Furries, self-esteem, and identity: perspective from a psychologist
by Patch O'Furr
‘If everybody’s doing it, it’s probably wrong’.
“FOR MUCH OF HUMAN HISTORY, our beliefs have been based on the assumption that people are fundamentally bad. Strip away a person’s smile and you’ll find a grotesque, writhing animal-thing. Human instincts have to be controlled, and religions have often been guides for containing the demons. Sigmund Freud held a similar view: Psychotherapy was his method of making the unconscious conscious, helping people restrain their bestial desires…”
Furries: Do you like your fursona? Do you have higher self-esteem, and feel happier and better with it?
Or do you represent “bestial desires” of a “grotesque, writhing animal-thing?” Are you fundamentally bad, and need to restrain what you are inside?
The 1960’s brought an alternative movement of self-esteem, dedicated to boosting “unconditional positive regard” for the self. Education and public policy has now become deeply supportive for this. But there are dissidents to this, too. Meet Roy Baumeister.
Roy Baumeister challenged the popular movement for self-esteem. In his argument, it breeds harmful, hollow narcissism. Hitler had high self-esteem- that’s it in a nutshell. It suggests refocusing beyond self and identity… to things like earning merit, offering value in relationships, and giving to community.
Baumeister crossed a divide, like another notable dissident, Camille Paglia. She proposed that modern society descends from two opposing philosophical traditions from the 18th century to now: Rosseau’s idealizing of nature’s beauty, vs. De Sade’s focus on reality’s pain and cruelty (pointing to Darwin’s theories about survival.) In the middle, there’s realistic trade-offs between choices, and practical free will.
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In recent news, there’s another symbol for toxic narcissism: Elliot Rodger, the killer in the UCSB shootings. Did that rageful, homicidal, suicidal, social failure have high self-esteem? Yes, really.
The news I’ve briefly sampled (I don’t want to dwell on it) suggests that his rage came not from lack of self-validation, but because OTHERS didn’t validate his own feeling about himself. (I haven’t seen a better example of a narcissistic “Patrick Bateman”-type character.) It seems that Rodger had no friends. In his mind, people just rejected him and he couldn’t understand it. After the ugly, pointless tragedy, people who knew him were puzzled. They said: we tried to be friendly, but he “rebuffed” us!
This disconnect between inner image and outer action says it all. In his disconnect, he couldn’t understand his isolation… and how being a friend is about giving, not taking. Especially to people (or animals) who don’t benefit yourself. (Imagine if he’d volunteered at an animal shelter.)
A friend of mine jokes about a difference between L.A. and San Francisco. In LA, people take pride in how much they spend on clothes. In SF, they’re proud of how cheaply they got something at the thrift store. Rodgers was pathologically obsessed with validating his worth by the cost of clothes.
(Furries are lovable with the way cost of a Fursuit means little… the importance is how creative it is, and how you use it.)
Rodger had no friends… but, with massive over-exposure in news, he makes the perfect symbol for every agenda you could name. He’s been called a “nerd”, as if liking Pokemon was all it took for that meaning-drained label. Guns, mental health, disdain for masculinity… too much money, soft liberal parenting… It’s possible to argue from all kinds of directions. It says as much about agenda-holders as the events. Start that, and get lost in the weeds.
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Back to the title topics:
One reason I completely support fursona play, is because it’s so unreal. It’s absurd. It’s play. It’s impossible to say with a straight face, that your inborn identity is actually a husky-fox-bat from another planet, and be taken seriously.
Some people DO say it with a straight face, though. “Species dysphoria”. Can you say that without laughing? Welcome to bizarro-world! “Unconditional positive regard” gone amok? If you hear me laughing, I’m laughing WITH you, not at you. I like having special people around, and being one when it doesn’t hurt anybody. Society needs more of that- until it really counts, at the line between play and having inmates run the asylum.
Let’s keep it real (when it counts) and spend less time on inner-focused circles, in favor of “How can we make things better outside ourselves?”
Happily, I think furries do a great job at that. I see it in Street fursuiting. Whatever it is for you, do share.
“A friend of mine jokes about a difference between L.A. and San Francisco. In LA, people take pride in how much they spend on clothes. In SF, they’re proud of how cheaply they got something at the thrift store. Rodgers was pathologically obsessed with validating his worth by the cost of clothes.
(Furries are lovable with the way cost of a Fursuit means little… the importance is how creative it is, and how you use it.)”
