Furries & Omegaverse: Why Are They So Popular?

In this episode, we dive deep into the world of furries, examining statistics, incidents, and stereotypes surrounding the furry community. We discuss a chlorine gas leak at a furry convention, the financial aspect of fursuits, and societal perceptions of furries. We also explore the growing trend of Omegaverse fiction, its appeal, and its comparison to the furry fandom. The discussion delves into anthropological aspects, psychological perspectives, and the intersection with other subcultures. The episode addresses parental concerns, societal norms, and the evolving nature of digital communities.

Speaker: [00:00:00] You're too late. Our spread has already begun. The planet will fall, just like every other before it. I understand, you were a human once. But you were once called

Speaker 2: DON'T YOU SAY THAT NAME! DON'T YOU SAY IT! I'm Strong Fang now! First in my name! My power knows no bounds! I can even almost blow myself! Watch.

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to do a deep dive into furries because recently I came across some, some furries statistics on furries that dramatically changed my conception of the phenomenon.

Speaker 8: The Chicago Tribune, 19 people were hospitalized at a furry convention in Illinois after what's being called an intentional leak of chlorine gas. What's a furry convention? Did I get that wrong? Oh gosh. Okay. Officials were called when I spoke. [00:01:00] Strong overflorines. What? Spread them.

Speaker 12: I think they had to evacuate the building and everything. Set the hotel guests, along with convention attendees, into the cold night. Many still dressed in their furry, furry costumes. We have a lot of costumers out here with big, fluffy costumes that'll keep people warm. So at this point, we're not at all worried.

Speaker 10: So we've been pulling people into a, like, a cuddle to like warm this baby. Thank you. And giving her our jackets and blankets. Yes. We just told Mika what the convention was about. She's Costumes kept everybody warm was the good news. The hotel was contaminated. Where you going? Hey! Guests came back and died at 4 a.

Speaker 12: m. Please still come back. The matter is a criminal case. Could you check? Could you check on me? Because he's just okay. She's over there somewhere.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. We talked about them before in like super early episodes, but I'm really glad to be coming back to it, especially after how much fun we [00:02:00] had doing the weird subcultures episode focused on which is steal people's fear. Check out that episode because now there's a new fear that pronatalists are stealing people's penises in Africa.

And, and some people might be like, why would I engage in sort of what they may see as weird fetish territory, right? Like, why is it important to understand this stuff as our society increasingly descends into more. You could say moral degeneracy and there are a number of reasons probably the biggest is if you have kids

Stuff like this is going to have a very different role in their life than it had in your life because what furries fundamentally represent for a lot of people is the idea that they can portray a different and pseudonymous personality and build relationships around the pseudonymous personality The problem being is that fursuits cost 10, [00:03:00] 000.

Well, like, you know, I'd say like, what does it say here? Between two and 10, 000. So furries are funnily pretty loaded. The ones who like get super into it. And this is

Simone Collins: something that came up at last year's natal con that when we were talking about, well, what segments of the population are otherwise socially isolated, but really incompetent.

Aside from autists, cause everyone had realized that the conference was disproportionately autistic and that pronatalist groups should probably target high competence, high, high wealth people and a very prominent person on Twitter who I'm not going to name because it was, you know, we want to respect Chatham House rules pointed out that furries are just like typically really put together competent people with a lot of money to your point.

Those costumes are not cheap.

Malcolm Collins: Well, actually, this brings a thing where the stereotype of the furry differentiates pretty heavily when you're talking about, like, the every furry, Simone.

Which is to say that the stereotype of the [00:04:00] furry is that they are incredibly socially bad, like, stupid people. They are incompetent.

They are like the

Simone Collins: Furcon people.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So the Furcon people, and this is important to understand is this is a stereotype that will develop around any community that doesn't have high barriers to entry. Because individuals who are expelled from all other communities begin to spend an increasing amount of time with that community, which creates this stereotype.

So whether it is. Furries or train collectors or people who go to dog shows or any of that, you're going to begin to develop this stereotype. Whereas the stereotype of put together are typically communities that have like a, a cost barrier to entry, like some amount of money barrier to entry which furries do to some extent or their communities that have some other barrier to entry.

Like one of the things that always pointed out is neuroscientists. Are unusually attractive like people who get when I was in getting like neuroscience degrees It was one of the most like attractive on average [00:05:00] degrees at the school And this was because it was harder to get into than other degrees the people in it were more put together because it was harder to get into than the other programs and that was a program I went to that's why I mentioned it.

And I I think that that defies a lot of the stereotypes there So I think what you might be seeing with your friend here who's saying this is some sub But Culture of furries that likely has a barrier to entry that he is familiar with and not maybe the general furry community. But because furries, there's definitely mega cringe throughout the furry community.

Oh, for sure.

Simone Collins: Yes, that's

Malcolm Collins: true. I'd point out is, well, I mean, let's

Simone Collins: also point out though. There is also make a cringe throughout the autistic community. So there's some kind of striation going on,

Malcolm Collins: right? So the pseudonymous identity is going to become increasingly inexpensive to access for the next generation because of a VR online spaces and the amount of people who have their primary social network.

In an online environment. And you as a [00:06:00] parent can say, well, my kids shouldn't have that. And I'm like, yeah, but did you still do the COVID lockdown? Did you still, you know, like the, the world today has made it systemically difficult for many kids to build friendships outside of offline environments and the friendships they're going to build was in online environments are often going to be better matched to their interests.

Because they get to choose sub interest communities from any group in the world, instead of the people who happen to be in their church group or their school. And so if you do not understand these communities,

Speaker 2: This This cannot be where it

Speaker: all started. Anyone would admit she's pretty hot. It's a totally normal reaction. That doesn't make me a furry.

Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh

Rola was the beginning, but she's not the source. [00:07:00] She merely awakened what already worked in the depths of our humanity.

You want our existence to have an easy answer, something you can point to and stop. But there is no stopping us. So long as there are outcasts with no dad to play catch with, or lonely homeschooled boys with internet connections, or Asians.

