The people afraid to show their peers or bosses my technical writing because it also contains furry art are some of the dumbest cowards in technology.
Considering the recent events at ApeFest, a competitive level of stupidity is quite impressive.
To be clear, the exhibited stupidity in question is their tendency to project their own sexual connotations onto furry art–even if said art isn’t sexual in nature in any meaningful sense of the word.
But then again, poetry can be sexual, so who knows?
Why are you glitching like that?
Haiku are lewd too!
Art: AJ
The cowardice comes in with the fear of their peers or bosses judging them for *checks notes* the content and presentation that I wrote, and not them.
Which (if you think about it for any significant length of time) implies that they’re generally eager to take credit for other people’s work, but their selfishness was thwarted by a cute cartoon dhole doing something totally innocent.
Even sillier, there’s a small contingent on technical forums that are “concerned” about the growing prevalence of queer and furry identities in technical spaces (archived).
Even some old school hackers conveniently forget that alt.fan.furry was a thing before the Internet.
As frustratingly incompetent as these hot takes are, they pale in comparison to, by far, the biggest source of bad opinions about the furry fandom.
The call is coming from inside the house.
Like Cats and Dogs
Last month, I wrote a blog post about Aural Alliance, which caused a menace in the furry music space to accuse me of “bad journalism” for not verbally crucifying the label’s creator (a good friend of mine) for having a failed business venture in the past, or taking credit for donating to their cause early on.
Everyone I’ve talked to that has dealt with this particular person before responded with, “Yeah, this is typical Cassidy behavior.”
To which one must wonder, “Since when am I a journalist?”
I’ve never called myself a journalist. I’m a blogger and I don’t pretend to be anything more than that. I especially would never besmirch the work of real journalists by comparing it with my musings.
At times, I also wear the security researcher hat, but you’ll only hear about it when I’m publishing a vulnerability.
This is a personal blog. I will neither be censored nor subject to compelled speech. I have no moral or professional obligations to “both sides” of what amounts to a nontroversy.
Nobody has ever paid me to write anything here, and I will never accept any compensation for my writing.
Sure, I contributed to covering Aural Alliance’s up-front infrastructure costs when it was just an idea in Finn’s head. I’m not going to apologize for supporting artists. The Furry Fandom wouldn’t exist without artists.
This kind of behavior isn’t an isolated incident, unfortunately. A handful of furries have rage-quit tech groups I’m in because they found out I generously tipped artists that were under-charging for their work.
It bewilders me every time someone reacts this way. Do you not know the community you’re in?
The most intelligible pushback I’ve seen over the years is, “Well if everyone raises their prices, low-income furries will be pushed out of the market!”
Setting aside that art is a luxury, not a need for a moment, that’s not actually true.
There are so many artists, and they’re so decentralized, that no coherent price coordination effort is even possible. It’s worse than herding cats. Some may raise their prices by $5, others by $500. If furries were organized enough to coordinate something like this, then we’d have a tough time explaining why there are still abusers in the fandom.
Also, it costs very little to learn to draw, yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeoQx9hphBw
Oh, but I’m not done.
The demand for low-priced digital art incentivizes people to reach for theft enabled by large-scale computing (a.k.a. “AI” by its proponents).
A similar demand for cheap, high-quality fursuits (usually at the maker’s expense) will lead to a walmartization of the furry community.
If you listen to these hot takes long enough, you start to notice a pattern of short-sighted selfishness.
When you demand something of the furry community, and don’t think of the long-term consequences of your demands, you’re probably being an idiot. This is true even if it’s actually a good idea.
If me supporting artists somehow prices you out of commissioning your favorite artist, you still have other options: Learning to make your own, finding new artists, saving money, etc.
On the flipside, the artists you admire will suffer less due to money troubles. Fewer artists starving makes the world a more beautiful place.
Center of the Fediverse
If flame war and retoot count relieved desire
In the comment thread someone must have known
That the hottest takes truly leave us tired
‘Cause in the center of the fediverse
We are all aloneWith apologies to Kamelot
If you’re on the Fediverse (e.g., Mastodon), and your instance uses a blocklist like TheBadSpace (TBS), you probably cannot see my posts on furry.engineer anymore.
