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---
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categories:
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- Non-fiction
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ratings: G
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date: 2016-12-04
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type: post
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pdf: gender-furry.pdf
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tags:
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- Furry
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- About furry
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- Gender
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title: 'Gender: Furry - An investigation into the interplay of gender and fandom'
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---
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_**Gender: Furry** was originally commissioned for and published in **Furries Among Us II**, released by Thurston Howl Publications_
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-----
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Many people, I suspect, use the idiom, "hindsight is twenty-twenty," in
|
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a way that is better served by other, more appropriate words or phrases.
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The sense in which I hear it most commonly used is perhaps more
|
||||
adequately covered by the beautiful portmanteau, "regretrospect". That
|
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is, now that things are said and done, I regret a lot of what happened
|
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during this adventure.
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Also, it's my second favorite portmanteau after "congratudolences" and
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really ought to see wider use.
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No, I think "hindsight is twenty-twenty" is better reserved for cases
|
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when seemingly unrelated occurrences come together to form an outcome
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that seems to be greater than the sum of the parts. It fits best when
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||||
you look back at your life and see disparate, unconnected events come
|
||||
together to make the situation you find yourself in now.
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I came out to myself and my (at the time) fiancé as transgender over a
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process of several months. It began sometime in 2010 or so, when I
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started to feel like I was able to put words to the things that were
|
||||
making me feel bad. I began by identifying as genderqueer, and although
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||||
that label still fits very well, I adopted 'transgender' in 2015 as the
|
||||
one that I use in day-to-day life to describe myself, as it leaves the
|
||||
fewest questions as to why I'm a six-foot-two rectangular man-shape in
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feminine clothing and makeup.
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|
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But we're talking about hindsight, so it's worth bringing up that one of
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the only things I ever stole was the book "The Boy Who Thought He Was A
|
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Girl", back in second grade. I'm guessing at the title here, as I can
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||||
find no record of it through casual Googling, however, I remember that
|
||||
it was a trashy, essentialist book about a boy who wanted to learn how
|
||||
to kiss, which somehow made him girly and, thus, confused about whether
|
||||
he should actually be a girl. Of course, in the end, his understanding
|
||||
of his gender role as a boy were firmly straightened out by
|
||||
strict-yet-loving family.
|
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|
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Or perhaps another step in this path of hindsight was sneaking into my
|
||||
step-mom's spare room when I was about twelve and trying on one of her
|
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old dresses. At that point, I had yet to become the lummox that would be
|
||||
my post-pubertal destiny, and so the dress fit, albeit poorly.
|
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|
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Or, hey, skip ahead to 2006, when I had just turned twenty and realized
|
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that it felt just as good to role-play online as a vixen as it did as a
|
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tod, though I told myself at the time that it was because I wanted to
|
||||
experience more relationship configurations than the male homosexual
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relationships I'd had to that point.
|
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|
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Each of these things, and so many more, felt like an independent,
|
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unconnected occurrence to me. It's only in hindsight that I can see that
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there were aspects of me straining towards some way to feel happy and
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comfortable. When I was growing up, they were simple oddities, but now
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just another way to see the present more clearly.
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I think that it's fairly common that one comes to terms with a portion
|
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of one's identity in this fashion. Before I came out as trans and made
|
||||
the question of sexual orientation at least twice as complicated, I went
|
||||
through the process of figuring out that, despite being born male, I was
|
||||
also attracted to other boys as well as girls. Those 'crushes' in
|
||||
elementary school make more sense, and so on.
|
||||
|
||||
There had to be some lever that pushed each of those instances from a
|
||||
collection of loosely related occurrences into the formation of a strong
|
||||
facet of my own identity. With orientation, it was obviously the rush of
|
||||
hormones that came with puberty: all of the sudden, 'liking boys' took
|
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on a new tenor.
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With gender, it was almost entirely the furry subculture's fault.
