Furries and Pornography
Much has been made about the subject of pornography within the furry fandom. Whether it’s media outlets trying to portray furries as sexual deviants, or movements within the furry fandom to deny or abolish pornographic content within the fandom.
As a preface to the data below, the researchers emphasize an important statement about the fandom: the furry fandom is comprised primarily of males, ages 18-25. Research on the psychology of sex indicates that this is a population that, furry or not, demonstrates tremendous interest in sex, whether it’s thinking about sex, engaging in sexual activities, or exposing itself to sexual content (e.g. pornography). It should be pointed out that nothing about “furry” is, in and of itself, sexual, any more than an interest in cars, comic books, or computers is inherently sexual. Rather, it is the belief of the researchers that one’s naturally-occurring sexuality tends to manifest itself in one’s interests and hobbies: if a person’s interest is in vehicles, it may manifest as pin-up girls on the cover of car magazines. If a person’s interest lay in comic books, sexuality may manifest in overly sexualized characters in comic books and their respective artwork. In much the same fashion, we believe that sexual content within the furry fandom follows the same pattern.
As a result of this longstanding issue within the fandom, we’ve asked a number of questions pertaining to furries and their interest in/ use of pornography. The data which follow are presented in as value-neutral a way as possible, and in no way are intended to be value judgments about the fandom or statements about what the fandom ought to be. They are merely data from furries regarding this often-asked-about but infrequently studied aspect of the fandom.
Q11: How many furries view furry-themed pornography, and are there gender differences?
To begin, we asked participants to do three things: predict what percentage of MALE furries looked at pornography, to predict what percentage of FEMALE furries looked at pornography, and then to indicate whether they, themselves, looked at furry pornography. The data are presented in the table below, with the guesses from both male and female participants provided.
First of all, as you can see from the bottom row, male furries are significantly more likely to view furry pornography than female furries, t(49.0) = -2.87, p = .006. Additionally, neither males nor females were more accurate in predicting the proportion of males/females in the fandom who view furry pornography. Finally, furriesunderestimated both the number of males in the fandom who view furry pornography and the number of females within the fandom who view furry pornography.
Given the prevalence of negative stereotypes about furries (e.g., association with sexual deviance, presumption that the fandom is a fetish), the issue of pornography is a controversial one in the fandom. We began by assessing the frequency with which furries view pornography. Furry men were significantly more likely to view furry-themed pornography (96.3%) than furry women (78.3%). Furry men and women both significantly underestimated these figures (84% and 70%, respectively)
1.
We also assessed other aspects of pornography use, summarized in the table below (all differences between men and women were significantly different from one another).
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