First of all, to answer that question is always tough for me; my response is generally along the lines of, "Kinda." I like furry art, certainly. I'll confess I like furry porn. I like animal fiction, and I've seen The Lion King many dozens of times. Nala is a total hottie. If this is all there is to furridom - a proclivity, a paraphilia, whatever - then most certainly I am, and I don't know a lot of zoos who aren't furries in this sense, particularly if we're counting "ferals" (that is, non-anthropomorphic anthropomorphic characters [?]).
On the other hand, I have little to nothing to do with the furry community, don't fursuit or anything like that, don't fancy myself anything other than a simple human, and quite honestly, a lot of self-professed furries would or do hate my guts. To them, furry is more than just a weird interest in anthro and animal fiction, and I wouldn't count, particularly since people like me make them look bad. And I can sympathize with this.
I'm not going to claim to be able to draw a line between these two parts of the furry fandom. Whether I'm a furry or not will continue to be up to judges other than myself. What I am going to do is draw a line between furry as a paraphilia and zoophilia. Right after I erect these sandbags around my dwelling.
Alright, so, here's the thing: ever since Kinsey (1948) we have had the idea that sexuality, at least homosexuality, heterosexuality, and bisexuality, are not exclusive categories but are instead along a spectrum. Later on, this became a series of two axes, which is now widely accepted:
For those who are unfamiliar, what this means is that everyone in the world fits somewhere on this graph: if they are further towards the top-right of the graph, they are more homosexual, and more highly sexual (towards hypersexuality) than the norm (on Y) and bisexuality (on X); if they are towards the bottom-left, they are more heterosexual and asexual (demisexual). It should be noted that placement on this graph should be considered more diamond-like than square-like, as it is impossible to be 100% asexual and hetero/homosexual, and it is impossible to be 100% sexual (hypersexual) without being bisexual.
Now, it has been suggested, albeit sheepishly, that there may be more to this graph. A hell of a lot more, to put it bluntly: there may be dozens more axes that can be placed here. Unfortunately, there just isn't that much interest in research in this area, and no one cares to fund it, so you won't find it in your textbooks anytime soon. These spectra range in all sorts of paraphilias: sadism-masochism, chronophilias (pedophilia to gerontophilia), anthrophilia-zoophilia, necrophilia-vitophilia(?), and whatever else.
You may think, after considering how generally well Kinsey has been accepted, especially given the time since the bulk of his research was conducted, that this would be a no-brainer. There are, however, problems with these becoming widely accepted. The first problem is that, as I mentioned, very little research has been done to support or fail to support such a paradigm shift, and there is no drive to conduct any. Even pedophilia, which once might have got some interest from legal establishments, is actually quite well-controlled these days, and convicted pedos have some of the lowest recidivism rates of sex offenders. The second problem is that the current versions of both the DSM and the ICD, which are the two manuals used most commonly by psychologists in making proper diagnoses, really like their categories, and all sexual disorders listed are categorical: that is, you can't be kind of a masochist, according to the APA and WHO. Thirdly, society doesn't like these people; most of us don't like the idea that we all fit onto a pedophilic spectrum, a necrophilic spectrum, and whatever else. It's not very scientific, but popular opinion has a much greater effect on the social sciences than we like to admit.
Now that I've finished that little rant, what exactly did it have to do with furries? As the title implies, it is my personal belief that the furry fandom is on that theoretical anthrophilia-zoophilia spectrum, based on the fact that zoophilia is much more prevalent among furries (Evans, 2008), that I have met few if any zoos out of the many who are not at least mildly interested in some aspects of the furry fandom, and that if you brave it and actually look at furry communities and art, you can literally see that sliding scale. This is not to say that all furries are secretly zoo. In fact, it means quite the opposite: although a fair number of furries self-identify as zoos, if we consider that sexuality is incredibly difficult if not impossible to change, based on the fact that there is no 'cure' for homosexuality, pedophilia, etc., you can actually be quite sure that if someone is into furry porn but doesn't have any such interest in real animals, that they are not going to somehow progress into zoosexuality: they already have their place on the spectrum, and they are going to stay there, given that sexuality tends to crystallize by one's mid-twenties. In short, if we accept that there is such a spectrum, we no longer feel the need to pigeon-hole people into one thing or another, or to make assumptions about someone fitting into some imaginary category simply because they're close.
If we extrapolate here to other sexualities, such as pedophilia, this can have some interesting implications, even affecting national legislation. Lolicon - that is, children or childlike individuals portrayed sexually in drawings or animations - has come under a lot of fire in the last few years, with people being arrested for creating, distributing, or possessing it. The idea is that people who view lolicon may eventually "graduate" to child sex abuse, either because they must already be pedophiles if they are viewing lolicon, or because the lolicon itself may make them become pedophilic. If we consider that lolicon may be to pedophilia as furry may be to zoophilia, some research (already backed by the fact that there are a great many people who enjoy lolicon but are not pedophiles, evidenced by the success of certain television shows that would not exist if they only appealed to the ~3% of the population who are pedophilic) would end the equation of loli fans and pedophiles, and thus the fear and criminalization.
Something to think about.
By the way, over the last week, this blog hit 1,000 views. Let's celebrate by getting 1,000 more, hm? Whether you think this blog is insightful or disgusting, entertaining or insulting, don't be afraid to share it; no one will think less of you if you do. ;)
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