Tackling Taboos: A Guide to Zoo Research

Disclaimer

The Zooier Than Thou podcast contains adult concepts and language and is intended for a mature audience. So if you stopped watching Bluey because you’re too old for kid’s stuff, you’re probably too young for this show.

Cold Open

The Convention Survey

Rose and Michael: (Laughing)

Rose: Ahhhh, wow.

Michael: You killed it at karaoke.

Rose: Thank you, thank you.

Michael: I didn’t know you could sing!

Rose: I was in choir for like, all of school.

Michael: Yeah, so was I and I wouldn’t have gotten a standing ovation if I went up there.

Rose: This convention has been a blast, thank you for making me come.

Michael: It’s been a blast to have you.

Rose: You got a light?

Michael: How. Did you lose ANOTHER lighter, Rose?

Rose: I was showing a cute guy a magic trick.

Michael: Okay but you didn’t literally make it— (gives up) Yeah here.

(Lighter flicks)

Rose: Gracias.

Michael: Don’t worry about it. Ahhhhhh! We are basically super heroes for being here too.

Rose: (Little laugh.) What? Like, for pride visibility, or?

Michael: That is one thing, yes. Your dress looks very nice by the way.

Rose: Hell yeah, you know it.

Michael: But ALSO, we are heroes for science.

Rose: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Michael: Weren’t you also doing that survey they were handing out?

(a pulse)

Rose: Oh. Nnnnah.

Michael: Why not?

Rose: (Glances around to make sure no one’s around. Takes a drag.)

I was really mad at the zoosexuality questions.

Michael: Oh. I would have thought you would have liked that being included?

Rose: Oh I was excited to see it at first. But like. I don’t know, there were five questions about it, and some of them were really loaded. Like, “Does your wife scream when you beat her?” loaded.

Michael: Yeesh.

Rose: Big yeesh. It came down to feeling like, “Even answering this question is agreeing to implications I really don’t agree with, so what’s even the point of me being here if the part most important to me is like that.”

Michael: Sure but like. That’s bad, but just skip those and still fill out the one saying you’re a zoo?

Rose: I don’t know. They were all pretty tone deaf, and after seeing it I just wasn’t feeling it anymore. If they want to do a bad job and get data that seems like it’s wrong because it is… (smoke) Their loss.

Introduction

Narrator: If you’re a member of a hidden population, you may have been in a situation like this before. Let’s imagine it together: You’re a sophomore, you’re gay, and you just heard about a survey going around about LGBTQIA+ campus life. You feel like you would be a good representative. It’s been a tense year. There was a protest about a guest speaker that almost canceled the event. A gay club in town got vandalized after a drag show. The LGBTQ club’s funding wasn’t renewed until they agreed to “tone down” their events. This is your chance to counter what you worry a study about gay people would be trying to highlight. Of course you’ll contribute!

You find the survey link in an email and get started. Age group, ethnicity, all the stuff you’ve had to fill out on other forms before in your life. Some of the questions do turn out to be what you were kind of expecting: Are you HIV positive, how many sex partners have you had in the last year. You fill it all out, glad that your answers are probably helping paint a better picture to others. But then you get to this question:

Does promising to use a condom help you pressure others into unwanted sex?

Yes or no.

The answer is “no,” because you don’t DO that, but… what kind of question is that?

Frustrated, not wanting to answer such a bullshit loaded question, you close the browser tab, and never finish the survey. And good riddance, you might think. What were those survey designers thinking?

This month, we interviewed a pair of researchers to get a better idea of what goes into surveys like the ones you’ve probably seen passed around in group chats and forum posts. It turns out, even with the best intentions, crafting questions that meet academic standards while not alienating your volunteers can be a tricky balancing act, especially when you’re dealing with an community as underground and understudied as zoophiles. In this episode, we’ll put you in their shoes, and we hope that researchers too will come away with a better understanding of what it takes for successful collaboration with us animal-inclined folks, and how to get there. Finally, we’ll examine a case study of a furry research group that has everything going for them, but somehow still can’t address the elephant in the room.

You’re listening to Zooier Than Thou: Tackling Taboos: A Guide to Zoo Research.

Theme Song

Kynophile: Hey, what can I say?

You’ve got me howlin’ at the moon!

Whoa, don’t you know that love is wild when you’re a zoo?

We’re Zooier Than Thou!

Oh yeah!

Sponsors

Announcer: Support for Zooier Than Thou comes from Epiphany Pipeworks. Check out Epiphiny’s work at his telegram channel @epiphiny_pipeworks, that’s E-P-I-P-H-I-N-Y.

This episode is also made possible by the time and graciousness of this month’s esteemed guests and contributors, and by the generous financial contributions from listeners like you! Visit us on the web at zoo.wtf, and subscribe using rss.zoo.wtf to get notified every time we’re on the air.

Topic - Tackling Taboos: A Guide to Zoo Research

An elusive subject

Narrator: Zoophiles are a hidden population for researchers, and when it comes to our community, available information is sparse.

Dr. Stetina: There’s not a lot where I would say the literature review, was not very extensive. You know what I mean? I mean, you could, you could research very, very long, but there’s not a lot, not a lot out there. And I would say more or less everyone knows what exists so far.

Narrator: Dr. Birgit Stetina is the head of the Department of Clinical Psychology at Sigmund Freud University in Vienna, Austria, and she’s spent her career studying hidden populations, including over a decade working with zoophiles in particular.

Dr. Stetina: I started my research process, I think around 20 years ago.

When I did my master’s degree, I was already working with hidden populations and trying to get an idea of what hidden populations need and try to break some taboos… My target population was recreational drug users then. And so that was the first hidden population that I ever researched. And, I was always working with human technique interaction. And at the same time as a young clinical psychologist, I also started working with human-animal interaction…

Narrator: Dr. Stetina’s interest in human-animal interactions led her to be interested in sexual interactions between humans an animals as well.

Dr. Stetina: I’m in that network of researchers in human-animal interaction. So of course we do speak with each other. I know that Andrea Beetz from Germany, for example, also did some research on zoophilia for her PhD, but I would say maybe it’s a handful of people all in all who have ever tried to analyze what we were talking about… and have tried to understand the dynamics.

Narrator: There is a reason there’s only been a handful of researchers who have studied the zoophile community. In their paper, “Review of cases, case series and prevalence studies of zoophilia in the general population,” Adalberto Campo-Arias and his colleagues spelled out their suspicions.

Campo-Arias: Information is truly scant on this subject, and it is difficult to accurately state the prevalence of zoophilic behaviors in the general population. It is extremely likely that the scarcity of valid and reliable data in this area is related to the negative connotations these behaviors have always had, from religious connotations such as sin, in the legal system as criminal, and to date as a mental disorder from the psychiatric medicine perspective.

Narrator: And these stigmas affect research at all levels of the process. Zoophiles traditionally have kept to themselves, preferring to be invisible rather than expose themselves to social and legal issues, or put their animal companions at risk of seizure or worse. Not only that, but social stigma affects what questions researchers are willing to ask.

Dr. Stetina: The fact that the topic is tabooed is not only visible in the general public, it’s also visible in research. So even from my team that I would say maybe only 50 percent are willing to touch upon the really tabooed topics. And I have other team members who would just say they don’t want to be involved in topics that are, from their viewpoint, too problematic, which I totally respect.

Dr. Zidenberg: You mentioned people being uncomfortable or potentially, you know, feeling some disgust at the subject, and I would say that’s quite a barrier research.

Narrator: Dr. Alexandra Zidenberg is an assistant professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, whose most recent effort to study the zoophile community just passed its review by the research ethics board at her institution within a week of recording this episode.

Dr. Zidenberg: It’s people who are not very familiar with human sexuality at all who end up reviewing applications. So sometimes it can be quite difficult for people to understand why someone might be interested in… in asking questions about human sexuality. Not just for zoophilia! That applies to almost every study on human sexuality. It makes people uncomfortable, and that, that can cause some difficulties.

Narrator: Dr. Stetina’s team hopes to present their findings at several conferences this summer, but that same discomfort for taboo topics could limit their ability to show off their work.

Dr. Stetina: We submitted to the International Congress of Psychology, and we’re going to submit to the International Society for Anthrozoology. So those are the people who research human animal interaction. I have been presenting the topic in earlier years, At those conferences, it has been accepted before, but it really always depends on how judges view, if that’s something that they want as part of the conference or not.

