Fans and friends,

I have a very difficult announcement to make. I've been agonizing over this situation for months, and I've come to a decision that scares me to death, but that my conscience and my life situation demand of me. I believe that I must come clean with you all. Please know that I understand that you may be distressed, disappointed, even disgusted with me, and that I believe that you have every right to be any or all of those things, but I hope that you will hear me out in full as to why I made these choices and why I must now come to you.

To get straight to the point: I am not a female.

As I have already experienced both ends of this spectrum, I realize that some of you have suspected for some time that this may be the case, and this will not be a surprise, and I also realize that some of you have come to know me as a woman and this will be a huge and possibly unpleasant shock. I know that you may feel betrayed, and you may feel that this conduct casts doubt on all of my behavior. Your feelings are justified, yet I hope that you will hear me out to the end.

When I started out on my own in May of 2016, I needed to find a way to monetize my artwork, as I have great difficulty finding traditional work. I was already in the process of securing an illustration job in Black Hole Dawn, but I needed something else to supplement my income. My previous experience had taught me that adult artwork is an excellent source of income for furry artists, and as I was living on my own, I decided to pursue that avenue. However, as I already had an online presence of sorts, because I wanted to be able to pursue SFW opportunities without my adult work causing problems, and because I did not want to risk alienating my family, I decided that it would be prudent to create a pseudonym under which to operate my NSFW business. I created the Robin Wright name to this end, and presented myself as female in order to further separate my artistic identities. I needed a female fursona to be the face of my brand, so drew from an old favorite character design from my college D&D games and created the Robin that you all know.

In preparation for this, I spoke with many of my female and LGBT friends about my plans and only went forward with this practice under their blessing. Had anyone I knew objected, I would never have continued, as I care deeply about women's rights and consider myself a feminist. I hope that those of you who visit my streams and Discord channel know this. I believe that this initial plan was a simple matter of "conducting business as:" and I do not believe that I had crossed the line in this initial intent.

The trouble started when I began to interact more with my clients through notes and streams. People wanted to interact with the artist, and of course the artist was this sort of construct; Robin started to slip into a full persona. As contradictory as it may sound to claim, I strive to be an honest person, and so I have been completely truthful—if a little cagey sometimes—about my life and self, only altering the truth slightly to protect my identity. In the interest of transparency, the only information that I have changed, to my knowledge, is as follows:

• I am not female; I am a cis male. Any "lady things" that I have spoken of have been drawn from my experience with the women in my life. Neither am I transgender; I identify personally as male.
• I am a father; when I have talked about my nephews, I have been referring to my children, and, in a related note, when I have talked about my sister, I have been referring to my ex-wife.
• I realized that I may come off as noticeably less feminine than one might expect, and so I have stated that I grew up with brothers to wave that off. I have only one brother, and when I have spoken of "a brother", I was referring to my only brother.
• I posted a picture of a young lady on my FurAffinity page; this was a friend of mine who modeled specifically for the picture and fully understood what I intended to use the picture for (this picture was taken down some time ago when I first began to deliberate my feelings on this situation).
• I have given false birthday information.

These are the only things that I have misled you about; my life experiences have been shared in truth and from the heart. However, a deeply convicting conversation with a good friend made me realize that I had also become glib about this practice; it is a simple fact that in the field of adult work, women do have some advantages, and I was all too happy to benefit from that.

As time has passed and I have found my fans becoming friends, I have become less and less comfortable with the Robin persona for a variety of reasons, which I will enumerate.

1. It was one thing to use this persona for business and security, but as stated, many of my fans have become my friends and supporters, and some of you have even supported me financially through my hardships. Bear in mind that these hardships have been very real and I have been truthful about them—I have never ever lied about my life situations or tried to use the Robin persona to try to garner sympathy—but I have felt increasingly uncomfortable accepting these outpourings of support given the mask that conceals me from you.
2. I have come to feel as though some of my friends may be developing feelings for me as Robin, and I worry that some of the outpourings of support mentioned above may be the result of those feelings, and I feel awful about it if that is the case. I am pansexual and these feelings are not necessarily unwelcome; however, I also feel awful about the possibility that someone might be falling for someone whom they will never know.
3. I consider myself a feminist and deeply invested in the empowerment and furtherance of women's and LGBT interests. I did not and do not believe that this practice started in the wrong, but as my business operations changed, it evolved into something inappropriate and disrespectful. I believe that I have been appropriating one of the few advantages that women have without dealing with any of the disadvantages, and in so doing have unfairly set myself alongside the likes of women artists far more worthy of their accolades than I. This needs to stop.
4. As of January, I have had, and been fighting for, custody of my children, and no longer feel as though I can support myself through the sale of adult material, as I do not feel comfortable using pornography as a cornerstone of my work when there are children in my home. In my estimation, the chances of that going wrong is too high. That said, many of you are waiting on adult commissions from me, and I will need to work out details with you on how to deal with that, and I won't be able to do so without being honest with you about my situation.

Please know that I never wanted to hurt anybody, and that a large catalyst in coming to this decision was when revealing my identity to a friend caused her to feel hurt and betrayed by this practice. I care deeply about each and every one of you and I hope that you will accept my sincerest apologies for any distress I have caused you.

