[adjective][species]

Let’s start with some unusual furry roleplay.

Dear Longed-for Colt:

 

When a certain cat saw the enclosed full-color picture of a Dub in holiday decoration, he shed tears of sadness and longing. He misses and worries about his Old Dear so terribly.

 

Kitty only lives to be with his Darling Drub again. He has set April 1 as the deadline for their reunion, if that fragile feline stamina persists, and if it does, upon arrival in the stable Kitty will need massive intravenous doses of Horse Essence.

 

All of a kitten’s unswerving love and devotion,

 

It’s creative and a bit unusual, but unmistakably furry. And it is excerpted from a letter that was written in 1966.

The feline is portrait artist Don Bachardy. And Old Dub/Drub the horse is Christopher Isherwood, one the great English novelists of the 20th century. His work includes The Berlin Stories, source material for the Cabaret musical and film, which starred Liza Minnelli and won 8 Academy Awards.

Isherwood and Bachardy are paleofurs, furries who existed before the furry community.

We at [adjective][species] have our very own paleofur, author Phil Geusz, who writes for us as Rabbit. Earlier this year he wrote an important article wondering if he could add to the collection of paleofurs he had discovered hidden in history books: a number that (aside from himself) totalled two. I am very proud to be able to add to his small tally.

(Phil’s article inspired a blog dedicated to the phenomenon of furries-before-furry: Paleofurs on Tumblr.)

Bachardy and Isherwood’s animal-person roleplay is collected in a book titled The Animals: Love Letters between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy. It is a memoir of sorts, less published in the hope of commercial success and more an attempt to document the history between the two. It seems to be largely marketed as a curiosity for Isherwood completists, but it makes for a superb furry conversation piece.

It is long, charting about half of the three-decade-long relationship between the two, which started in 1953 and ended with Isherwood’s death in 1986. Included with the letters are explanatory notes to keep everything in context, but otherwise the animal-themed affection and whimsy is unfettered.

The theme is startlingly similar to a lot of furry roleplay. Pet names abound, and expressions of love and lust are couched in almost entirely anthropomorphic terms. And like furry roleplay, the animal themes are largely dropped when they are exchanging factual information. The impact is charming, as the pet names allow them to explore and discover language to express their obvious love without falling into cliche. For example:

Kitty’s dear letter just arrived and made Dobbin very happy. Again and again he kissed the portrait of Kitty with his wet muzzle. It is exactly how Kitty looks when at his prayers or watching a plump juicy bird on a tree.

 

It does get a bit cloying: this is not a book to read in long sittings. It also makes me thankful that internet lingo was not available, otherwise these letters would be dusted with lols and ttfns and I shudder to think what else. This is not to disparage the utility of internet lingo, just that this book is saccharine enough as it is—it does not need the further whimsical and sweary touch of wtf or lmao.

The creativity on display is remarkable, and if anything Bachardy outshines his famous literary partner. In many ways it provides useful reference material for anyone looking to add an old-timey touch to furry flirting: Bachardy and Isherwood’s language has many similarities with today’s furry lingua franca, but also dozens of exciting neologisms and new turns of phrase. Consider:

Kitty pants at the thought of the return of his Only Muzzlelove and lives only to lick that salty old Hide with his rough little pinktongue and make it tingle again.

 

Furballs and pink catkisses, Purrpuss.

 

Their respective furry characters are full and fleshed out, acting as representatives of their true selves. Their human selves are reserved for the less-important real world. They are forever longing for their shared home—their basket—a retreat from the world where they can drop the human pretence and be their animal selves, together.

Their names for one another change over the years, but generally Isherwood is Dobbin, a sturdy old horse that can be relied upon to keep things steady. He is safe and friendly but prone to boredom without Bachardy’s spark. Bachardy is Kitty, an unpredictable feline, prone to bouts of excited flights of fancy, mixed with depression and borderline agoraphobia. Together, they are clearly a balanced and loving couple, each providing the other with affection but also support.

Bachardy’s portrait of former California Governor Jerry Brown

The quality and longevity of their relationship is more remarkable for the difference in age: when they met, Isherwood was 48 and Bachardy just 18. While such age differences are rare nowadays (and would probably be subject to suspicion), there is a long history of such relationships in homosexual couples, especially in the less enlightened decades of the 20th century. Examples of such relationships include Sir Laurence Olivier, who (almost definitely) had a relationship with Henry Ainley, 28 years his senior, and Stephen Fry with Steven Webb, 26 years his junior.

Isherwood and Bachardy are proof that a big age difference is no barrier to a functional relationship. They stayed together for 33 years, broken only by Isherwood’s death at age 81.

Isherwood is British and Bachardy is American, which partly accounts for the number of letters collected in The Animals. They also found themselves apart on occasion due to work commitments. The relationship communicated in the letters is therefore long-distance. In this way it bears many similarities to the situation that many furries find themselves in today, where couples may be separated for long periods of time. It is just another way that these letters from the 1950s, 60s and 70s are relevant to furry today.

The Animals is easy to find on Amazon and other online bookstores. It’s a terrific book to share with guests, and dive into every now and then. It’ll even help make your furry roleplay extra classy. Just don’t try to read it all at once.

On a recent work trip to London, I had the privilege of attending a LondonFurs meet, which I have to say was spectacular. There’s not really an analog around where I am, though I imagine the meet known only to me as “Chicken” in California might come close. It was big – hovering around 50 or so people – and there were a good percentage of the attendees in suit, which was new to me. In Northern Colorado, we don’t have too much in the way of furmeets, and what we do are quiet, intimate affairs with maybe 15 attendees, tops. Suiting happens, but is uncommon, and tends to represent only a small portion of the furries in attendance.

Another interesting thing was the barrier-to-entry in that the meet took place at a city bar, and thus attracted an older crowd, at least of drinking age (though note JM’s recent comment that this includes furries 18 years old and older, rather than 21 as it would be in the United States).

As I sipped mediocre cocktails (seriously, how hard is it to make a Pimm’s?!) and aggressively pink wines, I noticed a common trend among the furries – notably among the fursuiters: playfulness. Childish, simple playfulness. This, I think, is something of a universal within our fandom: the tendency toward play.

Play, commonly seen as an activity that takes place between children, or between children and a facilitating adult such as a parent, is an important part of development, particularly in the development of a child’s psychology. Play itself serves many purposes during a child’s intellectual development and helps to provide a strong basis for the growth of the individual. Outdoor play, for instance, helps to strengthen a child’s connection to and understanding of the environment around them. Meanwhile, social play can help solidify language within the growing child and lay the foundation for learning as the individual progresses through school (thus why play is seen as an integral part of early education).

Play also helps to solidify social interaction between individuals. Pretend play and other types of social play are formative in the ways in which children interact with each other into adulthood. Additionally, there is a strong emotional component to play. Childhood psychologists and therapists have often used play as a way of interacting with children on an emotional level. In short, play helps to shape the whole of the child’s personality.

The play that I witnessed at that LondonFurs meet, the one that struck me with the idea for this article, was simple. Three furries – two in suit, one out of suit – had arrayed themselves in an equilateral triangle and were rolling a swirly-green beach ball back and forth. Occasionally, the ball would escape the trio, and, with much visible consternation, one of the fursuiters would go scrambling after it and gleefully bring it back to the small circle. Onlookers watched and laughed, some took pictures, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

This type of scene seemed to me to be particularly furry. That is to say, it was notable in how common it was. It’s not uncommon to see furries engaging in playful activities, especially in suit – it was one of the first things I did when I got mine. It’s a common sight, seeing furries and fursuiters playing around at conventions, almost to the point where it seems out of place seeing a fursuiter not hamming it up and simply striding purposefully toward some goal.

On the surface, this raises quite a few questions. What exactly is the reason for this focus on play within furry. Is it a type of infantilization? That is, are we intentionally acting more childlike in order to feel more childlike ourselves? Or perhaps it’s a type of reclaimed innocence. We act like children in order to relive more childlike (and thus perceived as more fun) portions of our lives. Or perhaps it’s simply a means of letting down one’s “front-stage persona” in the Erving Goffman sense: we’re showing who we truly are – playful individuals – without the professional and interpersonal masks that we otherwise keep firmly in place.

With that last bit in mind, it’s worth noting that, in adults, play plays a slightly different role than in children. It’s associated most often with a strength of character found primarily in humor, teamwork, and creativity. There are various aspects of playfulness that all adults exhibit throughout their lives, and for various reasons, as mentioned. Playfulness is a healthy thing for adults to experience, as well as children, and there are aspects of it that fit in all of our day-to-day lives. [ref]

I think this is all quite important to furry, and not just due to the prevalence. I think that playfulness and childishness inform furry on a more fundamental level than we honestly give them credit for. I know the common refrain that furry is about hearkening back to our Saturday-morning-cartoon childhoods, that fursuiting is something we do for the enjoyment of children, and I believe that truly is the case for some, but I think that frames the whole situation in a much less personal, much more selfless way. At heart, I think the truth is that a good many of us truly are playful. Our childishness isn’t something that’s immature, as this playfulness even shows up in our more adult creations, but it’s something that shows our strength of character. After all, not only are we able to maintain a mask with which we interact with the public and professional world, but we are also able to let that down and interact with each other through true, honest play.

Fursuiting is magical.

The world shifts slightly when you plunge into a foamy fursuit head, and it takes your eyes a moment to adjust to the reduced light and the restricted vision. This is the moment you cross the threshold and become “in suit”. The effects are immediate.

Many fursuiters experience a feeling of relaxation when they enter suit. This feeling is a bit counter-intuitive to non-furries, there is sometimes a quick frown of suspicion when a suiter describes how suiting can be simultaneously physically taxing and mentally relieving. This suspicion is on par with that we feel when someone asserts that they “enjoy” some minor but fundamentally disagreeable task, like the person who has to wake up at 5:30am for work might say that they enjoy the crisp dawn air, and that they are more of a morning person anyway. It’s plausible but not very compelling.

The feeling of relaxation comes from the removal of social pressures. People start reacting to the suit and so the wearer can drop all the usual social defences: they can smile and frown and sweat and wave without worrying about the subtle ways that those acts might be interpreted. The suiter knows that people are reacting to the suit’s social cues, not those of the human being pulling the strings underneath.

There is a special feeling when you walk past a mirror and catch your reflection. Instead of the usual human meatbag of nerves and skin and hair, you see yourself as the suit: a furry character, one that has been designed and built to reflect whatever image that you would like it to reflect. You look into the mirror and see a version of yourself—one that raises its arm when you raise your arm, one that scratches its ears when you scratch your ears—but one that doesn’t betray your apprehension about meeting someone new, or your worry about making a spectacle of yourself in public, or your shyness about expressing a desire for friendly intimate contact.

Given time and experience, the fursuit stops being a bulky costume and instead becomes a natural extension of your biology. Like a tennis player who swishes a racquet in the unconscious knowledge of where the ball will strike, the fursuit is accepted as a part of the body. You accept that you are slightly bigger and slightly heavier. You stop thinking about the parts of your vision that are restricted: you simply see what you can see (and you might be surprised by your improved field of vision when you take your head off). Like a pair of contact lenses, you unconsciously take a foreign, inanimate physical object and make it part of yourself.

And now you are the fursuit. You might say that you are “fursuiting”, but you are really doing other things: maybe going for a stroll and posing for photos; maybe interacting and expressing yourself (mutely, perhaps); maybe—hopefully—hugging someone who is grateful to be hugging a real-life furry. This takes time and experience of course, and is a bit of a challenge… it’s hot in there. (Maybe in the first few months of getting your first suit, you lost a bit of weight.)

You have transmogrified from a human to a furry. Your mind has unconsciously accepted your new body, you accept that the face in the mirror is your own.

The experience of accepting a new body happens to everyone, when we transition from childhood to adulthood. We grow and change and, during puberty, we forever feel like we are wearing the wrong skin. It takes time for our minds to accept our new bodies, and in that time our bodies keep changing, and we never quite catch up. And if we lose a bit of weight, or bulk up in the gym, we feel this again… hopefully, as adults, we have learned to take joy in the changes that take place.

Karl Ove Knausgaard writes about the experience, as a child, of the fascination of looking at himself reflected in mirrors upon mirrors. He writes of feeling uncomfortable while standing in front of a bathroom mirror with a small mirror in one hand, looking at himself from different angles. He has become used to his own face but not with the other ways that people can see him, and he writes of a similar feeling seeing himself in photos, or on television, or listening to a recording of his own voice.

He feels this way because his body, his biology, reflects something of his own identity. He can never experience himself from an outsider’s perspective and so is obsessed with doing so. A fursuiter has a different experience: they have control of how they look from all angles, and so can relax the constant social worry of imagining how they may be perceived.

We humans, after all, are social beings. We exist in a social realm. Fursuiting allows us to do so in a more controlled way.

The fursuit provides us with a new body, a new biology, that we can accept as our own. And our ability to assume inanimate objects, like fursuits, to be part of our natural selves works the other way: our natural selves can extend to things that are not physically present.

It is certainly possible to feel body parts that are not there. It is common for people who have lost limbs to imagine pain in the missing body part. The pain is as real as any other pain, but one that cannot be physically salved because there is no physical biology. It is a personal pain, one that is experienced but has no evidence, one that can sometimes be healed by creating a false stand-in for the missing limb, allowing the body to unconsciously accept a foreign object, perhaps with use of a prosthetic or with mirror therapy.

Men who have lost a testicle through cancer sometimes feel like they are missing something that helps define themselves. A prosthetic, despite being functionally useless and rarely seen by others, alleviates this personal pain. Even though they “know” that the testicle is a fake designed to fool their unconscious mind, their unconscious mind doesn’t care and is just happy to feel whole again.

