What do you mean, 'you're a fox'?

6/10/2026 • filed under post, identity, furry

This morning I ended up discussing what it means to me to identify as a fox with a friend, who is also kinda like this. Given how natural (i.e. I didn't rewrite every sentence about 50 times) it came I was inspired to take some of what I said and turn it into a more coherent post. Which you're reading right now, so enjoy(?)

I, on many cases have described my self as, 'a fox'. And I don't mean I am a furry who has a fursona that is a fox (even though that is also true), like I, the person sat at a desk writing this, would describe themself as 'a fox'. And if you were to ask what gender I am, the answer would also be something along the lines of: 'i'm a fox', which no, isn't a speech inappropriate response, my gender fell out & got lost somewhere and 'fox' was the only thing I had to patch the hole with. I'll explain later.

Disclaimer

This will likely only be comprehensible if you are autistic, and maybe only if you in some way have a non-human identity. If you are neither I fully expect you to not understand anything I say here.

So you're a Therian/Otherkin, right? ΘΔ?

Eeh, not really. Sure, if you go to Wikipedia, the article 'Therian subculture' opens with

Therians, also known as therianthropes, are individuals who identify as one or more nonhuman animals, partially or entirely, on a personal level, which they call their theriotypes.

And yes, a fox is a non human animal, that I identify as, on some personal level. So, by that definition, I am a therian. Just ignore the fact that that definition would apply to a hell of a lot of furries that would not consider themself on any level therian. I however, don't like to use the term therian to describe myself, because as soon as you go beyond that most basic & broad of definitions, it starts to stop applying. For example, from the Therian Wiki on fandom.com (proxied by breeze.mint.lgbt), Therianthrope is described as

someone who involuntarily identifies as a non-human animalistic creature

and also states,

it is also agreed upon that a therian can not pick or choose their theriotype

This, along with a general preconception I have of therians often times wanting to reject being human, immediately disqualifies the term for me, because while I didn't wake up one day and choose to be like this, and I sure as hell don't remember being asked if I wanted to be autistic (this will become more relevant later), I can point to the decision I made in 2017 to become a furry, and for my fursona to be a fox. This, while did not directly lead to me referring to myself as a fox (except when used as short hand to mean 'my fursona is a fox' as is common amongst furries), it definitely set the stage and prepared a trap that once set off would lead me falling down a rabbit hole so deep, it would get the original inspiration for my fursona, Nicholas Wilde from Zootopia, excited.

A Video Essay About Furry Porn Changed My Entire Brain Chemistry And Made Me Autistic And I'm Not Even Joking

https://youtu.be/ws9g3igw51s. There it is. There's the link. Go watch that. It basically makes much of the same points, is a hell of a lot more well thought out, is much more entertaining & is actually somewhat approachable instead of just me rambling on about my life story.

But for me, in some time in early 2024, seeing 'On the Ethics of Boinking Animal People' was an absolutely unskippable video title, and, a 45-ish minute video about furry porn was exactly the type of content I'd watch. But it was what set off that trap I mentioned earlier, and I fell for it. Hook. Line. Sinker. I did not know that I would come out of it having my entire perception of myself changed. First of all, the video made me realise that yeah, I, undeniably am autistic. Which despite, 20 years of life experience I had at that point, which include, but are not limited to:

• being a furry
• spending all my time sat at a computer
• having almost exclusively autistic friends and my boyfriend being one of the autistic people of all time
• failing entirely to socialise with my peers at school, except those who were autistic, so much so they had to put me in special social skills classes
• having a magnetic attraction to trains
• being a subscriber of the DieselDucy YouTube channel
• having a friend, back when I was 12, confidently announce that I was autistic in a YouTube, to which when I pulled them aside to say "uh, I'm not", the response was "Oh, I thought you was"
• and having an actual psychiatrist ask if I was interested in an autism assessment, to which my response was "no thanks I don't think I'm autistic".

I still hadn't gotten it. (That is because I am an: OBLIVIOUS. CLUELESS. MORON.)

