Recently, there has been a lot of misinformation and propaganda flying around the American news media about the furry fandom. Unfortunately, this seems to be increasing with time.
Consequently, there are a lot of blanket statements and hot takes floating around social media right now about whether or not furries should talk with journalists.
That is to say, a lot of people are screaming, “Don’t ever talk to the press!”
I thought I’d offer my perspective, seeing as I did talk to journalists during the whole Ridgeland library incident.
But to explain my nuanced position, I need to explain a bit of background.
Never Say Never
My blog talks a lot about cryptography. You don’t need to understand anything about cryptography to get the point I’m going to make today, however.
Most information security professionals have hammered into their own minds to “never roll your own crypto”.
Taken to the logical extreme, this kind of advice would prevent the development of cryptography and make everyone’s communications vulnerable. This is obviously a bad outcome.
So why do professionals keep saying it?
99.99% of the time, the rule applies. If you’re building a line-of-business CRUD app, you don’t need to invent a new block cipher. Even if your cipher turns out to be very good, by whatever coincidence, it’s better to leave that to the experts.
In the minority of cases where someone needs to break the rule, they must do so knowing that they’re violating a norm. And the impetus is on them to justify this breakage; lest they suffer the consequences.
Usually, in cryptography, this just means “you aren’t taken seriously,” which is a pretty bad outcome.
In other areas of life, breaking a norm can mean ostracization or legal peril.
Back to Furries and the Media
When I see furries screaming, “Don’t talk to the press!” I’m reminded of how “Don’t roll your own crypto!” is practiced by the cryptography community.
Most of the time, it’s obviously a bad idea for furries to talk to the press, for a few obvious reasons:
- Random furries probably have no special training for dealing with the media, which means they’re easy to manipulate into spreading a false narrative
- Public communication is a skill that most of us don’t practice
- If you suffer from any kind of anxiety, the previous two reasons are exacerbated
Even if you’re a popular streamer or content creator, the kinds of questions they ask and how they present your answers to their audience is a different class from your fans and friends.
But should the rule for furries and the media be, “Never?”
Uncle Kage from AnthroCon says yes (with some nuance, in so many drunken words):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHZX0IvavEo
Meanwhile, Xydexx says no (with some nuance):
https://twitter.com/XydexxUnicorn/status/1666111194531332098
https://twitter.com/XydexxUnicorn/status/1666111788448923650
https://twitter.com/XydexxUnicorn/status/1666112045719203840
How you answer this question broadly depends on how much you trust your community.
Do you assume malice or incompetence from fellow furries? “Don’t ever talk to the press” likely sounds like sage advice to you.
Conversely, if you hold your community members in higher esteem, you’re more likely to encourage some conversations with some media outlets.
Regardless, there is one rule that must never be broken, but recently was.
Furries Must Never Contribute to Right-Wing Extremist Media like FOX News
Unfortunately…
Don’t do this. FOX News isn’t actually news; they argue as much in court.
Furry Press Checklist
If you’re going to talk to the press, you need to (at bare minimum) know the following:
- Which outlet, and what is their reputation?
- Who within that outlet are you talking with?
- What are you talking about?
- What questions or concerns do they believe their viewers have?
The most egregious incidents can be prevented by asking the first question and researching the outlet.
You should also know who you’re talking to, and whether or not they try to appeal to violent right-wing stochastic terrorists.
Many local news stations are okay, but specific journalists aren’t trustworthy. That’s why question 2 matters.
Regardless of the yellowness of the journalism you’re exposing yourself and all of the furry fandom to, you need to have a clear understanding of what’s being asked of you before you agree to any interviews.
This is a lot of homework and responsibility. If you’re not willing to do it, then don’t talk to the media.
There are better ways to get your thirty pieces of silver fifteen minutes of fame.
Epilogue
Of course, the person who went on FOX News is also a horrible person across every axis.
Not just this:
…but also this:
https://twitter.com/videah_/status/1667490374909149187
FOX News. Not even once.
https://soatok.blog/2023/06/06/on-furries-and-the-media/
#FOXNews #furries #furry #FurryFandom #media #Society
You’ve probably heard the rumors by now. It’s cropped up in Michigan, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and even Australia.The rumor is: Parents around the country are expressing “concerns” over schools allegedly permitting students that identify as cats use litter boxes in public schools.
You can hear this idea being parroted by Nebraska State Senator Bruce Bostelman, without an ounce of irony or self-awareness:
https://twitter.com/jonnykip21/status/1508485363177861124
Of course, it doesn’t matter how often or how thoroughly these allegations are debunked (and, make no mistake, they are debunked), that doesn’t stop people from spreading this false and damnable rumor on Facebook Groups like “Protect Nebraska Children”.
As a member of the furry community who also strongly opposes misinformation on the Internet, I feel it’s necessary and appropriate for me to expose the dark truths about this litter box story once and for all.
Who and What Are Furries?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPSQVRJuDTsFurries are members of the Furry Fandom, an art-centric participatory online community (with real-world conventions and events) consisting of people who enjoy anthropomorphic characters.
Characters like this!
