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The Stigmatization of Ferals
2 years ago
Has anyone noticed the increasing hostility toward feral artists over the past few years? Granted, there's always been the usual anti-furry outrage which encompasses ferals, but up until a few years ago, I had never seen hate directed toward ferals from other furries. From what I've seen, like most of the worst things on the Internet, it originated from social media, specifically Twitter. Obviously, people over there tend to look for the pettiest excuses to gin up drama in order to get attention, but up until now, that manufactured outrage has been safely quarantined away from the rest of society, allowing the rest of us furries outside of that toxic echo chamber of radicalization to live out our lives in relative peace. While the hateful tweets were frustrating to come across whenever I'd be searching for stuff over there, at least there was always the option to simply go to another website. However, I can't help but notice how it's now starting to spread and infect other online furry communities. At this point, you'd have to be living under a rock to not notice the growing trend of hostility toward the feral side of the furry fandom.
For example, just last week over on Reddit, r/RealFurryHours, a subreddit created specifically for furry-related discussion regarding topics considered too controversial for the more mainstream furry subreddits, recently appointed new moderators who immediately did away with any feral-related discussion and threatened to ban any users who disagree with their new announcement about it being "pro-zoophilia" in a stickied post. This happened despite me and most of the other users there protesting against the change. Just like on Twitter, there's a certain group of people who believe themselves to be above everyone else and therefore entitled to push for rules that better suit their own personal tastes.
We're even starting to see it here on FurAffinity. The most obvious example of this would be the infamous "cub ban" that kickstarted one of the worst witch hunts in furry history, a problem that's still ongoing as of right now, but let's not pretend ferals aren't going to be next on the chopping block. Remember, we're talking about a website run by the same people who openly belittle victims of gatekeeping if it means earning brownie points on Twitter. If they've already gone after cub artists and succeeded, it shouldn't surprise you to know that feral artists are starting to experience the same unfair treatment.
The double standard isn't lost on me either. Why must a completely non-suggestive image like this be forced to have a "mature" rating slapped on it by this site's administration when humanoid anthros get a free pass to be as suggestive as they want, showing obvious bulges and cameltoes with "general" rating? Drawing the basic outline of a sheath on a feral character is no more revealing than drawing a humanoid anthro wearing tight clothing that reveals the outline of the anatomy underneath. Most of the time, it's simply done for the sake of realism, meaning that unless there's some sort of extra detail or suggestive emphasis put on that aspect of an image, there's no reason for it to be given a higher rating. What makes it even more frustrating is that this hypocritical rule change against sheaths being allowed in SFW images was only enacted after e621 forced the same change onto its userbase without any justification. Seriously, what's the logic here? "Drawing anthros wearing skimpy outfits is perfectly acceptable, but adding the slightest hint of extra mass between a male quadruped's hind legs? Unacceptable! Think of the children, you pervert! Next thing you know, those kids will start drawing pictures of... Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron! Oh the horror!" Get real. These new rules are just being made up to give the people in charge more excuses to unfairly crack down on feral artists because they've become a popular target.
The only reason this double standard exists is because, as I mentioned earlier, there's a growing movement on social media being pushed by people who think our fandom needs to be sanitized of any politically incorrect elements in order to appeal more to outsiders. This is especially applicable for those who seek to rebrand our community as a leftist movement. It's a well-known fact that furries with more conservative political leanings tend to have fursonas with more conservative designs, as they generally prefer detailed realism over abstract escapism. That's also the reason behind why so many stereotypes involving "sparkledogs" with "socialist teeth" exist, as leftist furries, especially those who spend most of their time chasing the same trends on social media, tend to look homogeneous as a result, and unsurprisingly, their ideal vision of the furry fandom, despite claiming to support diversity, is just as mundane. Every fursona must look like theirs, act like theirs, and endorse the same ideology as they do. If you don't fit in, you're looked down upon with disgust and lumped in with a variety of undesirable outsiders (namely pedophiles, zoophiles, fascists, and any other monsters of the week). Again, these people are the ones spearheading this pro-censorship trend, pushing it onto every major furry website, hence why these unwarranted rule changes keep happening with increasing intensity.
