I do want to say a little bit about this though.

I think we're gonna see more in-fighting and disagreement in pro-ship circles.

The one stance we all share is "harassment over fiction/art is wrong" but that's it. Our opinions vary in other areas- https://twitter.com/lizcourserants/status/1322370443341418496

these other areas include having different thresholds of "what is/isn't acceptable when it comes to art."

We can all agree that harassment is wrong. But many of us do have hard-lines of "no, this is not okay" mainly when it comes to issues of racism in art/media.

Now my thoughts on the actual furry art in question, just to get that out there so y'all know where I stand.

I want to emphasize that *these are my personal opinions.* Please do not treat my thoughts as Pro-ship Law or anything.

The Confederate flag is racist. No ifs, ands, or butts about it. It's a racist symbol.

Don't waste your energy in my replies trying to defend that flag or people who proudly fly it or wear it in 2020, I don't want to hear it, keep your opinions on that to yourself, thanks.

And the way that flag was depicted in the art in question was just unnecessary.

When the Confederate flag is drawn in art like comic strips depicting racist hillbillies or whatever... that's one thing. I'm not bothered by that really.

But putting that symbol on a bikini for your sexy furry commission is another thing because, lbr, the person who commissioned that is likely some alt-right dudebro who loves to "trigger snowflakes"-

idk who tf else would pay an artist to draw a sexy animal in a bikini with the print of the Confederate flag on it.

I'm also not surprised that a furry commissioned (and drew) something like that. There are lots of racist furries sadly, just another day ending in -y.

And I'm not surprised that the artist didn't care once told about the racist history of that flag either. I could buy the "they're not American" defense at first, but there are DMs of someone explaining the flag to the artist, and they just literally didn't care.

Now the question of "should this art exist?" Personally I wish it didn't exist. I wish people weren't so desperately holding onto a racist symbol. But unfortunately there are still people like that out there. At the same time, ppl are allowed to voice that they think it's racist-

And that seems to be what happened. If you post art online, especially something as controversial as that flag, you're going to be criticized for it, and that appears to be what occurred.

And to circle back to my first point about how different pro-shippers are gonna disagree on things, the issue of censorship seemed to be at play here.

I think censorship is bad. But I also think that literal racist/hate symbols are bad too.

So I try to meet in the middle and my thoughts are that: yes, we can't censor racist art, but we can criticize creators who depict racist/hate symbols in a positive light. (Criticism doesn't mean harassment either, you can criticize something without harassing creators.)

For the record, whenever an artist draws something with that flag or another blatantly racist or alt-right thing, I typically don't tweet about it because I don't like giving those people any attention. They THRIVE off of even negative attention, so-

so I think it's best to just block+report shit-stirrers like that. But at the same time, I do understand people wanting to use it as a discussion point of "see, art like this still occurs in (furry communities for example), let's talk about why this is racist/harmful."