Furries who wear tails everywhere sometimes miss them. Phantom tail syndrome, despite the tail never being biologically present, is akin to feeling bereft of a missing limb or testicle. Putting the tail back on makes the discomfort disappear.

Fursuits might be considered a replacement for a furry body that none of us will ever have or ever experience. Even though our furry selves are entirely imaginary, they still inform our identity and our social interactions. Fursuiting is therapy for furries.

We humans ascribe special value to those parts of our bodies that are social: we care about the presentation of our faces, our hands, our genitalia. These elements of our biology are more important to our identities, and we accordingly place less importance on other parts of our bodies—the soles of our feet; our necks. Knausgaard sees the disparity between how we look and how we see ourselves as a relationship between identity and culture, in that our social interactions with the outside world inform how we see ourselves.

This is undoubtedly an artefact of our biological heritage. From an evolutionary point of view, we have succeeded as a species partly due to our social nature. We have a survival imperative to be social creatures, and our requirement for complex social interaction is one of the reasons we have unusually large brains.

As a species, our social nature requires our biological selves and how we think of ourselves—our identities—to be different. The biology is real, but the identity is real too. They are both valid descriptions of who we are, yet biology and identity are separate and distinct from each other.

As Knausgaard describes it, blood trickles through capillaries in the brain just beyond the thoughts. But the thoughts, on closer inspection, are just electrical and chemical reactions in a sponge-like object. Biology creates identity, but identity is not biology. Our biology makes up part of our identity, but so do inanimate objects like prosthetic testicles and fursuits, and purely imaginary things like fursonas.

And there are elements of our biology that do not inform identity at all. Knausgaard identifies the back of the neck as one such element: he sees it as non-individual, non-relational, biological, whole, and authentic. The neck is like the person inside the fursuit: critical to the working of the human body, but otherwise impersonal and non-individual, a biological person that has transmogrified into a biological machine.

Our furry selves, imaginary as they are, are very real. When fursuiting we make them tangible, and we relegate our human selves to mere, authentic, biology. We do this online as well, writing and communicating as our furry selves, just as I—JM the furry horse—am doing right now.

If anyone ever says to you that there is something wrong or inauthentic about juggling multiple identities, or thinking of one’s self as an anthropomorphic character, then you can tell them this: bullshit. There is a difference between identity and biology, and everyone has their own version. Our furry selves are simply more interesting, more creative, and more awesome.

Say that a horse told you so.

- The Other Side of the Face, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Paris Review, 28 May 2014
- with thanks to Branston for the conversations about fursuiting

An apparent contradiction for your consideration:

1. Furries care about animal welfare. Collectively we dedicate significant time, mental energy, and charitable donations to animal welfare causes (especially at conventions where total donations several hundreds of thousands of dollars per year). 83% of furries say they support animal rights (ref).
2. Only around 4% of furries are vegetarian (ref 2009 Furry Survey), about the same as the general population.

A group with a larger-than-normal proportion of animal welfare advocates, like furry, might be expected to have a larger-than-normal proportion of ethical vegetarians. This is not to say that all advocates of animal welfare can be expected to be vegetarian on grounds of animal welfare, simply that such a choice is more likely. So why are there so few?

(This answer is partly due to furry’s demographics. We are largely young and male, two groups that are less likely to be vegetarian than the general population. The difference isn’t particularly large, but it’s interesting: I wrote about it here.)

There are many reasons why furries might be more likely to be ethical vegetarians, at least on paper.

Research shows that humanizing animals leads to increased concern for animal welfare. Animal welfare advocacy groups know this (ref), and use it to help bolster their cause: furry mascots and cute animals abound.

As a convenient example, a furry friend of mine recently donated a couple of very hard-working, sweaty hours of time by suiting for the RSPCA. He stood outside a supermarket in his canine fursuit with a collection box, interacted with children and parents, and generally did his best to do a good deed. He was told that the money they collected that day was double what they might usually expect: the suiting did its job. (He eats meat and has never considered becoming vegetarian.)

It seems that it’s not just humanization of animals that leads to increased concern for animal welfare. There is evidence that animalization of humans has a similar effect.

(This is based on early research by a furry with a PhD, and sometime [adjective][species] contributor, Dr. Courtney Plante (aka Nuka). His work is based on several reaction-time experiments conducted on willing furries at Oklacon, Furry Fiesta, and Anthrocon. In this work, Dr. Plante compared the speed and accuracy with which furries and therians made decisions about whether a word or picture flashing on a screen referred to “me”, “not me”, “non-human animal” or “human”. Based on the pattern of mistakes and the speed of responding, it was possible to quantify how closely linked the concepts of “me” and “non-human animal” were tied in participants’ minds, a form of automatic “self-dehumanization”. This work has yet to be published, but it is promising, showing that the extent to which furries “self-dehumanized” predicted their endorsement of animal rights activism and concern for animal welfare.)

It is believed that humanization of animals—anthropomorphism—and animalization of humans—zoomorphism—help shape our attitudes towards non-human animals by helping us consider them to be part of our group. Like a lot of social animals, humans tend to treat those who are perceived to be part of a shared group differently. This is the reason why it feels more important if a countryman (who is a stranger) is, say, killed in an accident, compared with a non-countryman (who is also a stranger).

I should add that we are all susceptible to differing opinions based (partly) on whether someone is an insider or outsider. It’s not exactly logical to do so – it’s just the product of the evolutionary drive to protect our own DNA. We are, after all, just animals.

It’s probable that the furry propensity towards (1) anthropomorphics and (2) interest in animal welfare is linked. But that link doesn’t seem to take the apparently logical next step and collectively push us in the general direction of vegetarianism.

Curiously, there is no evidence that the therian subset of furry—those that see themselves either spiritually or literally as a non-human animal—are more likely to be vegetarian. And self-identified furry zoophiles—those with a closer emotional bond with non-human animals—are only marginally more likely to be vegetarian (somewhere in the range of 6 to 8%, although note that we are dealing with small numbers so this value is subject to more uncertainty than usual.)

And yet there is no doubt that vegetarianism improves animal welfare. The reasoning is very simple:

If an animal is being raised for profit, there will sometimes be a conflict between what is best for its welfare, and what produces the highest profit. And, sometimes, the drive for profit will take priority.

If you are vegetarian, you will reduce demand for meat. Accordingly fewer animals will be raised for meat, and so fewer animals will suffer.

The harm being done to animals in the interests of profit can, and does, occur any time from birth to death. Examples include the suffering of intensively farmed cattle in the United States, battery hens in the United Kingdom, live sheep export in Australia, or a fish on a hook in Canada. Even lower creatures, like lobsters, suffer (as detailed in this terrific David Foster Wallace piece, Consider The Lobster).

I’ll add that the harm being done to animals that are being raised for profit is a natural and unavoidable side-effect of capitalism. There is a drive to produce the same product for the lowest cost, and so people and companies try to do just that. Sometimes low costs lead directly to poorer animal welfare—which is why a battery chicken costs £1.50 from Tesco compared with the £15 organic one from my local farmer’s market—and sometimes people cheat or look for loopholes—which is how horsemeat ends up in cheap “beef” burgers.

(The corollary is that animals raised for meat, but not profit, do not suffer at the hands of the profit motive. An ethical vegetarian may be happy to eat the chicken you raised in your backyard and named Alfred. But you should probably ask first.)

Ethical vegetarianism is a very simple and entirely uncontroversial use of logic. The counter-argument doesn’t challenge the reasoning, it simply states that the conclusion is unacceptable: that refusing to consume animals raised for profit is inconvenient.

The argument for ethical vegetarianism has been around for a long time. However it was only as recently as 1975 that it gained mainstream understanding, in Peter Singer’s classic Animal Liberation. Animal Liberation received a lot of publicity, positive and negative, and at the time was thought to be the first step in a seachange in human attitudes towards non-human animals.

But very little has changed since 1975. The proportion of people in Western countries calling themselves vegetarian hasn’t really changed, and the number of meat-eaters worldwide has grown significantly (partly due to population growth; partly due to higher affluence in countries like India and China). Why? I don’t know, and nor does Dr Singer. It may be that it’s the same reason why furries are disinterested in animal welfare when it comes to food.

Perhaps you are one of the scant furry vegetarians. Or perhaps you tried it for a while and stopped. Or maybe you’re thinking of making the change. Tell us your story in the comments below.

Guest post by Ralphie Raccoon. 

Hi, I’m Ralphie Raccoon, and this is hopefully the first in a small series of short articles presenting some important and interesting (and perhaps some less important, but hopefully still interesting) questions about the fandom, and attempting to answer them as best as possible through the eyes of statistics and data. If you’re British and listen to Radio 4, or enjoy listening to the BBC World Service if you are from the rest of the world, you may have heard of the programme “More or Less”. Well, this is sort of like that. Except it’s a blog post, not a radio show. And it’s not on the BBC, it’s on [adjective][species]. And rather than a bunch of guest speakers, you just get me. Sorry about that. Anyway, I hope that you find these articles enjoyable, or, at the very least, slightly informative.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional (or even really an amateur) statistician. I have never taken, and probably will never take, a proper statistics course in my life. So if any professional (or amateur) statisticians notice any errors or incorrect terminology, feel free to come over to my house and beat me with a big stick (or just leave me some constructive feedback, whatever you prefer).

For this first article I’m going to try to answer what is perhaps the biggest question of all: Just how many of us are there? It certainly is an important question to answer. After all, a fandom’s popularity is defined by its size, and while we may still pale in comparison to other big fandoms like science fiction, anime and fantasy, in recent years our numbers have swelled as awareness grows, and some of the stigma begins to wither away.

Total attendances at furry conventions have grown by over 500% since 2003 (Wikifur), and it would be fair to assume that the fandom has probably grown by a similar amount, if not more. But while we instinctively know that the fandom has grown in recent years, it is hard to work out how big it has actually gotten. What are the chances, for example, if you got 100 random people into a room from around the globe, that one of them would be a furry?

It’s not an easy question to answer. The fandom is not a club, we do not have any way of knowing how many “members” there are, people are free to join and leave without notifying anyone. Censuses such as the Furry Survey are entirely optional, and while they do produce valuable data, it is not possible to extract an estimate of the total number of furries on earth purely from the number of responses. However, combined with the aggregate attendance data of conventions from Wikifur, there is another way…

The Convention Method

One way to calculate the population of something is by using a known quantity of a subset of that population, and knowing what percentage that subset was of the total population. To put it in laymen’s terms, if you had an unknown quantity of marbles, but you knew that 10 of them were green and 10% of the marbles were green, you would instantly know that you had 100 marbles. We can do a similar thing here, by using the aggregate attendance data of conventions as mentioned previously (the known quantity), along with data about what conventions furries attended in 2011 from the Furry Survey.

Now, we can’t just say that X% of the fandom attended a convention in 2011, as we know that many furries would have attended multiple conventions, but we do have data on which exact conventions (from a list of the most popular conventions) each responder to the furry survey attended in 2011. If we add up all the convention attendances, and divide them by the total number of responses

Total convention attendances (Furry Survey 2011) = 0.4 conventions attended per response. Number of responses (Furry Survey 2011)

So we now know that according to the Furry Survey, each furry on average attended 0.4 conventions in 2011. Now, if we take the sum of all the attendance numbers from conventions only from the list on the Furry Survey, in 2011, from Wikifur, and divide that by 0.4, we now have an estimate of the total number of furries in the world:

Sum of attendance at conventions listed in the Furry Survey in 2011 (Wikifur) = Sum of attendance at conventions listed in The Furry Survey in 2011 (Wikifur) × Number of responses (Furry Survey 2011) 0.4 Total convention attendances (Furry Survey 2011)

? 60,300

So there you have it, there were approximately 60,300 furries in the world in 2011. But is that really an accurate answer? As mentioned previously, the list of conventions that the Furry Survey collected data on attendance for was only limited to the most popular conventions, so many attendances at smaller conventions (particularly those from countries with small furry populations) would have been missed, meaning that the average convention attendance number is lower than it should be, and therefore there are less furries in the world than the statistic suggests.

However, my “gut instinct”, so to speak, actually points in the opposite direction, that 60,300 is actually too low a number, rather than too high. There really needs to be another estimate collected using different data, in order to give the number more (or less) credibility. You could use this methodology on something like, FA accounts, for example, as long as you could persuade Dragoneer to give you the numbers (If he’s kept any!). The more estimates like this that can be collected, the more certain we will become of an accurate number of people in the fandom.

There is also the issue of language. We perhaps assume that since the most popular furry websites are in English, and that most conventions are held in English speaking countries, that the vast majority of furries are at least proficient enough to be able to complete an internet survey. Is this a good assumption to make? Perhaps, but that is probably a whole other topic in itself*.

And finally, what about the question at the beginning, about the chances of there being a furry in a room of 100 people? Well, if we divide 60,300 by 7 billion, we can work out that approximately 0.0008% of the world’s population were furries in 2011. So to answer that question, if you got 100 random people into a room from around the globe in 2011, the chances of one of them being a furry would be approximately 1 in 125,000. Better odds than winning the lottery, I guess.

* This article was revised on 31 August to include this paragraph, which was mistakenly cut from the final version of the article. Bad editor-horse!

Coming soon: What is the “furriest” country in the world?

Ralphie Raccoon (not his real name, and he is not planning to ever change it to that) has a BSc in Special Effects Development at the University of Bolton and an MRes in robotics from the University of Plymouth, neither of which really had anything to do with statistics. He currently lives in a little house on a windswept hill just outside of the great northern English city of Manchester, known for its lively arts and music scene, trams the size of lorries, and rather excessive amounts of rain. At work he plays with big robots and deadly deadly lasers (no, really, that’s what he does. Trust me, it’s not as exciting as it sounds). Apart from hiding in trash cans and hissing at the neighbours cat, he also likes to watch TV, play computer games, burn himself on soldering irons in his workshop, and generally reflect on life and the universe in general.

