a furry declaration on pornography
or, Freak power!
birzeblog
this is the site feed for birzeblog, maintained by alyaza birze
Latest posts
on the matter of visibility in the furry subculture
or, ‘somewhere beyond the barricades, there is a world you long to see’
a theory on the recurrent furry moral panic
or, ‘the haunt of the ideological confrontation’
Black History Month, day 28: Why does any of this matter, anyways?
<main><h1>Why does any of this matter, anyways?</h1> 				 <p>We've more or less concluded my regular posts (there are some others I could make, but I'll probably save them for next year)—so it's time to ask: why does any of this matter, anyways?<sup>1</sup></p> <p>Probably this…
Black History Month, day 27: Nelson Mandela
<blockquote>The cause of communism is the greatest cause in the history of mankind because it seeks to remove from society all forms of oppression and exploitation, to liberate mankind and to ensure peace and prosperity to all.<br>A Communist revolution is different from all other revolutions in history. Whereas in other revolutions the seizure of State power is an end in…
on the tension of furry artistry and high culture
or, the trap of ‘high culture’ and the desert of the future
Black History Month, day 26: W. E. B. Du Bois
<blockquote>If now the world of culture bends itself toward giving Negroes and other dark men the largest and broadest opportunity for education and self-development, then this contact and influence is bound to have a beneficial effect upon the world and hasten human progress. But if, by reason of carelessness, prejudice, greed and injustice, the black world is to be exploited and…
on the matter of the acceptable target
or, the theoretical basis of a politicized, pluralistic expression of furry sexuality
Black History Month, day 25: Marcus Garvey
<blockquote>If anything praiseworthy is to be done, it must be done through unity. And it is for that reason that the Universal Negro Improvement Association calls upon every Negro in the United States to rally to its standard. We want to unite the Negro race in this country. We want every Negro to work for one common object, that of building a nation of his own on the great continent of…
Black History Month, day 24: Kwame Ture
<blockquote>Today we need a clear understanding of where we're going. It is no longer necessary for brothers to scream about guns and what we are going to do. To be revolutionary one must pick up the gun, but merely picking up the gun does not make you revolutionary. And we must understand this very carefully. There are a lot of brothers with guns. Some are shooting us! That's…
Black History Month, day 23: Maurice Bishop
<blockquote>We stand firmly committed to a nationalist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist position.<br>We support fully the liberation struggles being waged by our African Brothers in South Africa, S.W. Africa, Rhodesia, Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau for self-determination.<br>We will not allow the nationals of countries with racist laws designed to keep out…
Black History Month, day 22: Sam Nujoma
<blockquote>Pan-Africanism is a people's movement, a struggle against the unjust and ruthless oppression of the African people. Such oppression is nothing new, for its origins lie in the enslavement and exploitation of the African people. From this experience of oppression and colonial subjugation emerged a new generation of African leaders, mostly educated in European educational…
Black History Month, day 21: Shirley Graham Du Bois
<blockquote>Do not let anyone keep you from working for peace or using the word peace. Do not let anyone tell you that those working for peace are subversive.<br>— Shirley Graham Du Bois on the Korean War</blockquote> <h3>Shirley Graham Du Bois (b. Lola Shirley Graham Jr.)</h3> <p>Shirley Graham Du Bois was, like her long-time…
Black History Month, day 20: Claudia Jones
<blockquote>It was the great Frederick Douglass, who had a price on his head, who said "Without struggle, there is no progress." And echoing his words was the answer of the great abolitionist poet, James Russell Lowell: "The limits of tyranny is proscribed by the measure of our resistance to it."<br>If, out of this struggle, history assesses that I and my…
Black History Month, day 19: C. L. R. James
<blockquote>It is sufficient to say that socialist thought has seen nothing like this since the death of Lenin in 1924, and its depth, range and the repercussions which flow from it, go far beyond the Africa which gave it birth. It can fertilize and reawaken the mortuary that is socialist theory and practice in the advanced countries. "Marxism is a Humanism" is the exact…
Black History Month, day 18: Robert Sobukwe
<blockquote>We want to build a new Africa, and only we can build it[...] Let me plead with you, lovers of my Africa, to carry with you into the world the vision of a new Africa, an Africa reborn, an Africa rejuvenated, an Africa recreated, young Africa. We are the first glimmers of a new dawn. And if we are persecuted for our views, we should remember, as the African saying goes, that it…
Black History Month, day 17: Steve Biko
<blockquote>[...] in adopting the line of a nonracial approach, the liberals are playing their old game. They are claiming a "monopoly on intelligence and moral judgement" and setting the pattern and pace for the realisation of the black man's aspirations. They want to remain in good books with both the black and white worlds. They want to shy away from all forms of…
Black History Month, day 16: Martin Delany
<blockquote>Let it then be understood, as a great principle of political economy, that no people can be free who themselves do not constitute an essential part of the ruling element of the country in which they live. Whether this element be founded upon a true or false, a just or an unjust basis; this position in community is necessary to personal safety. The liberty of no man is secure,…
Black History Month, day 15: Edward Wilmot Blyden
