Burned Furs

From WikiFur, the furry encyclopedia.

This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to WikiFur style and standards.
For specifics, check this article's edit history and talk page.

This article does not cite its references or sources.
You can help WikiFur by adding appropriate ones or discussing on the talk page.

Burned Furs is the name of a movement to counter perversion within the furry fandom which was active from 1998 to 2001. In November of 2005, a new group was created using the same name and logo as the original.

1 Founding and History
- 1.1 Burned Fur Beliefs
- 1.2 Opposition Groups
2 Points of Discussion
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Founding and History

The Burned Furs were founded in 1998 by Squee Rat and Eric Blumrich. The group was composed of, in the words of Squee, "furs who have spoken up against fandom perversion and been 'burned at the stake' for it."

The Burned Fur movement was created because, according to their Mission Statement, "Anthropomorphics fandom is being overrun by sexually dysfunctional, socially stunted and creatively bankrupt hacks and pervs." Burned Fur, as a movement, did not produce an agenda or operating guidelines beyond its Manifesto and, to a lesser extent, Squee's "A Modest Proposal".

[edit] Burned Fur Beliefs

Many disputes over the exact nature of Burned Fur beliefs arose; the group was accused of wanting to impose some sort of anti-sexual vision on the rest of the fandom. Certain members of the group were intolerant of gays, Christian Furs, furry lifestylers, obscure fetishes, and erotic artwork - but, more generally, the Burned Furs were intolerant of those people who walked up to television cameras and press microphones to declare that the furry fandom essentially revolved around their own personal kinks.

While Burned Fur claimed that none of this was a problem if kept properly as a private matter, in private areas and within the law, they frequently targeted furry fans whose only "crime" was to criticize the in-your-face tactics Burned Fur seemed to pride itself on. Many critics considered Burned Fur a hate group due to the harsh tone of the Manifesto, physical threats made against other furry fans, and offensive t-shirts targeting furry lifestylers. It is important to note most of Burned Fur's critics did not have a problem with public decorum, but simply wanted the fandom's problems to be taken up discreetly with people in positions to do something about them rather than broadcast publicly where they could be, and are to this day, permanently archived. Ironically, while claiming they wanted to protect the fandom's reputation, Burned Fur managed to garner its own bad press with articles in the Greenwich Village Gazette, Philadelphia Weekly, and a write-up in Lore Sjöberg's Brunching Shuttlecocks.

Burned furs web-ring logo

It was in this atmosphere of mutual intolerance that the debate over the furry fandom's public image was waged, and subsequently buried under rampant acts of (sometimes mutual) demonization.

Many of these disputes occurred on USENET in the newsgroups alt.fan.furry and alt.lifestyle.furry.

[edit] Opposition Groups

The Burned Furs were opposed by a group formed specifically for the purpose called the Freezing Furs who accused the Burned Furs of being a hate group. Third and fourth groups, Nonaligned Furs and Furry Peace were formed on the basis of inclusion and non-alignment in the factional conflicts which resulted from the formation of the Burned Furs.

By about 2001, the Burned Furs had faded into history, many of them having left furry fandom altogether, with the effect that the countergroups formed to oppose them became defunct by default.

[edit] Points of Discussion

This topic contains controversial issues, some of which have reached a consensus for approach and neutrality, and some of which may be disputed. Please read the talk page discussion before making substantial changes.

By the time Burned Fur was founded, individual convention-goers were already boycotting CF due to lewd behavior that the convention's organizers insisted on turning a blind eye to. ConFurence was finally turned over to a group dedicated to cleaning up the convention's image in 1999, but because the new Chairman was a Burned Fur, many of the people who felt they had been targeted by Burned Fur refused to attend. In his own words, "The main problem wasn't necessarily that there was too much sex in fandom... but rather that from the outside, that was *all* people could see. ^{[citation needed]}"

Although former attendees were beginning to return to CF due specifically to the change in management ^{[citation needed]}, attendance levels continued to decline until ConFurence officially closed its doors on April 27, 2003.

Ironically enough, once abandoned, the original "Burned Furs" website was picked up by a pornography merchandiser. Some claim it was because the domain contained the name and keyword "furry", but there has never been any evidence of this. The more likely explanation is it was picked up because it is common practice for pornographers to purchase expired domains regardless of content.