April 18, 2024 • 35 mins
The furry fandom gets a bad rap. But on this episode, we're digging beneath the stereotypes to uncover the truth about this misunderstood community. We'll chat with furry researcher Dr. Courtney Plante along with Riley Black, a science writer and a furry herself, to explore what the furry culture is really all about, from the artistry of fursuits to the appeal of fursonas. And yes, we'll go there—investigating whether being a furry is actually a fetish (spoiler alert: for most, it's not, but for the others, we'll explore why). So put your preconceptions aside and get ready to learn what makes the furry community so fascinating—and maybe even find yourself with an urge to join in the fun.
Resources from Dr. Courtney Plante:
- FurScience: https://furscience.com/
Resources from Riley Black:
See citations and a transcript here: https://www.tabooscience.show/041-furries/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ashley (00:00):
The early 2000s were an awful time to be a furry.
(00:05):
Furries, in essence, are peoplewho have an active interest in
anthropomorphic animal characters.
They make art about them, get togetherat events to talk about them, and
most visibly dress up like them.
But if all you knew about them waswhat you read in the 2001 Vanity Fair
article entitled Pleasures of theFur, you'd think they were a bunch of
(00:28):
deviant sickos who can only get sexuallyaroused by wearing fursuits or doing
unmentionable things to plush toys.
You'd also come away wondering whyyou learned about crush fetish porn?
The dude needed a better editor.
Then, TV got in on the action.
There was a 2001 episode of ERthat took a page out of Vanity
(00:51):
Fair and conflated being a furrywith being into sex with plushies.
And a 2003 episode of CSI calledFur and Loathing investigated the
fictional death of a man dressedin a raccoon costume, which led the
detectives into the seedy underworldof furry sex, also known as yiffing.
One notable line from the episode?
(01:13):
Look, if I don't have my costumeon, I pretty much can't get yiffed.
The message is clear.
Furries are social outcasts with sexualfetishes that no normal human can stomach.
This idea of furry as sexual fetishis now so ingrained in society, it's
(01:34):
most likely the first thing you thinkabout when you hear the word furry.
I mean, it was for me.
I'm literally doing an episode aboutthem for this miniseries about fetishes,
only to find out that it's not a fetish.
At least, not for most people.
Today, we'll explore whatthe furry fandom actually is.
(01:56):
And, for the subset who do gethot thinking about anthropomorphic
animals, we'll find out why thatis, what it does for them, and where
the stereotypes have gone wrong.
I'm Ashley Hamer, and this is TabooScience, the podcast that answers the
questions you're not allowed to ask.
(02:33):
In making this episode, I quicklylearned that I actually have more in
common with furries than I thought.
Courtney Plante (02:39):
The definition of furry is best understood as a fandom.
Ashley (02:42):
That's Dr.
Courtney Plante.
Courtney Plante (02:44):
I'm a social psychologist at Bishops University in Sherbrooke,
Quebec, Canada, and primarily my researchfocuses on media effects and fan culture.
I'm a co founder and lead data analystfor an organization called FurScience.
It's sort of this interdisciplinary groupthat studies furries and the furry fandom.
(03:04):
I also do research on other fangroups like bronies and anime
fans, Star Wars fans, and the like.
Ashley (03:11):
Dr.
Plante is a furry himself.
His fursona is a blue cat named Nuka.
There's a fantastic picture of himas Nuka in his doctoral regalia
that I'll post in the show notes.
Courtney Plante (03:21):
So furries are fans the same way that Star Wars fans are
fans, or Harry Potter fans are fans.
So, you know, a science fiction fan.
likes media that's science fiction themed.
They like stories and artwork and theygo to science fiction conventions.
Furries do the exact same thing, but themedia that they like is media featuring
anthropomorphized animal characters.
(03:41):
So animals that walk andtalk and do human things.
So if it's in a show, if it's in avideo game, and it's got an animal that
walks and talks and does human things.
Ashley (03:52):
I spent a lot of my 20s in fandoms that looked just like this.
I was a skeptic.
The critical thinking movementmade popular by people like
Carl Sagan and James Randi.
And I'd talk about that online,go to local meetups about it.
and even pay loads of money to attend theNational Convention in Vegas once a year.
At their worst, skeptics areessentially a culture formed
(04:14):
around the phrase, well, actually.
And I promise you that if given thechoice between sitting next to a
skeptic and a furry on a cross countryflight, you'd want to choose the furry.
But I've also done my share of dress up.
I've gone to sci fi and comic conventionsdressed as Rey from Star Wars, Ygritte
from Game of Thrones, Amy Pond fromDoctor Who, Dolores Abernathy from
(04:37):
Westworld, I've even painted myentire body green multiple times to be
Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy.
So I fully understand theappeal of a good costume.
Courtney Plante (04:49):
I think if you understand one fan culture,
furries make a lot of sense.
If you're an anime fan, if you'rea sci fi fan, you kind of get it.
Ashley (05:02):
In fact, furries branched off from the sci fi and comic
fandom back in the 1970s and 80s.
That was when a number of comic artistsstarted creating material depicting
anthropomorphic animals, what they calledfunny animals, in normal adult situations.
These artists and fans of theirwork would meet up at conventions.
Courtney Plante (05:22):
They would hang out at science fiction conventions where they
would, uh, have a panel or form a roomparty for people who were particularly
interested in these funny animals.
And they would, you know, create thesesmall little independent zines or
independent publications where theywould pass artwork and stories around.
Ashley (05:39):
The parties started as a small single room kind of thing,
but each year they got bigger.
Eventually, a double suite wasn't bigenough to hold all the furry fans.
So they started their own convention.
In 1989, Conference became theworld's first furry convention.
But it wasn't the massivegathering you might think.
There were only about65 people in attendance.
Courtney Plante (06:02):
Throughout the 80s it was very much this sort of very small,
very few people had heard about it.
It was kind of, unless you knew someoneor had an in, it was really hard that
you would just kind of stumble upon it.
Uh, that kind of changed in the 90swith the advent of the internet and
suddenly there were uh, MUCKs and,and user groups where you could
sort of stumble upon it online.
Ashley (06:22):
A MUCK is a type of text based online role playing game
that's really popular among furries.
But yes, like many alternativecommunities, the furry fandom exploded
with the advent of the internet.
That's where Riley Black stumbled upon it.
Riley Black (06:39):
I first found furries before I really knew anything about what
they were, uh, back in the late 90s.
You know, they were talkinglike dial up internet days.
I think I was about like 15years old or so, and I lived in
a very repressive neighborhood.
you know, home in a veryrepressive society as we've
been in basically post Reagan.
And, you know, if I wanted to learnabout sex and sexuality, I had to go
(07:01):
online or basically find out for myself.
So I remember, like, Googlingjust basics and somehow I stumbled
upon, you know, this image ofjust like a sexy looking cat lady.
And we were like, okay, what is this?
Ashley (07:15):
Riley Black is a freelance science writer and the author of 10 books,
including The Last Days of the Dinosaurs.
She is also a furry, butshe wasn't back then.
And
Riley Black (07:26):
I stumbled across this thing and just started clicking through
the images, like, oh, there's like awhole community of people like this.
But of course, like, I'mstill relatively young.
This is something that Ijust kind of stumbled into.
And it felt like since It was attached tosex and sexuality, like the shameful thing
that I can't talk to anybody about it.
And not long after this was likethe era of that infamous CSI
(07:47):
episode with the furry convention.
And all I ever heard, especiallybecause furries are so closely
associated with queerness, wasthat, you know, this is something
that's gross and weird and deviant.
So like I was kind of on theboundaries of it for many, many years.
Ashley (08:03):
That's right, furries are closely associated with queerness.
So roughly 5 percent of the U.
S.
population identifies as LGBTQ, and inthe furry fandom, it's more like 70 80%.
Riley Black (08:17):
I remember talking to, um, a former partner of mine, it was
late as 2016, I think it was, and itfelt like coming out in its own way,
because she had that, you know, furrykind of response for a very long time.