It’s always a topic that stands out. Sometimes that means that it’s not accepted at all. Sometimes it means they say, we don’t want you to give an oral presentation, just put it on the poster and stand somewhere in the corner that not everyone sees what you’re talking about. But that’s not only because of zoophilia. I have experienced that with online pornography. I’ve experienced that with, as I said, recreational drug use, all things people don’t want to hear about. Sometimes it’s something that people don’t want to see. And sometimes the opposite happens, and then we’re invited for an oral presentation, and I hope that this is happening this summer.

Narrator: The stigma surrounding sex and sexuality can also affect funding, forcing researchers who want to study more taboo topics to get creative.

Dr. Stetina: I’ve never tried to get funding for any of the topics that I’ve been doing with hidden populations because I’m already aware that that’s nearly impossible, to be honest. So, uh, we try to fund our research, you know, cross funding with other areas that we’re interested in. So at the moment, for example, what we are researching is a combination of quality in life of people who have a pet that’s chronically ill. And at the same time, we are developing a questionnaire for animal handlers to judge quality of life in their animals. And those are things that are… how should I put that… that everyone agrees that this is relevant, that we get, that we get funding for something like that. So we would just cross fund. I have people who I pay out of those projects. And usually in their own time, or also, of course, because of their academic career, they also take part in studies like we are doing. So we actually have no funding for what we are doing.

Narrator: Outside of the research and academic institutions, public perception of the work may present difficulty for researchers. On Halloween 2023, Peter Singer’s Journal of Controversial Ideas published an article by an anonymous contributor entitled “Zoophilia Is Morally Permissible.” The backlash was immediate, with tabloid websites posting op-eds and the comments section of the Twitter post being filled with outrage from both animal rights activists and conservative provocateurs alike. When Joanna Burke released her book Loving Animals: On Bestiality, Zoophilia, and Post-Human Love, the social media response to her book promotion efforts drove her off the internet. Likewise, even Dr. Zidenberg’s work has caused her team to receive heat.

Dr. Zidenberg: I’m sure you’re aware of some of the troubles that can come from social media. Working in this field, working not necessarily just with zoophilia, any paraphilia research is a bit risky as a researcher. Doing this podcast, for me, is a bit risky as a researcher because you never know how the public is going to react to it. And I would say that, myself, my colleagues in the area, we do occasionally get death threats. It’s just a hazard of the job, and kind of an odd hazard because even if you are against the paraphilias that we research, my philosophy is that you should want more information about those communities nonetheless. If you’re going to be mad about something, at least know what it is.

Other professionals in human sexuality, paraphilia research, have been quite accepting of the research. Mostly it’s members of the public who are not necessarily very informed about psychology, research, sexuality, who occasionally get very angry.

Narrator: It’s clear that researchers who choose to take a plunge into studying this hidden population of animal lovers have an uphill battle. On top of the twists and turns of getting a study approved, funded, and published, you also have to figure out how reach the population you want to learn about. If you can’t access them, you’re left with very few options. Anil Aggrawal, a professor of forensic medicine at the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi, India, noticed this among other problems with existing literature. He found the language used by researchers confusing, and lacking uniformity. Having no way to study the population directly himself, he proposed a theoretical solution.

Aggrawal: Recently a ten-tier classification of necrophilia has been proposed to bring an end to a similar confusion extant among various terms referring to necrophilia. It is our proposition that various shades of zoophilia exist on a similar continuum. Thus, each proposed class of zoophilia can be “mapped” to a similar class of necrophilia already proposed. This classification has an intuitive appeal, as it grades all shades of zoophilia from the least innocuous behavior to the most criminal. It is hoped that it would also bring an end to the existing confusion among several zoophilia related terms. In addition, since each proposed class of zoophilia can be exactly “mapped” to classes of another paraphilia — necrophilia — it may point to an “equivalence” among all paraphilias not yet explored fully.

Dr. Stetina: When Aggrawal’s publication about the classification came out in 2011… It was only a theoretical approach. And I can see how he, he got the idea to, to do it that way because looking at the classification manual, zoophilia and necrophilia would be in the same category. So the assumption for him as a researcher was close to say, OK, I can deduct from knowledge of that one thing and get some idea about the classes of another behavior. And we felt that from a methodological standpoint, that doesn’t make any sense. And I felt that this is not how the population looks like. And so the first step was, and that was several years ago, that with, Lisa Emmett together, who was doing her PhD then, we tried to find out how that classification more or less really looks like, in the sense of, in what classes do we find people?

Narrator: D Dr. Stetina wanted to test the theoretical model in the real world. To do this, she and her team would need a representative sample.

Dr. Zidenberg: It is really, really hard to get fully representative samples. And to be able to do some of those sampling techniques, you need to know the composition of that full population. Which, a lot of the times, just isn’t very possible. If we’re looking at the demographical characteristics of Canadians, because we have a census, we can go in and kind of make a guess at that. That’s a little bit easier. We know about that population. But if we’re talking about something like paraphilia, or even people who have certain mental health diagnoses, if we’re talking about psychology research or whatever it is we’re interested in, oftentimes we don’t know what that population looks like. We’re not able to create something that would be representative of that. So we end up taking our little samples, and those little samples are limiting in some ways. We don’t know how representative they are of the whole population.

Toggle: How large is actually large enough? And how, you know, selective can you be in your sample before you run into trouble with this?

Dr. Zidenberg: With most of our inferential statistics, the answer’s gonna be a little bit different based on what kind of method you’re doing. Generally, you want at least 50 people per condition that you’re looking at. But that’s on the lower end of things. So, when you’re planning out a study… we do what’s called a power analysis. And that tells us the sample size we need, so the number of people we need to be pretty sure that we’re going to be able to detect if there is a difference there, statistically. It’s a little bit more complicated than that, but essentially, you can actually calculate how many people you will need so that you are pretty sure you’re not going to miss.

Narrator: But hidden populations are called hidden for a reason. Maybe you can find 50 zoos, but generally speaking, the larger the sample size, the more reliable your data will be. When it’s is too difficult to find enough volunteers, many researchers have to use forensic samples to gather data about hidden populations instead.

Dr. Zidenberg: It is the case that quite a bit of the research that exists has looked at what in my field we would call forensic samples. So those are people who are incarcerated or somehow in contact with the law. And that is limiting because If we think about our legal system and who is likely to come into contact with our legal system, generally, we’re talking about people who have more extreme behaviors, potentially more deviance in other ways, in attitudes, things like that, and they don’t necessarily represent the entire population.

Narrator: Frustratingly, data from incarcerated populations is often used to falsely link zoophilia to violent crime, in order to pass laws against bestiality, such as the recent ones in France, and earlier, Canada, where Dr. Zidenberg calls home.

Dr. Zidenberg: As researchers, we have to do our best with what we have, and one way that we have to do that is be very clear as researchers about our limitations. So, anybody who does research with forensic samples should acknowledge, “this is a forensic sample. They don’t necessarily represent the whole.” Whether that’s understood by politicians, then, completely different question.

Narrator: There’s a better way. Ideally, researchers trying to draw inferences about a hidden population would obtain a community sample — a group of people who aren’t in contact with the legal system..

Dr. Zidenberg: I would say that as a researcher, it’s more difficult to do research with community groups because you do have to form those relationships. You do have to kind of have that back and forth. Whereas with forensic samples, they’re kind of a captive audience, as long as you can get access to their data, through like Correctional Services Canada or the U.S. counterpart. it’s easy to, to go in and do that. In the paper that we published, we actually specifically say, it’s like measurement and correlates of zoophilia in a community sample. So we are saying that specifically we looked at people who were not incarcerated. And that is kind of a flag to other researchers reading it, that we are looking at a community sample. But you have to seek out those community samples because a lot of what exists is forensic samples, which has its, its limits.

Narrator: In order to get a community sample, you need access to a community. And not every community is open and forthcoming. Dr. Courtney Plante, better known to many by his fursona, a blue cat named Nuka, is an associate professor of Psychology at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, and a co-founder of the organization now known as FurScience. FurScience is one of the most reliable sources of information about the furry fandom, another stigmatized group with a long history of incidents that left many members distrustful of outsiders. For years, they have been working to improve the situation with high quality research and analysis to put various misconceptions about furries to rest. But there is one aspect of the community that historically, they’ve been reluctant to touch. In the comments section of a 2015 Flayrah article highlighting concerns about the behavior of sexology researcher Kevin Hsu toward furries in his own research effort, Dr. Nuka weighed in on the topic of studying zoophilia in the fandom.

