"CisScummery is at a near intolerable level"

[an hoopoe]

On Weasyl, one Rampack, presuming to speak for a whole swath of people, posted a journal (with the mandatory "trigger warning"):

https://www.weasyl.com/journal/61156/rant-stop-using-herm-shemale-cuntboy-for-your-porn

the gist of which is that the terms herm/hermaphrodite, shemale and cuntboy are offensive and may not be used not be used to describe furry porn (cuntboy refers to a male character with a vagina). And that the word herm is used to "stigmatize, oppress and erase intersex people" and that the word belongs to intersex people and only they, of all the people in the world, may use it.

Rampack also declared that fantasy art doesn't exist in a vacuum and shouldn't be immune from being "held accountable for it's problematic tendencies" (this logic could also be used to attack furry porn in general because it encourages bestiality, right?). Terms like like "problematic tendencies" strike me as being so vague and all embracing as to justify censorship of anything at all. Another curious part, I thought, was this:

People who kill trans women call us "shemales" and "trannies" I doubt you want to be like them. Your art doesn't exist in a vacuum! It is informed and exists in the real world!!

Equating people who use offensive words to murderers.

In the comments on that journal an artist said she wished to stop using terms like herm and cuntboy for her art and asked the journal author what she should use instead. Rampack said that she should use the words 'trans woman' and 'trans man', however the artist points out:

'since drawing furry porn is a business for me, i try to tag my images with things that are going to have high search value. i feel like if someone is searching for "trans woman" or "mtf", they are seeking a realistic representation of that bodytype. where as searching for "herm", folks are seeking out a very specific, over indulgent, representation'
^
https://www.weasyl.com/journal/61156/rant-stop-using-herm-shemale-cuntboy-for-your-porn#cid146752

'i don't want to imply that real transwomen are supposed to look like the "herms" that furries have grown accustomed to. seems like the "furry-herm" is an entirely separate creature from tanswomen. '
^
https://www.weasyl.com/journal/61156/rant-stop-using-herm-shemale-cuntboy-for-your-porn#cid146754

Rampack ultimately admited there that she couldn't think of an acceptable term. However, Rampack later settled on a Japanese word: "Futa" which is Japanese for... hermaphrodite.

In other comments, someone called Zinn ranted about cis scum and said that people who disagree with Rampack et al should commit suicide:

[...] The levels of CisScummery is at a near intolerable level. "Oh no, Herm is all about body parts, it's Fox Chix with Dix, don't make this a trans thing!" Plz dive into the ocean, and don't come back up for air [...]

^
https://www.weasyl.com/journal/61156/rant-stop-using-herm-shemale-cuntboy-for-your-porn#cid146847

She also ranted about cutting someones face up because they disagreed with her:

Changing your face with my scalpel would make me far more happy than if I didn't rearrange it with surgical tools [...]

^
https://www.weasyl.com/journal/61156/rant-stop-using-herm-shemale-cuntboy-for-your-porn#cid146889

What lovely people! Rampack even thanked Zinn for this vile and aggressive behaviour:

https://www.weasyl.com/journal/61156/rant-stop-using-herm-shemale-cuntboy-for-your-porn#cid146847

Despite that, some of those supportive of Rampack tried to paint her as a victim, for example:

i'm sorry that people are giving you shit for saying what should to any caring person be literally common sense - "avoid using words that hurt people if you don't want to hurt people". i'm really glad you're talking about this. thanks for the post.

This sort of aggressive policing of other peoples words produces odd neologisms such as "Womb-havers" and reduces people to begging for approval:

I tend to be lazy and just go "This is a bloke. He happens to have a vagina instead of a dick." or "This is a matter for all womb-havers in general" (In a reproductive rights discussion). Is that ok, or is this being too reductionist?

Some attempts at rational discussion, and which also dealt with some scientific inaccuracies in what Rampack was claiming about hermaphrodite humans not existing:

https://www.weasyl.com/journal/61156/rant-stop-using-herm-shemale-cuntboy-for-your-porn#cid146810

https://www.weasyl.com/journal/61156/rant-stop-using-herm-shemale-cuntboy-for-your-porn#cid146809

were ignored, or dismissed.

Someone implied that the Weasyl staff are on Rampack & co's side somehow, being "protective":

[...] the staff seem to be somewhat aware of this and have, if not supporting, then at least protective stances on our voicing opinions and raising concern on the matter

^
https://www.weasyl.com/journal/61156/rant-stop-using-herm-shemale-cuntboy-for-your-porn#cid147018

Which I doubt because this sort of thing is such a mess.