Ashley (08:30):
So Riley stayed away from the community for years,
until around her late 20s.
That tracks with fur science data,which says that the average age of
furries is roughly mid to late 20s.
Riley Black (08:41):
And that's when I started to find people.
I'll lean off through paleontology.
There are a lot of paleopeople who are also furries.
And I think it has to do with the factthat we love imagining what these animals
could look like and what colors they were.
And all that kind of stuff that justkind of comes with the science, it
easily plugs into these pop culture.
expressions.
So it was around that time that I finally,you know, invented a fursona of my own.
(09:04):
Somebody asked me like,well, what's your fursona?
I said, I don't think I have one.
And that's when I invented thefirst iteration of Riley Katten and
started talking to other people.
Ashley (09:16):
A fursona is a portmanteau of the words furry and persona.
It's a furry's alter ego oravatar that they use to represent
themselves in the fandom.
It's usually some species of animal,sometimes real, sometimes mythical,
and sometimes a hybrid of two speciesthat you'd never find in the wild.
A person's fursona will generally havespecific coloring and behavioral traits.
(09:39):
This is where you start tosee those fursuits furries
are so famous for wearing.
But not every fursona is that involved.
At its simplest, a fursona is akinto a username and a profile picture.
Courtney Plante (09:51):
When people interact online, you typically don't put
your full first and last name, soyou create an avatar, a name, and
a little profile for yourself.
So a fursona for manyfurries is just that.
It's a little name, it's a character,that's usually an anthropomorphized
animal character, and it's arepresentation of yourself.
Ashley (10:08):
For some people, it goes a lot deeper.
Courtney Plante (10:11):
Many furries imbue their fursonas with these idealized traits.
So if you're a shy, quiet, timid person,but you secretly long to be maybe a more
outgoing, engaging, gregarious person.
You might, uh, have a tiger fursonawho is very outgoing and confident.
Ashley (10:28):
A person might also imbue their fursona with traits they have
that might be seen by society as aweakness, but in the context of their
animal, they become something positive.
Riley Black (10:37):
I learned this year that I'm autistic as well.
I often express myself saying thatlike I'm kind of cat brained when
it comes to social interactions.
Sometimes it's kind of hard for me tojump in with people I don't know very
well, so it's kind of like you go to aparty and somebody's cat is there, and
you want them to approach you and givethem space and give them time, and that's
something that I identify very much with.
(10:57):
That's part of why Ipicked a feline fursona.
Courtney Plante (11:00):
So whether it's in interactive role plays, whether it's
in VR chats, whether it's in artworkor stories, but this is just kind of
your, your representation of yourself.
This is how you want the restof the fandom to see you.
And so it's a really good opportunity totry on different facets of your identity.
Ashley (11:19):
If you've ever tried to make a big behavior change, like, say, exercising
regularly, you may have seen the advice totry to identify as someone who exercises
regularly, even if you don't yet.
The idea here is that identity comesbefore behavior change, so if you see
yourself as someone who exercises, you'regoing to naturally start exercising.
(11:40):
So taking on the identity of someonewho's more confident or funny
or friendly, like many furriesdo, can be really good for you.
You can try out these traits in asafe environment, and if it goes well,
you get more confidence and you mightstart using them in the real world.
In fact, research suggests thatfurries who see their fursonas as the
ideal version of themselves, ratherthan some fictionalized character
(12:04):
that they could never be, havehigher well being and self esteem.
They're more likely to agree that theirfursona helps them through difficult
times, helps them express themselves, andmakes them feel better about who they are.
But some people have idealized identitiesthat go a bit beyond being fun at
parties, and a fursona can help them too.
Courtney Plante (12:25):
Transgender folks find it very comforting to
be sort of validated, have theirgender identity validated, right?
So they can interact with othersthrough their fursona and be seen as
the gender identity that they feel.
So they find it to be a veryeuphoric experience in that regard.
Ashley (12:40):
Riley didn't identify as trans when she first came up with her fursona,
but her fursona helped her get there.
Riley Black (12:46):
Rileycat got her start actually before I came out, and you know,
I kind of came up with this fursona.
And it was pretty much like me then,like, presenting as a nerdy guy.
Ashley (13:03):
So she asked an artist friend of hers to do a reference
sheet for her character.
Riley Black (13:07):
So a reference sheet is basically exactly what it sounds like.
It's a character sheet that has,you know, here are their details,
here are the color patterns.
So when you give this to artists, theycan just kind of pick it up right from
there and draw your character accurately.
And I said, like, could you do mea ref sheet, but gender swap it?
Could you make, youknow, Riley Cad a woman?
And they said, of course.
(13:27):
And as soon as I saw it,it's like, This is me.
This, this is like everything that I'vebeen holding back for, for a while.
And that really led the wayfor what my transition was.
You
know, I've survived quite a bit ofcomplex post traumatic stress disorder.
(13:50):
You know, I've lived througha lot of things that people
shouldn't have to live through.
And I feel like Riley Cat is verymuch the parts of myself that have
grown and come out through transitionand through a lot of the healing
that I've done without transition.
you know, the 35 years of baggage, Iguess, before that, that I'm able to
forget about that stuff, forget aboutthe flashbacks or the triggers or things
(14:11):
like that, and just kind of be presentin this character that feels like
this fulfillment of who I am inside.
Ashley (14:30):
Art is a huge part of the furry fandom.
I mean, the community was startedby comic artists, after all.
Furry artists will take commissionsto put people's fursonas in
virtually any scene, any scenario,and any format, from traditional
illustration, to virtual stickersfor messaging apps, to VR designs.
For some people, like Riley, art isa way to try on a role or identity to
(14:54):
see if they'd like it in real life.
Riley Black (14:57):
Especially early on in transition, you know, feminizing hormones
take quite a while to start kicking in.
I didn't really start seeingchanges until about nine months
after I started taking estrogen.
And even then I had yearsahead of further changes.
So during that time particularly itreally helped me to have this, you
know, basic projection of myself thatI could engage with those feelings
(15:20):
and experiences I wanted to havebefore I was, you know, basically
fully myself, you know, in real life.
Ashley (15:27):
Art can also help you see yourself doing things that you've
never done to see how it feels.
Riley Black (15:32):
I'm also very much involved in the BDSM community.
Many furries are.
And especially coming from my background,you know, all these sorts of things,
you know, around sex and sexualitythat, like, I couldn't learn or
were repressed or damaged over time.
It was really helpful to basically goto an artist and say, like, okay, like,
I have feelings about this particularactivity or thing I would like to do.
(15:53):
I've never tried it.
But if I get art of it, you know,that's kind of a way to engage
with it and see how I feel.
And there's certain kinks or interestsin the furry community that just,
like, you can't do in real life.
Like, a big one in the furrycommunity is macro micro, so being
very, very big, or very, very small.
And you can stage photos on little sets.
Sometimes people build, like, skyscrapersout of cardboard, and they'll let
(16:17):
you kind of go amongst them and actlike you're Godzilla or whatever.
Um, so there are things like thatwhere, like, if somebody has that
fascination or interest in reallife, but it's not really possible.
Artists can make it such thatyou can still engage with it or
it still resonates in that way.
Like, I love how much the fandom,whether it's safe for work or
not safe for work, is involved inthese basically forms of fantasy.
(16:40):
Because the world's hard enough as it is.
You know, if being a fox person runningaround as a giant in the city makes
you happy, then I say just go for it.
Ashley (16:51):
When we come back, we're talking fursuits, and finally,
what's behind the furry fetish.
Stay tuned.
It's one thing to embody yourfursona in art, but many furries
also literally embody their fursona.
(17:12):
I'm of course talking about fursuits.
Those full body costumes thatlook a bit like sports mascots.
When you think about furries, afursuit is probably what you picture.
Riley was kind enoughto show me her fursuit.
