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Rorschach Tests for Furries
12 years ago
General
"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development.”
- C.S. Lewis
When I was a little kid, my parents put me through a battery of various sorts of tests, to make sure the basic tests that kids get at school, checking for physical and developmental flaws and such, hadn't missed anything. Tests ran from physical things like eyesight to mental stuff like IQ. I was also tested psychologically, and as such got a good old fashioned Rorschach test.
As some of you may recall, Google recently celebrated the inventor of this test with an animated doodle that shows the viewer various inkblots, inviting their interpretation of them. The test experienced its greatest popularity among professionals during the 1960's, as the search links to Google's doodle reveal, but also became famous in general in Western culture even if they are not used by all professionals all the time. It involves showing those who take it inkblots and then recording their observations about what the inkblots look like to them.
When I took the test, I saw animals in the inkblots. Lot and lots of animal figures. Shocking, I know. Well, OK, maybe not all that surprising.
My tester quickly noted that I was mentally normal enough, whatever that means, but that I may have maturity issues, per the seeing of animal figures in the inkblots. This was a relief. They might think I was immature...but at least they didn't guess I was a furry! Whew, close call.
But jokey jokes aside, let's face it, the Interest in Animal Figures=Immaturity thing is something all furries deal with from that first moment in childhood when it tags you as different, right into adulthood, when the interest doesn't conveniently disappear as something you grow out of, like it was supposed to. Society does not approve of this interest. Which is fine, I suppose, nobody has to like it. But I sometimes regret that the disapproval is for all the wrong reasons, and that it is surrounded by so many contradictions and so much hypocrisy. When I read an article last week about something only vaguely related to fandom on Yahoo News, the article writer essentially described "furries" as people who dress up in mascot costumes and think they are animals. Augh.
We surround our kids with animal stories and cartoons that star animal figures, then are shocked when they don't lose a fondness for such things as they grow older. Given all the very adult fans of My Little Pony running around lately, I wonder how that will work out for them and for their kids? Some of them may not like to admit how "furry" they obviously are being, but they will face the same basic problem going forward - an interest in anthropomorphics is equated with immaturity in modern Western culture, no matter what inspires it, where it leads, or what it produces. MLP enthusiasm will not get a pass on this in the long run.
If anything, the mass appeal of MLP fandom and the popularity of the sexual aspects, even on non-Fur Affinity forums, only shows up the hypocrisy in the violent and broad brush reactions to "furry" over the years. Put a mainstream cover on it, and suddenly it's OK, even though it's all the same thing in the end. But then, we already knew that thanks to anime. Anime contains every fetish and every perversion one could think of both in its mainstream and more "adult" productions, yet some of its fans anxiously defend it while ignoring those issues, and then constantly assault Furry with accusations of perversity and immaturity.
Only anime is worse than any argument you might make about furry, in a way. At least furries have many, many angry debates among themselves about the line between art and porn, about the implications of violence and sexual violence in art, and the use of under-aged characters. But, if you interview anime creators, they have more excuses and rationalizations that admit nothing than you could ever count - "That rape scene furthered the plot." "The tentacles were symbolic!" etc.
Most of the time they either don't even bother to make explanations or the questions don't even come up though, as they don't see any problem here to begin with. When one of the hand wringers over at the Kotaku gaming news website questioned the pinupy art styles of the recently released Dragon's Crown game, the game's Japanese art director responded by suggesting that the critic must be gay. Cause hey, why else would he question the exploitation of female figures in a game unless he was playing for the other team, so to speak?
Watch enough Japanese media productions, and one starts to get the impression that, in that market, the exploitation issue is not a discussion. It's just an assumed business practice. To be fair, different cultural views about age and gender are part of this difference in perspective though, and perhaps we shouldn't make too direct a comparison between our own cultural expectations and those of another place, at least not without making some reasonable allowances and being aware of the differences.
And I don't mean to suggest that Western markets are pure in comparison. Watch any actor or actress scramble for explanations for the nudity in the latest Skinemax cable program while appearing on a talk show, and you will see very similar rationalizations for the simple reality that sex sells, whether it's in anime, anthro stuff, or live action.
