directions to the headless lounge or some other place where they can relax. If you can’t get an understandable answer, or if they tell you they need help, find a Convention Staffer at once, the fursuiter may be in distress. If you find a fursuiter that keeps falling down and doesn’t get up right away, you do not need to ask if they are ok. Quietly find assistance at once, but don’t make a scene out of it. In any event don’t attempt to help a fursuiter in distress unless you are a trained first responder. Summoning trained help is often the best help the untrained can give.

I have mentioned the Headless Lounge several times now, but just what is it? It is a special area where performers can ‘break the magic’ and remove their costume heads (hence the name of the room), take on water, cool off, relax, make fursuit repairs, attempt to dry out their gear, and generally just take a break.

In every convention I have ever attended, the Headless Lounge is a restricted area, available only to fursuiters and their handlers. Also I should note photography of any sort in the Headless Lounge is strictly prohibited for what should be obvious reasons. Its not a social gathering spot, its the ‘break room’ at work. Fursuiters leave the Headless Lounge to be social, so your not missing anything interesting back there anyway.

Still interested? Learn about becoming a Fursuit Handler. They are permitted ‘backstage’ and it is a wonderful introduction to performing in Fursuit.

So here I am, cooking in this sweaty oven, breathing through a fan powered ventilation duct, more than half blind, a little deaf, and quite daft: what do I get for these hardships? I get to perform magic. Oh, not hocus-pocus fluff, but real performance magic. I can show you what I want you to see, interact with you in the way I wish, and if I’m really clever, make you think you have seen a cartoon made real, or even perhaps something that science says cannot be. That is magic in my book.

There is a source of ‘make-believe’ that resides in each of us. That source might be a slowly dying ember hidden under years of bitter calluses or a beacon-fire so bright that it brightens the world for all to see. To take that flickering ember and brush away the dust and ash, bring it into the fresh air and let it begin to burn again for everyone to see is magic at work. For me, fursuiting is a way to amplify that magic and share it with the world. How much better could this world be if we each tried our hardest to build up that magic rather than tear it down?

Why do I go to this much trouble? I have a blast ‘taking off’ this human ‘skin’ and dancing around in the real world in a form of my choosing, in a manner of my construction, and with a character of my creation. Its not that I wish to abandon reality, but it feels so good to escape it for a while. I know that sounds like a muzzleful—ahem—mouthful, but its true. I can boil it all down to this: “It’s a lot of fun.” Others may put far more into it than that, but that is my reason. If you find your reasons to fursuit different from mine, thats ok. Tell me about it sometime, I love sharing the magic.

Like a lot of people, I was fascinated by both the depth and detail of Flip’s recently published guest article, The Beginnings of the Modern Furry Aesthetic. It feels like he has scratched the surface of something true, something that defines what “furry” actually is. He was kind enough to agree to an interview to give me an opportunity to explore some of the ideas he presented, as well as some background on his own unique furry experience.

Flip has been around furry since the late 1980s, starting with underground comics like “Omaha” the Cat Dancer as a teenager and eventually connecting with furry Usenet newsgroups in the early 1990s. He describes himself as an “uberfan”, meaning that his interests extend into science fiction, gaming, anime – you name it. In the mid 1990s he started helping organize fan conventions and drifted away from furry, returning in 2004.

He kept touch with furry until 2012, when he met Kyell Gold at Gaylaxicon, sparking his interest in the way different fandoms crossover and interact with furry. It was this time that his local furry community in Minnesota started discussing running their own convention.

Nowadays Flip helps run Furry Migration, which is in its second year in 2015 (held August 28-30). The theme is “Back to the Future”, and includes two artists at the forefront of furry’s genesis in the late 1970s, Reed Waller and Ken Fletcher. Flip has been working with Reed and Ken in preparation for the convention, giving him access and insight into their works, ultimately leading to his [a][s] article.

Our interview was held over a Skype videocall the day after Flip’s article was published. It involved about an hour of wide-ranging and fascinating topics. I took notes but did not record the call – accordingly please be aware that my transcript is far from complete, and can probably be considered a paraphrase of Flip’s words. He talks fast! There will be errors; they are all my fault; please accept my apology in advance.

