by Quentin ‘Cubist’ Long ©2005 Quentin Long

   In all subcultures, it’s a perennial favorite pastime: Trying to define what, exactly, the subculture in question is all about. And, remarkably enough, the furry subculture is no exception. Fortunately, furries are a laid-back lot, by and large; aside from the occasional Burned Fur-like abberation, most people simply don’t care whether or not anybody else shares their particular concept of ‘furry’. But every silver lining has a dark cloud! Unfortunately, this lack of a clear referent for the term ‘furry’ means it can be difficult to talk about the subculture, because you can never be quite sure how well their concept of ‘furry’ matches up with yours.
   So: With the above said and acknowledged, I’m going to take a stab at defining ‘furry’, and I’ll start by shooting down some possibilities.
   First: ‘Furry’ is not a literary genre. I would have thought this to be obvious, but at least one person whose intelligence I respect (hi, Phil!) holds exactly the opposite view, so I suppose it’s best that I lay it out explicitly. When you say that a particular work of fiction belongs to Genre X, you’ve made a statement regarding what sort of plot elements, themes, etc, will or won’t be found in that story. If a story belongs to the genre of Fantasy, it’s probably going to have working magic without anything resembling a contemporary level of technology; if the story’s genre is Romance, it will include a strong love-interest focus without explicitly pornographic depictions of sexual activity; and so on, and so forth. Again: If someone tells you that Story X belongs to Genre Y, he’s giving you some basic idea about what Story X is or isn’t all about.
   With that in mind, what can you say about a story if all you know is that it’s ‘furry’? Well… not bloody much, frankly. Some furry stories have magic; others don’t. Some have space travel; others don’t. Some focus on convoluted interpersonal relationships; others don’t. Some have high tech; others don’t. Some have… you get the point, I trust. When the rubber hits the road, the one and only thing you can tell about a ‘furry’ story is that at least one of its major characters will be an animal with a nontrivial level of human characteristics! And that, quite simply, is not sufficient basis on which to define a genre. Really, you might just as well define ‘human’ as a genre whose distinguishing characteristic is the presence of at least one human character! For that matter, why not declare that ‘yellow’ is the name of the genre which consists of all stories in which the word ‘yellow’ appears? All in all, the reason why ‘furry’ is not a genre is quite simple: The word doesn’t tell you anything about the story.
   Second: ‘Furry’ isn’t a lifestyle. Granted, some fur-fen treat it as such—but for every fur-fan who does do the lifestyle thing, there's at least 3 or 5 who don’t. Show me a concept of ‘furry’ which disqualifies more than 75% of all fur-fen, and I’ll show you a concept of ‘furry’ which is pretty much useless! We can say that all fur-lifestylers are part of furdom in general; we cannot say that all fur-fen are lifestylers.
   Third: ‘Furry’ ain’t no flavor of spirituality, neither. As with the lifestyle thing, all people whose spirituality includes a furry aspect can be regarded as part of furdom in general, but not all fur-fen have a spiritual aspect to their furriness. Therefore, spirituality cannot be a defining characteristic of ‘furry’.
   Fourth: ‘Furry’ isn’t a synonym for ‘artist’, ‘writer’, or even ‘creative person’. Yes, there are many fur-fen who do possess artistic skill of one kind or another; but in strict accordance with Sturgeon’s Law, it must be acknowledged that there are many other fur-fen who couldn’t write or draw their way out of a wet paper bag. Which doesn't make this latter group bad or inferior people, any more than Luciano Pavarotti’s inability to sing bass makes him bad or inferior, okay? [disgruntled muttering] Bloody hyper-egalitarians… As I was saying: Since artistic talent is not a universal characteristic of all fur-fen, artistic talent can’t be part of what makes ‘furry’ furry.
   Fifth: Mainstream media coverage to the contrary, ‘furry’ is not a mode of sexuality. Go ahead—just try to defend the notion that Walt Disney’s Robin Hood doesn’t qualify as furry! ’Nuff said?
   So: If ‘furry’ isn’t any of that stuff, what is ‘furry’? Or, in other words, what is it that all the myriad people who self-identify as furries have in common? When you put it that way, the answer should be reasonably obvious: ‘Furry’ is a subculture whose primary distinguishing characteristic is an interest in anthropomorphized animals. It’s not a genre, not a lifestyle, not anything else of that sort; rather, ‘furry’ is bigger than any of its aspects which one particular fur-fan might happen to be particularly devoted to.
   To borrow a metaphor, ‘furry’ is a big tent, with more than enough room for writers and artists and wannabe-lycanthropes and lifestylers and totemists and et cetera!