What I take away from that journal and the comments is that there exists a certain demographic in the furry subculture who have immersed themselves in forms of identity politics found almost solely on-line on social media, that this demographic is concerned with policing how other people express themselves, and that Rampack's journals and its comments are a good example of this demographic in action.

[an hoopoe]

There's some involvement from the Weasyl staff now. Someone had made a journal, as a result of Rampack's one, asking if anyone could think of an alternative term for herm:

https://www.weasyl.com/journal/61206/alternate-term-for-herm

and I noticed this comment by Inaki/Ikani:


^
https://www.weasyl.com/journal/61206/alternate-term-for-herm#cid146984

Rory is an administrator on Weasyl, that position being ranked below directors (Ikani is one of those) and above moderators.

It's difficult to make any judgement about what is going on without knowing what Rory said though.

[Zinn]

I'm going to avoid the internet for the next few days while this blows over. I'm a long-time lurker for Vivisector and I'm not mad that you've pointed out my behaviour was disgusting as it was. In cases were I don't think people will see eye to eye, I just try to get more creative with insults as I usually think it's a better use of time, but it always has weirded me when my more vitriolic statements get praised.

I don't usually say 'CisScum' or any permutation of it but as people were throwing 'SJW' around I just wanted to be an asshole and now it's blowing up. But in Rampack's defence they thanked me before I talked about I talked about Scalpels (I think, still avoiding Weasyl so I can't check time stamps.) If you were to have an award for stupidest person you've seen all day I think I've good odds to win. Don't hesitate to call me out on anything else I've fucked up on.

[an hoopoe]

I'm a long-time lurker for Vivisector

Ah, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that. I'm not very keen on the idea of call outs, I just wanted to highlight the sort of ructions that are resulting from the penetration of social media identity politics into the furry subculture. It might have been better if I'd quoted without naming people or paraphrased what was written, I suppose.

I think one of the things here is that social media often seems to produce echo chambers that thrive on straw men and dogmatic terms like sjw, go back to tumblr, cis white male, cishet, shitlord, gross, &c. and it can lead to emotions running high and people having spats with a series of canned responses used to dismiss things without discussing them. A common tactic seems to be to respond to someone, and then block them, in order to get the last word in. There were several visible cases of that on Rampack's journal.

[Zinn]

I'm aware of the filter bubble phenomenon and it's why I frequently give up on Tumblr as a social network site it's geared more towards content aggregation than creation. To be honest I did end up figuring out how the ignore user list works on Weasyl otherwise I may not have stopped arguing as you did predict tensions were high and I was getting praised on the journal and privately for my assholery. The Ignore function is really just to get rid of reply notifications people can make a new comment below and add whatever to signify they're responding to whoever's ignored them. I don't know if people followed through with this and made a new comment directed at me avoiding them, I'd rather be known as a coward than that one person who took a rage-induced heart attack because she took the internet too seriously.

I also think it's good you did call me out, but I did produce this summary for a friend amongst others I kept more neutral and devoid of snarl words.

---Transcript---

Friend: ...also relevant to the post on Vivisector, I quite like porn that could be tagged "cuntboy". :/ I don't mean to imply any cissexism.
Friend: And yes, burd.
Zinn: It's not liking of the subject matter that's the problem. I also like artwork with transgender characters, it's more of how we describe them.
Zinn: Remember there used to be really creepy comments artists didn't like? that it spawned its' own two FA groups "Yes Creepy Comments" and "No Creepers Plz".
Zinn: It's kinda like that, that there's two demographics. So people are divided over search terms, so what the Journal is making known is that there are people who have a preference on how art is tagged.
Zinn: I wrote some journal a while ago as Vosyl on FA (Deleted since) saying I wanted to attract more LGBT Watchers. Well using tags people who are LGBT follow and prefer would be one way to go about it.
Zinn: Then I read the other comments and it turned into this: http://pbfcomics.com/20

---End Transcript---

I think people will appreciate Perry Bible Fellowship take on this. I think a solution that might be viable as Weasyl has a Black & White Filter system would be to make a 'Grey Filter' that hides tags people don't want to see, it already allows users to add tags to submissions if the Artist permits (people have tagged my art with 'boobs' so I know this is an amazing thing.) I had this idea to code an extension to firefox that would've allowed people to tag e621 submissions that they can share through an exchangeable list; which I'd have hoped would settle disputes by allowing users for whatever reason to settle tagging disputes by collaborating on what shared criteria they have for tags. I do think this is a solvable problem.