This article was first published in 2012.

I’m sure I’ve gone on before about the benefits of working within a community, but I’ll say it again: you guys are ace.

While running the [a][s] Twitter account, I do my best to follow back everyone who follows the account.  This isn’t simply a nice-guy type thing to do; some of the best inspiration comes from all you fuzzies out there.  After all, the articles here would get pretty boring if they were solely about what it was like to be a furry without being a member of the furry subculture.  This week’s article comes from a recommendation and brief conversation with Drenthe, a raccoon of quality, about a book he had seen a review of which I subsequently purchased.  The book was Hanne Blank’s Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality.  I think it’s fairly obvious by now how much gender and sexuality interest me.

One of the early chapters of the book brings up an interesting concept that I only recently thought to apply to the fandom, and that’s the concept of doxa.

Doxa, from the Greek meaning “popular belief”, has come to mean something very specific in sociology today.  Doxa is everything that goes without saying in a society.  In Blank’s book, she uses it to describe the fact that, for the majority of our western society, it goes without saying that heterosexuality is the norm, that homosexuality has to do with two people in a binary gender system engaging in sexual activity or feeling romantically attracted to each other, when, on close inspection, neither sexuality nor gender are quite so simple.  This is part of our doxa, part of what we just assume is the case via popular belief.  It is rarely taught explicitly, and in fact rarely ever mentioned out loud because it is so common a belief.

This concept shows itself primarily in language and communication, though it’s also visible in many of the social structures of the society.  One of the most common linguistic elements surrounding doxa, Blank asserts, is markedness, or marked categories.  That is, two categories related by a rule and an exception, or a general category and a specific category.  For a pertinent example, one might consider the unmarked term “marriage” and the marked term “gay marriage”. Or perhaps in the language of media, this could be “advertisements” and “girls’ advertisements”, which in Chandler’s “Semiotics for Beginners”  is marked by “significantly longer shots, significantly more dissolves (fade out/fade in of shot over shot), less long shots and more close-ups, less low shots, more level shots and less overhead shots”.

All of this, of course, got me wondering about what sort of doxa and marked categories we have within the fandom.  Culture as whole has the givens and the goes-without-sayings, and individual subcultures, as parts of that whole, are just as susceptible to their own specific doxa.  I’ve written before about some of the stages of growth of an individual within western gay popular culture, and those, in their own way, are a sort of doxa, if it goes without saying that younger members of that culture go through their phases of discovery.

One of the big problems with discerning doxa amid that noisy channel of communication that is language and media is difficult, and it is most often found when it is challenged, such as when one notices a marked category.  After all, doxa is not a static thing: it changes and grows or fades as the society around it advances or declines.  Here are just a few of the things I’ve noticed within the fandom that could be called doxa, though as they’re all either currently being challenged or have already been challenged, they may sound a little dated.  To be sure, finding any sort of doxa that is currently well-entrenched is nearly impossible – it’s difficult to ask oneself what one takes for granted, after all.

• Everyone has a personal character – When I first started getting into the fandom and learning more about furry, it seemed as though the first thing you did was choose a species and attributes that fit your personality and did your level best to let that character become you.  Everyone I knew had a character that fit them well and only a few I knew had alts, which were mainly used to either sneak around or separate adult aspects of their interactions from more general aspects.  However, over time, I noticed that many of my friends (and me, for that matter) started to create different characters or at least different morphs to correspond to different aspects of their personality.  It wasn’t so much that one was just a foxman anymore; one was a foxman when chatting with friends, a foxgirl when questioning one’s gender identity, a wolverineman to roleplay stronger emotions, and so on.

  While this was likely the case even when I was still in my “fursona” stage, I think that things have become more clearly separated now as we get into such things as character auctions and “adoptables”, where one creating a character no longer has much to do with the personal aspect of having a character.  Now that the doxa of having a personal character is being challenged, you see more and more people on FA having journals listing their many characters, only a few of which they may have a personal connection with beyond simply “this is mine”.

• Furry is dramatic – As I mentioned in my previous post, it seems as though a meme will move in a certain arc shape that has become familiar.  That post was about the larger meme of drama within the fandom, but even that one can be seen to be moving in certain ways.  Whereas before it was considered implicit that furries were going to be dramatic people, now it is something that we hang lampshades on nearly constantly – heck, some of us even write introspective meta-furry articles about the subject – and it seems that a lot of that default-to-drama attitude is starting to fade away.  Just like all of the smaller bits of strife within the larger world of drama, the drama itself is starting to move in that same arc.  It is a doxa that is being challenged by the very fact that we’re so willing to point it out and name it.
• Furry is unpopular or uncool- Kathleen Gerbasi, referencing the infamous Vanity Fair article, mentions, “The furry stereotype promoted by [the article's author] indicated that furries were predominantly male, liked cartoons as children, enjoyed science fiction, were homosexual, wore glasses and had beards (male furries only), were employed as scientists or in computer-related fields, and their most common totem animals were wolves and foxes”, which does seem to fit in nicely with our own exploration of what might be the default furry in the fandom.  Needless to say, it doesn’t paint the picture of what one might call a cool or popular guy.

  However, as the fandom has grown and changed, it has entered into a marketing feedback loop: the more furs there are out there with purchasing power, the more money is to be made on them by creating products to suit their tastes, which in turn, helps to broaden the audience of furries out there.  At some point, it became cool and hip to adopt some items that could be seen as related to our fandom, if not necessarily to be furry oneself.  Spirit hoods, tails, and kigurumi pajamas are some examples of how this doxa has been challenged even from outside the fandom itself.

It’s important to note, here that there is a blurry line between doxa and opinion.  One can hold an opinion as a belief and even believe in it quite strongly, but doxa are things that we implicitly believe are true about the society in which we’re embedded, things that we take as fact.  The reason that the line is blurry is that, not only is it sometimes difficult to disentangle opinion from perceived fact, but that as doxa shifts and changes over time, it can veer closer or farther way from opinion.

Watching the shift and change of what we take as given within the fandom is a good way to watch the way our subculture grows and changes, itself.  As we watch these ideas shift from doxa to a division between orthodoxy and heterodoxy – that which is accepted as normal, and that which is seen as going against the norm – to an accepted variety, we can see the way that new members influence the fandom and how external factors can change our social interaction.  The perceived sexualization of furry and the consequent backlash from both older and newer members can be seen as part of this, for example, and there are even visible artifacts such as the numerous ‘not yiffy’ and ‘no RP’ groups on FA being tagged on artists’ and watchers’ profiles alike.  That is just one example, however, of a shorter change that has shown how the fandom is shifting along with its members’ participation.

So is doxa good or bad?  That’s a tough question to answer.  Doxa may be one of those things that “just is”.  It’s an artifact of the way we work as individuals as well as the way our societies are built.  Certainly, some doxa cause harm to individuals and minorities, and even within those minorities, sub-doxa of a sort can cause additional problems in the form of backlash, but commonly held beliefs and ideas are part of the glue that holds us together in cultures.  Even within our own fandom, there are several currents and ideas that form the shifting background of whatever furry is.  Equally difficult to ask, then, is what is the next doxa?  What new ideas will we find out we are taking for granted when they’re challenged?  What commonly held beliefs will lead to contention in the future of our small group of animal-people?  While it is difficult to look within ourselves and figure these things out now beyond searching for marked categories, it certainly bears exploration once they come to light.

Wolf Totem is a 2004 novel about a young Han Chinese student who travels to Inner Mongolia, and finds himself making a personal and spiritual connection with the indigenous wolves.

It is not a specifically furry book, but it explores themes that will resonate with many furries who have an introspective and personal connection to their species of choice. This flavour of furry can be seen as animism, where we imagine that we have a spiritual* connection with a non-human animal.

* Spiritual, roughly, means “not real” or “not tangible”. I include this definition to avoid looking overly fruity.

Our student’s connection with the wolves is, more or less, a furry one. He doesn’t imagine himself a lupine animal-person but he does feel a close connection with wolves in general. He explores his bespoke spirituality via the more structured totemism of the Mongols, which gives the book its title.

Wolf Totem is a book worth exploring if you identify with an animistic version of furry, especially if you are a wolf. It’s also worth reading for its visceral, bloodthirsty, violent set pieces, which rival anything I have ever seen or read.

Wolf Totem has structural and thematic similarities with Carroll Ballard’s 1983 (film) masterpiece, Never Cry Wolf. In Never Cry Wolf, our hero is a Westerner in Inuit country; in Wolf Totem, he is a Han Chinese in Mongol country. Like the Inuit, the Mongols are nomadic, existing as a smaller contributor to a larger ecosystem.

The Mongolian grassland is a place of extreme weather: white-hair blizzards in winter to humid heat and mosquito swarms in summer. Survival is such an environment is fraught.

The (human and non-human) populations of the grassland have adapted to survive these extremes by finding ecological niches. The two main predators, humans and wolves, are often in conflict but are also co-dependent. The wolves will risk an assault on human-raised cattle in times of starvation, while the humans rely on the wolves to keep scavengers and parasites in check. Like all nomadic societies, the Monogls do not have the safety net of a permanent settlement and so rely on the wolves, and other members of the ecosystem, for their continuing survival.

The vagaries of seasonal weather mean that that humans—like the wolves—experience feasts and suffer famines. Accordingly the deity of the Mongols, Tengger, is a sky god who controls those things that are outside of the influence of humans. The wolves, rivals and helpers*, are agents of Tengger. And so the Mongols adopt the wolf as their representatives to god: the wolf totem.

* making them, ugh, frenemies

The best parts of Wolf Totem are those that describe the bloody battles between man and wolf. Early on in the book, wolves slaughter a herd of gazelle during winter, leaving bodies preserved in the snow. The humans scavenge a few bodies, providing them with a rare glut of food during a lean time, and plan to leave the rest to feed the wolves over spring. However outsiders to the group, motivated by money from selling the pelts, extract all the remaining gazelles.

The hungry wolves, desperate, attack a herd of Mongolian military horses. The slaughter of these horses during a blizzard is a terrific, horrific scene:

“Horses whose bellies had been ripped open by wolves had just filled their stomachs with the first grass shoots of the year, mixed with some that remained from the previous autumn, and their abdomens were taut and low-slung; when the thin hide covers were torn away by wolf fangs, the stomachs and supple intestines spilled out onto the snow.”

 

In balance with this aggressiveness, the Mongols know that the wolves play an important if subtle role. They prey on the weak of other species—marmots, gazelle, horses, even humans—thereby ensuring strong and durable populations. This natural selection ensures that the grassland inhabitants are more able to withstand the extremes of weather.

This is a very strong echo of Never Cry Wolf. There, wolves are shown to keep the caribou strong by weeding out the weaker members of the herd. Human hunters, on the other hand, target the largest bulls and therefore imperil the herd’s survival. And similarly, in Wolf Totem, human outsiders will destroy the delicately balanced grassland ecosystem.

Wolf Totem is written from the perspective of a Han Chinese student, an outsider to Mongol culture. While this is based on the author’s real experiences, it works as a neat narrative trick: the readers learns about Mongol culture aside our protagonist.

The student is nearly killed by wolves in the book’s opening sequences, setting up his obsession. This scene is another that parallels very closely with Never Cry Wolf: there, the protagonist is devoured by wolves in a fever dream. In both cases, the wolf is taken as a symbol of personal identity (similar to that taken by many furries).

The similarities between Wolf Totem and Never Cry Wolf are striking but apparently coincidental. In both cases the protagonist is an academic observer, one who is drawn into a reactive, natural lifestyle in contrast to the deadening city. In both cases, the reader is taken on a journey from ignorance to enlightenment. Although where Never Cry Wolf is subtle and haunting, Wolf Totem can be repetitive and heavy-handed.

In each story the protagonist is welcomed by the local nomadic population, and adopts a version of traditional spiritual beliefs. This is possibly a problematic kind of cultural appropriation, where a simplified version of a complex (native) belief system is presented as innate spiritual wisdom. (This is the same process that sometimes leads to outright racist characterizations like Hollywood’s “Magical Negro”, whereby a black person applies mystical powers to help a white person, as in The Matrix, The Green Mile, and The Black Stallion.) However in Wolf Totem, like Never Cry Wolf, the protagonist doesn’t so much appropriate the local beliefs as create a personal, bespoke version—something a lot closer to furry. In both cases, the connection with the wolves is complex and nuanced, and so arguably errs on the side of respectful.

Wolf Totem tells the story of the destruction of the Mongol nomadic lifestyle, and the balance of the grassland ecosystem. This starts with the arrival of the Han students, including our protagonist. They are respectful and curious about the Mongols, but they still push—and sometimes flout—the boundaries of what is considered respectful to Tengger. But the final nail in the grassland coffin comes from the incursion of the Han Chinese Establishment, specifically Chairman Mao and his Cultural Revolution.

Wolf Totem is set in 1971. This was at the height of Mao’s cult of personality, and the goal of his Cultural Revolution was to empower the weakest in society via an establishment-led peasant uprising, intended to destroy inequality between classes. His two targets were traditional beliefs (because they are a roadblock to change) and liberal education (because this creates a class of bourgeois elites).

The outcome was that anything that fit the description of the “Four Olds”—old customs, culture, habits, and ideas—was targeted for destruction. This led to mass book-burning, destruction of buildings, and banning of cultural or religious ceremonies. It also brought China’s education system to a virtual halt, producing a generation of under-educated individuals.