Dr. Nuka: I also feel, in some ways, [Hsu’s study is] not likely to answer [the questions he poses in his research], because of desirable responding. It’s one reason the International Anthropomorphic Research Project has generally avoided the topic of zoophilia in the fandom - not because we don’t think it’s a topic worth studying, but because, really, it’s hard to get honest answers from people. If we were to ask people “are you a zoophile”, a few things likely happen - people don’t know what it means, or they know what it means and they react negatively to our even asking it, or they know what it means, identify as one, but deny it on paper, or they know what it means, identify as one, and are happy to indicate as much on a paper. In the end, there’s no way of knowing if the number we end up with is a valid assessment of the prevalence of zoophilia, or if it’s simply a measure of how many people are openly zoophiles, and trying to make any claims about the prevalence of zoophilia from these numbers would be ignoring these important validity issues.

Narrator: It does seem likely that getting responses from zoophiles who are furries, in their capacity as furries, would be especially challenging, considering the stigma against zoos is stronger in the fandom than elsewhere due to narrative resistance. But technology enables researchers to meet zoos where they are: in online communities, as Campo-Arias’ team notes in their paper.

Campo-Arias: There is little information about the prevalence of zoophilic behaviours in the general population… [but] It is likely that the internet will enable these behaviours to be investigated in large samples in the coming years.

Narrator: Since the very beginning, the internet has created a space for members of minority groups to develop a positive identity around the things that set them apart the rest of society. In his paper, “Identity, Resistance and Moderation in an Online Community of Zoosexuals,” Phillip R. Kavanaugh explains the functional importance online communities have to zoos.

Kavanaugh: The Internet has facilitated the development of online forums that have allowed for the open expression of zoosexual identities in virtual anonymity with similarly oriented others from around the world. Indeed, a number of studies have found that web forums play a significant role in demarginalizing those with stigmatized but concealable sexual identities and facilitate social networking. As persons become ‘cyber colleagues’, they engage in identity work, as well as obtain validation, emotional support, and camaraderie without the risk of stigmatization present in embodied forms of communication.

Narrator: The same is true for other communities. Dr. Victoria Hartmann, a clinical psychology researcher and executive director of the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas, discussed the importance of online communities for another misunderstood paraphile community on a 2021 episode of Taboo Science entitled, “Necrophilia.”

Dr. Hartmann: Without prompting or having any kind of a question that would lead the respondent down any kind of a path, every single one of them said, I was really afraid that I was a monster. And when I found others online that shared this fetish and knew I could experience it consensually with others, not only did I feel better about myself, but I wanted to help others. So they became altruistic about helping others accept the fact that this was simply a variant on a sexual interest that had its roots for many of them in BDSM pre-negotiated role play. So that was what’s fascinating to me is because a lot of these folks discovered this, you know 8, 9, 10 years old, 10, 13, whatever, and were terrified of themselves, and had been acting out in dysfunctional ways, either, you know, self harm, drinking, you know, substance abuse, whatever…. And they found that once they found that online community where they could express that, being able to function more normally and in a more serene way in their other, in their real life, they intermingled and were advantageous to one another. Self acceptance kind of way.

Narrator: We’ve seen the same transformation happen for zoos who find camaraderie in other animal lovers with similar interests and values, whether through forums, on social media, or with the help of resources like this podcast. So, how do you find them? Well, how does a zoo find other zoos? Dr. Stetina and her team put themselves in the shoes of their target population.

Dr. Stetina: We go online and try to be as open as possible and try to find places where people with certain wishes would go to. This is what I’ve done at the very beginning as well, researching recreational drug users, you know, trying to put yourself in the position of such a person, knowing that because of the taboo, it’s very difficult, and you need information. You’re doing something that’s problematic for the general public, but you still want information. So researching like that, I feel, paved the way for us, to get to you. And I feel due to the fact that we’ve been doing research on zoophilia for quite a while now, there are people who are reaching out to us. There are people who are interested in that research. And I would say for at least the last, maybe 10 years, zoos have been reaching out to me, have been reaching out to Lisa, and this is the connection that we used.

Narrator: That’s great, but not many researchers have a decade worth of street smarts or have put themselves out there as long as Dr. Stetina. So in recent years, zoophiles have stepped up their own efforts to connect. Of all the current efforts to engage with researchers, the largest and most successful is the program headed by ZT Horse, co-founder of ZooVille, the largest zoophile forum on the internet.

ZT Horse: The site is the biggest zoo forum in the world, having I believe over 200k users with 20k active daily. The past BeastForum was driven by people who were NOT zoos, and only sought to use our sexuality for money. It always bothered me the power a united zoo forum could yield for zoo research, if only, if only it was run by genuine good zoos! So, when we started getting researchers posting in the forum, I seized the opportunity to leverage Zooville’s userbase to work with scientists.

Narrator: ZT’s leadership has been controversial at times, but to his credit, his effort to coordinate zoos to work with researchers over the past 4 years had immediate results.

ZT Horse: I believe we’ve had 4 studies done, two are pending, one published, and one completely peer-reviewed.

Narrator: Four studies on zoos in four years is significant, given the lack of diversity and novelty of information currently available to academics. While the forum takes the position of embracing as many research opportunities as possible, ZooVille has a process to weed out bad actors and research projects of questionable benefit.

ZT Horse: Usually we have to verify it’s not some troll or fraud. So that process is like this… one, we get their email, and get a “letter of intent.” This is a declaration sheet with letterhead of the university, their signatures and proof they are indeed who they say they are. Two, we begin discussions on the study, how ZooVille works and the forum, and help researchers understand the nuance of zoophile culture, since there are many definitions and term’s we zoos use all the time that they have never heard of. So it’s important we look at their questionnaires, and suggest to them changes that zoo’s understand better. Three, after we review the survey back and forth, the study is sent to an ethics committee for approval. Once approved, it’s placed on the forum front page and it stays until completed…

Toggle: What would cause you to deny a team of researchers?

ZT Horse: We have denied researchers when we can clearly demonstrate in quotations from other papers and from academic experience where a questionnaire NEEDS adjustment. It is not uncommon to read papers making assumptions about zoos where their entire selection of people were prisoners or ex-convicts involved with other crimes. It’s very rare that happens when we deny a scientist, but we will not allow a scientist to dictate an agenda when we can clearly show with references where they need adjustment.

Narrator: And participation from the zoo community is much better than researchers initially expect.

ZT Horse: The scientists used to feel 50 participants was a good sample for zoos. Now they come away with two or three thousand. Huge, huge, irrefutable amount of data!

Narrator: Dr. Zidenberg was among the researchers that engaged with the community through ZooVille.

Dr. Zidenberg: I was definitely a bit nervous reaching out because I wasn’t sure how I was going to be perceived or if I was going to get a response at all. But I was actually really impressed by the level of interest that the community seems to have in research and their willingness to participate. I do research with quite a few vulnerable groups, some stigmatized groups, and not everybody is interested in participating in research or participating in the research process. So I was really happy, and really excited to have so much interest in the research. When I don’t work with vulnerable communities, I often work with students who are mostly just there to get their research credit and get out, and they do not care at all. So it’s really actually refreshing to have people who are interested in the results, and the process, and really all of those steps along the way.

ZT Horse: Building these connections… I mean its the single most important thing the forum has done. These studies will be the new wave of studies that will be quoted and referenced long after the forum may die in the future. We should protect these relationships very carefully.

Credibility

Narrator: It turns out a good number of us are tired of hiding and eager to be researched and understood. Even so, we’re only interested in talking to the right people. So what are the key ingredients researchers need to engage with zoos? To start, in order to gain the trust of a hidden population, they need to have credibility with that audience. Think of credibility as trustworthiness. Why should we, as a stigmatized population, trust you? As ZT pointed out, it’s very helpful to have an academic institution backing you up. Certainly, a team of researchers from the Royal Military College of Canada begins with a lot more credibility than, say, a YouTuber with a hundred thousand followers, hoping a stigmatized sexual minority will indulge sensitive questions. Academia benefits from impartiality, and potentially better understanding and sensitivity to taboo subjects. But it’s not the only way in. Twitter user AellaGirl released an extensive survey about sexuality and kink and came away with an incredible 400,000 responses across various social media platforms. Aella’s credibility comes from being embedded in the communities she’s interested in researching. At one time, she was one of the top OnlyFans earners on the entire website, earning over $100,000 in some months. She has appeared in several interviews and documentaries and blogs extensively about her research. You could say she has street cred.

This is similar to FurScience, has credibility with furries in part because it’s embedded in that community. Dr. Nuka has both the credentials of a major university and furry cred as a certified anthropomorphic feline. His WikiFur entry includes a photo of him in fursuit at his PhD convocation. Furries trust that an institution whose public face mirrors their own will have their best interests in mind, and as a result, FurScience boasts that furries report greater willingness to answer sensitive questions honesty than reported by other fandoms like anime and sports.

