Therian Guide: Forums

Based on both anecdotal experience and multiple polls and surveys it's quite well established that the furry fandom is very male dominated. Everyone knows this and remarks on it. Conversely, the therian and alterhuman communities are female dominated.

When I say male or female dominated I am talking about sex at birth. Not gender identity, for the record. Identities are pretty varied within both communities especially ours, that's not the specific pattern I'm noticing. If you're bothered by my language that's too bad because it's the only way I can effectively articulate my point. Internalise it how you want, or don't, it's not up to me. But I am talking about sex here.

The vast majority of "alterhumans" I have met are female/afab, the vast majority of furries I've met are male/amab. I have a little theory as to why. There's an old adage that men are interested in things and women are interested in people. Furry and otherkin are analogous to the things vs people dichotomy, two sides of the same coin.
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.

Stereotypical female bonding is more talky and involves smaller, close knit groups. Therianthropy and its related concepts are less about doing and more about being. People sit together (usually in virtual space but still) and discuss themselves, eachother, interpersonal relationships, the community matters of the day etc. It's people focused and inward facing. Thus kinda "female coded". And the demographics reflect this.
I'm not saying that there aren't overlaps and exceptions and that the subcultures are entirely homogeneous. Of course not. There are female furries and male alterhumans and the female furries still do the thing. They make up most artists too! I don't think identifying as nonhuman is a female trait on its own, either. But how it's expressed socially can be, as evidenced by every recent poll. Individuals vary in personality but there are of course general trends when you zoom out far enough. And this is one of those trends, from where I'm looking.

I think you’ve got a point there, yee! As somebody who was once a furry but swapped over to identifying as otherkin, I have noticed how the furry fandom is mainly male dominated. So male dominated that I’ve never met a female furry before, but I’ve heard that the female furries that do exist and go to conventions are sometimes straight up harassed...that made me realize that the fandom probably isn’t for me. I just felt out of place and unsafe.

But, in the therian/otherkin community, it’s much much more inclusive! I actually feel at home here and haven’t felt like my gender is a burden to myself and others. It’s much easier to be a female here, I’ve realized. I’m not exactly sure why, but I think you could be onto something! I’d be interested in seeing why, I’m just here to share my experiences

Hi,

As mentioned there are several old polls (back before gender identity was as big of a deal online as it is today) that show that furry communities are 90% male and 10% female, much like the majority of the Internet in general. Meanwhile therian communities are 60% female and 40% male.

Notably absent from these surveys is the question of gender identification, since that wasn't something people thought of at the time. So we must assume the answers are a mix of people who identified as one of the genders (so as the general population, mostly cis, but some trans individuals).

What is perhaps more interesting is this:

(2025-02-23 1:19)Lopori Wrote: [ -> ]When I say male or female dominated I am talking about sex at birth. Not gender identity, for the record. Identities are pretty varied within both communities especially ours, that's not the specific pattern I'm noticing. If you're bothered by my language that's too bad because it's the only way I can effectively articulate my point. Internalise it how you want, or don't, it's not up to me. But I am talking about sex here.

(2025-02-23 1:19)Lopori Wrote: [ -> ]Stereotypical female bonding is more talky and involves smaller, close knit groups. Therianthropy and its related concepts are less about doing and more about being. People sit together (usually in virtual space but still) and discuss themselves, eachother, interpersonal relationships, the community matters of the day etc. It's people focused and inward facing. Thus kinda "female coded". And the demographics reflect this.

I noticed a similar thing, but didn't want to say it too explicitly because people have reacted poorly to me, an AMAB cis male, talking about this topic.

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

The therian and otherkin communities also are big about self acceptance and introspection. Males typically are much less inner focused than females are, though this may less be due to innate sex differences and more to do with conditioning.

Personally I believe innate sex differences account for a lot, conditioning reinforces it but why reinforce it if it's not already there? Humans like any mammal are sexually dimorphic due to fact that sperm is cheap and eggs are expensive, and that affects behaviour. Hormones make a difference too. Some emotional and behavioural changes occur when trans people take HRT, an example would be frequency of crying and amount of aggression. That seems to be a really common change. HRT doesn't change everything, as the trends I'm proposing illustrate, but it does have an effect.

There are a lot of trans men and female non-binaries in otherkin communities, people who have gone to lengths to present and behave in a masculine manner. And yet, the female coded social behaviour never quite goes away. Because the sex demographics haven't changed. The furry fandom has a high transfem population and the activity based socialising is still prevalent. Old habits die hard.

One reason that I think that there are more AFAB therians is that young girls are generally more encouraged to be interested in animals than young boys. I believe that therianthropy usually develops when someone is a young child, whereas furries can choose to become one at any point.

This is an interesting way of looking at it, Lopori! There certainly is logic behind what you're saying.

Men do want to have plans to do things in group, while women often do introspection, care about emotions, about others. They are more predisposed to talk about them, while men often keep them for themselves. I am not a furry, however. I don't suit at least, do introspection, but am perhaps not as communicative as women tend to be. I care about emotions of others, not just the ones close to me, but taken as a whole.

I know this is not about me in particular. I just wanted to chime in and say that this may explain why there are more women in the community. Loved your take on this as well.

I see what you mean. As a biological male, I am an outcast in the Therian community. but thats alright!