Another furry survey --- links, thoughts
Dec. 18th, 2009 08:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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krinndnz pointed me, over in her LJ (friends-locked, but a lot of you will find this link useful anyway), toward a University of Alaska survey about furries, or furvey. [0] There's rather a history of bad surveys and research done on minority populations, which often makes people nervous about this sort of thing. (A part of me hesitates to class furries as "a minority population" --- but in this circumstance, of researchers saying "Ooh, here are some different people I can go and research," I think it fits.) In recent cases that have a lot of Internet press, there's always that ridiculous slash brain sexuality study (as ceruleanst points out over on Krinn's blog), and I also just read tagonist 's post about trans studies recently, and I also also still have PIlar Osario's work (thanks to this conference) about how race is not really a great category for medical studies sitting in the back of my head and percolating. So I approached this furvey with some trepidation, but decided I would go ahead, Google-stalk a little bit, and take a look at the survey itself.
Short, spoiler-free verdict: Actually I don't think it's that bad. One of the two researchers identifies or has identified as a furry (or I suppose is outright lying): "My name is Eric Olson, I am the data gnome and the person who suggested the study in the first place. I think the furry community, for all its weird little quirks is, on the whole, a pretty positive thing. I certainly benifited from it and I suspect quite a few other people have too." [1] That's not necessarily Objective (tm) but it makes me way more comfortable than other surveys have in the past. (I'm hopingeredien will chime in here on the furry survey that was going around Anthrocon --- I didn't take it, but she did and she talked to the researchers for a while, too. [2]) Also, you're able to click submit, read all the questions, and decide if you want to participate or not; it's just one page (although if you answer "yes" to one question it pops up five text boxes that were invisible before). This is way better than that surveymonkey nonsense that makes you answer two things, click, answer two things... so if you were sitting on the fence about this, you might as well check it out.
I did fill it out, and while I don't think it's nearly as problematic as some of the other surveys on such topics I've taken in the past, I'm not sure how interesting the results will be. Things like "How did joining the furry community change your life?" really seem like they need an hour interview, not two small before and after text boxes; I ended up writing a ton because I didn't want the narrative to be "I used to be sad but then I found furries and now I am happy!" Personally, I don't find that to be true in a meaningful way, and I don't think the question gave room for the intersections of furry and other identity markers or cultural groups to really be explained at all. All of the questions are either "yes/no" or free text entry fields, and I did like that. Also interesting: It didn't ask for gender, age, race, or other identifying markers at all. It really just wanted to know if you were a furry. I'm not skilled enough with this kind of data gathering to know if that's a good idea or a bad idea or what, but it was nice not to have to pick a gender out of two options again.
The things I found most interesting I actually think have very little to do with furry and much more to do with the evolution of social groups across the Internet. Furry is one of the groups out there with a lot of geographic spread and online socialization --- I think more and more groups are like that, but furry has arguably been at it longer than some of those groups, and so the social patterns there could be interesting. There were a bunch of questions about internet and in-person socialization, and the difference between them, and I found my own answers pretty interesting. Personally, I have a bunch of friends in different places, some of whom I've never met, but most of them I try to make a point of meeting, even if I'm going to interact with them primarily online; it real-personifies them for me and that's valuable. I know not everyone does this. I think collecting the different ways and reasons people do or don't do this would be interesting. I don't know if they're going to get that from this survey, but maybe it will make the question apparent to them or some other researcher. Or maybe there's tons on this already! If you know of any, please comment, I'm curious if nothing else. :)
I'm actually curious about how other people respond on this. I'm very lucky --- I have multiple very supportive social groups, and for the most part my answers to questions about support are just "Yup, I'm good. Yup, I'm happy. Yup, lots of friends." Do furry and other such geographically dispersed social groups offer resources to people who would otherwise have difficulty getting them in the places they live or from the people they spend in-person time with? Probably. And I think discussing and studying that --- furry as one example maybe, but not as the thing in itself --- has the potential to be really interesting and valuable.
Thoughts?
[0] Yes, they actually called it a furvey. Furchrissakes.
