The job distribution of furries may be explained partially by certain personality trends, as discussed elsewhere (http://www.adjectivespecies.com/201.....career-choice/ ). I sure hope I'm not the only member of the fandom either in law or public health, since I work in the former field and may aspire to work in the latter xD Some speculation suggests that these fields are too serious for a carefree furry spirit, unlike the world of Information Technology, but I do not know how much credence I would be willing to lend to such speculation. As long as I get to adorn my law firm office with furry posters, I'm not complaining :D

I was strolling through the forgotten meadow the other day, like any other mage-dragon, when I overheard two goblins chatting with each other. “I’ve found a way to get rid of the eye irritation from bombkin pollen!” exclaimed one to the other. “Oh? Do tell.” I stopped and looked up in curiosity. “Just take some orange nectarine, mix it with ground grass, and add it to your eyes! Every time I feel the allergy picking up, and I do it, I feel instantly better.” The other goblin looked skeptically. “Really? Has it worked for anyone else?” A sense of confidence filled the other’s voice. “Yes! 95% of my other friends have tried it for their allergies, and they get better! For the other 5%, they probably are just doing it wrong, like maybe not adding enough orange nectarine. I swear it works!”

The goblins continued on their way and continued talking about miscellaneous topics, such as how many magical mushrooms they could expect to harvest before the end of the day. I decided to walk by the waterfall in the meadow and take a seat by the relaxing scenery. Putting my book down and crossing my legs, I closed my eyes and gave pause to consider what I overheard. According to Popper’s Falsificationism definition of science, a hypothesis must allow itself to be disprovable in order for it to be considered scientifically valid. By constantly attributing the disconfirming events to other causes, you effectively immunize the hypothesis from falsification: you do not allow for observations to disconfirm it. I opened my eyes and gazed at the waterfall, considering the ramifications of my thoughts. I quickly realized that the problems associated with such pet “theories” were epistemically broader than that.

Generalizations from personal experiences are always problematic, because of the usuals: small sample sizes, biased samples, strong convictions getting in the way of rational thought, etc. Nevertheless, oftentimes, people will point to consistency and pattern as speaking to the veracity of their theory. “Oh, I observe Y consistently when X is the case.” However, there is also the perspective from the psychological literature: cognitive biases call even that observational consistency into question. There is the well documented phenomenon of Confirmation Bias, for example. This is the unconscious tendency to recall, pay more attention to, or weigh more heavily, instances and evidence that confirm one’s prior beliefs or hypotheses, and to ignore, dismiss, downplay, or conveniently forget those that do not. It is a pernicious phenomenon, and it shows that even that most prized of experiential characteristics, consistency, is not a guarantee of trend veracity.

I put my hands behind my back and paced around the watery rocks. Picking up a pebble, I held it up to my eye, feeling the smooth texture under my scaley fingertips. Individuals will stick to their convictions, and no study can shake a belief forged by unconscious drivers that are so often unacknowledged. I skipped it across the water, watching it bounce a few times before it sunk to the pond. Science is not perfect. No system made by mortal beings is perfect. Yet at least it acknowledges the unacknowledged and attempts to correct for it. I picked up my book and held it tightly to my chest. Feeling a cool Spring breeze against my scales, I took a deep breath and acknowledged the presence of the mighty wind. Then I marched onward to continue my walk through the meadow. Father, mother: how I miss you. Tricked by prior experience, you fell victim to your minds. Could I ever forgive the cruel devices of our dragon brains? Devices that put convictions of the heart far ahead of the results of careful, analytical battling of the inner biases. Only time will tell if I have it in my heart to do so. My heart? I let out a light chuckle. Even I am subject to the forces of mortality. My experiences vs. systematic data. I lose.

References:
http://landman-psychology.com/ConfirmationBias.pdf
https://1000wordphilosophy.wordpres.....sificationism/

FurAffinity is quite an interesting website for the "Type" section of its browsing function. It is one of the few websites with "Fetish" bluntly stated as a subcategory of the viewable materials. Yet many of the types of fetish work portrayed can find human analogues aplenty elsewhere on the internet. If we take the purported acceptance and tolerance of the community as a factor, then two hypotheses arise. The first is that, because the community is so accepting and open, it attracts a greater number of sexual deviants who would be shunned in other communities. In this scenario, the base probability for any given paraphiliac of expressing those paraphilias has not changed. The second is that, the proportion of paraphiliacs in the fandom is actually roughly the same as the number in the general population, but they are more willing to be expressive with regard to their paraphilias because of the acceptance and openness of the fandom. There is, of course, the possibility of both: greater proportion and greater probability of expression given presence. P(F) & P(E|F), where F is the event of a paraphiliac being in the population, and E is the event of expressing your paraphilia. Both these quantities would be greater for the Furry Fandom than the general population if both hypotheses were the case.