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I found furry at the age of fourteen or so through the website Yerf!,
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and later through a FurCode generator. At the time, though gender was
|
||||
quite confusing for me when viewed in hindsight, I identified as a cis
|
||||
gay male. Furry, then, was a welcome haven from home life, where it was
|
||||
cool to be a teenage fox boy thinking about dating other teenage fox
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||||
boys.
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||||
|
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As I grew up and continued in my development as a person, filling in
|
||||
bits of my concept of self as one fills in gaps in a puzzle when the
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||||
pieces are found, furry helped yet again in providing a framework in
|
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exploration and comfort.
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|
||||
<svg id="commission_sex_chart" width="600" height="400">
|
||||
<defs>
|
||||
<pattern id="diagonal-stripe-1" patternUnits="userSpaceOnUse" width="10" height="10">
|
||||
<image xlink:href="data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0naHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmcnIHdpZHRoPScxMCcgaGVpZ2h0PScxMCc+CiAgPHJlY3Qgd2lkdGg9JzEwJyBoZWlnaHQ9JzEwJyBmaWxsPSd3aGl0ZScvPgogIDxwYXRoIGQ9J00tMSwxIGwyLC0yCiAgICAgICAgICAgTTAsMTAgbDEwLC0xMAogICAgICAgICAgIE05LDExIGwyLC0yJyBzdHJva2U9J2JsYWNrJyBzdHJva2Utd2lkdGg9JzEnLz4KPC9zdmc+Cg==" x="0" y="0" width="10" height="10"> </image>
|
||||
</pattern>
|
||||
</defs>
|
||||
</svg>
|
||||
|
||||
*Gender expression of the author's character as portrayed in visual
|
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commissions over the
|
||||
years.*
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|
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The figure above shows the ways in which the sex of my
|
||||
characters in art that I commissioned changed over time. On the Y axis,
|
||||
you can see the genders expressed in the commissions, and on the x, the
|
||||
date of the commission. There's a very clear trend from male to
|
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genderless, then from genderless to female over time, then from female
|
||||
(as an idealized form of myself) to a specifically trans fox (as I
|
||||
started to get comfortable with my identity as a transgender person).
|
||||
I'm not alone in this progression, either, as many have found the
|
||||
utility in having a mostly safe space in which role-play is common and
|
||||
accepted behavior in which to explore various aspects of their identity.
|
||||
|
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There's a very good reason for this, too, but first, lets hear from
|
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other critters using furry as a lens to help in the explorations of
|
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their gender.
|
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|
||||
-----
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|
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When I think of Indi, I think of the colorful coyote/otter (read
|
||||
'coyotter', or simply 'yotter') that I've gotten to know fairly well
|
||||
over the past few years. When I met ver for the first real time, it was
|
||||
at a room party at a convention, where we were tasting various types of
|
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mead. I can't remember if ve had made vis way to the room party from my
|
||||
invitation or at the behest of our mutual friend, Tealfox. Either way, I
|
||||
was glad to have the chance to meet up.
|
||||
|
||||
Over the years, I would find myself catching up with ver again and
|
||||
again. At cons, sure, but also at vis house with vis owner Elanna, where
|
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I stayed for a few days in order to experience the delight that is
|
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Bandaza, a yearly celebration occurring near the end of November, which
|
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involves what must been the greatest concentration of postfurries I've
|
||||
ever seen.
|
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|
||||
As is perhaps evident from vis pronouns, Indi's identity falls somewhere
|
||||
outside the realm of 'male' or 'female'. Ve describes verself as
|
||||
neutrois transgender, as having a sense of gender that's neither
|
||||
masculine nor feminine nor a combination of the two. This carries over
|
||||
into vis online representation; ve isn't simply a coyotter, but a
|
||||
synthetic one, often plush. After all, while plush toys and other
|
||||
synthetic beings may have a semblance of sexual characteristics, it's
|
||||
easy to imagine them not having an internal sense of identity along
|
||||
binary gender lines.
|
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|
||||
Ve describes verself as having medically transitioned in order to deal
|
||||
with the body dysphoria (unhappiness with one's form or self) that is
|
||||
part and parcel of being transgender. This helps ver, along with finding
|
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modes of presentation to avoid social dysphoria, to exist in a
|
||||
concordant way with the world around ver.