Riley Black (17:26):
So she's a full suit, this is just her head, made by a
company called Blue Nose Creations.
It's really neat, there's all kindsof venting and stuff, there's a
little button on the back thatcompresses the fan inside the mouth,
and the mouth can move a little bit.
Um, but yeah, this is adepiction of what my fursona is.
Ashley (17:43):
That's, what, uh, how long ago did you get that?
And, I mean, can I ask,like, how much it cost?
Riley Black (17:48):
Yes, uh, two years ago, and because she's a spotty
character in there for Complex, um,she was about 6, 000 altogether.
Um, and she's a curvy suit, so there'sa lot of, like, either foam or balloons
and stuff that you can put at, like, thehips, or like, you know, she has breasts,
and because this is not just kind oflike a standard, kind of, for a suit,
that's why it costs a little bit more.
(18:08):
But there are some makers that go up.
into, you know, like five figuresor so for their fursuits, really
depending on what they're using andthe amount of complexity and detail.
Ashley (18:20):
A big misconception in the non furry world is that
all furries wear fursuits.
The cost alone should tellyou that that's not true.
FurScience gathered statistics on thisand found that only about 10-15 percent of
furries actually own a fursuit, though therates get higher when you survey people at
conventions, which kind of self select forthose who have discretionary income and
(18:42):
have a fursuit that they want to show off.
Another misconception that was pushedby that infamous Vanity Fair article
and the CSI episode is that fursuitsare built with strategically placed
holes so you can have sex in the suit.
I want to again stress thepracticality of this idea.
Would you have sex in a $6,000 outfit?
(19:03):
Sex is messy, and fursuits areexpensive to clean and maintain.
I've also seen commentary pointingout that wearing a fursuit feels
like you're wearing a couch.
It's just not a sexyfeeling for most people.
Studies bear this out.
When researchers ask people whodo have a furry fetish why that
is, fursuits are last on the list.
(19:24):
That said, strategically placedholes do exist, but from everything
I can find, they're rare.
You'd have to find a fursuit makerwho's open to doing it, and many
are pretty invested in keeping thepublic image of furries wholesome.
And the fact is that for the vast majorityof furries, it is not a sex thing.
Courtney Plante (19:45):
So first I want to say that there are some
furries for whom it is a fetish.
I don't want to say that there's not,and, you know, this is not an intent
to try to, uh, kink shame anyone.
If that's your fetish and noone's getting hurt, don't do it.
However, the data suggests that it'sincorrect to describe most furries as
having a furry fetish, as that beinglike the primary motivator of it,
(20:05):
in the same way that this would beinaccurate to say about other fan groups.
Ashley (20:08):
I mean, there's porn out there of video game characters,
anime characters, sci fi characters.
I once watched a Mariothemed burlesque show.
You still wouldn't say that beinga video game fan is a fetish.
Courtney Plante (20:21):
The reason is when you, you know, ask furries,
what's, what's the motivator here?
What, what compels you to do this?
The number one reasons are likethe enjoyment of the stories
and the fantasy itself, right?
So the, the aesthetics, uh, but also asense of belongingness and community.
Riley Black (20:36):
So for me, it's really a community focused thing, like, I consider
myself a furry because I engage with thecommunity, and if for whatever reason,
you know, I wanted to stop going toconventions, or, you know, having as
many friends who are in the fandom, orwhat have you, I might not call myself
that anymore, but to me, it's like anactive participation thing, that, you
know, I say I'm part of this community,and I feel like they claim me back.
Ashley (20:57):
However, in surveys, fur science researchers found that
around 10 percent of furries doconsider it a personal fetish.
The fetish does exist, andit's honestly fascinating.
I was super fascinated by the furscience research that said, basically,
(21:20):
researchers showed furry pornography tofurries and non furries and, like, asked
them a bunch of was part of that study.
Courtney Plante (21:28):
Yeah, that was part of my study.
Ashley (21:29):
Could you talk about that a little bit?
Courtney Plante (21:31):
Yeah, so this was my idea for a study, so I'll
take the blame for this one.
Um, the whole idea behind it was thata lot of furries are very defensive
about the idea of acknowledgingthat there is porn, right?
It's becoming less of a problem now,but, um, especially in the early
2010s, there was this concern becausethe media consistently got it wrong.
(21:53):
The media consistently told the story.
Oh, it's a fetish.
Oh, these are people who havesome kink, uh, isn't that weird?
And furries were gettingreally frustrated with that.
And so there was this sort of,almost defensive recoiling at
the suggestion that, Oh gosh, youknow, people, if they ever hear
about furry porn existing, they'regoing to assume the worst about us.
And so I was interested in this idea,this knee jerk reaction to assume
(22:15):
the worst, uh, when it comes to porn.
So Dr.
Plante wanted to study whetherfurries would have an exaggerated
perception of how explicit furryporn really was to non furries.
So we did it.
So we ran an experiment where weshowed furries and non furry college
students furry porn and, you know,sort of just, Typical pornography
(22:36):
and we sort of looked at how did theyrate how explicitly was it rated?
How pornographic was it?
And what was funny to me was that furrieswere rating it far more Pornographic
than were non furry college students.
Non furry college studentslike what the hell is this?
Like, okay, whatever 10 for explicit.
Go back to the actual pornthat I want to look at.
Whereas furries were like,Oh my gosh, there's a furry
(22:58):
character not wearing a shirt.
Gah, it's explicit.
Hide it.
Burn it.
Don't let anyone see this.
And so it suggested this idea that furriesmay be overly sensitive to the idea
that these might be sexualized becauseof this concern that they had that the
media might take this and run with it.
Ashley (23:14):
Yeah, it's so fun.
It goes back to that.
you know, porn is like,I know it when I see it.
Like if it, if it'stitillating to you, it's porn.
And if you're not a furry,it's not titillating to you.
So you don't see it as porn.
Yeah, that's, that's incredible.
Courtney Plante (23:28):
It seems that it was also a good demonstration of the
fact that, uh, people sometimes ask,if this is furry porn out there,
does that mean furries just aren'tattracted to conventional porn?
And that's not true.
Furries are.
So we found that furries liked the furryporn, also the non furry porn, right?
So, uh, So, it wasn't like theywere sacrificing their normal
human sexuality for something else.
Riley Black (23:55):
So people have this, you know, eww, furry response, and they
kind of consider furries synonymouswith like a certain form of sexuality.
But our culture is kind of awash withsexuality in so many different ways.
Um, particularly like heterosexualforms of sexuality and the idea of like,
you know, who you're going to marrywhen you get up or when you're a kid.
It's like, oh, is that your boyfriend,your girlfriend or whatever?
(24:17):
And there was something about the furrydepictions where even though I didn't
know it quite yet, it seemed different.
There was a queerness to it.
There was an otherness and astrangeness and a broader range
of expression, I think, to it.
That's like, Okay, even though Idon't fully understand this yet, and I
wouldn't until many years later, thereis more out there in the world than
I'm being told by the people around me.
(24:39):
I think that was part of it.
It was like that form of sort oftransgression, that you're learning
something about the world and the peoplein it that you've never been told before.
Ashley (24:50):
There's very little research on furry as a fetish.
This makes sense, it's a lot rarerthan the media makes it out to be.
But I can share a few theoriesI've found for why someone might be
turned on by anthropomorphic animals.
First of all, there has been researchinto whether being a furry is motivated by
zoophilia, a sexual attraction to animals.
(25:12):
While some zoophiles are furries,that survey found that there was no
statistical correlation between the two.
A 2019 article by Kevin J.
Hsu and J.
Michael Bailey proposed the idea oferotic target identity inversion.
That's a concept where instead ofjust being sexually attracted to
something or someone, a person getssexual gratification by actually
(25:34):
being the object of their desire.
That wasn't super satisfying to methough, because it doesn't actually
explain the attraction, it justexplains the desire to wear a fursuit.
And we've already explored howdiverse and usually non sexual the
reasons for wearing a fursuit can be.
