It seems to me that gay dudes are way more common in the furry community than any other group, including straight men. Any thoughts on why this might be? I remember /r/furry having some sort of poll to try to figure out how skewed the numbers were in their subreddit, but have you heard of any other ways that this has been studied?
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I think it has to do mainly with the origins of furries. Iirc furry subculture really came out of the intersection of sci-fi nerd culture and the gay scene, both of which were very popular in San Francisco , mostly because one of the very early influential furries was gay. Given that, and the fact that furries have been around since the very early days of the internet, naturally gay art was made which attract more gay people creating a feedback loop perpetuating the gayness of furries.
Another contributing reason why might be because while there are a lot of gay furries, furry culture and communities aren’t exclusively gay, so it tends to attract people who might be questioning their sexuality or who aren’t comfortable explicitly interacting with a gay community, giving a lot of people to explore their identities. That’s why I think it’s a common trend not just for gay people to be furries, but also for people to be “turned gay” by the furry community.
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Also for more info, I might not be remembering right but I’m pretty sure
@snallygaster did a decent write up on the early days of the furry community and the intrusion of the gay scene in it on Reddit a while ago (it may have been someone else, I can’t be bothered to look it up right now)
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This is an excellent and insightful comment! Thank you! I wouldn't say the furry fandom or whatever it might be called is a major part of myself, so I'm not even aware of who this influential furry was. Do you happen to know his name or handle?
I actually found a post from 2012 just now which discusses this a bit as well: https://www.askpapabear.com/letters/are-most-furries-gay . He adds that while approximately 20% of the community identifies as gay (which would be an over-representation but not a majority), "the impression that gay men are a huge majority in the fandom persists, however. Why is that? Papabear believes it is for the same reason that the gay community is so prominent in theatre: gay people tend to be more outgoing and flamboyant. Therefore, they are much more noticeable than straight men and women. Apparently, too, they like to draw a lot more art of a pornographic nature than straight people do (though, actually, some of our best gay porn artists are women, such as that of the Blotch team, which is two female artists). "
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I think that the 20% figure is a little misleading, because from what I’ve seen in stats (and post numbers on e621 back it up as a rough metric) the fandom may not be majority gay, but it is plurality bisexual, so adding it up it’s majority male attracted males. (Sorry I’m not linking anything I’m lying in bed but it’s from a big survey of furries floating around, I’m pretty sure Marco links it often).
Another thing that could explain it is the fact that furries are a predominantly online culture so generally only very online people tend to become furries. Compounding that with the fact that I have a feeling gay people tend to spend more time online because of social ostracization, or being online turns people gay (I’m sure if you dig into research you can find data on this).
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Oh yeah, I didn't consider that the actual gay art wouldn't necessarily reflect gay viewers (or even artists) but instead bisexuals or even people just enjoying the art despite not being specifically attracted to the peepee-havers.
Also, men tending to be more sexually out there on the bell curve paired with a large online presence should reasonably be reflected in a higher number of gay furries in the arenas that we are talking about, yeah.
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Snapshots:
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