|
||||
|
||||
In Indi's words, "Furry helped a lot by being a place where the answers
|
||||
to basic questions of identity (species, gender) are almost always
|
||||
fill-in-the-blank." Some of the best things that furry has to offer is
|
||||
that these things which mean the most to someone working on their own
|
||||
identity are taken at their word. For example, from the point of view of
|
||||
an FtM person --- someone transitioning from female to male --- to say,
|
||||
"This is what I am, and that's all that you need to know," is huge. The
|
||||
validation that one gains for being taken as and interacted with as what
|
||||
they say they are is no small thing.
|
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|
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Indi writes, "At its best, furry treats identity as consensual and
|
||||
fluid; you are what you say you are, and what you say you are may change
|
||||
and evolve in the future, temporarily or permanently."
|
||||
|
||||
Although there are many ways in which this can take place, the act of
|
||||
creating one's own character, the means by which they interact with the
|
||||
rest of the subculture, is something that furry excels at.
|
||||
"Anthropomorphic forms also provide a rich toolkit of options for bodily
|
||||
self-expression," writes Indi, "With countless species, real and
|
||||
imaginary, and a mix-and-match approach to species signifiers and
|
||||
primary/secondary sexual characteristics. All this allowed me to keep
|
||||
tweaking, trying different ways of being me until I found the one that
|
||||
felt the most comfortable and accurate."
|
||||
|
||||
That said, furry isn't the haven it might seem to be for someone
|
||||
exploring something as complex as gender.
|
||||
|
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Indi explains: "In furry chat venues, a common expectation is that sex
|
||||
will happen or at least be discussed, which means many choices about
|
||||
presentation and identity are interpreted in sexual terms." It's easy to
|
||||
see the ways in which this could interact with gender, given the complex
|
||||
interactions between sexuality and gender. "The "what do you have in
|
||||
your pants" question, the archetypal inappropriate question for trans
|
||||
folks, is almost always on the table."
|
||||
|
||||
This goes doubly so for non-binary genders. For those who present in a
|
||||
way way that lands somewhere between male and female, or outside that
|
||||
spectrum entirely, the issue of attraction and sex can become troubled,
|
||||
as Indi notes, "Further, presentations that seem difficult to interact
|
||||
with sexually, like those that de-emphasize both masculinity and
|
||||
femininity, will generally be given the side-eye or pointedly ignored."
|
||||
|
||||
I met Lumi, on the other hand, shortly before writing this piece when
|
||||
someone retweeted one of her posts. She had lined up drawings of her
|
||||
character over the years, with short explanations, and it was easy to
|
||||
see a similar trend as outlined in my own graph above: her character
|
||||
started male, then began to shift more feminine through a process of
|
||||
experimentation towards the female character she is drawn as to this
|
||||
day, in alignment with her female identity.
|
||||
|
||||
"Prior to coming out as female, I talked to some friends about it," she
|
||||
says. "I struggled a lot with the identity, even after coming out to
|
||||
friends, and then to everyone online. I considered myself non-binary for
|
||||
a while and went by they/them pronouns. This is because I don't
|
||||
experience much gender dysphoria so I didn't feel "Trans Enough" to
|
||||
consider myself female."
|
||||
|
||||
This is a sentiment echoed by many as they work their way through
|
||||
figuring out their identity. Non-binary identities are, of course, just
|
||||
as valid as binary identities, and for many, the 'end goal' is neither
|
||||
masculine nor feminine, as evidenced by Indi's journey, while for
|
||||
others, they're a step on the path. No states of identity can be said to
|
||||
be purely transitional, and none can be said to be purely final.
|
||||
|
||||
For Lumi, the non-binary portion of her journey happened to be
|
||||
transitional. "Finally, I settled on female but it still took me a while
|
||||
to "settle in" to being this gender. Since I can remember, people online
|
||||
have always assumed I was a girl anyways. Most people don't even know
|
||||
I'm trans, since I hardly ever mention it. They just assume I'm a rad
|
||||
cis girl."
