Furries.... Schools warned not to ridicule

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https://www.thesun.ie/news/10935640/parents-teachers-warned-schoolkids-furries/

pretending to be a cat/dog etc is fine especially for very young children and shouldn't be teased for it. Older kids actually identifying as an animal is quite different. Maybe they should be treated as if they are indeed the animal they claim to be - as someone said above cats don't go to school, they don't use the loo they have to go outside or use a litter tray and can't eat chocolate as it is poisonous to them ( as are lots of other things). Regular worming and flea treatments also mandatory. Most shops don't allow dogs unless assistance dogs ditto playgrounds etc etc. They can't expect to have the upsides without the downsides 😁

Sure, but that doesn't make it acceptable for other students or teachers to bully someone who thinks that.

I can't believe this is even a thread. "OMG we're being told NOT to laugh at people who quite likely have SEN or mental health problems or are socially isolated or awkward!! How fucking dare they!"

Absolutely and surely they'll have to prove they've had jabs against parvo, kennel cough etc before they can come to school?.

@Escaperoom absolutely! My dc were paw patrol crazy, dd was sky, ds was chase, they had the costumes & everything 😁 but that was their play at home & in the garden!
I'd have been mortified if they ever asked their teacher to call them chase or skye. But they wouldn't as they knew they weren't dogs & it was a game. They stopped playing it around 6. If they had thought they were dogs & insisted people refer to them as dogs I'd have called a child psychiatrist immediately!

@Flickersy so do you think people should be compelled to engage in other people's fantasies?

Again, do you and all the other posters on here not realise that a) bullying or b) validation are not the only two options available to you.

You can refuse to validate them or engage in this fantasy without being a complete twat to a probably more vulnerable young person.

Shocking I know.

Some things are actually ridiculous though. Ridicule does provide a social purpose.

That doesn’t make it ok to bully a child or anyone else. But it is ok to point out that a belief or a behaviour (not the person) is ridiculous.

‘you are not a cat. Stop being silly.’ isn’t bullying or ridicule. It’s just a response to a child being silly. And it’s milder than the rebuke you’d get for plenty of other ridiculous behaviour at school.

It I started turning up at work in cat ears and insisting people view me as a cat, my employers would tell me stop being ridiculous and that I can play at being a cat in my own time if I like but not to behave inappropriately at work. And they’d be absolutely right to.

@Flickersy the advice is that 'students need to feel comfortable expressing themselves' - well to do that they might need a strong dose of reality to understand that they are not a cat/horse/ dinosaur/ moon.
I don't think anyone is saying they should be bullied, ridiculed or tormented.

Where does the 'being a twat' come from? Not treating them like a dog/ cat?
Doing the above and voicing how this is weird/funny?
Again do you expect others to engage with this fantasy and prioritise the 'furry' over truth and their own views?.

How do you do that exactly when they ask to be called a different name & pronoun. How do you refuse to do that without being a twat? Please explain @Flickersy .

I guess the cat identifies as a cat.

I can only imagine the sight of a 14 year old female presenting as a boy taking a cat for a walk as if it is a dog.

I was cancelled when the kitten arrived, so I don't know how it worked out.

Then why is the OP outraged that people are "being told not to ridicule" these students? Their title, not mine.

But flickersky are people not being bullied into the make believe & nonsense? It's bullying behaviour in my opinion. Look at the way those girls in Rye were treated by their teacher for pointing out the truth.

identifying the behaviour as ridiculous isn’t necessarily ‘bullying’ though.

If a child is vulnerable (and it’s by no means a given that teenage girls in cat ears are all ‘vulnerable’ beyond the standard range of teenage girl vulnerability) then you can both identify the behaviour as ridiculous and inappropriate and provide sensible support and access to therapy.

Brushing the absurdity of the claim to be a cat under the rug isn’t helpful to anyone. Especially if they’re mentally unwell and vulnerable.

You can just gently but firmly say "No Shaun, I'm not going to call you Whiskers. Now please get on with the exercise."

You don't have to laugh at them or make jokes.

It's really not hard.

The article has that in the headline, but the substance of the article makes it clear that any questioning of the identity claim is supposedly ‘ridicule’. It’s not.

No one is arguing that teachers should make the cat identifying child sit on a dunce’s chair holding a sign saying ‘I’m an idiot’ while everyone points and laughs. But the article is about advice that equates just saying ‘no. You aren’t a cat’ with ridicule.

if a child cannot cope with just being told they are a human not a cat, they are probably far too unwell to be at school anyway.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/26/girl-didnt-identified-as-a-cat-post-truth-politics-media-gender-identity

according to this article, it didn’t happen.

I wouldnt bully them or ridicule them. But I wont go along with the lunancy either. In the same way that, sure change your name from James to Sally (or Hannah to Mike) but I wont agree that you've switched gender. Ill show respect but I wont support the delusion.

And they wonder why there is a massive shortage of teachers.

Radical suggestion: teachers teach their subject, pupils concentrate on lessons.

I don't know how these teachers manage to keep a straight face 🤣it's madness

I said the exact same to dh earlier, this is exactly why so teachers are leaving in droves..

Teachers are leaving in droves due to low pay and poor working conditions.

This kind of thing doesn't even register.

I'm a bit torn here. Obviously individual children should never be ridiculed especially when they may be in distress. To "validate" these identities would actually be a form of ridicule because clearly no adult in their right mind actually believes a child is a cat, so they're just playing along to make the child feel good in the moment which is incredibly cruel. One day the child will grow out of it and feel utterly mortified that adults went along with their fantasy and allowed them to make a fool of themselves.

But perhaps a certain of ridicule directed towards the ridiculous can be a healthy thing, and maybe society wouldn't be in the place it is if we weren't so afraid to point out the ridiculous, and maybe very distressed children wouldn't be identifying as animals if there were a healthy amount of ridicule surrounding the idea that a human can be an animal instead of this "anything goes" attitude.

Beg to differ. Knowing I was likely to have to deal with this nonsense, knowing that I was working in a Stonewall champion school with a very active LGBTQIA++ club (run by a TRA teacher in my dept, a somewhat aggressive 6"+ male), knowing that my union would throw me to the wolves for harbouring GC views ... All that was a significant reason to get the hell out of teaching. Not the top of the list but oh god, it registered.

One day the child will grow out of it and feel utterly mortified that adults went along with their fantasy and allowed them to make a fool of themselves.

This, the adults playing Hagrid, who know better, should be ridiculed