Meta-Concept Thoughts: Posthuman Identity Frameworks

A stream of consciousness project on the nature of the self within the context of subcultures

I’ve been an observer in the furry community for a number of years, though “observer” more or less means “I lurk and listen”. I happen to enjoy immersing myself in different social systems and communities, because I find them interesting and because each one has a very distinctive way of approaching the issues of community, of self, and of the criticality of the future.

Furries are of course no exception in this set of adhoc rules. There are many different communities ranging from fursuiters to artists to story tellers to the otherkin and many more. It is actually shocking, sometimes, to realize the sheer scale and scope of the culture and the many thousands of micro communities that exist. There’s just so much and so many and they all still fall under the general accepted umbrella of “Furry”.

What’s the appeal? Well, that depends on who you ask. Within the community itself, there’s no universal opinion, no singular answer. It’s as diverse as the furries themselves. But that is as it should be, I think, for given the nature of the furry community there should not be a singular answer.

My reasoning for this is simple: the uniqueness of its community spaces is a product of the psychological and sociological need for complexity in a world absolutely hell bent on simplified atomization. On dehumanization.

To explain that a bit: capitalism, and systems of hierarchical authority, will always seek to atomize communities for the purposes of domestication and control. If you shatter the community bond, you prevent any reasonable resistance. Joe won’t help Jane if they don’t know each other, even though they’re next door neighbors and have been living there for twenty years. This is utterly anti-ethical to human existence: we are a social species first and foremost and it is absolutely an instinctive part of our nature to seek out bonds with others.

Yet, it’s still a lived reality that there is a not insignificant amount of propaganda and capital being used to crush potential resistance before it starts. Anything that can be co-opted is co-opted and that which can’t be is targeted and destroyed, or at the very least shoved to the furthest possible sidelines away from the centers of actionable power.

Why is this related?

Because of all the community spaces I have ever ventured to explore, I have never seen one as ridiculously resilient as the furry one. Surely, you’d have to be though, given that even when they were still relatively unknown before the infamous CSI episode, they were targets of discrimination. Adding to the default prejudice that comes with having an interest in anthropomorphic animals, there is an unusually high percentage of people who would choose to identity as either nonhuman or partly human.

According to research done by the IARP (International Anthro Research Project), these percentage are rough estimates only. Still, in a community space built by the perpetual outsiders, for outsiders, is it really any surprise that it still stands strong despite the multitude of attacks and hostile attitudes in almost every public sphere? Even with some of the sliver of recent public perception changes (in part thanks to furries in anarchist movements) there’s still almost immediately hostility and distrust by non-furry individuals if they mention their affiliation. Presumptions typically rest on “they’re all pedophiles” courtesy of fascists. This depends on age-ranges, however, as research has found that a massive percentage of the fandom is firmly in the millennial and zoomer generations (88% and 75% participation rates, respectively).

In anecdotal evidence, I’ve seen continued use of hostile memes towards furries in most spheres I observe, though there does seem to be a growing trend to treat is a tongue in cheek. As a ‘they’re not that bad, chill’ attitude. This varies depending on the type of furry people are thinking they’re talking to or about, but the general mood seems to be improving very slightly. Perhaps, again, it is because of the work done by some of the much more prominent furs who are standing out and standing up. Or perhaps it’s because just so many of the younger folk either have a fursona, like furries, or just like anthro cartoons in general.

The community of furries is vast, with an earnest desire for inclusion, belonging, and mutual respect. Again, this is no surprise given the consistent hostile atmosphere of the public noosphere. But, it has interesting repercussions on a broader scale, since typically when presented with such animosity a group will close itself off, throw up walls, and disallow outsiders. And while there are definitely subgroups of the fandom who do this, most are very welcoming. Happy, even, to have people who are curious about them.

To me, this interchange is very human - and I speak towards the truer nature of us as a species. We are, in every sense of the word, experimenters of the political reality of our existence. I don’t mean politics of men in suits or borders on a map. I mean it in the sense of how we go through our daily lives connecting, communicating, and exchanging with one another. From a group-function perspective, it’s fascinating to see people who are targeted relentlessly still be willing to open up to others with the basic fundamental emotion of hope for connection being their driving star.