[adjective][species]
Firstly, what stands out in your article is your willingness to identify a very specific spark of furry: a 4-page minicomic titled Disguise Adroit de Plastique! in Vootie #4.

Flip
Disguise Adroit de Plastique!, or “Clever Plastic Disguise”, is published in The Erotic Art of Reed Waller, as is the second piece I mentioned in my article, Somebody Here Says There Ain’t Enuff Sex in Funny Animal Comics from Vootie #5.

Reed highlights both of these pieces as something new, foreshadows of “Omaha”. The earlier editions of Vootie focussed on cartooning and funny animals, a divergence from the science fiction/fantasy oriented APA (amateur press) zine Rune.

All of these zines were published in a way that had the artists retain copyright over their own pieces, so it makes it difficult to publish them online. However scanning is underway but it’s difficult to contact everyone involved after so many years.

The Minnesota furs have formed a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, to help run Furry Migration and other activities. We have talked about a possible archiving project or library. We are aware that we’re running out of time to get everyone who is still alive together to decide how to capture everything, and how to store it. How or where that might happen is up for grabs.

At Furry Migration we’re hoping to run events related to the process of creation and cartooning. Rather than just have guys sitting around in the dealer’s den, we want to have events where we crate something at the convention itself, in a collaborative way.

All artists have biases towards their own work, and so its easy to think that Reed might be overstating the importance of his work in Vootie and, later, “Omaha”. I own all the Omahas and my research, which is supported by a lot of common references, suggest that something special happened in Minnesota in the late 1970s. Vootie was just beginning, and Rowrbrazzle would become the first purely furry publication.

All the pieces were in place for furry to begin, the question is what was the trigger. I believe it was inevitable the furry would occur at this point.

Disguise Adroit de Plastique! stands out to me because it’s playing a game. That’s the furry trigger, the characters are not just a satire of human behaviour ala Fritz the Cat, the characters talk back to us. They tell us what to do, which is a different literary format. Before this the animal characters had just been satirical stand-ins for human beings.

I think this is part of the roleplaying tradition that is so strong in Minnesota – the birthplace of D&D via Gary Gygax and others. There is something that the characters are trying to say about themselves, something that’s hard to express. Like a classic fantasy character, the characters in Disguise Adroit de Plastique! are like an alter ego.

Reed identifies something special about Disguise Adroit de Plastique! in his compilation (The Erotic Art of Reed Waller), and I saw it at a Minnesota Cartoonists’ League (MNCL) gathering, which is a regular gathering of several likeminded cartoonists that still goes on today at O’Gara’s Bar & Grill in St Pauls.

[a][s]

As the first step to identifying the first spark of furry, you of course had to define what the furry aesthetic actually is. It’s not an easy question.

Flip
I thought to myself: if furry isn’t science fiction, what is it?

Looking at the history, there was a lot cartooning happening around Minicon in Minnesota, and also in California around people like Fred Patten. By 1981, Vootie was having trouble getting published after (Californian) zines like Albedo Anthropomorphics and Critters started to prosper. California become the centre of the growth of furry as a stand-alone phenomenon because they have more people: they had critical mass.

I contend that furry was sparked earlier, in the late 1970s in Minnesota.

The furry aesthetic is about emotional honesty, as embodied in the ideas of sex, drugs and rock & roll. There is something defiant about furry, something that says “this is me”. Regardless of whether you have a fursona, something about furry petitions a deep emotional core.

You can look at furry and see a range of expressions that are different from fandoms and from the rest of the world, in sexual behaviour, gender identification, sexual orientation, and a kind of eco-spirituality. These all tie into counterculture, and the way an artist sees the world, and rejects the world.

Furry uses tropes just like any art form, but it is different from the funny animal comics because the characters are personal. Funny animal comics, like Fritz or Disney’s Robin Hood or something more recent like Animaniacs, are just a reflection, a parody or satire, of the real world. Furry ties into something deeper, something primal.

[a][s]
In the 1990s, as furry grew, we started to see furry diverge from fandoms. People started to think of themselves as lifestylers rather than fans, suggesting a focus on that personal element rather than just the art.

