Next month, AMC+ is premiering a new series about furries that tracked down sexual abusers hiding within the furry fandom.
You can watch the trailer for this below. And I do recommend watching the trailer before reading the rest of this blog post.
Done?
Okay.
Bad Takes
Almost immediately as soon as this was posted online, Twitter does what Twitter does and bad takes like this began to circulate.
(Screenshots of said tweet even percolated into other platforms, which is ultimately where I saw it.)
(Archive / Alternative)
I’ve seen two reactions to this tweet, from reasonable people:
- No, it won’t. The actual crimes themselves caused irreparable harm to our community, but the best thing for a community to do when there’s a problem is to take out the fucking trash. And we did. And that documentary is all about us doing exactly that. It’s a good thing to talk about this.
- Regardless of the facts, because of the ongoing misinformation campaigns (litterbox hoaxes that amount to nothing more than thinly-veiled queerphobia, bills being proposed to solve the virtually nonexistent problem of furries in public school, etc.), this will add fuel to the ragebaiting headlines and outright lies about the furry fandom.
Not to mince words, reaction number 2 is a valid fucking concern, and I have no rebuttal to offer. Only time will tell how it plays out.
But unreasonable people aren’t posting either of those two reactions online. Instead, they’re insisting that we should all be shutting up.
The replies to that tweet are full of unreasonable people.
(Archive / Alternative)
And, predictably, the quote tweets were similarly misguided:
(Archive / Alternative)
I could include several more examples of bad takes, but I think we have enough of them to make my point.
Why Are We Even Talking About Bad Takes On Social Media?
While I doubt these twits would agree with each other in a social media discussion, it’s pretty easy to see a common narrative structure that underlies all of their arguments.
The argument implied by their position goes like this:
- Aesthetics, optics, and purity are held higher than all else.
- Talking about bad or shameful things is to be discouraged.
- If you talk to the media about the bad things, or tolerate something that isn’t bad but a moron might superficially get confused and think it bad, then you deserve social consequences.
Naturally, I disagree with all of these points.
- Good actions are more important than good optics. Since aesthetics are largely subjective, aesthetic similarities are not evidence of equivalence. Sexuality isn’t inherently evil (but consent is absolutely necessary).
- Talking about bad or shameful things is essential to having a healthy community.
- If I talk to the media recklessly, you do not deserve the collateral damage caused by my recklessness. And vice versa.
But I’m not here to offer mere disagreement.
The worldviews that follow the flawed structure I outlined above have observable downsides to the communities that perpetuate them.
For starters, perpetuating negative peace (sweeping bad actors under the rug instead of dealing with them transparently) is how you get missing stairs.
Refusing to openly act against (let alone discuss) bad actors is what gives abusers cover to hide and operate within our community.
I’ve said it before, more eloquently, but it didn’t stick. So here’s a bullet point list intead:
- The darkest period in the furry fandom’s history wasn’t the zoosadist abuse coming to light.
- The revelation was the end of the dark period.
- The dark period was all the time that the abuse was happening, and the people who knew did nothing to stop it, and the rest of us didn’t know about it.
People who cannot digest this simple concept have no business in the discussion. They’re simply not qualified to be taken seriously.
Quick aside:
One common thread from the more puritanical arguments made by younger furries is they seem to be coming from a place of, “If my parents find out about [bad thing], I won’t be allowed to participate in [group].”
That is the incentive structure that most reliably explains their talking points and decisionmaking, anyway.
There may be more going on than that, but they don’t explain their positions very well.
To wrap up this section, the existence of bad takes was always a certainty. In that regard, the ones I shared in this blog post aren’t really novel. But understanding the assumptions and the framework that the arguments arise from is useful.
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
As valuable as talking about the bad is, actually fucking doing something about it is way more impactful.
Sometimes, that means identifying and ousting abusers from your community.
Sometimes, that just means walking away from a discussion group when you raise concerns about someone defending sexual abuse and they trivialize your concern as mere “drama”.
Ultimately, what you get out of any social group will be a function of what you put into it. (There is a loss function somewhere in the mix too, unfortunately, but that’s life.)
A Note From Queer History
The gay rights movement, until the mid 1990s, failed to oust the influence of NAMBLA and PIE that advocated for what most people today would simply call “pedophilia”. These organizations had hoped to ride on the coattails of an increasingly popular rights movement to provide legal protection for their reprehensible activities.
Most discussions of queer history seem to gloss over this gratuitous error, which is a shame because some bad actors want to try this tactic again.
Takeaways
You cannot just sweep shit under the rug and expect problems to not fester.
You can have positive fandom representation without covering up the bad shit that’s happened in the fandom.
You can oust bad actors without repressing healthy expressions of sexuality between consenting adults. (Yes, that includes weird expressions of sexuality that aren’t harmful.)
Queer liberation without sex-positivity is self-defeating. (Happy Pride Month, I guess?)
Finally, I want to be clear that I haven’t watched the series in question–only the trailer and some commentary in discussion groups.
For all I know, the trailer is misleading and the actual substance is hot garbage doused in weapons grade cringe. I don’t think that’s the case, but we’ll all have to wait and see before we form a judgment about the actual merits (or demerits) of the series.
Header art: AJ
Nimona (