Furries.... Schools warned not to ridicule

The government’s minister for women and equalities is using the debunked catgender story...

Sorry to burst your bubble, Tabby, but the school has denied it, it hasn't been debunked.

but there have always been people who continue to dress up and pretend way beyond childhood. Some of them go on to become actors and there are plenty of people who do hobbyist stuff involving dressing up and role play - historical reconstruction groups for example, and things like Star Wars and Star Trek etc who have regular conventions.

Yes, but you don't get to do your hobby at school during lesson time. This kind of stuff is distracting when kids are trying to study and learn things.

Teachers shouldn't be ridiculing children at all surely? Furry or otherwise.

The internet creates the hype I think, but there have always been people who continue to dress up and pretend way beyond childhood. Some of them go on to become actors and there are plenty of people who do hobbyist stuff involving dressing up and role play - historical reconstruction groups for example, and things like Star Wars and Star Trek etc who have regular conventions.

These children at schools though aren't dressing as furries. Not unless they are very wealthy. Putting on a pair of ears and meowing isn't being a furry - it's just pushing boundaries.

Me too. Any excuse to bend the uniform rule to breaking point and I'm in!
This was back in the 70s as well - teenagers have always been the same.

You are right but the actual dressing up and stating they are identifying as a 🐈 cat or whatever is being done to wind up others and cause friction-in the classroom It's just a youth cult and rebellion.

girene, I think you're spot on. And I think that's why the whole idea of catgender gets people so riled up.

On the one hand, people who mention it are accused of being gullible (if they think it's real) or taking the piss (if they use it as reductio ad absurdam, missing the whole logical point).

On the other hand, I think it probably is real and did happen at peak schools trans craze. There were apparently sincere lists of gender identities circulating that included various objects and animals. They seem to have been subtly vanished or unlinked.

That and the general agreement that catgender is absurd seems to me to indicate society is as a whole passing the peak now. There will still be kids with dysphoria, as there are still kids with eating disorders but nothing near the number there were when it was peak social contagion. Maybe we can now start to move away from validating at all costs to thinking properly about what's in their own long term interests.

The point of 'identifying as a cat' seems to be missed by many commentators (although not by the 14-year old child who brought it up).

It's a simple reductio ad absurdum, as follows:

Trans supporters claim people are authoritative regarding their self descriptions: we should take it that someone who says, "I am a woman" is, in fact, a woman, just on the basis of that statement of self-identification.

But if self-descriptions are authoritative, someone who says, "I am a cat," is, thereby, a cat. This is absurd. So self-descriptions are not authoritative. Hence, saying "I am a woman" does not entail that the person saying it is a woman.

No-one needs actually to identify as a cat for this simple little reductio argument to be sound and its conclusion true.

... A man claiming to be a woman is not, thereby, a woman.

Likewise, a girl claiming to be a boy is not, thereby, a boy.

And, well, who would have thought it? Isn't it - wasn't it always - just obvious? Does it really need spelling out?

Obvious to everyone except, it seems, that daft teacher rightly pilloried by her pupils for thinking self-identification authoritative. And others?

What nonsense all this trans stuff is. How are people taken in by such obvious shite? Teachers? Teachers? Ffs.

I'm sorry, I haven't rtft but did they say why you shouldn't ridicule furries? I can't really think of any reason not to...

Most kids grow out of dressing up by the time they get to secondary school, or they did in my day [she said, oldly]. What's going on for kids who keep doing it? Is it all simply the internet? How and why are they doing it at school? I have so many questions

If this had happened in my day I absolutely would be taking the piss to push the boundaries and see how to trip the silly teachers up

(Disclaimer: of course I don't think Teachers are silly but the 14 year old me would have)

And right there is an example of a moral panic! Not only is Section 28 back, it is "much much worse" and there is "a rampant surge in hate crimes".

Love that she's called Tabitha 😂
That's an embarrassing piece of hyperbole - and she's a Head of English! Writing like a 12 year old 😆

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/rise-of-the-furries-a-purr-fect-storm-for-transgender-rights/

Opinion piece from a transactivist teacher, full of the usual nonsense.

And these groups have not been in schools for ages - precisely the opposite. Until the captured DfE started funding and promoting Stonewall, the paedophile scandal hit Mermaids, Gendered Intelligence, the Proud Trust, Global Butterflies and a host of other adult groups, schools followed the law on political impartiality. Now, following the DfE lead, they allow in political activist groups who openly work to create a hostile environment for women and girls. It has to stop.