|
||||
|
||||
"I feel like a fursona is a reflection of yourself. I don't believe that
|
||||
my fursona is me, but rather she is like someone I aspire to be," Lumi
|
||||
writes, referring to the ways in which furry helped in solidifying
|
||||
identity. "Since she's a fictional character, it's always been easy to
|
||||
experiment with her and my gender identity was part of that
|
||||
experimentation. She has always had the ability to shape-shift and I
|
||||
always found myself drawing her as a girl even when she wasn't."
|
||||
|
||||
-----
|
||||
|
||||
On a hunch that these sentiments go far beyond just that small sector of
|
||||
furry, I started a small, informal poll on twitter, and got inundated
|
||||
with responses. The poll itself was simple:
|
||||
|
||||
> Hi.
|
||||
>
|
||||
> Tell me about how furry helped you with figuring out your gender
|
||||
> identity!
|
||||
>
|
||||
> Thanks.
|
||||
>
|
||||
> *--- Tweet from @drab\_makyo on July 6, 2016*
|
||||
|
||||
The responses were overwhelmingly positive, though some had a few
|
||||
caveats. Many said that the opportunity to create a character as an
|
||||
ideal form of themself offered them the possibility to find a way to be
|
||||
more true to more aspects of their identity than they might have had in
|
||||
the first place. Furry, it seems, provides a constructive and creative
|
||||
place in order to explore.
|
||||
|
||||
You'll note, however, that I didn't say 'safe place' above. Many of the
|
||||
caveats to furry being a good place to explore gender surround the fact
|
||||
that, in a lot of ways, many furries who identify as trans or non-binary
|
||||
(as well as intersex folks) feel fetishized more often than not. Gender,
|
||||
as we well know, goes far beyond just the interactions of genitalia.
|
||||
|
||||
Another caveat that I heard was that, although the subculture provided a
|
||||
healthy means to *begin* exploring gender, many felt that the thing that
|
||||
helped them mature in their identity was seeing representation *outside*
|
||||
of the fandom, as well. This was especially true for some of the
|
||||
non-binary folks that I got the chance to talk with. Some mentioned that
|
||||
their exploration ceased at the point where they created a character for
|
||||
themselves to match their perceived identity and went no further without
|
||||
some external representation.
|
||||
|
||||
There's much more that I can say on the matter of why furry might be
|
||||
good for exploration, and I will shortly, but first, there is far more
|
||||
data available than just a single twitter poll! After all, as Executive
|
||||
Data Vix for \[adjective\]\[species\], it's my job to administer the
|
||||
Furry Poll, the fandom's largest market survey, and then to go for deep
|
||||
dives into that giant pool of data.
|
||||
|
||||
To that end, I started pulling some numbers from the 2016 Furry Poll.
|
||||
There were 3194 total responses to look at which were relevant to our
|
||||
topic at hand. Here are the questions that we asked:
|
||||
|
||||
1. What is your age in years?
|
||||
2. What best describes your gender identity?
|
||||
- Masculine or mostly masculine
|
||||
- Feminine or mostly feminine
|
||||
- Other *(NB: there were a series of options, including a write-in
|
||||
option, which, for our purposes, have been boiled down to an
|
||||
'other' category.)*
|
||||
3. Does your gender identity now align with your sex as assigned at
|
||||
birth?
|
||||
- Yes (I am cisgender)
|
||||
- No (I am not cisgender)
|
||||
- It's complicated (exactly what it says on the tin)
|
||||
|
||||
What all did we get? Well, nothing too surprising, and let me explain
|
||||
why.
|
||||
|
||||
The ideas that we hold to be true without proof comprise our *doxa*.
|
||||
That is, the things we assume to be true, or to be the case without
|
||||
needing to have anything backing those assumptions up. When one looks
|
||||
around the furry fandom at time of writing, one is likely to find a
|
||||
subculture made up mostly of those presenting masculine.
