Stop the Gatekeeping

It certainly has been a while since we last talked here. Things have changed and at the same time, other things haven’t. Thankfully, I’m less emotionally charged than when I started this blog, so it feels nice to return to it with something a bit more sober.

Disclaimer: I think in this post I am explaining my personal opinion, which I give you full rights to disagree with. Since the original post from @Femboy_Oreo was the epitome of ragebait, this article is centered around it in the first few paragraphs. If you can't handle it, grow a pair of balls (or ovaries!) and stop harassing people online.

This Post Has Been Shared 2.7k Times

I was casually scrolling through Twitter (it’s called X!) when I came across this lovely post from a user named @Femboy_Oreo. I actually had to double-check the username because at first I thought it was coming from some kind of alt-right account, lol.

Ouchie, I thought to myself.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but not for @Femboy_Oreo. I genuinely couldn’t care less about their ragebait opinion on what they subjectively find ugly or not. I find pup masks cute, for example. What I find much harder to stomach is a 17-year-old (UNDERAGE) person selling “belly pics” and maintaining a wishlist for older (usually men) to buy them things because hihi he’s a catboy (lmao, the irony).

They’ll grow up one day and maybe realize they were quite literally e-whoring while underage.

But because I’m a nice dog, I’ll stop punching down because honestly, this is an easy target if you have more than five brain cells left.

The real problem with this tweet isn’t the opinion. It’s the X algorithm.

This post was echoed around roughly 1.6 million times, and what started as comments about the aesthetics of a piece of neoprene quickly spiraled into hate, death threats, and most impressively, self-proclaimed “Queer Activists” and “Leftists” attacking a person who had the audacity to take a photo wearing shiny black fabric on an empty train.

Sieg Heil Conservatism!

I can’t even begin to imagine how @AceTheFemboi handled all that sudden attention, but I genuinely hope, from the bottom of my heart, that he’s okay. Online harassment, especially when it happens in a massive, distributed way like X enables, has a way of making people feel profoundly alone.

Now, before we break down all the idiotic talking points that led to hating a piece of shiny black fabric, let’s talk about the Weirdos With the Masks™.

The Weirdos With The Masks

(and other fairytales about Monsters and Men)

Let’s clear something up early: masks are not new, and neither is the fear attached to them.

Humans have been covering their faces for as long as we’ve been telling stories about gods, demons, animals, spirits, alter egos. The idea that a piece of rubber or neoprene suddenly signals moral decay says less about the mask and far more about the person panicking over it.

• Argument I: BUT IT’S A FETISH MASK!!!111!

Yes. It is. And proudly so.

Not because it magically turns the person wearing it into a dog (it’s really not enchanted neoprene, calm down), but because it originates from a sexual context like a lot of things humans later normalized socially.

Leather, latex, chokers, high heels, lingerie-inspired fashion, harnesses, all of these have sexual origins. Some still do. Some don’t. Most exist somewhere in between. That in-between space is uncomfortable for people who desperately need clean categories.

What’s happening here isn’t “fetish exposure”. It’s a social construction evolving past its original use.

Spend any amount of time in Germany and you’ll notice something funny: a lot of people wearing pup masks are not having sex. They’re playing video games, board games, watching movies, dancing, or just hanging out. There’s an entire subculture (within a subculture) that treats pup play primarily as a social identity, not a sex act.

Are some of them basically closeted furries? Yeah, probably. Does that actually matter? Not really.

To be clear: not all pups are furries, and not all furries are pups. The irony here is that the original ragebait tweet that kicked this whole thing off was made by a furry themselves, which is honestly a wild self-own.

What matters is this: humans constantly create identities and aesthetics that drift in and out of sexual and social contexts. That doesn’t make them inherently obscene. It makes them human.

So yes, it’s a piece of clothing.

A weird one? Sure, depending on who you ask. But let’s not pretend we haven’t been here before. A woman wearing a mini-skirt was once considered dangerous, immoral, and corrupting. Long hair on men. Makeup. Tattoos. Piercings. Each of these sparked the same moral panic, framed as “concern” rather than control.

