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.

Yes. It's true. It happened. Interesting that you're so keen to disbelieve things that don't fit your narrative.

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.

No, they were listening on the playing fields and handing round Walkmans 😂They were still listening at school though. I know because I was there and my recollection is the papers were twisting a teen phenomenon they didn't understand into a moral judgement. Which teenagers love.

The same with goths in the 80s and emos in the 2000s.

Honestly, what is the actual risk here? I can think of far bigger problems facing schools at the moment than kids dressing up and barking at each other at break.

It's the Internet. I'd have to be pretty credulous to believe everything posted on it, especially when there is good evidence that this kind of story has been circulated as a hoax a lot in the last few years.

The school this is happening in near me is also publicly denying that it's happening. Of course they are. They don't want that reputation. They want people to think it's a hoax.

But I've spoken to friends with DC at this school and they say it is happening. And the local Facebook group has loads of examples of it happening too. Why would all these children and parents be lying about it? Some of them are really worried about it. And my DD experienced it too at this event.

Do you remember when a woman was raped in an NHS ward and the NHS said it couldn't have happened because there was no man in the ward? When in fact there was a transwoman who raped another woman. The NHS lied and gaslighted the rape victim in order to protect their adherence to gender ideology. Open your eyes. This is happening.

E.g. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/60192/1/stop-trying-to-make-cat-children-happen-schools-teachers-trans-pupils%3famp=1

I'm a scientist at heart. If there isn't evidence for a hypothesis I don't believe it. And sorry, some anonymous posts on the Internet aren't evidence.

As yet noone has proof that children are being allowed to identify as animals at school and are being treated as those animals. When there is some proof then this kind of moral panic is justified. Until then, for me it's in the "conspiracy theory" bucket.

Young children have always enjoyed dressing up and pretending to be and playing as things like dinosaurs or pirates or cats.

But this is all on an understanding between adults and children that this is recognised as cos play or just play and is not real.

Where things have gone batshit is where the society starts to back this play and blurs reality - so yes you may have a willy and a beard but if you say you are actually a woman then you are actually a woman, yes you may walk on two feet with the DNA of a human but if you say you are a cat then you actually are a cat and despite dying out millions of years ago, actual real life dinosaurs can be recreated simply by 6 year old Timmy identifying as a T-Rex and having the costume to back it.

This denial of reality is incredibly dangerous, confusing and is causing mental health issues amongst young people.

Furry fandom is a step away from bronies. Who fantasise about sex with my little pony characters. It’s all a fetish. Pedo’s dream.

That type of thing is disgusting. Denying no man there so no rape happened just to keep the man happy and play into his fantasy. Sod the woman who was raped, she doesn't matter as long as the fuckin man in a dress is ok.

Sod men in dresses they are not women they are dressing up as their version of what they think is a woman, basically acting or role-playing. I will not respect a rapist ever no matter how he wants to describe himself I'm not joining in with his fantasy.

Yes. Actually buying into or affirmative of the fantasy is odd. No wonder an increasing number children are messed up. It feels like child abuse enabling a madness. Or grooming.

Ds had a furry at his school. Not one of those wears cat ears for fun but a 'proper' furry with an unsettling social media presence.

I think it's an extremely problematic fandom which like lots of things has crossed over to the mainstream.
Ds is part of a geeky hobby which often attracts furries and they are rather looked down on my most people because it's all rather grim

I didn't include a link to the NHS story as I suspect those thinking it's all made up would rubbish any source I linked to. But if you just Google something like "transwoman rape single sex ward" you will find lots of articles about it. It was in The Times etc. and was debated in the House of Lords.

Curiously (or not) I couldn't find a BBC article about it. Funny that. It's almost as if some parts of the media are also in denial.

Also what "proof" do you want of children identifying as cats? No one can take a photo of these kids and share it! The schools are going to deny it. I know it's happening. Calling it a conspiracy and a hoax because schools are denying it is very naive.

I think the whole thing is very weird and the worry is that it's trying to normalise fetish and get children involved. I remember someone on here saying they'd seen someone with two human 'puppies' on their high street going about like it was a perfectly normal thing - not a fetish that should be kept behind closed doors. It's all very disturbing.

That's a false conflation and I take offence to being called a rape denier. The NHS rape was not made up and as far as I recall, the police dod not doubt the woman had been raped, but the NHS denied it could have happened on the ward.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/hospital-says-patient-could-not-26506744.amp

That's completely different to being asked to believe an anonymous Internet post about children identifying as cats at school, when there is mounds of evidence of that exact story being spread as a hoax.

@AdamRyan that was my point really- I didn't mean the kids weren't listening covertly in school (I certainly was ) . There's a massive difference in doing something surreptitiously which teachers can turn a blind eye to, contrasted with overtly challenging the teachers which is what is happening in some cases (my analogy with putting the music on in class for everyone to hear and effectively challenging the teachers to deal with that).