Flip
I’m sure I could put this more delicately, but the 1990s saw an influx of homosexuals into furry.

I believe this occurred because furry allowed an expression of something deeply personal, and that expressions of homosexuality operate on the same level as other furry expressions, like the adoption of fursonas.

Ken Fletcher feels that fursonas are about roleplaying, in the same way that someone might roleplay a D&D character, at least if they are roleplaying well. Minnesota of course has a long history of roleplaying, with D&D being big with the college crowd.

This means that fursonas aren’t a new idea – they have always been around. Cartoonists would caricature themselves at conventions, and roleplayed as those characters. Reed Waller, for example, would sometimes draw himself as Reed Walrus.

This came from the roleplaying environment originally. The internet simply made it an obvious thing to do. Minnesota was also the home of early MUCKs, and people would play fantasy characters that were reflections of themselves, just as people do now with World of Warcraft. The idea of fursonas has a lineage.

Ken Fletcher talks about the old Californian furgroup, where there was an early schism between cartoonists that wanted to go Disney/commercial, and those with a more extreme artistic and countercultural bent. Part of that involved the use of fursona-like characters in Rowrbrazzle.

Different personalities were always going to do different things. It’s hard to say that the internet drove the adoption of fursonas, or the adoption of fursonas helped drive uptake of the internet. There have always been personal elements about character creation, without those characters being formal fursonas. It’s hard to identify where things changed.

[a][s]
When you returned to furry in 2004 after a few years away, did you notice that much had changed?

Flip
For starters, people assumed that I was gay. That was new! I’m bisexual and I didn’t mind, but I didn’t expect it.

The high profile comics were often explicitly homosexual, such as Associated Student Bodies, Genus Male, and Circles. This was something I tried to explain at Gaylaxicon but found difficult – it felt like furry had become a niche market of a niche market, i.e. homosexual funny animals. I know enough about marketing to know that no such market exists – it’s something that nobody would ever attempt to ‘capture’. So something else had to account for the popularity of furry.

It wasn’t just a lot of LGBT people, it was also expressions of gender and eco-spirituality. By eco-sprituality I mean something that feels religious but not exactly animism or totemism, something that looks into gaining a deeper understanding of self and personality in the world.

It felt like these things, as well as the adoption of fursonas, were symptoms of the furry experience. Like furry was related to roleplaying, or wish fulfilment.

There is also the drama aspect of furry. Compared with other fandoms, furries wear their heart on their sleeve, as if interactions with furry has an unusually deep emotional element. It’s easy for some social disagreements to be seen as attacks. It’s not like a disagreement between two people who have opinions on red cars or on chocolate – disagreements between furries are personal, and there is a high level of emotional investment. Something about furry petitions a deep emotional core.

[a][s]
What about yourself, what are your favourites within furry?

Flip
I always loved Rocket Raccoon. Rocket started as just a funny animal, a satire. But he become something more personal in the film.

The Director of Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn, must be aware of furry, and I think Rocket may be a deliberately furry character. There are animal aspects to his attack presentation, it’s an animalistic response rather than a human one. His non-human features come to the fore—his teeth are bared—and that personality edging into animalism… if it’s not deliberately furry then it’s walking up to the line.

There is also an anime called Spice and Wolf from 2005 or so, which is owned by Funimation. The wolf has consumed so many humans that he has become aware. Spice and Wolf uses the idea of instinct, nature, primal forces – the animal point of view is arguably more insightful into the real world than the human perspective.

[a][s]
Your involvement with the anime fandom has given you a perspective on the Japanese kemono phenomenon as well.

Flip
The Japanese have different roots into furry, but there are a lot of similarities. The Hyper Police doujinshi series, similar to Thundarr the Barbarian, which ties back to Japanese animal-like folklore characters that act on instinct.

It’s a uniquely Japanese point of view but a similar idea, and seems to influence a few people including an up-and-coming Miyazaki-like director named Mamoru Hosoda. He is responsible for Summer Wars, Wolf Children and the upcoming Boy & His Beast, although I’m not sure what the local title of that will eventually be. Hosoda is certainly aware of kemono. It might be better to call it an “animal aesthetic” rather than a “furry aesthetic”.

