Culture of Furries - spike.furaffinity.net

Culture of Furries: An Anthropological Look at
Anthropomorphic Society and Sub-Fandoms.
“Furries ruin everything.” “Yiff in HELL, FURFAGS!!” “God hates furries.” “Furries, burn
it with fire!” Yes, there is a lot of hate online, and occasionally in person, when it comes to the
furry community. But what exactly is a furry? What is the fandom about?
As someone who both loves studying culture, and someone
who has long loved furry art, when I started to become more
active in the community, commonly called the Furry Fandom,
I wanted to know more about it, its history, and its internal
dynamics. In this sense I am coming to this investigation with
both an Emic and Etic perspective, as it appears most do, but
I will get into that later. First, ‘what is a furry?’
What is a Furry? No, seriously, what IS a furry? One quickly
runs into a problem when looking for this definition because
there isn’t just one. One of the few defining features of Furry
is that it means different things to different furs. Furries range from simply enjoying art, stories,
games, or cartoons of anthropomorphic characters, to those who dress in animal costumes,
those who act like animals, even those who believe that deep down they are animals trapped in
human bodies. Another major aspect of the fandom
is general acceptance of anyone for whoever they
are. This final factor lead to a massive influx of gay
men coming out in the furry fandom, bringing with it
many of that culture’s norms such as identity
secrecy.
It should be noted that with the open acceptance
policy the furry community feels obligated to accept
anyone, even groups they otherwise hate, such as
the Nazi Furs.
Where did Furry come from?
Anthropologically animal/human hybrids have a very long history dating back to some
of the earliest cave paintings. Greek and roman tails, and others from around the world, are
abundant with humanoid animals, even Aesop's fables featured many intelligent animals.
However, the modern Furry Fandom has its roots at Sci-Fi conventions, where some people
who dressed up had private room parties.
Notably World Con, a convention for science fiction, fantasy, comics, and just about
any speculative fiction you can think of, began holding Furry Vs Klingon Bowling Nights. This
inspired furries to start their own conventions, and now they are taking place all over the world.
Who is the Furry King?
Unlike many other fandoms, such as Star Trek, Star Wars, and even Anime, there are
no governing bodies deciding what is and what is not furry, what stories are allowed or not,
and what story elements function in furry. We are organized very loosely and generate our own
cultural content despite also drawing from others. We have very few generalizable traditions
or social structures, but I will try to highlight some of these before delving into some specific
exceptions.
Due to furries general acceptance of people for who they are, combined with much of
mainstream societies tendency to marginalize anyone different, the furry fandom tends to gather
many people shunned from common society. For this reason Fur Meets (local gatherings of
furries) and Furry Conventions, are very important parts of our social organization. But it wasn’t
until the Internet that Furries truly started to unite across the globe. Originally this took place
mostly in the alt.net message board. Now we meet in forums, art sites, chat rooms, and even
have our own furry dating sites.
Traditionally, every new furry chooses, creates, or ‘discovers’ their
Fursona, or their furry identity. For some this is just a character
they like to write/draw, a furry face to be identified as, a character
they role play as, or it can be who they truly feel they are within.
Regardless of what it means to a specific fur, their fursona
becomes their face to the community. I am known as Chakat
ThornBrier (I will get into Chakats later), my fictive brother is
WrathofAutumn (the grey fox depicted at right).
There are a few big dogs in the furry fandom, such as Dragoneer
(owner and operator of FurAffinity, the largest furry art site, which
also functions generally as a furry facebook), or Uncle Kagge
(organizer for AnthroCon, the largest annual furcon). But in
general there are a couple of categories in which the highest
status people in the fandom fall, and most of them revolve around
creating the artifacts which help furs bring their fursonas to life.
The highest status tends to be reserved for furry artists, creating
depictions of various fursonas and story characters. Given the
open nature of the fandom a large divide exists between adult art
and clean art, and most of what the Furry Haters tend to scream
about is the adult art.
Second highest status is for furry writers, telling the stories of
these anthro characters, their strange anatomies, animal quirks, and the technology and
societies that develop around them. Once the stories are written many furs seek artists to
visualize their creations.
