Furries in schools

[Jamfirstest]

I have name changed for this. Forgive me if this isn't the right board but I need to talk this through to get my head around this.

Another parent has just told me there is a furry community of young people at her dc secondary school which is in my city and an ordinary comprehensive.

The school is humouring the accessories and so on and they now have a designated room in the school to congregate. Apparently there was a request for a litter tray in the toilets though this was denied (google tells me this aspect might have been a hoax attempt).

The secondaries around here are super strict with uniforms. How is this allowed???

So I'm told some children will only respond in animal noises.

I knew what a furry was before. What adults do for fun is none of my business. But this in schools???? Or have I been under a rock?

Yay! More reasons I am home educating my child. Fuck off with all this nonsense

That's what I've been told by teens I know. Kids are doing it as a wind up, and if teachers are signed up to gender identity they're in a bind.

If you believe this, I've got a bridge to sell you.

My friend husband works with ‘a cat’. Ears and meows. It’s in trendy media so I guess it’s par for the course.

At dds secondary furries are so last year. They are now identifying as "Therian" which is pretty much the same as a furry as far as I can tell. They bring their masks and tails into school and bounce around on all 4s. There's only a small cohort of therians at the school, but they are there.

Dd thinks the whole thing is bonkers. She comes home laughing about various Therian odd behaviours, but it doesnt bother her, she just finds it funny.

I thought I'd already peaked but this!

Yes we've got "therians" too, no idea what they are!

Perhaps if the staff went in to work as 🐱 🦊 etc the kids would start wearing their uniforms ☺️

Surely they just need to get the two most uncool teachers (Mr Drone-On, Head of Geography, and Ms Tuck-Your-Shirt-In) to do a full-school assembley where they go into raptures about their amazing furry hobby, which they combine with historical re-enactment in their spare time, to kill it stone dead?

Like when the Deputy Head of 6th Form told us to turn the music up in the Common Room, as he used to like The Doors. Thanks for ruining it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/1c4mq6v/who_teaches_a_furry/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/13slxa0/furries/

https://www.reddit.com/r/furry/comments/1akurjx/my_teacher_discovered_that_im_a_furry/

Seems to mostly be kids wearing fake ears. But then, some seem to think this is an 'identity'. IDK.

kids are brilliant at winding teachers up, teachers now don’t know which way is up re identity - queering the classroom has succeeded 😆

It's a TikTok trend, I feel popular amongst some children who are or possibly undiagnosed autistic. Girls who aren't in the cool crowd and still quite young in their outlook. They'll spend hours attempting to perfect the perfect cat leap.

But it's the links to abusers and a fetishistic underworld that's the issue.

I blame the parents, if you bring your child up wearing animal outfits how are the poor kids supposed to learn that they are human beings.https://www.johnlewis.com/john-lewis-baby-lion-shower-resistant-windbreaker-jacket-orange/p111159311

Ears were definitely a thing when mine were wee. Stick ears on it and charge an extra £10, was the cynical response.

I conducted a quick vox pop.

So, there are 'furries' in our local school, but this is just 'odd people' with a 'hobby'(the suggestion was sexually motivated) of wearing fur suits.

There is at least one 'therian', who acts like a dog and apparently identifies as a dog.

A girl in DDS class is apparently a wolf.

Huh, is this why I keep seeing teens with random ears and tails out and about? I thought it was just a trend I was too old to to understand. Are they genuinely claiming that they identify as animals or is it largely a wind up/way of being 'different'?

My DC are preschool so teens are largely a mystery to me 🤷‍♀️. My local fb is full of parents complaining that their children have been sent home for wearing the wrong shade of black trousers to school so I doubt they are letting pupils dress as animals around here.

There isn't. There is no proof of this happening in any U.K. schools. No child is being given a litter tray. Wearing cat ear head bands ISNT identifying as a cat!

No they're not claiming to be animals. It's a fashion thing.

There might be kids who like dressing as animals and there might be kids who muck about at break time pretending to be animals.

That isn’t the same thing as schools condoning it. We don’t tend to police what kids do at break and pretending to be an animal would be preferable to hanging out in the toilets vaping.

If there are schools who let kids wear ears in lessons or whatever then that’s ridiculous.

I'm in some groups for parents of autistic girls and its really common there. I think Therian, rather than Furry (the former isn't a sex thing, just an identity thing). Our school definitely allows masks and tails and for these students to be socially excluded by other kids for being hard work and weird. It's the mentality that you help someone by giving them exactly what they want, rather than being the adult in the room and drawing a line. Kids do not know when to stop.

In our school, gender is kind of passe, it now makes you "deep" or "interesting" to have multiple personalities, with one or two of them being an animal of some sort and with at least three sets of pronouns between your identities, so people always get them wrong and you can tell them how cruel they are being to you. TBH, these kids are hard work and I am perfectly happy that my DD dropped a friend for going all in with it.

I am seeing more teens wearing kitty ears (usually attacked to headphones/ear defenders).

I remember buying these years and years ago for my niece!

There is definately a whole culture of infantilising/refusing to grow up, isn’t there?

Last person I saw with kitty ears was a young man (all age teens/early 29s) dressed like a toddler in pastel links and blues with loads of badges and ear defenders/kitty ears. He was very tall and rather chubby.

https://furscience.com/whats-a-furry/

I'm amazed I hadn't come across this before.

Sounds like that one needs to be muzzled and on a short leash.

All you posters who don’t believe this is happening in schools are in for a big shock either when your own children attend school or if someone you know in real life confirms it. My DD has at least one furry in her school. She hisses at other children and gets completely endulged from what I hear my child telling me. I also have a daughter at senior school who says there are several furries there and she avoids them. What is this world coming to? It seems the only thing wrong any more is calling something ‘wrong’