Furries are from Mars, otherkin are from Venus

The point about furry artist is interesting, I wonder if there's an equivalent in the alterhuman community ? A specific subtype that would be composed of mostly male-at-birth folk ?
I have to admit I'm less categorical on this because i've also met a ton of nooks in alterhuman communities that are dominated by AMAB folk, but I acknowledge it might be luck of the draw. Specifically, draconic communities have a ton of transfem and cis male folks, but I do wonder if it's caused by the kind of mixed origin of dragon communities with dragon furries. (draconity.org was pretty equal furry and dragonkin, and this repeats in a lot of draconic spaces)

I'm assuming this difference of gender will probably lessen with time because furries and alterhumans are mixing a lot lately. Unless there's a sort of renewal of therians being seen as cringe, i'm assuming we'll see a lot more amab people that came from the furry community that do call themselves therians or display the theta delta, but they might not be the ones on therian focused census simply because they stick to the furry community still, and kind of are developing a different way of seeing their therianthropy/interacting online about it.

I do wonder though : if amab -> community that Does Things and group up from your perspective, and afab -> community that discusses, looks inward, then... shouldn't the tiktok kids be mostly amab? Maybe I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that it had a lean toward afab folk, and their main characteristics are a rather shallow view of therianthropy that chalks up to a vague feeling toward an animal, a tendency toward a shared costume and habit, and meeting up and sharing those masks / doing quadrobic together / whatever the kids are up to. Doesn't that sound more in line with what furries did?

I'm not sure if I'm the outlier here, but

Quote:Stereotypical male bonding is done over a shared activity, eg a game or a sport or train spotting. Furry is an activity, fursuits are things. It is no wonder then that the fandom is so male dominated because they can all meet up and do an activity together. In quite big groups.

This applies to me. My idea of bonding is indeed a shared activity. Though 3/5 of my friends are female, and they pretty much do act like you describe female bonding in the next paragraph, so I'm kinda forced to just give in. I'm generally unhappy like this and I don't quite feel like we're on the same page most of the time. One out of two of my male friends is also like my female friends, and the other male friend used to be more like me but went towards that as well lately.

I'm AFAB and I see myself as both male and female. I think these things are a bit more complicated, given that being transgender is also biological.

The reason I ever joined the therian community was only because I couldn't pretend that I wasn't a therian anymore, but I've been in and out and I do just fine without it.

Maybe I'm not getting the point?

(2026-01-27 18:33)Observer Wrote:  Maybe I'm not getting the point?

To be fair, this discussion is more about community wide trends than outliers. There's a lot of people who act in ways that do not match what Lopori says, just as a lot do match. I do like smaller groups, and don't hugely have a preference in doing (I am in many groups that are about observing birds, or insects, which would be a "doing" activity) or talking (but i'm not super into pure gossip, I just enjoy a good conversation). I do enjoy the therianthrope community's habit of discussing experiences and to be person first, but i don't really care about similar things in for example lesbian groups. So it's not... as categorical as "you, therianthrope, enjoy person first things", it's moreso "the therian community, overall, has a tendency to be person first talk, and it also seems to be afab dominated, and there could be a correlation between the two", not even necessarily a strict causation.

Re: subcommunities that lean amab, I was just about to answer that with dragons and then you already noted that yourself a few lines in. So yeah, seconding you on dragons. No idea why that is, I guess dragons are a bit masculine coded? RAWR FIRE BREATHING DRAGONS AND KNIGHTS AND SWORDS. Toy dragons tend to be sold as "boys' toys" more often.

As for the tiktok stuff, the first thing that comes to mind is how it caught on that might explain the afab lean? Teenage girls are the arbiters of what's cool, they're trendsetters, ideas spread like wildfire via them. Maybe it's partly that? Despite the similarity to furry. And interestingly, animal media like warrior cats appeals to girls for some reason.

I can also envision the gap closing somewhat over time because of exchange with furries.

Edit: the dragon thing got me really curious now about the gender distribution of soecific kintypes

Some interesting observations here Lopori. I think I can largely agree that they're true as far as generalizations go. They're tendencies, not absolute rules.

It certainly is something that can make male friendship difficult, as when, for some reason or another, you can't do the formerly shared activity or do ti as often as you could in the past, don't be surprised if your male friends drop you like a sack of hot coal. I've had that happen many times. There's nothing malicious or personal about it. It's more that the reality is as you say, male socializing tends to revolve around shared activities so when that shared activity dwindles or stops, so does the friendship.

My approach is kind of hybrid since I think shared activities are a good way to meet knew people and start to get to know them and create the foundation for a deeper friendship, and then after that point constantly Doing Things together doesn't have to be an emphasis, but as I've said, in practice it tends to not go well with men.

It's interesting how things changed. Back in the. day, it was generally reckoned that female autism didn't really exist. With the rise of the warrior cats fandom online in the mid teens, that seemed to be a solid counter-example that can't be denied, generally seeming to be the female autistic equivalent of what the Sonic fandom was to male autistic people in earlier eras. Those are stereotypes, of course, but they do have at least a kernel of truth to them. That's a tangent.

One big counter-example that occurs to me is that historically the therian community was largely male dominated. From its inception all the way up to maybe 2010-2015 it was overwhelmingly male dominated. The influx of new people during the Tumblr era decisively shifted the demographics to the reverse. It is interesting to think about why. Why does it appeal so much to preteen and teen girls? Cultural factors I don't quite understand. I haven't bene a teenager in over ten years so I'm old and out of touch with these things.

