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Uh oh... My research was reported on in the Daily Mail
8 years ago
Oh boy, the ride never ends =P Looks like the Daily Mail of all places picked up the Psychology Today piece on furries I wrote a few days ago. Comments on the piece are... well, about what you'd expect to find from a Daily Mail article.
Also, I can't help but feel like the author of this article wanted to put giant air quotes around the word "expert" every time they referred to me. =P
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet.....y-furries.html
Also, I can't help but feel like the author of this article wanted to put giant air quotes around the word "expert" every time they referred to me. =P
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet.....y-furries.html
Fark.com featured a link to the psych today piece a few days ago too, under http://www.fark.com/geek/
And the comments! Heavens forbid somebody who knows what they're talking about, who actually studied the matter, should contradict somebody's prejudices! "Don't those eggheads understand that prejudice is a Holy Bulwark against having to actually think?" They do seem to like an opportunity to make smart-alec remarks, though.
The sidebar! OMG!
"Furries represent fans of media featuring anthropomorphic animals..."
No, Furries are fans of media featuring anthropomorphic animals. (To be exact, it's the content of the media, not the media itself, of which we're fans. I've never heard of a "fur-o-vision.," not in real life.) And even that isn't entirely correct because we make so much of our own content!
"...the furry fandom encompasses much more than just the ‘therians’ ..."
No, the furry fandom does not "encompasses the therians!" Therianism is a community of people who believe that, in one way or another, they are part-animal; for instance, a wolf's soul trapped in a human body. (And that's a gross simplification.) Furry is a community of people who like cartoon animals. (We say "anthropomorphic animals," but for simplicity sake, you could say "cartoon" and not be too far wrong.) They're two entirely different communities. There are Therians who are also Furries. There are members of the Italian Mafia who are also Catholics. That does not mean that all Catholics are Mafiosi! (Boy would the Pope give a whole new meaning to "The Godfather" if they were!) Likewise, not all Therians are Furries, not all Furries are Therians.
But is there really any point in telling all that to the Daily Mail?
I guess it just proves the old saying; once you make something public, you no longer get to choose who looks at it.
Psychologists discover something you dislike?
"The field's full of a bunch of quacks and whackos, and their 'science' is complete bullshit."
Psychology study shows something you 'knew all along'?
"Hey guys, listen to the psychologists, they're SCIENTISTS doing real SCIENCE."
I can GUARANTEE you that if our studies showed that furries were batshit crazy and insane, every person in that thread would be like "SEE?! A REAL, CREDIBLE scientist said it, so it has to be true!"
/rant
This is pretty much the same thing that was done to me a few months ago based on a piece I wrote about global warming and aggression. A right-wing outlet picked it up and essentially said "Wow, look how stupid psychologists are - they say the dumbest things, am I right?!?!" and all the readers went "Yup, look how stupid those stupid liberal psychologists are, lol!!!"
It's an echo chamber of stupidity.
The place has improved over the years, and there's at least a few furries posting who are openly furry. I'm one of them, there's a few others. Thus far it's only been used as an attack on me exactly once, by someone who was obviously desperate for an ad-hom attack.
It's just annoying to deal with comments that conflate the fandom with the fetish, or the usual claims of Therianism.
I'm thinking of retracting and re-writing it based upon new observations and thoughts, but would you be interested reading my essay where I explain how I view what "Furry" means? It can be found here, if you're interested.