This Judgemental Little Business

(The Furry Manifesto)

One very pissed off Furry fan has a go at defining "Furry".

by Simo

The title bar of this document asks: "Why us Furries?" To amp up the lagging sales of its X-Box console, Microsoft offered its customers among the Otaku an added incentive: a sex toy called a dakimakura. (See: Getting in Bed with the Customer). It is no secret what these "hugging pillows" are really for: to allow the Otaku to yiff his favorite Anime character, frequently under-age at that. WHUDDA BUNCHA PERVS! Now, mind you, that Microsoft has, of yet, never offered free SPH equipped plushies to sell Furries the X-Box. So where is that episode of ER that features a dakimakura wanker for cheap titillation to induce people to watch yet another lack-luster, piece of shit TV show? Where is that CSI episode that "exposes" the wild going-on at a fictional Anime convention? Where indeed!

In order to understand how this happened, take my paw as we step into the WayBack Machine™. Next stop: the fall of 1998.

In 1998, many folks in the general public were well aware of the Star Trek fandom. "Trekkies" were widely recognized, and Trek conventions well known. Unless you were a fandom affiliate, or you happened to live near the site of a Fur-con, the chances are that you never heard of Furry Fandom. If you did, all that you would have known about it was that Furry was another geeky fandom, akin to the various sci-fi fandoms. No one looked upon Furry as a "dirty joke", there were no WTF TV shows, documentaries, or feature articles. There was precious little publicity of any sort. Anyone who did know about Furries had a generally good impression of our affiliates and our fandom.

That was about to change, with a vengeance, when some dipshit calling itself "Squee Rat" dropped a load of steaming, stinking BULLSHIT entitled This Sordid Little Business onto the WWW. This happened in September (Forever to be known as Black September) of 1998. Squee Rat hooked up with another dipshit and soon thereafter, the Curse of Furry-dom was born: The Burned Furs™. These assholes, carrying self-righteousness and chutzpah by the car-load, appointed themselves, with NO approval from the fan base, without so much as being asked by the fan base, the "moral" guardians of Furry-dom. Their weapon of choice was the Internet flame war:

WE SHALL institute ourselves as a monkey wrench in the gears of mainstream fandom--not to destroy it, but to improve it. If all else fails, and improving the fandom seems impossible or a waste of time, then we shall institute ourselves as an alternative to mainstream fandom. [...] WE STRONGLY DISCOURAGE the support of acts such as bestiality, plushophilia, fursuit sex and other things seen as "wrong" by non-fandom individuals (known by fans as "mundanes"). It will be easier for non-fans to sympathize and identify with anthro art if these elements are, if not eliminated, then pushed to the far outer fringes and rendered irrelevant to the fandom at large.
Statement of Purpose

The arrogance just drips off this "declaration": "WE SHALL" and "WE STRONGLY DISCOURAGE". There is just one little problem here: Who the hell asked you to do this? They succeeded in getting attention all right. After all, if your machinery starts making enough of a racket, people will notice. ("WE SHALL institute ourselves as a monkey wrench in the gears of mainstream fandom--not to destroy it, but to improve it." Is that, or is that not, one fucked up metaphor? Throwing a handful of nuts and bolts into your transmission just does wonders to improve performance.) What the PaL noticed was that accusations of "perversion" in the fandom were coming from within the fandom. If fandom affiliates are making the claim, then they must know what they are talking about. Once the Burned Furs™ started burning up the 'Net, the PaL first became aware that "perversion" was an issue. Most people had never heard this, and, furthermore, didn't care. More rational minds tried to prevail, to point out that this attempt to "clean up" the fandom was giving the fandom a bad reputation. The Burned Furs™ answered the accusation thusly:

The first can be refuted by looking at a history of furry fandom's appearances in the media:

March 1994: WIRED magazine publishes Johnny Manhatten Meets the Furry Muckers : "Take FurryMuck, for instance, 'the first anthropomorphic MUD.' It makes LambdaMOO look like the Young Republicans. People describe themselves as furry cuddly animals; more times than not, they have furry cuddly animal sex." (full text at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/muds.html)

March 1998: British magazine LOADED reports on ConFurence 9 (the fandom's largest gathering), calling it "a roll call...of people who would be some way below Louise Woodward on a list of potential babysitters." The article also contains an extensive interview with no less than three anonymous "zoophiles" (full text at http://x7.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=333133401 )

August 1998: The San Francisco Bay Guardian reports on Furry Fandom, interviewing, among others, "...a 36-year-old self-professed 'plushophile' with an extensive Web page detailing his fascination with the plush animals that he frequently 'boinks.' Yes, that means what it sounds like" (full text at http://www.sfbg.com/SFLife/32/47/furries.html)

September 1998: The BURNED FUR™ movement is inaugurated by ["Squee Rat"] with the publication of her "Furry Manifesto" on her web site. Who Dealt This Mess?
We're not the ones causing trouble for "Furry" fandom.

That's it?(!) The sum total of "bad publicity" for the fandom consisted of, count 'em: 1..2..3, articles! Let's take a good look at these articles. The first from Wired. Click on that link, and what you will find is an eight page yawner about MUDs and MUCKs. Actually, most of it is about LambdaMOO and its creator. FurryMuck gets two brief mentions. Now the infamous quote above would lead one to believe that most FurryMuck-ers are zoos. I'll save you the trouble of looking for it, as you will find it on page five. Here is a longer quote:

Take FurryMuck, for instance, "the first anthropomorphic MUD." It makes LambdaMOO look like the Young Republicans. People describe themselves as furry cuddly animals; more times than not, they have furry cuddly animal sex. FurryMuckers like to write long, loving, animal-sexy descriptions of themselves: Jynx smiles shyly and waves as he notices you looking his way. He is a Salusian male looking between the ages of 17 and 18. He has big clear blue eyes and is covered with a shining light brown fur.... [Alendia] is a very attractive squirreloid in her later teens. Her soft red fur clings damply to her body and a few droplets of water trickle from her cutely upturned pink nose. Her long red hair hangs silkenly down her back and a few damp strands fall in front of her large gentle eyes. She is completely nude before you. The fur of her inner thighs is orange and damp, becoming thinner and steamy near the uppermost edge. Her waist is very narrow and her body curves up towards her firm breasts, making a nearly perfect hour-glass shape...

Before going on, put down your coffee, so as not to ruin your keyboard when I reveal the awful truth. The FurryMuck-ers were... get this...

role playing

Horrible isn't it? The article itself, Johnny Manhattan Meets the Furry Muckers, is a technical article. It is not about the FurryMUCKERS, despite the title. The one and only possible criticism of Furry-dom is that remark about FurryMUCK's making LambdaMOO look like the Young Republicans. This is nothing more than the typical WTF that the typical mundane experiences upon meeting Furry for the first time. Referring to this article as an example of "bad publicity", and lifting that quote out of context, so as to create a misleading impression, betrays the extreme intellectual dishonesty of the Burned Furs™..

How about the article from Loaded? it was entitled Heavy Petting The link from the Burned Furs™ web site is bogus. It leads to a Frank Zappa fan site, not to an article. After taking a look at it, you can see why:

There are three dogs on the forecourt outside the Buena Park Hotel in Los Angeles. I mention this in passing to an effeminate man in white dungarees with a ponytail and a permanent smile. "Oh, really?" he screams. "Dogs? Outside?" Before I can offer confirmation, he is gone. I turn round to say something like 'What's the matter with him?' and find the lobby almost empty for the first time in two days. Imagine a school bus breaking down outside an open prison for semi-repentant paedophiles. Several overweight American computer geeks, freaks and 40-year-old virgins, thighs rubbing together and saliva dribbling down their chins, have made for the swing doors. One man, overcome by excitement, is unable to walk and restricts himself to bouncing up and down on the spot making noises like a small woodland creature.