<blockquote>It is the African converts to Mohammedanism and the Negro colonists from Christian countries, who have, thus far, done most for the permanent advance of civilisation in equatorial Africa; and it is these who seem to me to be the only capable and efficient agencies for the work of African regeneration. Mohammedanism—by its simple, rigid forms of worship, by its…
Black History Month, day 14: Cheikh Anta Diop
<blockquote>We must stop fooling the masses with minor patchwork and bring about the ultimate break with all the fake structures (Communauté, Commonwealth, Eurafrica) which have no historical future. Black Africa must finally and definitively be started up the slope toward its federal destiny.<br>We cannot go on running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. The…
Black History Month, day 13: Fela Kuti
<blockquote><a href="https://youtu.be/bC6ouP7qRoQ">Colo-mentality /<br><br>If you say you be colonial man /<br>You don be slave man before /<br>Them don release you now /<br>But you never release yourself<br><br>De ting wey Black no good, na foreign things them dey like: no be so? (He be…
Black History Month, day 12: Abdias do Nascimento
<blockquote>Shut off my body against dangers<br>take me away on the wings of your<br>expanding mobility<br>enlarge me into your lineage<br>of irony preventative<br>against my indomitable passion<br>mature me to your<br>insolent idiom<br>we shall shock puritans<br>unmask hypocrites<br>sons…
Black History Month, day 11: Aimé Césaire
<blockquote>⁵⁰ The slave ship! proclaim my certain and darkest instincts, the sails of black clouds, the polymasting of somber forests and the Calebars' harsh magnificence, a glaring memory of the whitening prow--this skeleton!<br>⁵¹ I hear coming up from the hold enchained curses, the death gasps of the dying, the sound of someone thrown into the…
Black History Month, day 10: Frantz Fanon
<blockquote>We should not therefore be content to delve into the people's past to find concrete examples to counter colonialism's endeavor to distort and depreciate. We must work and struggle in step with the people so as to shape the future and prepare the ground where vigorous shoots are already sprouting. National culture is no folklore where an abstract populism is…
Black History Month, day 9: Ahmed Sékou Touré
<blockquote>We must widen the debates, make them democratic, multiply contacts at all levels.<br>We will be able then to solve rapidly internal contradictions. For it is the constant practice of political democracy, it is the constant practice of social justice, it is the constant respect of the equality of the militants without any distinction or race, religion and sex, it is…
Black History Month, day 8: Thomas Sankara
<blockquote>At this moment, we have little choice but to recognize that masculine behavior comprises vanity, irresponsibility, arrogance, and violence of all kinds toward women. This kind of behavior can hardly lead to coordinated action against women's oppression. And we must say frankly that such attitudes, which can sink to the level of sheer stupidity, are in reality nothing but…
Black History Month, day 7: Walter Rodney
<blockquote>It is a common myth within capitalist thought that the individual through drive and hard work can become a capitalist. In the U.S.A., it is usual to refer to an individual like John D. Rockefeller, Sr., as someone who rose "from rags to riches." To complete the moral of the Rockefeller success story, it would be necessary to fill in the details on all the millions…
Black History Month, day 6: Samora Machel
<blockquote>The masses cannot be regarded as a band of passive individuals who carry out certain tasks that are dictated to them. Millions of men, divided and devoid of a clear awareness of their situation and the potential and means for changing it, are an amorphous mass that the enemy will dominate. When the masses have their consciousness aroused and are united on the right line, they…
Black History Month, day 5: George Padmore
<blockquote>For too long have Africans slept. But now they are awakening—and rapidly—to the realization of their inferior status, to a consciousness of their rights in the world of men and nations. And having awakened, they will not again fall back to sleep. They will fight—and by every means, as recent events have only too well demonstrated—to secure their…
Black History Month, day 4: Patrice Lumumba
<blockquote>O brother of mine, be yours!<br>Let the fierce heat of the relentless middaysun<br>Burn up your grief!<br>Let them evaporate in everlasting sunshine,<br>Those tears shed by your father and your grandsire<br>Tortured to death upon these mournful fields.<br>And may our people, free and gay forever,<br>Live,…
Black History Month, day 3: Julius K. Nyerere
<blockquote>"For it is not efficiency of production, nor the amount of wealth in a country, which make millionaires; it is the uneven distribution of what is produced. The basic difference between a socialist society and a capitalist society does not lie in their methods of producing wealth, but in the way that wealth is distributed. While, therefore, a millionaire could be a good…
Black History Month, day 2: Amílcar Cabral
<blockquote>"The people of Guine and Cape Verde do not take any great pride in the fact that every day, because of circumstances created and imposed by the Government of Portugal, an increasing number of young Portuguese are dying ingloriously before the withering fire of the freedom-fighters. What fills us with pride is our ever-increasing national consciousness, our unity-now…
Black History Month, day 1: Kwame Nkrumah
<blockquote>"While there is no hard and fast dogma for socialist revolution, and specific circumstances at a definite historical period will determine the precise form it will take, there can be no compromise over socialist goals. The principles of scientific socialism are universal and abiding, and involve the genuine socialisation of productive and distributive processes. Those…
Femlandia (Christina Dalcher) is kind of a bad novel
<b>Alyaza Birze (September 3, 2025)</b> <p>in an attempt to balance out my non-fiction reading imbalance (currently, 78% of my reading is non-fiction) i've been working on my backlog of fiction books to read. this is easier said than done—i'm rather selective with my fiction reading—and today's entry, <i>Femlandia</i>…