The greatest threat to humanity’s survival isn’t climate change, nor is it AI. It’s airline pilots who like dressing up as hot cartoon foxes.
That seemed to be the takeaway from a bizarre speech made last week by Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville on the Senate floor last week. During a lengthy anti-trans rant about “gender confusion,” Tuberville started pontificating on the furry fandom, a subculture consisting of people who enjoy drawing and dressing as anthropomorphized animals. “Many airline pilots, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers are part of the furry community,” Tuberville alleged. “Lord help us. It’s terrifying when you think about this.”
To bolster his point, he later posted a viral audio clip of airline pilots at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport meowing and barking at each other over the radio, though there is no evidence that the pilots in question were furries; the video was possibly a reference to a joke in the 2001 movie Super Troopers. “When you walk onto a commercial flight, it’s possible that the pilot flying your plane could have a deranged fetish of dressing up like an animal,” Tuberville said. (Interest in the furry fandom is not necessarily sexual, nor do all furries dress up as animals.)
Tuberville’s tirade went viral, with everyone from Jimmy Kimmel to The Daily Show weighing in on the absurdity of his remarks. But there was one detail largely omitted from the coverage: on at least one point, Tuberville was (kind of) correct.
“It’s definitely something we’ve talked about before, why there are so many furries in the aviation community,” says Toby, a professional flying instructor who has been running a flight school for the past eight years; he is also a prominent member of the fandom whose fursona (the fandom’s term for an animal-inspired alter ego) is a wolf.
Vulan, who works as a pilot for a major American airline, agreed. (Due to the stigma associated with the community, all of the furries I spoke with requested they be referred to by their fursonas rather than their real names.) Vulan, who uses they/them pronouns and whose fursona is of a fox, runs a group chat for furries in aviation—one of nearly a dozen that they know of. “It’s kind of a big deal in the furry fandom because it’s such an odd, out-of-left-field thing,” they say of the overrepresentation of furries within the air travel industry.
Given its taboo nature, as well as the general dearth of data surrounding the fandom, there aren’t really many reliable numbers regarding furry employment. But the aviation industry does appear to be fairly strongly represented within the fandom. Toby hosts aviation panels at furry conventions, and he says that they are among the most popular events, with recent ones attracting upwards of 400 attendees. All fursonas, he says, are represented, though airline pilots “do tend to favor birds.”
One furry who worked for four years at an airport kiosk says he knew of a number of other furry employees during his time there, including a baggage handler who had a tattoo of his fursona. “Some people are more vocal about it than others, but in my experience most don’t talk about it,” he told me.
Vulan says that at their airline alone, they know of “at least 40” other self-identified furries, from pilots to baggage handlers to air traffic controllers. It’s not, however, something they discuss openly in the workplace. “I don’t feel the need to be represented at work, and I don’t know anyone who feels that way,” they say. “I think everybody understands this is something we enjoy at home, and we’re not asking to bring it into work, just like we’re not asking anybody else to bring their home life into work if they don’t want to.”