Crush...Yiff...Destroy!

m_estrugo · Coadjutor Joined: 13 Nov 2003 Posts: 160

I've been looking for this message thread for years. I thought it was originally from 1996-97, but it was from 1999.

The original message that started this thread reads like this:

All righty,
I was really hoping to mail out PERSONAL e-mails to artists tonight, instead of taking this to Alt.FLAME.furry, but as someone already took liberty to post it (And why not...it's their free will)...I will post a general statement here.

First off, I would appreciate it if people do NOT take the following statements and warp, mis-quote, or flame them.
The following statements are mostly for artists (and dealers) anyways.

As has been rumored, CF10 has had some regulations imposed on it in the last minute. This being due to a nasty e-mail letter to the hotel claiming the Con is a bunch of "pornographers, " and supplying the hotel with a few choice sites off of Furnation. The hotel responded by panicking and looking closer into their precious (:::Rolls eyes:::) liquor license, and finds that no nudity is allowed on grounds...
(Whoever sent the e-mail KNEW what they were doing, they timed it PERFECTLY to make us all panic)

Anyways, to make a long story short, the Art Show will be G through PG-13. Basically, to make it easily understandable, whatever Yerf allows is basically what we can allow. There will be no NC-17 section. All this has been effective as of Saturday, March 27th. I would have gotten news to folks sooner, except I was unable to make last night's meeting, and had to speak with everyone today.

RULES FOR THE CF10 ART SHOW
(As directed by the hotel as of 3/28/99)

The CF10 Art Show is now officially G-PG13 rated. This will be effective for this Con, April 1-4, 1999 only.

The following rules are effective for the art show:

1) NO overtly sexual acts of any kind are to be displayed. This includes, but is not limited to: insertion, copulation, masturbation, anal, oral, or
anything else you can think of that can be done sexually.

2) NO genitalia showing. This includes penii, either flacid or erect, vaginas,
anus, or female areola/nipples.

3) Female breasts are OK, as long as they are nipple-less, or covered in fuzzy fur. The same sort of rule as on Yerf.

4) Sexy poses are OK, as long as ALL genitalia are covered. Nipples must be covered with clothing (or fur) , but the clothing can be shadowed to hint that there are nipple there...no problem.

5) Deep kissing.....we'll have to see the picture and censor it at our
discretion.

6) NO NO NO pedophilia, beastiality or snuff. I guess that's a given with rule #1.

We will offer "NO" NC-17 section this year. (This is OBVIOUSLY NOT at our
choice!!!)

I will make every attempt to personally e-mail artists an extended list of these rules, along with a few tips. Also, a list of guidelines will be available at the art show itself.

Other furry Cons have had these same rules, and survived...the no spooge policy is NOT what we are griping about, but rather the timing and the sneakiness of what happened. Some people try to spoil it for everyone.

Questions and comments can be e-mailed directly to me at XianJaguar@AOL.com

The rest of the thread, including Nexxus' menaces of legal actions for slander, messages by Random and many other memorable messages are available at http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&th=eb9e7d587fe3eb3e&rnum=10.

It's been 5 years and a few days since that message hit AFF. Confurence is gone, and after this "event" furry conventions started to regulate their "adult" contents more tightly. But I never knew who sent that mail to the manager of the hotel. Were the Burned Furs, active and on their heydays, responsible for this? Was it the idea of a single person? 5 years after what some claimed to be the worst attack to their freedom on the fandom's history, I'm still missing a lot of details.
Does somebody know anything else about this?

Computolio · Coadjutor Joined: 01 Jun 2003 Posts: 349

I declare that AFF thread required reading. It's an example of furry baiting of the first order. Hell, perhaps it's me, but it feels like furries panicked more easily back in the pre - Portal Of Evil days.

Burned Fur had little to no involvement; they did not send that e-mail. If they did do it, one of the former members would have spoken about it already.

Mitch · Coadjutor Joined: 01 Jun 2003 Posts: 290

Now that reminds me of something similar...

From this FurCentral post in May '02:

I was also involved with the group that stirred trouble for a couple cons by contacting the hotels they were going to be hosted at and providing them with links with photos from cons showing just what some furries choose to do in hotel lobbies. Before you decide to hunt me down, however, we presented them with a cross section. We told them of the spooge art and the dry humping and such, BUT, we did state that the spoogemongers did not constitute the entire con, but that the hotel may wish to look into the issue further and decide for themselves. I am, in small part, partly responsible for one hotel deciding to cancel its agreement to host one of the west coast cons, and another deciding that all images with nudity must at least have post-it notes covering genitalia and such.

And this Usenet post from July '01:

Today, I got a call from the Holiday Inn on the Bay... (the location for CritterConDiego next week) and it's on speakerphone with the banquet
manager and the sales manager, and another manager all at once.

<...my spider-sense starts tingling. As soon as I hear I'm on speakerphone, I know what this is going to be about.>

They start the call with "We have to ask you something about your event... we got this anonymous phone call."

Fully on guard, I immediately chimed in "Let me guess... someone thinks
that we're some sort of group of animal perverts or something, right?".

ZenZhu · Coadjutor Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 475

I knew the person who went by the handle of RazberryToez at the time of the incident through FurryMUCK. They had a different handle then, though. I remember actually sitting around while they were discussing some of these things.

It's interesting to see the furries cry slander. Basically, what RT and these other people did was contact the hotels and provide them with few links with the idea that the hotels might be less "aware" of some of the con-floor hijinks than folks who were more on the inside. I remember one person.... I won't divulge her handle.... wasn't really trying to encourage anti-furry efforts, but trying for a little "con reform" out of concern for what non-furry folks and, especially, kids may see. If memory serves me correctly (I always think of Chairman Kaga when I say that), they provided a few links to stuff like Doug Winger's work and Tim O'Rourke's page (that's T.O.R.... the guy who does all of the humping deer, right?), but also links to Yerf and the more clean art. The idea was obviously to throw a wrench in the works... but not so much to demand that the hotels cancel the con or anything. The idea was to let hotel staff know that cons were pretty okay for the most part, but that stuff like the spooge art and occasional fursuiter with no sense of public discretion did happen from time to time.

Obviously, it was furry baiting, but the idea was to let the hotels decide for themselves what they were comfortable with. Not so much "Furries suck! Cancel the con!" but more like:

"You see, Little Billy Hilton, furries aren't all bad.. but there are some real fruit loops that you might not want to deal with."

"Thanks Shipwreck, now I know!"

"And knowing is half the battle."

If I remember, the shit hit the fan so soon after they fired off their correspondence that they weren't sure if they had been the agents of change, or if someone else had beat them to the punch.

Khroan · Qualificator Joined: 29 Dec 2003 Posts: 37

THIS IS A GRAVE INJUSTICE!! HOW DARE THE HOTEL FURSECUTE THEM!!

Now what'll they masturbate to? :(