Malcolm Collins: And so if you do not understand these communities,

for example I mentioned the parent who thought that their daughter had got involved with a very wholesome group and a very studious group because she really liked writing fan fictions now.

And I was like, oh, No, you should probably, like, educate yourself on fanfiction communities.

Speaker 11: You're on the cannon ground. I'm up in crack ship's face. Let's start a shipping war.

Don't care if I get hate. Don't like my pairing. Well, then you can Hit the bricks. This is my OP. I'll go down with this.

Malcolm Collins: And, and it's the same with, [00:08:00] like, even if you're not into this stuff it's the same, the analogy that we've used before is in the past you could just avoid degeneracy, and now it's a bit like that scene from Abyss.

Where, you know, you, you can't just avoid water anymore.

If you don't give your kids an internet connection and then they grow up and they interact with the internet for the first time, without any prior experience, or annotation you are basically throwing a baby into the deep end of the pool. But when you do give your kids, the internet, that place is such a cesspool these days.

It is basically like this scene, but with degeneracy instead of water,

Fluid breathing system. We just got them. Anyway, you breathe liquid so you can't get compressed. The pressure doesn't get you. Check this out., can I borrow your rat?

What are you doing? You're gonna kill her! It's okay, I've done this myself. She's gonna be fine. Look, look, she's freaking out. She's just going through a normal adjustment period.

She's gonna drown! He's He's taking the fluid into his lungs. Still has a bit of anxiety here. Damn rat's breathing that s**t. That is . The [00:09:00] goddamnest thing I ever saw. See, the fluid's harder to push in and out than air. It's a little more work to breathe.

. She's diggin it. She's doin it. She ain't diggin it.

Malcolm Collins: Another thing I'd note here is that if you see furries as a cultural anathema as a phenomenon in terms of drawing people in I would encourage you to do. Any level of anthropological research or research into historic religions or traditions it's probably one of the most persistent reoccurring traditions across cultures, whether you're talking about the ancient Egyptians or the Vikings or the, like the Vikings and their bear costumes, where they take on bear personas or you know, African tribes or native American tribes or taking, We've said it

Simone Collins: before and we'll say it again.

Trad wives aren't trad, furries are trad.

Malcolm Collins: Furries are dramatically more attr What if you just mean common and traditional settings? But yes furries are found voluminously throughout history. And I'd actually say that our culture may be unique in not [00:10:00] having celebrations that are culturally normative in which individuals take on pseudonymous animal identities.

Or anthrop Anthropological identities Right, we're the exception. Yeah, yeah, we're the exception. We're the weirdos.

Simone Collins: We're the freaks.

Malcolm Collins: Not the funny. I will note that cultures that shy away from this sort of practice seem to outcompete the cultures that don't. That's important to know, that like while monogamy is actually rarer in a like total cultural standpoint, monogamous cultures tend to outcompete non monogamous cultures.

And I think it's the same potentially with this, but we can get into some reasons why that may be the case. But the larger point here I'm making is a lot of people who are like, well, my kids just will never be tempted or exposed to these communities or never have to engage with these communities.

And I'm like, like, what are you basing that on? And they're like, well, when I grew up, I wasn't and I was like, were you like obsessively online growing up in the way your kids are? Because I can tell you anyone who [00:11:00] was obsessively online, like myself, even, you know, 20 years ago you were exposed to furries from almost day one.

Like, they have been part of the digital native environment for a very long time.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah,,

Malcolm Collins: and also for us, we need to be particularly focused on this because we have autistic children and furries are overwhelmingly autistic.

Simone Collins: Ah, yes.

Malcolm Collins: Now, furries, or a lot of things on furries, will tell you that furries are not, like, a predominantly sexual thing, right? Like, they're like, this isn't, like, a sex thing, you know? This is, like, about art, and, like, identity, and everything like that. The problem is, is furries are a not sex thing? Is the same way in being gay is not a sex thing.

It's like, yeah. Okay. You might live 98 of your life not having gay sex, but that doesn't mean that being gay isn't predominantly a sex thing you know you you [00:12:00] it's like saying being in a gay marriage isn't predominantly a sex thing because like Most of what you're doing is like raising a kid or like making meals or having conversations with each other but it's like yeah, but That is still like a, you know, so I'll get to the stat here.

That really shocked me on this. So, in a study titled the furry phenomenon characterizing sexual orientation, sexual motivation and erotic target identity inversions in male furries. So they surveyed 334 male furries recruited around the Internet and. A large majority reported non-heterosexual identities, 84%, and some degree of sexual motivation for being a furry 99%.

Mm-hmm . So only 1% of furries, at least male furries, are not reporting a degree of sexual motivation for engaging with the community. It's very similar to like the whole trans thing, where it's like, if you have like, we had a lot of trans friends before, like, and we had deep [00:13:00] conversations with, about this stuff before coming out as potentially like trans skeptic which was quite a coming out of the closet for us, right, but we still have a lot of them as friends, but not as many, they're not going to be as open with us as they used to be, but in the conversations where they were very open with us, one of the things we would always hear is they're like, I mean, you know, for like public relations, like the party line is, this isn't a sex thing, but like, it's a sex thing, at least in part.

You remember hearing that Simone, right. Or, yes. And they're like, and this is why, like within the community, they'll like try to target and shame individuals who admit this to prevent them. And one of the ones we were talking to was he'd been talking about how this happens and they're like, Oh yeah.

Like you're allowed to have these conversations in private with other trans people, but you can't have them in public. And I get why they would do that. Like, yeah, it totally makes sense. Right. You know, but anyway, to continue here, the person, Oh, and by the way, if you're like, Oh, furry is a small population.

So we were looking at like the amount that consume active, like pornography related to furry stuff in our [00:14:00] book which is around 6 percent of the U S population. This is around the same amount that consume a tentacle porn. So to give you an idea of how big that is, that's roughly equal to the size of the smallest 15 U S States combined.

Simone Collins: Okay. Wow.

Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So big, big

Simone Collins: a sizable number of people, which is another reason why this should not be stigmatized.