Also, when money is at stake, ironic humor will serve as a fig leaf for the obviously questionable media content of stuff imported from the East - as shown in the marketing of one of the more recent shooting games by CAVE, in which the Western distributors openly used the term "loli" in "joke" ads to describe the under-aged, yet still sexualized, characters in the game, a first for Western marketing. And that game went on to sell better than any other recent release by that team. Was this because the game had pretty graphics and a relatively accessible difficulty level for a bullet hell shooter? Or was it because the game was "lolitastic?" We may never know for sure.
I can still recall the first time I heard that furries simply must all be pedophiles, because they like cartoon animals, and cartoon animals are cute, and cute=kids, so...somehow that equates to pedo. But when openly sexualized kid characters are simply featured in anime, no such mental gymnastics are required to come to the conclusion that PedoBear would give a stamp of approval, yet I don't hear the same such complaints about anime fans so often. Funny how that works. Could it be that objections to furries actually don't have much to do with such moral claims at all at heart? Maybe!
At a time when Fur Affinity has recently banned sexualized under-aged characters, anime and other Eastern media products introduce more and more of them, with Western marketing teams quietly looking the other way, or even more loudly exploiting it when it works for sales. But the furries are the ones the Internet rages at for being perverse and immature. Obviously, this has nothing to do with morals, ethics, or even standards for normality. It has to do with anthropomorphics being something that some have an adverse reaction to and a possible connection to taboo things that some cultures have a certain antipathy towards, along with assumptions about immaturity being related to any such interests. Last but not least, articles like the one I mentioned earlier here further muddy the waters with misinformation about the fandom. Meanwhile, the Net communities give the excesses of anime and such a free pass, as long as it's human figures being exploited, as if the imaginary anthro animal people needed more protection in society than actual humans.
Before you take me as an apologist for fandumb though, I should point out that it's not that simple. When I wrote a report on the "furry" art community for school a while back, I was pretty upfront about the presence of actually mentally ill people in the group and the problems the community faced. And since then, it eventually dawned on me that many disturbed and mentally ugly people who barely have any real interest in anthropomorphics have been attracted to the "community" over the years for all the wrong reasons. I know the group has its issues. But if you think that Furry is the only place for drama, you need to get out in other communities more.
Over on one of the game forums I have frequented the past few years, there have been scam scandals involving thousands of dollars, a forum member convicted of murder, counterfeiting accusations, and death threats between members, and all just in the relatively short time I have been there. Furry is nothing special when it comes to drama, except in the imaginations of furries. If anything, perhaps we should be thankful that most of our drama is really just relatively harmless arguing.
To sum up, we will only really be mature as a community when we stop with the misguided self hate that magically transforms any media product we happen to respect that includes anthropomorphics into something that is "Not...really...furry" and has us pretending we are not "really" so into something we obviously love, just cause some of us worry what the rest of the Internet might think. And real maturity as an Internet community may come when we stop covering up reactionary hatreds with supposedly dignifying but less than honest arguments about moral claims regarding Furry, and other things, that are not the real reason for objections to it.
The vast majority of us are not pedophiles, zoophiles, mascot suit wearers who think we are animals, or anything else besides fans of anthro animal characters. For all my writing here and all the arguments you will hear to the contrary, it's really not that complicated and it's nothing that should need layers of argument, pro and con, or hiding. For artists especially, the opportunities for creativity and expression found in anthropomorphics continue to have an enduring and irresistible pull for many of us. To not continue to enjoy that for fear of the thoughts or objections of others would be less than adult behavior.
Rave
- C.S. Lewis
When I was a little kid, my parents put me through a battery of various sorts of tests, to make sure the basic tests that kids get at school, checking for physical and developmental flaws and such, hadn't missed anything. Tests ran from physical things like eyesight to mental stuff like IQ. I was also tested psychologically, and as such got a good old fashioned Rorschach test.