But a much smarter person than meactually published a response to
(25:55):
this paper in the same journal, andhe had an alternative explanation.
This was B.
Terrence Gray, who pointed out that iferotic target identity inversion were
at play, men who are attracted to femalefurry characters would also want to
be female furry characters themselves.
And that was true of only1 percent of their sample.
Instead, Gray suggested thatattraction to anthropomorphic animals
(26:18):
might be a conditioned fetish.
That's where something that isn'ttypically considered sexual becomes
sexually arousing because of itsrepeated associations with sex.
Think high heeled shoes.
They're not sexual in and ofthemselves, but they're often worn
by people who are considered sexy.
Therefore, the shoes themselvesbecome a turn on for some people.
(26:41):
The original study did find that itsparticipants most commonly became
furries in the context of furry porn.
And it stands to reason that if you lookat enough sexy cartoon animals, cartoon
animals could start to look sexy to you.
And there's also the factthat the furry community is
just sexually open, completelyoutside of the rare furry fetish.
If you're getting your rocks off inother ways with open, understanding
(27:04):
partners who are also furries,the furry culture could come to
represent sexual satisfaction for you.
And that's great!
Courtney Plante (27:12):
One of the things that, I don't want to say a problem with
the furry fandom, but a characteristicof the furry fandom is that they're
incredibly open about sex, whichis actually very good, I think.
The drawback to that is that it makesit almost impossible to make comparisons
between furries and the general populationwhen it comes to sex, because if we
say, Hey furries, tell me all yourkinks and fetishes, they'll happily
say, yeah, what do you want to know?
(27:34):
We've actually done a study wherewe compared furries to anime
fans and furries to bronies.
Ashley (27:38):
Bronies are male fans of the TV series My Little Pony Friendship is Magic.
Courtney Plante (27:43):
We said on a 1 to 10 scale, hypothetically, how
open would you be about tellingus about your kinks and fetishes?
And on like this 1 to 10 scale,furries nearly maxed out the scale.
They're like, yeah, whatdo you want to know?
I'm an open book.
Whereas anime fans and bronies, likewithout even having to explain what
their fetishes were, they just saidas a concept, You know, 5 out of 10.
Like, I'm not going to tell youmost of what I'm interested in.
(28:06):
So, As an extension of that, ifwe were to run the study and find,
Hey look, furries report being morekinky than anime fans and bronies.
Is that because furries are actuallymore kinky or just furries talk about it?
Sexologists will tell you thatpeople have kinks and fetishes and
all sorts of wild sexual fantasies.
We just don't talk about it.
(28:26):
And so The, the impression that we oftenget is that, oh, furries, because they
talk about having kinks and fetishes,they must be especially sexualized, and
just, just all sorts of kinky and wildcompared to the general population,
and I don't think that's true.
I think furries are justnormalized talking about it.
Riley Black (28:43):
So the sexuality in the furry fandom, I think, largely stems from
its queerness, that the majority of usare queer, and some fashion or another.
And it's been there from the beginning.
I mean, every furry convention isbasically like a pride celebration.
It's a place that feels verysafe to express yourself.
That's very different, I think,for many of us from the places
that we come from or live in now.
(29:06):
And, you know, I don't want to make itsound like this is a monolith at all.
Like, furries, oh my gosh, if you area part of furry social media at all, we
fight with each other, you know, everycouple of months about these things.
We have every year, at least once ayear, there is a big argument about
whether people can wear pup hoods.
So basically involving this BDSMactivity of pet play or pup play
(29:26):
where someone will take on the personathat's more closely related to a dog
or other pet and usually as a handler.
Ashley (29:32):
Pup play, huh?
That sounds like the kind ofinteresting kink that a podcast
like this should do an episode on.
Maybe, like, the next episode.
Riley Black (29:42):
So there's not really one sort of standard thing.
We're not all like yiffing in fursuitsor not all commissioning smutty art,
but I love that there is a lot ofovert sort of sexuality in the fandom.
It's a freeing space because thesethings are usually looked down upon
as so different and gross and beyondthe pale and, you know, sort of a very
(30:08):
cisgendered, very heterosexual thing.
Society, and in some ways these aresome of the few spaces that we really
have to be free, even find out whatwe like, even learn from each other.
Ashley (30:18):
I need to stress that even though we've talked about some people
having a furry fetish, even thoughthe furry community is open about
sex, even though this episode aboutfurries is in a podcast miniseries
about fetishes, the vast majority offurries are in it because they're fans.
That's it.
And yet, because society doesn'tunderstand why a person would dress
(30:39):
up in an animal costume, peopleassume it's a weird sex thing.
Courtney Plante (30:44):
When I say picture a fan, you're probably picturing some kind
of music fan or some kind of, you know,fan of a particular television show.
That's our sort of defaultwhen we think of fan.
And what the research shows is thatthe further an example deviates
from that prototype, the moreit almost needs an explanation.
The more we kind of assume that there'ssomething weird or wrong about it.
(31:05):
And that some kind ofexplanation is needed.
So, furries deviate quite a bitfrom that typical sports fan, music
fan, fan of mainstream culture.
And so, people are natural psychologists.
When we see something weird, we feelcompelled to explain it somehow.
What is the reason for that?
And our default assumptionis one of two things.
(31:26):
We go, well, it's weird, it must be, uh, amental illness thing, perhaps the person's
dogs aren't all barking, or we assumethat it's some kind of sex thing, right?
So if you see a person in a fursuit, yougo, oh, well, either they've lost touch
with reality and they think they're ananimal, Or, well, they're doing kinky
(31:46):
things in that fursuit, that must be it.
And so, those are the twoplaces that people go.
They look for an extreme explanation forwhat they think to be extreme behavior.
Ashley (31:55):
And this is a problem.
This wild misconception of furries asa weird sex thing makes it so people
can't share the things that makethem happy with the people they love.
And that's not a great life to live.
Courtney Plante (32:12):
It's fairly common for furries to say, I don't
tell my entire family about it.
Usually it's, oh, this, there's an uncleor an aunt that maybe I wouldn't tell
because they might assume the worst.
Many furries will typically keep itundercover in the workplace, uh, again
for fear of what if their employer assumesthe worst about them because of this.
Yeah, so furries often keep itkind of close to the chest when
it comes to that sort of thing.
(32:32):
Only people they can kind of trust.
And it's not good fora person, by the way.
We have research that shows that whenyou are sort of forced to conceal
important parts of your identity,takes its toll on your mental health.
Ideally, we would live in a societywhere people didn't have to do this.
Riley Black (32:48):
The main thing that I would hope that people would understand about
furries is that it is a community ofpeople and that when people have that eww,
furry response, it's often not very faraway from a, you know, a don't shove it
down our throats response to queer people,or like, I don't understand why they need
to have a pride parade kind of thing.
(33:10):
These things are so closely tiedtogether that it's not just a
misunderstanding of funny animal people,that there are depths in history.
To this and if you are having thatresponse to people who are just enjoying
themselves and really not really doinganything much different from dressing up
at a comic con or for Halloween or likethat is a prompt for some self reflection
(33:32):
about what that is and where that iscoming from and I imagine many people,
you know become furries themselves whenthey have that strong response to it
Like, you know, there's a stereotypeor at least a you know, kind of running
joke within the fandom, when people startsaying, like, I'm not a furry, but it's
like, okay, we will give you your timeto come to this understanding, but you're
(33:53):
basically saying you're already one of us.
Ashley (34:01):
Thanks for listening.
My deepest appreciation to Dr.
Courtney Plante and RileyBlack for speaking to me.
You can learn more about Dr.
Plante's research, plus more researchabout the furry fandom, at furscience.
com.
Riley Black's website is at rileyblack.
net, and she's also active on BlueSkyat @restingdinoface.bluesky.social.
(34:23):
Taboo Science is written andproduced by me, Ashley Hamer.
The theme song is by DannyLopatka of DLC Music.