Heavy Petting

I read no farther than this first paragraph. My bullshit detector red-lined at this point. Now just try to picture that scene. A hotel lobby full of people clears out faster than if Bob (Bob Qaeda, Al's meaner brother) had just pulled the pin on a satchel charge. Does this make sense to you? Also, notice how the author of this so-called "journalism", Bill Borrows, inserts himself into the action. It is he that tells everyone that the dogs are outside. Why would he do that? Does he report every single sighting of stray dogs to every perfect stranger he meets? Is this credible to you? If it is, E-Mail me immediately: I have a bridge in New York I'd like to sell you. Does his metaphor: "school bus breaking down outside an open prison for semi-repentant paedophiles" sound like objective journalism to you? How about: "overweight American computer geeks"? How did he know that they were, in fact, computer geeks? Or does Borrows assume that all American computer geeks are overweight? Or that all overweight Americans are computer geeks? "40-year-old virgins": how does he know their ages, and whether or not they're "virgins"? Just because the article says that there were zoophiles (anonymous -- how convenient!) at Confurence 9, doesn't make it so. It is quite obvious that this article was never written to report on Confurence 9. It was written to be deliberately inflammatory, to create a WTF sensation. It merits no further serious consideration. Loaded is the sort of "magazine" that if I read in it that 2 + 2= 4, I would not believe it until I verified it with a reputable source. It is obvious that they don't want you to read this article. I wonder why?

August 1998: The San Francisco Bay Guardian reports on Furry Fandom, interviewing, among others, "...a 36-year-old self-professed 'plushophile' with an extensive Web page detailing his fascination with the plush animals that he frequently 'boinks.' Yes, that means what it sounds like" (full text at http://www.sfbg.com/SFLife/32/47/furries.html)

So what? This article is: Animal Magnetism. Far from being "bad publicity", it is factual, and, in fact, sympathetic.

The term "furry" has several definitions among the ranks of its fans. Sometimes used to describe the anthropomorphic animal characters themselves, the expression is just as frequently used to refer to those who relate strongly to those characters. The latter include aficionados who like to check out fanzines, films, and comics, collectors of figurines and stuffed toys (typically of a totemic type), those who long to be a "real" furry, and at the furry extreme -- those who believe that they are truly a nonhuman trapped in a bipedal body.

Oh the humanity!

Concerning the above mentioned plush-o-phile, that was Foxwolfie Galen:

FoxWolfie was careful to point out in an e-mail interview that not all furs are into plush, and it's certain that most collectors of plush aren't likely to indulge in the boinking aspect of the whole thing.

No attempt to sensationalize this. The writer allows Foxwolfie to speak for himself, and to point out that not all Furries do this. Hmmm... No bad publicity there either.

So there you have it, even if we take them at their word, what do we really have here? A limited circulation magazine of interest only to computer geeks, an obscure British scandal rag, and a small article in a local paper. That's the sum total of all the "bad publicity" that was going to destroy the fandom. This is what all the Burned Furs™' hysteria was all about: NOTHING! In fact, it becomes quite obvious that Hangdog is a pathological liar. There was never anything to "fix"; all the "bad publicity" was a pack of lies¹. In every single case, without fail, all the alleged incidents that "proved" just how perverted, how disturbed, Furries were supposed to be were either made up or exaggerated so badly as to become unrecognizable.

"We're not the ones causing trouble for "Furry" fandom." Have more ironic words ever been put down in writing? The CSI episode, the ER episode, etc. and ad nauseum: you can thank the fuck-tards of the Burned Furs™ for every bit of it. It's simple, really, there are no self-appointed "moral" guardians who took it upon themselves, without being asked, to clean up the Anime Fandom. This is why you have not seen anything about the freaky sex lives of the Otaku in the popular media.

Burned Furs™: Fuck you so very much.²

Does Furry-dom Have a "Pervert" Problem?

There was a time when the designation "Furry" didn't double for zoophile, plushophile, psychopath or naturist. It used to be fun, and people used to know *exactly* where you stood when you referred to yourself as a furry. But these days, people HATE being called as much. They cringe at the thought of being lumped together with the platoons of perverts who have decided to set up base camp under the guise of furrydom. A lot of cool people have dropped out of furriness altogether, rather than be associated with or pressured by these nutballs. (I STILL miss Abe Groter. Agony, agony...) I wrote this page as a response to the massive influx of support for the Furry Manifesto; Maybe there's hope for us after all. :) Furriness needs fixing, and I think I may have an idea.

A Modest Proposal
The Call to Action

Let's take 'em one at a time and see just what the problem, if any, really is.

* )  Plush-o-philes:
Here is what Squee Rat had to say about these folks:

That's shorthand for "I find this Meeko doll intensely erotic." These are the people who use FAO Schwarz as a singles bar. I don't know who decided that this was a valid excuse for a sex life, but he probably still lives in his mother's basement. You don't have to earn a degree in psychology to figure out how thickly laden with sexual dysfunction the very concept of Plushophilia is. How badly was your id stomped on to get you to the point where you would consider wanking a child's toy? I'm not sure I want to know. But I *DO* know Plushophiles have latched onto Furriness like a swamp leech. When people call furries "perverts," THIS is the kind of crap they're talking about.
This Sordid Little Business

"FAO Schwarz as a singles bar"?(!) "Thickly laden with sexual dysfunction"?(!) Forget about this hysterical characterization, what are we really talking about here? Isn't plushie yiffing just another form of masturbation? If you show me a man who claims that he never pawed off, or a woman who says she never tickled her own fancy, I will show you a damn liar. This is something that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US has done at one time or another. I'll betcha that even Squee Rat has masturbated. People stick themselves into some of the damnedest things; and stick some of the damnedest things into themselves. So what is the difference if you stick it into an SPH-equipped Meeko, or simply leave the job up to Mary Palm and her five sisters? What is the difference between tickling your ovaries with a dildo/vibrator which you hold in your hand, or to attach that same dildo/vibrator to an Andy Panda, and then hop on for a ride? There is no difference! If you can't see what is just plain old common sense, then you are truly a hopeless dumbass.

* )  Fursuit Sexers:
Fursuits are so hot and uncomfortable as it is. Now why anyone would want to have sex in one of these is beyond my comprehension. Nevertheless, there are actually some people who do this; some of those who do just happen to also have fandom affiliations. So what's the big deal here? Aren't they simply taking the fantasy to another level? Other people dress-up in other sorts of costumes in order to have sex. This is nothing new or unique to Furry-dom. Don't like the idea? Don't do it.

* )  Baby Furs:
The first time I ever heard of infantileism as a fetish was in 1980: an article about something calling itself the "Diaper Pail Gang". This was some twenty years before I ever heard the term: "Furry" used in a context other than as a reference to that which covers the exteriors of most mammals. Furries did not invent this fetish, but since it is already out there among the public-at-large, it is inevitable that it would find its way into that microcosm of the public-at-large that is Furry. Don't like it? Don't look at it. Problem solved.

* )  Yiffy/Spoogy Art:
Furry-dom deals with anthropomorphic animal characters. Sex is a major part of being "anthro". Therefore, it is inevitable that there would be sexed-up anthros. Furthermore, Furry did not invent the concept of yiffy art: all it did was name it. Until the early 1960s, cartoons were viewed as primarily adult fare. The cartoons of the 1940s -- 1950s contained biting social and political commentary, and yes, sex. The character, Pepe Le Pew, introduced in 1945 (first episode: That Odorable Kitty) pursued yiff as obsessively, and as futilely, as Wile E. Coyote pursued the Road Runner. Any episode featuring Pepe was one continuing double entendre. In case you missed it, Pepe is French. At the time this character was created, the stereotype was that French culture was uniquely sex-obsessed.

In this regard, Digimon Tamers stands out as a rare exception: a kids' show that doesn't look like one. Still, this is a Japanese production, not American. There is no way that any American producer would ever have made something like this. Scenes of Renamon's doing nothing but sitting on a roof top self-dialoguing? Too boring! Moar Axion! Scenes that speak for themselves with no dialog or voice-overs? Kids are to st00pid to get it! (Because we all know all kids are absolute morons that need to be talked down to by adults, amitite?) Of course, the Japanese have a history of doing this: from the late 1950s, we had a black-and-white animation: Eight Man. The writers took extra special care to get technical details right. One episode of Eight Man depicted a device called a "light burner" years before the word "laser" was coined. The writers of this series were obviously paying attention to the sorts of technical articles the PaL was unlikely to ever see. Eight Man is 180° removed from an American production, such as He Man. This American series had one episode, Search for the VHO, that was absolute bullshit. It was obvious that the writers had no idea what a "VHO" was, and couldn't care less.

Disney's Rescue Rangers also featured a character named Gadget Hackwrench. This anthropomorphic mouse was intended to offer pre-pubescent girls a positive role model along the lines of a female "MacGyver". Like MacGyver, Gadget got out of jams, not with her fists or a weapon, but by her wits and her technical ingenuity. This character was designed to fire a very different imagination among pre-pubescent boys. That's good marketing, and don't think they didn't know what they were doing. Marketing is a finely tuned science. The Furry artist, or Gadget fan (The Gadget Hackwrench fandom is a separate, though parallel, fandom) who draws a rendition of what he thinks this character ought to look like naked is simply taking the original concept to its logical conclusion.

