This discussion about furry subculture, sex, sexuality, gender, and relationships, took place over instant messenger and email from December 2006 to January 2007. This perspective on furry subculture is one individual's only, and may not reflect the views of the community as a whole. It is our hope that this Q&A will introduce furry subculture, and encourage discussion of it and other subcultures with respect to sex, gender, sexuality, and relationships.
Mekyla: In your understanding, what is furry subculture?
Coon: In a literal sense, it's anthropomorphism applied to most aspects of media and life. Socially it's grown into something where people with marginally similar ideas about this can speak freely, collide, rant, and (in theory) get along. Though honestly it's kind of a mess; there's no one central idea that all furs can connect to. Everyone's just thrown into the pot of the different facets of the culture and some semi-constructive product eventually comes out. You'll have to excuse me, 'furry subculture' is kind of a broad idea to define.
M: Could you provide some examples of how anthropomorphism is applied to aspects of media and life?
C: In media, furry is easily applied to art. There's quite a few furry art archives out there: Yerf (yerf.com), Fur Affinity (furaffinity.net), Orlando Furry Archives (fanarchive.net)... just to name a few. It's not restricted to comics and drawings; there's been an independent video or two produced specifically by the fandom, the most well-known being Kaze Ghost Warrior by Tim Albee. There's also a furry radio show hosted at www.ranting-gryphon.com.
As applied to life, there are a few concepts similar to those in traditional therianthropy and animal totems. It's been jokingly called species dysphoria, “help, I'm a fox stuck in a man's body”, but that's another story. Generally most people don't take their 'animal sides' to a religious level, but it's definitely there and prevalent enough.
M: Though there may be no central idea that all furs can connect to, what kinds of things are discussed within the furry community?
C: *chuckles* Well - whenever anything new in popular media rears it's ugly head it's usually a pretty hot topic. Just bumping in to the General furry life thread on a popular forum, there's...
"RL pics (lacking nudity)"
"furries in the news again"
"Furry slang"
"[Poll] changing your fursona?"
"Fur Con Depression"
"Are there any other gamers out there?"
"Where do you get your furry news fix?"
"How far is too far?"
"Collars?"
"Furry D&D"
"Over the Hedge"
"Worst furry shows"
"How to come out to my parents. [reference homosexuality and furry sides]"
"New wow Guild!!!!"
"having kids"
That's just off the general forum. There's art technique, fursuiting, music, politics, and probably whatever else you can think of.
M: How did you find out about furry subculture, and become involved with it?
C: I actually ran in to it on an offshoot of a costuming interest. I couldn't put my finger on just what attracted it to me at that time, especially since costumes did a decent job of freaking me out as a kid. When I was about 14 or so I bumped into a costumer's gallery of suits that didn't irritate me. They had a nice style to them that didn't involve something you'd see at your favorite theme park, lacking the bobblehead effect, and also didn't look like something you would see in a b-grade werewolf horror flick. The werewolf suit that I was taking a gander at just seemed to be halfway between a human and an animal. For the lack of a better way to describe it, I thought it was 'right' as far as a median between the two.
I was impressed. In conjunction with striking up a casual conversation with the artist, I meandered over to his art website. I opened up the about page, scoped out this whole 'furry' thing on google, found a few FAQs and related directories, and after about a year or so figured out that I always had a magnetic attraction to anthropomorphic media and concepts. The rest of it just stemmed from there. There's a few proximity-based searches and personal ad websites for furs and I couldn't resist meeting up with a few locally.
M: What attracts you to it? What do you dislike about it?
C: Interesting social networks, media (artwork, movies, stories, music) produced independently of large corporate interests, nice spots online to chat, and usually forward-thinking and open-minded people that don't mind that I'm a bisexual, social-service supporting son of a bitch (rare gems in Idaho). It's very comforting to know when you're talking to someone that they won't jump you when it occurs to them that your personal sexuality might involve the same sex.
But there's a healthy flow of drama. People are still people, even if they've got a spiritual affiliation with an animal. Gossip is hell; some artists have stopped producing artwork just because of some rumor. A few of my friends have had their reputations ruined just because they blinked in the wrong direction and someone decided to go ahead and splatter every board they knew of with gratuitous amounts of slanderous material. That and furs squirm whenever they're poked by an outside source. Don't even mention Something Awful (somethingawful.com) around your generic fur, most of them will flip out over those horrible, horrible trolls that keep attacking them. I'm looking forward to the point where furs will have enough self-respect to just issue the generic fuck-you to whoever's scratching them the wrong way and get over it. Personally, I found the CSI episode involving furries hilarious, despite it's inaccuracies.
M: What common misconceptions exist in the mainstream about furry subculture?
