Dogpatch Press

Mark Miner’s pre-2005 teacher photo, and screens from his more recent posts on social media.

Infiltration at VancouFur

Few places want to let a vocal pedophile feel at home, and that’s why Evil Unveiled made a page about Mark “Didaskalos” Miner and his endless quest for acceptance of pedophilia/pederasty/Boy Love. He’s been at it for decades, on places like the Boychat pedophile forum (where he posts as ScotusBaby). It gets tiny recognition like a category on a site to publicize “those who don’t demonize” pederasty.

Hopeless causes have their die-hards, and Miner is now trying to run panels at libraries and anime and fandom conventions, where he might reach supple young audiences that have their guard down. As a former teacher, he uses poetry and classic theater as a cover of legitimacy to harken back to his idea of a golden age — when men were men, boys were boys, and abuse between them wasn’t illegal yet.

Miner departs from basic definitions at the word Abuse. A core conceit of “Boy Love” is to split hairs about the folk conception of pedophiles violently raping children vs. “nicer,” less forceful coercive molesting. It’s a mental Olympics course in coy excuses. On his Boy-Love in the Classics group, Miner tells the other 2 members that he’s just for ACADEMIC DISCUSSION, and not actually pushing for acceptance… while doing exactly that for, well, himself.

For his plan to perform Boy-Love theater, Miner believes that tax-funded public spaces aren’t supposed to deny space to anyone over politics; so he counted it as a victory even if nobody came to see him at Mission Hills library in San Diego in February 2023.

His convention overtures succeeded with getting a panel in the official programming at VancouFur, on March 5, 2023. Context says it must have worked by omitting info provided by this article. The panel was late at night and marked not suitable for minors to separate it from con programming for parents and youth.

Miner’s furry con appearance stayed beneath public notice — did anyone go at all? — but it was just a start for his list of other cons he is targeting, furry and otherwise: A-Kon, Anime Boston, Anime Central, Anime Expo, Anime Los Angeles, Anime NYC, Anime Weekend Atlanta, Dragon Con, Fangaea, Isekai-Con, Metrocon, Necronomicon, Otakon, Paris Japan Expo, Ropecraft Chicago, Saboten-Con, Sakura-Con, Scottish Rite Temple, Tampa Fetish-Con, Thunder On the Mountain, and Youmacon. His furry con list started with Anthrocon, AnthrOhio, Furry Weekend Atlanta, Furlandia, Golden State Fur Con, and up to 30 cons in total. Maybe few of them would accept him, but should any host his belief that furries need to accept Boy Love to “GROW and FLOURISH”?

Scam and Threat 

Let’s emphasize that Miner isn’t part of this fandom. He’s skipping from place to place and looking for cracks to pry in.

An example of setting this up came with meager news notice in 2019 in the San Diego Reader, whose editor must have been out sick that day. Miner jumped on the bandwagon of library performing (citing Drag Queen Story Hour) to ride the coattails of harmless people who are just there to read nice stories. They’re not the same as each other, and you can tell because he keeps explaining the scamming, like someone desperate for attention.

• His “christian”, transphobe and TradCon (Traditional Conservative) stances give him strange bedfellows — even if they won’t admit it — like anti-Woke right-wingers who hate this fandom, and scandal-plagued churches that show TradCon beliefs in practice.
• Miner also admits “I have a Ph.D. in internet social engineering” (“trolling”), with a plan for schizo-posting on all sides of his intended controversy. It goes with being a vocal fan of far-right scammers like Andy Ngo and Milo Yiannopoulos. Miner compared himself to Milo as a “Performance Artist, who has been playing exactly the same game Milo is playing.” (Targeting furries was a death rattle of Milo’s deplatformed career.)
• This is the literal pedophile that the right wing accuses of targeting youth, and he isn’t a drag queen, he belongs to the right wing.