Speaking of sexing up cartoon characters, the aforementioned Digimon does not even make a pretense in this regard anymore. It began with its third season, and has gotten more and more blatant. I understand there's a new series now. I highly doubt it will ever come to American TV, based on some scenes I've seen: they're borderline pornographic. As "shocking" as some folks would find this, it's not that much different from what cartoons from the late-1940s routinely depicted. Of course, these cartoons appeared as theatrical features, and were never considered as fare for kids.

Make no mistake about this: even "regular" porn either inflicts harm on others, or involves harming others. One example is a video documentary about an incident that happened in an elite girls' boarding school in Czechoslovakia in the early 1950s. Four of the pre-pubescent girls were caught defacing a portrait of Josef Stalin. It was not stated whether this was a political act, or just a kids' prank. Regardless, these girls received quite a severe beating at the hands of the Head Mistress, overseen by a Political Officer of the Party. (Given the times, they got off damn easy. Entire families disappeared into the Gulag for lesser offenses.) The production company went to considerable trouble duplicating not only the school uniforms, but elaborate sets that authentically reproduced the Head Mistress' office. Why go to all that trouble? Same reason Playboy will shell out several hundred thousand dollars for an article by a prominent scholar, philosopher, scientist, or best-selling author: so guys can say that they buy it "for the articles". It keeps one's conscience clear to tell oneself that he's watching a documentary (What do you call that? A "porn-umentary"? "docu-ography"?) as they fap to scenes of very real actresses getting their very real asses beaten raw with very real bamboo rods, as they portray ten year old girls. OK, so they found four pretty young ladies willing to be paid for being filmed indulging in their own screwy fetish. There doesn't appear to be any shortage of this kind of material on the 'Net.

(In case you were wondering, when reviewing the referrer logs, I noticed that search engines were keying on some material here when folks were entering searches for material related to spanking women/girls. Just for shits and giggles, I repeated such a Google search to see how far down this web site appeared. It was listed over a dozen pages into the listings Google returned. Talk about persistence!)

OK, so the actresses did it to themselves, and probably enjoyed hell out of it. A very common ploy is to recruit naive young women into posing for porn photo sessions with the promise that all the super-models started out this way. Got to pay your dues, or so they say. Sleazy pornographers use the promise of a modeling and/or acting career for just such purposes. Indeed, I have a series of photographs showing a fairly good looking, bleach-bottle-blonde removing her two-piece bathing suit. In not one of these pics, does this young woman look like she feels good about what she's doing. The look, the entire demeanor, says naivety loud and clear. Six occasions for a life time of guilt and regret instead of that modeling/acting career she was likely promised. Still, she's an adult who should be capable of making her own decisions, even if those are piss-poor ones. However, lots of very real children don't have that choice. Kiddie porn does monumental amounts of damage: physical, emotional, psychological to all too many children. It is a serious problem, and is in no way, shape, or form acceptable.

Until genetic engineering solves the problem, anthros exist as nothing other than lines on paper and/or a collection of ones 'n' zeros on a hard drive. "Yiff", "spooge", "furotica" does absolutely no harm to any living being. No matter how "sick" you want to proclaim it, this remains a fact. There is no harm done. Period. End of story.

Who would you rather have move in next door? The "furvert" whose HD is filled with images of squirrel-women with enormous tits and/or well hung fox-men, or that creepy guy whose HD is filled with images of naked children in sexually charged poses/situations? Who would you rather entrust with authority over your ten year old daughter: the "furvert" who faps to sexy anthro vixens, or the guy who faps to actresses simulating young school girls your daughter's age getting their asses beat with paddles and belts? Get your priorities straight here people! If you don't like yiff or spooge, then don't look at it. How many times do I have to say it before you fuck-tards get it?

Fapping to furotica? Imagine this: Mr. Furry Fan paws off, imagining making love to a lovely vixenoid, running his hands through the soft, luxuriant coat, pressing his nose against her cold, wet, black canid nose, her claws lightly scratching his back, as they roll in ecstasy. Meanwhile, Mr. Respectable next door, age: 42, buys so much Rogain and Greecian Formula 44 that the stock price of both companies has gone up a point or two in a futile attempt to hold onto fleeing youth, showing the first signs of middle age spread, two kids -- one starting high school, the other going to college next year -- has retired to the bathroom to fap over the 21 year old supermodel who's the latest Playmate of the Month. Two fantasies: both equally unrealistic; all I see here is a difference without a distinction. Everyone -- and that includes you, Mr. Allfurriesareperverts -- fantasy fucks.

* )  Zoophiles:
Here, we may have the beginnings of a problem. If Mr. (or Ms.) Zoo has a legitimate interest in anthropomorphics, then they are as entitled to call themselves Furries as anyone else. Even if there had never been a single zoo in Furry, Furries would still face accusations of being "skunk-fuckers". One look at yiffy art would be enough for some asshole to make the connection. Trotman: "The most obvious one so far would be suspicions of bestiality. This wouldn't a problem if the furs that did it weren't so damn proud of it.[...] Do you know what all the other fandoms.. Trekkies, X-Philes, Lovecrafters... call Furries? SKUNK-FUCKERS." She states that this name, "Skunk-fuckers" is the responsibility of these "zoos". In fact, the term originated in 1985, at a comic convention out in California called "Baycon". Some unknown someone crossed out the word "Furry" on some flyers announcing a Furry get-together at Baycon and substituted the above mentioned term. If Squee isn't lying about her age, she would have been in kindergarten at this time. By the time of Squee's rant, Furries had been known as "skunk-fuckers" for over thirteen years. "Zoos", and other alleged "deviants", didn't have a damn thing to do with it.

So what are we going to do about these zoos? Take anyone who shows up at a Fur-con sporting a "zeta" pin out back of the hotel and break kneecaps with ball-bats? I suppose we could recruit the fursuiters for this task, in that they would be hard to identify in a police line-up. Of course, getting blood stains out of faux fur is a real bitch. One last word: if you are a zoo, and are in this fandom for no other reason than to recruit, or hide the true nature of your art, or to shield your true identity behind the Furry label, then, please, have enough decency to get the hell out of our fandom.

If Furries expect to drive the zoos out Furry-dom by flaming them on every forum they appear on, we will be repeating the same mistake the Burned Furs™ made. They won't get out, and the commotion will attract much unwanted attention. (And wouldn't that make for a lovely episode of CSI for the new season?) That's human nature: to dig in and fight it out when someone rejects and attacks you. "Love the sinner; hate the sin" doesn't work out in the real world. Even if you could drive all the zoos off of all the Furry web sites, there is nothing that would prevent them from starting up their own Furry-Zoo sites. No one "owns" the term "Furry" as it's just a common word. (And don't bother bringing up that business about Lindows. Microsoft's legal dept. has a budget bigger than the GDP of small countries, and can hire entire law firms to do their bidding. They have the luxury of court and jurisdiction shopping and the means to keep at it until they get a favorable ruling.) Indeed, zoos would be given an incentive to do just such a thing, out of spite for the hostility they encountered on Furry sites, if for no other reason. The true test of tolerance isn't accepting those things that you like, but rather those things you don't like. Zoophiles have been with us for tens of thousands of years, and, so far, no one has figured out how to make them stop. Religions have damned zoos to the everlasting fires of eternal hell, the law has jailed, and even executed them, and we can see just how effective that was: they're still here. I guarantee you that Furry-dom will be no more successful. As for the morality and ethics of zoophilia, that's another subject for a different time and place.

Over the past few years, anthropomorphic fandom has come to have numerous fringe groups associated with it, many of whom have little interest in the appreciation, promotion and production of anthropomorphic art, stories, costumes, etc. [...] These groups engage in behavior and activities that would be considered by non-members of anthropomorphic fandom (and indeed, many members of anthropomorphic fandom) as socially embarrassing, having dubious moral and legal status.
Statement of Purpose

"Pervert" is simply a code word that means: "I don't approve of your sex life". My kinks, fetishes, odd little sexual hobbies are never perverted. Yours, however, well aren't you one sick puppy! It's always the "other guy" who's the perv. Secondly, people do not neatly compartmentalize every facet of their being. If they did, then where would ideas for the fandom come from? We'd forever be stuck with the same old cartoons, stories, books, etc. if everything that wasn't manifestly "Furry" was automatically excluded from the domain of Furry. Furry would quickly become so excruciatingly boring that no one in their right mind would want anything to do with it. This applies to any creative endeavour. Ideas must be allowed to cross-pollinate if this fandom is to remain vibrant.