C: The big one: everyone has a fursuit. This couldn't be further from the truth. There's a good portion, I'd say around a quarter or a third, that would never consider wearing one. Only about ten percent of furs at best own a suit. Moreover, out of that small percentage, only a few screw with a fursuit on. Even to the rest of us, it's a marginally taboo thing to talk about. You won't be shot or excommunicated, but it's probably not something to bring up at the potluck.
Not everyone is gay. There's a number of straight people, and quite a few bi-curious people as well, their preference heavily upon the opposite sex. Though for some reason, bisexuals and homosexuals definitely seem to take the majority.
We have just about as much sex as any other group. Generally speaking, real relationships grow, sex happens, drama happens, deterioration happens, and the process cycles as usual.
Christian, right-wing republican straight furs do exist. It's not common, but since it's got nothing to do with the fandom, it does occur.
Furs have other hobbies. Most of us have lives away from 'furry'; it's a social circle. In our small group, there's a musician, an electrical engineer, a hippie, a Japanese culture enthusiast, and a normal guy that plays halo every once in a while with non-fur friends. Furry is very much transparent to the majority of people.
M: You mentioned that individuals in the community usually don't mind that you're bisexual. How does the community generally react to non-heteronormative individuals?
C: It depends on the particular deviation and country. I'm sure that people respond better to homosexuality in the United Kingdom or Canada than in the United States. Furries respond better to homosexuality and bisexuality in general, but I think that European furs respond better to transsexual people than US furs do. However I haven't done research in this area, so I can't say for sure. I can safely say that I live in one of the most conservative states in the States, and like I said before, the reactions are refreshing.
Almost any complex bent warped abused stretched malnourished sort of love triangle you can imagine will be accepted. Of course, this leads to some (usually humorous) flame wars when Mate A3 has a slight vendetta against E7, who then decides to gossip to B3 through 8, of which B3, B4, and B7 decide they don't like A3 anymore, A8 doesn't care, and the rest of them join the other side of the fray. None of it has anything to do with any prejudices about sexually, just some ordinary human distrust.
Transgendered people are generally well accepted from my personal experience. I haven't heard anything along the lines of distaste towards transgendered people, but not all furs will immediately accept someone as they want to be viewed.
At this point I have to release a short interlude of a disclaimer - these are biased, unscientific, unspecific, unscholarly broad statements about a macrocosm examined at the microcosm. Furs are flat out much more open about their likes and dislikes with sex. However, there's also a good amount of furs that can go for wholesome and heterosexual monogamous relationships. Let me set the stage correctly here. I'm speaking from the viewpoint of things you'd hear between good friends, over coffee (or even a few beers), discussed in private. . . or on a message board. In everyone's little gang, you'll find someone with a kink or two. Furs are just a bit more outspoken. In any case, I'll continue with the sweeping generalizations.
The fetish that has the highest percentage of practice would be undoubtedly bondage. (Don't get me started on collar jokes.) Furs rarely flinch at it's appearance or hearing of it in practice. If someone finds a kink distasteful to them, they usually glaze over it and forget about it. Shock value is rare. If a fetish is there and it's odd, a few people probably like it, and that's okay with most of the rest of us.
M: Given the generally accepting nature of the furry community, (albeit with the usual human distrust and other problems that plague most groups), it seems people will feel they can express themselves freely. How do people relate to their furry identifies in terms of personality as well as sex/gender expression?
C: It varies quite a bit. Foxes are generally themselves because of their cunning (or they think they are). Wolves tend to lean towards dominance. Domestic animals are generally submissive. Small animals are more skittish. Usually if there's some sort of associated stereotype generated by popular belief, it moves towards what someone will think about themselves or attempt to accomplish.
There's also a long running joke that there's no such thing as a straight male fox. That and somehow foxes get the brash of jokes about being sexually promiscuous. Foxes aren't looked down on for it though, it's just a joke that floats around. We actually have a straight male fox here locally.
There's usually not a whole lot of gender association for any species; it's normal for a female to be an ocelot, and it's normal for a male to be an ocelot. As far as gender expression, there's about an equal amount going on there too. Gender bending happens at intervals respective to the general population but is more openly expressed.
M: Is there anything else you would like to discuss?
C: Not really. I guess I should give out a shout out to the trolls / the 3rd person furry fan club before I head out, since they're probably going to dissect this little thing like a dead frog in high-school biology class. I have no doctoral degree in sociology or any of those wonderful studies, so I probably don't have a place to make some of the statements I've made. I also wanted to link to The Sociology of Furry Fandom by David J. Rust (http://www.visi.com/~phantos/furrysoc.html) for some supplemental information. You'll find there some well-founded statistics on the subject, and some support for my statements on polyamory and sexuality. That's about it.
