Having not been in the fandom that far back, I can only go on what I hear from other people. By itself, this looks like a pretty reasonable summary of things, even if it smells a little of pushing a personal perspective/opinion as how things were (I don't mean that to be as negative as it sounds).
My problem comes from when I look at this not by itself, but taking into account what I've heard from other long time members of the fandom. Others have talked about remembering porn and adult themes going way back. And it seems I vaguely remember some artists with portfolios going pretty far back, or a case or two of someone with a very old fursuit photo and my thought being, "Umm, that is much more sexually suggestive than what I've used to seeing around today." I wish I could link to things, but I don't remember names and specific cases as things being from that time period was not of special interest to me (especially with me not having been around long enough to thing artists as being new vs. familiar, old-school, etc.).
So when I see conflicting reports, someone saying things were not present or less present, and others saying it was about the same, I am more likely to believe the latter, if only because it is easier to miss seeing things than it is to see things that were not there.
To be honest, despite having seen some of the darkest depths of the fandom, and seeing plenty of the adult stuff around, it never really has looked more sexual to me compared to the rest of the non-furry internet. Heck, I've found fur-meets to be rather bland in that regard compared to my co-workers (who I would have expected to be more repressed/shy/nerdy in that regard than the average person), and the furs look like saints when compared to typical college and university students. To say the fandom was much, much cleaner in the past almost would make me think of that as being freakishly abnormal in the past, not the present.
Having not been in the fandom that far back, I can only go on what I hear from other people. By itself, this looks like a pretty reasonable summary of things, even if it smells a little of pushing a personal perspective/opinion as how things were (I don't mean that to be as negative as it sounds).
My problem comes from when I look at this not by itself, but taking into account what I've heard from other long time members of the fandom. Others have talked about remembering porn and adult themes going way back. And it seems I vaguely remember some artists with portfolios going pretty far back, or a case or two of someone with a very old fursuit photo and my thought being, "Umm, that is much more sexually suggestive than what I've used to seeing around today." I wish I could link to things, but I don't remember names and specific cases as things being from that time period was not of special interest to me (especially with me not having been around long enough to thing artists as being new vs. familiar, old-school, etc.).
So when I see conflicting reports, someone saying things were not present or less present, and others saying it was about the same, I am more likely to believe the latter, if only because it is easier to miss seeing things than it is to see things that were not there.
To be honest, despite having seen some of the darkest depths of the fandom, and seeing plenty of the adult stuff around, it never really has looked more sexual to me compared to the rest of the non-furry internet. Heck, I've found fur-meets to be rather bland in that regard compared to my co-workers (who I would have expected to be more repressed/shy/nerdy in that regard than the average person), and the furs look like saints when compared to typical college and university students. To say the fandom was much, much cleaner in the past almost would make me think of that as being freakishly abnormal in the past, not the present.