It was one of those strange coincidences that makes one think that, if there were a god, he must have a strange sense of humour. Salman Rushdie, who was the target of a 1989 fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini that called for his death due to his novel The Satanic Verses and who lost sight in one of his eyes after being stabbed on stage in the US last year, warned that never in his lifetime had freedom of expression been under such a threat in the West. Less than a week later, Fur Affinity announced a new rule banning adult artwork of characters with childlike proportions, later calling out specific pokémon and digimon. I have already written about the importance of free speech for the furry fandom, so here I would like to discuss how increasing authoritarianism is restricting free expression and a simple way to help safeguard it.

On June 9th, 2023 the furry world was baffled by a newsletter from Washington state’s convention Anthro Northwest that has since been removed from the internet. On their social media page this letter was headered with the statement “Something had to be said”. The letter opened as if it is about to take an action that would cause controversy to protect their gathering, but then moved forward with meandering prose about the dangers of ostracizing others based on accusation, which they later refer to be related to a phenomenon that has been deemed as “cancel culture”. However, in its statement it also didn’t really announce any action that the organization would take to combat these issues it deemed important to state are occurring.

This meandering and winding prose about “seeing through the glass darkly” certainly caught a lot of attention. Because of the vagueness and the context of being an official statement it led many to speculate what could have prompted the post that read more like a defensive personal blog. Soon other furry conventions and organizations would capitalize on the public relations blunder by making parodies of their own.

But perhaps at the end of the day, the glass that ANW’s chair, Gabriel Felix, was seeing through dimly was that of the house he resided in. The shattered pieces reflected upon him for a past where he ignored his own currently presented ideals. Because while the chair asks the fandom to be slower to judge and to be more judicious with our actions to outcast others among us, on May 8th, 2019 his convention had banned the Furlandia soon-to-be-chair at the time, Richard “Saphy” Thomas, from being able to attend ANW.

Note for clarity: Saphy was the promoted to chair from vice-chair of Furlandia following their 2019 gathering just after he was banned from ANW, the current chair in 2023 (Rex) is not banned from ANW. To make the story more clear the headline working verbiage around the titles have been updated in the article.

This month in Digging up Positivity, furry conventions raising money for charity, the fandom comes together to help those down on their luck, an upcoming furry comedy, and a lovely interview with this years’ winner of the Good Furry Award: Kite.

And stay till the very end of this video where I reveil the winner of the Pawperty Damage game on Steam, and various other announcements.

This month has been filled to the brink with not just the regular fundraisers, but also a whole lot in the spirit of this rainbow coloured month. Something we, as a fandom, can be very proud of.

So... lets be like a meerkat and dig in!

British furry Tim "Gamepopper" Stoddard has released his new book, Furtannia: The History of the Furry Fandom (Barnes & Noble US, Amazon UK) in the United Kingdom (Uncle Bear Publishing, 2023).

This well-researched book was written by Stoddard after many furries asked him whether he had written a book related to his history talks he has given at ConFuzzled. The resulting tome covers everything you wanted to know about furries in the UK. The book covers the following elements:

• How early British children's literature influenced the fandom.
• The rise of house parties and conventions such as ConFuzzled and Scotiacon.
• Information about key figures in the British fandom such as Simon Barber and Ian Curtis.
• A tour of the successes and failures of various cons.
• The connections between the U.S. and U.K. furs.
• Relates how the media have received and portrayed the fandom over the years.