This is an essay written for a queer theory course, on furries, fursonas, and furry porn. It develops on ideas from my last few essays, and working in the ideas of a few theorists: Donna Haraway, Deleuze& Guattari, and Susan Sontag. Relative to the other essays, it was a massive hassle to write, but it was also entertaining to research for.

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Becoming-Furry
By Reindeer Roger

Furry can mean at least three things. It can mean an anthropomorphic animal, a participant in the fandom, and within the fandom it also has a way of designating the people within the fandom who are completely immersed; the ones people call lifestylers, or the ones people who don’t identify as furries call furries. Furry also has a way of meaning something more than the fandom, more than the participants, and more than the anthropomorphic animal, because it has a way of possibly meaning all three. Most furries have fursonas, or anthropomorphic representations of themselves they use as an avatar within the fandom. The fursona might consist of a drawing, a text feed, archives of past conversations, or role-plays, and the becoming furry is enabled through the production of these affects. Using a fursona represents a kind of surrender to the necessarily distorted aspects of the Internet, or a stylization of Internet being, that is necessary for interaction in these circumstances to be understandable, fun, or graceful. It is becoming cyborg, in the terms Donna Harraway describes, becoming a part of the technology we use and the technology becoming an aspect of ourselves. It is also a becoming animal, like Deleuze described, except where becoming animal is much like becoming cyborg. In the process of anthropomorphization, animal components are adopted to idealize, or transcend the human self.

Most of the appeal of creating or using a fursona, and its transformative potential, is the product of the freedom and autonomy of the Internet meeting the freedom and autonomy of art . . . with both of these, in this case, used in the service of sexuality. It is natural that sexuality, being one of the most heavily regulated and restrained aspects of our existence, tends to become a major aspect to any exercise of freedom. It is difficult to disambiguate the extent to which furry porn is sexually, personally, or literally freeing. But occasionally, sexual expression is so wholly and intrinsically satisfying that it has a freedom of its own, making other considerations seem less important. Given the large number of sexually and socially marginalized people the furry fandom draws, I believe that this has to add to the motivation, and pleasure taken in, participating in the furry fandom on such a large scale. Much like a fursona becomes the idealized projection of oneself on the Internet, with only self-imposed limitations regarding any responsibility for it to be similar to oneself, the use of a fursona is an exploration of the freedom and potentiality enabled by creating an artistic representation of oneself. It allows us to reimagine ourselves, the world, or reality, through variation, invention, or omission.

There are politics to my use of this becomings-animal concept, because the authors of this concept on a surface level would probably disagree. They differentiate three kinds of animals, of which an anthropomorphic furry is most certainly the denigrated, pet, Oedipal animal (240). It is the territorialization of the animal by the human, producing only narcissistic contemplation. Becoming-animal to Deleuze and Guattari is not mainly about the animals as we know, characterized linguistically, socially, symbolically, or artistically, which is the second kind of animal he lists (241). He was not talking about totems, or resemblance, or imitation, or identification. They are more interested in a third kind of demonic animal, which is more of a relationship to the human, and an idea inspired by Artaud; a human with a deference of the mind to the body, a respect for the mind of the body. Furries can have any or all of these relationships to animals. Becoming-animal occurs to a gutted, molecular body, and has no interest in preserving or protecting the molar human one (270). This concept of a molecular body incorporating new elements is remarkably similar to Marshall Macluhan’s concept where technologies are incorporated into the self through the amputation of organs and a fusion with the technology, or Donna Harraway’s idea of the cyborg being (53; 75). Susan Sontag also comments that humans are embarking in an era where their capacities are being extended through the incorporation of technology (70). All of these authors lived in the same century undergoing similar transformations. Becoming-animal shares traits with becoming-cyborg, but shares less traits than with becoming-anthropomorphic, which can thought of as a cyborg becoming animal. Becoming-furry, creating a fursona, involves the selecting of an animal for its desired attributes, and the selection and incorporation of endlessly variable and customizable components. The body becomes molecular, allowing organs or parts to lose their attachment to a particular function and become something like what they want to become, hopefully satisfying the conditions of the thing which make it what it is, or its hacceities. This process of attempting to become always fails, but also always produces a becoming. In this sense becoming furry can also be thought of as a failed becoming animal, or a becoming-animal that can be more or less far along a line of flight from human to becoming-animal and animal to becoming-something else (274). Becoming-furry is of an entirely distinctive character from becoming animal, containing aspects of human, anthropomorphic animal, animal, machine, and idealized self.