As for what's perverted, how about this: abduct a twelve year old girl form her bedroom at knife-point, right in front of another twelve year old girl who's sleeping over. Next, rape and torture her for the next several days for your own selfish gratification. When she isn't "fun" anymore, take a length of coat hanger wire and twist it around her neck with a pair of channel locks until her neck snaps. This is what a foul excrescences from the deep, dark underside of what's often, with unintentional irony, referred to as: "humanity", did to Polly Klaas. I wish I were making this shit up, but I'm not. How does this in any way, shape, or form compare to some guy pounding away at a Meeko doll, or dressing up as a raccoon to take it up the ass, or who enjoys the occasional fur-pile, or who draws skunk ladies with wet, welcoming vulvas and an enormous rack, or chipmunk men with hard, throbbing schlongs? People: what the fuck is wrong with your priorities? Rub what few functional neurons you have left after all the rest died off for lack of use together and get this through your heads: the "perversions" that Furries are being accused of do not harm or threaten to harm the person and/or property of another. What is so terribly difficult to understand about this concept? You dumbasses: if you don't like it, then you don't look at it, and you don't do it! What a concept! Damn! Sometimes I even impress myself.

Here is a screen shot that I took as I was writing this.

It's a veritable tsunami of perversion! Of course, it comes as a mega-surprise that some of that would somehow find its way into Furry-dom. Never saw that one coming, didja? And, of course, Furry is the one and only fandom where this has occurred. Trekkies, Lovecrafters, Anime, X-Philes, B-5-ers, Star Wars: all these fans have perfect, squeaky-clean sex lives. Not like those filthy, sick, perverted Furries!

One last time: WHATEVER ANYONE DOES WHICH DOES NOT HARM OR THREATEN TO HARM THE PERSON AND/OR PROPERTY OF ANOTHER IS NONE OF YOUR GD BUSINESS!

What's Really Behind the Burned Furs™?

Let us take a good look at Squee Rat's manifesto: This Sordid Little Business.

Most people I know don't have too much trouble distinguishing between a "lifestyle choice" and a "warning sign." Yep, in many parts of the world, the idea of making love to Andy Panda is still regarded as somewhat misguided. Most parts, that is, except "Furry Fandom." [...] The most obvious one so far would be suspicions of bestiality. This wouldn't a problem if the furs that did it weren't so damn proud of it. For those of you that were out sick that day in Sex Ed class, DON'T FUCK YOUR PETS. Raping Fido is a 100% BAD IDEA. You're making us all look bad, Goddamit.

What have we learned so far? Boinking the family dog is merely a "bad idea", and it is "not a problem" unless you admit it. However, if your partner is "licensed by Disney", then you are "thickly laden with sexual dysfunction", your "id was stomped on". Excuse me, Squee Rat?! Believe me, Andy Panda won't mind it in the least if you make love to him. He will not whimper in pain as you force your non-panda-standard, over-sized "plug" into his undersized "socket". When you are done, he will not bleed from the resulting internal injuries. Andy will never catch a disease; he will never give a disease. He will not cringe in fear every time he sees you coming at him with your dick hanging out. He will not suffer such psychological harm that, after a few months -- a year at most -- of this abuse, he turns so irrevocably vicious that the only recourse is to have him put down.

Sigh... moving on.

The Official Burned Fur™ Hierarchy of Furry Depravity

Am I the only one who sees what's wrong with this picture? Take another LQQK at This Sordid Little Business: the majority, nine out of fourteen paragraphs, do not mention perversion at all. There are just two paragraphs which discuss "perversions": zoophilia, and plush-o-philia. (Isn't it ironic that the fursuit sexers don't even rate a mention, let alone a reprimand?) Either Squee Rat's moral compass is badly in need of a reswinging, or the "Attack of the FurryPervs™" was never the real issue in the first place. Indeed, FurryPervs™ have always been a red herring to hide the true agenda. Squee Rat: "I don't know what the hell happened here." I do know: what happened is that Furry fans discovered that they need not remain passive consumers of established comic art serials, that they could bypass the established publishers via the 'Net, that they could actively participate in the creative process of the genre that they loved. That's what the hell happened here, and those working in a dying industry were terrified to realize that Furry fans no longer needed them.

The above events have given the fans and producers of anthropomorphic art an image that is socially embarrassing at best and career-destroying at worst. [...] The hopes and dreams of success, even in modest independent fields, that many anthro artists and writers hold are in jeopardy because of the numerous problems with the fandom.
Statement of Purpose

Qui bono? If in doubt, follow the money. Make no mistake about this: what the Burned Furs™ were all about was money; it was never about "morals". Furry fandom started out just like every other fandom. Like the Trekkies, the Lord of The Rings fandom, the Lovecrafters, etc. you had a body of works. In this case, the early comic art serials by authors such as Steve Gallaci, Fred Waller, Greg Wadsworth. The titles included: Albedo, Maus, Omaha, the Cat Dancer among others. You had the admirers and aficionados of those works: the Furfans. At this time, Furry-dom was still very much a passive, spectator fandom. Furry could have lasted as a spectator fandom for years, decades even, except for one thing: the Internet.

Being that Furry was very much a "fork" off the UNIX hacker subculture, Furry-dom had among its ranks tech-savvy computer geeks. Very quickly, Furry established itself as an on-line community. Indeed, FurryMUCK was one of the first of the multi-user chat sites. Unlike Trekkies, who could only meet at an annual convention, or rely upon quarterly newsletters, Furries could network at will. This meant an extensive exchange of ideas: Furries could share fanfic, and fan art, share critiques, and take the genre into new creative avenues. New Furry art forms, such as fursuiting, for example, were created. Furries could do this without "leaders" or "trend setters". Furry art was expanding beyond the comic serial and the fandom was evolving away from the conventional idea of a passive, spectator fandom whose affiliates and members had no expectation that they could ever be a part of the creative process. Now, other fandoms had tried to become more participatory and failed where Furry succeeded. The Trekkies, in particular, wrote reams of fanfic. However, the creative endeavours of the average Trekkie were easily thwarted. The mainstream publishers of Trek novels, magazines, etc. announced to the fanbase that they would not accept fanfic, regardless of the quality. This was explained to the fanbase in no uncertain terms by the main publisher of these Star Trek novels in the Wall Street Journal in or around 1979 -- 1980. The publisher had their own staff writers, and were not in the market for writers, or stories. The Internet, however, allowed Furries to do an end run around the established publishing houses.

So who were these <low_reverential_tone>SERIOUS ARTISTES</low_reverential_tone> anyway? Well, there was Charla "Squee Rat" Trotman herself. Her connection to Furry is somewhat in doubt. (After supposedly writing the "Manifesto", and some other documents, she dropped out of sight so quickly that Burned Fur™ members were asking: "Where's Squee Rat?" The most visible Burned Furs™ were Hangdog, Clint Forrester, Lancid, and to a lesser extent, Blumrich and GothTiger. It is likely that either Squee Rat was a willing cat's paw, or was forced out of her own organization.) It is claimed that she is a "professional cartoonist", but it's the damnedest thing: Googling her name revealed no examples of her work, nor does it bring up any sort of career information. Trotman: "Drawing werewolves? E-mail me some pointers, I can't do 'em to save my life." Goldenwolfen doesn't have any problems Drawing Werewolves. Neither do lots of other Furry artists. I do believe the truth just slipped out here: Trotman has admitted that she's not much of an artist. Perhaps that's why she didn't get that job: incompetence? Then there's Eric Blumrich, the co-founder of the Burned Furs™. He is said to be a "free lance" (Translation: unemployed) professional cartoonist. His favorite subject matter seems to have been Kafka, Nazi and Communist imagery, and toilets (which would, of course, explain his chronic unemployment), in addition to some Furry subject matter. He "thought" that being a draftsman made him an "artist". No, Eric, it doesn't. He also holds some pretty whoo-hoo, extreme left, political ideas. There is also Peter "Hangdog" Schorn. His main activity seems to have been as a chronic flame warrior on the now defunct Yerf message boards. He stalked a 16-year-old female artist, gave her art damning critiques when she refused to bed him, and, finally, he was banned from the Yerf messageboard in September, 2001. (Unforch, Schorn's implosion on that message board has been lost to posterity. Second hand accounts describe his making wild death threats, even against former ally: Eric Blumrich.) Now there's a guy eminently qualified to be Furry-dom's moral arbiter if ever there was one! Another leading light in the Burned Fur™ "Movement" was Ralph Hayes. He makes his living (or tries to) from selling commissions via Furbid. Nate Patrin: his "disenchantment" with Furry-dom started around the time he made a post to AFF asking for suggestions on how his art could be improved, and then flamed the crap out of anyone who took him at his word.