This is because the people running TBS have erroneously decided that any criticism of its curators is anti-blackness.
If you want a biased but detailed (with receipts!) account of the conflicts that led up to furry.engineer‘s erroneous inclusion on their blocklist, Silver Eagle wrote about their experience with TBS, blocklist criticism, and receiving death threats from the friends of TBS curators.
(Spoiler: It was largely prompted by another predominantly LGBTQIA+ instance, tech.lgbt, being erroneously added to the same blocklist, which resulted in criticism of said blocklist curators.)
Be forewarned, though: Linking to Silver Eagle’s blog post was enough for TBS supporters to harass me and directly accuse me, personally, of anti-blackness, so don’t expect any degree of level-headed discussion from that crowd.
What Can We Do About This?
If you cannot see my Fediverse posts anymore, and actually want to see them, message your instance moderators and suggest unsubscribing from TheBadSpace’s blocklist.
If they refuse, your only real recourse is to move to another instance. The great thing about the Fediverse is, you can just do that, and nobody can lock you in.
Personally, I plan on sticking on furry.engineer. I trust its moderators to not tolerate racist and/or fascist bullshit.
The baseless accusations of anti-blackness are, unsurprisingly, false.
Burnout Isn’t Inevitable
A few months ago, I quit a great job with an amazing team because the CEO decided that everyone has to return to working in the office, including people that were hired fully remote before the pandemic. This meant being forced to move more than 3,000 miles, or resigning. I’ve been told the legal term for such a move is “constructive dismissal.”
In hindsight, I was starting to burn out anyway, so leaving when I did was a great move for my mental health and life satisfaction.
I’m an introvert. I have a finite social battery. Because my work was split across three different teams at the same company, I was a necessary participant in a lot of meetings.
More than 5 hours per day of meetings, as an individual contributor. Sometimes as many as 7 hours/day of them. I almost never had a quiet day, even after blocking one day every week so nobody would schedule any meetings and I could get productive work done.
If you’re interested in being a people manager, or have an extroverted personality, you’re probably unperturbed by this account. But I was absolutely miserable. My close friends started to worry if I was suffering from depression, because of how socially exhausted I was all the time.
I took a few weeks off between jobs. My new role doesn’t pointlessly encumber me with unnecessary meetings.
Every day, I feel the burnout symptoms leaving my mind. I feel challenged and stimulated in a good way. I’m learning new technologies and being productive. I’ve never spent more than 3 hours of any given day in a meeting.
Different people burn out in many different ways, for many different reasons.
In my experience, the consequences appear to be reversible if caught early enough. I don’t know if they would be if I held onto my old job for much longer.
The job market’s tough right now, but if you’re deeply unsatisfied with an aspect of your current job, prioritize yourself and make whatever change is necessary.
This doesn’t mean you have to switch jobs like I did, of course. It was a good move for me. Your mileage may vary.
Where’s The Cryptography?
https://youtu.be/4KNzdlc7ZcA?t=59
Somedays I feel like writing about technical topics. Other days, I feel like writing about unimportant or personal topics.
If you’re disappointed in this post, perhaps you also expect everything on this blog to be professionally useful?
Well, worry not, for you’re eligible for a full refund for the amount you paid to read it.
Logging Off
This post has been a collection of unrelated topics on my mind over the past few months. There is one other thing, but I was unsure if it warranted a separate post of its own, or an addendum on this one. Since you’re reading this, you’ll know I ultimately settled on the latter.
I started this blog in 2020 because I thought having a personal blog where I talk about things that interest me (mainly the furry fandom and software security) would be fun. And I wanted to do it in a way that was fun for me.
“Having fun with it” has been the guiding principle of this blog for over 3 years. I never intended to do anything important or meaningful, that sort of happened by accident. I didn’t care about others being able to use my writing in a professional setting (hence, my scoffing at the very notion above).
Lately, posts have slowed to a crawl, because it’s not fun for me anymore. I have a lot of ideas I’d love to write about, but when it comes time to turn an idea into something tangible, I lose all inspiration.
So I’m not going to force it.
