Year 8 student identifying as a CAT

[PonyPals]

AIBU to think that this world is becoming so screwed!
The stuff you read these days is truly horrifying.

www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/school-life/furries-australia-year-8-melbourne-private-school-girl-identifies-as-a-cat/news-story/04f31c482d0701cc1b42e047b5bcfce2

The school is happy to support this WTF

Some of the posts here are actually really nasty. Assuming the article is true and not made up bollocks designed to get people frothing and/or posted to grab screenshots for Twitter to show how nasty we all are ... there appears to be a young girl who is non-verbal (for whatever reason) who is identifying as a cat. Given she is non-verbal, I'd assume that she has something going on wrt to SEN and overall her response and reaction to being in the world. Maybe being allowed to role play as a cat is what keeps her in school. Maybe it keeps her happy and from self-harm. We don't know. But whatever it does not merit nasty posts about litterboxes and so on. These come across as very disablist.

My DD age 7 (with autism) tries to pretend she's a cat. She hisses and miaows and wants to be stroked like a cat etc. She is quite obsessed, and I think if she knew all about this "identifying" crap I would say she'd probably be into it. However, we don't allow it. She can pretend at home and we indulge her from time to time as it makes her happy, but when she's outside the home and goes to school etc. she's a girl, and that's it. I have no problem with her using her imagination, but obviously she can't BE a cat so we make sure she's fully understanding that it's just pretend. I expect her to grow out of it soon enough though - she did have another "thing" (also animal related) before this current cat obsession.

Similar stories have been making the rounds about schools in the US for a while - guess what, it's a load of rubbish:

eg
www.snopes.com/fact-check/furry-protocol-wisconsin/

This is so right. Pretending people’s delusions are reality is not kind. It’s harmful.

This is why I steer well clear of MS media.

It reminds me of the old "if a man can marry another man then what's to stop him marrying his sister or his DOG?" questions.

If they identify as any sort of animal, should they even be allowed into the school (except as a specimen in the biology lab)?

Beyond ridiculous - everybody knows you can't teach cats anything.

Well the girls wear tails sometimes apparently.

but it's considered harmless. They don't do anything other than pretend to be cats. It's not sexual. My girls just think they're a bit odd.

The school does support all the trans rubbish though and there are several girls who are now saying they are boys (it's a girls' school thankfully) I know of one girl that the school supported including name change and all kinds of shit, but chose not to tell the parents at all.

Hope her parents don't have her neutered.

It's really not a load of rubbish at my dds' school! They exist there. (We're in the UK).

My niece wanted desperately to be a pony, when she went to get new shoes she lifted her “hoof” backwards so the shop assistant could shoe her. She was three, so all was fine. She is now a teen and we believe she now identifies as a sloth, barely moves and would probably be happy to hang about in trees covered in moss if her mean parents didn’t make her do stuff.

Regardless if the article is true or not, there are people on this post stating that they have come across student at school with mental illness, identifying as cats

But it's reasonable and valid to ASK questions. We shouldn't be scared of asking "what if" questions just in case we can't justify our beliefs.

Ridiculous questions can be easily and robustly answered. There's no harm in asking them.

There was a girl in my school (25 years ago) who identified as a dolphin. There are clearly additional needs in the picture here and the press has jumped on it as something akin to trans issues.

My mind just went straight to that weird big brother scene with George Galloway and Rula Lenska where he pretended to be a cat 🤣🤣🤣.

This is where we are at now, if you can say you are something and everyone just has to accept it, where do you draw the line. "I'm a man"... "you don't look like a man" "well I feel like one so you have to accept I am one" "oh OK if you say so sir"... cat, dog, goat you can be whatever you feel like and everyone will go along with it. What do you think the email signature would be for someone who identifies as a cat 🤔 (feline/pussy) 😆

I don't care what other people do, I only care about me or my children being forced to go along with the pretence, in the interests of "Be Kind".

Technically, it's transphobic to assume that anyone who doesn't identify as cis-gender must have a disability.

(and yes, "cat gender" is as valid as any other gender in some circles)

When my sister was young she wanted to be a police horse when she grew up lol. Not even just own a horse or join the police which was strange.

That is cute.

I'm sorry but she needs special help outside of mainstream education.

Yep, we had a pupil join us last year and we were told they ‘identify as a cat’ as part of the pupil info exchange meeting.
Not told whether to indulge it or not, but I just got on and taught them as usual with no issues - there were no instances of cat-like behaviour all year so I presume they understood that being a cat was for home only. Yes, the pupil is ASD and relatively high functioning.

The issue here is that kids pick up on this stuff, start using Tik Tok, Discord, Twitter etc and see adults behaving like this and it all becomes valid behaviour for them

Regardless of this particular story / urban myth, I agree that this is the bigger issue along with constant normalisation of expanded boundaries. Kids mimic adult/others behaviour. It’s what they do. Very useful in learning how to hunt in hunter/gatherer communities. Very useful in learning social cues in densely packed urban communities. Less useful, arguably, in learning about furries or adults who wear diapers etc

This. I suspect there's an awful lot going on here that we're (rightly) not party to, for a child who obviously has complex needs. I don't think condemning the school to trial by tabloid is helpful here.

This reminds me of Dave Chappelle:

"I now identify as a white man, I'd like some goddamn respect and a bank loan".

Whether or not a specific report is true, and regardless of the circumstances in that individual case, society needs to decide whether it is possible for a person to change something fundamental about themselves - something that could not be changed naturally - such as their gender, age, race or species. (I know age changes naturaly - but it cannot consciously be changed, theoretically the rate of change can be sped up or slowed down using gravity for example but it cannot be reversed.)

To me it's illogical that I could legally become male but not change my race or age. There was a case not long ago where a man in the Netherlands (I think) wanted to change his age because he felt younger than he was, and doctors said he had the body of someone 20 years younger. This man had his case rejected, which I disagreed with. Personally I feel that I am closer to a woman 20 years my senior than I am to being a man of my age. I look old, I feel old, my body feels old.

When someone says they feel of a different race to what they were born as (in all the cases I've seen, it's a white person saying they are black), it's generally treated as highly offensive. But, physically, surely I am closer to being a black female than a white male?

When someone decides they are of a different species, they are either laughed at or seen as a pervert. I guess it seems more removed - I probably am closer to being a male human than a spider (I fucking hope so anyway). This sort of change may become more plausible in the future as animals increasingly gain rights, particularly "human" rights as some people argue monkeys or apes should have.

It all comes back to the fundamental question: can someone change something so fundamental as their gender, age, race or species? It's really a black and white issue, it's yes or no. Currently we have an untenable position where gender can be changed but the other things can't, even then gender can't really be changed (see all the bans on transwomen in female sport - regardless of your position, it's clear that transwomen are not seen as being female enough).