Malcolm Collins: I'm okay with stigmatizing it.

Speaker: Templar. When you called us, anal moles, pet o philes, and furgets, that was very hurtful. Now say you're sorry.

Malcolm Collins: I'm okay with stigmatizing it. Look, it's, it's, it's we can talk about whether or not it should be stigmatized. I think that's something we can close with here.

Oh, the other thing that we're going to talk about at the end here, I forgot to mention this at the beginning. And the other thing we're going to mention in this is go into the Omega verse

Simone Collins: [00:15:00] boy. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And talk about what might be going on there and like the underlying mechanisms that could be leading to these arousal patterns.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, next study here. Furry sexuality conditioned fetishes a better explanation than erotic target identity inversion. And in this they said, As a result, where furry sexuality due to a conditioned fetish, a trend towards ambivalence about the sex of both human and partner might be expected to some extent.

In contrast, Hugh and Bailey, 2019, expected that due to ETII males who desired partners who were female furry characters, their erotic targets, would also desire female furry characters themselves, their identity. Of the 307 participants included in Table 4, this was the case for 4 individuals. one percent.

This compares to 157 individuals, 51 percent who were ambivalent about both their own sex and their partner's sex as furry [00:16:00] characters to some degree, as might be expected if the erotic focus was on a fetish to some degree. Now that's fascinating to me. 51 percent of people who are furries Do not care about the gender that they are presenting as as a furry or the gender their partner as a furry is presenting as, regardless of their sexual identity.

Although, keep in mind that 87 percent consider themselves as some form of LGBT. Thoughts?

Simone Collins: Yeah, it's almost as though there's like a different orientation, like you're gay, straight, or, you know. Into animals, you

Malcolm Collins: know, as we point out like the actual levers in all of this are way more complicated You can look at our video like my husband's not gay Where we talk about like same sex attracted men in heterosexual relationships of which I am NOT one I know many people like, assume things from the title of the video without watching it.

But what we point out in that video is that the way that [00:17:00] sexuality actually manifests, and arousal patterns actually manifest, is so discordant from the idea of a predominant gay straight dichotomy that it is sort of pointless to even use the words gay, bi, or straight. It's better just to point out the things that arouse you, i.

e. You know, the secondary female sex characteristics, primary sex, its female sex characteristics, and point out the things that disgust you, which we argue are also on this arousal spectrum. So, just quickly, we argue arousal works from in relation to any specific target stimuli a response that goes from arousal to extreme disgust with the neutral response not being, you know, zero, right?

You know what I mean? It is zero, but then you can get a negative coded response here. So another study here that I found really interesting this is furries, eight to Z anthropomorphism to zoo of. Um, In this research, they surveyed both furries and non furry individuals attending a furry convention and a comparison group of [00:18:00] college students.

Furries commonly indicated dragons and various canine and feline species as their alternate species. None reported a non human primate identity. I thought that was pretty interesting, actually, how rare non human primates are. And I'll get to a chart that goes into this in more detail.

Simone Collins: That is interesting.

Huh? I never thought about that. Why are there no ape or monkey furries?

Malcolm Collins: Right. Actually I won't read the full of this because we get better data in just a second,

we'll get to the point that this survey was going to point out is a lot of furries consider themselves not fully human But I I instead here now want to get to a graph of what furries choose as their Fursonas because a huge chunk of furries nearly half of furries report to only having one fursona Which is pretty strong So a lot of furries only have like one identity they choose and then outside of that even more furries only have one Species they're focused on and the top fursona species are wolves 19 to 20 percent dragons, 13 to 16 percent boxes, 15 to 16 percent [00:19:00] dogs, 10 to 12%.

And cats this includes domestic and big cats, 14 to 16%. And this chart here has a bit different with dragon being further down. This

Simone Collins: just the, the presence of a dragon is so confounding for me because you could kind of guess maybe if this is a sex thing, it's some kind of orientation around.

body hair, like the more body hair something is, or just the more primal something is like that, you know, they're just the, and, and mammals may seem to exhibit that more, but dragons are reptiles and they're not even real animals. What, what is happening? I don't even know how they behave.

Malcolm Collins: Actually sorry, this gets even weirder for a theory that I was fairly certain of I thought was driving a lot of people to the furry fandom.

What was your theory? So, my theory was that it was around supernormal stimuli tied to dominance and submission. So, specifically we argue [00:20:00] in our book The Primate's Guide to Sexuality, that it appears that in humans, the Displays that are meant to signal dominance and submission would have borrowed from our arousal system because we see this in most social animals Specifically social mammals.

So for example dogs when they are signaling submission to another dog They will like prepare to be mounted right like it's a sexual symbol because the system evolution is a cheap programmer It'll just borrow other systems and when you get reverse gender dynamics like in spotted hyena, where females are dominant Females actually have a pseudopenis and they will get an erection to show submission and males get an erection to show submission in, in spotted hyenas, which I found very interesting.

But the point being is that we likely being social mammals borrowed these systems. And then women preferred dominant partners, because that was probably a better sign of their ability to care for her offspring and their ability to. Like, like in humans. As a [00:21:00] woman, you can tell more about the fitness of an individual by their position was in the tribe.

Then you can tell by what they look like, which is why women would have cued really strongly to dominance and submission as their primary cues for arousal patterns. Well, anyway, he. Within humans, there is only so much dominance or submission you can show now. There's a concept called a supernormal stimuli It's something like if i'm a bird and I was evolutionarily coded to sit on like blue round things and that's how Evolution got me to sit on my eggs and you put like a big blue ball next to it That's like bigger than an egg.

It could ever have it will choose to sit on the big blue ball. It didn't have an evolutionary reason So it's like To have some sort of like negative or cancelling out response to big blue balls, right? Well, we likely didn't have that many Evolutionary things that were meant to cancel out super normal dominant or submissive displays and so if you are aroused by submission are there higher forms of submission that you can engage in within [00:22:00] a sexual or fantasy context?

than just Somebody having sex with you. Right. And I think one of the evoked sets that people are going to have here in the same way that, like, I point out when somebody wants like tender submission, right. Where they're like, I want submission, but I want to feel safe and protected. I think this is where the daddy Dom little girl thing comes from.

