This is the one that I wanted to write since the US election results. If you follow me elsewhere, you already know my stance on the "No Politics" rule seen in furry fandom (and honestly anywhere else).

What I heard about the furry fandom is that it's more accepting, friendly to everyone, more tolerant. And to some extent it's true, given that there are a lot of queers in fandom and how right wing hates furries, which makes me to expect that people look out for each other. However...

What exactly "friendly to everyone" means to people? I myself cannot really empathize with the phrase because it lacks elaboration. I can feel what it means, but without saying more it just doesn't make any sense to me, maybe because I'm autistic, and I don't think that you can be friendly to literally everyone. But I know that some people use this as a way of being "neutral" on bigotry inside of community.

Let's say, you administer a local Russian (as in, everyone who lives in Russia) trans furry chat group. The country recently started a war and ethnical cleansing of Ukrainians. You have the "No Politics" rule for safety due to living in an authoritarian regime, and yet you can't ban literal imperialist openly glorifying said regime and war. And you say, that the topic is unpleasant to most people and that's why you require everyone to go to DMs instead. You wanted to protect "most people's" interests, and yet you got left with none because you refused to take an action and broke trust. What is just an unpleasant topic to you, is the reality to some and soon will be for you.

This is an example based on my experiences, I altered not much from the group I was actually in. And I also come from a country not-getting-any-better because of apoliticism that have poisoned even communities that claim to care about minorities. We fucked up so much that when we got "anti LGBT propaganda" law instead of protecting each other we let cops in or even as queers agree with the laws and trying to appeal to oppressors. We fucked up so much that even in chats with Russian furry migrants that live in foreign land, people still manage to use racial slurs to the locals and no one does anything about it. Well, you can say that people should find or form other communities then, but it's not productive to advise this to people who are already tired of dealing with bigotry and gave up, it's more reasonable to tell admins and organizers to do better simply because it's their responsibility.

So, being "neutral" helps no one but the ones in power, and it makes no sense because furries are already going to get banned for "LGBT propaganda" in Russia and in the world overall right wing hates them as a covert way of being queerphobe, so to be a furry is political enough. You claim that furry fandom is more progressive, but honestly, no one needs people that claim to be something and do nothing. When marginalized folks hope that someone more privileged will protect them, and they don't, it fucking hurts, it's isolating. I don't care how inconvenient it is for you, it's your duty to keep the community safe, you can't let anyone be alone, not in these tiring times.