Sorry Modest - it's not the reporting of it that's the problem. It is of course a minority of children and schools who have pandered to and enabled this But take a look at the unions for Heads / senior leaders. All frantically hand waving this away - while hiding their unacceptable trans guidelines that openly promote trans issues in schools and remove the rights of women and girls to single sex spaces. Ofsted were until last year a Stonewall champion - they left when Stonewall were outed for demanding that Ofsted downgrade PRIMARY schools for failing to promote gender identity! The capture of education by trans extremism is a massive issue.

10 years ago there were no teenagers parading round schools in cat ears etc. There were also single sex showers, dormitories, sports and toilets with facts about the two sexes being unremarkable.

It IS bullshit - bullshit that trans activist groups have been allowed into schools to sell their "born in the wrong body" nonsense. Terrifying that a Head can openly announce that he'd keep a 12 year old's mental confusion about changing sex secret from their parents. Even one teenager being allowed parade around a school as an animal, is one too many.

Thank heavens for all the reporting - otherwise this would all be kept a secret with children being targeted, alienated from their parents and set on a lifetime of drugs, surgery, ill health and infertility.

Right, but this is exactly my point! These groups have been around for decades. Why is it that only now there is worry and concern? Because it suits the media to have us up in arms about this made up problem. The trans issue is a completely different issue. The media are trying to push these things together because it suits their anti - trans narrative.

Just to be clear - I agree with you about the trans thing. We shouldn't give kids surgery, men shouldn't be allowed in women's bathrooms. But manufactured outrage is the very thing that pushes people on both sides to ever more extreme positions. For example: vaginas have absolutely not been renamed bonus holes. There is a trans supporting leaflet suggesting that this term might be preferred by some transmen when they are being examined. No where does it suggest that in general we should use this term for women's vaginas. But all it takes is for a trans activist to screenshot that conversation, post it on twitter with the caption "unclench your bonus hole, Mumsnet TERFS 😊" and before you know it they're all using that term as a 'protest'. The problems women face in regards to the trans issue are largely created by precisely this type of media. Stop feeding into the bullshit!

To be fair, we have now moved these goalposts way back. There really are not many 'therians' at all. A tiny subsection of the tiny subscection who are furries would class as therians: all those news stories have furries as the photos. As far as I can tell it's not that even therians tend to think that they are literally born in the wrong body, it's more a spiritual or close conenction thing. Like the film brother bear on steroids. They are also nothing new, I used to encounter them online 20 years ago.

I'll tell you what is new, though: the narrative pedalled by these scaremongering newspapers. These newspapers are trying to make a covert point about trans people, and they're trying to trick us into feeling paniced about a tiny online community that has been around for decades. The left is responding exactly as the right want them to: by doubling down and 'affirming' these kids' animal identities. The more we fear and spread this misinformation, the more kids will be exposed by the idea and the more 'therians' you will see.

Yes, if your child genuinely thinks they are a cat then for the love of God get them offline and tell school not to indulge it. But I really do not think that we should be worried just yet.

I wouldn't be surprised! She's probably lacking in self awareness to see what a complete fool she's made of herself.

Moopsi · 27/06/2023 10:48

They were clearly talking about a girl who identifies as a cat. And the girls said afterwards that the whole conversation with the teacher (telling off) started because they said in class that it was crazy to identify as a cat...

The school denies that any pupils "identify" as a cat. Several posters here think it's not happening.

Why would the girls bring up the subject of another pretending to be a cat? I wonder if it's because another kid is claiming to be a cat? I'd say yes, otherwise, it would defy logic.

And that so-called teacher is incredibly ill informed and he should be bloody sacked!

Yes! There was a very 😯clip on gogglebox not that long ago, from Alice Levine's series 'Sexually Active' about virtual furry sex.

Just to add to what @HarpyValley has said, I also see an educational side to furries.
A furry, if my experience is anything to go by, also does a lot of research on their chosen animal character - their biology, habitat, etc. There is also a lot of artwork involved as furries design their fursona. I've seem some amazing creations. Fursuit makers must earn a small fortune because the serious suits are very expensive and very detailed. I believe a decent fursuit costs upwards of £8K.
So not a poor persons hobby. Furries are probably all around you and you never notice. Like train spotters....

Yep - I think much that has been written by the DM about this is rubbish.

The cats are red herrings... 😂

Come on there is no way that isn't a wind up