Zoophiles don’t have the luxury of an embedded research team yet. And many zoos express concern that research led by fellow zoophiles would lead to skepticism from the general public about its impartiality. Indeed, credibility is not only about whether a community believes they can trust a researcher. It’s also about whether they think anyone else will.

Dr. Stetina’s experience and track record gave her an advantage when appeasing the concerns of a suspicious hidden population. For others at the beginning of their careers, working with the communities themselves to better understand their perspective is especially important.

ZT Horse: These scientists don’t know the zoo culture, terms, behaviors and quirks of the community. We do our best to improve on these little semantic details. We’ve had researchers whom sometimes out of ignorance have questions that zoos would find offensive, mostly due to misunderstandings of wording, almost as if the question assumes something about zoos that doesn’t allow clarification in other questions, or downright makes assumptions based on previous very old or outdated research. So we do our very best to find that middle ground with the scientists to adjust from experience what questions better fit zoos.

Dr. Zidenberg: It was quite easy to work with the community, I would say. It did take quite a bit of work. There was quite a bit of back and forth, and trying to kind of come to an understanding on different measures or why certain things were not changeable. Some of those, those little things were a little bit hard to reconcile, but not necessarily because it was difficult to work with the community, just because they’re big concepts that are, are difficult.

Narrator: Researchers need to strike a balance between accounting for bias, using best practices and accepted methods, and not alienating the audience they’re researching. For Dr. Zidenberg’s doctoral dissertation, she worked closely with ZooVille to design questions that would allow her team to gather the data they wanted while engaging the people they needed for their study. Some zoos on the forum raised concerns that by helping to shape the questions that were asked in Dr. Zidenberg’s survey, they were putting their thumbs on the scale, and they worried that could invalidate the results — that it would affect the credibility of the work.

Dr. Zidenberg: It’s definitely something somewhat tricky to navigate. And it really depends on your approach to science and kind of the, the philosophy behind your science. So often we operate from positivist philosophy or lens, and that is that there is one reality, and we can measure and capture that reality. And if you’re doing research from a positivist framework, then you have to be objective, completely removed from the process. And you are supposed to be this stone, untouchable, objective person.

Narrator: While some research methods employ distance and objectivity to avoid bias, that’s not always the best approach when trying to learn about a hidden population.

Dr. Zidenberg: I can do positivist research, but for a project like this, I wouldn’t say that’s the lens that I take. I take more of an alternative approach, where we look at the world as having multiple realities, and those realities are shaped by our experiences, by our interests, and by people existing in those places. So if we think about science in that frame, then it’s actually quite helpful to have the input of people who are from those communities, who have those experiences, so that we can capture their reality. So I would say that’s more of my approach for these projects. And within that approach, I get to be the expert in research methodology, in analysis, in a bit on the science behind human sexuality, behind paraphilias. But I am not an expert in being a zoophile, being attracted to animals, being part of that community. So I think it only helps to have that voice in there because it allows us to do better science, to better understand the reality that we’re operating within.

Motivation

Narrator: Credibility is only one ingredient. What drives a researcher can also be an important indicator to hidden populations about whether not a researcher is worth their time. Every researcher has a reason for studying what they’re studying, and that motivation shapes their approach. For Dr. Stetina, her life-long passion project led to curiosity about zoophiles.

Dr. Stetina: When you are a researcher, you have a vision of you want to accomplish. As a young clinical psychologist, I… started working with human animal interaction. So we worked with animal assisted therapy in the very, very early years, starting in 2000, actually, doing that when I was still a student. And relatively fast, I was seeing many, many layers about the human animal interaction, and that was what prompted me to look at the different layers. And I would say trying to explore the population of people, uh, with zoophile interests is following up on researching hidden populations, using technology to do that, because that’s possible nowadays, that’s a lot easier than it was 20 years ago, right? And try to understand something that’s tabooed in society. You know, we clinical psychologists, we try to observe, we try to explain, and of course, we also try to predict classification is a big part of our studies, and I like to look at populations from the human animal interaction topic in depth, and this is how I got to you.

I have that idea of trying to get at least ideas of the whole spectrum of human animal interactions during my research career.

So I would say in my life project of trying to get a better understanding of human animal interaction, zoophilia is one of the human animal interactions that I’m researching.

Narrator: For Dr. Zidenberg, a project about veterinarians’ understanding of animal sex abuse led her to become more curious about zoophilia.

Dr. Zidenberg: I recently found out that I have ADHD, so that the six tracks of things going on in my mind finally make sense. But one of the byproducts of that I guess is that I really love to ask questions. It was actually a little bit of an accident that I got into this area. A happy accident because I find it quite interesting, but unexpected. So originally, at the University of Saskatchewan, I was working on a very different dissertation about something completely different, and a friend of mine had went to a presentation at a conference on animal sexual abuse specifically. And we were interested in that topic and we ended up designing a study about what veterinarians know about animal sexual abuse. And then as I was reading for that project, I kind of stumbled into literature on zoophilia specifically. And I thought it was a very interesting topic, and I realized there wasn’t a lot of information in that area. So we ended up making another project, the one that I worked with ZooVille a bit and the zoophile community to actually complete.

Narrator: When her dissertation supervisor suddenly passed away, Dr. Zidenberg was forced to adapt, and that left her with a difficult task. She had to roll two very different projects, one aimed at vets, and one aimed a zoos, into a single dissertation. But when she finished, her penchant for asking questions led her to dig deeper.

Dr. Zidenberg: At the end of my doctoral dissertation, I just had so many questions left, and the community seemed to really be interested in research and in answering those questions, as well. So, I just thought, well, I have this connection and this interest, I might as well keep going. There are so many more things that we can learn.

Narrators: For others, a single life event can lead to a special interest. For Dr. Hartmann, a brutal act of violence left her looking for a purpose, which she found in research. And a warning, her story may be upsetting to some listeners.

Dr. Hartmann: It started with a trauma. Uh, when I was 17, uh, I survived a gang rape and I spent 10 years sort of in this very dark place because at the end of the day, when you are violated in that way. You wonder why. What did you do to invite that? How, how do these things happen? How could people be so destructive to someone they don’t even know? So it was just an intense experience that for 10 years I tried to run away from. And eventually, you know, you can’t, um, because then you become destructive yourself and For me, part of the healing process was going into education. So I was in my first year of undergraduate work and I took a psychology class. And when we got to the point where we cracked the book open for abnormal psychology, it was like lightning flashes and I was immediately hooked. And I immersed myself in that world of abnormal psychology and eventually I stumbled on, I’m not too big of a fan of this term, but what they called deviant sexual behavior, at least in the psychological world. And that it just was like, yep, this is what I want to study. I want to study this.

Narrator: Dr. Hartmann had a grand vision for her work. She wanted to create a tool for law enforcement officers and psychologists that could determine if a person had an inclination toward violent crime, before they could do harm to anyone like she’d been through.

Dr. Hartmann: I thought as I was going through this that I had found something and that I was going to be on the cover of Time magazine as the person who discovered what I coined, uh, progressive paraphilias, right? So in other words, I could be able to, I was going to be that person that was going to find that thing where you could determine that someone is going to commit a violent act against someone else.

Narrator: But while motivation and ambition may spark the inspiration needed to explore a taboo subject, good science demands a recognition when the data doesn’t support the hypothesis under test.

Dr. Hartmann: As a wonderful academic friend of mine says, the great thing about science is you’re usually wrong. And as I was finishing up my second doctorate, my hypothesis was wrong. Everything that I had based that doctoral thesis on was completely wrong. What I found was people with paraphilias or unusual sexual interests were separate and apart from those who commit violent crimes.

Narrator: In setting out to find a link between paraphilia and violent crime, Hartmann had discovered the exact opposite. It led her to dive deeper into the communities she was researching in order to truly understand them. But not everyone can separate their motivations from their results, as evidenced by numerous criminology studies searching for forensic evidence linking violent crime to unusual sexual interests. Criminologists in particular have a penchant for finding novel ways to link sex and violence, and it’s clear that for many of them, explaining criminality is the goal, often at the expense of stigmatized and disadvantaged people. Zidenberg herself received her bachelor’s degree in Forensic Psychology, with minors in criminology and criminal justice studies from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology – a red flag for many zoos. Ultimately, it was her genuine curiosity about zoophiles, outside of the context of criminal justice, and her willingness to work with ZooVille, that helped to win over the research team. Her interest deepened with the work, and discussions about future projects sealed the deal that her motivations aligned with the ZooVille team’s goals.