Regardless of the intent of the Cultural Revolution, the outcome—destruction of history and banning of education—is about as perfect a description of evil as I can imagine. It echoes the Nazis in 1930s Germany, or the Taliban in 1990s Afghanistan, or just about any example of cultural or religious whitewashing you care to name.

And so it is inevitable that the Mongols will lose their grassland at the hands of the Cultural Revolution and the rapacious Han. They will give up their nomadic way of live and resettle in fixed farming communities. Wolf Totem takes us through this seachange, which happens quickly and mercilessly.

The Mongol community is pragmatic in the face of this enforced change. They understand that they have limited ability to withstand the influx of Han culture, bureaucracy and infrastructure. And so they adapt. The most egregious victims of the change in Chinese Mongolia are the wolves, who are seen by the Han as merely a predatory species. Our student protagonist is helpless as he learns that he is the vanguard of the force that will destroy them.

Wolf Totem has some shortcomings. The characterization of the Mongol way of life as “good” and the Han as “bad” is glib, simplistic, and sometimes contradictory. For example, there is a description of Mongol wolf traps—whereby the trap is boiled and covered in horse grease to hide human scents—which are said to be an example of man’s intellect and cunning. Yet later, there is a description of Han wolf traps—using the same equipment to the same end but with more effective subterfuge—which is said to be unambiguously evil.

At times like this, Wolf Totem occasionally falls into “Magical Negro” thinking, where the author ascribes a spiritual infallibility to the exotic Mongols. It is as if Mongol acts are assumed to be justifiable (and so are rationalised as such), whereas Han acts are assumed to be bad or evil. This simplistic point of view remains even when the acts are very similar, and even when the actions of the Han make a lot of sense.

There is no doubt that there is a lot of suffering associated with the Mongols’ nomadic lifestyle. They are barely able to withstand the extremes of weather, and their stalemate with the wolves ensures constant conflict. The Han’s move towards permanent farming settlements provides stability and safety for the Mongols and their livestock. To get all utilitarian for a moment, it’s arguable that this reduction in (human and livestock) suffering more than offsets that caused by the hunting (to local extinction) of marmots and swans. (The wolves are also hunted, although Wolf Totem unusually pulls its punch by suggesting that the wolves are merely “driven” across the border to Russia.)

The arrival of the Han is heralded as a death knell for the land. However there is an epilogue where our protagonist returns, decades later, to discover a moderately successful farming community, and that everyone is doing pretty well for themselves.

This isn’t to underplay the negative effects of the Han’s incursion: cultural loss, environmental damage, and destruction of the grassland’s natural ecosystem. But it’s not as black-or-white as Wolf Totem makes it seem. (Never Cry Wolf makes the same mistake. The environmental message, while laudable, has all the subtlety of The Lorax.)

There are also some minor translation issues in Wolf Totem. At times, the reader is assume to be au fait with Chinese terms like li. At other times, the reader is treated with condescension, such as several references to Swan Lake which is unnecessarily and repeatedly clarified to be a Russian ballet.

Wolf Totem is also very repetitive in places. I suspect that this is due to challenges in translating from Chinese to English, where nuanced or modified nouns are translated back to the same English word. I can’t help but feel that it needed a brave translator/editor to cut the length of the book, perhaps by as much as half. As it stands, the narrative of Wolf Totem flags, particularly early on.

There are also a couple of very minor outright errors, which suggest to me that the translation and publication may have been rushed. Such errors are not really acceptable given that the translation is for a major publisher who paid $100k for the English rights. It also feels like a failure to properly respect the book itself, which has sold some 20 million copies—that’s slightly more than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; slightly less than The Hunger Games.

Still, notwithstanding these quibbles, Wolf Totem is worth the read for the unmistakably furry animistic spirituality, and the visceral scenes of life and death. But if reading’s not your thing, there is always the coming 3D film adaptation directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Name of The Rose), due to be released in February 2015.

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to travel from my home in London to the Rocky Mountain Fur Con in Denver, Colorado.

There were several of the [a][s] crew also attending RMFC. Zik—who has written a series of articles looking at furry communities around the world (“Foreign Furry Fandoms“)—challenged me to write an article about my American experience.

I grew up in Australia and moved to the UK about 5 years ago. The United States is, to me and to about 6.8 billion other people, a foreign country. Visiting an American furry convention as an outsider, and spending time with American furries, is an interesting and challenging (and thoroughly enjoyable) experience.

RMFC 2014 was my first American convention, outside of a visit to an smallish Elliott’s back in 2008. Aside from that I have been to Midfur (now Confurgence) in Australia, Eurofurence in Germany, and both Confuzzled and RBW in the UK.

The obvious point of comparison for RMFC is Confuzzled. They are very similar in size and age:

RMFC started in 2007; Confuzzled started in 2008

While I will use Confuzzled as a direct comparison, my comments generally apply to other non-American conventions I’ve attended.

It’s easy to mistake normal cultural differences (and the resulting culture shock) between the United States and elsewhere for furry differences. There are significant differences in culture, surprisingly so given the worldwide prevalence of American culture, but they aren’t the topic of this article.

The biggest challenge is the American tendency towards Amerocentrism. It is easy for an American to assume that American furry culture is furry culture. Here are a few simple examples of Amerocentrism, all committed by my [a][s] colleagues:

• The inherent premise behind Zik’s title: “Foreign” Furry Fandoms. He is implicitly stating that American is “domestic”; anything else is “foreign”, and imagines that assumption holds for his readers.
• Zik again, writing: “We Americans are hardly exposed to foreign furry culture beyond the artists we watch on art websites.”
• Makyo, during the [adjective][species] panel at RMFC, talked about furry racial demographics. He attributed changes in our collective racial profile to changes in the American furry community, neglecting to consider that furry’s growth worldwide might have significantly contributed to any changes.
• Klisoura, asking about race in the Furry Survey, uses the same racial categories as the American census. While that is appropriate for American audiences, it is not reasonable to have a separate category for (say) Native Americans and Pacific Islanders while lumping all Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Malay, Thai etc (all with measurable furry populations) into a generic “Asian” category.

This Amerocentrism is very understandable and no big deal, but it does colour my reflections on my American convention experience. I suspect that some of my thoughts may be interpreted as criticisms. They are not: if you are American, please keep in mind that you and I have different points of reference.

The biggest difference between Confuzzled and RMFC is affluence. Confuzzled is a significantly more expensive convention, and the attendees are significantly more affluent.

The approximate cost of attending each convention, assuming that you are staying in the hotel and sharing a room:

• RMFC 2014: US$375
• Confuzzled 2014: US$605

(I have made a few assumptions to reach these numbers, and tried to find comparable room options. It is certainly possible to reside at either convention for less.)

It’s worth adding that the RMFC and Confuzzled hotels are very similar, in size, in amenities, in room quality, and in location. They are both convention hotels on the outskirts of a moderately-sized city (Denver is 630,000; Birmingham 1.1m). They are both excellent venues.

To measure affluence, I’ve looked at each convention’s charity fundraising. I’m assuming that furries are equally likely to want to donate, and so donations roughly correlate with disposable income.

• RMFC 2014 US$5000
• Confuzzled 2013 US$19,300

(I was unable to find the 2014 Confuzzled charity donation. I have asked and will update the article when I get a response.)

This all makes sense. While RMFC is a big con, it largely serves the local population. Furries travelling from overseas or looking for a special con experience are much more likely to attend one of the really big American cons, perhaps Anthrocon or Midwest FurFest.

Confuzzled, on the other hand, serves the very large UK furry population, and only competes with Eurofurence for the UK and continental European furry populations. (Many European furs attend both.) Confuzzled also attracts furries from countries that do not qualify for the US visa waiver program, such as Russia, parts of Eastern Europe, most of South America, and most of South-East Asia. Those furries who travel will, on balance, tend to be more affluent than those who are local.

It’s worth adding that the cost of travel is much lower in the United States. Most RMFC attendees come by car.

• price of petrol in the US: 0.98c per liter*
• price of petrol in the UK: US$2.18 per litre*

(*Earlier version of this article quoted (wrong) prices per gallon. 1.0 liter = 1.0 litre. These are 12 August 2014 prices, ref)

The lower cost of RMFC lowers the barrier to entry, and therefore attracts a more socio-economically diverse crowd than Confuzzled. This is indisputably a good thing, but it does have some knock-on effects that make for a different congoing experience.

The RMFC art show is very obviously smaller, and of generally lower quality than the Confuzzled art show. Not only is it several times smaller, the works of art attract less bidding.

Again, this makes sense. A high-profile American artist will probably be more inclined to exhibit art at one of the larger conventions, in the hope of attracting more bidders and ultimately more money. This does create a possible niche for RMFC: artists creating something less mainstream will have more visibility, and may sell work that might otherwise be ignored. However this hasn’t yet happened at RMFC, if it ever will.

By comparison, the Dealer’s Den at RMFC is similar to that at Confuzzled. This makes sense too: people with wares to sell will want to attend as many conventions as possible.

There are fewer fursuiters at RMFC. I present this as prima facie: I think that is would be obvious to anyone attending both conventions. RMFC 2014 attracted 303 to the fursuit parade out of 1354 attendees (22%). I don’t have numbers for Confuzzled, but I have asked, and I will update this article when I receive a response.

The relative dearth of fursuits at RMFC is a natural outcome of its comparative affluence. But it’s a pity: fursuits are awesome.

On a related note, there was also less costuming and theatrical dressing (in public) at RMFC. Confuzzled hotel staff tend to either walk around with dumb grins, or exhibit mild symptoms of shell shock.

A second big difference between RMFC and Confuzzled, and a very obvious one if you spend much time in Britain, is the attitude to alcohol.

The Americans are subject to a higher legal drinking age of 21. Confuzzled is an 18+ convention, the legal drinking age, so all attendees at Confuzzled can legally drink. Three years might not sound like a lot until you consider furry’s age demographics:

• Under 18: 14.2%
• 18 to 20: 25.2%
• 21 and over: 60.6%

A full one-in-four furries can drink alcohol (legally) at Confuzzled but not RMFC. And of course any older furries with friends in the 18-20 bracket will be similarly affected.

The Confuzzled hotel bars are packed full of furries from the early afternoon until the early hours of the morning. RMFC is very different:

The (only) bar at RMFC at 8.30pm. Definitely a different con culture versus Confuzzled. http://t.co/oWCyIYY0Or

— Branston (@BranstonHoss) August 9, 2014

The difference is less to do with quantity of alcohol consumption (although I’m sure that furs in the UK are heavier drinkers), and more to do with the social environment of drinking in the UK. Alcohol is a social lubricant at Confuzzled; a reason to sit down and converse. Such a general social hub isn’t apparent at RMFC.

I strongly suspect that much of the socialising and RMFC goes on in room parties. Outside alcohol is cheaper than buying from the hotel bar and nobody is checking IDs. It’s a pragmatic solution, but it comes at the cost of the collective experience.

As an aside, there didn’t seem to be any large fetish-themed room parties at RMFC. For those who are so inclined, the ability to express an unusual sexuality in a large group can be a highlight of the entire convention. Such parties are often publicly announced on Twitter and forums leading up to Confuzzled. Either these parties didn’t happen at RMFC, or were more private.

There is a broader range of ages at RMFC. I’m guessing that this is because the furry community started in the United States, and so there are more folk who have been around for a while. There are notably more furries in their 40s, 50s and 60s: again, indisputably a good thing.

Interestingly, there were a few young children at RMFC, presumably children of furry couples. They helped create a fun, inclusive environment, and helped make RMFC seem more diverse than the largely young male monoculture that exists at Confuzzled.

My final comparison is probably an unfair one for the organisers of RMFC. Confuzzled is a superbly organised convention, and comfortably outstrips any convention I’ve been to. RMFC suffers in comparison.

Examples include fewer events at RMFC, and the ad hoc nature of many of those events. The event venues and the convention staff supporting those venues were often underprepared, and it was clear that little or no rehearsal had taken place. Many were, to put it bluntly, amateur.

The facilities for fursuiters were adequate, but a long way from the Rolls Royce treatment they receive at Confuzzled. Again, this an area where Confuzzled excels, so I suspect that the comparison is not fair.

There were very few signs in and around the hotel celebrating the convention and its theme. And it was clear that the conbook was assembled quickly: it didn’t include any information on the convention events (a pocket schedule was provided instead), the quality of the art and writing submissions were, um, variable, and in general gave the impression that insufficient time was allowed for proper editing.

A page from the RMCF 2014 conbook

Of course, the real reason for attending any convention is for the social environment. Here, RMFC was brilliant. I find it difficult to reasonably describe how much fun I had.

I travelled with three other furs from the UK, and we all had a ball. I got to see some old friends, meet a few people I previously only knew online, and of course I met many, many new awesome animal-people. I walk away from RMFC 2014 with friends for life and, in the most vital way, a richer and happier man. The love in the air at the Denver Marriott Tech Centre last weekend was palpable.

I am in debt to the organisers of RMFC, the attendees, and the furry community in general. I will be back. If you see me, come say hi.

We have a new visualisation to share today, courtesy of the industrious and talented hooves of Ruxley (https://github.com/ruxley).

This is an interactive visualisation which lets you explore the popularity of the top furry species, and see how that popularity changes with biological sex, gender, and sexual orientation.

Exactly how many wolves are there? (Lots and lots.) Are foxes gay? (Not really.) Are horses more popular than zebras? (Duh.)

This data is taken from the Furry Survey. You can set a baseline dataset, and compare this to any other dataset. So you can directly compare men with women, heterosexuals with homosexuals, or any combination with the wider furry community. It is, I think you will agree, quite nifty.