And I can already hear the argument: “It’s not the same thing.”

You’re right it isn’t.

But the mechanism is exactly the same. We attach moral meaning to objects, then punish the people wearing them. Not because the object is harmful, but because it violates an unspoken rule about what bodies are allowed to express in public.

The mask isn’t the problem. The discomfort with ambiguity is.

Argument II: BUT YOU ARE WEARING A DOG MASK TO LOOK LIKE A DOG CAUSE YOU WANNA FUCK DOGS!!!1111!

First of all: you are the only one bringing animals into this, and that’s deeply weird.

The pup identity within BDSM has very little to do with animals as animals. Most pups love animals in the same normal, non-creepy way most people do (please stop projecting your intrusive thoughts onto everyone else).

The pup mask is an accessory within something broadly referred to as pet play, which itself sits under the much larger umbrella of domination and submission.

This is the part people either don’t understand or refuse to understand.

The arousing or meaningful element (from what I’ve heard, I’m a virgin :P) is not “being an animal”. It’s a person (a consenting, adult, human person) voluntarily relinquishing control. Acting more instinct-driven, more playful, more unfiltered, and less constrained by the expectations attached to being “properly human”.

That’s it. That’s the core of it.

There is no animal involved. There is no desire for animals. There is only roleplay between adults who have explicitly agreed to it.

If you think this is equivalent to fucking goats, I’d like to remind you of something extremely basic: consent is not a minor detail. It is the entire point.

The difference between abuse and intimacy is consent. The difference between fantasy and harm is consent.

Conflating consensual adult roleplay with actual sexual violence against animals isn’t just wrong; it’s insulting to everyone involved and dangerously unserious.

Again: the mask isn’t the problem. The refusal to understand consent is.

Argument Gold Tier: Think of the Children!

(Except when they actually get molested or groomed!)

“Think of the children” has become the laziest moral shield imaginable.

Traditionally, this argument belonged to the conservative right. Funny enough, the conservative left has now picked it up with enthusiasm. (See? Political spectrums are often just opposite ends of the same stick.)

It gets deployed selectively, loudly, and almost always dishonestly. A masked adult sitting on an (empty) train? Moral panic. Actual minors being groomed, monetized, or quietly sexualized by platforms? Suddenly everyone is blind, busy, or deeply concerned about free speech, or worse, actively participating. Just look at the replies under @Femboy_Oreo’s posts when he shares belly pics. Yes, I had to bleach my eyes after seeing both the posts and the comments.

This outrage isn’t about protection. It’s about control.

Historically, “think of the children” has been weaponized to justify restrictions on individual freedoms far more often than it has been used to actually protect anyone.

Some notable examples:

Most recently: The Chat Control proposal by the European Council.¹ (We’ll get into why this is deeply problematic in a separate article.)

Most infamously: Nazi Germany quite literally used the slogan “Schützt die deutsche Jugend!” (“Protect the German youth!”). It appeared in newspaper headlines, Hitler Youth material, and anti-Jewish, anti-gay, and anti-trans propaganda.²

Most queer-relevant: The framing “Gefährlich für die Jugend!” (“Dangerous to youth!”) was central to the expansion of Paragraph 175 and the mass arrests of homosexuals under the Nazi regime.³

Now, you might say: “This is all well and dandy, but you’re projecting a fetish onto children.”

I don’t. And neither do most pups.

First and foremost: I hate children. They scream, they shout, and they can be intensely annoying. The last thing I want is a kid pulling on my pup ears and destroying an objectively expensive piece of clothing.

Second: when I am out in public as a pup (which is rare and usually limited to pup-specific events), I actively avoid families with children. On the even rarer occasions where paths cross, I disengage.

In one instance, a woman approached me with her child. I removed the mask and explained that while it might look “cute,” it’s probably not a great idea — mostly because it leads to a lot of unnecessary explaining later.

And yes, it really is just unnecessary explaining.

If a child is able to look at a fully clothed adult wearing a pup hood and immediately associate that with sex, I’d seriously question what that child has already been exposed to online. The first time I saw a pup hood (in my early twenties), I thought, “Oh, that’s a furry.” Google corrected me later.