Dr. Zidenberg: I would say it’s in the community’s interest to work with researchers, because people who have more nefarious motives, they can still find the information. They can go and scrape social media. They can find forums and analyze those posts and put whatever spin they would like on it. But if the community would like more research that serves their purposes, if they’re interested in learning more about specific things, it makes sense to work with researchers. And I say that as someone who tries my best to work with communities.

Dr. Stetina: On one hand, I feel you can only break a taboo by speaking about it. But it only makes sense to speak to the right people.

Dr. Zidenberg: I’m sure not every researcher always has the best purposes. But, I think for the most part, if someone is reaching out, they’re willing to at least have that conversation? That’s a conversation worth having.

Motivations to Methods

Narrator: A researcher’s motivations can play a role in whether or not a target community is willing to play ball. But the questions that motivate them also determine the research methods a researcher might choose to find the answers they seek. If you’ve ever taken surveys with rigid, standardized questions asking you to rate something on a scale from one to five, those researchers are employing quantitative research methods.

Dr. Zidenberg: With quantitative research, you’re really looking at reducing things down to numbers. So those are things like your scales, whether they’re validated or not. We have Likert scales where it’s like, you can rate something from very favorable to very unfavorable, and at the end of those, what you’re doing is generally inferential statistics. So you’re taking a small sample that you’ve measured, and you are using that small sample to make guesses about the wider population, because often we don’t get access to bigger populations. So with this research that I’ve done, we take a sample from Zooville, from internet forums, from Twitter, all those places, because that’s all we have access to. We’re never going to be able to access the whole population of the world to actually know what every zoophile thinks. So we use quantitative approaches with inferential statistics.

Narrator: But there are limits to what researchers can understand using quantitative methods alone. If researchers really want to know the lived experiences of a hidden population they’re researching, they may instead rely on qualitative methods.

Dr. Zidenberg: With qualitative methods, we’re less interested in that generalizability of going from a small sample to the bigger population, and we’re much more interested in the context. So we look at where people live, what communities they participate in, kind of those more… more contextual detail, for lack of a better word. what we’re measuring is not necessarily something numerical that we do statistics on. With qualitative approaches, rather than having people fill out scales, it’ll often be things like interviews and focus groups, where you get people to talk about their experiences, their way of viewing the world, and you get really rich data that sometimes you can’t capture in a scale.

Dr. Stetina: I started as a quantitative researcher. I feel quantitative research is a lot more detached from the actual target group that you are researching. This is why I’m also using the word target group because it’s like, it’s very from the outside, you know? You are researching the population. You are just looking at it from, the outside, right? And that went well, I feel, maybe like 10, 12 years, and, 2012, when I started at Sigmund Freud University, I met, um, many very interesting people who were qualitative researchers and, with their input, I got a deeper understanding that if that idea, what I have about clinical psychology and what, of course, all people would, would agree… speaking about the explanation, you know, trying to explain something, you have to have the subjective viewpoint of the people that you’re talking about, you know? So you have to ask about the subjective perception and only the subjective perception is going to give you a deeper insight. And this is what changed my approach completely. And at the moment I would say we’ve been trained quite well by our qualitative researchers at our university and we try to work with mixed methods.

Narrator: Dr. Stetina’s team first approached the ZooVille research group with a quantitative survey, but followed it up with in depth interviews with a select group of zoophiles who agreed to participate.

Dr. Stetina: I still think that quantitative research makes a lot of sense, and we got lots and lots of data from your group, which we’re going to analyze, that gives us some understanding about subgroups or about classification… but the qualitative interviews give us the idea of your experience. It’s not possible to understand a dynamic if I don’t speak with the person who’s within that dynamic, you know? I can only explain from the outside, but not really understand. So I feel a theoretical conception of a form of sexuality like that is not possible to explain without talking to the people who are in that dynamic. So this is why we said we need mixed methods.

Narrator: Despite her research on the zoophile community, Dr. Stetina was still an outsider. While her team knew some of the questions they wanted to ask, they knew that there would inevitably be questions raised during their conversations with zoos that they’d never have thought of. Because of this, the research team from Sigmund Freud University employed an approach called “grounded theory.”

Dr. Stetina: Grounded theory means that after every few interviews, we interviewers met and discussed the topic, the answers to the questions that we had creating new topics for the next interviews, you know, so we had very, very open questions, and during the open questions, when we asked if there are additional topics. Topics came up and we use that to ask the same topics that have been mentioned before in the future interviews. So until it’s sufficiently grounded, you continue, you continue, you continue.

Narrator: Using grounded theory, a research team can discover questions they didn’t know they had, or discover questions that the target population is incredibly interested in understanding more about, and this can guide their research.

Dr. Stetina: The grounded theory that we used made a lot of sense because this is the approach that you would usually use if you don’t know anything. And this is where we, came from, thinking, we actually don’t know anything. Yes, we have some scores from some of the tests, and we have data on gender or type of animal or something like that, or preferred type of sexual contact or something like that. But we don’t know anything about the subjective experience. We don’t know anything about the subjective perception. And this is how we went into that to try and understand how that looks from your perspective. This is why we felt that we needed to do that, and my team did agree, obviously.

Trust

Narrator: Once a researcher has the engagement of the target population they hope to study, by showing that they’re trustworthy and that their motivations align with the needs of that community, they have to maintain the trust that’s been extended to them. Dr. Zidenberg’s team almost lost the trust of the research team at ZooVille when it was discovered that she was simultaneously working on a survey for veterinary professionals, and the language used in that survey to describe zoophilia and bestiality were not flattering to the zoos she was working with. Several zoos raised objections and questioned the researchers’ intent.

Dr. Zidenberg: I got lots of angry emails. They are quite different studies, different populations, different constructs that we were looking at. So that necessitates different language. So, if we use the exact same language in both studies, both of those communities are going to object to language that we use, because it doesn’t fit what we’re trying to study. It doesn’t fit their experience of the world. So for the vet study, we were quite focused on their ability to detect harm to those animals. We did ask them if they knew the difference between zoophilia and bestiality, but beyond that, we weren’t really interested in their understanding of zoophilia itself. We were more focused on their training in detecting abuse. Whereas on the zoophilia side, we were interested in understanding sexual attraction, which is a very different question. So, to be appropriate for both of those groups, to be appropriate for our research question, our research design, we used very different language, very different questions, and really they were never meant to kind of go side by side.

Narrator: Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, and Dr. Zidenberg was able to explain the necessity of the language surrounding animal sex abuse in a way the zoophile team was able to understand and accept. There would be one more hiccup with that veterinary survey that raised some eyebrows. The final published paper included language that speculated that the small percentage of vets who didn’t wholly endorse the idea that bestiality was necessarily abusive may themselves be enabling or participating in animal sex abuse.

Dr. Zidenberg: It was actually a suggestion from a reviewer of the paper, and by suggestion, I mean, insistence that that was added in, for it to be published. And it is speculation. We don’t know if those people did perpetrate sexual harm against animals or if they participated in anything related to that, but, given the difficulty in veterinary medicine with talking about those subjects, there is some insistence that certain things be added in, not necessarily because they are fully empirically supported, but it is a possibility that there were some people who were perpetrating behaviors as well. It is only one explanation, and I can see how it would come across as not particularly, necessarily, well informed.

Narrator: The results of the veterinary study ended up being interesting for some of the ZooVille research team. Unlike with the zoophile community, Dr. Zidenberg’s team ran into various barriers when trying to work with vets on the topic of bestiality, which led to edits like the insertion of that specific speculation in order to get their paper published.

Dr. Zidenberg: I didn’t know it when I started the project, but there is a big taboo in veterinary medicine about talking about sexual abuse, which is kind of odd because they will talk about reproductive health. They’ll talk about animal husbandry. But the second that you want to broach the subject of sexual contact with animals, sexual harm with animals, everybody kind of shuts down. So it was very difficult to find someone who would act as a consultant for that project. And I would say in light of that, the results actually were not that surprising. The results really showed us that veterinarians get no training on animal sexual abuse. They didn’t really want to talk about it. Although they did endorse wanting more training in it, they really had no information.

Narrator: When it was time for Dr. Zidenberg’s zoophile community doctoral thesis to be published, she again worked with the ZooVille research team to refine the results.