There are a few interesting discoveries to be made, some surprising and others not-so-surprising. We will leave it to you to explore, although of course we at [a][s] are sure to reference this visualisation in future articles.

As a starting point, we suggest that you compare heterosexuals to homosexuals… and look at the otters.

Be aware that the data becomes less reliable if you select a small dataset. This is a normal outcome – just don’t take results from small datasets too seriously.

The more observant of you will notice some unusual results from the data. This is because many furries choose multiple species. For the purposes of this data, we count each named species once: so a fox-wolf hybrid counts as one fox and one wolf, and a furry who is usually a raccoon, has a tiger alt, and observes Dragon Friday will be counted three times.

Curiously, there are big variations in the number of species chosen by each of our groups. (This is why the data may behave oddly when you compare different groups.)

Women choose many more species (2.0 per furry by sex; 1.9 by gender) than men (1.5 by sex; 1.4 by gender). And heterosexual furries choose more species (1.7 per furry) than homosexual furries (1.4 per furry).

Why? No idea. But it sounds like an [adjective][species] type of question.

Very occasionally here at [adjective][species], we take a bit of time to highlight a furry artist. In this case I’d like to talk about Clair C, aka Gokart, who creates subtle and joyful art.

Clair has already contributed some art to [a][s], providing a happy purple zebra to grace a relatively inconsequential article I write about zebra domestication. It is a simple drawing, but one I found almost unfathomably delightful. Her sketch captures an essence of life in its minimalist lines, becoming something larger than the sum of its sparse parts.

Since then I have had the pleasure of exploring her art. There is a lot to explore. She is prolific, and long may that continue. Her art, largely comics and character studies, convey a kind of happy contentment or muted joy.

Purple Zebra

In our furry world, there isn’t always a clear delineation made between an artist and an illustrator. Many of our high profile artists are very skilled at creating essentially realist pictures of fictional furry characters: their drawings represent the way things might look in the real world. Such pseudo-realist art (Blotch, say) is important to furry, because it portrays a world in which anthropomorphic characters live and breathe.

There is an understandable drive towards greater realism in furry art, and many of our high-profile artists aspire to psuedo-realism. Such art is valuable and requires great skill. But realism is not required for a work of art to have value, and indeed realism can come at the expense of nuance and complexity.

Clair’s art is drawn with a simple style, yet with great skill and insight. She has an eye for small details that see her worlds and her characters exist beyond the page. I see similarities between her work and that of (Norwegian cartoonist) Jason—they both create sparse, uncluttered worlds, allowing emotion to come to the fore.

Such minimalism allows Clair to express complex ideas. Her work tends to be whimsical, and is often satirical, and so humour is rarely far from the surface. But she doesn’t deal in punchlines. She trusts the reader to read between the lines, to find small joys and small sadnesses hidden just below the surface.

There are dozens of examples I could have chosen from Clair’s recent output I could have chosen to accompany this piece. For my first, I’ve chosen a personal favourite.

Here, Clair is gently satirizing an old internet meme, the (delightful) “unicorns fart glitter” trope. She’s chosen her gross bodily function—vomiting—and made it a beautiful rainbow.

Her personal twist is to take the focus away from the fantasy of the glittery rainbow, putting it on the very real and unglamorous experience of vomiting. She brings her unicorn into the real world by making him anthro, putting him in a dingy apartment with drawn curtains and sparse furnishings, and giving him the flu. Our unicorn is poor, lonely, and sick.

The juxtaposition of the colourful rainbow vomit and the poorly unicorn evokes, in me at least, a combination of pity and laughter. We all experience a bit of magic when we do or see something exciting and new: maybe visiting a new town, or starting a new job. But the magic disappears over time and soon enough the magical new thing in our lives becomes part of our routine, the wallpaper of our life. And so it is for our unicorn: his rainbow vomit might be magical to us, but to him it’s just nausea.

Clair’s sick unicorn vignette is a perfectly pitched balance of the touching and the ludicrous. She explores the unicorn trope from many other angles in her art—it’s worth exploring her archive just for those.

For my second example of Clair’s work, I’ve chosen a page from her ongoing Harvest Moon satire.

In her comic, Claire takes us through the first few hours of Harvest Moon gameplay. Her story, while closely following the gameplay of Harvest Moon, is divorced from the unreality of the videogame universe. Her protagonist acts as an stand-in for the reader, bemused by the strange and arbitrary rules of the game, but happy enough to play along with them.

Reading her comic (titled Harvest) is closer to living, rather than playing, Harvest Moon. Clair gently shines a light on the illogic of the Harvest Moon universe, as her protagonist swaps rocks for chickens, encounters locals with lovehearts hovering above their heads, and spends all day watering a handful of seedlings. Our protagonist takes this strangeness as it comes, just like you do when you play the game, but with a hint of bemusement towards the whole experience.

Harvest succeeds where Scott Ramsoomair’s Pokemon satire (Super Effective) fails. Ramsoomair also takes the reader through the first few hours of a game that is set in an illogical universe. But instead of allowing the absurdity to shine through, he is forever reaching for a punchline. Super Effective is laboured where Harvest is delightful.

Harvest may be a satire, exploring the silliness of Harvest Moon, but it also acknowledges the fun of playing the game. Clair is clearly a fan, and her love for the game shines through. She has taken Harvest Moon—a work of art in its own right—and used it to create a valuable but very different work of art, just as great satire can do.

I asked Clair about her gaming, and she was kind enough to share a picture of her collection.

“As far as favourites go I will have to say N64, Gamecube and Dreamcast.”

Clair lists her influences as Scott Campbell (from Double Fine Productions), Steve Purcell (creator of Sam and Max), and Lewis Trondheim (who created the Dungeon series with Joan Sfar). She also recommends Jen (on Tumblr), Rory (on Tumblr), and Sloane (on Tumblr), who are the creators of Wolfen Jump.

Finally, I asked Clair to share one of her character studies.

“I liked how it turned out, plus I enjoy drawing foxes.”

Clair is, unbelievably, open for commissions. She is on Weasyl and FA. She also offers bonuses for subscribers on Patreon.

The Spring season of Harvest is available online and as a physical comic.

This article was first published in 2012

In 2008, Klisoura’s furry survey asked “Would you describe yourself as an advocate of animal rights?”. 43% of you chose ‘yes’.

In surveys from 2009 onwards, Klisoura asks exactly the same question but only 27% of you choose ‘yes’. What changed?: in 2009, a new question was added on the following line: “Would you describe yourself as a vegetarian?”

This is an example of a phenomenon known in the psychology world as ‘priming’. When asked about animal rights and vegetarianism together, the thoughts of some users will have been drawn to their latest bacon sandwich and decided that, no, they weren’t an animal rights advocate.

My favourite example of priming is a study that investigated voting patterns in Arizona in the 2000 election. That year, there was a proposition to increase school funding. Support for the proposition was significantly greater when the polling station was in a school, compared to support at other nearby polling stations.

It’s natural to disbelieve the effect of priming in the furry survey, or in the Arizona school district examples. It suggests that we are all susceptible to change our opinion based our immediate surroundings. However priming is a common phenomenon and there are many examples: the science is unarguable.

The results in the furry survey could have been skewed in the other direction of course: if the question about vegetarianism were replaced by “Do you support the prosecution of negligent pet owners?”, the number of animal rights advocates would have gone up.

The large priming effect in the furry survey demonstrates two things:

1. It’s very difficult to write a survey, especially when you’re asking for opinions.
2. Many people see a link between caring for animals, and choosing to eat them. This apparently simple connection is surprisingly controversial to many people.

I am vegetarian and I’m keenly aware that nobody likes a holier-than-thou attitude. The intent of this article is not to advocate vegetarianism. So let me get a few things off my chest:

• Meat is delicious. It’s delicious because the human body has evolved to take advantage of the copious nutrients in meat.
• But you don’t need meat to be healthy. Studies of vegetarian and non-vegetarian Indian Hindus show no significant difference in life expectancy. (Western vegetarians live longer than non-vegetarians but this may be due to other lifestyle choices, such as smoking.)

Being vegetarian can be a hassle and requires vigilance. As far as I am concerned, the convenience and deliciousness of an omnivorous diet is a good enough reason to eat meat. It’s just not for me.

Some vegetarians, like me, are ethical vegetarians. These people follow the general philosophy laid out by Peter Singer in his 1975 book, Animal Liberation. Singer’s utilitarian philosophy can be summarized simply as ‘minimize harm’. An ethical vegetarian might consider their options for a meal and decide that a vegetarian pizza does less harm than a pepperoni (which does less harm, in turn, than a meatlovers).

A key premise for Singer’s philosophy is that you must believe humans to be an animal. (This may be a problem for you if you are religious and you believe that God created man in his image.) If you accept that animals are capable of suffering, then you can weigh the suffering of those non-human animals against the suffering of a human animal. This explains why it’s okay to slap a horse but not okay to slap a baby; this also explains why animal testing of medicines is a good thing.

It seems logical to me that this reasoning would be more likely to resonate with furries, people who usually identify with or as non-human animals. Furries are much less likely to consider human beings to be a special case in the animal world, and much more likely to think about animal welfare. Consider the charities supported at furry events, or the 27%+ animal rights advocates.

So is there a higher proportion of vegetarians amongst furries? No.

• About 4% of furries taking Klisoura’s survey “consider themselves to be vegetarian”.
• About 4% of people in western countries identify as vegetarian.

It’s been suggested to me that meat-eating might form an important part of the identity of a furry with a carnivorous character. This may be the case for some furries, but it’s not the case in general: analysis of survey data shows that a furry with a pure-carnivore character is just as likely to be vegetarian as a furry with a pure-herbivore character.

The key to furries and vegetarianism comes down to gender bias. Anyone reading this will be keenly aware that furry is male dominated. Survey data suggests that around 80% of furries are male. (The women are also more likely to consider themselves only ‘weakly’ furry.)

This is important because, out in the non-furry world, women are twice as likely to be vegetarian than men. (If you are male and vegetarian, like I am, the question you’ll be most often asked is “so is your girlfriend vegetarian?” The correct answer, by the way, is “I reject the premise of your question”.)

In the furry world, the same ratio holds: women are twice as likely to be vegetarian than men. If you adjust the data for this gender bias (the male:female ratio is 50:50 outside furry; 80:20 inside furry), the relationship between furry and vegetarianism looks very different.

• If you are a male furry, you are twice as likely as a male non-furry to identify as a vegetarian.
• If you are a female furry, you are twice as likely as a female non-furry to identify as a vegetarian.

It’s probable that the gap between furries and non-furries is starker still. Incredibly, a full two-thirds of non-furries who identify as vegetarian regularly eat meat and/or fish. I suspect that furries have a far stronger grasp of the definition of ‘vegetarian’.

Even so, I remain surprised that vegetarianism isn’t more common amongst furries. The logic, while not for everyone, seems straightforward to me. I wonder if there simply isn’t the critical mass for many furries to be exposed to the idea – vegetarians certainly have a reputation for being obnoxious and evangelical.

I saw Peter Singer plugging his latest book a few years ago. He talked about the publicity and positive criticism generated by Animal Liberation back in 1975, and how he expected that vegetarianism would quickly become more commonplace. He talked about his surprise that the proportion of vegetarians has remained static since then. (Not coincidentally, his new book explores the idea of the ethical omnivore.)

So perhaps I’m being naïve. As the priming example demonstrates, none of us are purely logical beings.

(I promise— it takes a while but this column eventually gets furry.)

About a month prior to this article’s release I suffered some serious heart troubles. Little permanent damage was done, and the timely high-tech treatment I received was so successful that I actually feel better now than I have for years. It wasn’t nearly as a big a deal as it sounds when spelled out here. But, I have to admit, such a life-event can get a man to thinking. Another major life event is also looming up close for me— in roughly twelve weeks I’ll retire at last from my much-disliked factory job and be able to write or do whatever else I please full-time. I’ve worked very hard for this for a very long time, and saved money when it would’ve been much easier to spend it. In fact, I’ve been counting down the weeks for almost two years. Between the two, well, for the last few days I’ve been downright philosophical.

As a result of my upcoming retirement, I’m also free for the first time ever to relocate anywhere I darned well please, so long as I can afford it. For months now I’ve been studying real estate sites and recalling my travels to various places. I’ve many good friends in Seattle and a couple other writers have offered to make me feel at home there artistically, but as beautiful as the place is it might as well be made of pure unaffordium so far as my budget is concerned. The same goes for the entire West Coast. I’ve actively driven around the St. Augustine, Florida area looking for a new home, and found the region in some ways enormously attractive. But I know very few people there and once again it’s far away from the center of everything. Tennessee River cabins with boat docks for frequent fishing trips—something else I enjoy— tend to be far too remote, and while I’m very fond of Texas on many levels and have good friends there I loathe the eternal flatness of the more populated regions and the shortage of really good angling opportunities.

Since my heart issues developed I’ve re-evaluated my priorities a little. While I for most part loathe even short visits in big cities, perhaps I ought to try to put up with annoying and costly urban life anyway in the interests of quick ambulance response times? A little web-searching revealed that most towns located on large rivers, nearby Nashville included, tend to have a very few small condominiums available downtown right on the water, with a beautiful view of the barge trains trooping by. They’re at least marginally affordable in towns that don’t carry outrageous real estate premiums like, say, Chicago. I found a promising example in Nashville that claimed to be a hundred and fifty feet from the water at a price I could afford. Well, I thought to myself. Perhaps this is worth looking at! The riverbank itself is a city park; I could fish from the bank there just as if I had a cabin on the shoreline out in the middle of nowhere— the Cumberland is one of the finest fishing waterways in the USA. Except during rush hour I’d have an incredible highway network at my disposal, and according to the sales materials I’d able to look practically right into the bridges of passing tugboats. What a deal, eh?

