Silicon Valley Pride invites furs – Fangcon makes history with Pride parade sponsorship.

by Patch O'Furr

“Furry Pride” is redundant when you’re a talking animal.  There’s no way you can’t strut your stuff, turn heads and light up a crowd with smiles.  But when furries AT Pride join other groups with a bigger mission, it puts the magic where it most belongs – in a fabulous show – and makes a good cause better.

Furries invited for August 30, 2015:

Tip from Neonbunny, builder of influential events like Frolic:

“Silicon Valley Pride has reached out to me as they would love to have fursuiters at the pride festival, August 30th.  They will have a changing tent available, and can offer free admission for suiters that RSVP in advance.

The other person who they reached out to, who’s coordinating things right now, is Lani B.  She’s pretty active in the South Bay cosplay scene, and they’ve reached out to her to get cosplayers to go as well. (Anime/comic type costuming stuff).  Her email is dynamiccosplaycouple@gmail.com and she’s on facebook here.

This is the link for the pride event, and Lani has also created a facebook page to get cosplayers motivated to go (and hopefully fursuiters as well.) If anyone is interested in coordinating fursuiters for this, please get in touch!” – NeonBunny

The San Francisco Pride parade may be the premiere event for LGBT culture.  It’s popular among the SF Bay Area Furries, so in 2015, their show-stealing presence in front of a million viewers made a standout event for the whole furry subculture. But it was far from the only one.  (Expect a chat soon with Uncle Kage, about Anthrocon’s awesome accomplishments in 2015.)  In fact, theirs wasn’t even the only Furry statement at Pride events around the world.  Competition came from an unexpected place – Knoxville, Tennessee.

San Francisco Pride, gay marriage, and historic happenings in Furry Mecca.

by Patch O'Furr

Billet Sheltie – pic by Eric Campbell.

Gay marriage just became legal across the USA.  Even if you have no plan to get one, it’s a big deal.  People of a few generations ago thought we’d have flying cars before this happened.  The writer of “Furry Force” says:

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/614456789459865601

In San Francisco, the news hit right at “gay christmas”.  The city was getting ready for Pride, “the largest gathering of LGBT people and allies in the nation.”

It was already going to be one whopper of a party. But with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry fresh off the presses, Sunday’s Pride Parade in San Francisco became a rainbow-colored, joyous celebration for the ages.

The whole country was involved. The Chief of Police called it “the largest Pride celebration ever.”  Being mainstream was a big topic. On a subcultural level, the excitement spread among “the world’s greatest concentration of furries per square mile.” Furries were in the parade in 2005, returning in 2014 and 2015.

Pic by Vincent

Furry fandom: all humans welcome

by Patch O'Furr

Edit: a followup story is here – Why are “nerdy” groups male-populated?  Revisiting a debate full of dogma. 

“Sexism by numbers” is a faulty premise- let’s respect voluntary association

It’s not controversial to say that aliens aren’t among us. It takes bolder attitude to doubt some other faiths in public. But nobody should be afraid to say the emperor has no clothes. This is for furries- but also any nerd fandom, and anyone whose beliefs are developed enough to handle skeptical debates. Let’s start with a pervasive belief…

In furry fandom, men exclude women because there are more of them. There’s more men because they exclude women.

That’s a tautology:  self-reinforcing logic that’s built so there’s no way to challenge it. Circular arguments and religious articles of faith work that way.  It’s a type of fundamentalism- like creationism.

That’s not a straw man. These fundamentalists see a group of largely male members, and make a push-button reaction: there must be something wrong.  Penis = BAD!  With scowls, pointy fingers, and dutiful outrage, they go hunting for evidence to prop up a pre-fab belief that bad behavior shapes the membership.  Counting up a raw demographic number is the basic evidence to accuse this community of “inherent sexism”.  The number is sandwiched with bias-confirming anecdotes, and righteous demands to correct it.  Why aren’t we more inclusive? We need less men!

It’s a faulty premise. A raw number doesn’t show one motivation to cause it, like mean exclusion. What about associations formed by friendly mutual interest? That includes hobbies and open-door clubs.

A gay bar is an open-door club.  You can expect the clientele not to have the same proportions as society at large.  It invites certain interest, but it’s self-selecting.  They don’t screen between gays and straights at the door. (Could that even be possible, unless they invent a literal Gaydar?) Actually, there’s a general sentiment that gay bars are more friendly than other clubs, and they welcome allies of all kinds. That’s what draws many straight people to my local gay bar for our monthly furry dance night. You CAN have a less balanced, more inclusive community.

Exclusion is human. It can happen anywhere.  But despite flaws that are a natural part of society, like crime or evil, it’s easy to contend that furries do it MUCH LESS than elsewhere.

Controverisal SF rapper plans nightmarish gay goth animal S&M music video

by Patch O'Furr

Flayrah news, 9/28/12

MC Crumbsnatcher‘s recently released first music video is set to be followed by a second video shoot on October 15, timed to benefit from Halloween season. The video is themed “S&M gay bar in hell”, and is meant to cross over with leather/animal costuming popular among a subset of the San Francisco furry community. It will feature a story about witches who abduct Crumbsnatcher’s love interest, a penguin.

A series of videos are set to follow, including a shoot in Las Vegas for a wedding scene of a unique nature.

San Francisco rapper MC Crumbsnatcher’s furry music video

by Patch O'Furr

Flayrah news, 9/2/12

As a club-goer most likely to get down to goth/industrial/EBM, I’m not qualified to say much about hip hop/rap. However, I know that MC Crumbsnatcher is a secret goth too, and that’s my fursuited ass he’s humping at 4:00 in the video, so let’s do this.

The San Francisco Bay area hosts many subculture scenes. They bring people together who often stay separate in less busy places. MC Crumbsnatcher’s ties might be tagged as spoken word/slam poetry, indie rap, electro, Nerdcore and Homocore. His Facebook page also lists Poo Joke Teller, ruiner of childhoods, and being a trained psychic. Let’s add Furry to the list.

Content warning: Video contains super dirty words and sexy dancing.