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Mange The need for criticism in furrydom

In the late '80s I put out a few issues of an electronic newsletter called FurBytes, resurrected in a more critical vein as Mange--for one issue circa 1994. What follows is a rewrite of Mange's thesis, updated for 1998.

There are many things to be found in funny animal fandom. With the exception of a few sporadic (and defunct) fanzines--Furtherance, The Pelt and Plush--critical thinking's rarely been one of them.

The existence of FALF is predicated on the assertion that this lack is a serious problem. Why? Because furry fandom itself has problems, of varying degrees of severity. This doesn't make it unique; all fandoms have them, and many fandoms have variations on these very same problems. (The fact that furfen so often think of their fandom as entirely unique is, in fact, one of the fandom's problems, but that's a topic for another time.)

The unique problem I'm trying to address, then, is that these other problems are not being talked about seriously. As I'll get to in a moment, I think furrydom has a potentially fatal lack of politeness--but there's one unfortunate exception to that: no one wants to be critical for fear of giving offense. (This is distinct from being shrill, which is done with the intent of giving offense, and so does no one any good whatsoever. Shrillness is quite common among furfen.)

This ultimately prevents honest dialogue. Whether the subject of discussion is fan behavior or any created material, fannish or pro, "everyone has the right to do what they enjoy" is not a useful statement. But it's true, you object? Yes, it is. People also have the right to express their opinions and hold informed discussions on subjective topics. In other words: to be critics. Critical thinking is a valued skill, and it is that meaning of the word critical that we can, and should, strive for.

In the original issue of Mange, I talked about two problems I wanted to shine the spotlight on. To varying degrees these problems have been the subject of attention over the intervening years--but it's usually been attention in the form of "flame wars." As such, even though the material might seem a bit dated now, I think it's worth setting out again, if only to invite more rational discussion and to set up a groundwork for future articles.

Problem One: Narrowing Focus

One of the first "furry" comics I picked up was Apple Comics' "Space Ark," by Ken Mitchroney and Mark Cantrell. I met Ken at various Florida conventions and soon learned that he had an allergic reaction to the word "furry": as far as he was concerned, he did funny animals, and ne'er the twain shall meet. The problem? If you have more than a casual exposure to furrydom, you can guess it without any more clues: sex.

Now, to me, there was never any contradiction between thinking of both Buster Bunny and Omaha the Cat-Dancer as "furries." I like some erotica. Some of the furry art I have floating around my apartment is of nude characters; some of it's sexually suggestive. I don't see anything wrong with that. I also don't see anything wrong with considering some Disney films, The Wind in the Willows, and "Usagi Yojimbo" to all be furry--they share what I think of as the one qualifying component: anthropomorphic animals.

But over the years I've realized that while most fans would agree with that statement, there's always been those who don't act like it's true. You see, if you open things up to that wide a spectrum of stories, you're going to have people who tend to concentrate on one end or the other. Fair enough.

So why do I keep hearing people tell me they've been told-- dare I say explicitly?--by some furry fans that if they don't like the erotic end, or even the hardcore end, that there's something wrong with them?

This isn't new, and it isn't an isolated phenomena. And from all appearances, it's getting worse.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to find publications and portfolios in the fandom which don't allow R- and X-rated artwork. The closest that's out there is YARF!--and I remember them fielding criticism from Maggie de Alarcon and Chris Grant on their first issue. Then-editor Lance Rund was correct in replying that the 'zine didn't have a responsibility to hold their readers' hands and shield them from all possibly offenses. But there's usually a few very suggestive, seductive pin-ups, some with frontal nudity, in any given issue. Is that really going to draw in the "general audience" the zine's preview issue stated it was aimed at?

Sure, this controversy's been around since before I was in the fandom. YARF! partially came to be from a controversy over FurVersion's publication of a piece so explicit it violated its own loosely-stated standards, causing a protest letter--and withdrawal of support--from artist Monika Livingston. Before there even was a furry fandom, there was a funny animal APA called Vootie whose members nearly came to blows over the inclusion of violent, explicitly sexual pieces by a guy named Reed Waller.

If this was really so much of a problem, people might say, there'd be more complaints about it. ConFurence's membership is growing substantially each year and the dealer's room and art show isn't getting any less explicit. Therefore, sex is obviously what the fans want. Isn't it?

Well, here's a question for you: if it's all that's offered, how do you know that it's all that the fans want?

As the years have gone on, the marketplace for funny animal comics has imploded--and I think that's largely because the books are only aimed at the fandom. Think about it. If furry fandom's whole is three or four times the membership of last ConFurence (admittedly a quack in the dark), that puts the size at under 5,000 fans--just over half the circulation of "Albedo" at its peak, and a quarter of the circulation Fantagraphics' "Critters" had. And at those peaks, in the late '80s, there were a lot less active furry fans than there are now. The difference? Back then they were being marketed as comic books. Now they're being marketed as furry comic books--and they're only reaching furry fans. Even though the number of admitted fans has ballooned, most of those comics are struggling.

So why aren't the rest of those fans involved in furrydom? After all, "Usagi Yojimbo" is not only still doing well, it's doing well enough to have moved to color (and to get an animation deal for "Space Usagi"). So those people are still out there. Have they just not heard of furrydom?

Or are they turned off by what they see in it?

