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In this episode Roo and Elias, along with YuurYuu and Kristian as guests, discuss stereotypes about the fandom and those within the fandom.   The musical breaks are Je T'aime by Snow.Lukav + Renard, and Laugh at Life by Jackal Queenston.

Please excuse any technical issues, we will work harder in the future to make sure the recordings are top notch in quality.
Links
WikiFur on Stereotypes: http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Stereotypes
Kristian Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/KristianCollie
Kristian FurAffinity: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/kristian002
YuurYuu FurAffinity: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/yuuryuu
Now Listen S2 Episode 2 – Stereotypes - In this episode Roo and Elias, along with YuurYuu and Kristian as guests, discuss stereotypes about the fandom and those within the fandom.   The musical breaks are Je T'aime by Snow.Lukav + Renard, and Laugh at Life by Jackal

Xavier is off for personal reasons, so TK and Eeve3 take control of the show, starting with cookies and going rapidly downhill after that. When the Xavier's away, the rambling begins and this episode is no exception - though the Gaming News section actually gets done by the pair of hosts (for a change). Of course, with Xavier away, TK is left to talk about the Role Play alone as Eeve3 had missed the session, and it's not his strongest topic... For Done and Dusted TK talks about the film he saw thanks to YouTube: Turtles Forever, while Eeve3 gives her views on The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Werewolfe reviews a film TK had previously reviewed, Vuk (The Little Fox). Starring TK, and Eeve3. TigerTails Radio - Season 6 - Episode 35 - April's Not Quite Over Yet

submitted by Tiikirien
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I always see these people with tons of furry friends and it seems nice. Offline furry friends, too. Plus I'm not having luck on dating sites and it might be nice to date another furry. So...I'm curious.

submitted by Cervidanti
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I received some fairly strong reactions to the short article I wrote about geeks a couple of weeks ago. The article is probably the slightest and most trivial contribution I’ve made to [adjective][species] in my ten or so articles to date, so I was expecting some criticism about its glib tone and sweeping statements. But I didn’t expect that it would be read so differently by geeks, compared to non-geeks.

The geeks thought I was being unfair by connecting positive geeky behaviour to anti-social behaviour. Several people pointed out that geekiness is sexy and mainstream, whereas the anti-social behaviour I attributed to many geeks might be considered ‘nerdy’.

On the other hand, the non-geeks felt the opposite: they thought the article was an over-the-top love letter to geeks and geekiness everywhere.

As an aside, I’m happy to report that the geeks all responded to me on the internet; the non-geeks all commented as part of a ‘real life’ conversation. (Stereotypes: confirmed.)

In this article, I want to explore the geeks in a bit more detail.

Geekiness is a big part of the furry experience. It’s the most obvious, and accordingly laziest, way to characterize the community from the outside. For a new furry (or perhaps a journalist), it’s a bit overwhelming – and it’s easy to come away slightly shell-shocked after exposure to those geeks who can be low-empathy and unsocial.

For those people who exist in a geeky world – perhaps a programmer who plays tabletop RPGs with her friends – the geekiness of furry is not going to be so pronounced. I was recently shown a Livejournal post by Kuddlepup [link], talking about how furry is seen by people inside geeky fandoms.

Visiting a steampunk convention, Kuddlepup reported that furries are seen as being anti-social. But not because of poor personal hygiene or unsocial behaviour, but because furries at conventions only go to see their friends.

KP suggests that furries are being exclusive and vaguely cliquey, and I understand how it could be seen that way. However I’d argue that furry is fundamentally different from geek fandoms – it’s about personal identity. Furries are spending time with their friends because they can explore their identity beyond the superficial I’m just a wolf in a turtle-neck and glasses.

Comparing the reactions to KP’s post with those encountering the community from outside geekdom, I think there is a parallel with the contradictory reactions I received to my previous article. The different points of view are easy enough to explain, I think: there are many geeks in furry, but it’s not a geek phenomenon. Our geeks and non-geeks just have different reference points. Everything, as always, is relative. (KP goes on to make a few other interesting observations and I’d encourage you to read his post in full.)