But it was that video that linked the autistic traits to things I could relate to, like masking, and feeling like a 'failed human', and have it all click together in my mind along with a bunch of other autistic traits, in a way that I simply could not deny, overpowering my doubts like, the classic 'but I can't even stick to a routine!', and even inextricably linked autism to being a furry, and my gender identity, which I had been trying to figure out for about 5 years at this point, hearing the following:

Bitches are always asking how they can even adequately express a non-binary identity in a society that only recognises male and female.

It's simple. You just need to bark really loud!

was what made it click. "My life is a joke" usually means something really depressing, but I am going to use it right now in this context because, it is, my life is really fucking unserious & funny like what the fuck do you mean, and I will repeat this once-a-fucking-gain, A Video Essay Called "On The Ethics Of Boinking Animal People" explained my gender identity better in 10 seconds than I figured out in 5 years.

Also pay attention to how the video describes a very similar experience to what I describe for myself later on, like me, still describes it as 'furry', and distinguishes it from 'therian'. I don't know if I fully agree with the distinguishing factor being that 'furry' has a certain autistic quality that 'therian' doesn't, (like, have you ever seen the therian community?) but overall it makes sense to me, even if the precise wording is a bit off, and the video still describes what I mean when I say I'm a 'furry that takes it too far' ^[1]

The Veneer of Humanity

Realising I'm autistic made it click why I often felt like an outsider to the rest of humanity. Someone trying and failing to 'pass off' to fit in with humanity. Constantly feeling like you missed the class on how to behave & interact with others that everyone seemed to just innately know. Constantly feeling that you give off the subconscious feeling of unease of being in the uncanny valley to anyone you interact with. The way neurotypical people can see a single picture of an autistic person and subconciously percieve them as substantially less approachable. This, maybe among other things (i.e. having undiagnosed ADHD until age 18 doesn't help), you start to feel like you've 'failed as a human'.

But, regardless, you still, maybe without even knowing, put a lot of effort & energy into learning how to put on the mask of humanity. But, while it helps some, it drains you, and after a while you start to give up on ever finding it easy to socialise. But when it finally clicks you're autistic, and you learn what autistic masking is and you try to take off the mask of humanity off, what do you look like underneath? Sure, maybe it's just 'autistic human', but if it feels like everyone's silently telling you you're doing a bad job at being a human, why not give something else a shot?

The fox under the mask of humanity under the fox mask

(or hood rather, for those in the scene)

Given I had spent 6.5 years being a fox on the internet, and having the thing that made it click for me be about furries, animal people and the duality of being both a human and a non-human animal at the same time, and also, what it means for to be a dog, and as such, should be treated like one, such as how people get excited whenever they see a dog, and the ability to lie in someones lap and receive affection that pets dogs get unconditionally just for existing, without any obligations or responsibility, which for someone as affection starved and low self-worth as myself, especially back then, my response was: uh, yes please, I wanna be a dog^[2], where do I sign up? ^[3]

Now, if you remember, I mentioned how the term therian commonly being used by those who reject being human disqualified the term for me. I squarely do not want to become an actual animal, driven by instinct. I believe, that even though humans have been cruel to me, and human society is too (do I even need to say the line 'capitalism bad' at this point?), and it is very hard & difficult to live through that. But, if theres one thing I've learnt to live my life by, even if very cliché, it's that, nothing in life is easy, and living life on easy mode will destroy you more than any other human can. I've managed to get through a lot of that cruelty, and I've come to find people who are kind, loving and I could not imagine trading away the uniquely human ability to, make choices, have free will, come together, build things much greater than any one person can alone, to care for, connect with & love one another, to have conversation, and in general, live a life that is so much more than just basic survival instinct.

And of course, sometimes it would be nice to just be able to take on the form of a little guy and take a nap^[4] in someone's lap or whatever, but I'm not expecting that in any serious level beyond my daydreams, or if I could, I wouldn't want spend any a majority of my time outside my human form.