[magus]

Honest question, Zinn:

What are people *supposed* to call their multi-gendered impossible-in-RL-bodytype stroke art, then?

Less charitably, if threatening to cut up someone's face is your idea of getting creative with wordplay, then you need help. Bad.

[Conan]

For the record, here's what Rory said, from a user on lulz.net (screencap moved to imgur for archival purposes).

http://i.imgur.com/sUCzgQi.png

Rory has since been removed from the staff page over this relatively minor incident, despite there really being no grounds to do so in the much acclaimed and hyped Staff Code of Conduct.

Taking into account Weasyl's past at listening to SJW groups complaining, earlier this year a rule updated regarding nipple exposure was bashed by people for talking about "male nipples" and "female nipples", this latest incident seems to be cause for concern for some. Quote one user on lulz: "Havent been uploading many of my photos there, and now I'm not sure if I will. I don't want a picture to be yelled at by the fucking thought police because its discriminatory against windows or scenery or something."

[Zinn]

Honest question, Zinn:

What are people *supposed* to call their multi-gendered impossible-in-RL-bodytype stroke art, then?

"Wankfodder"? Maybe, people did post alternative terms in the journal and others. But I'm leaning towards wankfodder. For a SFW tag  CannonFodder might be more appropriate if you have that kind of artillery between your legs.

Less charitably, if threatening to cut up someone's face is your idea of getting creative with wordplay, then you need help. Bad.

I said a lot of things, the scalpel is by far the worst one. I ended up writing it out of frustration and ending the comment with 'read harder' as I was talking to someone else in the thread over how segmented demographics work and someone replied it'll lower overall exposure. It would. It entirely would, I thought it was a bad argument at the time as what I wanted to say -before scalpels- was to specialize for a niche audience rather than to make a bland furry flan artwork that has general appeal. So I didn't feel listened to, despite being on the biggest soapbox I have ever been on. I'll accept that I need help, either from a therapist, editor or lawyer. As I'm sure threats to grievous bodily harm is illegal here.

[an hoopoe]

I think one of the unfortunate things which causes communication problems with things like this is the us. vs them attitude that some people have. For example, out of curiosity I looked at Rampack's twitter and I noted that right from the start she was anticipating a confrontation and that they would turn up:

'no real flack for my journal yet. i'm sure they are all silent. we will wait. am i on the sjw furry list yet?'

One person commenting about the journal, on twitter, even went so far as to conflate people disagreeing with Rampack and transphobia:

"virulent transmisogyny among furries is no longer a surprising. ppl talking over rampack trying to tell her they know better".

I think the idea that the furry subculture is virulently transphobic does not represent reality. Another odd thing I thought was, in Rampack's journal , one person complained about how FA is full of transphobic art and that transphobic art is starting to appear on Weasyl as well, but is FA really full of transphobic art? Is weasyl really starting to see it being uploaded?

Also, to try and put things into some kind of perspective viz. the general furry subculture, Rampack's journal has 2192 views. Searching for 'herm' on FA produces over 81,000 submissions for example, with the most popular submission having over 99,000 views. Some people who are transgender are evidently OK with labelling their characters as herms. Of course Weasyl does have a smaller userbase than FA, but I suspect in general that Rampack's views are shared by a relatively small group of people in the furry subculture and not all or most transgender people who participate in the furry subculture.

[camellia sinensis]

Shemale, cuntboy, herm, and tranny are words this fandom and society at large would be better without.

The issue here, is that these words embody an attitude towards trans bodies with are very objectifying and commodifying. They help normalize trans bodies as being inherently and exclusively sexual and something to consume. Feminine people with penises, masculine people with vaginas, when they are referred to as shemales and cuntboys and such, helps cement them as something akin to mental fleshlights, to be only thought of in a sexual context, used, and then discarded until the next time you're horny and need a fix.

To act as if the Words being Offensive are the issue here is very reductive and honestly, disingenuous. The words are the expression of a social idea of trans people being sex objects, of being a set of genitals to play with, and these words feed that idea through the way they are used. Using them in a different way, also, doesn't fix things, because the idea of what these words mean and what they express already exist in the collective consciousness, and each time they are used without some kind of enforced social repercussion, these narratives are fed and reinforced.