So there you have it: the "cutting edge" <low_reverential_tone>SERIOUS ARTISTES</low_reverential_tone> who were going to define a whole new genre of visual storytelling. Marginally talented shit-eaters: one and all. Now we can begin to understand the emphasis placed upon those "career destroying", "dream jeopardizing" Furries. Unlike most fandoms, Furry is unique in that it is very much a DIY fandom. However, a DIY fandom is the last thing they wanted. They wanted devoted acolytes who were content to worship THE GREAT ONES, from a discreet distance and buy their shitty art. They wanted passive, spectator fans who would go to fur-cons to queue up for the grudgingly given autograph. What unmitigated gall "Those Furries" had to even think that they could participate in the fandom's creative process. The Burned Furs™ simply could not stand the competition! They wanted the field of anthropomorphics all to themselves because they knew that they could never make it on their own merits, their own talent, if they weren't in complete control. And, believe me, control is the operative word here. What they wanted was essentially a captive audience who would buy Furry comics, regardless of how crappy they were, simply because there was no other source of Furry material. The Internet made this old business model obsolete. Eric Blumrich was way ahead of the RIAA in realizing that the Internet had changed everything. And like the RIAA, he either would not, or could not, adjust to the new business paradigm. Since "free" is a hard price to beat, any aspiring professional had to be real damn good if he was to make any money selling to Furfans.

This is what the Burned Furs™ were fighting for: to return Furry-dom to a passive, spectator fandom by eliminating its most talented and creative affiliates. The Burned Furs™ biggest complaint against the Otherkin/Weres/Therians and the Furry Spiritualists was "irrelevance". Isn't that a strange accusation to be leveling at those whose beliefs involve human/animal amalgamations for their participation in a fandom dedicated to human/animal amalgamations? The problem here was that they were drawing on their beliefs, and the traditions and imagery of the shamanistic religions for artistic inspiration. They were going beyond the old worn-out, "funny animal", comic book artistic paradigm. The <low_reverential_tone>SERIOUS ARTISTES</low_reverential_tone> simply could not compete on a creative level. No wonder these no-talent assholes wanted these fans out of the fandom!

Squee makes a big deal of pointing out that the Burned Furs™ were to be the "sane" Furries. How ironic indeed it was to see their ranks fill up with some of the fandom's least sane representatives. To learn more: Freezing Furs Home Page (Note: The tone of this web site is rather strident, and a bit too shrill -- valuable information -- and an excellent object lesson in what not to do.) Burned Furs 2 -- Another good critique of the Burned Furs™ and their leadership, and hangers-on.

So how was this suppose to work? The whole idea was probably Blumrich's, or at the very least, he was the main figure in shaping Burned Fur™ tactics. As a member of the far-left, Blumrich would, of course, be quite familiar with Marxism. One of the key components of Transformational (a.k.a. Cultural) Marxism is the Hegelian Dialectic. If you don't know what that means, it operates like this: take an idea, the Thesis. Next, put it into open conflict with its opposite, the Antithesis. Let these fight it out, and you eventually arrive at a new equilibrium, the Synthesis. Once the Burned Furs emerged as a movement (Thesis) and not just a bunch of malcontents bitching on the 'Net about things about which they could do nothing, its counterpart, the Freezing Furs quickly put in their appearance (Antithesis). Now you know why the Burned Furs actively resisted every suggestion for steps that would actually accomplish what they stated was their goal of improving the public perception of the fandom. The controversy was the entire point!

In the above scenario, you also require one other thing: the "facilitator" or "change agent". Though the above looks like your normal consensus seeking and compromise, it is nothing of the sort. It is the job of the change agent to guide the supposed consensus to a predetermined outcome. Guess who that "change agent" would be? (This little stunt is one that hard leftists pull all the time. Indeed, the technique was developed and perfected by China and North Korea, using allied POWs as the guinea pigs. It is also part and parcel of those "encounter groups" the hippies were so famous for.)

Had it actually worked as planned, then Blumrich would have had the "consumer" fandom eager to buy whatever crap these guys saw fit to sell Furry fans. It didn't work in this case, since "encounter groups" don't work at a distance. If you're going to organize the community, you have to do it in person; it doesn't work through the impersonal medium of the Internet. Nor will it work when your "community" is spread out all over cyber space, and geographical space.

So there you have it. It was never about Furry's "fringe" element or FurryPervs™ at all. It had nothing to do with "saving" the fandom, or "cleaning up" the fandom. It had everything to do with who would control this fandom, who would dictate its fashions, who would set its creative directions: the <low_reverential_tone>SERIOUS ARTISTES</low_reverential_tone> or the fans themselves. We Furries still carry a publicity burden that we did not deserve or earn, just so a few, no-talent hacks could play the "big shot" and the <low_reverential_tone>SERIOUS ARTISTE</low_reverential_tone> I might actually get mad, if only the whole story wasn't just so pathetic.

Conclusion

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-- George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

So why bring this whole unfortunate chapter of Furry history back?

I wrote this page as a response to the massive influx of support for the Furry Manifesto; Maybe there's hope for us after all. :) Furriness needs fixing, and I think I may have an idea.

A Modest Proposal: The Call to Action

The support may or may not have been "massive", but there is no question whatsoever that it was sufficient to found a movement that had a definite influence on Furry-dom, spawned several counter movements, and was successful for over two years until the Burned Furs™ took down their web site on the 7^th -- 8^th December, 2000.

The Great Internet Furry Flame War ended five years ago. Now five years, in "real time" -- and certainly on the historic scale -- is nothing. In "'Net time", this is ancient history. The Great Internet Furry Flame War was fought mainly on Usenet (alt.fan.furry, alt.lifestyle.furry, alt.fan.furry.politics) and IRC. It has left very little by way of a paper trail, existing mainly as Internet "Cache". Large pieces of this history can disappear down the "memory hole" with the click of a mouse, or a hardware failure, at any time. Indeed, some of it already has. Furry-dom, having grown up on the 'Net, moves with the speed of the 'Net. Anyfur having five years in the fandom is a virtual "veteran". A great many affiliates have come into the fandom since that fateful day, 8 December, 2000, when the Burned Fur™ web site went dark. They have no direct memory of the Great Internet Furry Flame War. However, even the rawest newbie has heard of Sex2K and Plushies and Furries, "Fur and Loathing", ER and Fear of Comittment, or at least one of the major Fur-bash web sites. They have little, if any, idea where all that came from.

Read This Sordid Little Business, which the Burned Furs™ liked to refer to as "The Manifesto", and set aside all preconceived notions. Now, it is questionable if Trotman even knew the meaning of the word. A "manifesto" implies a statement of principle, philosophy, plan of action, and views. Except for the views, none of these things are present. The content defies logic, it is disjointed, and barely coherent. By all rights, this "manifesto" merited little more than a chuckle, a shake of the head, and perhaps a muttered: "Crazy bitch", followed by a click of the mouse and no further serious consideration. So far as documents that have launched movements great and small, This Sordid Little Business ain't no Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, or 95 Theses. It reads like the emo rant of some angsty moron:

squee_rat Dec 4 1998, 4:00 am show options
Newsgroups: alt.fan.furry
From: squee_...@my-dejanews.com - Find messages by this author
Date: 1998/12/04
Subject: Re: what is "burned fur"?
Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Show original | Report Abuse

In article , bevn...@netcom.com (Bev Clark/Steve Gallacci) wrote:

> uhm.. being a BOF of slow brains, what is this "burned fur" thingy?

*DE-LURK*

What is Burned Fur? An offshoot of "The Tantrum Heard 'Round the World." :)

I forget the exact date that I first uploaded "The Furry Manifesto," but the manifesto's original inspiration remains crystal clear. If you've ever vomited in a crowded public place, fallen flat on your face after tripping over your robe on your way to recieve your diploma, or been caught masturbating by your mother, you have an excellent idea of the caliber of utter humiliation and rage seething behind that rant.

