The Enough Already podcast made me look at furries vs. conservatives, Gamergate and Trump.
by Patch O'Furr
We're back! ‘Furry and Loathing in Denver’ https://t.co/gklbyUV4H1 @FingersMalloy @AsheSchow & I discuss furries, the campaign, UVA and pot.
— TLC (@TracyLConnors) August 17, 2016
On this podcast, host Fingers Malloy talks about his visit to Rocky Mountain Fur Con in Denver. It starts 20 minutes in. Thanks to Kieran for sending this.
It’s a gentle outsiders’ look. Fingers has a pastime of making fun of politics, but furries are spared overdone mockery. (“They’re not hurting anyone”, he says). He mentions past negativity and compares it to picking low-hanging fruit.
Enough Already is for pop culture and conservative politics. In fact it shares some serious connections to senators, governors, Fox News, etc.
There isn’t a big overlap with conservatives and furries. We talked on Twitter after the show, and they were curious to know why? I gave a very generic reason of demographics. There’s no politics about being a talking animal and we come in all stripes. But young and queer people tend not to be overly enamored with the right-wing or christian fundamentalists. That goes both ways.
Take this example. At World Net Daily (the fringiest of ultraconservative blogs), furries were recently bashed as deviant pedophiles by Phil Elmore, a sad oaf crying for help to detach his head from his colon. It was just ranting about moral decay from someone so repellant that nobody would want to decay him. Furs at Flayrah were not impressed by the ignorance.
Another example: in 2015, furries were mocked in a trollish article by Milo Yiannopoulos, star of the “alt-right” at Breitbart. He’s a Gamergate figurehead. Milo criticizes identity politics, rampant cultural narcissism, and “imitation identity disorders and theatrical attention-seeking”. He singles out “transpecies” beliefs as a symptom, mashing together the worst fringes of Tumblr, otherkin and furries.
You might call Milo an alt-right hipster for adopting gamers to cozy up with youth culture. Since he seemed to want cred with nerds, I guessed he would answer my mail. I asked him to be nicer to the misunderstood furries. He answered:
Of course. I suspect a lot of overlap with the gamers I love so much. Perhaps I should write something.
I think this is different from garden variety out-for-a-buck media sensationalizing. When furries are a pawn for conservative points, I sense fixation on how others should live from fossilized dino-turds like Phil Elmore, and political manipulation from slippery players like Milo. (“Just folks” friendliness can also mask apathy about whether others can live at all, but that’s another topic.)
I’m sure the affable hosts of the Enough Already podcast would demur about wanting everyone to be left alone with liberty for all. And I wonder if Milo will be cozier next time he talks about furries – perhaps in his own newly minted fursona (maybe a snake, or a weasel.) I’ll leave it to you to think about ulterior motives when media comes to our spaces wearing big smiles, but you can stay opinionated while taking curiosity and niceness at face value. Thanks are due to the podcast for real effort.
Speaking of Gamergate, they seem to have a problem with misrepresentation by the media. HMMM, SOUNDS FAMILIAR. And they seem to feel that gamers are unfairly vilified. HMMM AGAIN.
If you ask conservative minds about who could be most responsible for furries being punching-bags, like clockwork, expect complaints about Vanity Fair, MTV, CSI, etc. being “liberal media.” (But who’s buying what they sell?)
There are some alt-right and “furries for Trump”. One furry commented on the Twitter chat about that small section being his friends.
@bubbasjetpack it is possible although not easy, to be friends with people whose politics differ from your own. @PifOtter
— TLC (@TracyLConnors) August 17, 2016
“Agree to disagree” is a nice way to be. And if you can name other places where everyone hugs everyone like when furries meet, I’d love to hear. Maybe the rest of the world should try growing tails.
I have to mention a Twitter comment from host Tracy about acceptance of furries. She asked if the “muzzies” would open their arms to us?
They sure would. President Obama (America’s #1 muslim and the founder of ISIS) invited furries to come hang out at the White House. Our international conspiracy is everywhere. Beware of trying to fool us or use us – just be nice.
Donald Trump Accuses Obama of Inventing Furries
— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) August 16, 2016
Donald Trump's Hair Has It's Own Fursona
— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) January 26, 2016
Another Loss For Trump Campaign - Chester Cheetah Endorses Hillary
— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) August 16, 2016
— FURRY FANFICTION (@FURRYFANFIC) July 2, 2015
* (Seriously, there are some muslimfurs and members in places like Iran. I also have an article in drafts about how Furry is growing with new cons in southeast asia, but not so much in Malaysia and Indonesia because Islamic customs forbid showing animals doing human things. But that’s for another time.)
I don’t think one can pin down one variable which causes most furries to tilt strongly to the left, nevertheless, I think the furry subculture is already self-selecting for liberal attitudes.
The root of this I suspect is the ‘openess’ factor of the Big Five personality traits. There might be an equal number of people interested in the furry subculture across the political spectrum, but if one feels obligated by either personal or cultural norms to suppress that (or never encounter it in the first place) then you just end up with more ‘open’ people engaged in the fandom.
I don’t think there is any direct thing either, and I’m glad you mention personality traits of furries. I don’t think you can get specific any more than for why there seems to be roughly equal amounts of gay, bi and hetero members (making straight something of a minority! Not that it matters.)
There must be a big “dark matter” population. The internet brings a lot of that to light. For example an intensely homophobic culture like Pakistan’s happens to be a world leader for people looking at gay porn.