Communication is an act. It is not a passive behavior without consequences. By how you choose to communicate and indulge in things in a community, you are a part of a system that creates and spreads meaning. And here I want to stress, that finding some things hot isn't the issue here. It's how these things are treated collectively, and how they permeate community.

So yes. Using the words shemale, cuntboy, herm, tranny, and such, to collectively talk about trans bodies as to how they exist in furry fantasy land, does have consequences for actual trans people. It's important to be aware of that. What can be done about it? Be more restrained in how you indulge these things, and if these words are part of the erotic mystique to you, at the very least use them in places that aren't going to be public, and try to be aware of the harm they can cause.

[Zinn]

I think the idea that the furry subculture is virulently transphobic does not represent reality.

I think you're right on this. My intuition would say that we shouldn't expect Furry Art Websites to be more or less transphobic that what life can be experienced off-line for instance. As a conglomeration of sites that rely on User Participation to generate the hosted content, any apparent systemic bias would either be from bad sampling or already exhibited off-line. As online communities pool members internationally across the globe they can get a weighted sum of people who may lean in one direction more than another due to geopolitcs (location, location, location.) I haven't checked the journal since Friday but I think I know who you're talking about.

Downside to verifying any relationship between Rampack's Journal and submissions on FA's Search feature; Is the time of exposure as one variable, Rampack's journal is only a few days old, while artwork on FA can be  years old. The Journal is also in a higher category than journal so you need to log in to view so that limits how many people can see it (unless people take screenshot and those don't tend to bump up view counters.) On the Journal there are people who are comfortable using the terms in question but at the moment I can only view it as a Venn Diagram of furries that are trans that have read the journal, made a dissenting opinion (the diagram's overlap) with the other circle all the furries that are trans in the entirety of fandom. I don't know the quantity of magnitude of how people lean either way. Someone could always do a survey, but it'd need to be phrased in a way to hide the motivation behind a survey (otherwise people will give answers hoping it'll result in what they want it to), questions like 'how do you define gender identity?' and 'What descriptors do you use for your fursona?' might be good questions that avoid the Anchoring Effect. Regardless of execution I think it'll still prove difficult how much furries are part of Rampack's Audience and how it scales to the wider fandom, with how many people who don't know Rampack would make the same arguments of their own volition; just due to the nature of the fandom as amorphous diaspora of people coming and going, and attitudes changing. Five years ago Trans attitudes towards the descriptor changed towards 'Transgendered' as it being outdated, as well as the COGIATI took a nose dive into the dust.

I may have a better idea of how to get relevant information and draw better (And more 'succinct') conclusions in the future. Turns out there's a Correspondence Course that offers a recognizable BSc in Mathematics (OpenUni) I want to get into, but it'll take 6-8 years and I'm really hoping this will be resolved in some capacity that won't require the service of a mail-order mathematician to comment on.

[Conan]

The issue here, is that these words embody an attitude towards trans bodies with are very objectifying and commodifying. They help normalize trans bodies as being inherently and exclusively sexual and something to consume. Feminine people with penises, masculine people with vaginas, when they are referred to as shemales and cuntboys and such, helps cement them as something akin to mental fleshlights, to be only thought of in a sexual context, used, and then discarded until the next time you're horny and need a fix.

You know, if we were talking about people drawing humans, I would agree 100% with you. But we're not. We're talking about made up art that contains a massive range of completely impossible things. Someone who gets off to their "cuntboy" neon green talking fox wolf hybrid taur with hair on top of their fur, wings, and opposable thumbs isn't necessarily going to look at a human undergoing gender transition and go "damn that's hot. I want to yiff fuck that!!" Remember, there are a lot of furries who claim to be grossed out by "human sex" as it is.


I feel like there are better things to focus on than telling people they need to relabel furry their porn folders. Like trying to get transgender individuals accepted in normal society.

[Kirune]

You know, if we were talking about people drawing humans, I would agree 100% with you. But we're not. We're talking about made up art that contains a massive range of completely impossible things.

the subject matter itself is not important, it's the ideas that are being reinforced by it. like it or not, rampack did bring up a very valid point, art does not exist in a vacuum. it might not always be "informed" but it IS usually made to be shared, and the ideas that it carries with it will spread as well. it's not unreasonable to ask that harmful terms not be used and associated with these things.

though i'm surprised at the number of furries who went WEH I DON'T LIKE CHANGE, WEH IT'S JUST PORN, WEH SJWS. c'mon.