[1] I don't know why "benifited" reads as such a furry typo to me, but it does. Also my cite for this is http://uafurvey.org/question.html Also also, if that's the Eric Olson who I was able to find attached to UAlaska on Google, he has a usenet history. I didn't read it, because I don't care that much, but it at least suggests "not a fresh grad student, probably someone who's been attached to the university forever." But I haven't verified that it's the same person, because I have work to get to. ;)
[2] What she said about it made me nervous; from my recollected conversation, it seemed to her that they were looking to find a diagnosis parallel to gender identity disorder or something similar. That diagnosis itself makes me nervous --- Who are you calling disordered? --- but I'm torn about completely discarding it because it's actually afforded me and other people I can point to cheaper access to valuable medical resources. I'm not sure how that would help furries, unless insurance companies are going to start covering full-body leopard print tattoos or surface piercings for whisker mounts. Although there's totally a Blue Cross/Blue Shield Approved Fursuit! racket in here waiting to happen. Other people had other objections that I don't feel qualified to comment on. Wikifur also has articles on other furry surveys for people who really want to dig into this.
krinndnz pointed me, over in her LJ (friends-locked, but a lot of you will find this link useful anyway), toward a University of Alaska survey about furries, or furvey. [0] There's rather a history of bad surveys and research done on minority populations, which often makes people nervous about this sort of thing. (A part of me hesitates to class furries as "a minority population" --- but in this circumstance, of researchers saying "Ooh, here are some different people I can go and research," I think it fits.) In recent cases that have a lot of Internet press, there's always that ridiculous slash brain sexuality study (as ceruleanst points out over on Krinn's blog), and I also just read tagonist 's post about trans studies recently, and I also also still have PIlar Osario's work (thanks to this conference) about how race is not really a great category for medical studies sitting in the back of my head and percolating. So I approached this furvey with some trepidation, but decided I would go ahead, Google-stalk a little bit, and take a look at the survey itself. Short, spoiler-free verdict: Actually I don't think it's that bad. One of the two researchers identifies or has identified as a furry (or I suppose is outright lying): "My name is Eric Olson, I am the data gnome and the person who suggested the study in the first place. I think the furry community, for all its weird little quirks is, on the whole, a pretty positive thing. I certainly benifited from it and I suspect quite a few other people have too." [1] That's not necessarily Objective (tm) but it makes me way more comfortable than other surveys have in the past. (I'm hoping
eredien will chime in here on the furry survey that was going around Anthrocon --- I didn't take it, but she did and she talked to the researchers for a while, too. [2]) Also, you're able to click submit, read all the questions, and decide if you want to participate or not; it's just one page (although if you answer "yes" to one question it pops up five text boxes that were invisible before). This is way better than that surveymonkey nonsense that makes you answer two things, click, answer two things... so if you were sitting on the fence about this, you might as well check it out.I did fill it out, and while I don't think it's nearly as problematic as some of the other surveys on such topics I've taken in the past, I'm not sure how interesting the results will be. Things like "How did joining the furry community change your life?" really seem like they need an hour interview, not two small before and after text boxes; I ended up writing a ton because I didn't want the narrative to be "I used to be sad but then I found furries and now I am happy!" Personally, I don't find that to be true in a meaningful way, and I don't think the question gave room for the intersections of furry and other identity markers or cultural groups to really be explained at all. All of the questions are either "yes/no" or free text entry fields, and I did like that. Also interesting: It didn't ask for gender, age, race, or other identifying markers at all. It really just wanted to know if you were a furry. I'm not skilled enough with this kind of data gathering to know if that's a good idea or a bad idea or what, but it was nice not to have to pick a gender out of two options again.
The things I found most interesting I actually think have very little to do with furry and much more to do with the evolution of social groups across the Internet. Furry is one of the groups out there with a lot of geographic spread and online socialization --- I think more and more groups are like that, but furry has arguably been at it longer than some of those groups, and so the social patterns there could be interesting. There were a bunch of questions about internet and in-person socialization, and the difference between them, and I found my own answers pretty interesting. Personally, I have a bunch of friends in different places, some of whom I've never met, but most of them I try to make a point of meeting, even if I'm going to interact with them primarily online; it real-personifies them for me and that's valuable. I know not everyone does this. I think collecting the different ways and reasons people do or don't do this would be interesting. I don't know if they're going to get that from this survey, but maybe it will make the question apparent to them or some other researcher. Or maybe there's tons on this already! If you know of any, please comment, I'm curious if nothing else. :)
I'm actually curious about how other people respond on this. I'm very lucky --- I have multiple very supportive social groups, and for the most part my answers to questions about support are just "Yup, I'm good. Yup, I'm happy. Yup, lots of friends." Do furry and other such geographically dispersed social groups offer resources to people who would otherwise have difficulty getting them in the places they live or from the people they spend in-person time with? Probably. And I think discussing and studying that --- furry as one example maybe, but not as the thing in itself --- has the potential to be really interesting and valuable.
Thoughts?
[0] Yes, they actually called it a furvey. Furchrissakes.