I drove up to look the neighborhood over last Friday night, and that was all it took to put the kibosh on the whole thing. It was difficult to get within blocks of my potential new home, and would continue to be difficult practically every Friday and Saturday night from then until eternity. For, not being at all a country and western fan, I’d forgotten entirely that the famous Second Avenue North, home to the very finest country-western themed music and bars in the universe, was just a block away from my would-be abode. The crowds were happy, peaceful and content as I steered my convertible between the horse-drawn taxis on a deliciously warm weekend evening. A large passenger-carrying riverboat— the Delta Queen, perhaps?— was anchored in the river’s channel busily shuttling her revelers back and forth to have a good time ashore. It was a great night— a perfect night, even. The stars shone and there were no visible drunks, just tourists half of whom smiled and waved at me as I eased slowly through the masses with the top down. They were nice people; well-dressed, well-mannered, massed humanity at its absolute best. And yet, even though I of course smiled and waved back and genuinely wished them all a pleasant evening I knew that I was forever an outsider here, someone who in ten thousand years would never fit in. So even before I located the condo I’d come to see I turned around and enjoyed a nice, peaceful drive home in the dark.

Why would I never fit in? Because no matter how hard I try, I’ll never, ever be able to socialize and enjoy the company of “ordinary” people who like to chat about the local sports teams and what happened at church last Sunday. I like them well enough and mean them no harm, but have almost nothing in common with them on so many levels that at times it’s frightening. Nor, to make things worse, will I ever come to to either love or even understand country music. I mean no disrespect for those who enjoy what I recognize as a vibrant, relevant and deeply-rooted art form— far from it! It’s just… Not for me. In fact, even though I find some bluegrass to be downright listenable I have to struggle to even remain in the room when modern-style country is played. It’s my anathema. Were I superhero, it’d be my kryptonite. And that makes Second Avenue North the central node of all kryptonite for me, the very last place on earth I’d ever want to go for pleasure or joy. Why pay premium prices for a home whose prime virtue is to be near that?

So, I got to thinking as I drove home— it’s about a forty minute drive there from downtown. Maybe the urban living concept could still be made to work, but in a different city? I fired up my trusty desktop and used another real estate program to search the affordable South’s navigable waterways for condos for sale along the shorelines. And I hit paydirt almost right away, too, in nearby Memphis on the banks of the Mississippi! Happily I began to click about…

…only to almost immediately note the presence of something else I’d forgotten— Beale Street, the Rhythm and Blues equivalent of Second Avenue North. Immediately I abandoned my search there. I’ve actually been to Beale Street at least once or perhaps twice— I forget which. It was an amazing spectacle, and the music was far more to my taste than in Nashville. But again, the very idea of trying to fit in there, of spending my time in the little cafes and blues clubs, even though they’re among the world’s finest, made my skin crawl. Who, after all, would I talk to there?

That’s when the truth of it all finally came crashing through. The place I really want to live doesn’t even come close to existing today, and probably never will. It’s a place where people talk about genetic engineering and make elaborate puns over breakfast and discuss interesting new strategy games over lunch. It’s where people are bright and creative in their own rights, as opposed to merely basking in the reflected glow of a handful of star performers, and people accept each other as they are instead of demanding mindless conformity. I want to live among furs, in short— to spend as many of the rest of my days as possible among my own kind, and the shorter those days grow the more important this becomes. I want to buy a riverfront condo in a furry neighborhood full of good humor and lighthearted art, with a riverboat out in the channel disgorging tourists come to see our little Mecca where we put our best and brightest on display.

I wouldn’t even mind the traffic jams!

But we as yet have no Mecca, of course. No neighborhood or even block to call our own. If anyone anywhere is operating a furry night club or selling furry art out of a brick-and-mortar storefront, it’s news to me. We’re too few, too scattered, too lacking in vision and commercial appeal (though in my mind we haven’t really tried very hard yet) to make something like Beale Street or Second Avenue North happen for ourselves yet. Perhaps we never shall; perhaps the internet will provide enough “furry immersion” to make most of us entirely happy. The science fiction fandom never generated a geographic center, at least so far as I know, and they’re much further along culturally than we are.

And yet… And yet…

I’m fifty-three, and though I’ve saved well and have a reasonable amount to spend I have no homeland to join in any meaningful sense of the word. I live as part of a fragmentary underculture, among but not one with a sea of smilingsports fans who don’t understand why I’m not as happy as they are. My life is gray, gray, gray save for the hours in which I write and those rare days when I’m able to attend a con and be among my own kind.

Surely others share my yearning for home?

Tiny foxes: good for comforting.

It started innocuously enough with a tweet. I don’t remember the exact phrasing of it, but I had been having a rough day and was feeling the need for some sort of protective affection that I just couldn’t quite find offline; I’m rather tall and so it’s hard for me to find a way that’s comfortable for all parties involved to get that sensation of being held and protected. I think I wound up tweeting something silly to the effect of “I just want to curl up in a shirt pocket where it’s warm, cozy, and hidden.” I suppose I’ve always been a bit of a sap.

Like most things with far-reaching consequences, this start into the exploration of the “micro” side of the furry fandom had a seemingly inconsequential beginning. I’ve mentioned before that, after changing the ways in which I interacted online, several people treated me as though I were smaller than I really am (helped, no doubt, by the combination of text-only interaction and the lack of any specified height in my character description). With that trivial sentence, however, it suddenly became explicit, and before long I was interacting with those around me specifically as a tiny anthropomorphic fox.

Tiny foxes: good for making hammocks in your antlers.

This is one of those things that feels incredibly silly to write about in such plain terms. For me, however, it was a new twist on the ways in which I interacted in familiar surroundings. Everyday objects and friends became towering structures to scale, and media such as MUCKs and Twitter became my playground. In short, it felt like a new means of interacting with the furry community as a whole, akin to the way I felt when I first discovered the subculture.

And yet, much was still the same. I was still pretending to be a foxperson on the Internet. My friends-group remained much the same. Nothing else had really changed in my life, except suddenly, I was part of a community within a community: a sub-subculture. It came with a label: micro.

Furry, as a label, is really much too broad to be meaningful except in the most general of scenarios. It’s like saying “Americans” when we know that, with a population of almost 320 million people, that there are bound to be, for instance, people who describe themselves as “staunch democrats” or “devout Christians”, though, of course, even those labels are far too broad in some cases. “Staunch democrats” does not take into account the actual politics and core beliefs of an individual any more than “devout Christian” takes into account the denomination of Christianity of the devout.

Tiny foxes: good for booping noses.

So it is that we wind up with trends within the larger trend of furry, and trends within those as well. Micro, as a trend, was a new one to me, and thus the sensation of newness that reminded me so much of joining furry in the first place.

I’ve been a part of various different groups within the larger group of furry before, of course, just as we all are. I’d identified with gay furries, then fell out of that as a means of identification as my sexuality matured. I’ve identified with trans\* and genderqueer furries as well, as my sense of self has grown over the last several years. The list goes on, as I’m sure it does for all of us when we boil our interests down to labels and identities. Why is that, though?

Part of the reason I think that these trends within trends are as big a thing as they are is that a trend, a label, an identity, or even a kink can offer one a sense of community. It’s all well and good to be a tiny fox – or genderqueer for that matter – and feel that one has found an identity that makes one feel comfortable. However, it is the sense of community, of belonging to a larger group that adds completeness to that and can help make us feel truly whole.

Also, these interests or identities, when taken up by a group, help to generate interest and identity in others by the force of their own presence. That is, while I really rather liked anthropomorphic animals and playing zoomorphic games while growing up, realizing that there was a community that bases its very existence off such things led me into the fandom. Similarly, while I never felt wholly comfortable with my gender while younger, it was the resources of a community and an identity that helped me suss out my feelings on the matter.

Tiny foxes: not very good for martinis.

In this way, these trends act as attractors in a system: the closer one winds up to them, the more likely one is to wind up a part of them. I think this describes my journey into the furry subculture pretty accurately: by my presence online, as well as my interests in general, I wound up close to the community, and my proximity led to my eventual membership.

Along similar lines, the overlap between these sub-trends within larger groups such as furry can help introduce one – and thus bring one closer to – additional groups that one might not find otherwise. For instance, given my own shared interest in exploring both gender and furry has led me to the various ways in which the two interact, from the communities surrounding gender transformation, mixed-gender characters, the gender gap within the fandom, and so on, all of which I probably would not have found myself a part of were it not for my previous interests and identities.

As I alluded to earlier, this is hardly a furry-only phenomenon. After all, anything from the entirety of the human race down to the individual level can be divided up into separate trends, likes and dislikes, senses of identity, and so on. However, as I have mentioned countless times before, the fact that so much of our interaction takes place online, or is shifted online after the fact (as would be the case with convention reports and photos), we leave a vast paper-trail. All one needs to do is take a peek at someone’s profile on any popular art site and see the groups they consider themselves a member of, the ways in which they identify (my profile on Weasyl, for instance, has links to my open source code repositories, which I think speaks to how exciting of a person I am not).

It’s worth taking a moment to step back and investigate the ways in which you interact with others and identifying the trends that tie you together. Those ties and the ways in which they interact are what makes furry so durable a fabric.

A few weeks ago, I contacted a few large conventions and asked about the gender of their attendees in the dealers den compared to the rest of the con. I wanted to include this in my recent article, Furry Women at Furry Conventions, to supplement the IARP’s focus group research.

I didn’t get any responses in time for my article, in part because most conventions don’t collect gender data. I finally have a single response. I’m not going to identify the convention, but it is one the ten biggest, with over 1000 attendees at the most recent event.

Here’s the data:

• In the dealers den: 57% female
• Not in the dealers den: 12% female

This data comes with some caveats:

• The registration options were “male” or “female”, so we lose any nuances around the spectrum of gender or biological sex.
• This includes all people who registered and paid, which means that no-shows are counted.

This data is relevant to my article, so please read it to put this in context (if you haven’t done so already). The comments are worth reading too.

And—do any readers have access to convention data and would like to share?

Sex and Zen, released in 1991, is a totally ludicrous slice of Hong Kong cinema cheese, and something that deserves a wide furry audience.

The plot is simple enough: a moderately-endowed scholar has his member surgically replaced with a horse penis. He then proceeds to explore the benefits of his improved appendage by sleeping with a series of women, some of whom are married to other men. One of the cuckolded husbands seeks revenge by seducing the scholar’s wife.

And that’s basically it. It is incredibly silly and immensely entertaining.

The ‘zen’ aspect of the film refers to the revenge story. Essentially, our lustful scholar gets his comeuppance for his behaviour: he becomes blind and accidentally sleeps with his own wife, who by this stage is working in a brothel. She hangs herself in disgrace, which somehow counts as the scholar’s karmic redress. Frankly it’s a bit of a downer.

But don’t let that stop you from watching it, ideally with a group of inebriated furries. The acting and direction is gleeful—it is loads of fun. It’s notable for showing sex (and there is a lot of sex) as something fundamentally enjoyable. It’s refreshing in the light of the Western tendency for sex to be portrayed as emotional or intense, or the Japanese tendency for sex to be depicted as a kind of power struggle.

Sex and Zen it part of the grand tradition of Hong Kong pop cinema, which prioritises entertainment over realism. It’s the same philosophy that brought us the wave of unarmed martial arts films, with high watermarks being the best of the Jackie Chan films or (Australian co-production starring George Lazenby) The Man From Hong Kong. And, of course, Hong Kong pop cinema lives on with the films of Stephen Chow (Shaolin Soccer; Kung Fu Hustle) and others.

There is an argument that the best pop cinema nowadays come from the United States, with Quentin Tarantino as the standard-bearer. But while the Americans have co-opted the best aspects of Hong Kong cinema violence, they don’t seem to be culturally equipped to match the exploitative titillation of Hong Kong cinema sex. So while films like American Pie use the idea of flutes (at band camp) as a tittering punchline, the flute in Sex and Zen is shown to be put to good use.

Sex and Zen has spawned several sequels, although none appear to involve the original’s equine enhancement. It is possible that this may change in 2015, when 4D Sex & Zen: Slayer of a Thousand From the Mysterious East is released. (Plot synopsis: Two Japanese who sneak into ancient China, cause havoc and return to Japan where they engage in a sex marathon challenge.) At the time of writing, the involvement of a furry phallus in 4DSAZ: SOATFTME is unconfirmed.

Sex and Zen is based on a 17th century Chinese erotic novel of questionable quality, The Carnal Prayer Mat. The Carnal Prayer Mat is regarded as a minor classic of erotic literature, although this probably has more to do with its presumed author, playwright and essayist Li Yu (it was written under a pseudonym).

The Carnal Prayer Mat is the source of Sex and Zen‘s animal inspiration. The plot follows a lustful protagonist who enhances his virility with the help of a magician, who embeds a dog’s kidney into our hero’s penis. He then proceeds to have sexual liaisons with many married women, and one of the husbands seeks revenge.

The Carnal Prayer Mat has a clearer relationship to the idea of Zen and karma, and is seen by some as a Buddhist morality tale. Not everyone is so kind: others write off The Carnal Prayer Mat as mere pornography with limited literary value.

A brief, personal aside: I saw Sex and Zen years ago, well before I discovered furry. It’s slightly disquieting to think that it might have had an unconscious influence of my choice of species.