Bringing his scam to VancouFur inspired a few eagle-eyed furries to ask for help to make it news. It was a good idea to come to Dogpatch Press, because banning people or publishing warnings can have a price that other places can’t pay. The risk of frivolous litigation could involve lawsuits under the name Mark Miner.

Dogpatch Press can keep source confidentiality protected by law. Yes, even citizen bloggers are legally journalists for public interest. And unlike most conventions, Dogpatch Press has a history of winning in court against backlash for speech. Telling the truth has a high cost to defend it in court, but our money goes where our mouth is for reporting. We can report the story when conventions don’t.

VancouFur’s Response

Dogpatch Press reached out to VancouFur for comments, and heard back from a spokesfurry volunteer for the British Columbia Anthropomorphic Events Association (BCAEA):

“There was no tip submitted in writing or otherwise to the BCAEA, nor to any of the Vancoufur senior staff such as the chair or vice chair, regarding this individual prior to the 2023 event.

Didaskalos submitted his panel in the same manner that all our panels are submitted. There was a form, which asked for relevant information. Panels are approved on a case-by-case basis in the order they were submitted based on: time, subject, resources required, appeal, cost, programming space availability, and assuming the panel runner is in good standing with the BCAEA.”

Will he be welcome at Vancoufur in the future?

“This is a decision which needs to be made by the BCAEA board of directors. If you wish to make a formal complaint and supply the documentation you have, you may do so here: https://vancoufur.org/reporting-an-incident/ When a complaint is made, they will discuss the matter, review the documentation, and pass any decisions relevant to the matter to 2024’s relevant staff. If it is found that the person in question violates our AUP found here: https://vancoufur.org/acceptable-use-policy/ – they will not be welcome at Vancoufur.”

What to do?

Recall how Miner believes that tax-funded public spaces aren’t supposed to reject anyone over politics; and that lawsuits can be a risk for kicking people out of private spaces. This opens up cracks that people like him look for. If controversy happens, they may revel in it while insisting on getting in because they’re not illegal, while official response has to stay quiet.

Screening for creeps may even be structurally incompatible with volunteer-based, non-corporate sponsored events. Fan cons are not permanent institutions like schools, or operating for shareholder profit year-round. They’re one-weekend charity benefit social gatherings, that don’t own the space they rent, and only secure it as a low-cost volunteer thing. Creeps can get in by taking advantage of open, temporary volunteer based support.

There’s a legal precedent* covered by a Financial Times podcast about porn business (Hot Money episode 4). Websites usually aren’t responsible for what gets posted by users… until they start screening it. A leading adult website in the 1990’s worked to take down copyrighted Playboy images, but a few got through. Because they screened, they became liable when Playboy sued them, and it bankrupted them. If they had done nothing they would have been safer. Similar goes for furry cons screening people. How do they predict future incidents when screening only shows the past, and people without records can create the liability? Don’t consider liability to come from single banned people; it’s from screening itself. *Disclaimer: this is not legal advice.

So should Vancoufur have dropped Miner’s panel? Look for QUIET selection rather than a public ban if they’d known.

Another wrinkle is for creeps on staff; even if it’s hard to screen people, there’s also quietly dropping them. But when they’re high enough on staff or board to influence those decisions, that’s even worse than not formally screening, and maybe then the con’s existence itself should be questioned. (This happened with Rocky Mountain Fur Con’s cancellation). If staff show a priority to backlash at messengers and rant about cancel culture, they’re at the heart of the problem.

Creeps at cons are a problem that won’t go away easily. Think of it like a holistic challenge for the whole fandom to deplatform them, rather than expect one-weekend events to do it for you. Solutions could put a priority on problems with staff or official programming, not just the general attendance, using non-reactive and united community organizing and reporting.

Thankfully, this case may be more of an instructive example than a risk. It says that anyone can get in, even a pathetic Boy Lover who has to eat rice and carefully budget for $3 bus fares to travel, in hopes to grab crumbs of notoriety by performing to almost nobody. The best response is to let him starve.

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon. Want to get involved? Try these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for news or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)