Irs a boundary issue if its happening overtly and schools aren't dealing with it, same as turning up dressed as a punk/goth/ whatever else that isn't technically allowed in school.

IMO it's the lack of boundaries that is harmful for kids and disruptive to education.

All the crap they're exposed to online has the same effect, normalising everything, eroding boundaries. That damages their ability to recognise dodgy behaviour and to protect themselves from situations that might be harmful.

Schools receiving confusing messages on how to deal with kids and their identity has caused this problem. Teachers don't know what they are and aren't allowed to challenge any more and what is going to land them in trouble (going by what the many teachers I know tell me).

@AdamRyan I didn't call you a rape denier. And actually the police didn't believe the rapist until a year later when the CCTV footage was published and the NHS had to admit it.

I'm drawing a parallel between this case and people being disbelieved in other situations because it goes against someone's narrative. You are disbelieving all the people on this thread who have experienced children identifying as furries. A lot of people are keen to call it a hoax because of the uncomfortable links with gender ideology. Schools have a very good reason to deny it. Parents like me have no reason to make it up.

Perhaps ask yourself why you're so keen to disbelieve these stories?

What "proof" would you accept?

Irs a boundary issue if its happening overtly and schools aren't dealing with it, same as turning up dressed as a punk/goth/ whatever else that isn't technically allowed in school.

This is the thing. I haven't seen any evidence it is happening in schools, all claims it is have been debunked. We are just left with anonymous Internet posts.

It's a classic moral panic to me. Like emos:

https://davidbuckingham.net/growing-up-modern/emo-and-the-paradox-of-contemporary-youth-culture/mediating-emo/

In early 2008, a 13-year-old girl called Hannah Bond hanged herself in her bedroom in Maidstone in the South-east of England. In its reporting, the Daily Mail ran a story headlined ‘Why no child is safe from the sinister cult of emo’

15 years later, noone is talking about "the sinister cult of emo". Instead it's furries.

In the current climate, I think we should be extremely careful not to handwave away concerns about things that 'would never happen' etc due to the vast amount of seemingly ludicrous things that have actually happened.

For sure, this doesn't mean we should fly into a panic, but anything which could impact on children's safety and/or quality of their education bears examining further. Doesn't it?

If you think not, ask yourself why, who benefits from ignoring the potential issue?

Some kind of verification they actually happened.

Do you believe aliens have visited America and anal probed multiple of the population?

Do you believe that people can live on air if they are pure enough?

Do you believe society is controlled by lizard people disguised as humans that only a few of us have been lucky enough to see?

I don't believe any of these things, until I have some kind of verification of their veracity.

A few years ago (7 years approx?) I went to visit Leeds Armouries who happened to be hosting a My Little Pony event. It was 10% young children and their families and 90% men, mostly in their late teens and early 20's dressed as ponies and princesses. Now most of those men were likely innocent, but it seems like a pretty handy event if you wanted to go for nefarious reasons.

Where little girls (and some little boys) going and dressing as ponies and princesses is not sinister, and some adult men dressing as ponies and princesses could be seen as odd but harmless - the fact that there's a crossover causes safeguarding concerns. When it comes to furries, give the men the anonymity (and "cute" factor) of wearing a full furry outfit and you've got an obvious disaster waiting to happen.

I agree that kids playing as animals amongst themselves isn't sinister (although schools should grow a spine and stop it from happening in lessons), but the potential for overlap with the adult furry scene (whether kids looking this stuff up online or parents naively taking their kids to furry conferences etc.) is of huge concern, not exaggerated "satanic panic" stuff!

Your analogies are vacuous.

What kind of verification would you need in this situation? You haven't answered that.

I would ask yourself why you're so keen to disbelieve the experience of parents on this thread. What do we have to gain in making up stories about it? You already called me a liar about my DD's experience.

Regardless of what evidence is acceptable for a phenomenon existing or not (bit of a strawman, no one is saying we should believe unevidenced claims for anything), I can't imagine that anyone would disagree that kids need boundaries in school and teachers need to be supported to maintain them?

And that dodgy training and lack of guidelines over the last decade is responsible for eroding those boundaries.

If you think kids don't need boundaries and school should be an anarchist free for all, perhaps you could cite evidence as to why that's a good idea, as that's certainly not a point of view I've come across and I'd be interested to learn more.

When these are our kids' role models it's not really surprising this is happening is it?

Christ on a bike, my eyes

We know for certain that some people do identify as cats. For example, Scarlet Blake (male) identifies as both a woman and as a cat.

'During her evidence, she claimed she had a fragmented personality, which included being a cat, and miaowed at the jury to show how she would interact with friends.'

https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2024/02/26/cat-killer-sentenced-to-life-for-oxford-murder-as-part-of-sexual-fantasy-inspired-by-netflix-documentary/