Pornography

Pornography (Ancient Greek, noun: πόρνηγράφεινία [pornēgrapheinia]; euphemisms: Adult/Mature work/media, colloquialisms: Porno or Porn), also known as Pron/Pr0n or P0rn, is a term commonly used to describe sexually explicit imagery in artwork, photography, film, and writing.

In its original Greek definition it meant to "write about harlots" (πορνογράφος, "pornographos" in the Greek author Athenaeus's Deipnosophists in the early third century AD). The word was first used in the British English language in 1843.

Scope
Various groups within worldwide societies have considered depictions of any sexual nature "immoral", labeling thus "pornographic", and have attempted to have them suppressed under "obscenity" and other laws (e.g. the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court's "Miller test" and/or U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese's 1986 "Meese Report") with varying degrees of success.

Such "pornographic" works have also often been subject to censorship and other legal restraints to publication, display or possession. Such grounds and even the definition of pornography have differed in various historical, cultural, and national contexts.

Pornography and furry
Within the furry fandom, most explicit artistic or written depictions of sexual acts are considered "furry pornography". Images or descriptions of a single or groups of furry/anthropomorphic characters not explicitly engaging in sex acts but prominently displaying sexual organs (especially in a state of arousal) are also often considered porn.

Pornography featuring furry characters may be called furry porn, furry adult art, and/or yiff art. Another common term is Furotica, a portmanteau furspeech term of the words furry and erotica.

A wide variety of free online furry art and writing archives offer the option to upload and display pornographic art and stories to the public, such as Fur Affinity, Inkbunny, SoFurry, Weasyl, VCL. Most furry pay-sites are exclusively catered to such media.

Some image board, such as U-18Chan, Fchan and PlayMouse, are specifically intended for the showcasing of "furry porn."

Propagation
Often, members of the fandom and critics alike speculate that adult content makes up the majority of the fandom. The opposite point of view, voiced particularly in the 2 Sense shows, claims that this is caused by the cognitive bias: since pornography is not tabooed in the furry community, its relative percentage may be even smaller than in the mundane world, but the fact that it gets more exposure makes it appear to be a larger chunk.

No scientifically credible estimates of the exact ratio of pornographic content to family friendly content in the furry community exist to date. A rough estimate from conventions which allow adult content in such activities as art shows and charity auctions and auction sites such as FurBid-SF suggest a proportion of 25-40%, with a higher proportion of mature publications and 2D artwork than sculpture and other constructed art.

Fur Affinity, arguably the largest furry art site, published monthly statistics up until 2009 (FA LiveJournal) which consistently showed clean artwork outnumbered pornographic artwork by orders of magnitude.

Legality
There are no mainstream laws which specifically reference pornography containing anthropomorphic characters at this time, be it characters of adult or minor (cub) age. Furry websites, forums, groups and publications may enact them independently within the fandom.

Orientation
Furry pornography is often stereotyped as homosexual in nature. This is not always the case, though the percentage of bisexual or homosexual furries appears to be higher than that in the general population. A detailed survey by Tevildo of postings to the fur.artwork.erotica newsgroup between April and December 2001 revealed 45.6% of pictures to be "gay" themed and 48.9% to be "straight" (heterosexual) themed.

Species
Furry pornography commonly depicts species popular among the furry fandom, as many furry porn artists enjoy depicting their own personal fursonas in sexual activity, either with a fantasy mate or the fursona of a person to whom they are attracted in real life. Some pornographic artists draw generic characters as well, though these are usually species chosen for their sexual characteristics or stereotyped promiscuity, such as foxes, wolves, and horses.

Subject
Fetish imagery catering to various paraphilias seems to appear with significant frequency in furry porn. BDSM, vore, pregnancy fetish, costume play, infantilism, inflation, rape fantasy, and other fetishes are often depicted in furry pornography, with most of the characters engaging in these fetishes are being invariably anthropomorphic animals.

Transformation, in which humans turn into animals or furries transform into a different type of furry, is also popular in furry porn and regular furry art alike. Mental control or transformation permanence may be established through orgasm.

Most of these fetishes are not specific to the furry fandom, but merely furry expressions of them. While fetish porn is frequently attested to be unusually common in furry fandom — one of the complaints of the former critic Burned Furs was its perceived popularity — it is, again, impossible to obtain a precise percentage of fetish pornography compared to other forms of furry pornography.

Mainstream views
Furry erotica is not thought well of by some outside the fandom itself. In The Geek Hierarchy, Erotic Furries (sic) are ranked just below Furries as a whole, and just above "Star Trek fanfic, written as furry erotica, with Kirk as an ocelot (or something), and the author being the star and his own personal furry as well."