Currently, among family and friends, I am a Cartoonist, not a Furry, and as far as they're concerned, I'd like to keep it that way. Professionally, "Furry" is a dead end. Trust me on this one, folks, don't be a hero. I had to learn the hard way. You'll be called a pervert by prospective employers, and that's a fact. It's no fun. Even Professional "furry" art.. Comics like Usagi Yojimbo, Cerebus, Gon, and parts of Tank Girl and Bone... would never be labeled as such. hasn't anyone ever wondered how this came to be? The revulsion that trails the fandom didn't materialize out of thin air.

If I drew, say, superhero comics, with hideously over-muscled testosterone festivals in spandex with giant guns (find the phallic symbol, kiddies) and inflatable girlfriends, I'd be "normal." Giant codpieces and triple-E breasts? Nothing perverted there. But I made the mistake of showing around a Photoshopped ink sketch of a stylized panda in khakis and a bowling shirt. It would have saved me a lot of time if I'd simply tattooed SICKO on my forehead in neon green. No, that's not fair... But it's not unfounded. It's because of Plushophiles, Zoophiles, Beastialists, Lycanthropists, Lifestylers, and the others that claim furrydom that everyone else involved has been written off before consideration. I've been told I have no right to be proud of what I do, because it contains anthropomorphics. I'm guilty by association. And I'm damn sick of it.

I *AM* a furry, make no mistake about that. I've read Redwall, I've seen "N.I.M.H.", and I'd rather watch "Cats Don't Dance" than "Citizen Kane." I even like "They Might Be Giants." (YERF joke. Pay no attention.) hey, I've met all the requirements. *grin.* I've always been "furry," I suppose. Even as a child, watching STAR WARS for the first time, I remember feeling considerable annoyance when Chewbacca didn't get a medal from Leia at the end. When I played computer games, I played as the *least* human character I could find; usually Blanka, the Orcs, or Gemna. I avoided drawing humans, preferring anthros or furry/reptile aliens. I was Furry before I knew Furry was out here. I was delighted when I discovered such a fandom did in fact exist, but the elation dissolved into confusion and minor disgust. Sex with animals? "Lifestyling"? Is THIS what being a furry meant? Were all the friends I could make and possible contacts worth these fringe elements? I lurked for a good 9 months before I finally took the plunge, and submitted art to YERF. I'm not sorry I did it, but I don't ADVERTISE it, either.

I supposed I detached from reality for a while... I guess you could call it "The Honeymoon Period." I liked furry and furry liked me. :) No opinions, no arguments, only closet dissention whispered to trusted friends. Bliss. I actually began to think Furry might be okay. I thought wrong.

I think it was the "You haven't got a boyfriend? Aren't there any small woodland creatures close by?" crack that made me snap. The rest is infamy... erm, history.

Note: Mr. Gallacci was not impressed. He never replied again in this thread.

Regardless of what you think of the veracity³ of this tale of monumental stupidity, Squee's "temper tantrum", despite the moronic content and writing, resonated with enough fans to make the Burned Furs™ a reality. Either by design or pure dumb luck, Trotman tapped into that fundamental tendency of human nature to want acceptance. Very few of us like the idea that the PaL considers us to be "weirdos", regardless of how much we pride ourselves on our "individuality" and "non-conformity". We humans are pack animals, and ostracism is a terrible punishment. Cults understand this quite well, and many cults: Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Moonies, among others employ this with a terrible efficiency that keeps many "sheep" from straying from the "fold" even if they know better. It's painful to be cut off from a wider circle of acquaintances. It was all too easy for all too many Furries to buy the brand of snake oil Trotman and the rest of the Burned Furs™ were selling. It's not your fault that the PaL doesn't accept you. Blame it on "Them", get rid of "Them", join the PaL in ridiculing "Them", and you will win the acceptance of the mundanes. This desire to be seen as "normal" is the very desire which resonated with a great many well-meaning, but naive, Burned Furs.

Folks, please bear with me for a minute while I do a little soapboxing: Now _I_ know that all furs are not sexual deviants and perverts. And I know _YOU_ know that too. But we're not the people we want to change the minds of: It's Joe and Jane America out there we want to reach. And the only way we can do that is to avoid having someone start blabbing "Hi! I'm furry! And I like to (censored)!" whenever a camera gets shoved in their face. This has made us more than a little unpopular with some people, but we still press on.
--GothTiger

(Note: emphasis mine)

Notice what GothTiger is saying here: he wants to reach "Joe and Jane America". What he wants is for Joe and Jane to accept what he does as "normal" (Never mind that Joe and Jane probably never even heard of Furries, and probably could not care less even if they have.) Make no mistake about this: the lack of acceptance of Furry-dom's normality is still out there, just as much now as the day Squee Rat walked into that interview. The repercussions of the Great Internet Furry Flame War are still reverberating through the fandom. It is still all too likely that post-BF Furries will, once again, buy into the same bullshit that a previous generation of Furries accepted with too little question. (Indeed, the signs that history may be ready to repeat itself are already beginning to appear.)

Joe and Jane America will never accept you as "normal" when everything you do cuts across so many cultural grains. You still like stuff that you should have outgrown. You attend cons dedicated to "kids' stuff". You spend more on a fursuit than Joe America ever spent on a business suit. You decorate your living space with kids' dolls, maybe you still play and sleep with them as well. You reject the Western cultural and religious anthropocentric traditions. And we haven't even gotten to the idiosyncratic spiritualities, the weird sexual hobbies, and the freaky fetishes. GothTiger was asking the impossible: Joe and Jane will never accept any of this as "normal". It isn't the "freaky Furries" who are the problem; you are the problem, and the PaL isn't going to draw any distinctions between "freaky" Furries and "normal" Furries, sexual Furries and non-sexual Furries. Deal.

While it's true that the Burned Furs™ are no more as a viable entity, it is also true that the Burned Furs™ didn't simply go quietly into that good night with their tails tucked between their legs. Not only is the 'tude still very much with us, but the Burned Fur™ site is back on the 'Net as an active site. For years now, the only way you could see it was via Internet cache. Is a revival in the works? We Furs are still confronted with internal intolerance. The no-talent hacks are still out there...

Should the fandom have kept like this, I'd still consider myself a 'furry', I wouldn't be typing these words and you wouldn't be reading them; and I'd focus my efforts to draw more comics featuring my funny animals, knowing that the chances to have a viable career as a funny animal/anthropomorphics artist would be higher than they are now. Of course, my point of view is biased, since I am a cartoonist and love drawing funny animals. But, supposing you are on the fandom only to enjoy anthropomorphics, and not to 'create' them, I'd consider the number of professional-level artists drawing furry stuff would be higher because there would be a larger market willing to pay good money for good quality anthropomorphics, either comics (mainstream or not), literature, or roleplaying games.
A Furry What If (Emphasis Mine)

...and they are still blaming Furries for what are manifestly their own inadequacies. So he wants to be a professional cartoonist? So what is he doing to advance his career prospects? Is he applying himself to his art, developing his talents, building up a nice portfolio? No, he'd rather spend hours and hours a day filling up a Fur-bash site with bullshit articles and posts whining and crying about how Those Furries are holding him back! Yeah, that's exactly what I'd like to see on a resume. Good going, there, Slick. "I'd focus my efforts to draw more comics featuring my funny animals, knowing that the chances to have a viable career as a funny animal/anthropomorphics artist would be higher than they are now." If you ever put pen to paper and drew your own anthros, don't you just feel all guilty to hell and back! It's your fault that Mr. Iwannabeaprofessionalcartoonist isn't busy with that professional career. It couldn't possibly be because his art just isn't good enough? The mind just boggles at such a display of monumental dumbass-ery.

It turns out that the author of the above, does, indeed, work as a professional cartoonist. Here is a further amplification:

To me, stuff like Maus or even the early Albedo aren't mere funny animals. They're a step ahead of what I draw: deeper, more complex and usually laid out on a more intelligent way, despite they also use anthropomorphized animals, and that's precisely what I call "anthro" stuff, myself.

I never tried drawing anthropomorphics, and haven't had the idea to do it (especially after hearing the horror stories I've heard), although I'd like to find a good semi-pro or pro artist to talk with them about a few scripts of things perhaps too deep to try with my usual, cartoony style.