I rediscovered Sex and Zen while reading about food, specifically Chinese dishes that make use of animal penises. This isn’t really relevant to the first part of this article, other than perhaps giving you an unwelcome insight into how your humble author spends his weekends, but I did learn some slightly amazing facts. I present some highlights here, which you may find useful in future social events, perhaps when making chitchat with your grandparents, or to pass the time with strangers while waiting for a bus.

Factoid one: penises from Scottish stags that are shot for venison are all the rage in China. Apparently they are extremely valuable because “the Chinese go nuts for the penises of stags that roamed the pristine Scotland highlands.” They are dried before shipping.

Factoid two: animal penises are relatively well known as a ‘tonic’ ingredient in many parts of China, with supposed medicinal effects that are completely predictable. Unfortunately, a dish made by stewing penises in Shaoxing wine is not known as “cock au vin”. That’s a missed opportunity.

Factoid three: there is a penis restaurant in Beijing (Guo Li Zhuang). It’s a version of a restaurant that first opened in the Chinatown district of Atlanta, USA.

Factoid four: penis is, apparently, almost tasteless and has a texture variously described as gelatinous or rubbery. There is no significant difference in flavour between species.

For the curious, here is some further (and thoroughly entertaining) reading:

• Penis with Goji Berries (for Valentine’s Day)
• Fuschia Dunlop on How to Make Dick Soup

Sex and Zen is easy to find on DVD although it has only been released in Region 1 (North America). And presumably you can think of one or two other ways you might acquire an electronic copy. It’d be bandwidth well spent.

Finally, my apologies for the clickbaity title to this article. I honestly couldn’t think of anything better. I’d love to hear your suggestions for alternative titles in the comments below or @jmhorse over on Twitter.

 

[adjective][species] was compromised last night through a template loader bug in WordPress.  The only effect that we have seen from the compromise was that spam links were injected at the top of the page, visible only to users on certain IP ranges (notably Google; the goal being to boost spam sites’ popularity in the search engine).  This appears to have been an automated attack on several WordPress sites on our host, and no data has been compromised, however, this should serve as a reminder to practice Safe Password!

If you run WordPress and find yourself in a similar situation, here are the steps required to clean it up:

1. Search for the exploit in your installation.  It looks like this at the top of your template’s index.php file.  If you have access to the command line, you can check for it with the following command:
   find . -name *.php -exec grep -q "mx_start" {}\; -print
2. Clean the files by removing the block.  If you’d like to automate the process, here is a python snippet for doing so: import re import sys f = open(sys.argv[1], 'r') text = f.read() f.close() pattern = re.compile(r'<\?php /\*mx_start.*mx_orig_end\*/ \?>', re.MULTILINE|re.DOTALL) print pattern.sub('', text)

   Run it automatically by saving it as demx.py, and using bash like so:
   for i in `find . -name *.php -exec grep -q "mx_start" {} \; -print`; do python demx.py $i > $i.demx; mv $i.demx $i; done

In recent months, several [adjective][species] contributors, including myself, have been writing about issues faced by women who participate in the furry community.

In general, we’ve suggested that furry isn’t a welcoming environment for many women. We are male-dominated, and we don’t always do enough to reduce or prevent deliberate or accidental sexist behaviour. Many women avoid socialising in large furry groups, and many others choose to stop associating with furry altogether.

We have presented a wide range of evidence that supports this point of view, all of it necessarily either indirectly inferred from Furry Survey data, or based on anecdotal evidence. This evidence is certainly good enough for the basis of discussion, but many furries felt we were either inventing a problem that doesn’t exist, or exaggerating the issue.

Last week, the IARP published some hard data. And it doesn’t make for nice reading.

IARP volunteers handed out surveys to attendees at this year’s Furry Fiesta, held February 21 to 23 in Dallas, USA. 246 surveys were returned, out of 1884 total attendees. You can see their results in full, with discussion, here:

https://sites.google.com/site/anthropomorphicresearch/past-results/2014-furry-fiesta

As part of this research, they ran a focus group comprising of 21 women. They asked about experiences of sexism:

• 68.4% of women agreed that the fandom was an intimidating place for women
• 22.0% of women felt that women in the fandom were looked down upon. 66.7% of women felt that women in the fandom were put on a pedestal or revered. Those two variables were found to be highly correlated (r = .61, p = .008). The researchers also noted that past research on hostile and benevolent sexism has suggested that both forms of sexism often go hand-in-hand.

Aside from the questions asked by the IARP, there was also some open discussion in the focus group, to explore other common experiences. Among the themes expressed:

• Several participants indicated that ‘inappropriate touching’ was a problem at conventions, with furries feeling entitled to hug or to touch them because they were in suit, cosplaying, or simply for being a female.

• Many women expressed frustration over having male friends who would try to make a relationship sexual, or who were friends with the goal of one day becoming more than ‘just friends’. In a similar vein, relationship statuses seemed to be a barrier for many women, who found it difficult to make male friends when they were in a heterosexual relationship.

I urge you to read the whole thing.

I also recommend that you share and discuss the results in social fora, be that Twitter, Fur Affinity, Reddit, or wherever your furry social networks exist.

The IARP’s Furry Fiesta research is notable in that their sample of 21 female furries is a fairly large proportion of the total number of women at the convention (assuming that women made up about 10% of the total turnout, which is typical as far as we can tell). But it’s also worth pointing out that they weren’t able to talk to those women who chose not to attend the convention.

Convention attendees tend to be older than the average furry, and they tend to have been involved with furry for longer. It is reasonable to guess that the women who attend cons are those who are less subject to unwelcome attention, or less affected by unwelcome attention.

To put it another way: furry women who attend a convention have usually got a pretty good idea of what to expect, and they have concluded that any negative experiences associated with spending a few days at a convention are outweighed by the positive experiences. Necessarily, this means that the women who attend are less vulnerable—they are older, more experienced, and more capable of dealing with unwelcome behaviour—compared with women who didn’t attend.

Yet 68% of these women—the ones who are less vulnerable—agreed that furry is an intimidating place for women.

This, to me, is incredibly strong evidence that women (as a group) have a different experience within furry than men (as a group). It is ridiculous to suggest that 68% of men—the older, the more experienced, the convention-going, the less vulnerable men—find furry to be intimidating.

As it turns out, I was at a convention myself last week: Confuzzled, the biggest UK convention that gets bigger and better every year. One night, I was chatting to a (male) friend of mine who introduced me to a (female) friend of his. As we started chatting, she happened to make reference to her boyfriend.

This was, I learned, a coping strategy. When she meets new, male furs in a social environment, she has learned that mentioning her boyfriend helps reduce the regularity with which she receives unwelcome attention. Like the women in the IARP’s focus group, she often has to deal with “male friends who would try to make a relationship sexual, or who were friends with the goal of one day becoming more than ‘just friends’“. For her, this is something she has to do in a convention environment, to help make sure the positive experiences outweigh the negative experiences.

Furry is not alone. Many other male-dominated groups fail to create environments that are welcoming for women: other fandoms, sports fans, gaming communities. Very few men in these groups are outright sexist or want to be intimidating towards women—the problems are largely caused by invisible cultural norms. It takes specific effort to change things.

So what can we change?

Firstly, we can acknowledge that the problem exists. We can share evidence of the problem, be that scientific evidence like that presented by the IARP, or stories of negative experience.

Secondly, we can act as advocates for women. We can do this by challenging people who think that women have it easier than men*, and those people who think that the problem doesn’t exist.

* the IARP Furry Fiesta survey found that 42% of furries feel that the fandom treats women too positively

Thirdly, convention organisers can take steps to be more welcoming for women. This might include a women-only convention orientation session, to introduce women to the convention policy on sexual harassment and key security staff (as well as being a venue for women to meet and support each other through their experiences).

Fourthly… well, that’s something for each of us to think about. It’s a complex and pervasive problem, and it’s not going to disappear in a hurry. But it can get better, with time, and with the efforts of thoughtful and caring furries. Like you and me.

Guest post by Witchie (@witchiebunny). Witchie is just, loyal, patient and true just like any other Hufflepuff. She also thinks way too much for her own good.

At the risk of sounding clichéd, please allow me to introduce myself: I am commonly known as Witchiebunny; artist, gamer, sometime podcaster and all around good-natured lapine.

I noticed a recent article here on [a][s] made reference to a post of mine on another blog from sometime ago. I addressed a conversation I found myself in whilst dealing with some comments I felt, and still do feel, were sexist.

For a bit of contextual framing: at the time I was a Fur Affinity admin using various communities, including Livejournal,  as a way to stay in contact with users who did not generally get face-time with FA admins any other way. In the process of reading a post regarding a then fellow admin, I noticed a comment made about said colleague by a male, and gay, furry:

“Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that she goes on the warpath every 28 days or so?”

 

Guys, if you’re out there, reading this, let me give you this bit of advice: period jokes aren’t funny. They’re not cool, and the only ones who are going to laugh are those who, in general, hate women.

Upon reading this comment, I replied. “Not cool,” said I. “Seriously, I hate misogynistic comments like this.”

The response? “*shrugs* meh.”

Meh? That’s it? Called out on your misogyny and all you can say for yourself is “Meh”?

Eventually, I was told that it was simply a joke that I was reading way too much into and that I was overthinking. My favorite was the apology given:

“okay… let me clarify this since you’re taking this waaaay to personally.

this was a stab at [insert name of admin here], not all women everywhere. if it was interpreted as being a stab at all women everywhere, well, it was never intended as such.

better?”

 

This is an attitude I’ve encountered all over the internet, but never so prevalently waved around, and proudly, than among gay men within the furry fandom.

As a perfect example, I once engaged in a conversation with a friend who was opposed to the idea of breastfeeding in public. He called it gross, and disgusting. (the discussion of public breastfeeding is one for another time and blog, and won’t be gone into here.) I stuck up for the right to breastfeed in public and was presented with an analogy of public breastfeeding to public fellatio. Upon calling out this comment as misogynistic, I was contacted by this friend’s boyfriend whom I was also friends with, and asked why I was trying to “censor” his SO.

The conversation came down to this friend’s assertions of the following points:

1. Women want special treatment to feed their babies in public because they’re too selfish to stay at home and feed in private where it’s proper,
2. Women didn’t want this special treatment in the past, because these are recent laws and what about women who just made do with this in hundreds of years prior,
3. That women always wanted special treatment for stuff and why couldn’t they just suck it up like men.

All of which culminated into:

4. That I, as a woman and also as a minority had MORE power and privilege than he did as a cisgendered white male.

Now I make no bones about, nor apologize for the fact that I am a feminist of a certain stripe. There are certain words and behaviors that I recognize as being sexist and harmful, and I recognize the attitudes that, at the core, make up these behaviors.

To give a very basic understanding of my brand of feminism (which doesn’t go far enough, by some standards and goes way too far, apparently, by others): I recognize that there is an inherent sexism that we, as a western society, have been socialized into thinking is acceptable, normal behavior. While I stop short of declaring that men and women are the same, period, and that ANY generalizations based on gender are wrong and part of the problem (for indeed, I also recognize that men and women are not only different, hormonally, but are socialized differently and so, on the whole, gender-wide discrepancies, differences and patterns of behavior DO exist), I will definitely say something if I see ANYONE putting down ANY gender because of a stereotype being perpetuated.

Even so, I recognize that there is a certain level of sexism that even I adhere to and end up being an apologist for. Such is life, no one is perfect.

However there is a difference between socialized sexism (i.e a young girl being less interested in science because of the ingrained idea that it’s a “man’s field”) and overt, over the top misogyny.

Take as an example the “Gay Furries” group on Fur Affinity. At one point, there were quite a few journal posts along the line of “Girls, ew.” or “Women, vaginas, scary, disgusting, ugly…” (most of those journals have since been deleted).

You get the idea. Leaving aside the quite obvious fact that by doing this, the gay men of the group are alienating all of the gay women within the group, this is a very overt form of misogyny that is not only unapologized for, but celebrated. And it’s done constantly within the fandom, in the name of gay unity, or even just “humor”.

Male gay furries constantly feel at liberty to demean, insult, and otherwise marginalize any woman they come across for the simple fact that they’re a woman. And while I can understand it as a level of group-reassurance (i.e “The societal norm is to expect us to be straight, and we identify as gay, which means we’re not attracted to women, so therefore in order to satisfy each other that we’re all right, and all ‘normal’ within our peer group, we’ll marginalize the apparent subject that makes us outsiders, women”) this goes far beyond that. This goes into outright hate.

And if you attempt to point out to them that they are being misogynist, or sexist, the tendency (as the aforementioned furry did) is to bring up misandry, as if the fact that sometimes women hate on men validates their misogyny.

I will only say this once:

THE FACT THAT WOMEN SOMETIMES EXHIBIT A HATRED AGAINST MEN DOESN’T MAKE WHAT YOU DO RIGHT, IT MAKES EVERYONE EXHIBITING MISANDRY/MISOGYNY OR OVERT SEXISM IN GENERAL DEAD WRONG.

Misandry is typically exhibited as a retaliation against rampant and unacknowledged societal misogyny. By using it as a justification for further misogyny, a recursive loop is created.

To put it in coder terms: gender relations between (in this instance) gay men and ALL women will eventually segfault.

This is NOT rocket science. A lot of gay men don’t realize that they have such a high level of misogyny, or even identify what they feel/think/believe AS misogyny, or sexism. They will say “Well I can’t be a misogynist/sexist, because I have a woman friend.”

This is the same thing as saying “I can’t be racist, I have black friends!”

Let me tell everyone this: having a friend who falls into this general category of those you hate, even a good friend, doesn’t stop one from having and exhibiting the signs of the underlying problem. Using it as a shield against accusations of being any kind of *ist usually ends demeaning the friend you claim to care so much for.