[camellia sinensis]

The issue here, is that these words embody an attitude towards trans bodies with are very objectifying and commodifying. They help normalize trans bodies as being inherently and exclusively sexual and something to consume. Feminine people with penises, masculine people with vaginas, when they are referred to as shemales and cuntboys and such, helps cement them as something akin to mental fleshlights, to be only thought of in a sexual context, used, and then discarded until the next time you're horny and need a fix.

You know, if we were talking about people drawing humans, I would agree 100% with you. But we're not. We're talking about made up art that contains a massive range of completely impossible things. Someone who gets off to their "cuntboy" neon green talking fox wolf hybrid taur with hair on top of their fur, wings, and opposable thumbs isn't necessarily going to look at a human undergoing gender transition and go "damn that's hot. I want to yiff fuck that!!"

Well, my actual point, if you read my post again, is not about the existence of art that depicts things like that, it's the way these things are consumed and disseminated. In your example you used a lot of very out there add-ons, but I think it obfuscates that what people are talking about are furry characters with humanoid appearances (four limbs, one head, etc, you know what i mean) with a certain loadout of genitals being labelled in a very demeaning way when you consider the real life parallels to actual trans people.  Like, this goes beyond people drawing these things as fantasy fetish fuel, you have people who have characters they cavalierly refer to as cuntboys and shemales, presenting themselves as such in the furry community and being their main face and identity, even though in real life they are comfortably, sometimes adamantly, cis, and many react very strongly to actual trans people saying that the reductive, sexually exploitative language these characters who resemble their real life bodies are treated with makes them uncomfortable. You can see quite a few examples of that in the thread in question.

So no, I don't agree with your assertion that because these things can be portrayed in a very fantastical way it's unreasonable for there to be upset, since there is a definite trend for people to treat these caricatures in an unassuming way that takes for granted the oversexualized manner in which they are presented. I don't mean to use this as a rhetorical cudgel or anything, but I know actual trans men who have been referred to by clueless furries as "real life cunt boys", for example.

Also:

"I feel like there are better things to focus on than telling people they need to relabel furry their porn folders. Like trying to get transgender individuals accepted in normal society."

I think you're probably smart enough to figure out why "There are More Important Things we could be focusing on right now" is an embarrassing point to make in any discussion, so I won't engage it.

[an hoopoe]

I thought these comments on Rampack's journal, by a transgender person, were relevant and worth reading:

this is such a difficult thing to talk about because, as a trans girl its obviously really painful to see slurs like the s-slur tossed around casually but at the same time i have no idea what could be used to replace them! you cant really say "trans girl" instead because 99.9% of the time characters that are girls with dicks ARENT trans girls, and very specifically too. being trans isnt inherently about your genitals, its about defining yourself differently as to doctors did at your birth. this IS usually related to genitals, which means trans girls usually have peens and trans boys usually have cooches but.. this doesnt apply to characters!

like, unless a character specifically has a backstory about it, them being a girl with a penis doesnt make them a trans girl, it just makes them a girl.

personally to me, i dont see "cuntboy" as a slur, it actually seems perfectly descriptive. boy with a cunt, it doesnt misgender in the same way as the s-slur. i use dickgirl a lot, personally, but really whenever i dont require a singular word i just say "girl with a dick". i dont think it needs a label!

id call trans people their gender cause 99% of the time i dont even need to mention genitals, but with characters its a lot more specific cause theyre not trans, theyre just people with whatever genitals, be they giant tentacocks or hyper cooches or cthulhu's beard or even nothing at all, and its an entirely different discussion than to real life. yeah, fiction doesnt exist in a vacuum but its also important to remember the differences too

^
https://www.weasyl.com/journal/61156/rant-stop-using-herm-shemale-cuntboy-for-your-porn#cid146946

I think that what is written there is nuanced and reveals shades of grey and uncertainties surrounding this matter.

We'll see in the next few years what happens wrt to words going into or out of use, I think. I believe that at the moment things are generally a bit up in the air in the furry subculture, for example with furries spreading out into social media and away from specific furry websites, the general tremendous influx of young people over the past few years, new changes in social attitudes towards sex and gender issues, and various other things.

When the dust settles, as it were, we'll see what happens.