Josesk Volpe
Back in the middle 2000s of Furry Fandom, nobody was looking up the canonical ages of fictional cartoon animal people to check if drawing lewd art of them was āProblematicā or not
In the past, there already were furs policing artwork, kinks and identities. I.E. the Furry Sexuality Survey from The Furry Revolution by The Chained Wolf made a poll to research fetishes, paraphilias and sexualities in the furry subculture back then, it included samples of the most commons comments of those who answered the polls, some claims zoophiles and babyfurs are unacceptable and that both are harmful to the community.
> The people who have sexual feelings for animals use the furry community to their advantage, they use the over tolerant atmosphere of the group to avoid criticism and socialise with actual Human beings for a change. Also, they try to hide themselves amongst the Furries who have more conventional beliefs hoping that everyone elses image shadows over theirs (rather like a needle in a haystack), but they fail to realise that they actually stick out like a sore thumb (just use a magnet and the needle will come out). Zoophiles do more damage to the group by typecasting it, rather than giving it diversity. The same goes to Babyfurs, I believe that they have the potential to stain the furry fandom far worse than they ever could do to their nappies. Both zoophiles and babyfurs are unacceptable in my view.
This back in 2008.
We can go even further on the past back in the 1998, when we got the first alert of what we will be dealing today. The well known Burned Furs, which many furs usually makes the revisionism saying it was just a regular anti-gay group (or even worse, saying they were just trying to cleanse the furry rep) but their first targets were the zoophiles, spiritualist furries (therians wasnāt a word back then), vegetarians and lycanthropes, also usually targeted all the weird artworks and furry expression from that time.
We can go even further on the past back in the 1998, when we got the first alert of what we will be dealing today. The well known Burned Furs, which many furs usually makes the revisionism saying it was just a regular anti-gay group (or even worse, saying they were just trying to cleanse the furry rep) but their first targets were the zoophiles, spiritualist furries (therians wasnāt a word back then), vegetarians and lycanthropes, also usually targeted all the weird artworks and furry expression from that time.
So, see, it always existed in furry, it just currently became a trend. Furry always had this contradiction between being the weirdest and very acceptive subculture but also having the issue of being so huge in hate of other furs differences. We canāt treat it as a new thing perpetuated by dumbasses, this is a phenomenon which we already had in the past, weāre having again, and as such will end pretty soon, but may repeat again and again. We didnāt deal with this threat, instead we focused on keeping a good sight for the media.
If this is a phenomenon we have to comprehend why this became a trend the second time. Back on the 90ās, the Burned Furs were mostly made of frustrated furry artists, it was also that time that the internet began to be more popular and widely used, the furry community occupied that space much earlier but it was still very new to the community, the decentralization changes it has made to the subculture arrived as a shock for some older furs who were used to participate via APAs. The decentralization allowed many artists to share and sell their artworks independently but also brought somewhat a inequality, which arrived to frustrate some artists from that time. It also brought anonymity but some furs preferred to use their real names. The media influence was sensationalist and sex-negative, some furs who used real names were afraid of losing their jobs or having a impact on their families, while some furs perceived the media attention as a result of their lifestyle being so separated from their mundane lifestyle to have been scaring out the mundanes, which was seem as a negative, neutral or a positive result. The Burned Furs took all that and blamed the furry minorities because, in their words, not the media and the sex-negative capitalist society, but they, the ādegeneratedā were making a bad image of furry and flaming out all other furries along them, so it was necessary to keep them out of the community. The similarity with the current rethorics arenāt merely coincidence.
If this is a phenomenon we have to comprehend why this became a trend the second time. Back on the 90ās, the Burned Furs were mostly made of frustrated furry artists, it was also that time that the internet began to be more popular and widely used, the furry community occupied that space much earlier but it was still very new to the community, the decentralization changes it has made to the subculture arrived as a shock for some older furs who were used to participate via APAs. The decentralization allowed many artists to share and sell their artworks independently but also brought somewhat a inequality, which arrived to frustrate some artists from that time. It also brought anonymity but some furs preferred to use their real names. The media influence was sensationalist and sex-negative, some furs who used real names were afraid of losing their jobs or having a impact on their families, while some furs perceived the media attention as a result of their lifestyle being so separated from their mundane lifestyle to have been scaring out the mundanes, which was seem as a negative, neutral or a positive result. The Burned Furs took all that and blamed the furry minorities because, in their words, not the media and the sex-negative capitalist society, but they, the ādegeneratedā were making a bad image of furry and flaming out all other furries along them, so it was necessary to keep them out of the community. The similarity with the current rethorics arenāt merely coincidence.
The current furry subculture is facing the opposite economical progress, weāre now facing centralization, and back in the 10ās weāve got the furry exodus where the furry community grew, furries websites began to decay, usage of mobile apps increased a lot while web decreased, and furries began to move to mainstream social media such as Facebook and Twitter to share and sell artwork. Itās also the same time weāve seem the rise of the far-right in the world which used (and also governed) the same social media algorithms. Social polarization spreaded a lot not only in furry but in the entire society.
