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.

Young teens have been doing this for years , my friends dd spent a year with a fake cat tail attached to her 12 years ago . Although she wasn't allowed to wear it for school

I don't think we should be asking for photos of kids to be posted 😅

I do agree with you that I think at least some of it is exaggerated or of daily fail level reporting (saner thing).

The increase in kids in cats ears is real, but you only have my anecdotal word for that :)

At my daughters secondary school recently there was a year 8 girl on all 4s in the playground wearing cat ears and a tail, purring and meowing. She had crowds of pupils around her shouting and jeering, and teachers were trying to get them all to move away.

I think kids identifying as cats/wolves/jellyfish/whatever and insisting the school take it seriously isn't happening.

I know girls wearing cat ears is happening but that's just a fad and is as relevant to "safeguarding" as them lik8ng heavy metal, or being an emo. So meh. Complete aeration over nothing.

It's a bit like all the rubbish about Satanist heavy metal bands recording albums with subliminal messages you could hear when you played the record backwards/at 60 rpm from when I was a kid. Complete scaremongering with no basis in reality.

Heaven knows what the motivation is for starting these hoaxes.

It's not a hoax though. My DD went to a joint school event where there were only about 20 girls attending. One of the girls from the other school went around on all fours, went up to the headmaster of DD's school and pawed at this leg and woofed. The poor man didn't know what to do with himself. She also ate her lunch - some kind of pasta salad - directly from a bowl without using her hands. DD said all the kids didn't know how to react so no one said or did anything.

adam several of us are aware of a school where this is happening, I’m wondering if it’s the same one. I have several friends with daughters at that school. Why would we be lying?

My 8yo asked me this a few days ago!
I just explained what it was.
That it can be just adults who like to dress up as animals as a hobby but that sometimes it was also a sexual fetish that consenting adults took part in. I explained it was just a fantasy and not about real animals. More cartoon like animals. I told him its not something he would really be able to understand as a child.
Then he was really embarrassed to have been talking about it with his mates as he hadn't really understood. He said it seemed strange and i said i agreed personally.. but if consenting adults wanted to do that with each other it was none of my business as long as no one is geting hurt by it.
I don't really find it alarming because it's just the Internet. These kids at this age hear these words because someone's older sibling will have shared some meme or tiktok or whatever and found it funny and the younger ones won't get it but pretend they do because they want to be cool..
This is not new. I remember misusing sexual words etc when I was in primary school that I'd come across with no real understanding of what they meant but we just all pretended we knew..
What I'm glad about is that my son felt comfortable in admitting he didn't know what this meant and comfortable enough to ask me about it.
I would never in a million years have felt comfortable asking my parents about the weird stuff I heard in the playground!!

And yes there's a trend for cat ears in primary school... but that has absolutely NOTHING to do with furries! You can buy these cat ears in claires... they aren't fetish wear it's just young girls thinking cats are cute... my 5yo daughter has some in pink glitter. It's just a trend amongst them right now at school.
I do think the furry panic is a bunch of bullshit tbh. Of course they hear these terms....
I heard terms like 'pearl necklace' 'gangbang' etc in primary school... I had no idea what they meant.. just thought it was funny.. and cool to say them to look grown up. I had a vague idea they were 'sex words'... absolutely none of us were actually doing those things.
This 'furry' stuff is just like that.

It's always surprising to see parents evidencing something undesirable amongst children and effectively being called liars. There's enough reported evidence that this is happening in a minority of schools. If society always hand waves away reports / incidents then that's how abuse escalates.
No secondary children should be going into school dressed / behaving as furries. Not a single one.
Primary children can explore being dinosaurs, cats, aeroplanes and the rest. That's developmentally appropriate.
Any secondary school enabling this should be reported - first as a complaint to the school / governors and if that fails then to Ofsted. I don't believe it's widespread but it should be stopped where it's being condoned.

Can someone not identify as the Queen of the Entire Fucking Universe and ban this shit before it gets even more out of hand?

I mean, if we are supposed to play along with people being animals, then Queen of the Entire Fucking Universe is not too far-fetched.

Also, if HRH could also fire all of the politicians before she hangs up her crown that would be awesome.

Most of this ‘furry’ thing in my DC’s school is girls according to the head of year (who seems as puzzled by it as I was)

I wouldn’t explain further. I’d let the child think that it’s just like kids dressing up for now.

I think this article gives a good overview. As always, sex sells. I don’t think there is much point in mentioning that some furies get off on it.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/14/us/furries-culture/index.html#

Lots on twitter/X, reddit (I keep getting a sub for the costumes pushed because I have faved some sewing subs) and discord.

And this is why you need to react to this woke gender ideology crap! I've been trying to alert people for ages, but get shut down

I think this is the point where FWR have jumped the shark

Really? I see this as the point where AdamRyan jumped the shark. But I guess we're all different 🤷‍♀️

Apparently there are lots of furries at DD's school. They bark (and maybe miaow) I gather, and other mums have confirmed being told the same by their daughters. However the uniform rules are pretty strict so i think any actual dressing up could only be done on non-uniform days.

You called?

Wonder why mental health issues are on the rise. Batshit like this doesn't help. Fetishism being introduced to children.

It's not the same as the heavy metal 'satanic panic' though, for a number of reasons.

This is about a lack of boundaries being enforced in schools. Kids need boundaries to feel safe and secure and learn what's appropriate behaviour. Teens need boundaries to kick back against in developing their own sense of self - if there aren't any boundaries they end up doing more and more extreme things to feel like they're actually managing to rebel.

No one in the 90s was pulling out a boom box and listening to cradle of filth in class - that behaviour would have crossed the boundaries of reasonable behaviour and been dealt with. The issue of whether they were listening to satanic lyrics and if so was that harmful or not was a separate one.

If some kids (and plenty of posters here have experience of it) are transgressing normal school rules with their animal/ furry behaviour, that's a problem because: -it's disruptive
-It undermines the school uniform and behaviour rules
-It shows the pupils that the staff are not in control, which in a school setting is disastrous

• its lowering boundaries which in turn endangers children.

The phenomenon might not be as widespread as some people fear, but it's not a good development that is happening at all, it's it?

Surely if we've learnt anything from the last few years its that things that 'never happen' are happening rather too frequently?

Same round here.

Chatting with my DD about a similar thread a few days ago - where a child told her parent she was a therian. DD is into fan art for a couple of fandoms (pretty innocent stuff) which attracts a element of oddness.
There's lots of tribal overlaps between these areas plus quite young kids/adults online communities - almost all of these kids are identifying as something - therians are common, plus hardly anyone has boring old standard pronouns, majority are or claim to be ND. Lots of young kids with YouTube channels and tiktok accounts posting films and personal details. I do wonder if parents are aware of their children's online lives.
She follows a few people and has come across quite a lot of dressing up/cosplay as animals and said it's quite sweet but agreed with me when I pointed out that their audience might not be quite as innocent. She's also quite shocked at how much personal details are shared -.internet safety lessons in school etc are not being heeded..
I'm not at all surprised that this is beginning to permeate into schools.

Oh did she aye?

Exactly! Great answer.

The problem imo is not schools, the problem is the Internet introducing kids to all manner of weirdness.

My approach would be the same as yours.

I do however wish there was more done to protect children on the Internet.