The funny thing is, if a woman speaks up against this particular stripe of misogyny or sexism, then they’re an evil feminist who can’t take a joke, and this from the same gay men who “can’t take a joke” when the joke is a hateful homophobic one, and not a hateful misogynist one.

This is particularly bad among furries because we are ALREADY marginalized to a great degree by “mundanes” in general, and the internet as well. Socially, furries are already seen to be at the bottom of the totem pole. Do we really, truly have to further marginalize and fragment ourselves by having such hatred towards those whose only crime was an accident of birth?

I realize that this is a deeply ingrained and socialized issue, but seriously folks. Have the testicular fortitude to do some self-reflection and self-introspection. It’s painful but you will be a better person for it.

And that goes for everyone.

A Phenomenological Reflection

Guest Post by Alex Schluter MATPhilo MPhil (@boserwolfs). Alex took up AB Philosophy, Cum Laude, in Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona Spain; his Master of Arts in Teaching Philosophy at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium; and his Advanced Master in Philosophy Major in Continental Philosophy, specializing in Phenomenology at the same University. He can also sing and dance.

Open your eyes to the potential of leadership. As you understand leadership with a “little l”, you see there are small things each of us can do every day to positively influence our customers, colleagues, friends, and communities. True leadership isn’t about power over people; it is about power with people. “Leader” is defined as “one who organizes a group of people to achieve a common goal,” how true that is!
- You Don’t Need A Title to Be A Leader: How Anyone, Anywhere, Can Make a Positive Difference, by Mark Sanborn

 

There is no question that we idealize leaders. When you are asked to define leadership, do you visualize “great” leaders or front-line supervisors? We seem to need leaders to be larger-than-life figures, people we can admire and look up to, just as we did our parents, particularly our fathers. Indeed it is arguable that the stereotypical leader is a substitute father-figure.

It is no surprise that we expect leaders to look after us, be nice to us, pay attention to our needs and inspire us with visions of glory. We all have dreams of a bright future, and we look to leaders to help us realize our dreams.

But isn’t it dis-empowering to depend so much on one person? Have we not outgrown our need to depend on our parents or their substitutes? Can we not find our own way and show leadership ourselves? Happy Feet shows us a way.

Happy Feet is a movie about Mumble, a penguin. The conflict in the movie is a conflict about values, sparked by a food shortage in the penguin community.

Mumble places value on searching for the cause of the depletion of their food (fish). However, the leader of the community places value on the status quo: to remain and not to explore.

Let us consider the natural attitudes of these two penguins: the community leader is conservative and prefers not to act; Mumble is curious but this makes him an outsider. Their natural attitudes have affected their responses to the situation. We see that Mumble has a belief in his heart, which creates a conviction, which moves him to act upon their problem, and discover what has happened to the fish.

Mumble’s belief and conviction transcends his natural attitude of mere curiosity. The situation, and Mumble’s experiences (the combination of his curiosity and his outsider status), create a transcendental attitude where he feels he must act. It is the value he places on the community that motivates his personality, and that motivation is firmly constituted in his person. To put it another way: through his transcendental attitude, we can say that his transcendental ego has an act (noesis) and content (noema); respectively, his valuing of the penguin community, and the community itself.

“What dominant act we encounter in the person is his act-character, which will sediment into a habitus to become his or her personality.”

 

Mumble’s transcendental attitude moves him to act at once: the immanentizing of his objective. Unfortunately the leader of the penguin community remains in his natural attitude, and stays closed to the possibilities offered by Mumble.

The leader casts Mumble from the penguin community. But while Mumble leaves the community in person, he never leaves it in spirit. The community is a part of him even while he is apart from it, and with this in his heart he continues his quest to solve the community’s problem.

Mumble’s belief in the possibility of helping the community has strengthened through his experiences. The opposition he has received, and his experience of being outcast, has turned his belief into a conviction.

“The more one ascertains his belief through critique the more his actions or behavior flow efficiently from the said belief.”

 

In a way, Mumble brings to mind our great father Socrates. Amidst false accusations he continued to stand for his convictions. Socrates stood out and died for the truth.

Mumble, propelled by his convictions, eventually learns the cause of the depletion of the penguin community’s food. He has to return to the community and find a way to convince them to adopt their own transcendental attitude. But how?

Mumble teaches the penguins in the community a tap dance, one that comes spontaneously to him, one step at a time. He teaches them step by step, a rigorous and tedious process. Such a process is required for him to lead the others towards the transcendental attitude that “the community is present in each member!”: the immanentizing of the community.

Little by little the elders of the penguin community start to follow Mumble, as he teaches them the steps of the tap dance. Or, to put it another way, he has opened the way to the transcendental attitude where there is immanence in the transcendental ego and the transcendental object (respectively, each penguin, and the penguin community). He opens himself, and themselves, to the truth of what he has learned. And the day is saved.

When our convictions flow out from a transcendental attitude, so there is immanentizing of the furry community, then like Mumble we will be driven to do good and become heroes and leaders among our fellow furs. With the conviction that everything we do has a communal dimension, no matter how little or even how secret, our actions will have a communal effect.

If we perform good and heroic acts for the furry community, those acts will have a good and heroic effect in the furry community. If we act badly, our actions will also be felt, directly or indirectly. We cannot escape the communal effects of our actions. And better still, our actions reinforce that we cannot not escape from the community while we act as part of it.

We furries can create opportunities for ourselves, where there will be the constitution or institution of this transcendental attitude; the immanentizing of the community (ego-cogitas-cogitationes-cogitatum). This is a challenge for all of us, furries and non-furries alike. We have to create an atmosphere that will provide a community consciousness, where one is aware that he or she carries with him or her the community, even as he or she is doing his or her “personal” routine. We do it step by step.

A leader is drawn from a community; formed in a community; and will serve in a community!

“Could it be, that guys aren’t here to oppress, as much as reacting to being repressed?”
- Patch O’Furr, Dogpatch Press, 21 April 2014

 

In recent months, I’ve written a couple of articles looking at how the furry community treats women. I presented evidence and discussion for furry being ‘inherently sexist’. Those articles received a fair bit of criticism.

I chatted with a few of the people who were critical and asked if they’d be interested in writing a counterpoint article for publication on [a][s], or otherwise go into a bit more detail. I had two motivations: firstly, because criticism is good thing in general (we’ve published several counterpoints on various issues in the past); and secondly because I wanted to explore the differences in my language, and the language used by someone who doesn’t think that furry is ‘inherently sexist’.

I think it’s an important conversation, and one worth having. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find someone who had the time and motivation to make the argument. That is, until last week.

Dogpatch Press is a relatively new venture, a journalistic if irreverent look at furry by Patch, who you might already know as an occasional contributor over at Flayrah. Patch has written some great stuff in the past (notably this 2013 expose of fake furry ‘dating’ paysites), and he already has some engaging content on Dogpatch Press.

Patch has written a long article, which is critical of my arguments. I recommend that you read it (it’s called All Humans Welcome), and I also recommend that you have a browse through the rest of his site if you haven’t done so already.

Patch is reacting to two of my articles for [a][s] that look at the treatment of women:

1. It’s Raining Men, looking at demographics from Furrypoll data and how that affects furries who might wish to start a relationship with a fellow fur.

2. How To Pick Up (Furry) Women, looking at how women are treated at furry gatherings and conventions, and why it’s not cool.

I want to challenge a few of Patch’s points, but before I do so:

• I respect and appreciate Patch’s willingness to discuss this topic. I think his opinions reflect those of many people, and I’m glad that he’s taken the time to explore and publish them.
• Patch uses some strong language. I believe that this is a style choice, intended to be irreverent and jaunty, and not intended to be insulting. I encourage anyone reading his article to approach it in this spirit. (I’ll add that a recent article of his describes a trolling incident, so obviously he doesn’t think he’s a troll.)
• While I’m challenging Patch in this article, I don’t think that he represents every contrary point of view on the topic. [a][s] is happy to publish opinions from anyone who would like to continue the conversation or disagree.

Right, preliminaries over, let’s look at some of Patch’s comments:

“‘Sexism by numbers.’ A raw number doesn’t show one motivation to cause it, like negative exclusion.”

 

Here, Patch is referring to furry’s gender demographic, which is approximately 80% male / 20% female. He doesn’t think this is evidence of a problem.

He is quite right if you look at this data alone, but there is converging evidence. Converging evidence is evidence from various sources that point to the same conclusion. Nuka wrote about this in some detail recently in a guest post for [a][s], where he says that converging evidence “bolster(s) our confidence in the obtained findings“.

My first piece of converging evidence: many women agree that harassment at furry gatherings is a problem. I’ve spoken with a lot of women through the course of writing these articles, and there is a common (but not universal) theme: that you can expect to be harassed by men if you attend a convention or large meet. Some women choose to stay away; others consider it to be the “price of entry” and manage as best they can.

There is a thread on the Eurofurence forums titled Women at Furry Conventions, where several women share their stories. The responses are similar to the responses I’ve received: a big range of experiences but a common theme. I’ll add that the women responding are largely those who are still active in the furry community—I also spoke to women who chose to leave the community, sometimes after being harassed, sometimes after being sexually assaulted or raped.

My second piece of converging evidence: women are less engaged with furry than men. (Ref furrypoll.com results.) When asked “How strongly do you consider yourself furry?”, women score significantly lower than men.

My third piece of converging evidence: women are under-represented at furry conventions. When you ask furries online to fill in a survey (like Furrypoll or one of the IARP surveys), a consistent 20% or so of the respondents are women. Yet women make up only around 10% of attendees at furry conventions*.

*Source: IARP data, which is partially collected at conventions, discussed here; and Eurofurence demographics (11% female).

It’s clear from this result that furry women are less likely to decide to attend a convention, compared with furry men.

My fourth and final piece of converging evidence: the preponderance of women in the dealers’ den at conventions. When women have an external motivating factor to attend conventions—selling their wares—they attend in much greater numbers.

Patch may argue that none of these pieces of evidence is proof, and he’d be right. But they paint a compelling picture: that women suffer from harassment at large furry events, and that they are choosing to stay away from these events, or leave furry altogether.

“Are women driven away from here because they consider themselves too feeble to deal with annoyances, without special protectors? I disagree. I consider them to be tough, independent equals, who assert themselves. Insecurity isn’t the norm.”

 

I don’t intend to comment in detail on this quote from Patch, except to point it out as one of his more gratuitously privileged and condescending points. Apparently Patch thanks that women who stay away because of harassment are “insecure”.

“It’s easy to suggest that if a significant amount of female furries were more than slightly annoyed with awkward social interaction, they would take matters in their own hands, and form constructive support groups in furry fandom.”

 

Patch sees a dearth of public support groups for furry women as evidence that there isn’t a problem.

Of course, any feminist or women-focussed group in a visible furry space will attract abuse and harassment (see here for an example).

I’d suggest that many women who are harassed simply leave furry altogether.

 

It’s worth reiterating that women are not the only furries who suffer from harassment. It’s common enough for guys to be harassed too, sometimes by gay furries and sometimes by women. This harassment can be serious too – I have, for example, spoken with a male furry who was raped by a female furry.

Even so, furry women are in a special predicament, for two reasons: they are more vulnerable, and they receive much more harassment.

To illustrate what I mean by vulnerability, let me relate a story told by a non-furry friend of mine. This guy is 6′ tall, big and strong, 40 years old, and a world-class aikido teacher (and former competitor). He was at a bar, waiting for his drinks to be poured, when he was approached by a guy, who proceeded to hit on him.

This happens from time to time, where a guy or a girl will hit on my friend. And he will shrug them off, telling them that he’s not interested. The difference on this occasion is that his latest fanboy was tall. This made my friend feel uncomfortable, even though there was no suggestion of violence, even though he could look after himself (and then some) if anything happened, even though he was sure that his fanboy had nothing but good intentions. The fact of a few inches of height was enough to make my friend feel mildly threatened.

So my friend tried to make neutral and noncommittal comments until his drinks arrived, and he made his escape. He wasn’t harmed or damaged in any way except for 30 seconds or so of discomfort.

The slight power imbalance in my friend’s situation is one felt by women all the time. Even though guys who hit on women are often doing so in a friendly and positive way, there can be a perceived element of danger. And it doesn’t matter if the danger is real (or realistic), it only matters how it is perceived. If you are made to feel uncomfortable and vulnerable on a regular basis when you go out, you might question whether you wish to go out at all.

There is a simple experiment that neatly demonstrates how often women are harassed: researchers placed a silent bot on IRC, using either a male name or a female name (ref). Over several weeks of data collection, the female bot received 25 times more malicious messages than the male bot.

Harassment can happen to anyone. But it’s more threatening to women than men, and women receive much more than men.

“When a group is imperfectly human- is the glass half empty, or half full? It all comes down to your fundamental view of human nature, and whether it’s evil or not.”

 

Patch makes an interesting point here. He loves furry; I love furry – so why spend time exploring furry’s problems, when I could be discussing those things that make furry great?

I think that it’s good to be self-critical, and that by being self-critical we can become better and better.

“Could it be, that guys aren’t here to oppress, as much as reacting to being repressed?”

 

Which brings me back to Patch’s pièce de résistance, where he argues that men are the marginalized ones, not women. It’s (sadly) a common refrain from men who don’t realise that they are in a privileged position.

He is able to empathize with men who have found furry to be a safe haven, and he can’t imagine that such a tolerant and welcoming place might not seem so tolerant and welcoming to all. He is, unwittingly, refusing to believe that the negative experiences of women in the furry community are valid. And that’s wrong.

But even though I disagree with much of Patch’s essay, I’m glad that he has taken the time to write it. It’s an important conversation, and criticism is always welcome.