|
||||
|
||||
<svg id="alignments_chart_sexes" width="600" height="400"></svg>
|
||||
|
||||
*Gender identity of respondents in the 2016 Furry
|
||||
Poll.*
|
||||
|
||||
To that, the survey offers only confirmation. A
|
||||
bit more than 75% of the respondents --- certainly a supermajority ---
|
||||
responded that their gender identity was masculine or mostly masculine.
|
||||
Although one's expression or presentation used as a predictor has its
|
||||
flaws, a glance around the average convention space bears truth to this
|
||||
claim: we can mark that down as one point for our doxa reading things
|
||||
correctly.
|
||||
|
||||
<svg id="alignments_chart_alignments" width="600" height="400"></svg>
|
||||
|
||||
*Gender alignment of respondents in the 2016 Furry*
|
||||
|
||||
Now, how about we look at gender alignment;
|
||||
that is, let's take a look at the breakdown of how folks' gender
|
||||
identity aligns with their sex as assigned at birth. For example, a
|
||||
trans man who was assigned female at birth but identifies as a man now,
|
||||
would be someone who would fall under the umbrella term of
|
||||
'transgender', while a man who was assigned male at birth would fall
|
||||
under the term 'cisgender'. Additionally, for the sake of completeness,
|
||||
the survey also offered the choice for the respondent to answer that the
|
||||
answer was more complicated than these two choices would allow (we did
|
||||
not ask for further details, and had we, we would not, of course, be
|
||||
able to share them while preserving anonymity).
|
||||
|
||||
The most noticeable part of this, on the surface, is that one sees a
|
||||
great deal more trans-feminine (those who identify as feminine and yet
|
||||
whose sex as assigned at birth does not match with their identity, in
|
||||
this instance) than trans-masculine folks. It's understandable that the
|
||||
"other" category, small as it is, contain a more even distribution, but
|
||||
given the uneven distribution in reported gender identities, it makes it
|
||||
all the more striking that there are so many trans-feminine respondents.
|
||||
|
||||
This is, perhaps, a shadow cast by society at large, making it more
|
||||
enticing for a trans-feminine person to seek refuge in a welcome
|
||||
subculture. For someone assigned feminine at birth to be into
|
||||
stereotypical masculine behavior is not a big deal. We even have a word
|
||||
for that: tomboy. It's value-neutral in many circles, and downright
|
||||
positive in some. But for someone assigned masculine at birth to behave
|
||||
feminine, well, there's a word for that, too: sissy. A welcoming
|
||||
environment for someone to explore along those lines --- from masculine to
|
||||
feminine --- is, therefore, not so difficult to foresee. It's also why the
|
||||
demographics of those interviewed for this piece fall more along these
|
||||
lines. It has little to do with minimizing the transmasculine
|
||||
experience, and quite a bit to do with the demographics involved.
|
||||
|
||||
-----
|
||||
|
||||
There is a certain peril to dating not one, but two wordy, genderful
|
||||
critters, and being married to a cisgender gay man who has stayed with
|
||||
me through my own transition (who, for his part, mentioned that the
|
||||
benefit of furry was that it exposed transgender identities to him as
|
||||
something more than what you'd hear from the news, adding to the
|
||||
personhood involved). When I began this project, not only did I have
|
||||
plenty of story to tell, for myself, but both partners leapt at the
|
||||
chance to help, whether it be through interviewing or through beta
|
||||
reading the final piece.
|
||||
|
||||
Forneus and I met over Twitter back in 2011 through a mutual
|
||||
acquaintance, and bonded during an impromptu metal concert in one of the
|
||||
elevators at Further Confusion in 2012. It was loud, there were cats, I
|
||||
stuffed my fursuit paw in someone's mouth by accident. Good times.
|
||||
|
||||
Forneus has been with me through most of the time I've been consciously
|
||||
exploring gender. They sat and listened to me complain about the lack of
|
||||
non-binary representation, the problems inherent in getting the
|
||||
requisites met for starting hormone replacement therapy, and the whole
|
||||
process of coming out at work.