Episode music is from EpidemicSound, and there's a referral
link in the show notes if you wantto try it for your own projects.
Have a question or commentabout anything I covered here?
Well, you can leave a voice note byheading to podline.fm/tabooscience
(34:44):
and hitting record.
You can leave your name or stay anonymous,and I might play your message on the show.
Next time, as promised,we're talking pup play.
There's actual science on this, you guys.
It's great.
So tune in next time.
I won't tell anyone.
The early 2000s were an awful time to be a furry.
(00:05):
Furries, in essence, are peoplewho have an active interest in
anthropomorphic animal characters.
They make art about them, get togetherat events to talk about them, and
most visibly dress up like them.
But if all you knew about them waswhat you read in the 2001 Vanity Fair
article entitled Pleasures of theFur, you'd think they were a bunch of
(00:28):
deviant sickos who can only get sexuallyaroused by wearing fursuits or doing
unmentionable things to plush toys.
You'd also come away wondering whyyou learned about crush fetish porn?
The dude needed a better editor.
Then, TV got in on the action.
There was a 2001 episode of ERthat took a page out of Vanity
(00:51):
Fair and conflated being a furrywith being into sex with plushies.
And a 2003 episode of CSI calledFur and Loathing investigated the
fictional death of a man dressedin a raccoon costume, which led the
detectives into the seedy underworldof furry sex, also known as yiffing.
One notable line from the episode?
(01:13):
Look, if I don't have my costumeon, I pretty much can't get yiffed.
The message is clear.
Furries are social outcasts with sexualfetishes that no normal human can stomach.
This idea of furry as sexual fetishis now so ingrained in society, it's
(01:34):
most likely the first thing you thinkabout when you hear the word furry.
I mean, it was for me.
I'm literally doing an episode aboutthem for this miniseries about fetishes,
only to find out that it's not a fetish.
At least, not for most people.
Today, we'll explore whatthe furry fandom actually is.
(01:56):
And, for the subset who do gethot thinking about anthropomorphic
animals, we'll find out why thatis, what it does for them, and where
the stereotypes have gone wrong.
I'm Ashley Hamer, and this is TabooScience, the podcast that answers the
questions you're not allowed to ask.
(02:33):
In making this episode, I quicklylearned that I actually have more in
common with furries than I thought.
Courtney Plante (02:39):
The definition of furry is best understood as a fandom.
Ashley (02:42):
That's Dr.
Courtney Plante.
Courtney Plante (02:44):
I'm a social psychologist at Bishops University in Sherbrooke,
Quebec, Canada, and primarily my researchfocuses on media effects and fan culture.
I'm a co founder and lead data analystfor an organization called FurScience.
It's sort of this interdisciplinary groupthat studies furries and the furry fandom.
(03:04):
I also do research on other fangroups like bronies and anime
fans, Star Wars fans, and the like.
Ashley (03:11):
Dr.
Plante is a furry himself.
His fursona is a blue cat named Nuka.
There's a fantastic picture of himas Nuka in his doctoral regalia
that I'll post in the show notes.
Courtney Plante (03:21):
So furries are fans the same way that Star Wars fans are
fans, or Harry Potter fans are fans.
So, you know, a science fiction fan.
likes media that's science fiction themed.
They like stories and artwork and theygo to science fiction conventions.
Furries do the exact same thing, but themedia that they like is media featuring
anthropomorphized animal characters.
(03:41):
So animals that walk andtalk and do human things.
So if it's in a show, if it's in avideo game, and it's got an animal that
walks and talks and does human things.
Ashley (03:52):
I spent a lot of my 20s in fandoms that looked just like this.
I was a skeptic.
The critical thinking movementmade popular by people like
Carl Sagan and James Randi.
And I'd talk about that online,go to local meetups about it.
and even pay loads of money to attend theNational Convention in Vegas once a year.
At their worst, skeptics areessentially a culture formed
(04:14):
around the phrase, well, actually.
And I promise you that if given thechoice between sitting next to a
skeptic and a furry on a cross countryflight, you'd want to choose the furry.
But I've also done my share of dress up.
I've gone to sci fi and comic conventionsdressed as Rey from Star Wars, Ygritte
from Game of Thrones, Amy Pond fromDoctor Who, Dolores Abernathy from
(04:37):
Westworld, I've even painted myentire body green multiple times to be
Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy.
So I fully understand theappeal of a good costume.
Courtney Plante (04:49):
I think if you understand one fan culture,
furries make a lot of sense.
If you're an anime fan, if you'rea sci fi fan, you kind of get it.
Ashley (05:02):
In fact, furries branched off from the sci fi and comic
fandom back in the 1970s and 80s.
That was when a number of comic artistsstarted creating material depicting
anthropomorphic animals, what they calledfunny animals, in normal adult situations.
These artists and fans of theirwork would meet up at conventions.
Courtney Plante (05:22):
They would hang out at science fiction conventions where they
would, uh, have a panel or form a roomparty for people who were particularly
interested in these funny animals.
And they would, you know, create thesesmall little independent zines or
independent publications where theywould pass artwork and stories around.
Ashley (05:39):
The parties started as a small single room kind of thing,
but each year they got bigger.
Eventually, a double suite wasn't bigenough to hold all the furry fans.
So they started their own convention.
In 1989, Conference became theworld's first furry convention.
But it wasn't the massivegathering you might think.
There were only about65 people in attendance.
Courtney Plante (06:02):
Throughout the 80s it was very much this sort of very small,
very few people had heard about it.
It was kind of, unless you knew someoneor had an in, it was really hard that
you would just kind of stumble upon it.
Uh, that kind of changed in the 90swith the advent of the internet and
suddenly there were uh, MUCKs and,and user groups where you could
sort of stumble upon it online.
Ashley (06:22):
A MUCK is a type of text based online role playing game
that's really popular among furries.
But yes, like many alternativecommunities, the furry fandom exploded
with the advent of the internet.
That's where Riley Black stumbled upon it.
Riley Black (06:39):
I first found furries before I really knew anything about what
they were, uh, back in the late 90s.
You know, they were talkinglike dial up internet days.
I think I was about like 15years old or so, and I lived in
a very repressive neighborhood.
you know, home in a veryrepressive society as we've
been in basically post Reagan.
And, you know, if I wanted to learnabout sex and sexuality, I had to go
(07:01):
online or basically find out for myself.
So I remember, like, Googlingjust basics and somehow I stumbled
upon, you know, this image ofjust like a sexy looking cat lady.
And we were like, okay, what is this?
Ashley (07:15):
Riley Black is a freelance science writer and the author of 10 books,
including The Last Days of the Dinosaurs.
She is also a furry, butshe wasn't back then.
And
Riley Black (07:26):
I stumbled across this thing and just started clicking through
the images, like, oh, there's like awhole community of people like this.
But of course, like, I'mstill relatively young.
This is something that Ijust kind of stumbled into.
And it felt like since It was attached tosex and sexuality, like the shameful thing
that I can't talk to anybody about it.
And not long after this was likethe era of that infamous CSI
(07:47):
episode with the furry convention.
And all I ever heard, especiallybecause furries are so closely
associated with queerness, wasthat, you know, this is something
that's gross and weird and deviant.
So like I was kind of on theboundaries of it for many, many years.
Ashley (08:03):
That's right, furries are closely associated with queerness.
So roughly 5 percent of the U.
S.
population identifies as LGBTQ, and inthe furry fandom, it's more like 70 80%.
Riley Black (08:17):
I remember talking to, um, a former partner of mine, it was
late as 2016, I think it was, and itfelt like coming out in its own way,
because she had that, you know, furrykind of response for a very long time.
Ashley (08:30):
So Riley stayed away from the community for years,
until around her late 20s.
That tracks with fur science data,which says that the average age of
furries is roughly mid to late 20s.
Riley Black (08:41):
And that's when I started to find people.
I'll lean off through paleontology.
There are a lot of paleopeople who are also furries.