And what was I complaining about? that pros run away from furrydom -never mind me, since I wasn't on the semi-pro/pro circuit myself- but not because there's bazillions of people drawing the same they did and thus were eating their share of a rather miserable market, but because the furrydom's reputation is so sickengly low on the industry that if -anybody- ever hears you've been somewhat involved with it you run a serious risk to end your career. Many, MANY of those artists around 50 by now regret what they did when they joined the furry fandom on its early days.

How do I know? Well, I've worked (and continue workling) on an ex-furry publisher, and thanks to my boss, I've had the chance to meet many of those high-level artists that were famous years ago.

Mr. Iwannabeananthroartist: stop being so damn gullible and stop slurping the hot, steaming bullshit straight from the asses of these so-called "high-level artists" playing the victim card. I guarantee you: the next "Claude Monet", "Vincent Van Gogh", "Paul Gauguin", "Edgar Degas" certainly was not among these artists whose careers we Furries "ruined". Furry-dom's "sickeningly low" reputation was manufactured by those very industry insiders. They did this through rumour mongering, innuendo, gross exaggeration, and outright lying. Those "high-level artists" couldn't hack it, they lacked the talent in the same way as you just admitted here, and it was precisely because "bazillions of people drawing the same they did" -- and were doing it better. OK, I can sympathize with their plight. The same way, and for the same reason, that I can sympathize with buggy whip manufacturers when Henry Ford brought out the Model T. In both cases, they were caught behind the technology curve. The buggy whip manufacturers couldn't stop the Model T. But they could adapt by, for example, manufacturing automobile accessories. Or they could go out of business. It was their choice to make. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, it's damned unfair. But that's life, and your only choice is to at least try to make lemonade when all it hands you is lemons. (Trite cliche, but cliches wouldn't be cliches if they didn't contain a large measure of truth.)

I reiterate: if you want to draw anthropomorphics, what will bring your ideas to life: applying yourself to this effort, or posting bullshit on the 'Net?

• 29 August -- 1 September, 1980:
  Steve Gallacci proposes new comic-art serial about genetically engineered intelligent animals in an interstellar war.

• May, 1981:
  Greg Wadsworth introduces new comic-art serial about an oppressed class of "funny animals" struggling for freedom.

• August, 1981:
  Fred Waller introduces Omaha, the Cat Dancer

• Feburary, 1982:
  Captian Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew introduced

• June, 1984:
  Steve Gallacci introduces Albedo, self published.

Here is a small sampling of early Furry comic-art serials. You can find out more about it at YARF Chronology. Notice something that all those dates listed have in common? All of this early Furry art is pre-Internet. Back in those days, if you wanted to try something new, you needed a publisher willing to take a chance. This, in turn, meant that you had to be real damn good, to have established a reputation as an author who could produce a saleable franchise, before any publisher would consider introducing something new, "weird", and a potential marketing flop. Or you had to take the risk yourself, as Steve Gallacci did, and self-publish, and eat the losses if it turned out that you weren't good enough. These guys were, indeed, the early movers and shakers of the fandom.

Today, if you want to be a Furry artist, all you need is a modem, an ISP account, an art program, and an idea. The first two aren't difficult, and though Photoshop costs big-time, the nearly capable GIMP costs nothing but the time it takes to download it. The last is a bit problematic, but nothing that guys like Gallacci didn't have as well. Congratulations, you now have everything it takes to be a Furry artist, and you have something else that Gallacci, Wadsworth, Waller, etc. never could have hoped to have had in their wildest dreams: an instant, world-wide audience! So Mr. Iwannabeananthroartist, stop blaming Furries. We didn't do it to you. Put "the blame" where it belongs: on technology and the Internet; face the facts: that boat left the pier some twenty years ago, and sailed without you. You will never be an arbiter of Furry fashion when anyone can do their own thing, and I can get it with nothing more than a mouse click. Get that idea out of your head, get off those Fur-bash web sites, get back to your drawing board, and, maybe, you can come up with something good enough that folks out there will want to actually pay you for it. Of course, you will need to rise above the shit-eating, hack level. There will never be another "Steve Gallacci". Period. End of story.

On second thought, Santayana was a hopeless Polly Anna: he assumed that remembering the past was a remedy against repeating it.

Some people never learn.

SIGH...

¹Here is the perfect example of manufacturing lies (Note: Comments in red):

Hello folks, This is a letter to Mark Merlino which the author has asked be forwarded to alt.fan.furry. For those of you unfamiliar with the him, Ed Kline is a very genial fellow whom I have been acquainted with for a few years, mostly through Confurence. He is best known for the wonderful costumes of Red Shetland and Eeon that often show up at the con and together with Kishma Danielle form Thundermark Press. Ed is someone I have great respect for, and I have been asked to pass along responses to this message to him as they appear.

Why doesn't Ed Kline do this himself? Considering the seriousness of these allegations, this is already deeply suspicious

Mark, This letter is in regards to a serious problem that we encountered at ConFurence 8. I direct this letter at _you_ personally because I assume you are still in _charge_ and responsible for the convention in general. I say I _assume_ because certain matters have made me question your authority regarding the running of this con. Mark, pay very close attention to what you're reading. I do not want any misunderstandings. It is well known that you have been on the Internet conversing with members of alternative lifestyles and encouraging their involvement with the convention. I have absolutely NO problem with them or their involvement. I DO however question any one or group that you willingly invite to participate in the convention that have absolutely no interest or appreciation of the premise of the convention, i.e. the love of anthropo- morphics of all sorts which was to be, I believe, the original idea for the con, unless I am mistaken. I bring this up because of certain incidents we encountered at the convention. On Thursday, the day of my arrival, on our way to get something to eat at the hotel coffee shop, we watched two young men deliberately waiting for what we saw to be "mundanes" see them, and proceed to deep-throat each other in a rather blatant manner in the hotel lobby. Obviously getting a kick out of offending these people. This went on for the period of time it took us to get across the lobby and into the coffee shop. They were still there when we left. This behavior is immature, disgusting and we assume has nothing to do with the convention.

Who were these "two young men"? Where is the evidence that they had anything to do with the convention?

This would have offended me and my group no matter whether those making the display were homosexual, hetersexual, bisexual, or otherwise! This behaviour is offensive _any_time and _any_where. This little game of "freak the normals" should be policed by con security.

So why didn't you report it? Since these "two young men" have not been identified, nor any proof offered that they were con guests, it's just as likely that they were trying to "freak the Furries" if they existed at all.

Science Fiction/Fantasy conventions have a hard enough time getting "outsiders" to take them seriously. Besides that, what the hell was one of your security doing walking around in DRAG? What's that got to do with the so-called premise of the convention along with not aiding in the confidence people would be feeling in approaching security? That was very immature and _unprofessional_!

Was he on duty or off at the time? If he was off-duty, so what? Another vague accusation without merit.

Speaking of unprofessional security, both Kishma and Tanmin went up to the Art Show at 7:30am on Friday. Do you know what they found? The artshow was completely open and unsupervised. Empty! No one was there! Had they been less than honest people, they could have filled one of the convenient boxes full of whatever artwork they wanted and walked out. With NO ONE being the wiser. Instead, they planted themselves, and waited for "security" to arrive, while telling others who arrives before Security that the room was not open yet. (We were told that Jazmyn was the last one to lock up ... and she had the wrong door locked!)

Again, these things happen. In the on-going chaos that is any con, mistakes like this sometimes happen. She locked the wrong door: it was a mistake.

This was not the only experience we encountered. There was a situation in an elevator Saturday evening, when I was taking some important guests back to my room for business. We were discussing said business in the elevator on our way up to the room when one of the gentlement with me leaned back against the wall, as most people do, when he found his side and pants covered in SEMEN! Some diseased bottom-feeder couldn't contain himself and squirted all over the wall. This goes way beyond disgusting and immature.

How do you know that the substance in question was, in fact, "SEMEN!" ? Did you collect a sample for analysis by a forensic laboratory? Where is the lab report? Or are you just assuming that it was "SEMEN!"? Furthermore, this scenario is impossible unless the "diseased bottom-feeder" can cum in Wingerian porportions. Male ejaculate doesn't amount to more than a few cc's. There isn't enough to so completely cover an entire wall shoulder to ankle. Furthermore, where is the proof that this "diseased bottom-feeder" -- assuming he ever existed in the first place -- was a guest of the con? Are there any surveillance videos? Since there were other guests at the hotel having no connection to the con, how do you know it wasn't one of them? Or are you just assuming, once again, that it just had to be a con guest? This whole story is nothing more than Merlino-bash bullshit.

