I hope you all will forgive my intrusion as a non-maintainer. Here's a perspective as a user:

Only three interview subjects talked to me about their own erotic investment in the fandom, but I suspect that many others were more interested in having fun at FWA than in talk- ing to me about their sex lives. Although my official escort soon left me to proceed on my own, a few people approached me between interviews to make sure I was not up to anything objectionable. The most interesting of these was a graduate student in performance studies whom I met only in full fursuit and who checked my credentials with his major professor, an old friend of mine. I hope that this young scholar and amazing fur-suit dancer - he won the contest - will write about the fandom

My entry into these specific communities came through a naturally occurring chain of events. In each case, I knew an old-time resident in the community, and my relationship with that individual opened the community to me. I had grown up in a rural Piedmont area in a neighboring state, so the customs of both communities were very familiar to me