Regardless of how furry is seen through the lens of geekdom, it doesn’t help us understand why we have so many geeks.

One thing we can say for sure: there is a preponderance of furries with non-traditional sexuality and gender identities. We’ve established that a very large number of furries re-evaluate their sexual preference after they discover the community; the full spectrum of gender identities are well-represented; furries exhibit a lot of unusual sexual behaviour (like the zoophiles, for example).

The breadth of humanity seen within furry is one of its great traits, because exposure to different people helps us all to become more understanding and tolerant. Furry is great for those people with unusual sexual and/or gender identity: furries can roleplay these parts of themselves, online or even in person.

Roleplaying as an animal person allows many furries to slowly accept and ultimately embrace their unusual gender and/or sexual identity. This ‘baby-steps’ approach is healthy and low risk from a physical and mental point of view. It’s one of the ways that furry provides a positive environment for personal change, and it allows us to enjoy the irony of furries using an imaginary animal person as a vehicle to acceptance of their true self.

This virtue of the furry community is why, I think, that furry attracts so many (male) geeks. Geeks are often perceived to be weak, and this doesn’t mesh well with a society that conflates ‘masculinity’ with ‘strength’. Geeks are often bullied because they don’t meet society’s assumed roles.

Disclaimer time: I’m aware that geek culture has become more mainstream in recent years. However ‘geek chic’ is still very marginal. Looking into the most important reflector of mainstream human society: geeky TV characters are still, for the most part, held up as figures of fun. There is not a significant difference between the characterization displayed in The Big Bang Theory and, say, Steve Urkel.

At the risk of making a serious philosophical point using Urkel, it’s telling that SU would sometimes transform into a masculine, suave, jamesbondian alter ego, named Stephan Urquelle. The contrast between our nerd and his masculine alter ego – like Superman & Clark Kent, Urkel & Urquelle, and many other similar examples – clearly delineates society’s position on what it means to be a man. The opposite of a man?: the geek.

There are parallels here with many furry geeks, who present as a furry self with a very different outward attitude, in mind and body. Furry avatars often bear little relation to the human behind them and this is particularly prevalent amongst the geeks. There are very few overtly geeky furry avatars.

Happily, we furries are accepted as the animal person that we purport to represent. This means that our geek can present as Lord HyperDragon and be accepted on those terms. Just like someone can experiment with gender online, our geek can mentally test-drive Lord HD’s body and attitude. Such roleplay often leads to change: it may be that our geek starts to become more like Lord HD over time – maybe in attitude, maybe in sexual behaviour, maybe by hitting the gym.

Now, before I get castigated (again) for lazily stereotyping geeks as unsocial and unwashed, I want to be clear that this isn’t my intent. Geeks may be the single most obvious feature of the furry community, but the definition of ‘geek’ is slippery. I can’t discuss the geeks without making some broad statements that will be fundamentally wrong in some way. But the geeks are different from the non-geeks – and there is some evidence that the two groups have different experiences within furry.

In my previous post, I tried to assess the number of geeks by looking at the response rate to three questions from the Furry Survey:

Would you describe yourself as:

• a fan of RPGs? (Yes 55%)
• a fan of science fiction (Yes 61%)
• a fan of anime (Yes 49%)

I’m going to use the response to ‘science fiction’ to explore survey data from those that answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’, two groups that are respectively more or less likely to be geeks. I chose ‘science fiction’ because I think it’s the least ambiguous question of the three. However the trends are similar for the other two questions.

With Klisoura’s help, I compared new furries with furries who have been in the community for at least 5 years. I looked at the decline in heterosexuality, which is the clearest statistic for the phenomenon of furries re-evaluting their sexual preference.

• for science fiction fans, the decline in heterosexuality is 42% (over 5 years)
• for everyone else, the decline in heterosexuality is 54% (over 5 years)

Statistics alert: this data is of very low quality. There are many reasons why it is statistically and logically flawed beyond all reasonable use. I present it because I expected to see this pattern before Klisoura and I performed the data mining – it supports my hypothesis about the geeks.

