International Anthropomorphic Research Project
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International Anthropomorphic Research Project Anthrocon 2015 Working Paper Full Citation: Plante, C. N., Gerbasi, K. C., Robers, S. E., Bruegel, K., & Conde, W. (2015). International Anthropomorphic Research Project: Anthrocon 2015 Summary. Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/anthropomorphicresearch/past-results/anthrocon-2015 Anthrocon 2015 Furry Artists, Fantasy, and Post-Con Depression In July, the IARP attended Furry Fiesta for its sixth consecutive year (though Dr. Gerbasi and her colleagues have been doing research at Anthrocon before the IARP’s inception for several years more!) Anthrocon has always been the flagship of our team’s research, representing the biggest sample of convention-going furries we’ve got. As such, we spend a good portion of every year planning for our Anthrocon study, deciding which of the hundreds of questions we want to ask to such a large sample of the furry fandom. One of the difficulties of this task is paring down the number of questions we have from several hundred to a manageable 6-8 page survey. We managed to do so, balancing questions that were either very likely to be fruitful or which were very interesting to us and to furries. In striking this balance, we ended up doing three separate projects: our standard Anthrocon survey, a second, “artist-only” survey, and a post- convention follow-up survey. This write-up represents a brief summary of the data we collected at Anthrocon 2015. As with all of the IARP’s write-ups, we endeavor to find a balance somewhere in the middle ground between writing up a small, overly simplistic point-form list of conclusions and flooding the reader with hundreds of pages of statistics. While there are certainly many more findings than are presented here, the present results were chosen because they are the most interesting to furries, have the most potential to lead to future research, or because they were the most surprising to us. As always, if you have questions, concerns, or criticisms about the presented findings, or would like us to run an analysis to satisfy your own curiosity, please e-mail Dr. Courtney “Nuka” Plante at [email protected] . Methods: What did you actually do? The data presented here represent a compilation of three separate studies that were conducted at Anthrocon or in the days following Anthrocon via online survey. In all studies, all participants were over the age of 18, as required by our ethics review board, and all participants’ information was contributed anonymously and confidentially. The first study presented was a study of artists in the Anthrocon Dealer’s Den. It served as a follow-up to our Furry Fiesta 2015 artist survey, and sought to study a much larger, more representative sample of artists and writers in the fandom. Moreover, many more questions were added to the survey, using the feedback we attained from our Furry Fiesta 2015 artist survey. Questions on this short, two-page survey (it was kept short in the interest of not disrupting the workflow of busy artists in the Dealer’s Den) included demographic questions, questions about their art content / career, their attitudes toward fans and other artists, and questions prompting artists to discuss some of the common problems they encounter in the fandom. In total, of 150 surveys passed out to nearly every artist in the Dealer’s Den, 69 were returned to us. This represents a fairly good-sized sample of artists in the Dealer’s Den, though it is worth mentioning that this sample is unlikely to represent all artists in the fandom (e.g., online artists, new artists, older artists who no longer attend conventions, etc…) The second study was the IARP’s annual Anthrocon survey, an 8-page survey handed out to nearly 2,000 furries attending Anthrocon. More than half of the surveys were handed out by the researchers to participants on the Thursday before the con, while they were standing in line waiting to register for the convention. The rest of the surveys were distributed by the researchers at their table in the Dealer’s Den throughout the course of the convention. Participants completed the survey in exchange for a ribbon for their convention badge, a small vending machine prize, and a donation to the convention charity. In total, 992 surveys were returned to us, of which 979 were useable (e.g., were not completed by minors, handed in blank, etc…) The survey was broad in scope, and included questions assessing general demographics, fantasy engagement, well- being, belongingness in the fandom, definitions of terms, fursona, species stereotypes, self- consciousness, and more. The final study was intended to be a study following up on our general Anthrocon study. At the end of the Anthrocon survey, participants had the option of providing us with their e-mail address and a self-generated unique code. If they chose to do this, we e-mailed them, 3 or 7 days after the convention, with the link to an optional online survey. This survey included many of the same items from the general survey, as well as several additional items. In essence, the goal of this survey was to assess whether participant answers would change from the time they were at Anthrocon to the time they returned home and settled back into day-to-day life. A significant motivation for this study was prompted by furries’ discussion of a phenomenon they called “post-con depression” in many of our past focus groups: a felt “slump” or “down period” in the days and weeks following a furry convention. This study aimed to see if this phenomenon existed and, if so, whether it could be observed and measured using existing psychological instruments. In total, 154 participants completed the post-convention follow-up survey (83 completed the survey approximately 3 days afterward, 71 completed the survey approximately 1 week afterward). Results: Get to the Data! The results of our findings are presented with the aim of making them as accessible as possible to everyone reading, presented as a series of question-and-answer sections. To improve accessibility, we display two forms of our results: one geared toward an audience with little to no statistical background, who want a simple, concise answer to the research question, and a second targeted toward readers who are more stats-savvy, which include the results of t-tests, ANOVAs, and multiple regression analyses conducted using the statistical program SPSS. Part 1: Artists in the Fandom 1. Does the sex/gender composition of artists in the furry fandom differ from the rest of the fandom? Short answer: Yes, absolutely. In fact, while the furry fandom, as a whole, is predominantly male (about 75%), artists in the furry fandom are almost equally predominantly female, with about 75% of furry artists self-identifying as such. Moreover, when asked about their gender (as opposed to their sex), we found that many people who indicated that their sex was female also indicated that they identified as a man or as genderqueer / non-binary, far more than those indicating that their sex was male, the vast majority of whom indicated they identified as a man. Long answer: As the figures above illustrate, in a complete reversal of the trend found in the broader furry fandom, furry artists seem to be predominantly female. The IARP has been assessing self-identified gender separately from sex, recognizing that there are many people for whom their self-identified gender is either not represented by their body or who do not feel their gender identity falls into a “man/woman” dichotomy. Studying sex and gender this way has been particularly informative with regard to the artist sample, as it shows that 14.7% of artists self-identify as genderqueer or non-binary, information that would have been missed had we simply asked them to check “male” or “female”. Moreover, our findings suggest that a far higher proportion of females (as compared to males) indicated that they identified either as transgender or genderqueer. We are, as of yet, unsure why artists show such a dramatically different sex/gender composition compared to the rest of the furry fandom, and future research will be investigating this issue. However, it is worth noting that, in the past, we have suggested the possibility that the furry fandom as a whole, being predominantly male, may seem like a “boys club” to women. This may discourage women from joining the fandom, or it may preferentially select for people whose gender identity is more in-line with traditionally masculine traits. For females who have an “in”, however (e.g., “I’m an artist, I belong here”), they may find it easier to belong to the fandom. It remains for future research to these hypotheses. As a final interesting note, the table below illustrates that furry artists, as compared to non-furry artists in our sample, were nearly 5 times more likely to self-identify as genderqueer/ non-binary, and were twice as likely to self- identify as such compared to the general furry population. The reasons for this are as-of-yet unknown, but represent an interesting finding for future research to explain. 2. Are furry artists older than furries in general? Short answer: Yes. Whereas the average furry has been found to be in their early-to-mid 20s, the average furry artist in our sample was in their early 30s. In addition, there is a far higher proportion of older furry artists than there are older furries in the broader fandom. Long answer: The figure above shows that, unlike the age composition of the broader fandom, which is heavily positively skewed (e.g.