Quick status update on a few things. First, new design for the site! I’m slowly figuring out how to use this program, and it’s been very rewarding to see everything slowly become more aesthetically full.
Second, and the bigger update I wanted to give, is that fiction reviews are going to be slow for a while. I’m back in school, so non-fiction reading is taking up all of my time. However, I want to do more of these informal status updates to discuss what I’m reading. I’m currently working on some independent research work into queer history, which I’m very excited about! Regrettably, we live in an era where corny people are trying to erase the long, beautiful, and ecstatically queer story of my community. Whether that’s through deletion, omission, or eradication. But queerness can never be stopped, as it is a piece of the natural world. As long as life continues, so will the variables of queerness. So, because I am a very petty person, I figured I could write about historical questions, areas of research, and the books I’m reading. Hopefully, if you too are curious about queer history, this can act as a resource for your own studies. As a gay furry guy, this is how I show love to my fandom UwU. There is true power in carrying the history of your community. We must hold onto our memory and pass it down for future generations. That is Pride!
Also, small note, I want to do more reviews of other artforms such as music and film, so keep an eye out for that.
Contemporary Questions
What’s driving me to study queer history is the absolute confusion I feel trying to understand the contemporary backlash to progress we’ve seen in the 2020’s. So, I want to throw out a bunch of questions as a way to identify topics for framing research into the past.
In the infamous Project 2025, there is one particularly haunting paragraph that has stuck with me.
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.” (Pg. 5, link to full document here Project 2025 Exposed | GLAAD)
There are several key lines here that are worth analyzing:
First, the connection of pornography to “Transgender Ideology.” The queer community has long faced attacks under the guise of morality, obscenity, and deviancy. What we are seeing now is a modern iteration of the same moral panic that repeats time and time again. So, it is worth studying the history of these morality claims.
It is also deeply sinister to frame Trans identity to “Ideology,” which again ties into a legacy of denying that queerness legitimately exists, framing it as a deviant action, a thing people do.
Connecting Trans existence to obscenity and pornography is not a threat made in isolation, it is now an active political pursuit and we must recognize it as such. On September 11, Michigan representatives introduced the “Anticorruption of Public Morals Act,” which would ban all pornography in the state. Buried inside the document is the inclusion of content that,
“Is a depiction, description, or simulation, whether real, animated, digitally generated, written, or auditory, that includes a disconnection between biology and gender by an individual of 1 biological sex imitating, depicting, or representing himself or herself to be of the other biological sex by means of a combination of attire, cosmetology, or prosthetics, or as having a reproductive nature contrary to the individual’s biological sex.” (Michigan Lawmakers Are Attempting to Ban Porn Entirely)
Why is visible queerness tied to obscenity? How is queerness a threat to “public morals?” How have public morals historically been used to infringe the civil liberties of minority groups and to assert a dominant hegemonic lifestyle?
While I do want to make it clear that Trans existence is not pornographic and should be defended clearly as its own subject, pornography should also be defended and protected. Pornography and sex are often the frontline of politics. It is no surprise that in a culture that is rolling back protections and progress for women, queer people, and people of color, that we are also seeing increased rhetoric in discussions of public morality. Powerful figures fear that the traditional hierarchy is being destroyed, and sexual liberalism is tapping into their paranoia. Sexual freedom is a freedom of the body and of identity. Pornography is a human expression of that freedom. To quote the legendary John Waters, “Remember, pornographers have always been on our side. Brave, ready to fight for our rights. Smut is our friend.”
Second, “Misogynistic exploiters of women.” If you take a quick look at the right as it exists now, (and often their records), it doesn’t seem like they are the protectors of women. And yet, they do truly see themselves as protectors of womanhood, (see the common slogan, “What is a woman?”) At the same time we are seeing advancements in women’s and queer rights, we are also seeing a rightward cultural backlash that is fetishizing hyper-gendered bodies. It manifests through the manosphere, tradwives, “Mar-a-lago face,” natalism, birth-rates, and most critically in the policing of Trans bodies and gender performance. Historically, why do we see this gender binary manifest after progressive movements? What does queerness, feminism, and sexual liberalism challenge against traditional ideals of gender, and therefore power? How can we frame this modern backlash in terms of patriarchy, the hegemonic power of heterosexuality, and political equality?
Finally, the moral panic to “Think of the Children.” We’ve seen this claim for centuries against all minority groups. Queer people have been a clear target for it, and we can see this coming back with a vengeance, (not that it’s ever been dormant.)
What’s interesting about this current wave is that it comes at a time when younger generations are coming out with their queer identities more than ever before, with roughly 1 in 4 gen z adults identifying as queer. (Nearly 30% of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ, national survey finds). Within this context, can we read fears over book bans, queer content censorship, education, and the moral panic of “Social Contagion Theory” as older generations fearing their control over younger generations? On an anecdotal level, we can read many stories of parents joining TERF organizations and queerphobic groups after their child came out. Can we frame this backlash as a child’s civil rights issue? Especially with drastic targeting of medical care for minors? How much of this is individual parents fearing their control and ownership of their child.
On a legal level, we also see this fear of the new generations over social media censorship. This is where I’ll mention my current obsession, the “Interstate Obscenity Definition act” and the “SCREEN act.” In a press release for IODA, Mike Lee is quoted saying, “…hazy and unenforceable legal definitions have allowed extreme pornography to saturate American society and reach countless children…” (Lee Bill Establishes Obscenity Definition Across States – Mike Lee US Senator fo…) You will see this rhetoric pop up as more censorship bills and campaigns appear during this administration.
It’s also telling that later, the release states, “The new definition removes dependence on ever-changing and elusive public opinion, replacing ambiguity with practical standards to make obscenity identifiable.” Rather than letting a society dictate its own morality, this bill asks for the parenting of government to steer the morality of society. So how can we interpret contemporary censorship and obscenity bills knowing historical context? How does this contextualize to an era that calls Trans existence pornographic, queer education and information as inherently sexual, and fears the moral climate’s impact on children?
I’m going to wrap this up here by saying that it is critical that we in the furry community and the queer community need to be politically knowledgeable and engaged in this contemporary climate. I have been deeply inspired by the pressure campaigns against payment processor companies as they exploit their economic power to censor adult content, (with a very scattershot approach to queer content, even sfw queer content.) However, payment processors are not the only opposition to watch. We need to pay attention to legislature as it grows both federally and statewide. We need to be engaged with local politics as morality organizations such as Collective Shout, Utah Parents United, and other groups use grassroots pressure campaigns to effect censorship. We need to be conscious of ourselves as part of a community and maintain our pride in a hostile era.
I love this fandom dearly. A major part of my research is to understand how queer communities build an “underground” for themselves to express alternative forms of identity, to build an independent economy of goods and services, and create communal knowledge to advocate for social equality and civil rights. The beautiful thing about the furry fandom and queerness is how liberating it is for identity. There is a freedom to explore sexual desires in a far more consent focused and knowledgeable climate than the heterosexual hegemonic culture. There is freedom in being cringe without the internal eye cutting you down. It is unabashedly queer, for us and by us. Now, we are seeing a backlash that wants to hide, criminalize, censor, and eradicate any public manifestation of sexuality and gender that it cannot control. So, it is worth looking to history to understand how backlashes fear alternative communities, and how those communities maintain their collective identities and push back. Our pride challenges their power.
Love to you all. Keep furry weird and take care.
-Ash L.
