By David-Elijah Nahmod
“Fox Foxerson” is the brainchild of queer cartoonist, illustrator, oil painter and mental health advocate Christi Furnas. In many ways, Fox is a reflection of Furnas’ own life. Like Furnas, Fox is queer and lives with mental illness. According to Furnas, Fox has opinions, and those opinions can be read in “Ask Fox Foxerson,” an advice column that appears in “Dispatch,” an arts and culture publication based out of Minneapolis. Oh, and Fox is literally a fox — a cartoon.
“Ask Fox” is a satirical column. The questions Fox answers are real, but the answers have a comedic edge to them. In one column, a gay man who calls himself Annoyed Boi asks Fox what to do about his allegedly straight friend who wants to dry hump him all the time.
“I think ‘straight’ is just a phase your flirty friend is going through,” Fox’s reply reads in part. “It’s only a matter of time before they hug, kiss, dance and hump their way to a new identity.”
Further down in the same column, Annoyed Boi is advised to set his boundaries.
“My money is on him denying the whole thing and proclaiming straightness,” Fox writes. “There might even be some derogatory terms toward the queer community. Don’t be reactive, just set your boundaries. Let him know if he ever needs to talk, you’ll be an ear. Because if he’s gay, he’s having a hell of a time coming out of the closet. And maybe it would be more helpful to him to talk it out with you rather than doing the humpty hump.”
Fox’s column may have a comedic edge, but the advice is ultimately sage.
Of course, Fox is just a character. It is their creator, Furnas, who writes all the replies.
Furnas hails from Kansas, but feels that she has lived through enough Minneapolis winters to call herself a Minnesotan.
“I got married 11 years ago,” Furnas tells the D Lit Blog. “My wife is a writer and I’m a professional artist. Historically, I’ve worked in oil, but in 2015 I got it in my head to write a graphic novel about living with mental illness. A Minnesota State Arts Board grant helped get me going on that, so I switched to pen and ink.”
Fox Foxerson began as a mini-comic titled “Crazy Like a Fox: Adventures in Schizophrenia.” Furnas reports that she is now working on a full-length graphic novel with the same title, in addition to the column in “Dispatch.”
“I didn’t want to write a memoir, but I did want to speak about living with schizophrenia,” Furnas says. “Fox’s experiences and voice mirrors my own. Obviously, characters like Jellyfish Boss Lady, Snake and Worm don’t literally exist, so the book is not a memoir.”
Furnas identifies as queer. She came out in the ‘90s. When she received her mental health diagnosis she was open and honest with her friends and family because, according to her, it made sense.
“I didn’t come out of one closet only to dive into another,” she said. “Sharing my experience with schizophrenia is important to me because I know other queers coming out made a profound difference. It was what shaped the movement to stop HIV, and continues to affect our political climate, and so on.”
Like their creator, Fox is queer. There was no coming out, according to Furnas, Fox just is.
“Fox’s pronouns are they/them,” Furnas said. “I understand the female term for a Fox is Vixen, but Fox doesn’t use she/her pronouns, so there you go. My pronouns are she/her, that’s the one difference between us. If I had been born 25 years later, who knows? Identity is contextual and time is a context.”
According to Furnas, Fox has lived with mental illness their entire adult life, and so their answers to reader’s questions reflects that experience.
“I treasure the response to my comics,” Furnas said. “Largely, it falls into two buckets. People living with severe and persistent mental illness tell me they are happy to see their experience reflected. I hear a lot about how representation helps to start conversations that are otherwise hard. I get, ‘that same thing has happened to me!’ I also hear from parents that their teenager or adult child can really relate.”
Furnas added that Fox is a bit of a know-it-all. They honestly think they are helping people gain a new perspective, though with a sense of humor.
“I hope people can take Fox’s advice with a grain of salt and either LOL, or at least finish reading it with a smile,” she said.
Look for “Ask Fox Foxerson” in “Dispatch” here: https://www.dispatchmsp.com/issue-14-dear-fox-foxerson/
Fox also has a presence on Instagram: @fox_foxerson.
Got a question for Fox? Email them at: foxfoxerson@dispatchmsp.com
For more information on Christi Furnas and her work, please visit: https://www.christifurnas.com/