On Representation

I've been thinking a lot about representation recently. The zoo community is a beautiful tapestry of so many amazing people and diverse voices and it comes together to form a beautiful picture of who we as zoos are. As someone that's involved in so many pieces of the community I think I get to see that summation of how spectacular the community is. But, most people don't have that perspective. Not every zoo engages with every part of the community. And most people that aren't zoos probably only see a glance. And I've been thinking about what that glance looks like. What representation are we putting out there? There's already a negative stigma around zoosexuals, but what can we do to try and make sure that we combat that by putting our best foot forward? Before we get there though, I have something I want to talk about really quickly. 
 
 
When I first joined the zoo community, it was a really amazing experience. I'm lucky enough to have never been totally isolated in my zoosexuality. I've had zoo friends online for most of my life, and even real life zoo friends for a lot of it. But in all those places, being a zoo was seen very much as a "dark secret." Something that we needed to always be cautious about. It was fantastic being able to hang out with a group of zoo friends and shoot the shit, but it felt like a backroom meeting in the basement of a dingy bar. Very cool, but also very hush hush. The zoo community on the other hand felt like a street party. An acknowledgement of us being here and proud of it. Something where I didn't get that same feeling of doing something wrong, that I needed to hide. I joined so incredibly bright eyed. From the moment that I first listened to that ZooTT episode that finally got me to create a Twitter account, I knew that I didn't just want to be a part of the community. I wanted to give back to it. I wanted to help it grow and thrive. I wished I had found the greater community when I was younger, and I wanted to help other people find it for themselves now. 
 
 
Which is why I wanted to create things like Zooey Dot Pub, and the ZDP Discord server. Why I want to put in the extra effort to try and make memes and content that gets shared and do everything else. And little by little, my presence in the community grew. The first time I ever got Toggle to like one of my tweets, I was elated. When Vex followed me, I thought that was incredible. When Toggle actually said yes to being my first interview for the magazine, I was shocked. It was really a meeting your idols moment. And then somehow I was even invited to BE on the podcast. Little by little, the silly magazine I was running got bigger and bigger, the Discord server became the biggest zoo space out there. People started messaging me telling me that I was the reason they found the community. I had people tweeting about how excited they were that I liked their tweets or followed them. Somehow, I'd become someone that other people looked up to. I'd become representative of the zoo community.
 
 
And on one hand, that's really cool. It's awesome that after all this time and effort it seems like my hard work is paying off. What we've created is incredible, and I'm so thankful that we've come this far. On the other hand though, it's terrifying. Because now, I'm not just one zoo that's trying to make cool stuff. I'm one of "the" zoos. My name is associated with zoos in general. And that's a huge responsibility. 
 
 
The way stereotyping works is that people take individual people that are part of a group that they don't like, and then portray that person's traits to be representative of the whole group. You see a woman make a bad turn while driving and all women suck at driving. You see a white guy who is violent and all white guys are violent. There might be millions or even billions of a particular group out there, but you see a few examples and if you have a negative perception about that group already, it gets amplified. This is made even more extreme when that individual is seen as a big voice within that community.
 
 
Hasan Piker is an extremely prominent leftist political Twitch streamer. He has a huge audience, and frequently is featured in other content as well. If you're reading this, there's a pretty good chance you've at least heard his name before. As far as his politics go, he's pretty far on the left. He's a full on socialist, he believes housing should be a public good, he once famously said that "America deserved 9/11." Now, if you're someone that doesn't like leftists, you can look at the political left in general and say "Every leftist is like this" because he speaks on behalf of the left. If you want to be a little bit more nuanced, you could say "Every socialist is like this" because there are way less socialists than their are leftists. Regardless, people on the other side of the political spectrum frequently tout anything Hasan does as a reason for why "the left" is bad. 
 
 
I used to think that kind of thing didn't matter. That the most important part was to live your true and most authentic self and say fuck the haters. But, even though I'm nowhere near the level of infamy Hasan has, now that I'm also a big voice in a community I don't know if I feel the same way I used to. It almost feels like every time I say something now I'm saying it "on behalf" of the community at large, whether I want to or not. The things that I do are taken to be the things that zoos in general do. Everything from the articles I write, down to the tweets that I make, or even the messages that I send in public chats. And god forbid I go to a furry convention and have to deal with the ramifications of how I act in real life. 
 
 
Let's talk about representation. I'm sure you've heard the term before. Typically associated with having diversity of characters in media, but there's a lot more to it than just that. My content, and even my personhood at this point, are representation for the zoosexual community at large. That's true not just of me, but of every zoo. 
 
