SiegedSec, a collective of self-proclaimed “gay furry hackers,” has claimed credit for breaching online databases of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that spearheaded the rightwing Project 2025 playbook. On Wednesday, as part of string of hacks aimed at organizations that oppose trans rights, SiegedSec released a cache of Heritage Foundation material.
In a post to Telegram announcing the hack, SiegedSec called Project 2025 “an authoritarian Christian nationalist plan to reform the United States government.” The attack was part of the group’s #OpTransRights campaign, which recently targeted rightwing media outlet Real America’s Voice, the Hillsong megachurch, and a Minnesota pastor.
In his foreword to the Project 2025 manifesto, the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, rails against “the toxic normalization of transgenderism” and “the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology.” The playbook’s other contributors call on “the next conservative administration” to roll back certain policies, including allowing trans people to serve in the military.
“We’re strongly against Project 2025 and everything the Heritage Foundation stands for,” one of SiegedSec’s leaders, who goes by the handle vio, told The Intercept.
🫡 to the gay furries
They’re kinda like anime fans, but their self-insert characters are all animal people.
The subculture traces back to a series of room parties at scifi conventions in the 80’s, but didn’t grow into its own until the internet got more common.
Wait, this is news to me. My understanding was that it began as effectively a kink with its associated community. Like, I think I recall it being pretty much strictly sexual in every way I heard of it for a long time. And then lately I see that it’s more broad than that - the most clear example I have is when my kiddo’s friend recently named it as one of the cliched “kid archetypes” at their high school, e.g. jock/goth/furry/etc. Maybe it was just never specifically sexual or maybe it’s been through some evolutions.
(I am not a furry, but I’ll try my best to explain what I know.)
People who really like anthropomorphic animals (animals with human features).
Generally what I’ve heard from others is “If you want to be a furry, you’re a furry.”, so the following are not requirements.
Most have a “fursona”. It is an animal character that sort of represents you. Like your own personal mascot.
It may be whatever color and specie you like. Even a hybrid between species. A person can have multiple fursonas.
Generally furries like to draw these characters, or even some more generic ones like for example Nick Wilde from Zootopia.
Some furry artists accept drawing commissions, i.e.: you can pay someone to draw your character.
Some even have fursuits. That is an expensive suit of your fursona, so you can fully be your own private mascot. By expensive, I mean multiple thousands (yes, freedom currency). Of course, it’s made by people, and you are people. DIY is also an option, and if you get skillful enough… money. Though it doesn’t have to be a fullsuit. It could be head-only or partial (head, paws, feetpaws, tail). Also digitigrade suits are usually more expensive than plantigrade, but let’s not get too far.
Not sure if I gave any good explanation, but certainly better than that episode of CSI xD.
Basically, everyone has a Mii/xbox avatar unique to them, like a physical username, called a persona/fursona. Some people get extremely expensive custom suits of their fursona. It’s semi like anime fans, but not tied to corps, very decentralized. It got started in the 70s and 80s with sci-fi cons where people gathered for disney-esque animal cartoons and comics, and has roots in importing anime to the US.
The furry community is somewhat like a church with various chapters, you can join furry chats in various cities and countries to quickly form a social network wherever you go. In the US, there tend to be city chats, state chats, regional chats, and national/international chats. These cover a broad range of interests from coin collecting to mountain biking and skiing, but the common thread is that everyone is a furry.
Conventions occur and are like a cross between a family reunion, blackout party, and university classes where panels are taught on things like fursuit building, drawing, car meetups, pilot meetups, doctor meetups, etc. It’s like a networking and party event on steroids.They are fun as hell and occur all over the world, ranging from a few hundred people to over 15,500 people. They have been growing dramatically since 2016. Cons usually partner with local animal charities and tend to donate tens of thousands of dollars each con.
It tends to be a very welcoming and open community, drawing a significant portion of the population that is LGBTQ. Last time I checked, this was about 2/3rds of the population.
Down The Rabbit Hole: Furries. For anyone who doesn’t know Fredrik Knudsen and may kneejerk to this before watching, this documentary has won awards at furry conventions.
