Safer schools issues guidance on furries in school

If there are furries at pride it is because they identify as gay/bi/etc but they aren't there because they are a furry

"I can imagine that the male ones do not have quite the same wholesome cutsie vibe!"

They most definitely do not @Boiledbeetle 😭

But part of the point of safeguarding is supposed to be acknowledging that paedophiles will go to extraordinary lengths to access children, which is why robust frameworks are necessary, but that knowledge seems to have been lost and so many adults are putting the validation of adults and ideology above kids safety. It's so worrying.
This.
It should not matter who the adult is or which group they're part of. No adults should be considered beyond the remit of robust safeguarding procedures.

As soon as any group of adults is given a free pass or less scrutiny the people with harmful intentions will seek to join that group.
E.g. If Group A has less scrutiny then those adults with harmful intentions will seek to join Group A. If Group A no longer gives easier access to children then those adults will no longer wish to be part of Group A, but they will try Group B if it looks like Group B is exempt from robust safeguarding. If Group B tightens their safeguarding procedures, Group B will be less attractive to those seeking to harm children and those with harmful intentions will look for another group. That's how predatory adults operate. It doesn't mean that everyone on Group A or B was harmful. It just means that where safeguarding is weak, it will attract those with harmful agendas.

Well said. The capture of social care & safeguarding organisations by the trans lobby is doing immense damage to safeguarding children and I suspect that's what we're seeing here with Gamble.
Remember the NSPCC debacle where it took them days to utter any criticism of their gay male employee masturbating in workplace toilets dressed in a rubber gimp suit (wanking rubber man)? Mermaids had a paedophile adjacent trustee openly appointed despite his history. Stonewall opened their arms to Challenor after their safeguarding disasters despite Stonewall working intensively with schools.
None of the above organisations were shut down, they all continue to work with children despite their actions.
Gamble's reluctance to openly admit an error & minimising the sexual aspects of furrydom seems similar - the sacred caste that is never be held to account and whose demands will always be a priority over children's safety and wellbeing.

How do you know it wasn't sexual for him? Do you think teenage boys would admit that to teenage girls? Or maybe keep it quiet?

I actually like the two on the right. The left one I'm not sure I'd want that even in the loo!

I can understand why people would buy them, they are cute. But to comission them puts those peoples heads in a completely different space to mine! That would be like me getting family portraits done of everyone as smurfs! And I just wouldn't no matter how much i love the little blue creatures.I

I can imagine that the male ones do not have quite the same wholesome cutsie vibe!

Yes agree @Flowerly I obviously wasn't being clear. What I was trying to say is that if safeguarding is working effectively then it doesn't require in depth detailed information about the details of a fetish / craze.

Part of the point of robust safeguarding frameworks (which the statutory guidance and legislation is supposed to provide) is that no-one is above suspicion and it's not possible to have a group that's exempt. Of course, you're right, it's not working at all well in many schools which is why some of them are encouraging children to keep secrets from their parents and transing them in school etc. But part of the point of safeguarding is supposed to be acknowledging that paedophiles will go to extraordinary lengths to access children, which is why robust frameworks are necessary, but that knowledge seems to have been lost and so many adults are putting the validation of adults and ideology above kids safety. It's so worrying.

First one's fairly old, second is the aforementioned spaghetti monster wedding I managed to dig up, and the third is something semi-recent :')
Almost like Instagram Model or E-Girl vibes imho.

Thank you @2fallsfromSSA for addressing this.

Apart from anything else Safe Schools Alliance use plain English which is essential to effective safeguarding and 'safer schools' do not and their website is word salad.

When it comes to word salad, it always makes me very suspicious that there is something that someone is trying to hide.

So i bet the furry community absolutely leapt at the chance to go under the trans umbrella!

Girlfriends house for lunch

Hi mum thanks for inviting my new boyfriend for tea. Is it OK if we eat outside as Trevor is a furry. Oh look how cute he is eating the contents of Dad's vegetable patch. I luuuuv him so much.

Trevors house for lunch

don't be stupid Alison I'm not wearing the suit to dinner with my parents! They would disown me!

I do also have to add;

Furries have been on this gender train for decades saying all the things TRA's are now.

Maybe this is confirmation bias as I've been around them so much, but my impression of the furry community is that they're deceptively large.

I'm not being funny, I remember all the way back in 2012/2013 there was genuine serious talk in the furry community about how to "come out" as a furry to your friends/family.
It was beyond cringe.

@SpicyMoth thank you for explaining. It is absolutely fascinating. I find myself slightly envious of your friends who get to listen to you vent about this.

And given that this is a thread about furries AND we have a sensitive material button on images so it's not viewable to those just scrolling. I would be fascinated to see what people actually spend their spare cash on!😁

ah the old days of listening to the modem connect!