[1] I don't know why "benifited" reads as such a furry typo to me, but it does. Also my cite for this is http://uafurvey.org/question.html Also also, if that's the Eric Olson who I was able to find attached to UAlaska on Google, he has a usenet history. I didn't read it, because I don't care that much, but it at least suggests "not a fresh grad student, probably someone who's been attached to the university forever." But I haven't verified that it's the same person, because I have work to get to. ;)
[2] What she said about it made me nervous; from my recollected conversation, it seemed to her that they were looking to find a diagnosis parallel to gender identity disorder or something similar. That diagnosis itself makes me nervous --- Who are you calling disordered? --- but I'm torn about completely discarding it because it's actually afforded me and other people I can point to cheaper access to valuable medical resources. I'm not sure how that would help furries, unless insurance companies are going to start covering full-body leopard print tattoos or surface piercings for whisker mounts. Although there's totally a Blue Cross/Blue Shield Approved Fursuit! racket in here waiting to happen. Other people had other objections that I don't feel qualified to comment on. Wikifur also has articles on other furry surveys for people who really want to dig into this.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 02:00 pm (UTC)My engineer brain's objection to this is that being trans is feeling the identity of something that exists (man, woman) while being otherkin is feeling the identity of something that doesn't exist (talking fox-person, dragon, &c.)*. I can construct a number of explanations for how brain chemistry or hormones or some sort of physical system could lead to trans identity --- of course I have no idea if any of them are true, and I think it doesn't matter, but Engineer Brain has much more difficulty coming up with a reason for otherkin.
Theory Brain steps in and is all "Who says men and women exist? Aren't those also socially constructed identities, and the only difference is that more people are publically inhabiting them and they're deeper ingrained into the culture?" And this is a very good point --- while clearly people are born with penises or vaginas, we don't really have reliable data points on people being born with wings. Of course, this is awfully body-essentialist, isn't it? I don't have a problem with people identifying as genderqueer, why should I have a problem with people identifying as speciesqueer? Theory brain and engineer brain are largely able to agree that they don't have a problem with that, but aren't sure if it's the same phenomenon or not. Theory brain likes using the same methodology and engineer brain doesn't, but they figure they can hash that one out if they ever find themselves doing the research.
Activist brain, though. Activist Brain is all "You guys are missing the point." (Enlighten us, O Activist Brain.) "The point here is that the way people study trans is broken to begin with! This whole `gender identity disorder' thing is a bunch of garbage. Continuing to use these models and methods to study trans people is doing harm by reinforcing problematic narratives! Why would we take that harm and superimpose it onto a new community just for the convenience of some academics?" And the whole time Theory Brain is taking notes like crazy, but Engineer Brain is just sitting in the corner muttering something about second system syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect).
And this is why I usually keep my internal monologue internal. :) But I think both "Are these phenomena actually similar enough to study this way?" and "Is this a valid way to study even the first phenomenon?" are both valid questions. The answer to one or both might be yes, but I don't know.
*One could argue this point, but not with Engineer Brain.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 04:29 pm (UTC)Scientist Brain (mine) wants to know what models and methods Activist Brain (yours) thinks should be used to study trans, even if they are just kind of speculative ideas rather than fully-developed models and methods.
Scientist Brain always seems to run into sticking points in these sorts of conversations because most other people seem to be thinking solely from the perspective of their Theory and/or Activist Brains, and Scientist Brain finds this terribly unsatisfying. Activist Brain (mine) reminds Scientist Brain that it's not actually other people's obligation to satisfy her about the nature of their experiences, and Scientist Brain knows this, but wishes that there was more constructive dialogue going on between Scientist Brains and Activist/Theory Brains, because they often seem to be off in their own little worlds unproductively creating echo chambers with each other, especially Theory Brains. Scientist Brain is privately dubious sometimes about the Theory Brains' little world's relationship with the real one.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 04:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 05:44 pm (UTC)Some people appear to actually be doing this.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q124gu26164651m1/
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a909392359&db=all
http://www.psy.surrey.ac.uk/people/staff/p.hegarty/LGBT/2005%20Hill%20Transphobia.pdf
But not as many as ought to be. A lot of the work on transphobia seems to be centered around understanding its effects on trans people, or on helping trans people to cope with it. Which are worthwhile endeavors, but addressing the symptoms rather than the causes.
Do you think that understanding the phenomena of cis and trans (e.g. what model should be used to frame gender identity, what causes cis and trans identities) is at all worthwhile? Or do you think that it's beside the point since it doesn't directly help trans people?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 09:50 pm (UTC)I have the same worries about trans research, with the additional caveat that if many people are trans because of brain chemistry but a few people are trans for some other reason, and "brain chemistry" becomes the standard for authenticity, that will suck in different ways from current standards of authenticity. (And is harder for people to fake; right now it's fairly easy to spew bullshit at shrinks until they give you hormones, it would be much harder to fake a CAT scan.)