(2026-01-28 0:33)Zero Wrote:  One big counter-example that occurs to me is that historically the therian community was largely male dominated. From its inception all the way up to maybe 2010-2015 it was overwhelmingly male dominated. The influx of new people during the Tumblr era decisively shifted the demographics to the reverse. It is interesting to think about why. Why does it appeal so much to preteen and teen girls? Cultural factors I don't quite understand. I haven't bene a teenager in over ten years so I'm old and out of touch with these things.

The early community, like most of the early internet was text-heavy, debate or discussion oriented and focused more on introspection rather than comparison to others, aesthetic and performative identity.

It was social media and mobile devices that lured many young females into a competitive arena of comparing themselves to others and trying to stand out. "Therianthropy" was simply a vehicle that gave them an edge in one-upping their rivals. If these aesthetic based, social competition platforms went away tomorrow, the female population would level out and I think we'd see a much more even number.

(2026-01-27 19:43)Lopori Wrote:  the dragon thing got me really curious now about the gender distribution of soecific kintypes

To start your data collection on that, I’m a cis male and Canada lynx.

This is a really interesting discussion, though, and it’s prompted me to look at how I relate to people. I’ve always been somewhat asocial and introspective, but I realize that most of my male associations have been on the basis of “doing stuff.” As far as discussion or conversation goes, I’ve never been big on taking about my feelings, although I am AuDHD and don’t have the best handle on those in the first place, on top of the gender norms I grew up with in the 80s and 90s. Experiences and thoughts, sure, but feelings are a but more difficult for me. Thought provoking indeed.

Edit: another thought about the gender/kintype distribution. I wonder if it is significant that I am not just a feline, but a solitary one? Or perhaps that’s more related to my particular neurodivergence?

I'm sure this is lowk useless info but I've met a lot of amab furries who claim to be furries cause they think they are animals, I'm definitely not saying all and I'd say a very good majority aren't, like I said, this is my irl personal veiw of the community, js cause of furries I've talked to in person. so maybe its a label safety thing, like certain ppl feel safer using certain labels

@Kaiyus Casster
That’s kind of interesting. I’m kind of the reverse. I have an interest in anthropomorphic animals, but I don’t consider myself a furry because I don’t participate in those spaces or any of the typical activities. I wonder if they would perceive the furry label as safer simply because it’s more widely known? I mean a label is a label and individuals are free to use one and not the other, it just seems kind of odd to me

(2025-02-23 11:19)DustWolf Wrote:  But I would like the reader to consider why the above is what we see? If online gender identification is genuine in the sense of someone claiming to be trans male being male, why does the majority of them seem to adhere to female behavioural stereotypes? If they didn't, the correlation mentioned above should be tied to gender and not sex, no?

Obviously, like the quoted post, I would also like to point out that there are outliers, but talking about the majority.

I've recently watched this video, which shows that in the recent years, there has been an increase in the number of trans men (AFAB identifying as male):

This is relevant to therianthropy because obviously being a therian is also an identification and furthermore there is no medical diagnostic test for therianthropy, so whether someone "is therian" is entirely dependant on the people who identify online one way or another and notably their ability to accurately gauge this and honestly identify.

Food for thought.

LP,
Dusty

A few days ago, I had a giant debate with Grok (that AI chat bot by Elon) about this exact thing. My point was: "Look at these online communities - therians and furries. Their demographics show that they are not dominated by men or by women - they show that they are dominated either by cis men and trans women, or cis women and trans men. So does this mean that, in the end, the gender identity is just a label they use, and what really determines their societal behavior at large is their biology? Is it fake, after all? Does it mean I'm just a man after all?" We went back and forth for a while, it spent a long time researching stuff, and here's what I carried away from what it said: It doesn't have to do with the person's gender at this very moment - it's the way they were socialised that has left an impact. The biggest evidence for this is that trans folk who had the luck to be socialised as their correct gender from an early age behave and act in ways that corresponds to their gender identity, and often have the same stereotypical interests as others with their gender. In other words, trans people only "adhere to their assigned sex's behavioural stereotypes" for as long as they are treated that way by society. To add more complexity to this: If a person finds an interest before or during transition, they won't just abandon it or no longer find it interesting simply because of their transition. It's also important to add more nuance to the trans experience - namely that a large part of trans people in online communities, especially when it's centered around identity like in furry or therian spaces, are in very early stages of transition, or are even just experimenting with what feels right. And none of these will just magically act differently than they have been conditioned to their whole lives. This contrasts the way many trans people - especially those who transitioned before they found their communities and everything - who have been in society as their gender for a while a) don't point out that they are trans because they don't need to do so as much anymore, so statistics often underrepresent or don't show them (not that this would be apparent in therian spaces, as these spaces are mostly made up of trans people experimenting with labels or in very early stages of their tranisiton), and b) have been able to "integrate" way more into their gender - and therefore also have way more similar behaviors and interests as others of their gender.

P.S. It is useful to point out that rapid increases or decreases in the number of trans people does not determine that being trans is fake - nor does any diagnosis "confirm" that someone is trans, since we've seen the same rapid increase until 2021 and then decrease until now in the number of diagnoses for gender dysphoria in Swiss clinics, for instance. What these numbers ignore is nuance: They can ignore things like how many people were experimenting with gender identity at a given time and therefore give the illusion that trans people magically "stopped being trans", or how overworked and undermanaged a clinic is (saying this due to personal knowledge of local trans healthcare facilities).