I don't think the issue is one child furry inadvertently turning other children into furries. More that today it's so easy for the adult wrong uns that walk amongst us that would use this as a good way to groom and abuse children.

Your friend may have been subjected to a very early version of what happens now, or he may have avoided it completely. The fact that he continued a childhood thing into adult hood that now has a sexual element for him would suggest he probably did come into contact with things he probably shouldn't have whilst still young.

I'd say I agree with your summary of it honestly - From personal experience, and from talking to other female artists - most of them generally get into it just because they like art and it's where the big money is. Typically through anime or manga interests.

For the ones who buy rather than create, it's more of a way to express themselves, different sides of their personality, different emotions for the most part.
The most common type of pieces are "pin-up" style pieces, these can either be clothed or nude, it's about 60/40 ratio at a best guess.
Though that being said most clothes are usually lingerie, undies, beachwear etc. They more give the vibe of "empowered in their sexuality" rather than provocative though, they're generally more artistic. I think aesthetically the pin-up style is just popular.

A lot will also commission or create "vent" pieces, where you're capturing super extreme emotion/crying. Some extend into self harm or showing cuts/drinking/smoking weed etc.

Some will commission wedding themed images or just cutesy "couple" images - I remember one I was asked to render in a "Flying spaghetti monster" in the night sky looking all ethereal, that one was wild ahahah :')

Then there are also some who, I don't know if they can't have families, or if they haven't found the right person yet or what, but they're suuuuper family centred and will create "fursona's" for their entire, solely online families.
They'll have husbands/wives, children, sisters, parents, grand parents, the whole shebang - All just other furries they met online roleplaying being a family.

Then ofc there's the relatively small subset who just want sex stuff, I genuinely feel this is older teens/young twenties people who generally just have high sex drives.
However this tends to fade away as they get older. Commissioners who would once want only NSFW work from me over the years gradually wanted more SFW stuff, until they didn't really get NSFW stuff at all anymore.

I could post some of the SFW stuff I've done for people if you'd like to literally see what kind of thing they'd commission?

I genuinely think it would floor people to know how much money furries have to throw around on a whim, and how many are in positions of power or working at super well know companies relatively high up and on high wages.

I think it's like with any preference - it can be quite naive/sweet as a child. It doesn't turn into something sexual until the child grows up and becomes an adult. You don't see/hear things until you're ready for them.

i'm not sure I understand? Children don't tend to grow up and seek out communities that have sexualised their childhood hobbies and toys.

Childhood hobbies or toys don't turn into something sexual for no reason. All supported by a massive community of adults.

Furries are already sexual. And if a child has been exposed to them, they've been exposed to that concept, however unwittingly. It's the very definition of grooming.

That description brings the movie From Dusk Till Dawn to mind and not in a good way.

Well, it was pre-smartphones, but it wasn't pre-internet. And none of my peer group were supervised with things like chat rooms and instant messaging. TBH, I think it's because the internet was still quite new back then, so a lot of parents didn't even know how to use a web browser. (Gosh, it sounds like a different era...)

My friend really wasn't some kind of sexual deviant influencing our class negatively. We knew he had 'his thing', we knew it didn't appeal to us, and that was that. We didn't treat him any differently. When he was older and went to uni, he found his scene.

I think it's like with any preference - it can be quite naive/sweet as a child. It doesn't turn into something sexual until the child grows up and becomes an adult. You don't see/hear things until you're ready for them.

I mean, pretty much every pop song is filthy. I didn't get any of the references when I was a kid as I just didn't think that way. As an adult, I hear them all now...

Good catch!

For posterity here's the photo from that tweet.

MAP = Minor Attracted Person (pedo in old money) and a furry in the corner. How cute. How innocent!

https://twitter.com/richk13/status/1652217362861490177

Anthropomorphic animals would never be used to groom children or used by a group of acknowledged perverts right?

But many moons ago was your furry friend able to go online with the phone in his pocket on his way home from school and talk to grown men pretending to be 15 years olds?

An usual FETISH you meant to say. It's not a fucking hobby.

Some of you are talking as if this is a new thing.

I went to a school with a furry many, many moons ago. It wasn't sexual when we were in school, in the same way that boys and girls "going out" wasn't sexual - dating in schools rarely went beyond holding hands and kissing.

Yes, now that he's an adult, there is a sexual element to it - but he wasn't a danger to others, or at risk by others when he was a child. He was just a boy who identified as a furry creature. TBH, I don't think anyone other than his closest friends realised when he was a kid - mainly because he didn't have the money to buy a furry outfit then.

Having denied any sexual element! So dodgy.

At least there are plenty of people on Twitter calling him out.

It must be like whack a mole for you 2falls. I hope you know how grateful we all are. I thank God you're on top of all of this.

All the hug options were furry

Sorry.