 
I want to take a second to talk about some bad things for a moment here. If you're not okay hearing about the sadism leaks or Sappho, skip this paragraph and the next two. But, I think it's important to look at these things, because they're the negative representation that we face in the modern day zoosexual movement. Both of those things are things that people use to define what the zoo community is. I've even seen fellow zoos get caught in this trap. And I get it, honestly. If I was friends with someone who then was found to be a vile sadist actively harming animals, I'd probably find it pretty hard to trust again too. Similarly, the fact that someone that already had an audience joined the community just to immediately start grooming children felt like sabotage to the community so powerful it almost felt deliberate. "(that group we don't like) are groomers!" has always been a weapon the right has used to villainize people, but one high profile case of it actually happening adds so much gasoline to the flames, and while the name Sappho isn't said that much anymore, it's hard not to imagine that part of the reason there's so much discourse around grooming isn't because that became another thing on our tapestry.
 
 
But that's the power of representation. The sadism leaks are another huge example. They gave people that already didn't like zoos something to point to to say "This is what zoos are behind the scenes," and it caused a lot of people who didn't know anything about zoos to get an immediate bad impression. That's not to say exposing sadism is bad. It's better to remove it when you find it than let it fester, absolutely. Especially for the sake of the animals who are the victims of sadism, our first and most important task should be to do what we can to not allow this type of thing to continue happening. But it can mean, unfortunately, that when people are looking at us at a glance, without all of the same long-timer perspectives that some of us have, that they might see the word "zoosadism" when they are hearing about "zoosexuality," and mentally roll both words into being the same thing in their mind.
 
 
You may have heard about this already, but on June 10th, there's a documentary that will be premiering at a film festival. The documentary is called, "The Furry Detectives: Unmasking A Monster." The documentary is all about the general investigation and fallout of the zoosadism leaks. We haven't seen it yet, we obviously don't know what it's going to be like, but a lot of zoos I've been talking to are dreading it, because at large, film media so rarely gets us right. And, while this documentary may not actually even be about us, people could easily get the impression that it is about us anyways. And that's going to suck a lot, if it does turn out that way. But, unless this documentary does an exceptional job, chances are that it's not going to go out of its way to paint the majority of zoos in any kind of positive light; chances are that in a documentary centered around freaks and monsters, we're not going to get an equal or greater amount of screentime that shows our editor-in-chief Alissa playing fetch with a dog and then making dinner for a dog and then lying on the bed reading a book with a napping dog and no one gets hurt and everything is zooey and peaceful and lovely. Even if the documentary doesn't specifically mention zoos or the zoo community at all, there's going to be an immediate link for the uninformed audience from "These people having sex with animals are evil" to "That means people that have sex with animals are evil." And unfortunately, there's really not a lot that we can do about it. Like the Sappho stuff, it's just going to be something that we have to reckon with. (Or, hey, paws crossed that these filmmakers in this case prove us wrong, but you can take the same concerns and apply them to any hypothetical media that ever gets made on the topic)
 
 
Okay, if you skipped the paragraphs preceding, you're good again at this point, welcome back. Don't blame you at all for not wanting to revisit those memories. That said, don't think you escaped all the negativity because there is one more thing that I want to talk about as it comes to bad representation. Part of being a zoosexual (arguably the biggest part) is finding animals attractive. Without that part, you're probably just someone really into animal rights. Zoosexuality is a sexuality, just like any other. I'll be honest, I follow some adult content creators on Twitter. I see explicit pictures of humans doing things, I think that's neat. I see pictures of furry artists drawing things, I think that's also neat. Both of those are things I'm attracted to, and I like seeing them. I see pictures of animals however, and something is different. I still like the picture. I'm still attracted. But at the same time, there's a level of shame that I experience. Now, I actually don't think adult zoo content is overtly bad. Yes, there are obviously ways that it *can* be bad, but I also think there are ways that human content can be bad in all the same ways. The existence of the possibility of bad things doesn't necessarily make it bad in general. It's not the pictures that I have issues with, it's the representation. I don't think there's anything wrong with being attracted to animals, nor do I think there's anything wrong with wanting to share that attraction with others. But, as a member of the zoosexual community who thinks a lot about this kind of thing, it's hard not to see pictures of horses from underneath getting hundreds of thousands of views and not think, "What is this saying about us?"
 
 
When I get DM's from people asking if I want to "swap pictures", my first thought is about what kind of light that's painting the community in if they're sending those kinds of DM's to everyone, even if I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with someone wanting to swap pictures. There's a very clear and very present stereotype that zoos are only in it for the sex, and that they take advantage of animals to fulfill their own needs. For the most part, that's absolutely untrue. But, does that kind of content reenforce that belief in a way that's overall harmful, even if the thing itself isn't? I think it's awesome that Jdonk (someone who posts a lot of pictures of horses from underneath) is getting closer and closer to 100k followers. That's a very clear and public sign that there are a TON of zoos out there. And in a lot of ways, that's awesome for the community. But at the same time, from an outside perspective, if that takes up so much of our tapestry, what do people looking on think if that's the first, or first couple things they see when they look at us?
 