Again, anecdotal, but it is this absolutely hell bent undercurrent of hope that I always see. Despite suicide rates being high, and despite the pain and anguish that comes with living in physical isolation more often then not, furries build vast pillars of hope for themselves. They connect with each other, remind each other they aren’t alone, that there are others out there just like them. That no matter what barriers they have, they’re accepted and welcome. It is a remarkable act of courage, of virtue.

This isn’t to say that the community is perfect. As I said, they are very human, with all the normal flaws that come with our humanity. But furries are still unique, and strive as I might to find a historical parallel, I have seen none. Not a single one in any historical context. If there is one that I’ve somehow missed, please do let me know as I would very much like to broaden my horizons in that regard.

Perhaps that uniqueness is best defined by what is commonly seen by outsiders: the fursona. What is a fursona? Think of it as an avatar - it can represent something as deep as the inner spiritual self of that person, or perhaps just the physical embodiment of what they desire to look like. Some hostile psychologists associate it with a negative body dismorphia, a thing attributed to the harmful television of the 90s combined with the relentless ads and messaging telling the children growing up then that they were “wrong”. So, to feel right, they created an image utterly untouchable by the mainstream.

I do not agree with this perspective. I believe it both ignorant and harmful. The one thing I think has a sliver of merit is the notion that this cohort’s unusual size is indeed due to the influence of media during the 90s and beyond. For whatever reason, the population dynamic is majorly young (YA to early 30s) and mostly male according to the IARP. From my experiences, it definitely was impactful to see various animal characters in positive story telling situations when I was growing up. The Disney movies, specifically, were powerful in the sense of shaping how I was perceiving myself as a child, and as a young adult.

They were weird, they were strange, they were unusual, and often they were heavily queer coded. Like so many who bonded with Ursula or found Jaffar fabulous, I was drawn to Robin Hood and found in him personality traits I liked. Children are highly innovative when it comes to finding bits and pieces of things in the world that they like, that they want to emulate, that they see themselves within and I was no different.

To me, this is a logical reason to explain why there was a population explosion during the time period. The sustained growth since then has come from both those old movies and the growing cultural awareness of the community. I’ve spoken with younger folk who found the appeal by watching old TV shows or movies, or even modern things and still finding themselves drawn to the animal character.

I’ve also spoken with people who engage with it from a more spiritual perspective. From this point of view, it becomes a matter of soul, of faith. There are people within the community who worship some of the animal spirits in an interesting fusion of Wiccanism and Totemic religious practices. Some too who even worship the old Greek gods in a revitalization of the Hellenistic traditions. Most commonly, I’ll hear phrases that describe the animal they associate with as their spiritual guide and companion. These fusions of religious practices is slowly growing into something very new, very experimental.

I would not be surprised that in a decades time it results in a new, broadly accepted faith system within the various communities.

Fursonas act as a portal into this for all members of the fandom. My most common encounter with a fursona is the SFW variety, where it represents purely the manifested avatar of the person. A portal, a gateway, a method of conveying the “true self” to others in an image or a description that then is the mechanism of community engagement. It’s really quite fascinating, especially when placed in the context of the generational treatment of identity.

Depending on the cultural context and the time period, identity has been seen as “fixed”. I would say that since the Colonial Empires conquests and genocide of many of the planets cultures, that the homogenized (and more easily controlled) notion of fixed identity has become the accepted norm. However, we know from a scientific perspective this is not at all true.

Personalities go through shifts multiple times during a lifetime, with estimates being as low as three and as high as six. We are not unlike both a physiological Ship of Theseus in the sense of replacing our atoms every decade, but equally one of the mind where we replace pieces of our inner selves.

In that environment, the furry identity is the ultimate experimentalist. Worthy of the true frontiersmenship of the original transhumanists, furry identity acts as a flexible framework to self-reflect, to ask questions, to try something new. Original Characters can act as pathways from the Fursona to dabble even further. I know of people with multiple Fursona’s and multiple OC’s who switch between them as effortlessly as I would between fonts.