(Art: LvJ)For one reason or another, furries are also a predominantly LGBTQIA+ community. If you took a large random sample of people, you’d expect at least 90% to be heterosexual and cisgender. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. But if you took a random sample of furries, that figure is now only 20%.
For this reason, furry hate was often used as a dog-whistle for homophobia in forums where overt homophobia was not permitted.
https://twitter.com/spacetwinks/status/728349066178998274
If you’d like to learn more about the furry fandom, I highly recommend the appropriately named 2020 documentary The Fandom by Ash Coyote.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0QaTW3kEY
Are Furries in K-12 Public Schools?
Overwhelmingly, no. The average age of the furry fandom varies from survey to survey, but 26 years old seems like a good estimate for the median age for survey participants (as of 2020).
Source: FurScience, 2020 survey results
Interestingly, the median age of furries was only 20 in the year 2011, which suggests that the furry fandom is consistently getting older.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t any furries under the age of 18. We just don’t have any data on them today.
Second, due to ethical restrictions, the IARP is unable to study minors (as parental consent would be required, something we cannot reasonably expect to obtain if a person has not “come out” to their family as a furry).
This is the only scientific data we have, and it’s not perfect, but you can actually extrapolate a reasonable heuristic for the magnitude of underage furs based on the change in adult median age over time.Since the adults of the furry fandom are consistently getting older (median 20 in 2011, median 26 in 2020, which is a 6 year increase over 9 years), the proportion of people under 18 was likely at most 33% of the total furry population in a given year during this interval.
This upper limit assumes most underage furries continue to be furries in adulthood, a negligible mortality rate, and people are discovering the fandom younger than 18.
If a lot of furries discover the fandom after they turn 18, then 33% is probably unreasonably high.
If this proportion still holds true, then the median age for furries is still squarely in the realm of young adulthood, not childhood.
Do Furries Identify as Animals?
No, furries do not identify as animals in the way that these very dumb rumors would imply.People that identify as a non-human animal are called therians (or more broadly, otherkin). Most furries are not therians, but some are.
Do Furries That Identify as Cats Use Litter Boxes?
No, this is a damned lie with no basis in reality. Even Snopes debunked it.If you’re interested in the origins of this dumb rumor, Dogpatch Press has a deep dive into the history of it going all the way back to the 1990’s.
The Dark Truth About These Rumors
If it’s not true, why are Facebook Groups and GOP politicians spreading lies about furries and public school students all of the sudden?Unfortunately, the answer is transphobia.
https://twitter.com/KandissTaylor/status/1506603753008472064
There is an emerging generational culture war about transgender people.
To many older Americans, the idea that a person could be anything other than male or female seems absurd, and the notion that anyone could change their gender is uncomfortable (but science is consistently on trans people’s sides here).
Most younger people don’t carry the same prejudices as their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.
This litter box rumor is both a dog whistle for generalized queerphobia (as the majority of furry hate always has been) and a weak satire of non-binary gender identities. “If they can decide they’re neither male or female, what’s stopping them from identifying as a cat?” is the premise of this bigoted reasoning.
Before gay marriage was legal in America, there were a lot of online arguments put forth by evangelical Christians and Republicans that, “If you make gay marriage legal, soon you’ll have people wanting to marry their pets and we’ll have to legalize bestiality.”
Which, yes, is a very dumb slippery slope fallacy, but the current furry panic certainly echoes their same delusional beliefs about alternative lifestyles.
In short, the entire premise of the “furry litter-box in public schools” rumor is to bully nonbinary and/or transgender students through a dog-whistle, so they can evade being cancelled for overt bigotry.
These people are showing their whole ass when they spread these lies.
https://twitter.com/SoatokDhole/status/1506931766837321731
Also, it’s interesting that the people spreading these lies are Republicans, who claim to want to “protect children”, but are also in favor of child marriage.
What Can We Do About These Lies?
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify anyone in your life who believes these rumors (especially if they’re sharing lies from Facebook Groups that peddle misinformation), and then link them to this blog post.I don’t expect it to persuade everyone, but it can save you the effort of having to argue further with them. Just copy+paste the URL and move on with your day, knowing you did your part to tell them, “You’re wrong, shut the fuck up.”
Where Did This Hoax Originate?
Allegedly, this entire hoax about “furries being permitted to use litter boxes in public schools” was started as a prank by a user named Tracing Woodgrains, a contributor to the anti-trans podcast Blocked and Reported, hosted by Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog (alternative mirror).
(Art: LvJ)
So—what does it take to persuade Libs of TikTok to tilt at windmills, to spread a moral panic over a falsehood? How can hoaxers break past her fact-checking, with nary a red flag to be seen?A nonexistent man passed on a false tip on the basis of paper-thin evidence, then squirmed away at any attempts to nail down the concrete before finishing things off with a broken link to a Facebook group that did not exist.
So there you have it. This entire thing is not only unbelievable, but fabricated for the sake of trolls’ amusement.https://soatok.blog/2022/04/06/the-dark-truth-about-the-furry-protocol/
#demographics #falsehoods #furries #furry #FurryFandom #lies #litterBoxRumor #misinformation #Politics #rumors #Society