[a][s]
How do you find today’s furry?

Flip
I find furry to be a bit limited. There are norms to what a fursona or a fursuit “should” be. I feel like a suit is devalued when it’s a character from a roleplaying game rather than an original.

In time, I expect to see the boundaries on what a furry “is” get broken down more and more. My concern is that furry is following a mould, but if we’re being true to furry then we should follow it in whatever way makes sense to us.

Guest article by Flip. Flip has been involved with furry and other fandoms since the late 1980s, running conventions since the mid 90s, and generally being an uberfan. He is currently helping organize Furry Migration, which is held in Minneapolis August 28-30 this year.

This document started as a refinement of the Wikipedia definition to the nebulous “beginning of Furry” as a fan culture, but it quickly became apparent it would get bogged down in some nuanced specifics that, although really useful in understanding what started when historically, do not lend themselves to the brevity required by Wikis. In the end, this is more a thesis on specifically when furry started and what were the central galvanizing themes that set it apart from its sister fandoms/art forms. It may be useful to have both WikiFur and Wikipedia up as references for specific definitions and explanations. Warning: There is some graphic language due to specific quotes and citations, but general context is kept as PG-13 as possible.

The existing definition of the start of Modern Furry is somewhere around 1980-1985. It is the combination of funny animal comics and the use of anthropomorphism in science fiction into a form that is a sub-genre apart from both: Furry Fandom. WikiFur’s identification puts this point between the publications Vootie and Rowrbrazzle. Wikipedia tends to suggest Furry’s genesis as more a product of Science Fiction fandom and their corresponding conventions. Although Wikifur is more specifically correct in that furry fandom is a product of some particular underground comics, it is important to note that Wikipedia’s definition is still generally correct, but missing some nuance.

To understand all the pieces involved here, it is important to recognize what was happening during the 1970s, specifically in society and popular culture. It was a tremendous time of personal discovery, social expression and artistic experimentation. Specifically to pre-modern furry concerns, the use of anthropomorphism continued to be expanded in new ways across various media. Much of this is easily seen in the animation, science fiction and comic books of the time.

For animation, three examples of would be Disney pieces like Robin Hood (1973) in the mainstream, characters like Lieutenant M’Ress from Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-4) in Science Fiction fandom, and Fritz the Cat (1965-72) as an example from Underground Comics stemming from developments of counterculture in the 1960s. Although these forms were still “funny animal”, design and context was pushed from their previous use of referential comical parody/irony/satire that was indicative of the mid 20th century, to more direct serious introspection of the human condition, be that emotional reflection, cultural analysis, or scathing social commentary.

To be fair, a good deal of the expansion of the use of anthropomorphism was in works of Science Fiction, which for this article includes the major subgenres of Fantasy and Horror. Using anthropomorphic races, everything from alien races to modern updates of myths like werewolves or ents, was very common in the 1960s and 1970’s. Modern Science Fiction primarily used anthropomorphism as a literary device in stories. The most common device was to provide an “outside” perspective to the human condition, where a “near human” could ask questions about the somewhat arbitrary idiosyncrasies of humans while still having a coherent intelligence and emotional understanding of life as a “civilized” entity.

To draw back to the original thesis, Wikipedia’s citation of Science Fiction as the genesis of Furry is fair. Modern Furry, or something very similar to it, would likely have arisen in time given this environment. However, even though we can see the roots and building blocks of what would be Modern Furry here, it needed something else, some spark, to evolve into Furry. If shown examples of Robin Hood or M’Ress to fans of the Furry genre, those fans commonly comment, “They look Furry, yet somehow do not ‘feel’ Furry.” Fritz the Cat seems to come closer, but still not quite. True, Fritz has a “funny animal” design and adult content, but there seems to be an essential aspect that is missing. What needs to be identified here is the underlying Furry Aesthetic and the moment that came into being. Also, to list out some of the central themes and methods that typify this sub-genre. The fact that many fans of Modern Furry, comics, and Science Fiction see each other as “different” suggests that there are notable differences outside of whether or not anthropomorphism is used. In short, the Modern Furry Aesthetic is a blend of existing genres but in a unique way.