Yeah. Well, and this is

Simone Collins: where pet play comes in, but furries and pet play, people are super different.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because we have so few evokes sets in our society of what tender dominance looks like that for a lot of people, all they can think of is dads and pet owners. And so they, they then play out those roles.

Well, with furries, I assume what might be happening more frequently. Is predator and prey rolls because predator and play rolls would be a good example of a super normal, dominant or submissive stimuli. Yeah. IE what's more dominant than a male hunting you to have sex with you? It's a okay. You aren't

Simone Collins: in [00:23:00] society where like everything has to feel super egalitarian and people don't even like admitting that social class exists then like you have to turn to animals struggles to survive and eat each other.

To find those dynamics that you find sexually satisfying. That makes sense,

Malcolm Collins: right? So here's, here's the evidence for this and here's the evidence against this theory. Okay. Okay. So the evidence against this theory I'll start with is, is it almost like first owners of typically submissive animals are incredibly rare or not submissive.

I guess of typical prey animals are very rare. So, You have to go quite down until you get to a bunny. Bunny is like eighths or ninths here. And, and even then, so if I just read like in order, right, you have wolf, fox, dog, big cat, dragon, mythical cat rodent, rabbit so those two, I guess, I put in the prey category.

Yeah, wrote on some of that. I put in prey category. Reptile, avian, bear, [00:24:00] horse, aquatic, hyena, skunk marsupial, dinosaur, deer, feline, squirrel, ferret, canine, insect.

Simone Collins: Feline comes that far down? Well, I think it's because they're breaking

Malcolm Collins: feline out from cat. You saw they had big cat, cat, and feline here, and I think feline,

Simone Collins: Oh, just broadly cat like?

Okay. Yeah. Strange. So I So, but, I still feel that within species, you can have Yeah. This is, this

Malcolm Collins: is where I feel the opposite. So if you look at because I've, I've watched some of these like YouTube shows about books that are popular with, with young people I really got into this one about not, I didn't read them.

I just read people talking about them, like reviews of it and the trauma in the community. Yes. There's one about like cats or something. It's called like, Danger, not danger cats. What is it called? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Simone Collins: It's

Malcolm Collins: called like warrior

Simone Collins: warrior cats warrior warrior cats Not to be confused with thunder cats of our childhood

Malcolm Collins: And they [00:25:00] got like 16 books in the series or something and there's all this community drama and everything But like they've they've spawned like online environments where you can play and like warrior cats environments And it's like an mmo sort of a role play thing like second lifey, right?

And they've got like people would pay like You There's like one case of me paying like a hundred thousand dollars for like a warrior cat like drawn thing of it's weird. Okay, like I just pointed out that like there's a lot of people who write books in this space and I have explored What are the themes in these books?

And dominance, interspecies dominance, and religious rituals are often Featured very heavily in a lot of this furry stuff and this got me thinking. Oh, so what they're looking for is ritualized dominance and submission rituals, which we don't have in our society. There are not really good ritualized dominance and submission rituals in human society outside of what you get within like BDSM play.

But that doesn't feel, I think for a lot of people like real, it feels very [00:26:00] artificial. And so that may be something that they're trying to cue through here. Okay, so

Simone Collins: a less a less contrived feeling of dominance and submission play.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and we'll get to I think that that's what the omega verse is about a lot as well.

Simone Collins: Oh that for sure. Yeah that much is That the omega verse is a very hierarchical but also primal in its drives society, so it's hierarchical but it doesn't feel like it's arbitrarily so which I think helps You With the narrative and to make that stimuli like hit better, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and furries were broadly we've talked about this before, but it is worth noting here what I think causes the furry fetish, especially the more extreme forms where people are quite anthropomorphized and like could not be coded as human.

Is that we likely I mean, remember how I said, like, birds would need a disgust reaction to eggs that are too large, right? Otherwise, they'll just always sit on the big [00:27:00] blue ball of those exist in their environments in the same way that. Human males, for example, need a disgust reaction to other human males, or they're going to end up sleeping with those other human males.

Whereas human females may not need that disgust reaction as much, because that's not going to be as detrimental to them from like a disease perspective or something like that, which is actually what you see.

Actually, you also see this. And the cultural session of medic reinforcement. , in that religious bands against lesbian sex is super, super rare. , for example, you don't have it in Christianity, Christianity. No we're in the Bible. Is there a ban against women sleeping with other women yet? It's purely explicit about men not sleeping with other men.

And the disease transferal rate of these two practices is incredibly differentiated. Very, very, very high risk of extreme disease transferal in male to male sex.

Very very, very low list. It risk in female to female sex.

There's just not that much of a negative from it.

I actually decided to ask an AI this, and it said [00:28:00] that male male sex had eight extremely high risk of disease transference. Whereas it marked the disease transference, wrecks risk of female, female sex as negligible, but not impossible, significantly less than heterosexual sex, which is, , I think shows. The incredible low risk of it.

And where's that low risk, very little cultural, evolutionary pressure to evolve an aversion to it, or biological evolutionary pressure for women to have discussed at the idea of having sex with another woman as high a level as the disgust that most heterosexual men feel. Towards the idea of having sex with another man.

And humans are definitely going to need a disgust reaction to Things that look like humans, but are not humans.

Here, specifically, I am thinking primates, right? Because we actually know with other primates, crossbreeding happened, like, fairly late in human evolution. Like, well [00:29:00] after, like, the hominid chain split off, there was still degrees of crossbreeding. I think this might explain the incredibly rare rate of apes within the furry community.

is If the thing that we had to learn to build a disgust reaction to was other non human primates you would have gotten a pretty strong signal from something that looked like an ape in terms of a disgust reaction.

Simone Collins: Interesting. So it's been kind of bred into us.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But you should also have a disgust reaction to non humans more broadly, right?

Yeah, because this

Simone Collins: is not going to produce successful offspring. Don't try.