There are other situations which I'll go into later, After I make them up but at this point - in case you're wondering why I'm bringing this to your attention again - it's YOUR con as you are so want to make everyone aware of. Which means shit like this is your responsibility . My question is... when did you decide to make this convention something other than anthropomorphic? What are you going to do about this "lunatic fringe" that is seeping into the convention? And understand this, I don't care whether they're alternative lifestlyists or otherwise or if they make love to their pets, or any other "preference." That's not what I'm addressing. What are you going to do about the people who aren't interested in attending this convention for its intended purposes?

Why should he do anything? These folks paid their admission. The idea that they should also have to pass a test of ideological purity is utter nonsense. There are a lot of folks who attend all sorts of conventions simply because they like conventions. What sort of test at the door do you propose to ferret out these types?

We actually had people look at myself when I was dressed as Eeon, Kishmas as Tashta, and Tanamin as Ingo, and ask "That are the weirdos doing here in costume?"

So what? Fursuiters are a distinct minority within the fandom, and there are Furries who do consider this to be very weird. Wasn't there a big flame war on alt.fan.furry over this very thing?

We overheard others, on more than one occasion ask, "What's a furry?" and receive the answer, "I don't know. I'm just here for the parties and sex."

Again, so what? They paid their admission, as to why they did so, that's none of your goddamn business (or Merlino's).

What are you going to do about these same people who are going about methodically ruining the reputations of the alternative lifestylists as well? And, if you don't think there's a problem with this, you're not looking in the right places. Get your head out of your ass and clean up your fucking act. I'm not the only one that's pissed about this. Maybe you don't care. You seem to have gradually drifted over the years into a fog of self-gratification. Everytime I and others have tried to communicate with you on a professional or otherwise level, you never respond.

Perhaps it's because he doesn't want to dignify this bullshit with a response? If I were in his place, I wouldn't respond either.

Do you treat your GoH's the same? Unless it is over the Internet you do not respond, even when professionals I've known -at the very least- enclose a SASE for you. We've been very angry at times over your lack of professionalism in the way that you deal with people. Have you noticed, Mark, how fewer and fewer familiar faces are showing up every year? Probably not. And I do mean outside your own circle. This convention used to draw everybody you and I knew in fandom because of its uniqueness. In the last few years I've watched fewer and fewer people show up. I wondered about that. I wondered about the causes. I thought, "Surely it's not because of Mark and the way he's running the con?" Last year we saw a great number of "strange young men" again, blatantly embarrassing everyone around them and "oblivious to what they were causing". Or so it seemed. Now, in case we were overreacting to circumstance, I and my group questioned others at the con. "Old Timers" who've been attending conventions for a good ten years or more, like ourselves. Surprise! EVERYBODY we talked to not only felt as angry as we did at what happened to us, but recounted myriad incidents that happened to themselves as well. And many decided that they were not coming back.

Nothing more than hearsay. Fact: every Confurence Merlino ran had a bigger attendance than the previous one. Confurence folded after Merlino was forced out.

Now, Mark, I and my household are extremely open-minded. I myself being permanently involved in a well working three-way relationship: Kishma and Tanamin, my two mates, both being bisexual, and I myself being betero. (I have declared myself heterosexual, having experienced male sex and found absolutely no interest in it personally. But, as I said before, I am not opposed to it.) Now this was not all that led to pissing me off. What really clenched it was our attempt at being involved in the Pet Auction. Gee, Mark, innocent naEFve us. We thought it was going to be a PET Auction. As in, people in costumes and anthropomorphically inclined, adopting others of similar interests for the benefit of charity. We thought it would be fun. Lo and behold our surprise! We found it was nothing more than a "queer auction." Kishma offered to do a lap dance as Tashta, her zebra dancer, to the highest bidder. If she was offereing this to a furry audience, she probably would have brought the house down. Instead, she got crickets!!! Know what that means, Mark? She went for $28. Subtract the $10 WE spent on the Cabaret ticket, totals $18. I don't even want to tell you what happened with Eeon, who's been known in dandom a lot longer than Tashta. And yet, some little cretin in tight black shorts, offering veiled sex, went for $180. In fact, ALL those offering "extras at the discretion of the pet" sold for over $40. Mark, all of this came off as a thinly disguised excuse for pandering. You're lucky it wasn't shut down. And we DO mean this seriously, Mark. It's not just sour grapes: EVERY furry costume that was bid on went for a low bid. Except Cataroo. .. and that's the ONLY one: the two gentlemen who bid on her had entered and left with her. The only women other than Tashta who participated went for $12 and $8, respectively. And one of that was a pair of round cuties who were basically offering a rather charming "spanking" show. They got crickets. All the women did! All the anthropomorphics did! Anyone who did not offer or imply sexual favours were bid on very poorly or not at all. Now what does this lead you to believe, Mark? Who do you think was dominating the audience, Mark? I think you should really address some considerations concerning your security as well, in these matters. There were camera teams prowling these areas who we discovered were NOT there for the convention's health: but, evidently doing expose`s casting furrydom in a negative light and boy did they have tons of ammunition _this_ time!

Mr. Exline, after replacing Merlino, had the same problem. There was nothing that Mr. Exline could have done about the camera crews from The Man Show. If the hotel lets them in, then there is precious little Merlino could have done about it.

The nonsense we've seen happen at THIS convention is not helping the situation one bit. You're responsible, Mark. I'd get your act together or get some people to help you who CAN, before you find yourself and your convention facing some very serious consequences. As a result of all this crap, needless to say, you won't be seeing us next year, or a number of others - old-timers and new people alike... from what we were given to understand. Should this trend continue, we do not want to be involved, and will be attending other conventions, rather than wasting our time, money and emotions on this one. Understand, Mark, this used to be our _favorite_ convention! We'd make it to THIS one even if we didn't make it to any other! In the past, it's been a wonderful way to re-energize our creative energies: but, Mark, if you're going to change the convention to some other venue then stop trying to hide what you're doing under the guise of ConFurence. If you feel the need to run an Alternative Lifestyle convention, then why don't you do that instead of changing ConFurence into it? It's ruining it for us, and others. And for those who are not interested in the alternative lifestyle aspect. It also piss us off that you invite this opening on the 'net and yet make no mention of this "change" in _InFurNation_. This letter has been posted to you; but also --because it's so damned hard to get you to respond to a letter-- at the suggestion of our friends, we are also having this letter posted on alt.fan.furry, where it is more likely that you will notice it - or at least you'll have a harder time ignoring it. And if YOU ignore it, rest assured others will not. I want your response, Mark. This isn't just a bitch-fest: we all feel this way. As for _myself_, I want to deal with you in person, Mark. You know where to find me. You know how to reach me. Do it. By the way, Mark, the reason I did not approach you at the convention was that - in the mood I was in - I might have gotten myself thrown into jail.

Rather than take these concerns to Merlino at the time, you'd rather wait until after the fact, when it can do no good whatsoever, and post this bullshit all over the 'Net. Yeah, that'll solve the problem all right. Or is it that no one complained at the time because there was nothing to complain about at the time?

I saw too many of my friends get hurt. Figure it out.

Ed Kline

²I would like to make this perfectly clear: I do not consider the majority of the membership of the Burned Furs™ to have been evil. For the most part, these folks were, and remain to the present, good Furs. It is the leadership, their various cat's paws, and hangers on which I consider evil. It is the leadership to which I will be referring from now on. They were successful in fooling well-meaning fans into serving their foul agenda.

³Squee writes: "But I made the mistake of showing around a Photoshopped ink sketch of a stylized panda in khakis and a bowling shirt. It would have saved me a lot of time if I'd simply tattooed SICKO on my forehead in neon green." Does this make any sense to you? Now, is it unreasonable for someone applying for a position as a cartoonist to have pics of such stylized animals in their portfolio? How does this "panda" differ in any meaningful way from a stylized mouse (Mickey Mouse, Jerry) a stylized bear (Yogi) or dog (Huckleberry Hound), etc. ad infinitum? Why would this lead to her being denounced as a "SICKO", and equated with those who draw "smutty pictures"? Why would that lead to that comment about "small woodland creatures"? If this incident happened at all (which I highly doubt) I'd bet the mortage money that the image in question was full-on spooge. Showing your potential employer something like that isn't the smartest thing in the world to do, now is it?

Squee: "The Manifesto was written, oh, an hour and a half after the 'woodland creature incident.'" Yeah, that's the intelligent, mature way to handle blowing an interview.