Argument III: but there is a picture with pups and they are grooming children.

Yes. I know. You’re probably referring to this image:

I tried to trace the origin of this photo. Some claim it’s from Folsom (where children wouldn’t be allowed). Others claim it’s photoshopped (it doesn’t look like it). Most likely, it’s from a Pride parade.

And no, this doesn’t make me disgusted. Disgust is a child’s emotion. Adults can usually get past that and think a bit more critically.

Is it problematic? Yeah. I think so.

I don’t have children, so I can’t honestly say how I’d react as a parent. But I do think this is an issue not because it involves pup hoods specifically, but because it involves children being placed into sexualized contexts at all. That problem isn’t exclusive to queer or BDSM subcultures. It exists everywhere.

Personally, I disagree with this kind of interaction, and I would never participate in it (not at Pride, not anywhere). If I had any influence, I’d argue for family-friendly segments early in Pride events, followed later by the overtly sexual or kink-oriented expressions. Surprise sexual imagery isn’t limited to pup hoods.

That said, all of these discussions share a common, inconvenient truth:

Leather, BDSM, and kink have been part of queer culture for as long as queer culture has existed. Not because queerness is inherently sexual, but because repression tends to push sexuality into visible, exaggerated forms.

And yes, let’s be honest for a second: men are horny sacks of meat (to my female friends, you are also horny sacks of meat and I love you a ton, but I am trying to make a point here :D). When men are attracted to other men, this often becomes even more apparent. That’s how you get jockstraps, leather, kink gear, heels, and people going out almost naked.

This isn’t corruption. It’s history, since we claim we care about history in this “community”.

The LGBT Movement is Dead

(and why you should also take a shit on its grave!)

At some point, the LGBT movement stopped being about liberation and started being about branding.

What was once a messy coalition of people fighting for the right to exist slowly mutated into a performance-driven ecosystem where optics matter more than outcomes. Visibility without substance. Slogans without solidarity. Outrage as a substitute for action.

The result is a movement that is incredibly loud online and disturbingly absent when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable unless those people are useful for clout.

When aesthetics become politics, anyone who looks “wrong” becomes expendable.

We’ve seen this pattern before.

When gays and lesbians secured marriage rights, trans people were quietly pushed to the background. Now that trans people are (finally) fighting for the right to live in bodies that feel like their own, it’s suddenly time for everyone else to shut up, behave correctly, or get thrown under the bus.

Same story. Every time.

Not just in the LGBT movement, everywhere. When the Bolsheviks took power, the proletariat they claimed to liberate was quickly forgotten. When the Nazis rose by promising dignity and stability to the German people, they delivered atrocities instead.

And yes, before you ask:

“Did you just compare the LGBT movement to Stalinists and Nazis?”

Yes. I did.

Not because they are morally equivalent (that would be stupid), but because the mechanism is always the same. Every movement sells the same lie: “We will build a better tomorrow together.” And then, once power or legitimacy is achieved, people get sorted into acceptable and disposable categories.

Everyone retreats into smaller boxes. Gays with gays. Bis with bis. Trans with trans.

And if you fall in between (if you’re too feminine to be straight, too masculine to be gay, too weird to be trans, or just don’t perform your identity correctly), congratulations, you’re now the outcast.

You’re not oppressed. You’re just inconvenient.

I’ll try to say this as carefully as possible, because this is not an alt-right talking point and I refuse to let it be turned into one.

During the gender-label explosion a few years back (the 52 genders moment), the intention was good. The goal was to make space for everyone. But at some point, even as a member of the community, I was just exhausted.

We replaced one rigid system with another.

Trying to fit every single human experience into a neat text label is still a form of control even if it’s painted in rainbow colors. And the truth is: you don’t have to fit. Nobody actually asked you to.

All anyone ever wanted (my gay friends, my trans friends, all of us) was to be accepted and loved.

Somewhere along the way, we lost that simplicity.

Which brings us to Pride.