And I think it has to do with the factthat we love imagining what these animals
could look like and what colors they were.
And all that kind of stuff that justkind of comes with the science, it
easily plugs into these pop culture.
expressions.
So it was around that time that I finally,you know, invented a fursona of my own.
(09:04):
Somebody asked me like,well, what's your fursona?
I said, I don't think I have one.
And that's when I invented thefirst iteration of Riley Katten and
started talking to other people.
Ashley (09:16):
A fursona is a portmanteau of the words furry and persona.
It's a furry's alter ego oravatar that they use to represent
themselves in the fandom.
It's usually some species of animal,sometimes real, sometimes mythical,
and sometimes a hybrid of two speciesthat you'd never find in the wild.
A person's fursona will generally havespecific coloring and behavioral traits.
(09:39):
This is where you start tosee those fursuits furries
are so famous for wearing.
But not every fursona is that involved.
At its simplest, a fursona is akinto a username and a profile picture.
Courtney Plante (09:51):
When people interact online, you typically don't put
your full first and last name, soyou create an avatar, a name, and
a little profile for yourself.
So a fursona for manyfurries is just that.
It's a little name, it's a character,that's usually an anthropomorphized
animal character, and it's arepresentation of yourself.
Ashley (10:08):
For some people, it goes a lot deeper.
Courtney Plante (10:11):
Many furries imbue their fursonas with these idealized traits.
So if you're a shy, quiet, timid person,but you secretly long to be maybe a more
outgoing, engaging, gregarious person.
You might, uh, have a tiger fursonawho is very outgoing and confident.
Ashley (10:28):
A person might also imbue their fursona with traits they have
that might be seen by society as aweakness, but in the context of their
animal, they become something positive.
Riley Black (10:37):
I learned this year that I'm autistic as well.
I often express myself saying thatlike I'm kind of cat brained when
it comes to social interactions.
Sometimes it's kind of hard for me tojump in with people I don't know very
well, so it's kind of like you go to aparty and somebody's cat is there, and
you want them to approach you and givethem space and give them time, and that's
something that I identify very much with.
(10:57):
That's part of why Ipicked a feline fursona.
Courtney Plante (11:00):
So whether it's in interactive role plays, whether it's
in VR chats, whether it's in artworkor stories, but this is just kind of
your, your representation of yourself.
This is how you want the restof the fandom to see you.
And so it's a really good opportunity totry on different facets of your identity.
Ashley (11:19):
If you've ever tried to make a big behavior change, like, say, exercising
regularly, you may have seen the advice totry to identify as someone who exercises
regularly, even if you don't yet.
The idea here is that identity comesbefore behavior change, so if you see
yourself as someone who exercises, you'regoing to naturally start exercising.
(11:40):
So taking on the identity of someonewho's more confident or funny
or friendly, like many furriesdo, can be really good for you.
You can try out these traits in asafe environment, and if it goes well,
you get more confidence and you mightstart using them in the real world.
In fact, research suggests thatfurries who see their fursonas as the
ideal version of themselves, ratherthan some fictionalized character
(12:04):
that they could never be, havehigher well being and self esteem.
They're more likely to agree that theirfursona helps them through difficult
times, helps them express themselves, andmakes them feel better about who they are.
But some people have idealized identitiesthat go a bit beyond being fun at
parties, and a fursona can help them too.
Courtney Plante (12:25):
Transgender folks find it very comforting to
be sort of validated, have theirgender identity validated, right?
So they can interact with othersthrough their fursona and be seen as
the gender identity that they feel.
So they find it to be a veryeuphoric experience in that regard.
Ashley (12:40):
Riley didn't identify as trans when she first came up with her fursona,
but her fursona helped her get there.
Riley Black (12:46):
Rileycat got her start actually before I came out, and you know,
I kind of came up with this fursona.
And it was pretty much like me then,like, presenting as a nerdy guy.
Ashley (13:03):
So she asked an artist friend of hers to do a reference
sheet for her character.
Riley Black (13:07):
So a reference sheet is basically exactly what it sounds like.
It's a character sheet that has,you know, here are their details,
here are the color patterns.
So when you give this to artists, theycan just kind of pick it up right from
there and draw your character accurately.
And I said, like, could you do mea ref sheet, but gender swap it?
Could you make, youknow, Riley Cad a woman?
And they said, of course.
(13:27):
And as soon as I saw it,it's like, This is me.
This, this is like everything that I'vebeen holding back for, for a while.
And that really led the wayfor what my transition was.
You
know, I've survived quite a bit ofcomplex post traumatic stress disorder.
(13:50):
You know, I've lived througha lot of things that people
shouldn't have to live through.
And I feel like Riley Cat is verymuch the parts of myself that have
grown and come out through transitionand through a lot of the healing
that I've done without transition.
you know, the 35 years of baggage, Iguess, before that, that I'm able to
forget about that stuff, forget aboutthe flashbacks or the triggers or things
(14:11):
like that, and just kind of be presentin this character that feels like
this fulfillment of who I am inside.
Ashley (14:30):
Art is a huge part of the furry fandom.
I mean, the community was startedby comic artists, after all.
Furry artists will take commissionsto put people's fursonas in
virtually any scene, any scenario,and any format, from traditional
illustration, to virtual stickersfor messaging apps, to VR designs.
For some people, like Riley, art isa way to try on a role or identity to
(14:54):
see if they'd like it in real life.
Riley Black (14:57):
Especially early on in transition, you know, feminizing hormones
take quite a while to start kicking in.
I didn't really start seeingchanges until about nine months
after I started taking estrogen.
And even then I had yearsahead of further changes.
So during that time particularly itreally helped me to have this, you
know, basic projection of myself thatI could engage with those feelings
(15:20):
and experiences I wanted to havebefore I was, you know, basically
fully myself, you know, in real life.
Ashley (15:27):
Art can also help you see yourself doing things that you've
never done to see how it feels.
Riley Black (15:32):
I'm also very much involved in the BDSM community.
Many furries are.
And especially coming from my background,you know, all these sorts of things,
you know, around sex and sexualitythat, like, I couldn't learn or
were repressed or damaged over time.
It was really helpful to basically goto an artist and say, like, okay, like,
I have feelings about this particularactivity or thing I would like to do.
(15:53):
I've never tried it.
But if I get art of it, you know,that's kind of a way to engage
with it and see how I feel.
And there's certain kinks or interestsin the furry community that just,
like, you can't do in real life.
Like, a big one in the furrycommunity is macro micro, so being
very, very big, or very, very small.
And you can stage photos on little sets.
Sometimes people build, like, skyscrapersout of cardboard, and they'll let
(16:17):
you kind of go amongst them and actlike you're Godzilla or whatever.
Um, so there are things like thatwhere, like, if somebody has that
fascination or interest in reallife, but it's not really possible.
Artists can make it such thatyou can still engage with it or
it still resonates in that way.
Like, I love how much the fandom,whether it's safe for work or
not safe for work, is involved inthese basically forms of fantasy.
(16:40):
Because the world's hard enough as it is.
You know, if being a fox person runningaround as a giant in the city makes
you happy, then I say just go for it.
Ashley (16:51):
When we come back, we're talking fursuits, and finally,
what's behind the furry fetish.
Stay tuned.
It's one thing to embody yourfursona in art, but many furries
also literally embody their fursona.
(17:12):
I'm of course talking about fursuits.
Those full body costumes thatlook a bit like sports mascots.
When you think about furries, afursuit is probably what you picture.
Riley was kind enoughto show me her fursuit.
Riley Black (17:26):
So she's a full suit, this is just her head, made by a
company called Blue Nose Creations.
It's really neat, there's all kindsof venting and stuff, there's a
little button on the back thatcompresses the fan inside the mouth,
and the mouth can move a little bit.
Um, but yeah, this is adepiction of what my fursona is.
Ashley (17:43):
That's, what, uh, how long ago did you get that?
And, I mean, can I ask,like, how much it cost?