This will be the last post on this blog for a while. I recently tried to pick up fiction writing, but I’m not happy with anything I’ve been able to produce yet, so I won’t bore anyone with that garbage.
There are a lot of brilliant people that read my writing. Most of you are more than capable of picking up where I left off and starting your own blogs.
I encourage you to do so.
Have fun with it, too. Just remember, when it’s time to put the pen down and take a rest, don’t be stubborn and burn yourself out.
Happy hacking.
Header is a collage of art from AJ, CMYKat, Kyume, WeaselDumb, and a DEFCON Furs 2023 photo from Chevron.
https://soatok.blog/2023/11/17/this-would-be-more-professionally-useful-if-not-for-the-furry-art/
#fediverse #furries #furry #FurryFandom #furryMusic
If you’ve somehow never encountered an Internet meme before, you may be surprised to learn that the number 69 is often associated with sex (and, more specifically, a particular sex act).This happens to be the 69th blog post published on Dhole Moments, since I started the blog in April 2020.
You could even go as far as to say it’s the 4/20 +69th post, for maximum meme potential.
42069, get it? (Art by Khia)
However! I make a concerted effort to keep my blog safe-for-work, so if you’re worried about this post being flooded with furry porn (a.k.a. yiff art), or cropped yiff memes, or any other such lascivious nonsense, you won’t find any of that on this blog. (Sorry to disappoint.)
Instead, I’d like to take the opportunity to correct some public misconceptions about human sexuality, identity, and how these topics relate to the furry fandom.
Is Furry a Sex Thing?
I find it difficult to overstate how often people assume the “furry is a sex thing” premise. Especially on technical forums.But let’s backtrack for a second. What isn’t a sex thing?
Art by Khia.
This turns out to be a difficult question to answer. Even Wikipedia’s somewhat concise list of paraphilias doesn’t leave a lot of topics off the table.
Are shoes a sex thing? Are cigarettes? Poetry?
Comic from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
Hell, one might be tempted to cry foul on the header image used in this blog post for including tentacles, hypnotic eyes, and footpaws in the same image. (Scandalous!) But if you look at the uncropped versions of these images, you’ll quickly realize they aren’t yiffy.
Top Art by AtlasInu.
Bottom: Created by FlashWhite_. Fox is Kiit Lock.
The more you read about this topic, the more you’ll realize this question is inert. Anything can be a sex thing. Humans are largely a sexual species, and sex is deeply ingrained in our culture (which can make life awkward for asexual people).Instead, the question of whether or not the furry fandom is sexual becomes a bit of a Rorschach test for one’s cognitive biases.
If you’re chiefly concerned with public image–especially when fursuiting in public, where kids can see–you’re incentivized to double down on the fact that the furry fandom is no more inherently sexual than anything else can be. And this is true.
If you’re concerned with cultivating a sex-positive environment where people can live out their sexual fantasies in a safe, sane, and consensual manner, you’re incentivized to insist that furry is a sexual thing. “We have murrsuits for crying out loud! Stop kink-shaming! Down with puritan ideologies on sex!” And this is also true.
Humans are largely sexual, so any activity humans engage in will inevitably involve people sexualizing it. Even tupperware parties, for fuck’s sake! Anyone who believes there is a “Rule 34 of the Internet” tacitly acknowledges this fact, even if it’s inconvenient for a narrative they’re trying to spin.
So while this might be a meaningless question, one has to wonder…
Why Does Everyone Care So Much If Being a Furry (In Particular) Is Sexual or Not?
To understand what’s really happening here, you need to know a few things about the furry fandom.
- Approximately 80% of furries are LGBTQIA+ (source).
- Early anti-furry sentiments were motivated by queerphobia, especially on forums like Something Awful–and the influence of early hateful memes can still be seen to this day.
https://twitter.com/spacetwinks/status/728349066178998274
One of the Something Awful staff eventually acknowledged and apologized for this.
Archived from here. To corroborate, an Internet author named Maddox once parodied SomethingAwful’s hateful obsession with furries.
There was even a movement within the furry fandom history (the “Burned Furs“) that aimed to excise queerness and sex-positivity from the community. It’s no coincidence that a lot of the former Burned Furs joined with the alt-right movement within the furry fandom.