Dr. Zidenberg: We also did provide the manuscript for review to a small number of individuals in the zoophile community so that they could flag anything that might be particularly harmful to the community that might be a misinterpretation. As well as just to get a little bit of input from the community, because for us, not being part of the zoophile community, not having that attraction to animals, some of the ideas just don’t occur to us. So it was quite helpful in the interpretation of things as well to have that feedback, but it also was a way to honor the contributions. We understood that this is a very personal, very vulnerable piece of information for our participants. And we wanted to try our best to honor that and produce research that wouldn’t harm the community in exchange for participating in our research, because that’s something we definitely want to avoid.

Narrator: Despite a few bumps along the way, Dr. Zidenberg’s good rapport with the zoophile community at ZooVille left the door open for more research in the future. Meanwhile, the team at Sigmund Freud University won over the zoo research crew in an unprecedented way. The trust they fostered allowed them to conduct face-to-face, video interviews with zoophiles. In our review of existing research, with the possible exception of Hani Miletski, we couldn’t find a researcher who had gotten such a large amount face time with zoophiles since perhaps Kinsey in the 1940’s. In feedback with Dr. Stetina, Toggle provided some insight into what won him over and convinced him to participate in the interviews.

Toggle: I think the first thing that stood out is the purpose of your study. There are a lot of people that approach us, like researchers that approach us from various different angles. A lot of them are, just kind of focused on zoos as this singular, group of people that are of interest because of the taboo nature of it, or there are various different ways to do it, and a lot of them feel very valid. But what really sold me on your study and why I really wanted to get in front of you with video interviews was because you were approaching this from an entire standpoint of like, we want to study all aspects of human and animal interactions and relationships, and that can’t be done without involving zoos. And that, just the very premise itself was, first of all, super important. But then the other thing that was really important is the way you discussed, you know, Privacy and security concerns and all of the concerns that people have as being a part of a population whose sexuality is criminalized in a lot of the world.

Narrator: When it came to data protection, Austria’s strict laws on data handling, and the clear understanding from the team that the information they were handling was delicate and needed to be treated with care, won the research team a lot of trust.

Dr. Stetina: Although of course we used modern technology to be able and call the participants… what we did is we used the very, very old school technology to record videos, you know, so it was not connected to the computer. We used, you called it dinosaur technology. I’m not sure if it’s a dinosaur. I actually got to know it when I was studying. So, uh, but I know it’s called dinosaur technology, so it’s not connected to the internet. So very, very, all traditional audio recording devices. And afterwards, the interviews are transcribed, and we have a very, very strong, data protection law, so that’s only allowed to be on a local drive somewhere. The law for us psychologists in Austria even says that information about clients and also information about research has to be on an external drive that’s locked away, really locked away in a place where you also have a door that you can lock with a key. So we have the double and triple protection. But I feel what was most relevant for you all was that, we were using old audio recorders and not just recording that on the phone or on the laptop to have it in a digital way to, to, to maybe use it online or something like that. It has to be kept at least 10 years, but at any time point, participants are allowed to be excluded from the study, and then everything would be deleted.

Narrator: While the zoos who attended the meeting started off with trepidation about the idea of doing even just audio interviews, the interest in participation over video by the end of the meeting was significant.

Dr. Stetina: It was over 30 in the end. So when we’re telling that our qualitative experts, they say that we are crazy, to be honest, because they never do more than 15. Because it’s just a lot of work, you know, and we’re, and we’re just starting to analyze the text. So you can think about each interview having around, I think between 80 and 120 pages print. We’ve also been in contact with some publishers. Usually they are not very happy about publishing a taboo topic, but we’re still trying to find a big publisher, as big as possible, that we can give the interviews room. You know, it will not be enough to write papers about that. Of course we will do it, but that’s not the point. I think we need more room. We need a book to go into depth and explain what we learned talking to you.

Narrator: In addition to the wealth of information Dr. Stetina’s team was able to gather, many zoos came away with a positive experience after participating.

Dr. Stetina: There are not many people who like to talk about their sexuality, uh, in an interview. There are not many people who are very open about that. And we wanted to know everything as much as possible. Of course, within, the personal limits of each person, but we wanted to go as deep as possible. And we felt that we could enhance the relationship, we could create hopefully a trusting, a trustful interaction with using video. So this is why we said that we would like to try it. Not everyone wanted it, I have to say that. But many, many did. And, I felt that it was a good experience. We also had the feeling that some of the interview sessions were more or less even therapeutic, you know? People starting to talk about things that they maybe have never talked about with someone from the real outside, you know? So, I think it can be a good process.

FurScience

Narrator: Trust, credibility, motivation. So far we’ve heard from our guests about how these issues underpin the delicate balancing act that researchers have to perform when studying taboos with underground, marginalized groups. Finding them. Adapting the questions they ask, and the language they use to match the expectations of people whom they ask for truthfulness. Convincing institutions that their topic is a worthwhile use of their employees’ time and brand. Passing review before an ethics board, whose members might not be so enthusiastic. And the personal consequences they might have to endure from a disinterested or offended public. Wanting to investigate something in the first place.

Finding that essential balance is difficult enough when a project doesn’t threaten a way of life, or an invisible, omnipresent economic system considered too big to fail. But tackling something that confronts deeply held beliefs, stokes anger and disgust, and questioning a person’s claim to their home on the basis of an immutable facet of their sexuality, all at once, and the task isn’t just difficult. It’s almost impossible.

It’s time to talk about Fur Science.

Fur Science is the public face and media relations arm of the International Anthropomorphic Research Project, or IARP. For over 10 years their mission has been to demystify and destigmatize furries to the broader public and promote acceptance with high quality analysis and data collection from volunteers.

And they keep busy. Dr. Plante alone has given dozens of presentations, media appearances, and interviews, and is easy to find at furry conventions, happily talking shop with passers by, indulging curiosities, and graciously accepting criticism. All that effort is backed by regular surveys, publications, and most recently, a lengthy new book exploring everything they’ve learned in a decade, which is free to download on their website.

In exchange, furries have rewarded Fur Science with unprecedented access and cooperation. Their datasets now include tens of thousands of survey responses collected in person and online, covering a huge array of subjects and providing very strong evidence for the fandom’s lifelong assertions that… this is all fine actually! Furries are cool and smart and incredibly talented! Being furry has all these positive impacts on a person’s life! Sure, the ingroup/outgroup conflicts are tedious, and the drama stinks, and the animal penis drawings are… weirdly specific and accurate… but look how open and accepting furries are! It’s not all about sex, and neither are their pastimes! We all have so much to learn from their example! Grass grows, birds fly, water is usually wet, and here’s the data to back it up!

And… it’s true. Fur Science has made a huge and positive impact on the fandom. Reading their publications is so gratifying. Being seen so completely feels wonderful. Every question they answer seems to verify our intuitions and touch us personally, or somebody we know.

Except for one.

Furscience and Zoophilia

Nuka:  The label of furry and calling yourself a furry is driven almost entirely by these non sexual components.

Narrator: For many years, Fur Science had plenty of work to do without ever discussing sexuality in the fandom beyond orientation. So they didn’t. Instead, they collected demographic data to get a sense of the fandom’s composition, and recruited volunteers they could contact for future projects about specific issues. They held focus groups for therian and otherkin furs and conducted interviews. Next they turned to autism spectrum experience. Their first international survey came a year later in 2017. The goal was to get established, and use the results to set the record straight about furries and facilitate mainstream acceptance—a task furries have been working on since the 80s with slow, but meaningful progress. This is exactly what furries needed. Zoophilia was not on the agenda. It couldn’t be. And for a while, furries were left to sit with adjective species’ infamous, and anonymously published, 1-in-6.

The first official mention of zoophilia by fur science is on the resources page in an FAQ for parents, which went live in June 2019.

Website Quote: Does liking adult furry art mean my teenager wants to have sex with animals? Furries are no more likely to be attracted to real-world animals than non-furries. Zoophilia is one of the most unfortunate misconceptions of furries. Screenwriters’ imaginations have contributed to this misnomer.

Narrator: It is the shortest answer of all questions listed. It cites no data from anywhere. The acknowledgments at the bottom of the page suggest it was written by a 3rd party, and not FurScience staff. In the years since, it has never been updated.

Around the same time, Fur Science ran their 7th study, the Summer 2019 survey to online participants, and was beginning work on the 8th. But the 7th study was unique. In addition to collecting new data, it sought to replicate the findings of another, also infamous research publication, lead by then PhD candidate Dr. Kevin Hsu, and his advisor Dr. J. Michael Bailey at Northwestern University.