Riley Black (17:48):
Yes, uh, two years ago, and because she's a spotty
character in there for Complex, um,she was about 6, 000 altogether.
Um, and she's a curvy suit, so there'sa lot of, like, either foam or balloons
and stuff that you can put at, like, thehips, or like, you know, she has breasts,
and because this is not just kind oflike a standard, kind of, for a suit,
that's why it costs a little bit more.
(18:08):
But there are some makers that go up.
into, you know, like five figuresor so for their fursuits, really
depending on what they're using andthe amount of complexity and detail.
Ashley (18:20):
A big misconception in the non furry world is that
all furries wear fursuits.
The cost alone should tellyou that that's not true.
FurScience gathered statistics on thisand found that only about 10-15 percent of
furries actually own a fursuit, though therates get higher when you survey people at
conventions, which kind of self select forthose who have discretionary income and
(18:42):
have a fursuit that they want to show off.
Another misconception that was pushedby that infamous Vanity Fair article
and the CSI episode is that fursuitsare built with strategically placed
holes so you can have sex in the suit.
I want to again stress thepracticality of this idea.
Would you have sex in a $6,000 outfit?
(19:03):
Sex is messy, and fursuits areexpensive to clean and maintain.
I've also seen commentary pointingout that wearing a fursuit feels
like you're wearing a couch.
It's just not a sexyfeeling for most people.
Studies bear this out.
When researchers ask people whodo have a furry fetish why that
is, fursuits are last on the list.
(19:24):
That said, strategically placedholes do exist, but from everything
I can find, they're rare.
You'd have to find a fursuit makerwho's open to doing it, and many
are pretty invested in keeping thepublic image of furries wholesome.
And the fact is that for the vast majorityof furries, it is not a sex thing.
Courtney Plante (19:45):
So first I want to say that there are some
furries for whom it is a fetish.
I don't want to say that there's not,and, you know, this is not an intent
to try to, uh, kink shame anyone.
If that's your fetish and noone's getting hurt, don't do it.
However, the data suggests that it'sincorrect to describe most furries as
having a furry fetish, as that beinglike the primary motivator of it,
(20:05):
in the same way that this would beinaccurate to say about other fan groups.
Ashley (20:08):
I mean, there's porn out there of video game characters,
anime characters, sci fi characters.
I once watched a Mariothemed burlesque show.
You still wouldn't say that beinga video game fan is a fetish.
Courtney Plante (20:21):
The reason is when you, you know, ask furries,
what's, what's the motivator here?
What, what compels you to do this?
The number one reasons are likethe enjoyment of the stories
and the fantasy itself, right?
So the, the aesthetics, uh, but also asense of belongingness and community.
Riley Black (20:36):
So for me, it's really a community focused thing, like, I consider
myself a furry because I engage with thecommunity, and if for whatever reason,
you know, I wanted to stop going toconventions, or, you know, having as
many friends who are in the fandom, orwhat have you, I might not call myself
that anymore, but to me, it's like anactive participation thing, that, you
know, I say I'm part of this community,and I feel like they claim me back.
Ashley (20:57):
However, in surveys, fur science researchers found that
around 10 percent of furries doconsider it a personal fetish.
The fetish does exist, andit's honestly fascinating.
I was super fascinated by the furscience research that said, basically,
(21:20):
researchers showed furry pornography tofurries and non furries and, like, asked
them a bunch of was part of that study.
Courtney Plante (21:28):
Yeah, that was part of my study.
Ashley (21:29):
Could you talk about that a little bit?
Courtney Plante (21:31):
Yeah, so this was my idea for a study, so I'll
take the blame for this one.
Um, the whole idea behind it was thata lot of furries are very defensive
about the idea of acknowledgingthat there is porn, right?
It's becoming less of a problem now,but, um, especially in the early
2010s, there was this concern becausethe media consistently got it wrong.
(21:53):
The media consistently told the story.
Oh, it's a fetish.
Oh, these are people who havesome kink, uh, isn't that weird?
And furries were gettingreally frustrated with that.
And so there was this sort of,almost defensive recoiling at
the suggestion that, Oh gosh, youknow, people, if they ever hear
about furry porn existing, they'regoing to assume the worst about us.
And so I was interested in this idea,this knee jerk reaction to assume
(22:15):
the worst, uh, when it comes to porn.
So Dr.
Plante wanted to study whetherfurries would have an exaggerated
perception of how explicit furryporn really was to non furries.
So we did it.
So we ran an experiment where weshowed furries and non furry college
students furry porn and, you know,sort of just, Typical pornography
(22:36):
and we sort of looked at how did theyrate how explicitly was it rated?
How pornographic was it?
And what was funny to me was that furrieswere rating it far more Pornographic
than were non furry college students.
Non furry college studentslike what the hell is this?
Like, okay, whatever 10 for explicit.
Go back to the actual pornthat I want to look at.
Whereas furries were like,Oh my gosh, there's a furry
(22:58):
character not wearing a shirt.
Gah, it's explicit.
Hide it.
Burn it.
Don't let anyone see this.
And so it suggested this idea that furriesmay be overly sensitive to the idea
that these might be sexualized becauseof this concern that they had that the
media might take this and run with it.
Ashley (23:14):
Yeah, it's so fun.
It goes back to that.
you know, porn is like,I know it when I see it.
Like if it, if it'stitillating to you, it's porn.
And if you're not a furry,it's not titillating to you.
So you don't see it as porn.
Yeah, that's, that's incredible.
Courtney Plante (23:28):
It seems that it was also a good demonstration of the
fact that, uh, people sometimes ask,if this is furry porn out there,
does that mean furries just aren'tattracted to conventional porn?
And that's not true.
Furries are.
So we found that furries liked the furryporn, also the non furry porn, right?
So, uh, So, it wasn't like theywere sacrificing their normal
human sexuality for something else.
Riley Black (23:55):
So people have this, you know, eww, furry response, and they
kind of consider furries synonymouswith like a certain form of sexuality.
But our culture is kind of awash withsexuality in so many different ways.
Um, particularly like heterosexualforms of sexuality and the idea of like,
you know, who you're going to marrywhen you get up or when you're a kid.
It's like, oh, is that your boyfriend,your girlfriend or whatever?
(24:17):
And there was something about the furrydepictions where even though I didn't
know it quite yet, it seemed different.
There was a queerness to it.
There was an otherness and astrangeness and a broader range
of expression, I think, to it.
That's like, Okay, even though Idon't fully understand this yet, and I
wouldn't until many years later, thereis more out there in the world than
I'm being told by the people around me.
(24:39):
I think that was part of it.
It was like that form of sort oftransgression, that you're learning
something about the world and the peoplein it that you've never been told before.
Ashley (24:50):
There's very little research on furry as a fetish.
This makes sense, it's a lot rarerthan the media makes it out to be.
But I can share a few theoriesI've found for why someone might be
turned on by anthropomorphic animals.
First of all, there has been researchinto whether being a furry is motivated by
zoophilia, a sexual attraction to animals.
(25:12):
While some zoophiles are furries,that survey found that there was no
statistical correlation between the two.
A 2019 article by Kevin J.
Hsu and J.
Michael Bailey proposed the idea oferotic target identity inversion.
That's a concept where instead ofjust being sexually attracted to
something or someone, a person getssexual gratification by actually
(25:34):
being the object of their desire.
That wasn't super satisfying to methough, because it doesn't actually
explain the attraction, it justexplains the desire to wear a fursuit.
And we've already explored howdiverse and usually non sexual the
reasons for wearing a fursuit can be.
But a much smarter person than meactually published a response to
(25:55):
this paper in the same journal, andhe had an alternative explanation.
This was B.
Terrence Gray, who pointed out that iferotic target identity inversion were
at play, men who are attracted to femalefurry characters would also want to
be female furry characters themselves.
And that was true of only1 percent of their sample.
Instead, Gray suggested thatattraction to anthropomorphic animals
(26:18):
might be a conditioned fetish.