|
||||
|
||||
At the same time, I was there much of their own journey. While I've
|
||||
landed somewhere on the feminine side of neutral, they have been
|
||||
experiencing things differently: "I'd say I'm somewhere in genderqueer
|
||||
land, leaning feminine. What that means for me: I'm mostly fine with the
|
||||
body I was born with, but my presentation is a lot more
|
||||
"stereotypically" feminine based on modern American stereotypes."
|
||||
|
||||
I had the chance to ask them if they felt comfortable expressing their
|
||||
identity both within and outside of furry. "Yeah, for a few reasons,"
|
||||
they said. "The consequences that directly impact me are a lot less
|
||||
likely to be problems. I'm not going to lose my job or an opportunity at
|
||||
a job, I'm not going to have to work with the random troll every day, et
|
||||
cetera. It's a lot easier to disengage, I guess, as long as I keep
|
||||
myself honest on it."
|
||||
|
||||
"Everyone's already primed to the concept of an ideal self," they
|
||||
continued. "Even straight cis\[gender\] furries, so "my ideal self is
|
||||
me, but with different bits" feels really easy to explain most of the
|
||||
time. \[Even\] from within the broader trans community, there's
|
||||
definitely a tendency to feel like I'm not "trans enough""
|
||||
|
||||
Outside of furry, though, things were less comfortable. ""If I show up
|
||||
to this interview in a dress, it'll raise questions" is something I had
|
||||
to deal with a lot during my last job search, for example." The world at
|
||||
large rarely cares about our ideal selves, and often makes sweeping
|
||||
judgements based on presentation. "I'm not convinced that HRT would be
|
||||
right, so I'm not doing it," they mention. "The "next step" is coming
|
||||
out at work. I don't currently feel capable of doing that."
|
||||
|
||||
Lexy, my other partner, expressed similar thoughts. While furry, "helped
|
||||
by having open and kind people to talk with, and to explore gender
|
||||
identity with," life outside of furry offered much more in the way of
|
||||
obstacles. She hasn't been able to take many steps yet largely due to
|
||||
family issues, and has described her path as, "Working towards finding a
|
||||
safe environment to transition. I currently feel fairly uncomfortable
|
||||
due to not being able to transition, but overall I feel like furry has
|
||||
helped a lot in feeling more comfortable with myself."
|
||||
|
||||
So is furry a net win, over all, for furries? "Yeah, for sure," says
|
||||
Forneus. "It's definitely helped me figure out my own sexuality, if
|
||||
nothing else, and I know a lot of cool trans furries. So that's pretty
|
||||
helpful too, having good friends with both a shared interest and a
|
||||
nominally-similar life history."
|
||||
|
||||
Lumi agrees: "I'm very comfortable with my identity, and I feel it fits
|
||||
me very well. I almost fell game to the idea of "Well you have to be
|
||||
really girly to be a girl," but now I'm more like a tomboy girl. Yeah,
|
||||
sometimes I might be rude and I'm not into dresses and makeup, but at
|
||||
the end of the day, I am one cool chick."
|
||||
|
||||
Indi sums things up nicely, saying, "Even three years ago I never would
|
||||
have believed I would be able to go this far, to feel like I've almost
|
||||
entirely managed to express myself as the human-AU version of a glowy
|
||||
swishy neutral-gendered rave critter. It hasn't always been easy, and
|
||||
there's still a lot that could be done to make it smoother, but I think
|
||||
I'm in a good place. There's always ways to improve, always new things I
|
||||
think I can try, but each move seems to be smaller than the last, and
|
||||
I'm far more comfortable with myself than I ever could have imagined I'd
|
||||
be when I started trying."
|
||||
|
||||
-----
|
||||
|
||||
Given the stories of those exploring and expressing gender and identity
|
||||
through the framework of furry, the obvious next question that needs to
|
||||
be asked is "why?"
|
||||
|
||||
Naturally, these sorts of things are not answered by any simple quip,
|
||||
nor even a single article like this. That said, there are some things
|
||||
that we can point to that might help explain just why the furry
|
||||
subculture plays as big a role as it does in the formation of its
|
||||
members' identities, gender and otherwise.