Since then, things have only gotten even more strict, and there's no sign of it stopping any time soon. FurAffinity is going all gas and no brakes on ramping up the censorship, especially if it makes those of us with unpopular opinions (whether aesthetic or political) feel less welcome. I think it goes without saying that this is all by design. Update 2.7, the most recent update to this site's rules, has already had the side effect of forcing feral and semi-anthro artists such as
TaniDaReal and 
Ruki to self-censor over accusations of their characters looking "too childish" due to their less humanoid character designs having smaller bodies. If we're already at that point, who's to say it'll end there?
One of the most overused analogies is that of the frog in boiling water. In most cases, it's just used by people attempting to rationalize a slippery slope fallacy, but in this case, it's actually applicable. For the longest time, we've been told that FurAffinity is meant to be a safe haven for furries to post whatever pieces of artwork they make as long as they're given the proper rating, but that's quickly changing. Now, we're dealing with a website that's run by people who act as judge, jury, and executioner, having the final say in whether or not the art you make even qualifies under their ever-changing rules, and those rules are getting stricter and stricter. How much longer are people going to tolerate these new rule changes no one outside of Twitter asked for before more people speak up about the obvious censorship on display? Ferals are a cornerstone in the furry fandom and have been around since the very beginning, and you'll quickly find that not a lot of artists will be left if ferals were to disappear from this site, so let this be my message to the people running FurAffinity: I don't care what your personal tastes are as long as you tolerate mine, and my preference for feral characters should not disqualify me from being a member of this community. Whether you like it or not, ferals have always been a part of the furry fandom, and no amount of rule changes in service of double standards will change that. We were here first, and you better believe we'll still be here when this all blows over.
For example, just last week over on Reddit, r/RealFurryHours, a subreddit created specifically for furry-related discussion regarding topics considered too controversial for the more mainstream furry subreddits, recently appointed new moderators who immediately did away with any feral-related discussion and threatened to ban any users who disagree with their new announcement about it being "pro-zoophilia" in a stickied post. This happened despite me and most of the other users there protesting against the change. Just like on Twitter, there's a certain group of people who believe themselves to be above everyone else and therefore entitled to push for rules that better suit their own personal tastes.
We're even starting to see it here on FurAffinity. The most obvious example of this would be the infamous "cub ban" that kickstarted one of the worst witch hunts in furry history, a problem that's still ongoing as of right now, but let's not pretend ferals aren't going to be next on the chopping block. Remember, we're talking about a website run by the same people who openly belittle victims of gatekeeping if it means earning brownie points on Twitter. If they've already gone after cub artists and succeeded, it shouldn't surprise you to know that feral artists are starting to experience the same unfair treatment.
The double standard isn't lost on me either. Why must a completely non-suggestive image like this be forced to have a "mature" rating slapped on it by this site's administration when humanoid anthros get a free pass to be as suggestive as they want, showing obvious bulges and cameltoes with "general" rating? Drawing the basic outline of a sheath on a feral character is no more revealing than drawing a humanoid anthro wearing tight clothing that reveals the outline of the anatomy underneath. Most of the time, it's simply done for the sake of realism, meaning that unless there's some sort of extra detail or suggestive emphasis put on that aspect of an image, there's no reason for it to be given a higher rating. What makes it even more frustrating is that this hypocritical rule change against sheaths being allowed in SFW images was only enacted after e621 forced the same change onto its userbase without any justification. Seriously, what's the logic here? "Drawing anthros wearing skimpy outfits is perfectly acceptable, but adding the slightest hint of extra mass between a male quadruped's hind legs? Unacceptable! Think of the children, you pervert! Next thing you know, those kids will start drawing pictures of... Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron! Oh the horror!" Get real. These new rules are just being made up to give the people in charge more excuses to unfairly crack down on feral artists because they've become a popular target.
