Furries (A Paper for an Honors Seminar)

Austin Tamutus
Dr. Marianne Dekoven
The Question of The Animal
December 10, 2013

Furries

There is much discourse and dialogue about the relations and parallels between humans and animals.  Many literary works investigate the boundary between humans and other species.  Although not many affirmative statements can be made about the prototypical representation of animals in literature, the liminality of the boundary between humans and nonhumans is addressed, by literature and scientific research, in a predominantly anthropocentric fashion.  Zoomorphism, the reciprocal of anthropomorphism, finds its home in a much different walk of life:  the "furry" subculture, internally known as the "Furry Fandom".  This paper will address the demographics of the furry fandom as preliminary overview, then delve into a review of what the significance of the furry fandom may be, as well as the meaning of how furry artwork and literature use animals and their characteristics to portray characters.

Why Furries Are Good and Who They Are

This has taken me a long time to post, partly because I didn't know if I wanted to post it, partly because I was not sure about what exactly I wanted to say on the subject, and partly because I wanted to say something very particular.  Most of all, I think it's important to explain a facet of our world that is really quite foreign to many people, but is very much a developed and interesting subculture.

I'm motivated to describe it in a very clear and descriptive fashion because I think that it's easy to put the subject into a box and label it as some sort of weird novelty.

I went to FurAffinity United this summer, August 16-18.  It's a furry convention.  To properly discuss this adventure, I need to define a few terms for the layman.  And, as a student of neuroscience and linguistics, I don't play around when I'm defining terminology.  So what you hear here is as precise as it will get.

The noun 'furry' can be used in two ways.  It can be used to describe fictional characters that have the appearance of human-shaped animals, which are less colloquially called anthropomorphic animals.  Bugs Bunny is a furry.  The term 'furry' is also used as shorthand for a person who considers themselves a fan of subject matter that depicts furries.  The adjective form of furry is used to describe things that pertain to the furry fandom.  There's also the term 'fursona', a noun used to describe a nonhuman persona that a person identifies with or acts out.

Furries in art: "Harbinger", by Blotch

The term 'furry' is incredibly loaded.  It means a lot to people who are familiar with the fandom because of all of the preconceptions and stereotypes there are about the demographic of people who frequent the online hubs of the community.  It also means a lot to many people well-versed in "Internet culture", if there is such a thing.  The furry fandom is certainly a diverse community, but because most of the community frequents the same small number of hubs, it's easy to characterize the way that those hubs work and be turned off to any of the main characteristics of those particular places.