Hsu: The rates of nonzero sexual attraction to real animals and sexual arousal by the fantasy of being a real animal indicate that these sexual interests were common among participants. However, the average degree of either sexual interest was low. This suggests that male furries are not primarily motivated by either zoophilia or autozoophilia. Because zoophilia was significantly correlated with autozoophilia, participants sexually aroused by the fantasy of being a real animal tended to be sexually attracted to real animals. This result provides some support for conceptualizing autozoophilia as an Erotic Target Identity Inversion.

Narrator: In a textbook example of poor rapport with a hidden population, Dr. Hsu’s team lacked credibility, trust, and faith in their motivations from their target community. Hsu raised hackles among furries and within FurScience. Complaints included soliciting volunteers without proper permission, inadequate consent disclosure, and a perceived lack of concern for sensitive topics within a misunderstood population. The basis of the research didn’t help; Hsu believed the furry phenomenon could be explained as a form of erotic target location error, a paraphilia framework closely related to Dr. Ray Blanchard’s transsexualism typology and autogynephilia, which we covered in our Season 2 Episode 7 Bonus Epiosde, “The Furry Who Would Be Zoo: Where Blanchard, Bailey, and the Zoo Community Intersect.”

Needless to say, this hypothesis was a nonstarter for many furries, an overwhelmingly queer group with more than 10 times higher transgender representation than the general public. Hsu even included a point scale to measure participants sexual attraction to real animals, and found that nearly half of responses indicated at least a little attraction. If adjective species’ report of 1-in-6 was sobering but felt “about right,” Hsu’s figures felt outrageous. But a deeper reading of Dr. Hsu’s work reveals nuance that others seem to ignore.

Hsu: We anticipate that some results from our study might be used to perpetuate the existing stigma against furries. In particular, some individuals might try to use our study to further stigmatize furries for having unusual sexual interests, such as sexual attraction to anthropomorphic animals and sexual arousal by the fantasy of being an anthropomorphic animal. However, we emphasize that neither of these sexual interests is even potentially harmful, because anthropomorphic animals are not real. Furthermore, we found little evidence that male furries are especially sexually attracted to real animals (i.e., have zoophilia)… Although many in our sample reported some degree of sexual attraction to real animals, the average intensity was low.

Narrator: While furries didn’t respond well to Hsu’s approach or the underlying mechanisms he sought to test, the resulting paper concludes with an understanding of the importance of destigmatizing sexuality.

Hsu: We believe that it is unfortunate that furries are stigmatized for having unusual sexual interests, but we doubt that this stigma will change without open and honest discourse. We cannot have open and honest discourse by denying the existence of the many furries who are sexually motivated and have unusual sexual interests. By studying sexual motivation and unusual sexual interests in furries, we will better understand their role and importance. Perhaps then, both furries and our larger society will no longer find them shameful. That would be a good result, in our opinion.

Narrator: Fur Science broke their pragmatic silence on the matter. Their survey included the same point scale as Dr. Hsu’s research, and added a question near the end where survey takers could write in their fetishes, and whether they discovered those interests through fandom participation, or if they were preexisting. Dr. Plante appeared on Fur What It’s Worth to discuss the results.

Nuka: We’ll dive into one of the, uh, one of the more controversial ones. We have zoophilia. Zoophilia, I’ll say, is way, uh… Again, for this being the thing that people say, Oh, furries are people who are sexually attracted to non human animals, the actual number of furries who are attracted to it is 6. 89%. So despite the misconception that, oh, furries are all about sexual attraction to animals, like, well, no, we’re talking maybe 6 to 7 percent of furries… would probably fall into this category. We don’t have raw numbers from the general population, but it’s been suggested that in the general population, it hovers from anywhere between 5 and 10 percent. Zoophilia has been a thing long before the furry fandom was a thing, so I’m not terribly surprised to see this number is pretty much in the same range as what you’d find in the general population.

Narrator: Only 6.9% of responses to their survey self identified as zoophiles, the second lowest ever measured in the furry fandom. And Plante asserted the real number was lower still when including responses who left that portion of the survey blank.

In our own research for this episode, the literature we found indicated the prevalence of zoophilia in the general population might be closer to 1-2%. In 2009, the annual Furry Survey’s estimate of zoophilia in the furry fandom was 13.9%, with more than nine thousand furries responding. It’s unfair to Fur Science to expect them to be everything to everyone, but from zoofur’s perspective, this was a terrible start.

In 2022, Fur Science followed up on the issue with another survey collected in person and online. This time, they used a list of fetishes gathered from previous work, and asked volunteers for longer answers about their experience in the fandom. The result: 13.3% reported “more than a little” sexual attraction to animals—double their previous study, and within the expected range established by other furry research. And Fur Science included a short discussion about it in their new book, released January 2024, exploring 10 years of effort and lessons learned.

The discussion marks a turning point in precision and in tone, at times conciliatory, but the narrative is the same as before. The range they give for zoophilia at large is now from 2-8%, and attributed to work done by Baltieri in 2017 and Kinsey’s pioneering human sexuality studies in the 1940s. In an effort to narrow the disparity with furries, Fur Science compares zoophilia to a long list of fetishes that are more popular with furries, but does not acknowledge their relative popularity among non-furries. They argue that previous studies on zoophilia they cited could be underestimates, because they studied real-life behaviors and not fantasies, but without acknowledging that their own result could also be an undercount. They don’t consider that measuring real-life action would exclude zoophiles who are non-practicing, or that the majority of bestiality acts that aren’t perpetrated by animal industry, are single experiences by non-zoos and never repeated. Fur science does acknowledge that the term zoosexual has endorsements from other scholars, but only to note its contested status. In a footnote, they report that fewer than 1% of their responses used it, without contemplating why zoos might prefer a decades-old, value-neutral descriptor, or whether their classification of zoophilia as a fetish would be so offensive to some participants, that it could negatively impact their current and future work on the subject.

Whereas Kinsey’s estimate and others measuring actions and not fantasies infer a range for zoophilia that could be higher or lower, Fur Science’s 13.3% figure is probably the minimum supported by their sample because of desirable responding. Zoos have many reasons to lie about their zoophilia; non-zoos don’t.

On the positive side, this short passage is the first time in print they consider the possibility that zoophilia might be an area where they don’t have the same trust and access that furries routinely give them. Although Fur Science never discusses the discrepancy between 6.9% and 13.3%, they do note a large difference between online and in-person survey responses, with online responses showing stronger endorsement. They speculate the difference is because zoos feel unsafe and unwelcome at furry conventions because zoophilia is highly stigmatized by furries, and provide a page of quoted responses from zoo participants confirming that the stigma exists.

Zoo 1: I don’t feel accepted. I have to hide my real feelings about being a zoo, otherwise, I’m subjected to an onslaught of hate online.

Zoo2: Being a zoo in furry spaces either means complete demonization or complete acceptance based entirely on the people you surround yourself with. There’s very little in-between these days.

Zoo 3: Yes, I am a zoophile. There are a number of furs who despise folks like me. This is likely influenced by the zoosadism leaks a while back as well as society’s views in general. I am NOT a zoosadist. I am in love with my dog. Why would I hurt her? Zoosadist and rapist are labels applied to me without merit. So I have to keep this side of myself mostly hidden from furs. Otherwise, I would likely be banned and ostracized from the few furry spaces I do occupy.”

Zoo 4: I am a zoophile, & I am not afraid to be such. However, I get constant death threats & harassment for it.”

Narrator: Our collective experience suggests the opposite is true. Perceived anonymity online changes people. Some open up in ways they feel they can’t in person. Others wield anonymity like a talisman, enabling shocking cruelty that isn’t possible anywhere else. The risks for zoos online, furry or not, are real and severe. It goes far beyond empty threats. Doxxing ruins lives. Wellness checks, nuisance calls to family, friends, and employers, strangers coming to your home, even swatting, all put our personal safety and our animal families at risk. None of these things happen at furry conventions, where there are consequences for being awful. They’ve always been and remain one of the safest, most relaxed, and most fun places for zoos to meet and be themselves. There is a reason why, when asked the best place to go to meet zoos, the answer is almost always furry conventions. Use good judgment, be good guests, find your people, and breathe deep.

Don’t start none, won’t be none.

Some of the quotes Fur Science includes in the text specifically mention online threats and harassment. None of them identify in-person experience. Perhaps Fur Science will explore the difference in a future study. It’s clear they’re not done with zoophilia yet, and this is already a major step in the right direction.

That’s credibility and trust down, but what about motivation? What other reasons might fur science have for taking a minimalist, defensive approach to zoophilia and sexuality in general? Why not be proactive and address the fandom’s worst kept secret head on?

