Do you know what a furry is mummy?

[FridayForever]

Asked my ten year old.

She proceeded to tell me it's where adults pretend to be animals and they'd played it at school cos they thought it was funny.

How do you explain to a child without much concept of sexuality what a fetish is? And that it's not the same as kids pretending to be animals, which is of course perfectly normal play.

My DD came home with this the other day, she’s 10 too - not West London are you? I told her that some adults do this in a romantic way and it’s not a word to bandy around because it doesn’t mean what she thinks it means. She just said ok and left it there. I probably said it wasn’t most adults and was unusual but that the word was dodgy.

Oh God 🫥

How’d your 10yo come to hear of it? Because furries are noted to have some very unsavoury clusters of paraphilia (including the most obvious, yes) so I’d be genuinely worried about what [an older sibling of] one of their friends is doing online that your child’s come home asking.

Am not sure at all as to how you should approach that discussion (or rather, cannot sufficiently arrange thoughts to communicate helpfully) but am sure someone will be along to help soon. Much sympathy 💐

I was told recently it is a big thing - furries at school - by someone who has kids at school. Apparently on mufti days, they come in furry costumes?! My own are young adult and know what furries really mean! I was astonished (and I'm in a rural area - a very long way from W London). Is it a Tiktok thing? I cannot think of another vector.

I would check the content of their PHSE lessons if I was you - you would not believe the shit kids are being taught is absolutely ok and nothing to see here. Thread below on some schools guidance from last year.

Whatever people may tell you - furries are fetishists and some of them abuse animals. Shit like the guidance below minimises all of that.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/safer-schools-issues-guidance-on-furries-in-school

Loads of kids at my DD's high school are 'furries' apparently and go about in animal onesies. One girl wears ears and a tail to school and makes cat gestures and sounds.

The world is utterly batshit.

One girl wears ears and a tail to school and makes cat gestures and sounds.

And they don't send her home, and tell her to put some proper clothes on?

As the article says 'buckle up' for this one.

https://www.avclub.com/the-insane-story-of-a-furry-convention-undone-by-its-de-1798264086

There are a lot of furries on Roblox - could that be the original source.

Fucking hell. 😱

Nope. They technically have a uniform but it isn't enforced in any way whatsoever.

A couple of schools near me have this. I have heard there’s a gang of foxes who wear ears and tails and howl in lessons but don’t get punished.

Same at my DS's secondary school. There is one in year 8 who insists she is a cat and only meows, she apparently wears cat ears and a tail to school and the school don't seem to bat an eyelid. Her request for a litter box was denied though. There's one who thinks she's a dog in year 10 as well.

What. The. Actual.

When did we stop with any boundaries at all? This links to the Abigail Shrier thread here. The kids are really not alright (and I don't blame the kids).

DS learned about furries on TikTok. He was a similar age at the time.

Yet girls can't wear trousers, have to have the correct socks and shoes are monitored as if in the military.

Bonkers.

There seems to be a thing called 'therian' too

When this came up last year it was dismissed by the Association of School Leaders and countless others as "nothing to see here", not happening, fake news.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12213579/How-schools-allowing-kids-identify-cats-horses-dinosaurs.html

Children & young people are really being failed in some schools of this is allowed to happen.

Oh yeah there's a girl who is a bird therian.

Thankfully DD is incredibly not taken in by any of this shit.

what is this??

*too scared to google frankly

Unfortunately lots of kids are using as furries, and lots of schools are allowing it. There was a discussion on my local mum's FB group about a local schools where girls aren't allowed false eyelashes (which I agree with) but are allowed to wear ears and tails (which I don't!). When I said that furries are a fetish lots of mums disagreed with me. I think many have only come across the term in the context of this latest teen fad, and have no idea where it comes from

Iding not using!

Furries have had sexual connotations for many years, even I know this.

But it seems schools don’t quite get the more sinister concepts aka it’s just kids having fun…..

The dismissal often relies on a sleight of hand by declaring "it's all fake news" and then adding sotto voce "that they're given cat litter trays to use to go to the toilet". John Ronson did this on his recent Radio 4 programme Things Fell Apart (series 2) to effectively say that if this single item of misinformation exists, then every other claim made about the bizarre and harmful identities all around us must also be untrue.

It's a conspiracy theory in the states. Not sure where it comes from. I'm wondering if similar conspiracies are taking hold here - I highly doubt any uk schools are letting children howl like wolves in lessons.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/culture/2022/nov/04/joe-rogan-school-litter-boxes-kids-furries-gender

https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/199fifa/why_do_people_want_to_believe_furries_have/

I remained unconvinced that all furries are fetishists. You can easily find furries claiming not to be. This all looks a bit moral panicky to me.

The trans activists will tend to respond to claims of children being allowed to identify as animals in school being made up (and one certainly gets the impression they may have been exaggerated). But can they give a coherent reason why, if it did actually happen, they would be opposed to it?