Another semantic conundrum involves "Yiff." The term may be used in a number of different ways ( https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Yiff ), but it usually connotes sexual meanings and activities. In the furry "mainstream" sense, this is often associated with pornography depicting the usuals: genitals, breasts, bodily fluids, etc. However, isn't it the case that material is only pornographic if it is intended to arouse someone sexually? By this definition, a picture of someone's feet being licked is pornographic to a paw fetishist, but non-pornographic to a non-paw fetishist. To the latter, it might just be gross or creepy, quite the opposite of arousing. A sex-repulsed asexual might not find mainstream furry pornography attractive at all; if the same person is a paw fetishist, he or she might find pictures of toes being suckled arousing, but only in the absence of sexual body parts and fluids. Then the pornographic nature of a yiff portrayal is very individualized: what is yiffy to one is not yiffy to another. The trouble comes in legal and population level statements regarding pornography. Again, paraphiliacs are left out of those definitions. Only characterizations of "weirdness" or "grossness" are left for them.

In the human realm alone, there is enormous arbitrariness associated with the types of sexual fetishes and kinks existing. Having finished Jesse Bering's 2013 book "Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us," I am well aware of the 547 documented paraphilias there are. This is why, whenever I see someone asking, "Why in the world do those people find X attractive?" or some variant, followed by many personal experience stories and speculations about their own fetish development, I think the arbitrariness aspect is not being considered. There is so much researchers still do not know about how paraphilias develop, and part of it is the ethical problems associated with human experiments. A number of theories are floating around out there ranging from sexual imprinting to more neuroanatomical explanations, but no one seems to capture the full story. It's very easy for me to come up with a "Just so" story for why coprophiliacs are attracted to what they're attracted to, or why acrotomophiliacs desire what they desire. I would rather admit ignorance, then become "submissive" to anyone's pet explanation.

Nevertheless, from a sociological point of view, regardless of the mechanistic explanation, the reality is many paraphiliacs are in the same state as the homosexual community decades ago. While the status of the latter community has improved legally and socially, the status of the former has not. The stigma associated with "unnatural" sexual deviance is similar to the stigma against those with mental illnesses in our society; both lead to unnecessary psychological harm and self-loathing. As advocates of erotic pluralism note, we must be open and willing to discuss these sexual matters if we ever hope to strive to achieve a society where self-hatred is no longer the case for many of those with these kinks and fetishes. United States sex education is already lacking in many dimensions, but at least with the advent of the Internet, more and more resources are available to such folks and they often quickly realize that they are not alone. A true prevalence estimate for any particular paraphilia would be quite difficult given how private these matters are, but new methodological paradigms may be on the way now that the Internet is here. One can only look to the future optimistically.

It very commonly seems to be the case that the more interesting a question is, the more difficult it is to answer. Very frequently, shallowly conceived questions have an answer that is both not very profound and very easily attained. However, progress has never been made by avoiding the hard questions and the thought processes that those questions evoke. We must ask the interesting questions, and see where the train of thought takes us.

Based on 2014 data published by the International Anthropomorphic Research Project, a number of interesting demographic trends have come to empirically characterize the Furry Fandom. Obviously, these results are to be considered in light of the typical statistical assumptions regarding the sample and the data. As for to what extent those assumptions were met, one must look at the methodology and results and decide for oneself. A number of interesting dimensions were considered: the age breakdown of the fandom, the gender identity composition, the sexual orientation composition, marital status, political liberalism, etc.

While a number of those variables are salient to me, for practical purposes, it makes sense to just pick one of interest and develop a discussion based on it. Let's look at the racial/ethnic breakdown portion of the study in section 5. The researchers note:

"Furries, as a group, were the most predominantly white, having relatively fewer members of ethnic minorities compared to the other groups. The reasons for this are unknown, though it may be the case that the historical origins of the furry fandom (grounded in the science-fiction fandom which has also been traditionally white) may partially explain these findings."

While it would be nice to see the standard errors, I'll take the point estimate. Around 4% of the sample self-identified as "Asian." Why is this salient? Because I also self-identify as such. It can also be observed that for self-identified "Hispanics" and self-identified "Blacks," Furries rank the lowest proportionally, relative to the other fandoms in the research. The question arises: why are the proportions so different to what would be expected under the null hypothesis of proportions being the same as in the general population? Statistically, what predictors can account for the observed variation?

One can speculate whether these demographic trends have a more profound social effect on dynamics within the fandom, or whether the nature of those dynamics are matched up with what one would expect to see in the general population. Would one expect to see a higher incidence of racist behaviors in a population that is predominantly white than one that is not? I would be curious to see the sociological data if this is the case. It is probably not the case that it is entirely nonexistent: https://medium.com/@cookiecreamfox/.....58a#.jlqotmq19. The empirical question that I am interested in is: am I more likely to observe microaggressions, apathy toward the causes of People of Color, etc., from my own Furry associates than I am in my interactions with other groups?

Having formerly been more knowledgeable about the Anime fandom, it would be interesting to compare the probabilities of the aforementioned type of occurrence between fandoms, but alas, I cannot generalize from personal experience alone. Too many cognitive biases to muddy the inference. Though, I must say, it has been an interesting learning experience getting out of my comfort zone and surrounding myself with white people at furmeets. Intriguingly, there are a number of groups dedicated to particular racial/ethnic subroups (for example,  africanamericanfurs ) One must wonder why the number of such identity groups is not greater than what it currently is. It would be curious, for me, to see how many furs would join a group for Asian-American furs. I can only speculate.

References:
https://sites.google.com/site/anthr.....fandom-project