23 Sep, 2024: Our collection of material documenting harassment, doxing and allegations of illegal behavior against MAPs, on the part of a purportedly "MAP" group, is now complete. A second article documenting a campaign of disinformation by said group is nearing completion, and will be shared here.
Cub
Cub is a type of furry art (pornographic or not) featuring a childlike anthropomorphic animal (cub), often in a sexualized situation. Cub porn can take many forms: drawings, stories, audio, comics, animations and so on. There are communities focused on cub, and they are often shunned by the rest of the furry fandom due to this kind of media being too close to "pedophilia".
Due to being cartoon animals, it is sometimes difficult to tell what is a cub and what is not. A real animal, such as a cat, is an adult at the age of four, but cubs often act like human children at that age. Plus, a character can be an adult, but retain childlike features for cuteness, such as pokémon and digimon. This has led to speculation about what is considered cub and what is not.
Bans
Sites like Fur Affinity have banned cub porn (specifically, Fur Affinity banned cub porn in November 24th, 2010[2]) and have tried to regulate it in various ways, some ways more popular than others. One of them, set to take effect at the end of June 2023, is a clarification in the acceptable upload policy to explicitly ban characters that have childlike proportions, which bans many kinds of pokémon and digimon, if they feature in sexual situations, even if the character is of age (a pokémon can spend it’s entire life in it’s first evolutionary stage and digimon can alternate forms). The new rule has caused outcry.[3]
Another site, Sofurry, banned cub porn as well, but has not made such drastic changes to their policy, preferring to rely on common sense, rather than proportions.
In 2010, Fur Affinity user Cubprotest reported Fur Affinity to Alertpay, arguing that Fur Affinity was hosting pictures that could be construed as child porn. Alertpay then withheld the donations due to Fur Affinity until the site banned such content. In November 24th, 2010, Fur Affinity banned cub porn. The then administrator, Pinkuh, left her role, as she found it unacceptable to ban fantasy characters. Sofurry banned cub porn[4] in March 2018 due to it’s head administrator, Toumal, fearing that a change in the way the law was interpreted could cause him legal trouble for allowing such content in his site. Another furry art site, Weasyl, never allowed such content.
The cub porn ban on Fur Affinity caused a surge in Inkbunny’s popularity. Inkbunny is a site started by Starling,[5] who featured in the only Western printed pornographic cub-centered comic, Softpaw Magazine.[6] Inkbunny allows cub porn to this day, 13 years after it’s launch. With the new rulings on Fur Affinity, Inkbunny experienced another popularity surge in 2023.
MAP community
Due to cubs not being children, but resembling them in many ways, many MAPs cherish such content. There was a sizeable number of open MAPs on Inkbunny, using the flag to identify each other. Many were anti-contact, some were pro-contact, but like many others, the site seems to have taken to censoring the MAP Identity.
However, not every cub artist identifies as a MAP. In fact, a similar strife to that found between pedophiles and shotacons/lolicons exist among cub artists, with them trying to distance themselves from pedophilia - claiming their drawings do not represent real children, thus do “not count”. In the case of cub porn, since the characters are not even human, some cub artists distance themselves even from shotacons and lolicons, since shotas and lolis are human characters, albeit fictional, and thus “more pedophillic”, although that is very rare and most cub artists don’t have a problem with shotas or lolis.
Paraphilic Infantilist cub
There are people who enjoy cub without the pornographic aspect. Such is the case with babyfurs, who enjoy looking at art featuring underage cartoon animals who act and are treated like babies. That’s not because they are sexually attracted to the character itself, but because the viewer puts themselves in the place of the character, imagining such things happening to themselves. That’s because babyfurs usually are also ABDLs[7] (adult baby, diaper lover) and enjoy age play. They don’t lust over the character, but lust over the idea of being in the role of that character. Many of their fantasies do not involve sexually explicit scenarios, so a babyfur may settle with non-pornographic cub works.
The same can be said about other fetishes that feature cubs. The furry fandom has many people who are open about their sexual fetishes and they might consume cub not because of the character, but because the character is doing something that appeals to the viewer’s particular kink. The same response could be elicited by a character of age.
External links
- Reizinho’s Regarding Cub Porn
- Advice for cub artists
- Infinitydoom’s Not a Loophole, about Fur Affinity’s ban based on character proportions.
- Out furry pedophile holding the flag
- Miniwolf fan art
- Babyfur
See also
- Zoomap
- Child Pornography
- Lolicon - Drawn girls
- Kemono lolicon features lolis with animal characteristics.
- Shotacon - Drawn images of boy characters.
- Prohibited images of children