Child identifies as a wolf ... WTF?

I am a "leftie", I support LGB rights and I am an atheist.

I believe that exactly this kind of thing is happening. Although I too think the litter trays in school are hyperbole.

Surely the very fact that a guest on radio 4 is speaking out in support of children identifying as furries shows that it's likely that it's happening?

I am not saying any of this to undermine myself or the people and things that I support.

DS used to identify as a police dog (yes that specific) and he'd bark (we'd have conversations 'in dog'). But this was when her was 2 (before her was at nursery. I didn't give him bob martins and a flea bath though.

I worked in a place with a nursery and one day one of the little boys was marching about with a teddy bear shoved up his jumper yelling 'I've got a baby in my tummy!!!!!!'. The staff just said 'that's nice X, come alone it's back time...'

It's call imagination...

When I was at secondary there were girls overly enamoured with the TV series Buffy and were scarily intense over being vampires and were genuinely sucking each others blood etc.
The difference today is that the parents enable it whereas parents back then just laughed, told them they'd grow out of it, made jokes about dracula and put a stop to any silliness getting out of hand. The school had zero tolerance about it of course. I feel so sorry for children today, it's like there are no proper adults.

I identify as a millionaire and everyone needs to validate me and treat me as the millionaire that I am

Or fucking not

My sister taught in California for many years - from the stories she has told me, nothing would surprise me. She was saying recently there was a local school (to her in the US) that had some sort of 'animal'student.

you were being perfectly reasonable until your last sentence

The whole programme (and series) is worth a listen

OK, fair enough.
I have looked for evidence before that this is happening and not found any. What I did find was a lot of evidence that it's being used by certain political and religious movements to push distrust of "lefties" and undermine LGB rights.

If you choose to believe it is true based on Internet anecdote that's up to you. I prefer to wait until there is some evidence of it.

Adults have fallen for what one of the speakers described as
supportive parenting and teaching
rather than
boundaries

"I think I'm a girl"
That's nice, where is your homework ?
has turned into
"oh my goodness we must affirm this temporary identity and trap you in it"

which is doing MASSIVE harm to the mental health of the young
and the safety of women and girls

My son told me, when he was 5, that he wanted to be 'a pelican' when he grew up. I laughed and told DH.

We did not immediately start treating him like a pelican, but it seems that 16 years from that hilarious moment, other idiotic parents would be doing precisely that.

The earth is doomed.

Can someone please pull the brakes on this crazy world so I can get off absolute madness 😠

This ⬆️

My only small caveat is that one person's nonsense is another's true belief. Some people really do believe that it's possible to have a gender identity that differs from their sex (including furry identities), just as some people really do believe that it's possible for a baby to be born without any sperm having been involved (the immaculate conception of Jesus).

Neither of these beliefs should be taught as facts in secular schools.

Sadly, some of the believers get very angry at those of us who refuse to have the belief pushed on to us e.g. males declaring that they have a female gender identity and insisting that they compete in women's sports (even if many women in that sport don't share their belief). Thankfully this doesn't tend to apply to the average Christian but obviously there are some extremes there too.
By contrast, there are a lot of gender identity believers who get angry.... some also get patronising and start talking about simplifying things with crayons.

Fortunately I can happily represent my own lack of belief (that we all have a gender identity) with crayons, should the need arise. A crayon war sounds much more fun than a culture war too. En garde! 🖍️

I don't think it matters whether this case is fake news or not (FWIW I believe it to be true). This is absolutely happening (as witnessed by many including my neighbour mentioned above) and it is being pandered to. By adults who should know fucking better.

It's not 'Be Kind' to agree with a small child who tells you they identify as a hedgehog - it's confusing and potentially dangerous. You like hedgehogs? Great. You want to dress as a hedgehog? Great. You think you are a hedgehog? Really? I promise you are not a hedgehog, you are a human.

FFS

I bet it can tell by the lovely clean toilets.

wveryone who doesn’t agree with me is lying. Everyone who doesn’t agree with me is a Russian bot. Everyone who doesn’t agree with me is right-wing. Everyone who doesn’t agree with me is Hitler. It’s so obvious what’s going on

And one more time WE ALL KNOW THE LITTER TRAY THING IS FAKE NEWS.

Quite! 🤦‍♀️

No of course not but people got very heated on the thread defending children's rights to be whoever and now we're told (probably by the same posters who were shouting people down on that thread) that it's all made up & not happening. 🤷‍♂️

I know. It's interesting that it's when risk to children is exposed that so many deniers appear. Almost as if they want people to stop questioning and looking.

All the abuse cases - Saville, Couzens, Edwards & countless others had whistleblowers who were silenced, marginalised, threatened or too scared to speak out. This is a harmful to children ideology that's operating in plain sight. Even if it's one child in one school (and we know it's many more than that) all children are entitled to be protected.

I caught some of that programme - it was the bit debunking all social media faux outraged posts about furries in schools. There've been a few programmes about it recently. The 'litter box in classrooms' came about because schools in America were putting buckets with stuff like cat litter in classrooms because they have to be prepared to lockdown classrooms and shelter in place if there's a shooter. It's for the kids to go to the loo if needed in that situation.

There was also a recent very sensible analysis in, I think, The Guardian. It's just another thing far right, anti woke crowd want whip up a drama about on social media and when people look for evidence (not of the my sister's friend's hairdresser said on Facebook type) it is, surprise, surprise,not there.

Do you think everyone on the Internet is who they say they are?

But it's not made up?
There was literally a thread on here recently with several parents coming on defending their children's rights to identify as whatever animal.

You need to listen to the fact check in the episode. What they know is a pupil at a school in Scotland was informally recognised by one member as a furry. This is not the same as "children identifying as animals in schools".

The Daily Mail got this through an FOI request, not because the school disclosed it. My hunch is it was a fishing exercise to all schools to find "evidence".

The Daily Mail also introduced the term "species dysphoria".

It's like someone trawling to find evidence of Haitians eating pets. One child in Scotland being referred to informally as a wolf by one member of staff is not a sign of anything.

Just Daily Mail/GB news click bait ridiculousness.

Yep. Your missing the point that everything certain people don’t like is a culture war.

There should not be a single teenager in any UK school identifying as anything other than a teenager. That's the whole point.

Arguably, there shouldn't be any teenagers identifying as teenagers either. People either are teenagers or they aren't.
I don't identify as a woman (despite the fact that I am one). I don't identify as anything.

I might feel I can identify with someone's particular situation i.e. I can empathise with how they might feel about a particular experience, having experienced it myself in what might be a similar way. For example, I can identify with the way teenagers might feel very confused about their place in the world. We all went through it and it seems to be even tougher now, particularly with the pressure that society seems to pile on them identify as x, y or z.

Likewise, I don't identify as straight/heterosexual or as middle-aged. I just am these things. No "identitying as" required.

😂
You sound nice.