Children wearing tails?

[ShepherdMoons]

Dd's friend at drama club has recently started wearing a tail.She sometimes wears ears.It looks quite cute but I also find it a bit odd (they are 11).Dd hasn't asked to wear a tail (yet) but wondering if this might be her next question.I appreciate there's a bit of a trend for this at the moment and seems relatively harmless but I do find it odd.AIBU?

This misinformation pops up once a month on this forum.

It's just a bit of a play/fashion as kids move from that awkward child phase to preteens.

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As a child, I desperately wanted a ''horse tail'' to swish about - We made them out of raffia and strips of newspaper and did show jumps in the garden over bamboo poles on flower pots.

But the new ''furry'' thing seems like a creepy fetish

I seen adults doing this!! And 18 year olds... it's a dad thing like goths

Er ... I think I speak for myself and every goth I know when I say that 'being a furry' is nothing like being a goth.

Its children pretending

Dont make it something its not

I remember a thread on this topic not so long back, and it was full of people saying, I'm a teacher, this doesn't happen, it's all a scare story got up by the Daily Mail....

None of this would have happened without the normailisation (ie, brought into the mainstream as family entertainment) of fetish through Pride, drag queens, etc, and the politicisation of identifying as someone or something you are not through "gender" studies and the infiltration into all walks of public life (including schools) of "Stonewall law".

I'm a Haidt fan too, but in fairness furries predate social media. They were around in the 90s when I was a kid.

I think the main change has been a more visible online presence for both the playful child centered and the awful adult fetish side of the furry fandom.

I knew and loved Goths {wasn't one} but Goths are absolutely the antithesis of Furries.

A plump creepy bloke in a furry onesie is the opposite of a Goth.

Honestly you need to look at this community online with a more suspicious eye. I looked into all this for work as I work in children’s services and it really isn’t innocent. The videos that the kids watch are often produced by adults, there’s a high risk of grooming and the language they use is very combative against parents and non ‘therians’. There’s also lots of pressure to buy and purchase ‘gear’, masks etc. Kids can easily become targets for bullying both from their peers who will think they’re weird and the ‘community’ if they’re not showing enough dedication to being ‘therian’.

Christ maybe I’m old school but this would be nipped in the bud immediately. Imaginative play for smaller children- fantastic to be encouraged but role play in everyday life for the over 10s is just plain weird.

Ridiculous. You have no basis to say this. The kid might just want to dress up.

Goth: '' I'm not a Furry''.

It isn't - that's a big misconception

Furry fandom - Wikipedia

I have a couple of kids in a club I run that occasionally wear tails (both 10). They don’t howl/pur/act like animals or anything like that.
that’s how they choose to express themselves so I’m not bothered by it.

But then again they might be accessing all sorts of dangerous people online. Best to be alert and keep children safe from online grooming.

Do you have any actual evidence of this happening at all? It appears to be absolute drivel from what I can find online

I didn’t believe it either until I met her. The furry in case was an older student having done a gap year and had implants placed in her cheeks for screw in whiskers. Completely adopted the life on a Cat. Very rarely spoke and I suspect had mental health issues. Very sad.

The furry fandom is like the anime random online.

You get a whole range of people who engage with it. Some of them are kids who don't fit in and it gives them an identity. Some are kids who like the creative side of it, like drawing the characters or dressing up. Some like the role playing aspect of it. Just like anime, some are men with deranged sexual fetishes who use the fandom as a smokescreen to participate in, and get minors to participate in, their fetish.

Just because some men online use it for fetish reasons doesn't mean all instantiations of pretending to be an animal are fetish driven or bad. Just like anime: just because there exists a whole load of depraved anime porn, doesn't mean that all anime is bad or fetish driven. Just because there's people with a fetish for high heels, doesn't mean that all instances of wearing high heels are fetish driven. And so on.

A 4/5/6 year old playing dress up fine. Anearly teenager who wants/thinks/identifies as a cat ridiculous. The world has gone insane.

I dont know how schools cope with this shit.

but then you'd have to empty the litter tray!! 😝

Sadly it’s not misinformation. I’m a child psychologist and this furry/therian stuff comes up sometimes in the clinic. It’s a big issue in lots of secondary schools and is a lot more than play/fashion.

Oh god not the furry thing. It’s an adult sexual fetish that children have found the “cute” part of. Problem is the online areas for furries are not cute and fluffy and friendly once you did under the surface.

It’s out and out fetishism.

There is one at dd’s school. It even has a YouTube channel. It hisses at people and meows and rolls around on the floor at school.

I’ve offered dd a water spray bottle 🤣

Crazy that parents are openly allowing their children to take part in such a thing tbh. This isn’t harmless dress up. Not to the people they are talking to and will be sharing their photos with.

Look up rainfurrest 2015.