Spoiler: It’s nothing scandalous or bad.
Every once in a while, someone posts this photo on Twitter to attempt to dunk on furries:
Midwest FurFest 2018
Over the years, I’ve seen this discourse play out several times.
The people that post this photo usually don’t elaborate on why they think this photo is meaningful, they just let it stand alone and expect their audience to fill in the blanks.
So let’s leave nothing to the imagination!
I’m going to take somewhat of a Q&A format for this blog post, which is a slight departure from my usual writing style.
But first, let’s tackle the most important point:
STI Testing is a damn good idea
If you’re organizing any type of public event–be it a gaming, anime, steampunk, cyberpunk, or comic book convention, music concert, medieval or renaissance festival, and so on–you should consider doing what Midwest FurFest does.
This is obvious to most queer people, but might be counter-intuitive at first. So let me explain.
Any large gathering of people is likely to lead to adults hooking up. This is a fact of life, especially when alcohol is involved.
Having a convenient way to know your status onsite is a great way to allow consenting adults to make informed decisions about their sexual health, especially if they’re not generally promiscuous and aren’t in the habit of getting tested regularly.
Let me emphasize: the most sexually promiscuous adults are generally already in the habit of getting regularly tested, so the onsite STI testing doesn’t actually do much for them.
This only helps people who don’t regularly visit their health department or planned parenthood to know their status.
Therefore, free onsite STI testing is a damn good idea to protect the health of your community.
Even if you hold some weird disdain for the habitually sexually promiscuous (“sluts”), this service primarily benefits everyone else, since any ethical slut already knows their goddamn status as well as the status of anyone they’re fucking that night.
Any event that can afford to offer Free STI testing and doesn’t probably doesn’t care about adults making informed decisions about their sexual health.
Furry conventions are for furries, which are overwhelmingly LGBTQIA+ compared to the rest of the population. That one of our conventions can afford to take steps to protect the sexual health of its adult attendees is a damn good idea, even if it was limited to HIV at first.
Everyone should consider stealing this idea from us.
Seriously, it’s not the 1980’s anymore. Everyone is at risk of HIV. It isn’t just us gays that need to be careful.
MarleyTanuki
What are the other benefits of offering STI Testing at conventions?
Aside from the obvious benefits to public health, there are some other community benefits to offering STI screenings at large public gatherings like conventions.
Specifically, it destigmatizes sexual health and people who are HIV-positive.
It doesn’t encourage “degeneracy” (which is a word loaded with historical baggage that many people aren’t aware of).
It encourages people to know their status and ask prospective partners their status–and, if they don’t know, provides a convenient way to get tested before any sexual activity occurs. This obviously prevents the spread of STIs and is a great idea for public health.
How much does this cost MFF?
As far as I’m aware? Nothing, aside from dedicated convention space and maybe some parking passes for the hotel. This doesn’t touch the convention budget.
Howard Brown Health approached MFF years ago and, from what I can gather, continues to cover the cost of STI testing.
(HBH is Chicago-specific, though. I can’t promise there’s a congruent organization in your area, specifically. I’ll update this post if I find a good resource for finding local organizations beyond “ask your local health department”.)
What is the context behind this photo?
Midwest FurFest usually overlaps with World AIDS Day.
Many years ago, they decided to start offering free onsite HIV testing in observance:
https://twitter.com/FurFest/status/804366774699429888
Many people realized what a damn good idea that free HIV testing was for conventions, so the demand for these tests far exceeded what they anticipated.
Thus, by popular demand, they have continued this forward in the years since.
https://twitter.com/FurFest/status/1595450934410170368
In addition to being overwhelmingly queer today, the furry community has a long history of queer involvement going back to its roots.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIPk-itLl1jOlIa2wTnu-1wpivom6MTd-
The photo at the top was from 2018–the third year of this service being offered.
Unlike the other photos of the booth signs taken over the years, that particular photo was posted on a subreddit dedicated to hating furries (r/yiffinhell). This may explain why it’s the specific photo that always gets reposted by people trying to dunk on furries.
(Also: Try harder next time. This kind of dunk is self-defeating.)
This photo is proof that furries are sex freaks!
Wrong. Humans in general are sex freaks. Furries really aren’t that special here.
To wit: Ask any experienced event organizers about their experiences with Tupperware conventions, and you’ll hear stories that make furry convention antics seem tame in comparison.
Alternatively, ask about academic or medical conferences.
Furthermore, as I explained above, offering free HIV testing (or even free STI testing) doesn’t actually benefit the kinds of “sex freaks” that you may be worried about.
But sex is evil!
What’s actually wrong with sex? None of us would be alive if it weren’t for people having sex.
Rape is bad. Clearly. The difference between rape and sex is consent. So if the conduct is occurring between consenting adults, who cares? Let them fuck who they want. You’re not responsible for them.
In an environment where sexual health is taken seriously, inadvertently encouraging sexual promiscuity by making these tests available… doesn’t actually hurt anyone.
Like, stop and think about it. What specific harm is it causing, and who specifically would actually be harmed?
Furry may be a sex-positive space, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily sexualized. There’s a difference between the two terms, y’know!
Why talk about this?
There’s a tendency among some furries to promote negative peace, especially when it involves the media.
I’m not one of them.
Sophie
We need to acknowledge and deal with problems that happen in our community, and hold people accountable for misbehavior. We cannot do this if we cannot talk about problems. Real problems are not “drama”.
If there was any social downside to STI testing being offered at conventions, I’d talk openly about it. But there isn’t any.
The only “problem” occurs when bigots and imbeciles try to make it seem like bad optics to do the bare minimum to prevent the transmission of STIs in their community.
Don’t fall for their deceptions. If you’re reading this page, you’re probably better than that.
Also, my blog tends to rank high on search engines, so I saw fit to write about this topic so when someone seeks to fact-check this photo, they’ll have the opportunity to learn about it.
AJ
TL;DR
Furry conventions offering STI testing is a damn good idea that everyone should copy for their own events.
https://soatok.blog/2024/09/30/why-are-furry-conventions-offering-hiv-testing-to-attendees/
#conventions #furries #furryConventions #FurryFandom #HIVTesting #publicHealth #STITesting
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.
Art by Khia.
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