|
||||
|
||||
There are a pair of twinned concepts within the realm of psychology that
|
||||
have been applied to this topic in particular. Aaron Devor, a
|
||||
sociologist and dean of graduate studies at the University of Victoria
|
||||
in Canada, described them most succinctly in their paper, "Witnessing
|
||||
and Mirroring: A Fourteen Stage Model of Transsexual Identity
|
||||
Formation."
|
||||
|
||||
The stages themselves are interesting, of course. They describe the path
|
||||
that a trans person might take as they work through the process of
|
||||
coming out, transitioning, and so on. I'm not going to list them here,
|
||||
to save on ink --- the paper is free, easy to find legally online, and
|
||||
worth a read on its own. However, I'd like to talk about the twinned
|
||||
concepts mentioned in the title, as they play a much more integral role
|
||||
when it comes to figuring out why furry might be a good place for so
|
||||
many to explore identity.
|
||||
|
||||
Witnessing is the idea that we gain something in the way of validation
|
||||
by having others see us as we see ourselves. For someone who is
|
||||
solidifying the image of themselves as they feel others ought to see it,
|
||||
to have someone outside themselves perceive them along those lines is
|
||||
incredibly validating. For trans women to called ma'am, or trans men to
|
||||
be able to use the men's room, or for non-binary folks to be referred to
|
||||
by their proper pronouns…all of these things are a form of witnessing,
|
||||
and help to reinforce the individual's sense that they are doing what is
|
||||
best for their life.
|
||||
|
||||
To go along with that, mirroring is the idea that we gain validation by
|
||||
way of seeing others who are like us. For folks in the early stages of
|
||||
transitioning, this comes both in the form of seeing other folks in the
|
||||
early stages --- the "I can do it too" effect --- as well as folks later on
|
||||
in the process --- the "See, it can be done" effect. When we see something
|
||||
of ourselves reflected in others, it adds a bit of realism to something
|
||||
that might have once only been a fantasy.
|
||||
|
||||
Within my circle of friends, we talk of the 'gender cascade'. Someone in
|
||||
our lives will come out and start exploring their own gender more
|
||||
openly, and we'll think to ourselves, "Oh, hm. If they can do it, so can
|
||||
I!" or perhaps, "Goodness, now that I'm confronted with this, I'm
|
||||
starting to question my own identity". For me, although there were
|
||||
several such people, the one I think of most immediately is Indi;
|
||||
watching vis explorations within the realm of gender is what got me to
|
||||
think seriously about all of my own internal struggle about gender
|
||||
identity. Ve, in turn, had vis own influences, stretching all the way
|
||||
back into the distant past, each of whom influenced others, creating a
|
||||
cascading flowchart of gender.
|
||||
|
||||
This goes far beyond just our little in-group. Folks have often talked about the cascade, perhaps using terms such as
|
||||
'transplosion', or one news source's amusing choice of 'transgender
|
||||
mania'. In both cases --- either constrained by the constituents of a
|
||||
subculture or relatively unrestricted and part of society at large ---
|
||||
those who are questioning their gender, or even those who are certain
|
||||
but unsure of beginning transition, can gain validation through
|
||||
witnessing and mirroring. That is, they can allow themselves to be seen
|
||||
as they are in safe contexts and see others who are like themselves in
|
||||
order to gain the confidence to move forward.
|
||||
|
||||
Furry provides fertile soil for this sort of thing due in large part to
|
||||
the fact that we explicitly design the image that others think of when
|
||||
they think of us, through the formation of our personal characters,
|
||||
avatars, or fursonas, however you want to think of it.
|
||||
|
||||
If you flip back to the graph of the sex of my characters that were
|
||||
represented in commissioned furry art, you can see a very definite shift
|
||||
away from male. At first, I shifted from masculine to explicitly
|
||||
genderless, because my assigned identity had become so painful to me
|
||||
that my instinct was to escape. From there, as I gained confidence and
|
||||
with validation from others, I started to incorporate more and more
|
||||
feminine aspects into my characters.