Malcolm Collins: I am going to read a section from the pragmatist guide to sexuality here, but before I do, I need to. Bring you up to date with one of our theories on how a common fetish type works.

Earlier, we mentioned that in our model for sexuality. Arousal, doesn't go from arousal to no response. It goes to arousal to discussed with a neutral response in the center. , whenever something seems [00:30:00] to arouse the vast majority of the population. It will discuss a small minority of the population.

Whenever something seems to discussed a large majority of the population, it will arouse a small minority of the population. You do not see this with other strong emotions.

Like say a fear of Heights or a fear of fire.

Here, what we are arguing is that the. Loudness of the arousal or decisis. Signal carries over. So for example, if the majority of the population finds a dead body at like the highest level of disgust output, Even individual is born, was a sign flip there. They will see it with the highest level of arousal output. Same with say sex was an animal.

If a normal person is going to have, , an extremely high discussed output to that, these small minority of the population that is interested in that is going to have an extremely high arousal output to that.

Fetishes that are the result of [00:31:00] signed flips seem to be characterized by being overwhelmingly male and being early in onset.

So if I'm gonna read from our book, the Pragma Dis Guide to Sexuality on this one fetish group that may be tied to inverse systems that due to his over representations of males and early onset is zoophilia slash bestiality.

Both of these communities are aroused by the idea of sex with animals, and both are surprisingly common. Kinzie study back in 1948 found 8% of men and 3% of women had had sex with an animal by the time he, whoa.

Simone Collins: I forgot that, that's Almost one in 10 people,

Malcolm Collins: right?

Simone Collins: I didn't think about it. Didn't fantasize about it.

Just, just wait for it

Malcolm Collins: for it. But with time dropped was more recent studies showing them around 5 percent and 2 percent respectively, likely a product. of lower access to animals in a more urban society. These numbers are fascinating when contrasted with our survey results, which suggest that only 6 [00:32:00] percent of males and 2 percent of females are aroused by the idea of sex as an animal.

If the data is accurate, this indicates that around 87 percent of people who are aroused by the idea of sex with an animal have tried it. The impulse must be incredibly strong in that portion of the population that experiences it. This leads to support the theory of volume modifiers are developmentally separated by plus minus signs.

The volume of the disgust generated by the idea of having sex with an animal is super high in the average person, so the arousal by it would be equally high in somebody who accidentally was basically multiplied by a negative one in terms of the way their system worked. Now, not to go further into the data here because we can do a whole different video on zoophilia that I think would be really interesting because the communities there are weird as hell.

In terms of their level of sophistication, because they have to be quite sophisticated in the way that they traffic animals for this.

Simone Collins: Well, and let's also be clear, like the logistics of sex with animals is not without hazard. There are complications and there are detailed guides on [00:33:00] navigating this.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So the before I get further, I yeah. So what I'm saying here is the system that's meant to tell you, oh, this thing isn't human is either like laxer in these individuals, or you might even have an inverted system in these individuals. And keep in mind that historically there is a preference for individuals who are not activating a disgust reaction, but who look very different from you.

If you can watch our video, our redheads monster girls we talk about this in more detail, which is to say that whenever you have a strong sex selection I eat tons of males in a region where dying and you typically have this across northern regions, like incredibly far north regions, you will get selection for unique.

Morphological traits that basically appear nowhere else. These include multiple hair colors multiple eye colors extreme freckles and being a ginger, And it is interesting like as europeans you may not consider how weird it is that we have Different eye colors in different hair colors [00:34:00] in different ways that our hair grows out and different.

Like some of us will be curly haired. Some of us won't in a lot of ethnic groups around the world. That's just not true. This level of internal diversity and that was driven by an extreme number of deaths in the male population which led to females being able to, or the remaining males being able to select the females they want.

Or I think it was, No, it might have been the opposite. It might have been an extreme number of deaths in the female population compared to other groups. But it was due to one of the two. Anyway, the point being, it just led to more strong sexual selection, which shows that even in a historic environment, people preferred the most unique looking that didn't set off a, this is not a human response.

So that's likely what we're seeing here.

Simone Collins: Right, because furries, to be clear, don't look like, full out animals. Typically, they look like anthropomorphized. Animals. I don't know. Yeah. They look like Tony the Tiger. Not, which by

Malcolm Collins: the way became like a, [00:35:00] in the furry community and and Kellogg had like a big problem with it because they all turned Tony the tiger to this hot gay guy because he comes across like a gay guy to me.

I'm sorry, like, doesn't Togi the tiger sort of come off like a friendly gay guy. And so they made him into this like Tony the Tiger, like sex idol in like the gay, furry community.

Simone Collins: I just love, like, whoever this marketing intern is who has to deliver this information to their superior, trying to explain, there, there's this community called furries and they, I don't want to explain too much, but they like dressing up in costumes and you know, these like, well, what?

Like mascots? And they're like, yeah. Yeah. Like mascot costumes. Why is that a problem? Well, sir, I just, Oh, to be a fly on the lawn.

Malcolm Collins: Right? Yeah, they're furries. I have a slideshow I need to show you and we'll explain many things, but also bring many more questions to the table. [00:36:00]

Simone Collins: I would just have them watch the Internet Historian video on FurCon, I think.

It'll do it.

Malcolm Collins: Internet Historian is such a goat. Oh, furry reference there, right? Like not just, oh, but anyway. The other thing that I think draws a lot of people to furry is, and this is what a lot of people in the furry community will tell you. Speaking of our videos about autistic individuals over autistic representation communities, and looking for a sense of identity when you don't.

deal that you identify strongly with the things you think you're supposed to naturally identify with like a personality. So many furries are drawn to the fandom as a means of exploring their identity. The concept of a fursona, an anthropomorphic animal character that represents an individual allows furries to create idealized versions of themselves, often imbues with positive characteristics they aspire to have.

That can be partially appealing for those who are shy, reserved, or socially anxious in their everyday lives. So, consider, right, like, if you are a shy person, and you then say, Well, [00:37:00] my fursona isn't shy, he's really outgoing all the time, you know, he's like Tony the Tiger, right, you know? And people aren't seeing you and aren't judging you.