I think much of the attraction of anthropomorphization in furry porn comes from its lack of specificity, which comes from its distance from mere humanity. There is an innate tendency to desire attributes from humans that transcend what is humanely possible, which is a possible source of our tendency to personify and identify with animals, or machines. Furry or cyborg becomings allow us to choose elements of our selves to excise, replacing them with more idealized animal, or machine components. There is a powerfully expanded potentiality that occurs through all of the variables this simultaneity offers. Like cyborgs, furries are creatures of social reality as well as creatures of fiction (Haraway, 75). Whereas in human representations, once the universal sexual ideal has been defined, it exists in one, unchanging, unrealizable form, varying only through redefinition, subtle ornaments, transgressions, or hair colour, furry art is able to -- through the choice of animal, and manner of illustration -- offer infinite and immediate variation to what generally represents an unchanging ideal. Moreover, through the use of animals, rather than humans, the ideal does not have the same minute obligations to perfection, approximation, or literal demonstration. Not only can animal or cyborg representations realize ideals, but they can surpass them, or add variation to them. In the fantasy-realist aspirations of some furry art, attempts can be made to render realistic anatomical details, realistic fur, semen, textures, backgrounds, emotional expressions, without any of these realisms endangering the essential disconnect from reality. Furry art offers the possibility of completely reimagined associations with real representations. They are abstractions and stylizations of dynamics that in reality are far more varied, complex, and detailed, or weighed down by the specific consequences and effects that they produce.

The process of becoming-furry also involves the selection of an animal. Animals are often chosen for their associations, characteristics, or attributes, as they coincide with the self or an idealized self. The selection of an animal is also the selection of a position in relation to other animals, analogously to relationships between humans. As Deleuze comments, “Relationships between animals belong to science, but also to dreams, symbolism, art and poetry, practice, and practical use” (235). In this way, despite the distancing from reality produced through anthropomorphization, the dynamics, structures, and politics of reality persist in anthropomorphic representations. I see these dynamics in the way animals tend to stratify themselves into sexual roles, in a similar manner to how value and attributes tend to become associated with particular social groups, genders, attributes, races, sexualities etc. There tend to be distinctions between larger, dominant tops, and weaker, more submissive bottoms. Between a male and a female, the female is generally submissive; between a straight-acting, masculine man, and a gay, effeminate man, the more masculine man tends to top; larger furs tend to top smaller furs; athletic, fit furs tend to top un-athletic, overweight furs; normal, ordinary animals tend to top unusual, exotic animals. This manifests as dogs topping cats, as dogs are seen as more masculine and stronger; carnivores top herbivores; larger animals, such as lions, tigers, wolves, or dogs, tend to top smaller animals, such as deer, foxes, pandas, or cats; lions, tigers, or wolves, tend to top other lions, tigers, or wolves, perceived as less masculine. Moreover, in anthropomorphic, humanized characteristics, personality-wise, tops tend to be rude, unemotional, fun-loving, professional, mature, stable, and strong, whereas bottoms have less dominant or 'feminized' personalities, being silly, emotional, sexually-charged, slutty, immature, consumable, and even danger-seeking. Perhaps this can be explained by an inherent attraction to sexual dynamics that are polarized, and in a tendency of furs to create fursonas related to sexual roles existing, or rather idealized, in real life, and taking pleasure in selecting, negotiating, experiencing, and demonstrating the attractiveness of a particular sexual and social role.