The alt-right is explicitly queerphobic; especially against trans people. But it’s not just queerphobic; it’s also an ableist and racist movement.
Regardless of sexual orientation, a lot of furries are neurodivergent, too.
Simply put: The reason that most people care whether or not furries are sexual is rooted in the propensity of anti-furry rhetoric in Internet culture, which was motivated at its inception by mostly queerphobia with a dash of ableism.
The notion that furries are “too sexual” originated as a dog-whistle for “too gay”, and caught on with people who didn’t know the hidden meaning of the idea. Now a lot of people repeat these ideas without intending or even knowing their roots, and many more have internalized shame about the whole situation.
Unfortunately, this even precipitates into the furry fandom itself, which leads to an unfortunate cyclical discourse that takes place largely on Furry Twitter.
Original tweet unavailable
Furry Isn’t a Sexuality. There is no F in LGBT!
If you publicly state “anti-furry rhetoric is largely queerphobic dog-whistles”, you will inevitably hear someone try to retort this way. So let’s be very clear about it.Furry isn’t its own sexual identity, and I would never claim otherwise.
Unlike transgender people, furries do not experience anything like “species dysphoria” (although therians/otherkin do report experiencing this; don’t conflate the two).
What’s happening here is: Most furries (about 80% of us) have separate sexual/gender identities that deviate from the heteronormative. A lot of queerphobia is easier to sell when you convey it through dog-whistles. So that’s what bigots did.
Polite company that wouldn’t partake in queer-bashing is often willing to laugh at the notion of “Beat A Furry Day“.
Anyone who tries to twist this acknowledgement to mean something ridiculous like an LGBTF movement is either being irrational or a 4chan troll.
Art by Khia.
For related reasons, you shouldn’t ever feel the need to “come out” as a furry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG2DRLimBSM
It’s okay to just really like Beastars, Zootopia, or even the Furry aspects of the Minecraft and Roblox communities. It doesn’t make you a sex-freak.
What’s the Take-Away?
It doesn’t really matter if the furry fandom has a sexual side to it. Everything does! The people who proclaim to care very much about this care for all the wrong reasons. Don’t be one of them.
Art by Swizz.
And remember: Lewd furries aren’t furry trash; we’re yiff-raff!
Sex Isn’t Well-Defined Either
While we’re talking about sex, did you know that biological sex isn’t neatly divided into “male” and “female”? This isn’t an ideological position; it’s a scientific one. Just ask a biologist!https://twitter.com/JUNIUS_64/status/1054387892624285699
Trans and nonbinary people change gender (which is about your role within society) from what they were assigned at birth, but even sex itself isn’t so concrete.
The next time someone tries to appeal to “science” when talking about trans rights and then vomits up some unenlightened K-12 explanation of human reproduction and biological sex, remind them that science disagrees with their oversimplified and outdated mental model–and they might know this if they kept up with scientists.
Where Can I Learn More About the Sexual Side of the Furry Fandom?
Important: If you’re under the age of 18, you should stay out of adult spaces until you’re old enough to participate. No excuses.If you’re looking for pornographic furry art (also called “yiff”), most furry art sites (FurryLife, FurAffinity, etc.) have adult content filters that you can turn off when you register an account.
If you’re looking for something more interactive, there’s a swath of furries that develop private VR experiences for 18+ audiences. One of the most well-funded Patreon artists makes adult furry games.
If you’re curious about why and how people express their sexuality when fursuiting (also called “murrsuiting”), there’s a subreddit for that.
It’s really not hard to find. This is one of the advantages of furry being a largely sex-positive community.
Furry YouTuber Ragehound even has a series about Furries After Dark if you want to learn more about these topics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGOlQJDO5no
Finally, similar to how 69 is a meme number for sex, furries have an additional meme number (621) that comes from the name of an adult furry website (e621.net).
You now have enough knowledge to navigate the adult side of the fandom. Just don’t come crying to me when you develop the uncanny knack for recognizing which r/furry_irl posts are actually cropped yiff versus wholly worksafe art.
https://soatok.blog/2021/04/02/the-furry-sexuality-blog-post/
#furries #furry #FurryFandom #LGBTQIA_ #Society