Third is the only one of the major four which has far less to do with content creation, and
much more to do with the display of furry society. Fur Suiters, like those depicted with the Storm
Trooper above, are the most visible portion of the fandom to the general public and represent
what much of the fandom aspires to, as it is the closest in reality they could ever hope to come
to ‘being’ their fursonas.
Despite all the media hype, having a fursuit is actually a rarity in the fandom due to a
combination of their high price, the time and skill it takes to build them, the difficulty of wearing
them, and the care and maintenance they require once acquired. According to Furry Survey
2011 only 8% to 10% of the fandom owns either a Partial (head, tail, hands, and perhaps feet),
or a Full Fursuit. Wrath here is very proud of his
partial suit and was quite distraught when a claw
broke off of one of his feet last year while we were
filming a music video.
The image of all furries having these suits tends to be reinforced by many furs having an
aversion to having their human identity revealed to
the fandom at large, preferring to be known only as
their fursona whenever possible. Recently I have
seen some furs deliberately countering this
generality, publishing their human photos for all to
see.
The last group in the top four I have seen would be
the ones who make the third group possible, the
holders of the secrets to building good looking
fursuits. The Fursuit Builders skills are much sought
after, but few rise to any significant fame. The
names of master builders who’s wait list is
reasonably short tend to float among the fursuiters
like precious treasures only shared with their closest
of friends. The few famous builders tend to have wait
times lasting several years. I know one who has
been waiting for OneFurAll to finish his suit for over
four years, and during this time Clockwork Creatures
has nearly finished his ‘backup suit’ in only two years.
“ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US!”
Furry is not a culture one is typically born into, rather it is something you discover and
realize you belong to. It was almost three years after I met Wrath that I finally accepted that
I belonged among the furries, and another year and a half before I decided to be active and
choose my fursona. It is not uncommon for furries who find one of their human friends has an
interest in anything remotely anthropomorphic to begin trying to pull them into the fandom.
Sometimes this has disastrous results, other times the fandom grows a little, but typically the
individual learns what we are and simply decides its not quite for them. Life continues.
Most furs have had these interests from a very young age. Many grew up loving
cartoons like Duck Tails, Tailspin, Red Wall, Rescue Rangers, All Dogs Go To Heaven, The
Secret of NIMH, Watership Down, 101 Dalmatians, Star Trek: The Animated Series, and
Disney’s Robin Hood. Many played StarFox1, Sly Cooper, Banjo Kazooy, Mad Max, and
Ratchet and Clank.
Others grew up reading Red Wall, Mother Goose’s Fairy Tales, Animal Farm, Charlotte’s
Web, Ms. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Watership Down, or Banicula.
1
Side Note: I personally blame StarFox and Robin Hood for the disproportionate number of Foxes in this
generation of the fandom. Apparently in the 80’s big cats were popular. From 2006 to 2008 Wolfs ranked
#1 with Foxes #2, but in 2011 this was switched, Foxes now coming in far ahead of Wolfs, while common
dogs steadily rose each year since they ranked 9th in 2007 to their present 3rd place.
For many these interests carried into adulthood leading many of their friends to shun
them for holding onto childish things. Then they find others with similar interests, finding they
have a name for what they are they now become Furry. In this sense every new fur must
find what it means to be Furry for themselves, so we all approach this culture from an etic
perspective, coming in from the outside. At the same time the common threads that lead new
members to the community gives a common ground for the fandom as a whole, granting us all a
somewhat emic perspective.
Sub-Fandoms
Within the Furry Fandom there are many sub-fandoms dedicated to specific things.
Some are based on particular physical attributes of the fursona (such as having digitigrade or
plantigrade feet, being a ‘Feral’ or a ‘taur’), religion, politics, or sexuality of the fur, and others on
the story setting of the fursona. I want to focus on this last one because it breaks the generality
of Furs having no top-down organization or leadership.
For Wrath, being an Old Trek Fur, it is the original ideas set out by Gene Roddenberry in his
Original Star Trek series which determines what he can or can’t do, how a phaser works, and
the rules of Star Fleet. For Mobian Furs it is
the Sonic the Hedgehog games, cartoons,
and comics which lay out their rules. Of
special interest to me here are the subfandoms that grow from within the community
itself such as the Furry Basketball Association
startedand run by Buck Hopper. There are
many, but I will focus on just two, Sergals and
Chakats (of which I am one).