The "narrowing focus" that I'm referring to is--yes--the increasing focus on sex. Sexy art. Sexy comics. And more insidiously, the sex life, real or perceived, of fans. More and more, "alternative lifestyles"--not humdrum things like sexual orientation, but eyebrow-raisers like degrading bondage, sadism and bestiality--are becoming identified as part and parcel of furrydom. And they shouldn't be.

Now, anyone who really knows me won't accuse me of being a prude. I don't care what anyone does on their own time, and I don't intend to advertise what I may or may not do on mine. But what brings people to furry fandom should be furries. Not shared sexual desires.

I've written before that sensuality is part of what furries are; I still think that's true, for reasons which go back far into mythic history. But sensuality and sex aren't synonymous, and there should be at least as much of a place for fans of The Lion King in furry fandom as there is for fans of "Omaha."

More and more people I've talked to are already giving up on "furry" fandom. They're still interested in anthropomorphic animals, but they think it's too late to save the word "furry" from what they see as very specific sexual connotations. When I was hearing this just from volatile people, I didn't take it too seriously. When it's enough to make MU Press editor Chuck Melville--certainly no more of a prude than I am--propose abandoning "furry" to the pornography crew and come up with a new name for the entire fandom, it should become pretty difficult to dismiss.

Is there really an image problem? Is it something we should be trying to fix? Should we be trying to rehabilitate the word "furry"... or should we be looking for another word? The great sex debate has caused schisms in the fandom before. Is it time for another one?

Problem Two: Community Fragmentation

This one may be a bit more controversial--fewer people see it as a problem, and by bringing it up I may hack off some of the people who agree with the existence of problem one. But this is something to think about.

When furry fandom started--and by this, I'm speaking really of the fandom itself, not the funny animal artists of Vootie and the original Rowrbrazzle members--there was an almost evangelical feel to it, the idea that it was something that should be brought to all corners of the earth to bring in as many new fans as possible. Well, as observed above, that's worked--to a degree. And something interesting has happened. You see, a lot of the old fans--almost all of them, in fact--were artists. Most of the rest were writers, or publishers, or Guys Who Organized Parties. To a degree it was a community of (perceived) creativity.

But as more of the "new folk" entered, furry fandom acquired people who were "only" fans. They enjoyed funny animal artwork and stories. And that was it.

And as this happened, the older community developed a new class of being, also found in mainstream comics fandom, that I've dubbed the proboy. A proboy is to a pro what a fanboy is to a fan: someone with very little sense of courtesy or friendship, who treats those in the "other" class not as people but as sources of raw material. The fanboy thinks of artists as sketchbook generation machines. The proboy thinks of fans as income generation machines.

And as this "class distinction" became more widespread, the feeling of community--well, it didn't exactly go away, but it wasn't extended to most of the newcomers. I've heard more than one old fan grouse about how furry fandom is being ruined by newcomers who don't contribute anything--meaning, evidently, that those who can't produce stories or pin-up art aren't welcome. And these are the same old fans who were so evangelical about bringing new fans into the fold.

I received a letter a while ago from Don Fitch, commenting on an editorial not too dissimilar from this one in "Grump," a perzine I just started doing for Rowrbrazzle. Fred Patten had put some of the extra copies of this perzine out on a freebie table at ConFurence 6. He started out with a wry assumption that he must have paid for his copy of "Grump," as no one ever does anything in furry fandom for free.

Even though he was wrong in this case, generally speaking, he's--forgive the phrase--right on the money.

The feeling seems to be that if you might possibly get money for something, you are obligated to charge for it. Combine this attitude with the lack of critical judgment prevalent in furry fandom, and the results approach the horrific. "Artists" sit around dealers' tables pushing high-quality photocopies of embarrassingly awful porn. More and more fanzines are produced with less and less regard to quality of content. And, as witnessed by the quality of many stories in Radio Comix' anthology titles, the standards of supposedly professional publications slip to match the market's.

And everything, no matter how poorly scrawled, has copyright notices written on it in forty foot high letters of fire.

I don't begrudge furry artists the chance to make money at cons, or in publication. But if this is really going to be a fandom, then people are going to have to learn the difference between a professional attitude and a predatory one. And just as importantly, they're going to have to start treating one another as friends--artists, writers, con organizers and fans alike.

In a word, furrydom lacks basic, mundane etiquette. And as heretical as the notion is in our do-your-own-thing, be-your-own-person, write-your-own-rules subculture, we're in sore need of it. The more recently perceived problem (and endless flame topic on alt.fan.furry) in fan behavior ultimately involves no imagined sex displays in hotel lobbies and has little or nothing to do with any permutation of the word "lifestyle." It involves simple, ol' fashioned selfishness. Furrydom, like much of science fiction fandom, has a wonderful childlike magic to it, but we must grow up enough to avoid simply being childish.

Ultimately, few people within furrydom--and, for practical purposes, even less outside--really hold up consistent mirrors to the fandom, the work it creates and the conventions it holds. People sometimes rail about these things, but--in the classic, constructive sense--they don't do much criticism. SF fandom has had its internal critics for decades, from very early on. The time for furrydom is overdue. If furry is creating a body of work, it can be analyzed. If furry is a community, however tenuously held together, it can be studied. And we can discuss, debate, come together--and maybe even learn.