Comics, especially “funny animal” and Underground Comics of the 1960’s and 1970’s seem to be the key in understanding this transformation. Comics can use anthropomorphism in sharp relief to function as literary technique like parody, irony, satire and absurdist humor, usually referring to someone’s character or an aspect of the human condition. To feature a cowardly character as a chicken is an example. With the close of the Silver Age of Comic Books and the growth of counterculture in the 1960s, comics and comic books were rebranding themselves, trying to bring insightful humor to a new clientele. Some comics tried reimagining of “funny animal” characters in fantastic, cosmic new roles. Example: the original Rocket Raccoon was created and refined in this period. Other comics went darker and more into science fiction like 2000 AD, which created characters like Judge Dredd. Some also followed the counterculture, invoking a theme of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” and a deep cynicism for “polite society”. Artist like Robert Crumb and Steve Gerber created new “funny animal” characters whose awareness, if not indulgence, of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll”, as well as cynicism and distrust of authority, was part of everyday life.

If we look at the Fritz the Cat comic, we are looking specifically at a satirical comic that depicted anthropomorphic characters smoking weed, having casual sex, and being violently anti-authoritarian. However, Fritz is ultimately NOT Furry because it is based in satire and the dynamic of a “dark mirror” on real society. The use of the various animal species is analogy to various races, jobs and/or social standings of people in human society. The characters exist to point at issues in society, but the use of anthropomorphic animals is more of a convenient and incidental label or trope in a broad character sense. Something about this seems insufficient in defining the Furry Aesthetic. The fact that Fritz was different in that it was adult oriented and had adult themes does separate it from earlier funny animal comics, but by itself does not make it Furry.

WikiFur identifies a major turning point somewhere between Vootie and Rowrbrazzle. Vootie was an amateur press association (APA) founded by Reed Waller and Ken Fletcher, who had worked previously on a more Science Fiction/Fantasy style APA named Rune. Both artists have identified multiple influences from the examples above. Influences also came from a close group of friends and artists in the Minneapolis area, a Science Fiction convention called Minicon, and book stores and print shops like Uncle Hugo’s and Dreamhaven. Many of these same local friends, like Timothy Fay, later worked on Rowrbrazzle. Looking at the individual issues of Vootie, the publication is a crossroads of Science Fiction and comics’ use of anthropomorphism in fun and new ways. If the “spark” of furry were to be identified, it would be in Vootie #4 in 1977. The name of the comic is “Disguise Adroit de Plastique”, or pidgin French for, “Clever Plastic Disguise”. The beginning of this comic is very much a satire with “funny animal” characters in a Fritz sort of way. A wolf is grumbling about the death of Underground Comics (and really the death of the counterculture as Reagan and the cleaning up of society that marked the 80’s were just around the corner), with a turkey and a sheep arguing that, “It’s not that bad, we accomplished so much.” They then point at sanitized versions of mainstream “underground” publications. The wolf starts to agree. The sad joke here is that, truth be told, the mainstreaming of these comics had extinguished the vibrant, defiant and artistic fire that made these comics important in first place.

But then the comic takes a novel turn. A sexy vixen shows up and tells them to stop moping and “act like animals,” claiming to the wolf he has been there so long he has forgotten what he is and thinks he is a person. She goads him, “You’re an animal, so act like it!” as she proudly presents a sexy, ample chest. A brief cloths ripping, foreplay scene later, the bear bartender demands, “What the hell are you doing?” This set the scene as a conflict between giving into primal urges versus following the rules of society.

The bear bartender in this scene can be seen as to represent “we” the reader, listening to the arguments and finally making a decision as to which is the “true” argument. The turkey and sheep stress that if we act all feral, we can’t be taken seriously. The vixen states if the animals don’t act feral, they are LYING to themselves. In a series of panels that encapsulates the Furry Aesthetic, she declares, “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.” “Let’s fuck and feast and forget we ever knew that Disney shit!”