|
||||
|
||||
Your character is an unspoken-yet-explicit way for a fur to say, "This
|
||||
is how I ought to be seen." For trans folk, it provides a useful tool in
|
||||
terms of exploring gender identity: although mirroring becomes mudding
|
||||
in many circumstances (for those role-playing as a different gender,
|
||||
being outed as such isn't exactly desirable), it sure as hell makes
|
||||
witnessing easier. I became a fox girl on the internet long before I got
|
||||
the letter that allowed me to start hormone replacement therapy.
|
||||
|
||||
There's a conclusion that I draw from all of this, though it took me
|
||||
some time to connect the dots, pull it up, draw it all together, and
|
||||
many other metaphors.
|
||||
|
||||
When I started associating with animal people on the internet, I did so
|
||||
as a fragile teen who could barely admit that sex was a thing that
|
||||
existed, much less as a being with a sexual orientation, never mind one
|
||||
that might not be straight, or even sexually active. Meeting and
|
||||
interacting with sexual, non-straight, and happy folk helped change that
|
||||
over the process of a few years, and a few halting relationships.
|
||||
|
||||
Fast-forward a few years, and there I was: a mid-twenties person in the
|
||||
middle of an identity crisis. What was I? Was I nothing? Sex was a
|
||||
panic-riddled minefield of unmet expectations and awkward feelings of
|
||||
being built wrong. Was a I woman, with my my dreams of
|
||||
motherhood-but-not-fatherhood? Was I something in between, with the fact
|
||||
that womanhood discomfited me in a different way than manhood?
|
||||
|
||||
Here, unlike with my orientation, I had enough experience to both look
|
||||
around me and see those going through something similar, as well as to
|
||||
take a step to be seen as who I felt that I might be. I started out
|
||||
haltingly, and went down a few wrong paths (looking at you, plush phase;
|
||||
love me some plushies, but it's not *me*), but I found myself a niche.
|
||||
It came in the form of a description and a few megabytes of graphical
|
||||
data culled from the minds and tablets of some artistically minded and
|
||||
decidedly amazing friends. It led to me confronting my therapist one day
|
||||
and saying, "Hey, can you write me a hormone letter?"
|
||||
|
||||
Fast forward another year or two, and where am I?
|
||||
|
||||
I'm putting together the pieces of the fact that this isn't a uniquely
|
||||
trans thing, though this is an article on the intersection between
|
||||
gender and furry. Neither is it a uniquely sexual thing, though the
|
||||
intersection between sex and furry is worth an article of its own. It's
|
||||
something one layer up. It's membership in a community that provides a
|
||||
mechanism and a place for these discoveries to take place.
|
||||
|
||||
Is it a uniquely furry thing? Almost certainly not. There are many
|
||||
different subcultures out there that follow the same pattern. The My
|
||||
Little Pony fandom is a wonderful example, providing a similar outlet to
|
||||
those who claim membership. However, there's no doubt that furry played
|
||||
a rather large role in identity for me, just as it did for so many other
|
||||
folks. There's just so much to be said for the fact that we build the
|
||||
avatars that we use to interact with others here, beyond even what many
|
||||
other subcultures do.
|
||||
|
||||
Without furry, I might just as well have come out as gay, then neutrois,
|
||||
then genderqueer, then trans, then all of those other wonderful labels.
|
||||
But would I have felt safe doing so? Would I have gotten all of the
|
||||
validation that I needed to feel healthy doing so? Would I have come
|
||||
away with countless other brothers, sisters, and non-binary siblings in
|
||||
whom I could confide, admire, and rejoice?
|
||||
|
||||
I don't know. There's a lot to account for. My life has treated me well,
|
||||
in all, and I feel privileged to have lived it. That said, I'm not
|
||||
convinced that there would be an outlet that would have provided such
|
||||
for me.
|
||||
|
||||
Would there be one, outside of furry? I rather think not.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/posts/gf/d3.min.js"></script>
|
||||
<script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/posts/gf/nv.d3.min.js"></script>
|
||||
<script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/posts/gf/figures.js"></script>
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user