That's where something that isn'ttypically considered sexual becomes
sexually arousing because of itsrepeated associations with sex.
Think high heeled shoes.
They're not sexual in and ofthemselves, but they're often worn
by people who are considered sexy.
Therefore, the shoes themselvesbecome a turn on for some people.
(26:41):
The original study did find that itsparticipants most commonly became
furries in the context of furry porn.
And it stands to reason that if you lookat enough sexy cartoon animals, cartoon
animals could start to look sexy to you.
And there's also the factthat the furry community is
just sexually open, completelyoutside of the rare furry fetish.
If you're getting your rocks off inother ways with open, understanding
(27:04):
partners who are also furries,the furry culture could come to
represent sexual satisfaction for you.
And that's great!
Courtney Plante (27:12):
One of the things that, I don't want to say a problem with
the furry fandom, but a characteristicof the furry fandom is that they're
incredibly open about sex, whichis actually very good, I think.
The drawback to that is that it makesit almost impossible to make comparisons
between furries and the general populationwhen it comes to sex, because if we
say, Hey furries, tell me all yourkinks and fetishes, they'll happily
say, yeah, what do you want to know?
(27:34):
We've actually done a study wherewe compared furries to anime
fans and furries to bronies.
Ashley (27:38):
Bronies are male fans of the TV series My Little Pony Friendship is Magic.
Courtney Plante (27:43):
We said on a 1 to 10 scale, hypothetically, how
open would you be about tellingus about your kinks and fetishes?
And on like this 1 to 10 scale,furries nearly maxed out the scale.
They're like, yeah, whatdo you want to know?
I'm an open book.
Whereas anime fans and bronies, likewithout even having to explain what
their fetishes were, they just saidas a concept, You know, 5 out of 10.
Like, I'm not going to tell youmost of what I'm interested in.
(28:06):
So, As an extension of that, ifwe were to run the study and find,
Hey look, furries report being morekinky than anime fans and bronies.
Is that because furries are actuallymore kinky or just furries talk about it?
Sexologists will tell you thatpeople have kinks and fetishes and
all sorts of wild sexual fantasies.
We just don't talk about it.
(28:26):
And so The, the impression that we oftenget is that, oh, furries, because they
talk about having kinks and fetishes,they must be especially sexualized, and
just, just all sorts of kinky and wildcompared to the general population,
and I don't think that's true.
I think furries are justnormalized talking about it.
Riley Black (28:43):
So the sexuality in the furry fandom, I think, largely stems from
its queerness, that the majority of usare queer, and some fashion or another.
And it's been there from the beginning.
I mean, every furry convention isbasically like a pride celebration.
It's a place that feels verysafe to express yourself.
That's very different, I think,for many of us from the places
that we come from or live in now.
(29:06):
And, you know, I don't want to make itsound like this is a monolith at all.
Like, furries, oh my gosh, if you area part of furry social media at all, we
fight with each other, you know, everycouple of months about these things.
We have every year, at least once ayear, there is a big argument about
whether people can wear pup hoods.
So basically involving this BDSMactivity of pet play or pup play
(29:26):
where someone will take on the personathat's more closely related to a dog
or other pet and usually as a handler.
Ashley (29:32):
Pup play, huh?
That sounds like the kind ofinteresting kink that a podcast
like this should do an episode on.
Maybe, like, the next episode.
Riley Black (29:42):
So there's not really one sort of standard thing.
We're not all like yiffing in fursuitsor not all commissioning smutty art,
but I love that there is a lot ofovert sort of sexuality in the fandom.
It's a freeing space because thesethings are usually looked down upon
as so different and gross and beyondthe pale and, you know, sort of a very
(30:08):
cisgendered, very heterosexual thing.
Society, and in some ways these aresome of the few spaces that we really
have to be free, even find out whatwe like, even learn from each other.
Ashley (30:18):
I need to stress that even though we've talked about some people
having a furry fetish, even thoughthe furry community is open about
sex, even though this episode aboutfurries is in a podcast miniseries
about fetishes, the vast majority offurries are in it because they're fans.
That's it.
And yet, because society doesn'tunderstand why a person would dress
(30:39):
up in an animal costume, peopleassume it's a weird sex thing.
Courtney Plante (30:44):
When I say picture a fan, you're probably picturing some kind
of music fan or some kind of, you know,fan of a particular television show.
That's our sort of defaultwhen we think of fan.
And what the research shows is thatthe further an example deviates
from that prototype, the moreit almost needs an explanation.
The more we kind of assume that there'ssomething weird or wrong about it.
(31:05):
And that some kind ofexplanation is needed.
So, furries deviate quite a bitfrom that typical sports fan, music
fan, fan of mainstream culture.
And so, people are natural psychologists.
When we see something weird, we feelcompelled to explain it somehow.
What is the reason for that?
And our default assumptionis one of two things.
(31:26):
We go, well, it's weird, it must be, uh, amental illness thing, perhaps the person's
dogs aren't all barking, or we assumethat it's some kind of sex thing, right?
So if you see a person in a fursuit, yougo, oh, well, either they've lost touch
with reality and they think they're ananimal, Or, well, they're doing kinky
(31:46):
things in that fursuit, that must be it.
And so, those are the twoplaces that people go.
They look for an extreme explanation forwhat they think to be extreme behavior.
Ashley (31:55):
And this is a problem.
This wild misconception of furries asa weird sex thing makes it so people
can't share the things that makethem happy with the people they love.
And that's not a great life to live.
Courtney Plante (32:12):
It's fairly common for furries to say, I don't
tell my entire family about it.
Usually it's, oh, this, there's an uncleor an aunt that maybe I wouldn't tell
because they might assume the worst.
Many furries will typically keep itundercover in the workplace, uh, again
for fear of what if their employer assumesthe worst about them because of this.
Yeah, so furries often keep itkind of close to the chest when
it comes to that sort of thing.
(32:32):
Only people they can kind of trust.
And it's not good fora person, by the way.
We have research that shows that whenyou are sort of forced to conceal
important parts of your identity,takes its toll on your mental health.
Ideally, we would live in a societywhere people didn't have to do this.
Riley Black (32:48):
The main thing that I would hope that people would understand about
furries is that it is a community ofpeople and that when people have that eww,
furry response, it's often not very faraway from a, you know, a don't shove it
down our throats response to queer people,or like, I don't understand why they need
to have a pride parade kind of thing.
(33:10):
These things are so closely tiedtogether that it's not just a
misunderstanding of funny animal people,that there are depths in history.
To this and if you are having thatresponse to people who are just enjoying
themselves and really not really doinganything much different from dressing up
at a comic con or for Halloween or likethat is a prompt for some self reflection
(33:32):
about what that is and where that iscoming from and I imagine many people,
you know become furries themselves whenthey have that strong response to it
Like, you know, there's a stereotypeor at least a you know, kind of running
joke within the fandom, when people startsaying, like, I'm not a furry, but it's
like, okay, we will give you your timeto come to this understanding, but you're
(33:53):
basically saying you're already one of us.
Ashley (34:01):
Thanks for listening.
My deepest appreciation to Dr.
Courtney Plante and RileyBlack for speaking to me.
You can learn more about Dr.
Plante's research, plus more researchabout the furry fandom, at furscience.
com.
Riley Black's website is at rileyblack.
net, and she's also active on BlueSkyat @restingdinoface.bluesky.social.
(34:23):
Taboo Science is written andproduced by me, Ashley Hamer.
The theme song is by DannyLopatka of DLC Music.
Episode music is from EpidemicSound, and there's a referral
link in the show notes if you wantto try it for your own projects.
Have a question or commentabout anything I covered here?
Well, you can leave a voice note byheading to podline.fm/tabooscience
(34:44):
and hitting record.
You can leave your name or stay anonymous,and I might play your message on the show.
Next time, as promised,we're talking pup play.
There's actual science on this, you guys.
It's great.
So tune in next time.
I won't tell anyone.
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