As some of you may recall, Google recently celebrated the inventor of this test with an animated doodle that shows the viewer various inkblots, inviting their interpretation of them. The test experienced its greatest popularity among professionals during the 1960's, as the search links to Google's doodle reveal, but also became famous in general in Western culture even if they are not used by all professionals all the time. It involves showing those who take it inkblots and then recording their observations about what the inkblots look like to them.
When I took the test, I saw animals in the inkblots. Lot and lots of animal figures. Shocking, I know. Well, OK, maybe not all that surprising.
My tester quickly noted that I was mentally normal enough, whatever that means, but that I may have maturity issues, per the seeing of animal figures in the inkblots. This was a relief. They might think I was immature...but at least they didn't guess I was a furry! Whew, close call.
But jokey jokes aside, let's face it, the Interest in Animal Figures=Immaturity thing is something all furries deal with from that first moment in childhood when it tags you as different, right into adulthood, when the interest doesn't conveniently disappear as something you grow out of, like it was supposed to. Society does not approve of this interest. Which is fine, I suppose, nobody has to like it. But I sometimes regret that the disapproval is for all the wrong reasons, and that it is surrounded by so many contradictions and so much hypocrisy. When I read an article last week about something only vaguely related to fandom on Yahoo News, the article writer essentially described "furries" as people who dress up in mascot costumes and think they are animals. Augh.
We surround our kids with animal stories and cartoons that star animal figures, then are shocked when they don't lose a fondness for such things as they grow older. Given all the very adult fans of My Little Pony running around lately, I wonder how that will work out for them and for their kids? Some of them may not like to admit how "furry" they obviously are being, but they will face the same basic problem going forward - an interest in anthropomorphics is equated with immaturity in modern Western culture, no matter what inspires it, where it leads, or what it produces. MLP enthusiasm will not get a pass on this in the long run.
If anything, the mass appeal of MLP fandom and the popularity of the sexual aspects, even on non-Fur Affinity forums, only shows up the hypocrisy in the violent and broad brush reactions to "furry" over the years. Put a mainstream cover on it, and suddenly it's OK, even though it's all the same thing in the end. But then, we already knew that thanks to anime. Anime contains every fetish and every perversion one could think of both in its mainstream and more "adult" productions, yet some of its fans anxiously defend it while ignoring those issues, and then constantly assault Furry with accusations of perversity and immaturity.
Only anime is worse than any argument you might make about furry, in a way. At least furries have many, many angry debates among themselves about the line between art and porn, about the implications of violence and sexual violence in art, and the use of under-aged characters. But, if you interview anime creators, they have more excuses and rationalizations that admit nothing than you could ever count - "That rape scene furthered the plot." "The tentacles were symbolic!" etc.
Most of the time they either don't even bother to make explanations or the questions don't even come up though, as they don't see any problem here to begin with. When one of the hand wringers over at the Kotaku gaming news website questioned the pinupy art styles of the recently released Dragon's Crown game, the game's Japanese art director responded by suggesting that the critic must be gay. Cause hey, why else would he question the exploitation of female figures in a game unless he was playing for the other team, so to speak?
Watch enough Japanese media productions, and one starts to get the impression that, in that market, the exploitation issue is not a discussion. It's just an assumed business practice. To be fair, different cultural views about age and gender are part of this difference in perspective though, and perhaps we shouldn't make too direct a comparison between our own cultural expectations and those of another place, at least not without making some reasonable allowances and being aware of the differences.
And I don't mean to suggest that Western markets are pure in comparison. Watch any actor or actress scramble for explanations for the nudity in the latest Skinemax cable program while appearing on a talk show, and you will see very similar rationalizations for the simple reality that sex sells, whether it's in anime, anthro stuff, or live action.
Also, when money is at stake, ironic humor will serve as a fig leaf for the obviously questionable media content of stuff imported from the East - as shown in the marketing of one of the more recent shooting games by CAVE, in which the Western distributors openly used the term "loli" in "joke" ads to describe the under-aged, yet still sexualized, characters in the game, a first for Western marketing. And that game went on to sell better than any other recent release by that team. Was this because the game had pretty graphics and a relatively accessible difficulty level for a bullet hell shooter? Or was it because the game was "lolitastic?" We may never know for sure.