To summarize, my totally unscientific hypothesis and data analysis suggests that furry disproportionally attracts people who don’t fit into mainstream society.

• many people are attracted to furry because of unusual sexual and/or gender identity
• many (male) geeks are attracted to furry because they are not traditionally masculine

The obvious question raised by this theory:

• Does furry exist simply as a mental stepping-stone for people to understand and accept their true selves?
• Or do people within furry learn to love themselves because the community is such a positive environment for introspection and real change?

It’s difficult to say which premise is the cart, and which is the horse. It’s a question that, I think, is fundamental to exploration of furriness itself. So as a horse, I’m going to continue to pull this philosophical cart, exploring the question within the pages of [adjective][species]. (I’m also going to continue to torture equine-themed metaphors.)

But the cart can wait for future articles.

For now, I’m happy to reflect on all the positive things that furry brings. We
all know people who, through furry, have improved their lives. This might be through re-evaluation of sexual preference or gender identity, or maybe they’ve lost weight, or improved their job situation, or maybe just gotten a little better at dealing with the difficult job of being human.

I think that the abstraction of one’s self into an anthropomorphic avatar is what makes furry so personal and rewardingly social. Hopefully we’re all better people for this weird and wonderful furry experience.

Wanna play a game? Now you can be a TRUE furry card game champion with the Nordguard card game coming this summer. So it turns out that Nordguard’s “Across Thin Ice”  and  chromamancer paintings are making it to a cool little card game that will be on sale for $12 (standard) and $25 (collectors ed.) . Personally I adore playing card games with nude anthro charries, but makes it hard to play in public (even NYC) so this will be a right fit for anyone. Check back here as always for more updates on this.

submitted by Tigo24
[link] [1 comment]

Hi everyone, I am a Fur who is studying for a masters degree in Higher Education (in particular student Affairs). I was wondering if anyone is currently working in this field and if they had any advice for a fur getting into this field. While I know that the field and the fandom may not have a large connection, I am hoping to work at a college that is more fur-friendly or has an active community (charity work, cons, ect). I ask this because the fandom is very important to my life (even though I have not had much of a chance to be active where i live) and I hope to educate students in higher education and create an environment that promotes harmony and growth to all students. Thank you for taking your time to read this and if you don't work in higher education I would love to hear any stories or advice you could give that relates to the college environment (or how you would like to be treated by others). Also I apologize for any and all grammatical errors.

submitted by Girugiru
[link] [5 comments]

My girlfriend moved to Las Vegas last year, but never had the opportunity to meet anyone. I live in four hours away in California, so I wanted to see if anyone was in the LV area that had something in common with her (and me) would meet up and hang out for a day.

(Sorry if this isn't the right place to post this, or if these posts aren't allowed)

submitted by Ladysharpclaw
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Over on Alector’s page is looks like we go our self a SALE …yeehawww…  So head on over HERE and get 15% off pre-orders for the Red Lantern – The Backgrounds, 45 pages of visual stunning drawings depicted from ” Red Lantern – The Crimson Divine” book.

submitted by Greynois
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submitted by Loomy7
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submitted by Blazeholden
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submitted by JasonMacker
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submitted by t_j_k
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submitted by Harke
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On a serious note: As if you haven’t already here in previous posts Fernando’s Cafe in Pittsburgh, PA across the street from AC was going under. With the help of many furries world wide we made history and presented a large donation in the sum of $21,000. It shows a big mark in our fandom that furries aren’t just a bunch of sex freaks.  Check out the video and see how the presentation went on April 21st. This was one of many videos, but I find this covers the most.

submitted by Dhaos
[link] [7 comments]

I was curious if anyone here had one. If so, who would like to watch me/get a watch from me?

http://www.furaffinity.net/user/chioro/

submitted by Chioro
[link] [140 comments]