Being open in the face of that kind of repression I think is one of the ways furries might even count as a counterculture, not just a subculture.
None of this is meant to bug people about how they want to vote, that’s their business. Personally I endorse Vermin Supreme for dictator.
Okay, regarding Gamergate, there’s a big difference between a group feeling misrepresented by the media and being ACTUALLY misrepresented by the media. I personally got to watch the whole Gamergate scandal play out in real time, first having the Zoe Post brought to my attention, then watching the flood of misogynistic and anti-feminist attacks leveled at Zoe Quinn and other female developers and critics, the conspiracy theories on youtube insinuating personal and professional corruption thoughout the video game industry, and then finally the constant damage control when it was all proven to be lies. And as many people have pointed out, it wasn’t one of the many REAL instances of industry corruption and malfeasance that triggered Gamergate, it was when a woman was accused by an ex-boyfriend of sleeping with critics for reviews.
I genuinely believe that many Gamergaters don’t believe themselves to be misogynists. I also believe that many Republicans don’t believe themselves to be racists. It doesn’t change the fact that they support a platform that has been outright proven to promote bigotry, and by arguing that said bigotry doesn’t exist are ultimately shielding those people within the movement who do real harm. The media’s analysis of Gamergate was not a sensational ploy, it was a spot-on recognition of what was going on within the movement.
PS: Given the constant and unabashed racist, misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic arguments published and promoted by Milo Yiannopoulos, please think about the message you’re sending to furries who are female, POC or LGBTQ when you suggest an alignment with people like that. It implies that you care more about the opinion of bigots than the people they target.
“I also have an article in drafts about how Furry is growing with new cons in southeast asia, but not so much in Malaysia and Indonesia because Islamic customs forbid showing animals doing human things. But that’s for another time.”
That should be very interesting, considering the new furry conventions in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines that seem to support each other.
http://www.furum.org/2016/
http://furrylah.com/
http://thaitails.net/th
http://www.phanthrofest.com/
It just occurred to me to post a link to the AnthroAsia forum here. Maybe you can get furry penpals throughout Southeast Asia here.
http://www.anthroasia.com/forums/index.php
Furries for Trump? Heck, there was one (quite high-profile) fur who endorsed Michele Bachmann, FFS!
Interesting that Furries In the Media just profiled a Rush Limbaugh mention a few weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB4f5S3vG8g
Thanks! The article is about outsiders looking in, so I didn’t talk to conservative furries, this is a great example of the topic.
I am sure I am going to get beat up for this, but here it goes anyway.
I guess I just can’t seem to grasp how so many lean left(strong centralized government) when historically those types of governments have decimated minority demographics based on race, religion, and sexuality. Does anyone even remember who National Socialist German Workers’ Party was? Socialist governments have slaughtered how many? And this is what we consider inclusive?
It’s really off topic,
Left doesn’t imply “strong centralized government”. Left isn’t the same thing as Liberal, liberal Social Democracy isn’t the same thing as Socialist, Socialist isn’t Communist isn’t Dictatorship. Dictatorship isn’t exactly left.
The NSDAP (National Socialists) weren’t socialists any more than North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic Of) is “democratic”. They were extremely corporatist however (look up Ford, IBM’s role in organizing death camps) and undeniably right wing in every way.
That hyper reductionist stuff about lumping “strong government” into all the same thing is really useless. If we wanted to get way into the stuff you’re getting at, it’s a bunch of apples and oranges.
If we wanted to compare apples to apples, we might look at the state of development of nations in question.
For example, socialism. At the time of the October Revolution in 1917, the USSR was the largest continent on the planet with disunited people at a medieval state of development separated by huge distances. There were decades of sacrifice to develop it. By the 1950’s they had the most advanced space tech, universal literacy, rising life expectancy, equality for women, etc.
All of that in a short time span which we in North America had a 100 year head start for – while it cost of tens of millions of native american lives, slaves etc. No innocence here. And it’s not like every nation suddenly turned democratic at the same time. All this relative stuff is required for getting closer to apples to apples.
Looking closer at purges and famine that people cite as politically motivated evil – famine wasn’t a new thing but the Holodomor was also the last famine they ever had in the USSR. And have you ever fact checked for how many WWII military deaths are deceptively included? Then there’s the fact that for their entire existence, they were under siege by a cold war, not just sitting there existing.
Stalin, Pol Pot etc deserve no love. However Marxism implies no slaughter of anyone. It’s merely applying the small-scale village commons ideal to industrialized society. There is plenty to debate about human irrationality and how well an idealist framework applies to the future. However as a framework for looking at the past, the concept of class relations is incredibly valuable.
This is a relevant article about the Holocaust and historical revisionism to try making false equivalance between what Nazis did and what Socialist governments did. https://jewishcurrents.org/articles/the-double-genocide-theory/
Tl;dr there is no equivalence, that was above and beyond the worst genocide in modern history.
“In no other genocide did a mighty state put its government’s resources to work to murder every child, woman, and man of a designated ethnic group, far from its own borders, with no “baptismal” (or other recanting) option for a victim to be spared, and with zero provocation from the victims beyond their being living humans of the group slated for extermination.”
That one’s on the right. No, lefty people aren’t out there decimating minorities.
Edit: anarchism is left, dummy. Off topic means off topic. Further comment is deleted, stop linking inane youtube videos, wank on someone else’s website please.