Becoming furry means becoming a member of the furry fandom, analogously to how becoming a wolf is always becoming a pack of wolves, or becoming a wolf in relation to the pack (243). Deleuze talks about packs and crowd(masses), which he borrows from Canetti, who Macluhan and Sontag also both think about (Macluhan, 104; Sontag, 193). Harraway talks about community by affiliation or affinity. The concepts are largely similar, implying a kind of organization that is based in principles of disorganization, the individuals which form the pack and pack which affects the individuals. The boundaries of the pack are defined by its elements which are anomalous, just as the most strange and sexual; furries are the ones who determine the boundary of definition for the word furry (245). The sexual furries turn out to be most of them, though furries will delay this admission. In this sense, it is appropriate that the words for the furry fandom, ideal, and community are so difficult to define or disambiguate from each other, because it reflects well on the position of the assemblage in defining the nature of the group. The impulse to become furry, as Deleuze describes with the pact with the demonic wolf, is probably the smut for many furs (244). Statistically, most furs are gay or bi males. Deleuze also describes wolf packs as best representing minorities, or criminal organizations (243). The furry fandom has an ambience which is under the radar and illicit. It is thoroughly abject in terms of seeming like an underworld, being anonymous, and being disorganized. The furry fandom exists in the dark corners of the internet, being largely unknown. It is not yet swept up in the codified, linguistically stable molar state entities.

To surpass the difficulties of obtaining antlers, muscles, fur, furries invent technologies of self-formulation which aid their becomings-furry: fursuits, stories, porn, art, role-plays, and avatars. Dildos with forms that are fantasias on animal anatomy can be purchased online. They find the necessary animal elements to become their anthropomorphized animal, and incorporate the hacceities – movements, features, intensities – of the animal into their becoming (274). The different planes, or mediums – writing, drawing, fursuits, role-plays, porn -- each have distinctive characteristics allowing them to effectuate becomings with varying degrees of successfulness or limitations. Deleuze and Guattari, Marshall Macluhan, and Susan Sontag all realized this, though they use different language. The becoming furry operates between all of these, on what Deleuze calls the plane of consistency. Harraway would call it cyborg ontology, a joined structure of imagination and material reality (150). A furry does not need to participate in any particular self-formulating technology to enact his becoming furry, but multiple technologies can be adopted and fused with the self. If the fursona exists anywhere, it is as a drawing on the plane of consistency, over a temporal unifying plane called the plane of immanence. Components, influences, drawings, ideas, written descriptions, are accumulated by furries, adding up to their fursona or idealized self within the fandom.

The media, art, and porn produced within the fandom are excellent, and largely produced by furs within the fandom. The aesthetic language is symbolic and descriptive, and it draws from an inventory of stock characters, settings, stylistic conventions, and tropes. Two things come to mind: the process of becoming through the composing of hacceities, and Susan Sontag’s description of the distinctive features of porn. Both of these are relevant, since most art within the fandom is a hybrid form, functioning as art, entertainment, porn, communication, discourse, and representation. In The Pornographic Imagination, Susan Sontag examines porn as a medium, with an emphasis on what porn is, and what porn does. Porn occupies an ambiguous space between art, as an expression of extreme forms of consciousness, or document, as evidence of them (36). She calls the psychological, social, linguistic, and artistic realm occupied by porn the pornographic imagination. This is related to her observation that the features of porn that define it as a medium: fantasy, singularity of focus, transgression, and a language in which ideas are synonymous with actions, are what contribute to its effectiveness. Sontag notices that the lines between fantasy, which is always seen as unproductive and infantile, and imagination, which is seen as producing art and knowledge, is blurry, and differentiated by societal and psychological influences rather than by aesthetics (48). The stock characters, undeveloped settings, and borrowed plots characteristic of porn suggest that porn works through the use, rather than the expression of erotic materials (48). “Sex is not pornographic, but rather images or representations of it – structures of the imagination – are . . . Porn mainly makes one think of other porn, rather than unmediated sex, and not to the detriment of the erotic effect” (48). Porn works through the rearrangement of an inventory of erotic materials existing in the consciousness of the creator and reader into new combinations, arrangements, schematics, for the purpose of drawing new conclusions and producing sexual satisfaction which is the same as knowledge. Porn is a language in which ideas are synonymous with actions (58). She notices that porn is powerful when it is obscene, which is less a matter of depravity than it is about resonance (55). The powerfulness of porn is measured precisely though how closely the artist brings the reader to experiencing death, the loss of their sanity, or the loss of their humanity (62). Porn operates along polarities of total dominance or submission, and she identifies its aim as annihilation/ transcendence, or the annihilation of another (69). She sees the ultimate effect of pornography as producing sexual or pornographic knowledge through a poetry of transgression, which as it is seen by society as dangerous, must also mean it is important (71). Susan Sontag uses different language and has a narrower focus than Deleuze and Guattari, but their observations on the affects and purpose of artistic mediums resemble each other. Her notion of the pornographic imagination and the transformations it produces can be thought of as the lines of becoming being formed between the artist, or reader, and the figures represented in the porn, on a plane of consistency. The hacceities and movements which constitute the world of the representation are aligned with, and experienced by the reader, allowing the porn to sweep the reader into becomings, which Susan Sontag calls transformations.