Nowadays, Pride is mostly ceremonial. In most of the Western world (America right now being a notable dumpster fire), basic rights are largely in place. Gays got marriage. Trans people gained access to legal recognition and medical care that lets them live more comfortably.

I don’t go to Pride to fight for rights anymore. I go because it’s a party.

And when my leftist friends ask, “But don’t you still face discrimination?” my honest answer is: not really.

I live in Western Europe. People respect me. They know my choice of partners. They’ve met my boyfriends and my girlfriends. They don’t have to feel the same way, but they’re fine with it.

This isn’t universal truth. This is my reality.

Yes, sometimes I’ll encounter bigots. Sometimes I’ll feel unsafe. But honestly? I’d feel that way even if I were straight. The world is a scary place. We form groups to feel less alone not more boxed in.

So for me, the LGBT movement is… kind of dead.

And I’m okay with that.

Because it means something worked. It means I don’t need a movement to exist as myself. I don’t have to lead with a label. I can just say: “I’m Zack. I like guys and girls.” And more often than not, I’ll naturally find other colorful, open-minded people not necessarily queer, just decent humans.

That’s progress.

If oppression ramps up again (and history suggests it will), the movement will come back. Louder. Meaner. Stronger. And we’ll fight again for things we currently consider common sense.

But for now? I’m out.

(And to be clear: LGBT organizations are still critically important, especially for people living in places where being gay or trans is punishable by prison or death. That work matters. What doesn’t matter is endlessly litigating what President Gasman the 2nd, aka Donald Trump, said this week. Bigots will always exist. We fight them together when it actually counts.)

The “Left” is Out of Sync with Reality and the “Right” is Taking Advantage of It

Now let’s talk about my other favorite identity: the Left. You guys have seriously fucked up.

I’ve always called myself left-centrist. I believe in a strong welfare state that respects individual freedom and rights, but also has free-market components because humans are greedy bastards, and if we don’t give people incentives, we’ll eat each other alive. It’s not a perfect system by any means, but it works reasonably well if done right.

For the short periods when I could vote local elections in my home country or European elections, I traditionally chose “left-leaning” parties. I was a proud (center)-leftist.

I probably still would be if I were in Germany, for example.

I saw Die Linke. They were interacting with Gen Z, actually listening to people’s problems and offering solutions. That’s what I thought leftism was supposed to be: pragmatic, empathetic, problem-solving. Not policing morality, sometimes worse than the Right. I’m looking at you, Starmer’s UK. Orwell would be proud.⁴

But then I look at the same tweet that started this post, and I see profiles with Marxist-Leninist symbols, Stalinist quotes, and people literally wishing death on the pup. People claiming moral superiority while echoing the same cruelty they claim to oppose. The “sensitive” side of the political spectrum is acting no differently than the insensitive side, all to follow trends instead of principles.

The Right doesn’t need to do much. They just sit back and watch the Left cannibalize itself over optics, purity tests, and terminally-online discourse. Every pile-on, moral panic, and performative cancellation gets neatly repackaged as evidence that “these people have lost their minds.”

And sometimes, painfully, they’re not wrong.

When a masked queer person on a train becomes a bigger threat than actual exploitation happening elsewhere (which is usually what the average Leftist Twitter account is busy with alongside Gooning), the Left has completely lost the plot. They’re so focused on policing appearances that they’ve lost touch with reality and the Right is laughing all the way to the bank.

How Did We Reach Here?

We got here by confusing visibility with progress.

By mistaking engagement for impact. By letting algorithms dictate morality. By rewarding the loudest, angriest voices instead of the most thoughtful ones.

We got here because it’s easier to harass a stranger than to challenge a platform. Easier to dunk on aesthetics than to confront abuse. Easier to pretend you’re protecting someone than to actually do the work.

Gatekeeping didn’t disappear; it just changed costumes.

And this time, it’s wearing a pride flag and calls itself the Gen Z and Gen Alpha of the LGBT movement. Yeah, no thanks. I’ll let Boomers destroy us; at least they would show more empathy.

I know this post was long but need to get some thoughts out of my head. If you managed to read that far, well thank you!

Kind Regards,

Zack

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