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 isnt 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 cultures 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 wasnt 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 whos 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 Disneys Robin Hood. Many played StarFox1, Sly Cooper, Banjo Kazooy, Mad Max, and Ratchet and Clank. Others grew up reading Red Wall, Mother Gooses Fairy Tales, Animal Farm, Charlottes Web, Ms. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Watership Down, or Banicula.

Side Note: I personally blame StarFox and Robin Hood for the disproportionate number of Foxes in this generation of the fandom. Apparently in the 80s 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 cant 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 sub-fandoms 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 subfandom 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 Micks 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 Micks 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 Chakats 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. Chakats 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 dont 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 thats 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.