The role of porn or art within the fandom is related to self formulation, transformation, and becoming, which can be affected through multiple discourses. Posting a drawing of a character is, within this discourse, a way of advertising and sharing a character, soliciting reaction, evaluating its merits, making it more real, defined, and known. There are sexually oriented motives specific to furry porn. Posting a character, and soliciting a response to it, helps verify the attractiveness of its design, the way it is drawn, and the situation it is presented in. This can be a personally driven motivation towards creation, or a socially driven motive for expression and recognition, but generally is a combination. An artist's aspirations in conveying a character and creating a work may be limited to the attractiveness of the work itself. To a commissioner, this can have the descriptive effect of having a finely made portrait. The appreciation of a viewer is not necessarily related to these artistic or character-driven discourses at all. But their evaluation is a part of the discourse nonetheless, being what is sought by the artist and contributors. As reading any comment list under a drawing posted on Fur Affinity will reveal, people react to furry art on a variety of levels.

Possessing, and controlling fursonas enables new kinds of interactions. The most intuitive, though perhaps most interesting possibility is for the character to be described, fit into narratives, or interact in drawn scenarios with other characters. On virtual, discursive, or ‘real’ levels, it is very difficult to tell what is going on when two different people's fursonas are depicted together in furry porn, or even in solo situations. Sexually, perhaps nothing is actually happening. But what is sex? Is there a meaningful distinction between a person drawn in a sexual situation with another person, or masturbating with another person over a webcam feed? Is masturbating via webcam more, or less extreme than being depicted in more involved situations in furry porn? How much is furry porn a private interaction between a few individuals versus an extreme exhibitionist display? Is anal sex, or a blowjob sex, or is sex defined as vaginal penetration by a penis for the purpose of procreation? Is it a meaningful distinction that the interaction is occurring between created characters, versus if it happened in real life, and is posted to xtube? These questions are less difficult to navigate when we allow ourselves to thing of the way fursonas are a version of the self which exists on the Internet, and is suspended within the real life self. When sex occurs over the internet, the interaction does occur, the only question is on which plane, which aspect of the self. Fursonas are a distinctively cyborg mode of being. “A cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints” (Haraway, 154). They are a way of manoeuvring between blurred realities gracefully.

Given the large number of conscious or unconscious opportunities for distortion, exaggeration, or omission mediating any online self-representation or encounter, the main distinction between using a fursona as an online representation versus one with the pretence of being a projected, accurate version of the self, is only the explicitness of the fiction involved in the process. The creation and use of fursonas is a way of participating in and encoding a visual language, participating in new hybrid discourses and interactions. Artistic mediums are explored in ways that blur distinctions between art, porn, communication, document, and self, and effectuate the same kinds of blurring on the people who enjoy them. Becoming furry is becoming cyborg, in the terms Donna Harraway describes, becoming a part of the technology we use and the technology becoming an aspect of ourselves. It is also a becoming animal, like Deleuze described, except where becoming animal is much like becoming cyborg. Using a fursona represents a kind of surrender to the necessarily distorted aspects of the Internet, or a stylization of Internet being, that is necessary for interaction in these circumstances to be understandable, fun, or graceful.


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Bibliography

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. "Becoming Intense, Becoming Animal." A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1987. 237-545. Print.

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Twentieth Century." Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. 149-181, 243-248. Print.

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McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man,. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. Print.

Sontag, Susan. "The Image-World." On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977. 153-80. Print.

Sontag, Susan. "The Pornographic Imagination." Styles of Radical Will. New York: Delta Book, 1969. 34-73. Print.

Sontag, Susan. Under the Sign of Saturn. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980. N. pag. Print.