The only reason this double standard exists is because, as I mentioned earlier, there's a growing movement on social media being pushed by people who think our fandom needs to be sanitized of any politically incorrect elements in order to appeal more to outsiders. This is especially applicable for those who seek to rebrand our community as a leftist movement. It's a well-known fact that furries with more conservative political leanings tend to have fursonas with more conservative designs, as they generally prefer detailed realism over abstract escapism. That's also the reason behind why so many stereotypes involving "sparkledogs" with "socialist teeth" exist, as leftist furries, especially those who spend most of their time chasing the same trends on social media, tend to look homogeneous as a result, and unsurprisingly, their ideal vision of the furry fandom, despite claiming to support diversity, is just as mundane. Every fursona must look like theirs, act like theirs, and endorse the same ideology as they do. If you don't fit in, you're looked down upon with disgust and lumped in with a variety of undesirable outsiders (namely pedophiles, zoophiles, fascists, and any other monsters of the week). Again, these people are the ones spearheading this pro-censorship trend, pushing it onto every major furry website, hence why these unwarranted rule changes keep happening with increasing intensity.
Since then, things have only gotten even more strict, and there's no sign of it stopping any time soon. FurAffinity is going all gas and no brakes on ramping up the censorship, especially if it makes those of us with unpopular opinions (whether aesthetic or political) feel less welcome. I think it goes without saying that this is all by design. Update 2.7, the most recent update to this site's rules, has already had the side effect of forcing feral and semi-anthro artists such as
TaniDaReal and 
Ruki to self-censor over accusations of their characters looking "too childish" due to their less humanoid character designs having smaller bodies. If we're already at that point, who's to say it'll end there?One of the most overused analogies is that of the frog in boiling water. In most cases, it's just used by people attempting to rationalize a slippery slope fallacy, but in this case, it's actually applicable. For the longest time, we've been told that FurAffinity is meant to be a safe haven for furries to post whatever pieces of artwork they make as long as they're given the proper rating, but that's quickly changing. Now, we're dealing with a website that's run by people who act as judge, jury, and executioner, having the final say in whether or not the art you make even qualifies under their ever-changing rules, and those rules are getting stricter and stricter. How much longer are people going to tolerate these new rule changes no one outside of Twitter asked for before more people speak up about the obvious censorship on display? Ferals are a cornerstone in the furry fandom and have been around since the very beginning, and you'll quickly find that not a lot of artists will be left if ferals were to disappear from this site, so let this be my message to the people running FurAffinity: I don't care what your personal tastes are as long as you tolerate mine, and my preference for feral characters should not disqualify me from being a member of this community. Whether you like it or not, ferals have always been a part of the furry fandom, and no amount of rule changes in service of double standards will change that. We were here first, and you better believe we'll still be here when this all blows over.
The thing is whenever I search feral art on sites with an upvote/downvote system they always get plenty more upvotes so either it's a vocal minority and/or people just being hypocrites because they think it makes them look good and moral or something. Like if you can't tell or don't care that drawings are not the same as real animals, feel free to blacklist feral art, but stop telling people they're some kind of evil because they like a genre of fantasy art. They could just as easily make the argument that something like inflation or vore art should be banned because they'd cause harm to the participants in real life, but nobody seems to have a problem with those. Go figure.
You don't like the stigmatization of feral art (I don't either, btw), but you are making a spurious connection between that sentiment and left-wing politics, simply because you dislike both, and thus, incorrectly assume they're related to each other, when they're not. Not everything is some leftist movement or position.
The conservative-leaning Burned Furs were what tried to sanitize the fandom to be more palatable to the general public. And they were extremely homophobic and bigoted to boot. (The only good thing that group did was go after people who were actual zoophiles and the like).
Leftists are usually ok with the fandom being harmlessly quirky.
