as originally posted on shadowthekitsunereturns.tumblr.com
by Oxthebeardog
After several days of data collection, analysis, and formatting, I’ve finally finished compiling all the data (well, the easily-categorizable data) from the survey I released last week!
There were a total of 409 responses to the survey by the time I closed it up. All in all, the demographics suggested by the sample of furries surveyed pretty accurately mirrored my predictions–as a community, we are majority male, overwhelmingly white, and most of us are in our teens and 20s. Gay, bi, and pan are the three most common sexualities within the fandom, followed somewhat closely by straight and aseuxal. I haven’t made a graph of this just yet, but there were a total of 42 respondents who included the information that they were polyamorous or supported polyamory. Of those 42 respondents:
0 were straight
7 were gay
7 were bisexual
14 were pansexual
3 were asexual or greysexual
2 were demiromantic
3 were demisexual
1 was androsexual
6 did not specify their sexuality outside of being polyamorous
In regards to length of time spent in the fandom, about half of all respondents said that they have described themselves as furries for the past 1-5 years, while about one fourth have been in the fandom for 6-10 years.
As a whole, we are a very Internet-based community, as most respondents are involved with the fandom online quite frequently, but very rarely in person. Though there was a fairly large diversity in regards to whether furries know other furries, it seems to be the case that most (though not by a large margin) are acquainted with more non-furries than furries.
The vast majority of respondents felt accepted for both their gender and sexual orientation. However, there was a considerable drop in positivity when asked whether the fandom was accepting of other people of various genders and sexualities (though it should be noted that most respondents still believed the fandom to be largely positive and supportive). Regardless, furries do seem to be considerably more accepting towards various facets of the queer community than non-furries are on average.
A large number of furries within the survey purported to have some form of connection with the queer community outside of the fandom–the numbers air slightly on the side of non-involvement, but not by a large margin. It would appear that casual involvement is the least common–most furries are either entirely uninvolved or frequently involved with the queer community. Meanwhile, in the eyes of those furries who do have some connection to the queer community, it appears to be relatively unaccepting of the furry fandom in comparison to those who do not actively participate.
With all that said, there is still more data that was collected in the survey, though it is qualitative rather than quantitative–things like “How does your experience in the fandom in person compare to your experience online?” I will be looking through this data piece-by-piece over the next day or two, and using the information therein in my final analysis paper. I’ll post that paper online once it has been fully graded and revised, if necessary.
Finally, I’d like to thank @furrywolfcyrus, @diadektrius, @verysmolcat, and @spartadog; @HavenFusky on Twitter; sinibuns, xXJewelynXx, and Kero on FurAffinity, as well as VonKrampus, ClemFox, Rashkah, Keefur, and bigblueraptor, all of whom were a huge help in the creation, revision, and spread of this survey. It was thanks to you that I even managed to get on my feet with this project–I couldn’t have done it without you.
Furry Times 