We Are All Queer Now Redux

Recently I got  into a bit of  a scuffle with Patch o Furr at Dog Patch press   over what I perceived  was an attempt to  coopt  furry fandom into  Bay Area LGBT culture by  declaring  SF as the furry Mecca . Usually Patch does a good job bring up stories, but he has at times have San Francisco  queer culture  myopic view which come across as declaring a generalization  of  furry fandom, in my opinion. .   I am sorry Patch,  words means things. When we look a the use of  idiom of Mecca  it can be a  palace of importance  that attracts   a lot of people  or a center  of importance people look to i.e. Silicon Valley as a Mecca of the tech world. I confess   I may be reading too much to Patch’s ranting of  SF being the fury mecca . Still I objected to it  and here was his reply in another column.

“This story is dedicated to furry friend Acton, a “conservative activist” and Hello Kitty collector who gets very upset to see these events welcomed by the community. He insists that he is “100% heterosexual”, and wants you to stop making him think about a diesel driving daddy bear cuddling up to read Hello Kitty bedtime stories with him. Express yourself, hun! This dedication is brought to you by the color pink, and the word Apophasis.  

A real fine piece of  Apophasis.  First of all, there   many male  heterosexuals and  LGBT who are  Hello Kitty fans, but sexual  orientation  does  not matter.   Oh yes  I know , according to  Christine  R. Yano in her book, Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek across the Pacific, Hello Kitty  is the unofficial   mascot of gay community.   Still many male fan are Heterosexual and Homosexual.  But loving Hello Kitty does not make one  Gay.

I am  100%  Heterosexual and not  a new manifestation of  Crusader Cat or a meber of Westboro “Baptist” (I dare not call them a church) . I have not  been involved  in conservative causes  since 2012 when I left both  conservatism and  the Republican party over how conservatives  abandoned limited government. These day I consider myself a libertarian.

Being around  LGBT  in the furry fandom made me realized  there is no monolithic  idea of LGBT culture as some activist  tries to make  it.  A Gay man in the East Cost or Midwest  may object the idea of the Bay Area  the Mecca  of  gay culture.  In the same way  many furs  would not consider the bay Area queer culture   as a monolithic  mecca  of Furry Fandom.  Another issue is how some will think by participating.  From another post I made (1.):

In a comments on Opinion: Misconceptions about the origins of furry fandom Calbel summed up the problem :

“> Are you implying that someone pulling a stunt like this is somehow my fault?

I’m not implying anything; I’m stating the obvious. Putting ads for the convention in a gay lifestyle magazine will have a natural tendency to attract people who think the convention is about being gay. “

The same could be said about Gay Pride if  furry is not  put in context we are a  fandom the contains LGBT elements but not an LGBT fandom.

Another problem is unnecessary  burden  many of us who are Christian Furries and growing number of pre-adolescent to young teen furs who like the fandom for fursuits and cute art but not interested in the sexuality. Some have suffered undue hardship by ill-informed parents when the parents discover their child furry interest and then want to whisk their kid into conversion therapy  or  want to exercise the gay demon form their kids because  the ill-inform parents linking  furry fandom to the gay culture.

Yes the furry have  LGBT element in it because  we are an open fandom, but not a license  to coopt  furry as part of LGBT / queer culture.

  1. http://www.furry.asinglelion.com/?p=1041

Similar problem I had

http://adjectivespecies.com/2013/10/14/furry-as-a-queer-identity/

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