They're judging something else, something that you only partially identify with.

I knew that even I do this.

To an extent without putting on a furry costume, which is to say, I have a persona that I know I can queue using.

Specific. Preset. emotional and verbal commands. , by that, what I mean is. At the beginning of every conversation, I say something. Fans of the show may have noticed it, or they may not have, if they are incredibly low.

Perceptions stats. , which is I in an exuberant voice. Say hello with a big smile on my face. And that puts me in a high energy, , gregarious and affable. Persona. That is not necessarily my default persona, [00:38:00] my default persona. Is much more.

Disinterested and pragmatic and cold and not really interested in talking to, or being around anyone other than maybe my wife. , but if I have. Preset myself into this alternate persona. It's very easy to keep it going once. I've sort of seeded it and I can see a furry costume is also doing a fairly good job of that. It's just probably easier if you just did it with like a cue word or something like that.

This can be a very interesting way to sort of get around personality flaws that you aspire to overcome in a social context. And for some weird people, these personality flaws can be really, really strong. But then the secondary thing that this can be very useful for is individuals who

individuals who are autistic and when they're like, well, I have these few things that are not human like, or that fill into the, like, okay, imagine you're describing your personality and you are autistic, [00:39:00] right? And then. You realize that because we, in our society, even though we have dropped a lot of this idea of, oh, we're going to have like anthropomorphized animals as a major part of our society.

We still have a collection of stereotyped personality traits that we associate with anthropomorphized specific species. And so these individuals might. Be like, oh, I am this collection of personality traits and then they look to animals and they're like, oh, that actually fits like what I think of wolves being like, you know, like, and then they're like, oh, so I must be part wolf, right?

They're trying to sort things. They're trying to order things like an obsessive pattern to the extent where if you look, what you see is 22 percent of furries. So these are, I'm going to go over a few studies here, believe they were less than 100 percent human. Huh. While 23 percent believed they were other than 100 percent human.

And [00:40:00] approximately 1 in 3 furry, 33 percent reported feeling not 100 percent human. The concept of being less than 100 percent human is complex within the furry community, blah, blah, blah, blah. And 25 to, sorry, 22 to 25 percent of furries consider themselves less than fully human. So I found that really interesting.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I wonder if this, if they believe like on a genetic level, maybe, that they're not fully human. I don't know. Or if they just don't want to identify fully as human, I want to dig deeper on that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I don't know.

And doing more research on this. I found that this belief. is considered parallel to the belief that a trans individual would have that they are not their birth gender. , So there used to be this thing called other kin, which was like the idea that some people were partially animal and they would identify as an animal in the same way a trans person would identify as the other gender. , but the other can concept and community just got shamed to high hell.

And so I don't [00:41:00] know if that many people really identify with it anymore, but instead there's now just sort of this background assumption within the furry community. Because so much of the free community is trans to very high overlap in these communities. , which is. Well, I mean, I'm not going to make a political stance around this, but yeah, in the same way, I identify as another gender.

I identify partially of another species.

And this brings me to my conclusion on what I think of the furry movement, which is to say. It's mostly a harmless movement. And I really do not see the point in outright shaming it as much as something say generic, transgender isn't, which is just way more of a waste of time, money, resources, emotional effort on something that. Or not. By the data I've got to make you particularly more comfortable with yourself or happier or better off. , whereas with furries, I don't see it as bad because it's not like they're living their entire life as a furry.

They're doing it. [00:42:00] Occasionally at conventions, right? Like if transness was something that people did a few times a year at a convention, I'd support it.

If it was something where you just bought like a $10,000 costume that you could, you know, stop using whatever you wanted to. Well, yeah, I'd be like, that's, that's totally fine. And this is why I do support cross dressing, drag Queens, drag Kings. All of that stuff. If you're doing it as an, every now and then performance or something like that, and it makes you feel good, that's fine., Just don't dedicate your entire life to it.

But was furries.

, the big consternation I have with them is their connection to these other mimetic clusters. Which are so harmful, like the, Gender identity obsession and stuff like that. , and note here, when I'm complaining about transgenderism, I'm not complaining about just having like a fluid gender identity or a different gender identity presentation, all that stuff has been really common throughout human history.

I'm totally supportive of that. What I'm complaining about is gender identity [00:43:00] obsession. , and an obsession with the ways that other people are interpreting your gender identity. That's where it becomes really unhealthy. and communities that are accepting of individuals who build this type of obsession can cause this obsession to spread.

It appears to be a viral phenomenon that if you go to our video recently , on, Eating disorders and transgenderism. , there isn't really any historic or cross-cultural parallel with this sort of gender obsession. , yes, there's historic parallels for fluid gender identity, which I'm okay with, but what there is not is gender obsession.

As to why I am concentrated by this gender obsession phenomenon. Well, it's associated with a 50% attempted on a Live-ing. Rate. Of course, I would be concerned about my kids catching up memetic virus

having a 50% attempted, you know, what rate.

Gender obsession appears to be a totally modern phenomenon, . And so. Interestingly for me, my concerns about [00:44:00] the furry community are completely downstream of my concerns against this memetic virus and not about furries themselves at all. In fact, I would go so far as to say, , of the sexual deviancy is that are common today.

, furries are probably both the, the least offensive and the most traditionalist, as I've mentioned, almost every culture in history had some sort of a celebration like this.

As to how I would have my kids relate to something like this, I would say, just apply the rules that we use for everything else. Which is to say, if you want to occasionally indulge in furry conventions or indulge in furry erotic material. Whatever. So long as you do not. Incorporate a sin into your identity is so long as you don't incorporate an indulgence into your identity and you recognize this for what it is and indulgence. You occasionally dabble in that gives you some additional happiness or something like that. But to never sacrifice your only chance at meaning in life. Which is your [00:45:00] industry, your productivity, your ability to uplift our species. For indulgence. , which is a lifestyle of freedom or a lifestyle or any other lifestyle, which lowers your standing in society and, , wastes your time and waste your money.

