Any academic-type literature on furry fandom?

September 13, 2005 1:55 AM

Has there been any serious evaluation of the psychology and sociology behind furry fandom? Or is it usually only mentioned as a subgroup of fandoms in general?
posted by monsterhero to society & culture (6 comments total)

I googled the personal webpage of some guy who went to furry conventions and surveyed attendees. The guy is a furry himself, so I didn't really bother with his (probably biased) writings on furry culture, but if you scroll down to the bottom of the page he presents the demographic results of surveying 360 furries. You might gain a little insight on the sociological aspect of furry fandom, if the data is accurately reported and the sample population is large enough (no idea on either of those). It seems men greatly outnumber women, the majority are bisexual, computer professionals are a well represented occupation in the fandom, half are monogamous and half are polyamorous...
posted by Derive the Hamiltonian of... at 6:38 AM on September 13, 2005

There's been a bit of sociological research into this. At a Pacific Sociological Association meeting a couple of years ago, there was a paper presented on this subculture. I'll see if I can dig up the program.
posted by luriete at 9:15 AM on September 13, 2005

Apparently, furries fall toward the bottom of certain social heirarchies.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:56 AM on September 13, 2005

There's a lot of straightforward information in Deviant Desires: Incredibly Strange Sex by Katharine Gates. She also has tons of stuff at her website, including an entire section dedicated to "furverts".
posted by RoseovSharon at 5:56 PM on September 13, 2005

I guess I should have added that my links above involve the fetish sub-set of furry fandom since for these people it's sexual, whereas for the "regular" folks it's not so much about being kinky.

And I guess I should have also added that some people would probably consider those links NSFW.
posted by RoseovSharon at 6:06 PM on September 13, 2005

There's a fairly large furry population on a game I play called, "Second Life" - they've a free 7 day trial if you'd like to ask some questions to real ones. IM Chris Byrne if you need help finding some in world although it should be pretty easy to find some.
posted by prodevel at 1:38 AM on September 14, 2005