 
I don't really have a good answer to that question. Not one that doesn't make me a hypocrite anyway. This isn't a problem that just zoos face. As a bisexual, one of the things that I see the most from people when they talk about why bisexuals are bad actually, is that all bisexuals are super slutty polyamorous deviants that have no self control. To be honest, I think a lot of those things are pretty fine to be, but it's definitely something that most people would consider a negative stereotype. Which is frustrating because I'm personally a little promiscuous. I like to have a good time, especially around conventions. And while there's definitely nothing wrong with that, it's hard to escape feeling like I'm being a bad representative of bisexuals because I'm playing into that stereotype. But what's the solution? Just stop doing something I like that isn't harming anyone because I don't want to be a bad representative? Or go on uncaring about representation at all. Say "fuck it" and just be myself.
 
 
This is a problem that exists a hundred fold within the zoo community. For bisexuals, they've already mostly had their liberation. Sure, there might be the snarky comment here and there, but those people are in the minority and their views aren't taken seriously. There is erasure to contend with, and that absolutely still matters, but the biggest battle has been fought already, so to speak. For zoos, we're still fighting our uphill battle. If I was a bisexual in the 50's or 60's, would I have felt differently? If I knew that I was representing an oppressed population, would I have felt more of a necessity to restrict myself from things I know are fine, just to try and present a better picture of myself to the world? 
 
 
There's a responsibility that comes with being part of any group, but especially one that's marginalized. That's true of big names like me, but that's also true of every single individual in that community. When it comes to "Bisexuals" as a community, I'm a nobody. Zoo activism is the only queer activism that I'm involved with. But, that doesn't mean that I'm not still someone representing that group. If I have "Bisexual" in my bio, and then go and share deepfakes of a nude celebrity, that's still "proving" to people that see it that all bisexuals care about is sex. It might not have the same reach as if someone that was a bigger name did it, but it's still a data point people can use against the group. Now, imagine this at scale. There are an estimated 13.7 million bisexuals in the US. If even 0.01% of those people were bad, and acted as "bad representation," that's over a thousand people. That's more than enough for people looking for an excuse to try and paint all bisexuals under the same banner. For zoos, the number is even smaller. Our community is counted in the thousands, not the millions. 0.01% of 10,000 people is just one. All it takes is a single person to have the same effect as more than a thousand for bisexuals. And we know there are more than 10,000 zoos out there, and we unfortunately know there's more than just a single bad zoo out there too. But, thinking about the tapestry, if there's 13.7 million people all contributing to the picture, one person's contributions are tiny. If there's 10,000, one person's contributions can be a lot more. 
 
 
Like with most of these more philosophical articles, I don't really have a solution that's going to fix all of society's problems in 2 hours or your money back. I can say things like "Do your best to be a good citizen of the zoo community, and think about how people will perceive your actions." But is that really a solution? I don't want it to be. I hate saying that the solution is to sanitize ourselves to appeal to the broader audience. But at the same time, if our goal really is to gain acceptance for the community, we need to put our best foot forwards, and I don't think that's possible without thinking about representation. Maybe that's the role of figureheads within the community. Some figureheads can get away with being their freaky unadulterated selves and being so hyper charismatic that tons of people are willing to get on board, and that is amazing, that's awesome. But, for at least some applications, some representation in the world, a more clean look is desirable. We can try and stay clean and look nice for the people looking into the community, and the hope is that we're seen first and we can present a very positive and brand safe version of ourselves while everyone else gets to live their lives as they please. I think it's easy to say that's what happened with the furry fandom. It's not like there hasn't always been an undercurrent of sex and partying that's existed with the fandom, and that didn't go away as the fandom grew and gained acceptance. There were just other things that the media could focus on that presented the fandom more favorably. 
 
 
Maybe that's my job now. To try and hold up the moral values of the community as an infallible paragon. But man, I'm just a raccoon. The idea that so many other people rely on me to be that for the community as large is so horrifying. I'm not someone who's got a background in any of this. I just wanted to try and do something nice for the community. But now here we are, and the only options left are to keep moving forwards or to retire the Tarro name and start fresh, and I can imagine few things as selfish as that option when so many people have put their trust and their faith in me. When so many people believe that I can be someone to represent them. 
 
 
All I can do is my best, and that's what I'm going to keep doing. And while I'm no artist, I just hope that my contribution to the tapestry is one that people can be proud of. 
 
 
 
 

Article written by Tarro (May 2025)

Find ZDP on Telegram at https://t.me/zooeydotpub 

Find the ZDP RSS feed link in our footer any time you're on the website! That url for anyone interested is https://zooeydotpub.zdu.se/feed.xml

Questions, comments or concerns? Check out our Discord server! discord.gg/EfVTPh45RE 

Find Tarro at https://twitter.com/hereforthezoo