And then people would be like, no, you should, you should fight for a society where everyone accepts furries. , just as much as anyone else and they can get jobs just as much as anyone else. And they can like, that's the society we live in right now. What we, what we shame is people who walk around all day in a fursuit or with a tail attached or something like that.

And you're like, well, why shouldn't we live in a society where, fursuits are totally normalized and it's like, why would we want to normalize that? , they're, they're big, they're cumbersome. They would get smelly really quickly. They would be difficult to clean. They like the. When people are like, well, why can't we normalize this incredibly inconvenient and self-indulgent behavior?

It's like, well, because it's completely inconvenient. It's self-indulgent okay. There's a reason why it's not normalized there. A reason why even historically, in the societies that did have [00:46:00] furry like parties and stuff like that, none of the people in those tribes went around all day

and their animal for zonas.

, you would just do it at special events.

And with my kids, that probably means, okay.

Do you want to get a, like a half. Cheap fursuit go to convention occasionally. Sure. You're dropping 20 K on a Luxe suit. No that's is wasteful

Why is affirming your furry identity so much more important than the lives that money could go to saving or the science that money could go to improving or any personal project for self-improvement that you could be spending that money on like education or anything like that? It just obviously isn't and I think, , learning too.

See people who dedicate their lives to self-affirmation with disgust is an important thing for me to teach my kids. Because then that can make. These sorts of self-affirming lifestyles or lifestyles that are built around. Having other people see you a certain way.

Less appealing.

Recently on the discord, somebody who's like, oh, Malcolm, you know, you wouldn't be so skeptical of this trans [00:47:00] stuff. If. Trans people were more accepted in mainstream society. Like this must be just downstream of appealing to a conservative base or, oh, Malcolm. How could you Bose? , engage in effective altruism or want to create this iteration of effective altruism, heart effective altruism, and be trans critical. Into this, I would say there is literally nothing more antithetical to actual effective altruism than a trans individual.

This is somebody who spent time, emotional effort and tons of money in terms of modifying how they see themselves and how other people see them. They could have gone towards actually moving our species forwards or saving lives. It is the highest display possible within our culture right now, outside of walking around with diamond teeth. Of personal indulgence and obsession. Instead of dedicating your life to other people.

And they're like, well, what about the people who were just born? A different identity and I'm like, I I'm [00:48:00] totally fine with that. Look, if somebody's in. Like let's say this happened. Let's say that sometimes. Female brains were born inside male heads and sometimes male brains were born inside female heads and I'm like, then just act with a different gender expression. You know, Nobody else seems to have this absolute obsession was being seen as a certain way, except for like Andrew Tate in like the, the, the far right.

Like Chad Brodes, it seemed to have some form of body dysmorphia. An obsession with the way that you are gendered by other people is not a normal part of human psychology.

And not mentally healthy. And normalizing a psychological license to develop. These kinds of obsessions is very bad for society.

But I find that interesting.

Simone Collins: I mean, I definitely, I think a lot of kids do this. I went through phases where I, Wanted to be a cat as a child.

This is not something I'm proud of. You have

Malcolm Collins: to tell the audience about this phase. This is like, it wasn't a normal level of wanting to be a cat, [00:49:00] right?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I would, I would very actively imitate cats. I was convinced, I was quite young while this was happening, okay? That I could speak with cats. Like telepathically, maybe I can't remember the full details of it, but I was pretty convinced of it.

My friend and I would imitate cats all the time. We were very effective at it. It was. Looking back on it, extremely embarrassing.

Malcolm Collins: Not really, for a young girl. At the

Simone Collins: same time, I was thinking that There were these books called the Animorphs series. I don't know if you remember these. Oh yeah, no,

Malcolm Collins: Animorphs was apparently super based if you read it all the way through.

Simone Collins: Oh, I actually have never read a single one because I'm not actually that interested in human trans transformation into animals. And

Malcolm Collins: I haven't, I don't know, my cat face was just a thing. But I have read YouTube summaries of them, Simone.

Simone Collins: This is

Malcolm Collins: your,

Simone Collins: your literacy. I, have you read the book? Well, I've watched the YouTube summary which is [00:50:00] honestly so much better in many cases.

Yeah. So I, I mean, I think that there's something deep in humans that makes them appreciate animals perhaps. There's even some sympathetic magic. I know that when I was a kid at my preschool, I went to this home based preschool where the leader of it would make a cake of your design choice, any design choice, if you were a kid.

Then I always wanted a swan cake for my birthday because this was a birthday treat. So she would make a sheet cake shaped like a swan. And I thought That if I ate the swan cake, I would become a swan. I wanted to be a swan cause swans are graceful. So, I mean, I definitely, there's, there's something.

Malcolm Collins: Simone, this is, this is why I think it's important to talk about this.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because if you raise your kids, not realizing that the type of phase that you went through is normal. Okay. Yeah. Normal to do this. And, and like you, you're like, Oh, this is very non normal. Is this is very weird. Yeah. Then [00:51:00] your kid who is experiencing that and has access to online communities, they are going to be very easy to be targeted by furry communities.

Oh, not like,

Simone Collins: oh, you just like pretending to be a cat, then it becomes, so you're a furry, and here's your friend. You didn't have access to

Malcolm Collins: online communities back then. If you had met a furry community back then, How appealing with the ideology that they're selling that well, a lot of people aren't fully human.

And why don't you come to our events where we all do the little cat thing together.

This is why it's so important.

If you want your culture to survive the internet. That you do not shame. Normal things as weird. And it even helps if you do not shame a weird things for the sake of being weird.

Remember shame the indulgence and not the impulsed people don't choose what impulses they are subject to. They choose how much they indulge in those impulses. [00:52:00] And a small level of indulgence should never be an excuse for shaming.

Because that leads to rumination and obsession, as you can see from any study on trying not to think about a thing.

And you could say, well, why, why would you.

