Con aftermath

[altivo]

Dropped the car off again this morning to have the windshield washer pump replaced (they couldn't get the part in time last week) and then swung by the library to pick up my paycheck and return a book. I have today as vacation, and part-time colleague Carolyn was at the desk. She's covering for my hours today, in part. She greeted me with "I know where you were."

Sure enough, she did. She had read about the con in a newspaper, I guess. My fursuit badge was still in my pocket and I showed it to her. She was quite affirming actually, and said she thought it sounded like a lot of fun.

So... Obviously it isn't always as necessary to hide furriness as we seem to think. Intelligent people are not ready to believe the drek and nonsense that comes out of tabloid journalism like MTV and CSI. They see us for what we are, certainly harmless and unthreatening, and at worst eccentric.

As someone (I forget who, sorry) pointed out at innerwolf's panel on Saturday morning, if you went to a Shriner's convention for a weekend, no one would make a pariah of you for it, yet the Shriner's are notoriously eccentric in some of what they do and certainly can be just as strange as anything furry. So there it is.

Off to have lunch and see Harry Potter movie 4 with my mate, since he took care of the farm by himself all weekend. NaNoWriMo and the podcast will have to wait a bit longer.

Comments

[ruwhei.livejournal.com]

Eccentricity is ok. Doing weird things is ok and fun.

FurCons have in the past encouraged very questionable behavior - in some cases illegal. The police investigated prostitition (the 'charity' auction) when Confurence was in Buena Park, and the recent incidents with rather rampant illegal drug use at AC are examples of that. The overt sexuality of many cons not only make many people uncomfortable, but the increased desire of some furries to "Freak out the Mundanes" make those mundanes think Cons are more dangerous than they really are.

Viewing the con as a "Mascot and animated character convention" is prefectly acceptable to most of the population. But viewing it as an "alternative sexuality convention" or a convention where people engage in Fursuit piling, do drugs, and walk around in diapers and insist on infantalism reduces the public's acceptance of the fandom.

I'm not trying to bash in your obviously good times at a moderate sized con. I'm trying to comment on what makes cons acceptable to the general populace so that Furryfans are accepted as good members of society, and not some psychotic fringe group interested in tearing down the social order. When people view furries as the latter, you'll see much less acceptance.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. Sometimes you break out in the strongest kind of conservatism.

A police investigation doesn't impress me. I've seen it used far too often as a harrassment tactic. This is particularly true of charity auctions and so-called slave auctions. The charges, if any are made, never stick.

Drug use? Probably. Though I doubt very much that there was any more of that than if the hotel were full of business people. The drugs of choice may have been different. Drinking? Yes, probably to excess in either case. No, I don't approve of either, but I don't believe the furries are any different in that regard.

As for sex, at least in public view, no. Now I realize that you probably view me as Caly does, as being so innocent that I wouldn't recognize it, but no. It was quite well-behaved in that respect. And whatever went on in people's rooms that I don't know about, I also don't care about, and neither should you or anyone else.

Baby fur stuff and other peculiarities of the sort do seem awfully strange to me, and frankly, I don't think they are so much furry as they are something that furry allows to be more visible. No doubt those things were present but I didn't see them. Nor did I see much effort on the part of furs to "freak out" the mundanes. The local furmeet group has had a lot of infighting about that in the last year, and I think the behavior was already well subdued at least among locals.

MFF also seems to have a high content ratio for its size. The number and quality of panels seems better to me than what I've seen on the schedules of other cons.

As for Carolyn, she clearly knew exactly what furry fandom was. I don't know where she heard or read about it, but her notions were neither the "mascot and art" convention nor the exaggerated and lurid CSI viewpoint. She is a very bright and unconventional woman herself, with a law degree but disillusioned with the practice of law and a rather jaundiced view of social and political conservatives.

[hgryphon.livejournal.com]

"Intelligent people are not ready to believe the drek and nonsense that comes out of tabloid journalism like MTV and CSI."

Alternately, Intelligent people don't WATCH MTV and CSI...

Hmm, I could use some HP4... Too bad I don't have a car anymore to go see it...

[pioneer11.livejournal.com]

For a few years I got heavily into Football. Of course I've
also been heavily into drinking so Football came as nothing
new. Anyways, I'd go to games and sit in the cheap seats
in a parka and gloves and yell and scream but...there was
always, always a group that would strip down and
be painted in team colors and getting "I forgot how to
speak English" drunk. Not just kids, I could understand
that having been wild and 18 and a soldier once. But this
was an all ages, all sizes, all gender thing. @.@

Furry's gots nuttin on that.

nuthin

*facepaws but laughs*

Glad you had fun! ^_^

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Football and that exact phenomenon was also mentioned and of course you're right. I never could "get" football. It's like chocolate. OK, I understand what it is, but the frenzy it excites in some people is simply beyond my comprehension.

I'm sure furry is exactly like that for a lot of other people, just as many don't "get" science fiction or can't deal with fantasy literature. Their reality just doesn't allow for that sort of imagination.

But I sometimes hear young furs talk about being furry as if it were a thing they have to hide from their family for fear of being disinherited, evicted, or worse. Now that I have trouble understanding. It carries not even the weight of being gay or converting to some exotic religion. Why would a family kick you out for being a furry? Yet the fear is tangible in some cases, so thick you could cut it in blocks and build an igloo to hide in.

[pioneer11.livejournal.com]

Yeah, thats the problem. I think it /might/ be a generational
thing. For me SF was a fun thing, outside of the regular work-a-day
world, as is should have been. Furry much the same. Not something I'm
ashamed of because I don't attach religiosity or sexuality to it, its
an escape valve on wondering if my union has the muscle to fight
of things like the recent GM cuts or if I'll have to /really/ try
and flack my fiction and dance for my kids dinner. If its fun,
with heart and soul in it, thats cool, but if your getting
naked in the freakin' endzone *facepaws* all perspective
is lost.