I would like to address some questions that I anticipate about my plans moving forward.

Who are you really?

I think it's likely that some of my fans will be able to figure this out, but I have decided not to fully and publicly reveal my identity at this time. The intention of the pseudonym still stands: I do want to keep my NSFW work history at least one step removed from my other projects, and whatever I do with my gallery here, this persona is inextricably tied to NSFW material.

Will you continue to offer commissions after this?

I'm not sure; I imagine it will depend on the general response to this announcement. It is possible that I will be largely decried, and if that happens I will remove myself professionally from the community. I never meant to cause harm, and if my continued professional activity would cause distress, then the right thing to do is to retire from this field of work.

If I do continue to work under the Robin pseudonym, it will be under full disclosure that Robin is in fact a pseudonym and character, and that I am male. No more misinformation.

What will you do with the Robin character?

Robin is a character close to my heart. It has been suggested that I sell her or otherwise give her away, but I think I will either keep her around or else retire her, depending on the overall response.

Will you allow Robin to be used in adult material that you do not create?

I'm honestly not sure. I obviously do not object to adult material, and fan art of Robin has deeply touched me in the past, but again, it will largely depend on the response to this announcement. As stated, I did not and do not want to hurt anyone, and I don't want to throw this character in the faces of people who may find her representative of inappropriate behavior.

Has anyone somehow forced you into this decision?

No. While my decision to "out" myself has been strongly influenced by people that I have discussed this with, the decision is fully mine. I believe that I need to accept responsibility for my choices, whatever the consequences of those decisions may be, and that I have allowed this to go on for too long already.

This sounds an awful lot like fraud.

I don't want to get into a big legal discussion in my apology, but suffice it to say, I never sold the fact that I was a woman; I sold art, and those who have received art from me got what they paid for. This is not to say that what I've done is acceptable; only that it isn't fraud.

It sounds like you're hoping people will just let this go.

I am not in any way trying to sweep this under the carpet, nor do I expect this to just go away. I fully expect this to be a dark mark on my work history, and there is every possibility that it will spell the end of this arm of my art career. I do hope, at least, that you will believe me when I say that I never meant to hurt anyone and that I take this action in order to move towards healthier, more respectful business practices.

How can you call yourself a feminist if you're willing to do something like this?

I fully understand your distress, anger, and frustration, and again, please know that I am deeply convicted that I allowed this to go too far, and that this announcement is specifically because I am not willing to do this. In way of explanation and not excuse or justification, as I've stated, I had discussed this with female and LGBT friends beforehand, have had the assistance of women in the execution of this practice, and have revealed my identity to a trusted few who have expressed understanding. The transition into this realm of inappropriate conduct happened subtly, and I realized the potential for harm only recently, at which time I began to reconsider very carefully.

In my history as an artist, I have had the opportunity to interact with and work with several female artists, and I truly believe that some of the greatest wells of talent and ability I've seen rest in the female contingent of the furry subculture, and deserve attention and praise. I also believe that female artists in the subculture work hard to overcome a variety of unfair challenges such as inappropriate comments and behavior directed towards them, a general lack of respect and understanding, and other such difficulties.

I have tried to encourage respectful and positive behavior both within and without the Robin persona, so it does not escape me that my own practice is both disrespectful and potentially harmful. I realize that some of my fans and friends may have been happy to see a strong and successful female artist. I feel terrible about how I have let myself be blind to the negative ramifications of my actions.

I do consider myself a feminist, and I want very much to see women as well as LGBT individuals empowered and successful. I try to do my part to that end, and right now that means putting an end to this practice of appropriation.

Are you saying that adopting a cross-gender persona online is wrong somehow?

No. There are many in the furry subculture who adopt cross-gender personas for their interactions online in a sort of pseudo-transgenderism. Whether it makes them more comfortable in their interactions, or is the only way in which they can express their very real transgender identity, or simply allows them to explore a side of themselves that they are otherwise unable to, or frankly most reasons I can think of, as long as the way a person presents their self online doesn't hurt others, in my opinion, it's fine.

As enumerated above, I believe that there are special circumstances that have caused my own use of a female persona to be inappropriate. I am not here to condemn or condone anyone else's behavior, only to take responsibility for my own.

A final word: I apologize deeply to everyone, but most especially to my most regular fans and followers. You have been there for me and supported me and in all this time there has been this mask between us. Please know again that I do care about each one of you, that aside from this matter of gender, you do know the real me, and I believe that this small community of friends that we've created through streams and Discord has been good for all of us, and I hope that we can continue to be friends, but also that I understand fully if you feel hurt or betrayed and no longer wish to support or even acknowledge me. The people that I've met through Robin have been some of the kindest and most thoughtful and positive people that I've ever had the pleasure of knowing, so I thank you for that from the bottom of my heart.

I will be closely watching feedback and ready to answer questions. I will understand if you need to vent your frustrations at me, but please be civil to each other in any discussion that may arise.

UPDATE

As I am no longer able to provide pornographic commissions, I have opted to clean them out of my gallery as I feel they create a false impression of my services. I believe that I have supplied all of my customers with high resolution copies of each of these works, but if you have misplaced yours, contact me and I will resupply you with them. I have left in ref sheets and artistic nudes because I do not feel that they constitute pornographic material.