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Improper conduct at the party

Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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  • #55107 Quote
    I was disturbed by something that happened at the party yesterday, but I didn’t mention anything immediately because I needed time to process everything and understand why it bothered me so much. If I had the full picture as it was happening I would have intervened, but it was too late by the time I got all of the pieces. There was an interaction between the group and a member of the general public. I was not present for the first part, but I did observe the second part directly.

    From my understanding, a group of kids was walking by and saw the fursuiters. They entered the room and started taking pictures, in a manner that I understand wasn’t respectful. A fursuiter later commented to me that they were gawking. While the kids were taking pictures, one of them set a hockey puck down and a member of our group took it and threw it into the trash.

    Later on the kid returned looking for their hockey puck. A member of our group grilled them on their behavior and refused to return the hockey puck to them when they didn’t apologize. I was a direct witness to this and can attest to the look of utter shock on the poor kids face. If the kid hadn’t been so blindsided by what they were hearing, I’m sure they would have been crying. They were definitely panicked.

    I don’t know all of the individuals involved, and the child certainly doesn’t, so this has become a reflection on the furry community as a whole and MNFurs specifically. This is why I feel a conversation needs to be started about what happened.

    There are a lot of different parts to what happened. The easiest to address is the point when the hockey puck was throw into the trash. Whoever did that committed a crime as that was stealing. There is no justification for taking somebody else’s property, no matter how little you value it, and throwing it away. Additionally, if that single act hadn’t been done, the kid would not have returned and the entire second part of the interaction wouldn’t have occurred.

    Harder to address are the problems that led up to the theft. In recent years a lot of attention has been paid towards the respectful treatment of fursuiters. Within the community. That there is the key. It’s not unreasonable for a fursuiter to expect that they should be treated with respect. It IS unreasonable to expect the general public to know this. If you wear a fursuit in public, you are going to be gawked at eventually. And despite the fact that MNFurs reserved those rooms, we were still in a public setting. You CANNOT place the same expectations on the general public as you do on other furs, that is going to take many years of positive interactions between furs and the general public. Additionally, these were kids! Kids don’t always have the best judgement to begin with and that should have indicated to those involved that ignoring them was the best option.

    And that last point is why I had problems with what happened when the kid came back. They had no idea they did something wrong, and they still don’t. As far as those kids were concerned, they had a positive interaction with something they had never seen before. But then somebody chastised them and wouldn’t let them have their property back. That act may have seemed reasonable in the moment, but upon reflection on the interaction as a whole I feel that crossed the line into bullying. It turned what was a positive interaction with the public into a negative interaction. That kid is always going to see furries now and think, “Those are the jerks that stole my hockey puck. They are mean.”

    Every time we have a negative interaction like this, especially one that could have easily been prevented, we set our community back. Negative interactions have far more weight than positive interactions. And this is why I feel we, as a community, need to have a conversation regarding how we interact with the public and what kinds of expectations we have when doing so. We have done a lot of good things, but we can’t make mistakes like this.

    #55108 Quote
    Since not every one at the party was responsible for the issue this should have been brought to the boards attention so that they can deal with the people responsible for the issue. They do have the ability to ban people from events if they continue to cause trouble.
    #55109 Quote

    Since not every one at the party was responsible for the issue this should have been brought to the boards attention so that they can deal with the people responsible for the issue. They do have the ability to ban people from events if they continue to cause trouble.

    This was a bigger deal than just one or two people. There were a lot of people present who should have known better.

    #55110 Quote
    As a suiter that walked by those kids before, they were super disrespectful. They threatened to hit us with their sticks and stuff if we walked into the ice rank. Not to mention flipping us off and calling us names. The people who had stolen the puck are very in the wrong and that was a shameful thing for them to do in reaction to their bad behavoir.

    *Vibes in mom energy*

    #55111 Quote
    I feel like we don’t have enough info and that conclusions are being jumped to. We had a lot of really good fursuiter interactions with the hockey group and other kids/parents that were in the building. You say you weren’t around for the first part, and saw the second part – and that you don’t know the individuals involved. This could very well have been kid fursuiters dealing with other kids – which Nova’s reply leads me to believe was the case. I also witnessed a couple of the nonfurry kids taking things WAY too far, and the fursuiters I saw at the time handled it pretty well.

    Also keep in mind that we probably had 200-300 attendees. Overall everyone was very well behaved. I’m not trying to judge whether or not a mistake was made, but trying to put into perspective that an overwhelming majority of interactions were good ones.

    #55140 Quote
    I think I was around this towards the beginning. Some of us decided to enter the rink that was next to us to get a few photos in an area that was more open.  There was nobody on the ice at this time. There was some playful interaction between us and a few kids that were in the rink, and although they “ran away” at first, they came back and asked us questions and seemed to be having fun.  We took a few pictures, said goodbye to the kids, and left respectfully.  Not exactly sure what all went down after this.  Just thought I’d share the info that I have on the situation.

    Yo! Hope you are having a wonderful day!

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