Sergals are a sleek race described as having
canine, avian, raptor, and shark traits. Their
world, their people are divided into two sub-species that are almost constantly at war.
I have interviewed the creator of Sergals,Trancy
Mick (or Mick39), via FurAffinity. She is a Japanese
artist and writer who envisions herself as a Northern
Sergal by the name of General Rain Silves who
takes great pleasure in eating her opponents alive.
We had some difficulty with the interview due to our
language barriers, but were able to get most of my
questions answered. Combined with similar
interviews I had with other sergals and my research
on wikifur.com I found several interesting facts which
either paraleled or starkly contrasted with my own
sub-fandom or the furry fandom at large.
It would appear that people who choose Sergal
fursonas are disproportionately straight females who
enjoy taking on the dominant personality. This is
especially striking because the fandom at large is
over 70% male, with a third of those being gay men, and roughly 40% of the women being
bisexual. Sergals tended to be quite attracted to the sleek body shape and aggressive culture.
When asked if the recent introduction of a new race to the setting had any impact on them I
was surprised to find that most of the sergals were relatively unaffected, until I discovered that
this was somehow exactly in line with the context of Mick’s story (not having read it I can only
go by what the sergals have told me). I also found sergals to be fairly religious furs, yet despite
their traditional backgrounds most sergals take well to the aggressive sexualities portrayed for
them in the official stories.
I specifically chose Sergals to compare to my own because my initial observations
were that Mick’s creation and that of the Chakat Universe were similarly sized, that
their creators were both actively involved in their own fandoms and the furry fandom
at large, and each had specific sexual expectations laid out by their respective
creators.
Years ago, before finding the Furry Fandom I came across a website with stories and art
by Bernard Doove, an Australian author and artist. The Chakat’s Den, had a vast library of short
stories and art depicting a science fiction world in which humans had created anthropomorphic
slaves with advanced genetic engineering. Once they had won their freedom and all the world
sought to colonize the stars a new race was created to be the ultimate colonist. Chakat’s
were created from a combination of human and large feline genetics to be hearty, social, and
intelligent so they could go to worlds and prepare them for others to arrive later. They were
made hermaphroditic, with uncluttered genetics, to ensure that as long as any two of them
survived the colonization process could continue.
I interviewed a few of my fellow Chakats on FurAffinity, as well as extending the
opportunity to Shir Goldfur (Bernard Doove, depicted at right and above), unfortunately shi was
too busy with the recent series of conventions and getting hir new book published to get back to
me with the answers. However, shi does have on hir site answers to several of my questions.
Chakats in the fandom are attracted to the grace and power of large cats while still
enjoying the manual dexterity and intellect represented in the felitaur form, the social empathy
and togetherness (with heavy focus on tight extended families, as depicted above), and the
hermaphroditic anatomy Goldfur set out in the stories. There is also a heavy element of the
Transhumanist movement (using technology to surpass natural human limitations). Chakats
appear to be slightly less religious than the general furry population, who are typically less
religious than their regional norm.
I should point out something about hermaphrodites. Generally in the furry fandom furs
who choose hermaphrodites are bisexual women and Female-to-Male transexuals. However,
I have found that quite a few chakats (myself included) are of an extreme rare gender identity
known as Gender Fluid, meaning that how masculine or feminine we are changes over relatively
short amounts of time. This coinciding factor is likely due to the Chakats having been created
with a two week gender cycle during which they shift from extremely male to extremely female
(culminating in their ‘heat’ which is the only time they can get pregnant).
As you can see, the Culture of Furry is extremely diverse, open, and constantly
changing. There is a common question posed in the fandom, “Will furry ever go mainstream?”
From what I am studying I don’t think it ever will, but I do believe that a lot of elements of the
fandom, such as tolerance of people for who they are and the decentralized organization, will
become more pervasive. I already see some communities online that have many of these
features and I see that spreading all the time. I see the Furry Fandom as a poster boy for what
we can achieve in the future, even if some of the world remains too blind to see it.
Well, I believe that’s all I have to say for this paper. Good bye, or as Chakats say, “Tails
High.”
Legal Addendum Note: I claim no ownership of any of the images used in this document. Each
is copyright their respective owners and are used here under ‘Fair Use.’