This is a new switch. This was not just a “near human” character simply observing an “odd behavior” of the human condition, but an outright rejection of some aspects of it. It also rejects some of the classic analogy/parody use of anthropomorphism and instead suggests a more alter ego or even idealized pure Form as per the philosophical concepts of the Theory of Forms. The argument here is that most of us are lying to ourselves, often not listening to our base instincts. We are far too worried about the dangers of hedonism or just “acting appropriately”, that we defy our “true” nature. In short, we see “funny animals” change from an allegory of humans to something specifically NOT “appropriately human,” and we should be more like the animal character if we wish to be instinctually honest with ourselves.

Combine this comic with the later and better known, “There Ain’t Enuff Sex in Funny Animal Comics” in Vootie #5, as well as everything in this vein afterwards, and we get an artistic aesthetic. An aesthetic, as a philosophical school, points to a truth. More importantly, from this point forward there is a schism in Funny Animal Comics/Science Fiction; where a group of artists and writers go in a new direction chasing this aesthetic where animal instinct provides insights to the human condition. The Truth being pursued is a sense that there is better self honesty in listening to our baser brain in some situations. This seems to be a recurring theme in Furry but not always funny animals from that point forward.

To clarify, this artistic aesthetic is not in all Furry works. But it seems to be a constant thematic base line for Furry. For instance, not all Star Trek episodes highlight its baseline aesthetic of the utopian society of fairness among equals. But it keeps coming back as a general theme in the series. Similarly, not all Furry needs to be adult or sexual in nature to be effective. In fact, Albedo Anthropomorphics, published in 1983, goes back more towards the Science Fiction roots. However, in it the Furry Aesthetic is alive and well. Characters are not just felines, canines, etc. for the sake of an analogue of job, social class, race, etc. like in Fritz. Being a feline fundamentally changes the way a character experiences the universe, and in many ways the “human” side of the equation is the analogous reference used in the perceptions of the character. Tangential as this may seem, we are still using story for analyzing the human condition. This is important to note, as the Furry Aesthetic assumes a sentience and active moral agency as part of its literary device, even when analyzing base and raw emotions and actions. This makes a clear distinction between Furry and Zoophilia.

There is a challenge that this aesthetic is, “Nothing new and we have seen it before.” This is correct, but ubiquitous use as we see in Furry had not been done in 20th Century culture, and this is the reason why I use the term Modern Furry. If we look at some of the older mythology and storytelling, we see a willingness to dwell in the dark feral domains of the human condition with anthropomorphic characters more often. We do see several instances in these older stories where an animal’s nature gives us insight to the human condition. However, many cultures, including western culture, have something like the concept of a “great chain of being.” In these systems, animals are considered “below” us and, effectively, offer nothing to teach us. The use of anthropomorphism shifted from instinctual/insightful to analogous/referential as a literary device where this paradigm is culturally prominent. Modern Furry denotes a subculture where that literary use shifts back.

Today, we clearly have fandom identified as Modern Furry with a fan base commonly using this Furry Aesthetic. They use former “funny animals” to be unapologetically honest about feelings and motivations. This can be as either alter ego (fursona) or idealized pure form. This creates a point of reflection for the human condition that can be viewed as a classic Id/Ego/Superego tension. Understanding this aspect of the Furry Aesthetic helps us understand why, although not focused on a gay community in its inception, Furry fandom found easy audience and was a great medium to aid in discovery, portrayal of, and dealing with specific challenges of the LGBT community that is indicative of 2nd generation Furry in the counterculture of the 1990’s. This is why the Furry Aesthetic continues to find an audience with people in the counterculture communities involved with BDSM, eco-spirituality and mysticism, emotional self development, alternative relationship systems, and gender identification, just to name a few.

In conclusion, if we are to understand what Modern Furry is, we need to understand it was developed in a mix from Science Fiction, counterculture and Comics. It is an artistic aesthetic that does have some separation from those genres, and it seemed to have an inception point in the middle issues of Vootie between 1977 and 1978. The Furry Aesthetic is the artistic use of anthropomorphism to put in sharp relief the tensions of our animal instincts and societal demands and how they both impact the human condition.