Editing Furry fandom (section)

==Furry lifestyle==
{{See also|Otherkin}}

The phrases ''furry lifestyle'' and ''furry lifestyler'' first appeared in July 1996 on the newsgroup alt.fan.furry during an ongoing dispute within the online community. The Usenet newsgroup was created to accommodate discussion beyond furry art and literature, and to resolve disputes concerning what should or should not be associated with the fandom; its members quickly adopted the term ''furry lifestylers'', and still consider the fandom and the lifestyle to be separate social entities. They have defined and adopted an alternative meaning of the word ''furry'' specific to this group: "a person with an important emotional/spiritual connection with an animal or animals, real, fictional, or symbolic."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tigerden.com/infopage/furry/lifestyle.txt|title=alt.lifestyle.furry - Frequently Asked Questions|date=May 8, 2001|access-date=2006-08-26|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060821023802/http://www.tigerden.com/infopage/furry/lifestyle.txt|archive-date=August 21, 2006}}</ref>

In their 2007 survey, Gerbasi et al. examined what it meant to be a furry, and proposed a taxonomy in which to categorize different "types" of furries. The largest group—38% of those surveyed—described their interest in furry fandom predominantly as a "route to socializing with others who share common interests such as anthropomorphic art and costumes."<ref>{{cite journal | last = Gerbasi | first = Kathleen |author2=Paolone, Nicholas|author3=Higner, Justin|author4=Scaletta, Laura|author5=Bernstein, Penny|author6=Conway, Samuel|author7= Privitera, Adam | year = 2008 | title = Furries From A to Z (Anthropomorphism to Zoomorphism) | journal = Society & Animals | volume = 3 | pages = 220 }}</ref> They also identified furries who saw themselves as "other than human", or who desired to become more like the furry species which they identified with.<ref name="BBC" /><ref name="Gerbasi2008"/>