Spoiler: It’s nothing scandalous or bad.

Every once in a while, someone posts this photo on Twitter to attempt to dunk on furries:

Over the years, I’ve seen this discourse play out several times.

The people that post this photo usually don’t elaborate on why they think this photo is meaningful, they just let it stand alone and expect their audience to fill in the blanks.

So let’s leave nothing to the imagination!

I’m going to take somewhat of a Q&A format for this blog post, which is a slight departure from my usual writing style.

But first, let’s tackle the most important point:

STI Testing is a damn good idea

If you’re organizing any type of public event–be it a gaming, anime, steampunk, cyberpunk, or comic book convention, music concert, medieval or renaissance festival, and so on–you should consider doing what Midwest FurFest does.

This is obvious to most queer people, but might be counter-intuitive at first. So let me explain.

Any large gathering of people is likely to lead to adults hooking up. This is a fact of life, especially when alcohol is involved.

Having a convenient way to know your status onsite is a great way to allow consenting adults to make informed decisions about their sexual health, especially if they’re not generally promiscuous and aren’t in the habit of getting tested regularly.

Let me emphasize: the most sexually promiscuous adults are generally already in the habit of getting regularly tested, so the onsite STI testing doesn’t actually do much for them.

This only helps people who don’t regularly visit their health department or planned parenthood to know their status.

Therefore, free onsite STI testing is a damn good idea to protect the health of your community.

Even if you hold some weird disdain for the habitually sexually promiscuous (“sluts”), this service primarily benefits everyone else, since any ethical slut already knows their goddamn status as well as the status of anyone they’re fucking that night.

Any event that can afford to offer Free STI testing and doesn’t probably doesn’t care about adults making informed decisions about their sexual health.

Furry conventions are for furries, which are overwhelmingly LGBTQIA+ compared to the rest of the population. That one of our conventions can afford to take steps to protect the sexual health of its adult attendees is a damn good idea, even if it was limited to HIV at first.

Everyone should consider stealing this idea from us.

Seriously, it’s not the 1980’s anymore. Everyone is at risk of HIV. It isn’t just us gays that need to be careful.

What are the other benefits of offering STI Testing at conventions?

Aside from the obvious benefits to public health, there are some other community benefits to offering STI screenings at large public gatherings like conventions.

Specifically, it destigmatizes sexual health and people who are HIV-positive.

It doesn’t encourage “degeneracy” (which is a word loaded with historical baggage that many people aren’t aware of).

What is the context behind this photo?

Midwest FurFest usually overlaps with World AIDS Day.

Many years ago, they decided to start offering free onsite HIV testing in observance:

Many people realized what a damn good idea that free HIV testing was for conventions, so the demand for these tests far exceeded what they anticipated.

Thus, by popular demand, they have continued this forward in the years since.

We are honored to welcome back Howard Brown Health for HIV/STI Testing Services!

This year for convenience, there are TWO testing locations:
HRO Directors A/B/C and
DESCC Rooms 59/60
Testing will be open Friday and Saturday, 9:30am-4:30pm pic.twitter.com/oNTBzKdHqs

— Midwest FurFest (@FurFest) November 23, 2022

In addition to being overwhelmingly queer today, the furry community has a long history of queer involvement going back to its roots.

The photo at the top was from 2018–the third year of this service being offered.

Unlike the other photos of the booth signs taken over the years, that particular photo was posted on a subreddit dedicated to hating furries (r/yiffinhell). This may explain why it’s the specific photo that always gets reposted by people trying to dunk on furries.

(Also: Try harder next time. This kind of dunk is self-defeating.)

This photo is proof that furries are sex freaks!

Wrong. Humans in general are sex freaks. Furries really aren’t that special here.

To wit: Ask any experienced event organizers about their experiences with Tupperware conventions, and you’ll hear stories that make furry convention antics seem tame in comparison.

Alternatively, ask about academic or medical conferences.

Furthermore, as I explained above, offering free HIV testing (or even free STI testing) doesn’t actually benefit the kinds of “sex freaks” that you may be worried about.

But sex is evil!

What’s actually wrong with sex? None of us would be alive if it weren’t for people having sex.

Rape is bad. Clearly. The difference between rape and sex is consent. So if the conduct is occurring between consenting adults, who cares? Let them fuck who they want. You’re not responsible for them.

In an environment where sexual health is taken seriously, inadvertently encouraging sexual promiscuity by making these tests available… doesn’t actually hurt anyone.

Like, stop and think about it. What specific harm is it causing, and who specifically would actually be harmed?

Furry may be a sex-positive space, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily sexualized. There’s a difference between the two terms, y’know!

Why talk about this?

There’s a tendency among some furries to promote negative peace, especially when it involves the media.

I’m not one of them.

We need to acknowledge and deal with problems that happen in our community, and hold people accountable for misbehavior. We cannot do this if we cannot talk about problems. Real problems are not “drama”.

If there was any social downside to STI testing being offered at conventions, I’d talk openly about it. But there isn’t any.

The only “problem” occurs when bigots and imbeciles try to make it seem like bad optics to do the bare minimum to prevent the transmission of STIs in their community.

Don’t fall for their deceptions. If you’re reading this page, you’re probably better than that.

Also, my blog tends to rank high on search engines, so I saw fit to write about this topic so when someone seeks to fact-check this photo, they’ll have the opportunity to learn about it.

TL;DR

Furry conventions offering STI testing is a damn good idea that everyone should copy for their own events.