I can still recall the first time I heard that furries simply must all be pedophiles, because they like cartoon animals, and cartoon animals are cute, and cute=kids, so...somehow that equates to pedo. But when openly sexualized kid characters are simply featured in anime, no such mental gymnastics are required to come to the conclusion that PedoBear would give a stamp of approval, yet I don't hear the same such complaints about anime fans so often. Funny how that works. Could it be that objections to furries actually don't have much to do with such moral claims at all at heart? Maybe!
At a time when Fur Affinity has recently banned sexualized under-aged characters, anime and other Eastern media products introduce more and more of them, with Western marketing teams quietly looking the other way, or even more loudly exploiting it when it works for sales. But the furries are the ones the Internet rages at for being perverse and immature. Obviously, this has nothing to do with morals, ethics, or even standards for normality. It has to do with anthropomorphics being something that some have an adverse reaction to and a possible connection to taboo things that some cultures have a certain antipathy towards, along with assumptions about immaturity being related to any such interests. Last but not least, articles like the one I mentioned earlier here further muddy the waters with misinformation about the fandom. Meanwhile, the Net communities give the excesses of anime and such a free pass, as long as it's human figures being exploited, as if the imaginary anthro animal people needed more protection in society than actual humans.
Before you take me as an apologist for fandumb though, I should point out that it's not that simple. When I wrote a report on the "furry" art community for school a while back, I was pretty upfront about the presence of actually mentally ill people in the group and the problems the community faced. And since then, it eventually dawned on me that many disturbed and mentally ugly people who barely have any real interest in anthropomorphics have been attracted to the "community" over the years for all the wrong reasons. I know the group has its issues. But if you think that Furry is the only place for drama, you need to get out in other communities more.
Over on one of the game forums I have frequented the past few years, there have been scam scandals involving thousands of dollars, a forum member convicted of murder, counterfeiting accusations, and death threats between members, and all just in the relatively short time I have been there. Furry is nothing special when it comes to drama, except in the imaginations of furries. If anything, perhaps we should be thankful that most of our drama is really just relatively harmless arguing.
To sum up, we will only really be mature as a community when we stop with the misguided self hate that magically transforms any media product we happen to respect that includes anthropomorphics into something that is "Not...really...furry" and has us pretending we are not "really" so into something we obviously love, just cause some of us worry what the rest of the Internet might think. And real maturity as an Internet community may come when we stop covering up reactionary hatreds with supposedly dignifying but less than honest arguments about moral claims regarding Furry, and other things, that are not the real reason for objections to it.
The vast majority of us are not pedophiles, zoophiles, mascot suit wearers who think we are animals, or anything else besides fans of anthro animal characters. For all my writing here and all the arguments you will hear to the contrary, it's really not that complicated and it's nothing that should need layers of argument, pro and con, or hiding. For artists especially, the opportunities for creativity and expression found in anthropomorphics continue to have an enduring and irresistible pull for many of us. To not continue to enjoy that for fear of the thoughts or objections of others would be less than adult behavior.
Rave
Where does this elite adult/not adult attitude come from in the first place?
In fandoms, I've always taken it as the stupidest, worst members are usually the loudest, most desperate for attention, and therefore more likely to be heard and seen...and sadly propagate stereotypes. It's the same with all fandoms, from furries, to bronies, to sports fans.
As for Drama, I think that's just an internet thing. People think they can act out and be untouched for being a bully, a hypocrite and so on because of anonymity. It's everywhere, and boy, can it turn a person's heart black over time.
As for the underage thing...I wonder to myself sometimes if there's a point people shouldn't go at times. How far down a dark hole does a person go down before they decide this is too far? But that's simply my views on it, not much more then that.
But thank you for a very interesting, thought-provoking read.
But keep in mind, extremes in any fandom do reflect on the whole of the group...especially since the outside tends to see them first and foremost. Heck, I think I only know one furry that has a fursuit.