What does this say about the purpose of identity when placed in the context of a Fursona? To be honest, I’m not sure. In terms of psychology, this is still a very much frontiersmen style of research. How far can you bend identity? What purpose does it serve towards evolutionary pressures? It all depends on the flavor of psychology you follow, whether you are a nature vs nurture type and so forth. Contextually, I believe that the fundamental purpose of a Fursona is to answer one of the Philosophical Questions: who am I?

To describe yourself is one of the most difficult tasks imaginable. It’s a brain attempting to think about itself, using itself, then describing what its thinking. If that sounds like it’s headache inducing, that’s because it is. It’s a practical exercise in meta-cognition, something often associated with the basic first step in sophontics or the practice of an intelligence purposefully modifying its own intelligence (which itself is considered a milestone of development of a species in some circles).

As a furry, the question becomes much more broad. Who am I means what am I as much as it queries the mind. Am I a dragon? A monkey? A bird? A fish? What calls to me? What do I call to? And why?

The critical question here is why because it acts as the locus, the focal point of conversation within the mind. To understand what you are is to understand who you can be. If you understand who you could be, you understand why you will be. Everything else after that is essential a Zen poem in motion: if you immediately know the candlelight is fire, the meal was cooked a long time ago (thanks Stargate).

To some, a fursona is comfortable. A mental skin, a salve, a balm, a way to approach the hard, purposeful cruelty of the world knowing you aren’t alone. To others, it’s a spiritual bond to the Other or the Beyond, a way of connecting that transcends the empty and hollow words echoed in indoctrination bubbles of false faiths. It’s a way of experimenting with unique belief again in a fashion not seen since the Colonial Empires burned the world down.

So what does it mean to have a fursona? Well, that’s entirely up to you. Just like the connection you have with it is yours, the interpretation of it is yours. The journey is yours. No one else can take it for you. I sometimes think it’s similar in a way to the spirit journey of the North American First Nations. It must find you, as much as you must find it. It’s an act of self-actualization, of letting yourself become empowered enough to be able to discover it. Or be in such a situation as to be able to hear it beyond the pain. It comes to people in many different ways, and no two stories I’ve heard have been the same. Yet, in every instance where I’ve spoken with people who have a fursona, they seem significantly happier with themselves as people.

Perhaps, in a way, it’s a mechanism to allow people to feel human again. In a world so utterly hostile to our humanity, so devoid of our humanity, it is almost the peak of irony that people who wish to move from it in rejection are instead the ones who exemplify its heart the best.

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Extra Luca:

A brief sidenote on Luca. Boy did that movie annoy me. Here we have two sea monsters - furries! - who are obviously queer coded to hell and back. Their lived experience in their world is the combined fear of discovery and experimentation. The unknown, the uncertainty, but the almost impossible to resist desire to try anyways.

So much potential for story telling. So much potential to expand on the nature of the questions that furries ask themselves all the time.

What does it mean to have no fixed sense of self? What about when your sense of self is defined in context with your peers? Who is Luca, without his friends? What is a person when they are alone? Are you still a monster, if no one can see you or hear you?

*aggravated writer noises.*

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Extra 2:

Basically, this movie was kind of a perfect exemplification of what furries want for themselves in a macro sense. A “Zootopia” where everyone, no matter who or what they are, is welcome. Imagine if you will, a furry city.

It would basically be Zootopia. Though, I personally am not convinced it would result in a neoliberal approach with cops and the like, but ciest le ve. There’s nazi furs, no group is perfect and no ideal survives contact with reality.

Still, all things considered, Zootopia would be a significant quality of life improvement for basically everyone, fandom or no.

I think it also did a really good job of understanding the species they included, the biological needs, and had some interesting (if very magical) solutions to the environmental problems. Sociologically, it would be a monumental undertaking to get so many different people together from such radical morphological backgrounds. The amount of complexity is astonishing - in a good way!

Remember how I said earlier that complexity is in part a problem that furries are inadvertently solving? This is it. The complexity makes our brains happy.