Just doing a quick search on Twitter brings up a wide variety of tweets that range from the usual talking points about us being "backwards" to the all-too-familiar rants about how we're "not welcome here" as a call for gatekeeping. It's only if you look for a while longer that you eventually find some positivity, indicating a generally hostile attitude toward feral artists that's becoming increasingly popular.
Even on YouTube, I'm starting to see this negativity become more and more normalized. Notice how this video about an underperforming furry convention with some questionable people involved, for example, can't even go for more than 2½ minutes without the narrator deciding to voice his distaste for feral artwork in a video completely unrelated to that subject. Given the political context, remarks like that are, by design, intended to elicit reactions of disgust from the intended audience and further reinforce a negative attitude among other leftist furries toward anyone who draws feral artwork.
Keep in mind that I'm not trying to go out of my way to exclusively find examples from leftists in order to make a connection where there is none. It's just an observation I've made that leftist furries tend to be the ones who are the most vocal about their opinions, oftentimes looking for excuses to intersect them with their political associations whenever they can, whereas right-leaning furries tend to be more libertarian and prefer to promote freedom of expression over gatekeeping, meaning they're less likely to throw a fit over someone else drawing stuff they're not into. Maybe I'm biased, but that's just been my experience as someone who's dealt with hostility from both sides.
This applies to furries, especially shown when Vitai Slade was attacked by Fox News, and that is because this fandom is mostly LGBTQ+, and right-wing movements don't tend to be fond of such people. Fox News didn't bring it up for shock value, but to serve the bullshit narrative that queers are dangerous to children, so to them, furry = queer = pedophile. And even amongst right-wing furries, many of them are actually bigoted against the LGBTQ+ too, so they're not really the most tolerant people either. It won't result in them being accepted by the rest of the right-wing regardless, but still.
So claiming that cancelling groups or going after those they don't like is a left-wing thing is false. I will even go as far to say that it is much more common on the right than the left. Even on right-wing "free speech" sites, left-wing content is shadowbanned, removed, punished, etc. You're entire premise that it is a leftist mob that just ruins everything for an innocent right-wing is false.
And that is especially true when right-wingers started destroying cases of beer because they didn't like the fact that a single ad had a trans women in it, so they lost their shit and acted like children. So much for their love of free speech.
So yes, right-wing hypocrisy is obvious, and you would have to be living under a rock yourself to not notice that.
Again, nothing to do with leftist politics, which still stands. I would expect support and hatred for it as a whole to be more independent of politics than many other positions.
Anyway, just so we're clear on this, Vitai wasn't attacked by Fox News. He was attacked by leftist furries on Twitter after he appeared on Fox News. It's all about guilt by association, and you're clearly falling for it. Don't think for a moment that you'll be fine defending feral artwork while associating yourself with the very same people who jumped on the opportunity to use someone's TV appearance as an excuse to drag every feral artist including me through the mud. The purity spiral comes for all, and I guarantee it won't be long before there's a call-out thread with your name on it starting with "TW: feral" or something similar. That's what I'm trying to warn you about.
I am aware of the criticism Vitai received as well. So he was attacked by both, though from what I can gather, they went after him because it kind of was a dumb decision, and people voted overwhelmingly in his poll not to do it.
Either way, I'm well past caring about what labels people like you want to throw at me, so I'd appreciate it if you'd spare me your ranting about the right wing being the problem as if you're not actively playing into the very same politicization I'm talking about. You're just proving me right at this point.
lol.
Indeed ferals are likely the next on the ban list.
Wouldn't directly attach that to political directions though. Or more like, the extremes of both ends of the spectrum dislike quirky things.
But this fandom has been hijacked by people who are not real furries and simply want to forcibly impose their own worldview onto everyone. And most of these people who have hijacked the fandom were born after 2004. These people believe they are the center of morality and everyone else is simply wrong and must be cast out. And unfortunately to many people are bending the knee these people and are just allowing it to happen.