Aside: There are some of us who would rather have instinct than be human. That is perfectly valid. I admit I haven't had the worst of the possible human experiences, and I am optimistic about life and humans to a fault, but I'm not at that level. See also: yet another video from a musician about their autism making them realise they're not (at least entirely) human. (something something if I had a nickel)

Error CS0029: Cannot implicitly convert type 'Fox' to 'Gender'

Okay, so, you know how I said that I would also say that my response to being asked what my gender is would also be to say 'I'm a fox', and how that doesn't really make sense because, well, that doesn't fit, 'fox' isn't a gender, 'boy', 'girl', even 'non-binary' are correct answers, but 'fox' doesn't fit in, right? Well, lets step back a little and try and figure out why someone might want to know someone's gender.^[5] Usually, it's because humanity assigns certain characteristics, expectations & behaviours to certain genders, and yeah, it's 2026, you can be an effeminate guy, pop off king, but that's my point, you're still effeminate, from the Latin 'fēmina' meaning 'woman'. As long as you're living within humanity's gender system, you're always going to be prescribed with some level of masculinity (male-ness) or femininity (female-ness)^[6]

So, as someone who never signed up for humanity's gender system, and rather had it forced upon me, and especially given autistic people as a collective's less than stellar relationship with greater humanity, and also autism coming with a level of resistance to what is the expected 'done thing', especially without good reason for it, I don't want to oppress myself under humanity's system of male/female based gender. So, lets solve the XY problem of people asking what my gender is, and instead, just describe what characteristics, expectations & behaviours I want to portray and to be expected of me, I wonder if there's a single, short, snappy word that everyone already kinda knows what it means that gets that across. Here's a hint: a three letter word that rhymes with 'box' and up until this point it's already been used 19 times in this Markdown file.

An entirely custom, scratch built in-house, bespoke gender.

Defining your gender outside the traditional expectations of what people expect a gender to be is immensely freeing. As for someone who has struggled in the past with agency and authenticity, especially in my identity, identifying as transgender has given me immense power to define my identity for myself, even down to the core foundation of a person's identity, changing your name is seen as a done thing once you start toying with your gender identity, and having the way people refer to you be a set of words you chose for yourself based on your own personality is empowering on its own, but defining your entire gender outside of the ordinary takes that to a whole new level.

Like, for example, if you try and do the whole 'boys like blue, girls like pink' thing with 'fox', you'll draw a blank, like, what even is the stereotypical favourite colour of a 'fox'?^[8] That won't even make sense as a question, because like, the only frame of reference for the term 'fox' in most people's mind is the 4 legged critters with the boots with the fur. So, effectively, the answer is, "I don't know, what is a 'fox'es favourite colour?" which means, you are starting from an blank slate when it comes to what people expect it to mean for a person to be a 'fox', which again in turn, means that you have the freedom to define, for yourself, what it means to be a 'fox' as whatever you want it to mean without having to deal with preconceived notions of masculinity or femininity.

And while, yes, while most people might have preconceived notions on what is acceptable fox-like behaviour, but yes, that is the point, first of all, that is based on my personality, more so than if I limited myself to the standard gender options, and provides framework to explain any behaviours I choose to take from the actual critters (what? you're surprised someone who just spent all that time explaining about autistic de-masking acts in a way that pleases the autism?), because if anyone gets confused, you can just say 'oh, them? yeah they're a fox'. And sure, they'll probably still be confused if they don't have any experience with any other Outsiders of Humanity.^[9], it still gives you a blank page rather than having to fight preconceived notions that might exist for other terms you use.

"Because bees foxes don't care what humans think is impossible."

Ok, now you might be thinking, that like humans, foxes, are mammals, like I don't already know where you're going with this, so, there are distinct 'boy foxes' and 'girl foxes'.

To which I respond, what are you, 5 years old? When have you ever seen an adult (that isn't speaking to a child) distinguish between a 'boy animal' or 'girl animal'. Sure, it might be important to know if your pet is a male or female when you're taking them to the vet, but, and I hope you know this already, sex and gender are not the same thing. Gender is a trait that only exists within humanity. And plus, I never specified, I am just An Fox. Of ambiguous sex. Because it doesn't matter. I mean, how would you even tell? I mean, there is the obvious, but unless you're a vet, I don't think you should be paying much attention to that area^[10].

In conclusion,

anyway man idk, im just a fox awrwrrr. go watch some propaganda or smth