Allow for that sort of stuff. And it's well, in a historic context where an individual with afraid of their community rejecting them. , and then them having to live in the woods that were dying or being kicked out of the tribe. , being shamed was a really powerful way to enforce.

Convergent and behavior. Unfortunately in a modern context, it has the exact opposite effect. Because that individual who is being shamed for something, they feel this strong, negative feeling associated with, oh, I'll be rejected for the community. Or they might hide that thing about themselves and feel, oh, if the community knew they'd reject me, but then they can find communities that accept them for that thing in an online context. And then it gets even worse because, well, they have a fear [00:53:00] or an emotional pain associated with the mainstream community that they're associated with, but a feeling of protection and comfort with this online community.

And then, well, they began going to conventions where they can indulge in this aspect of themselves. And before, you know, it, there's no way to reach them anymore because now they have a group of people who accepts them for this thing that you told them was weird and something they should feel bad about. And when you're trying to get them to come back to your people or your community. What do you have to offer them? You say, come back to us so you can feel shamed for this again, so you can feel embarrassed about this again.

Why would they come back? That social technology while it made sense that it evolved, it had like.

Early human context, or even a pre-modern context in the age of the internet is incredibly deleterious and like.

shooting your genetic line in the face.

Your kids growing up are going to know what furries are. They are going to encounter [00:54:00] furries regularly, and they're likely going to have furry friends. Eve you tell your kids. Furries or evil people.

Don't engage with them. Don't go around them to attempt to isolate them from a phenomenon like this when they meet a furry and they realize that furry isn't evil and is in fact a nice and otherwise normal person. Every other warning that you gave them tied to furries completely flies out the window because at the first step you invalidated yourself.

So when a person who didn't grow up in an environment around furries who didn't grow up, having furry friends tells me, oh, this system that my parents used to keep me from becoming a furry is going to keep my kids from becoming a furry. I'm like you. You never even had an option to be effortless. Like what are you talking about? Please use a degree of common sense.

Think about it this way.

Okay. Your parents didn't have to worry about you becoming a furry, but maybe collecting comic books with something your parents. Shamed people around you, four or playing Dungeons and [00:55:00] dragons. And then you snuck out and you did that. And you got really into that. How could they have prevented you from doing that?

Well, they probably couldn't have right now. What if they had told you that you will never be accepted into a church again, if you. Play video games or collect comic books or collect baseball cards , or play Dungeons and dragons or read a Harry Potter book, any of the things that historically. , we're seen as potentially deviant well that would've made it very easy for you to decide to never go to church.

You get. Big mistake that many conservatives make here as they're like. Yeah. Well, if I seed the ground on this today, then tomorrow it'll be something even more deviant. They see society as an, a salon to increasing deviancy. Instead of seeing deviancy as incurring in waves and them not recognizing that the deviancy that they grew up with. Might not be particularly more deviant than the [00:56:00] deviancy that the kids are dealing with today.

They have just normalized it more. So consider something like Dungeons and dragons, for example. If furries had been popular in, let's say the 1970s, um, and Dungeons and dragons was just becoming popular today. We would likely see Dungeons and dragons is significantly more deviant than furries. You'd be like what's so DB and about furries.

That's just that thing where people dress up in animal costumes and go to parties, , Dungeons and dragons. That's where people, , Living complete alternate universe is where they are totally detached from reality. And they play with magic and spells and other forms of satanic arts of furries. That's not a satanic cause I just dress. Totally normal stuff.

You know, grandpa used to do that with his fraternity and the boys from the lodge. , and, and if you're like, come on, it's not like there was stuff that was really degenerate in the past, more degenerate than things today that we no longer do anymore. That is faded out of popularity. I'm like, okay, what about key swap parties? , if [00:57:00] you haven't heard of a key swap party, a this is something I think was popular in the sixties. , in which. Swinger couples would go to a house. And they'd all put their keys in like a bowl at the door and then you'd end up having sex with whoever's key.

You randomly picked up from the bowl.

, there are very few things in our society today as degenerative that.,

and I think that it's important that we recognize this. If you give something the power to peel people away from your community at will.

So instead of reacting or shaming indulgences with disgust, shame it with logic. What else could you have invested this time and effort into how many people are dead so that you get to walk around with that fancy

Gender display first suit or necklace.

When your kids see people brag or show off. Pointless indulgences.

Malcolm Collins: This should be what their brains are translating that to.

And if a person's like, no, I paid for it with. [00:58:00] Insurance then this analogy is even more spot on.

Speaker 16: You see this?

Speaker 15: This here

Malcolm Collins: Top surgery.

Speaker 15: Comes from a little girl in Riverside, California. TooK me three whole weeks. And this

Malcolm Collins: First suit

Speaker 15: nice lady in Detroit. Motown. Six days flat. And there's this old guy in Philly. I killed him in 72 hours. Yeah, I'm getting better as I go along, baby.

Malcolm Collins: And like, you see what I mean, Simone?

Simone Collins: You

Malcolm Collins: would have been completely all about that.

Simone Collins: So I get why it would have been a trans furry in your, would

Malcolm Collins: have been repelled. So I that would have like, one of the big furry conventions happened right across from my office where I used to work in Silicon Valley.

Yeah. I could never really get in the building because the smell was so bad. And this is to me. So to you, you would not have gotten, you would be that autistic. [00:59:00] Guarding mechanism. You wouldn't even get past the door.

Simone Collins: That is wild. So the, the rumors are true.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, no, well I mean the suits are very difficult to wash because they're like these big bulky things.

I have watched videos on people who didn't wash the suits for months, and like how they, I love watching videos on like cringe compilations, and they were talking about how hard they are to wash. It's a weird thing. And so, you know, you're sweaty because they're, they're very warm inside, obviously.

And then people are yiffing or having sex inside these sometimes. So, you know, you're not going to wash them within the time period of a single convention, at least. Because then it's all going to be wet the next day you try to go out. So you're dealing with, you know, if it's a multi day convention, at least a few days of sweat accumulated in the suit.

Thanks. And other forms of BO and stuff like that. So, I mean, it's totally understandable to me. I don't