There is no other group of people in the world who moralize and terrorize themselves over zoophilia like furries do. Some furries insist on nuance in defense of their zoo-adjacent behaviors, while rejecting any suggestion of nuance from zoos. Maybe fur science’s strategy is like that older furry friend we all have, who has one foot in a murrsuit, and the other firmly planted in the real world, and who wishes everyone inside and out would just step back from the bullshit and think harder. Maybe for fur science, that meant putting off questions about zoophilia, while they taught us all to think like social scientists.

Maybe they’ve been under intense pressure from every direction to make data that doesn’t exist yet tell stories that it can’t. And now that they’re the premier source for testable claims about furries, they’re victims of their own success.

Maybe they believe, like I do, in a moral duty to preserve the furry fandom and keep it available as a safe space for people who don’t have one. And their strategy depends on acknowledging zoos, but without elevating or condemning them.

Or perhaps it’s simpler than that. It could be that FurScience’s number one asset in interfacing with the furry fandom, is also their biggest weakness in addressing the elephant in the room. We asked Dr. Zidenberg about this, and she agreed to let us to quote her with the condition that we make it clear that she has never personally worked with FurScience, and doesn’t know the people involved, so her input is speculative.

Dr. Zidenberg: They absolutely have an advantage because they are embedded in that community. They know a lot about it. they have all of that information, but… I would say that sometimes if you are very embedded in a community, it can lead to blind spots or it can lead to, sometimes, rigid thinking. Not just for people who are in the furry fandom. I mean, I’m a woman. Sometimes I do research on women and I’m very bound by my own experiences, my own way of looking at things. So, sometimes being embedded in communities or in identities can definitely shape the way that you look at them. But, I don’t want to, I don’t want to say anything mean about them without having the whole picture… and I definitely don’t want to disparage them or say that they’re not experts.

Narrator: We’re inclined to agree. FurScience are the undisputed experts in all things furry — at least as far as their commitment to destigmatization allows them to explore. There’s a noticeable pattern in much of their work. Their results are often framed as, “Here’s what the general public has wrong about the furry fandom.” And they’re known to dismiss other reseachers’ work that includes furry fandom in uncomfortable ways, as they do in their 10 year retrospective with Zidenberg’s work that identified interest in furry sexuality as a subscale for zoophilic interest. But perhaps the zoophilic undertone of furry culture is one of those things that is easier to see from the outside, where observers aren’t lost in the fog of narrative resistance.

Hope for FurScience

Narrator: There are hopeful signs. FurScience, and Dr. Plante in particular, are always open to constructive feedback to help them improve. And we hope that if they hear this, they understand that our critique comes with a great deal of respect for what they do. The researchers at FurScience are professionals, and they understand how to handle hidden populations with care. It’s also clear that they’re aware of how their own personal boundaries may affect their work, and that they take preventative measures. Realizing their shortcomings while trying to gather data about sex and sexuality in the fandom, they added a sexologist to the team who will guide future work.

There’s also the fact that they did revisit zoophilia, and their data was better the second time around. Kind of. Their discussions don’t match our lived experience, and that’s something they could only learn about by talking with us, which hasn’t really happened yet. But hey, at least we’re in their new book. Their 5 year report didn’t even mention zoophilia, and only mentions bestiality once, in the context of an illegal act.

From our standpoint, it appears they’re treading as lightly as possible, and would rather not have to go there at all. But we think it’s inevitable. If FurScience doesn’t get this right, eventually somebody else will, and we don’t want a derogatory marks on their superb record. FurScience’s mission is to destigmatize furry, but maybe there’s a lesson in Dr. Hsu’s work. The stigma surrounding this topic can’t change without open, honest, and thorough discourse. We can’t do that from the position that zoophilia in the furry fandom is an “unfortunate misnomer.”

Conclusions

A Future with FurScience, and with Other Researchers

Narrator: FurScience deserves the same patience, kindness and respect we extend to other researchers. That includes taking no for an answer. We should encourage, but not demand, the same consideration as zoos that they extend to other subgroups within furry, and if they’re willing to talk, we should be, too. And if Dr. Zidenberg and Dr. Stetina are to be believed, zoos are easy to engage with and eager to cooperate.

But these researchers put in the work to earn our trust, demonstrate credibility, and prove that their motives were good. And that’s not trivial. Dr. Zidenberg’s background in criminology, a highly paranoid field full of junk science that zoophiles are right to be wary of, and yet she was able to prove herself and gain our cooperation. Dr. Stetina’s team was able to get zoophiles, a group of people who value privacy and anonymity, to agree to face-to-face interviews. Even Dr’s Bailey and Hsu were able to gain our trust and prove that their motives were aligned with our community’s needs, despite their body of work being steeped in Blanchard’s typology. That’s also significant, as Dr. Zidenberg can explain.

Dr. Zidenberg: So, when I did the initial analysis for my dissertation, for that paper that’s published, we actually found that we had a sizable number of people who didn’t identify as men or women, but they identified as a number of non binary and transgenders. A lot of the time people who are trans or non binary get left out of the conversation.

Narrator: All this is to say that there’s no reason that FurScience can’t do the same. In 2023, FurScience held a second series of therian panels at AnthroCon, to share early insights from their data, and make sure that their upcoming publication spoke to their experiences. Logistics aside, why not do the same with us? Consider this an open invitation.

And for other researchers who might be listening, now you know where to find us. Our doors are open to good-faith engagement with anyone willing to meet our safety requirements. We’re interested in knowing the whole truth.

A Final Message for Zoos

Narrator: We’ve spent the last section of this piece talking to FurScience, and by extension to researchers in general, but now we want to address our fellow zoos one more time. Dr. Zidenberg put it better than we ever could:

Dr. Zidenberg: If the community would like more research that serves their purposes, if they’re interested in learning more about specific things, it makes sense to work with researchers. And I say that as someone who tries my best to work with communities. I’m sure not every researcher always has the best purposes, but, I think for the most part, if someone is reaching out, they’re willing to at least have that conversation? That’s a conversation worth having.

Narrator: Right. And that means answering all those awkward questions that don’t quite hit the mark so you can get to parts that really matters to you. And it means willingness to meet researchers where they are, even if they aren’t perfect, and to trust the collaborative process. It also means providing constructive feedback and being willing to compromise a little bit when factors beyond our understanding influence how something is worded or presented. And yes, it also means knowing when to say, “No thanks,” when it’s just not working out.

Dr. Stetina: I feel you can, only break a taboo by speaking about it. But it only makes sense to speak to the right people.

An Announcement

Toggle: Thanks for listening to this episode. We worked really hard to put this together and make the first episode of season 6 a special one, and there’s actually more than we could fit into our hopefully 90 minute block! If you’d like to hear the full interviews with Dr. Zidenberg and Dr. Stetina, now is a really good time to subscribe to bonus.zoo.wtf with your favorite podcast client, or at least to visit the bonus episodes section of our website. We’ll be releasing our full episodes shortly after the release of this episode, and we really, really don’t want you to miss them, because they’re excellent and insightful. In addition to what you’ve heard tonight, we also talk about some of the preliminary results of their studies as well as what’s next down the pipeline. Whatever you do, don’t miss out on these bonus episodes. If they’re not out when you check, be sure to keep checking back!

Outro

Aqua: Thanks, friends, for listening to Zooier Than Thou.

Toggle: A special thanks to everyone who participated in this episode. Be sure to check out the show notes for our bibliography and useful links. A transcript for this episode is also available.

Aqua: Our next episode comes out April 23rd. We’re takin’ it easy and shooting the breeze. It’s bound to be chill and fun, so don’t miss it!

Toggle: You can subscribe to the podcast via our zooey RSS feed: just point your favorite podcast client at rss.zoo.wtf. You can also check out our extensive bonus content at bonus.zoo.wtf! If you want to show your support financially, head on over to donate.zoo.wtf. Find us on Bluesky at… you guessed it, @zoo.wtf.

Aqua: Our podcast’s website hasn’t changed, and you can find a form there that enables anonymous submissions to the podcast! You can also simply email us at [email protected].

Toggle: Share this podcast with someone who’s really interested in zoo research, or with a certain furry research team that we’d love to hear from!

Aqua: I’m Aqua, and I’m the little blue orb on the new logo! Hi mom!

Toggle: And I’m Toggle, and don’t let the way I’m about to deliver the next line fool you: I’m fucking exhausted. And you’ve almost fucking — (laughter) And you’ve almost finished listening to Zooier Than Thou! Stay Defiant, fellow zoos! We’ll see you next time you feel like howling at the moon!