Not to be a ‘De Sade’ here, but I think the aside is a bit over simplistic and weighted on giving the furry fandom a pass. What I mean is that while you say ‘the cost’ of a fursuit means little, all fursuits cost.
There is very much a ‘have and have-nots’ mentality and conflict when it comes to those furry who have a fur suit and those who cannot afford one or don’t want one. There are those who find it agitating that when the press cover’s the fandom that it’s all about fursuiting. In effect they see the fursuit itself as a fandom status symbol, while those in normal clothes who may create art or writings are put aside.
It’s not how I personally feel on it. However, these feelings do exist and are important to point out when you’re making such comparisons to community like this. And that’s putting aside the geographism of the ‘people from their town are terrible and people from my town are awesome.
But looking at these two things we can see that self-esteem can go further than the self. It’s not quite given a name so I’ll call it ‘commune-esteem’ for now. Where people within a group can have high ‘commune-esteem’ will prop up the positive of a community, your statements on Furry and SF examples of this. They could also see the very worse in a community (even while being a part of it, but usually when they are not) and pick at the worst of the group and their behaviors, ‘drama communities’ probably being an example of such. These would be examples of low commune-esteem.
Every self and every commune is made up of their good and bad parts to me, so I try my best to balance the two. However having high or low esteems are not essentially bad things, as long as they don’t cause one to make adverse decisions against others or themselves.
Thanks for the very nice comments!
About the “geographism” with comparing L.A. and S.F., I agree and have to add it wasn’t any kind of serious comment, just a joke. My friend is a stand-up comedian and that was part of a routine. I edited out the explanation for length. Jokes might come from nuggets of truth without meaning to be facts.
Same for the cost of fursuit comment… It was a quicky aside from the topic. I think it most applies to fursuiter meeting fursuiter, or people into that specific thing. Artists and writers deserve their recognition too, and I’d be happy to highlight them more!
Rather than joking about how stupid it sounds like every Tumblr troll and their cat, you might want to give a little more contemplation to why or what that motivation exists for furries to seek understanding and recognition for their atypical identity choices–ask what it could imply for humanity, were it legitimately recognized and understood. Maybe facilitate the development of something bigger: like furry-supported post-humanism, or something. Just a thought.
I get it; the comparison of certain elements of dysmorphia or even sometimes, spiritual attachment attested to be experienced by certain furries, linking them with another species, may not be an even remotely apt narrative comparison to make with experiences cited in the transgender population–and yea, while it may not elicit sympathy from you, because it’s such a corny notion at face value, in the face of the melodrama surrounding identity politics–being ‘transpecies’–something interesting ‘is’ definitely taking place within and around the furry fandom, that this kind of idea would be important enough to pick up traction, and remain a subject of debate.
There is some phenomenon here that I feel some us furries are at times all too quick to blow off, in a fit of self-deprecating humor, we’ve all fashioned to save face and look sane. What if it’s okay to want to transcend humanity, rather than it always being just about a hobby?
And while yes–Even I’m not a huge fan of the crazy social justice warrior-fueled ‘me-me-me’ ego shtick circulating at present (despite at times benefiting from its more sober spasms, being, myself, transgender and all), I think it’s a bad show of faith to the human race, to just stamp on every strange new notion that rises up from within its ranks, assuming it’s going to spit out the next breed of crazed killers-and/or-death-cultists. Self-fulfilling prophecies, you know?
Keep in mind lastly, that conservative, God-loving, apple-pie eating types who love their mothers and support the Confederacy, are also capable of flying off the handle and turning into crazed killers. Liberal-sponsored philosophies are not the only toxic ones hanging around in our society.
“In his argument, it breeds harmful, hollow narcissism. Hitler had high self-esteem- that’s it in a nutshell.”
With all due respect, Hitler IS a fine example of the classic Narcissist however, IMHO, to suggest that high self esteem is prevalant in and/or contributing to NPD is a fallacy. At the core of the NPD individual is almost always a fragile, low-esteemed self. The Narcissist ensues after building layer upon layer of “false pride” around that core, protecting it by nature of disguise, until this becomes an all-encompassing effort to build it up, at any cost.
Though Hitler exuded power and control on the outside, I’d argue that, like the classic NPD model, it was driven by a week esteem that needed ever more powerful ways to reinforce it. If he felt slighted, he responded with oppressive force, made possible only by the vast & multi-layered narcisistic supply of individuals recruited by his charisma.
Corrections. Up ttp late. LOL
“… a WEAK self esteem…”
“… multi-layered NARCISSISTIC supply…”