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?

Ok so the difference between furries and therians to my understanding is that both enjoy dressing up in animal cosplay (which could mean anything from little cat ears to clip on tails to full on fursuits), but therians take it more seriously, role play and “believe” they are the animal they dress up as. Otherkin are a similar phenomenon, only they are role playing/ believe they are creatures like fairies, dragons, elves etc. This seems harmless, if cringe- and I cannot really judge as I’m a D&D player so spend a portion of my free time pretending to be a variety of fantasy characters.

I’m also an old goth and A lot of this is just fashion and teenage silliness which is influenced by anime. I wore little black cat ears when I was a teenager (not at school though), but I wasn’t a furry- I just thought it looked cool and different to what my “trendy” peers were wearing because I was a misfit little edgelord who wanted to stand out but have a tribe at the same time. I’m pretty sure adults would have been up in arms about some of my inappropriate fashion choices when I was 16, but part of being young is to play with identity and fashion. Kids will push uniform policy in lots of different ways and the school should enforce their policy fairly across the student body- so if you aren’t allowed massive hair bows, you shouldn’t be allowed cat ears etc.

Unfortunately, dodgy people are attracted to subcultures. There were a lot of older men preying on much younger girls in the goth/ numetal crowd I hung out with as a teenager- 23 year old men with 14 year old girlfriends.

Similarly, the online furry community is full of stuff which is massively inappropriate for kids and in some cases outright illegal - we’re talking bestiality and CSAM. Furry stuff can look innocent at first glance, and is very attractive to children, especially ones who are already fond of anthropomorphic animals - an extremely popular and common trope in kid’s media. For this reason, I don’t want my children involved with the online furry community and it’s got nothing to do about whether I like the fashion or not. I am strict with my children’s internet and media consumption and have explained why apps like TikTok are not allowed.

I can’t speak for the litter tray story but strongly suspect that’s total bollocks. I can believe kids meowing and hissing and barking because kids can act like total mental cases in their attempts to freak out their peers and annoy adults. I know I leaned into the devil worshipper persona to scare people away from me. In reality I was just listening to Marilyn Manson albums and reading Stephen King.

I was a misfit little edgelord who wanted to stand out but have a tribe at the same time

I love this phrase. Perfectly describes many teenagers, including me at one point!! Teens have such a strong instinct to find a tribe to belong to. I'm sure these days, now that Spotify means everybody can access all music, and the internet means everybody can access all fashion subcultures, that's largely why "identity" has popped up to fill this gap.

Who did you hear that off, though?
Sounds very "my next door neighbours best friend's mum" said.
Our local, extremely racist FB group usually has a furry outrage thread pop up every few weeks or so.
They're always second, third, fourth hand too.
It's all nonsense to get people frothing.

There are furries at my dds' school too. My dds were talking about them at dinner the other night. There's nothing sexual about it from what I can tell - they just like dressing up as cats/foxes/squirrels and eating their lunch off the floor.

@HelenHywater those are not "furries", they are kids dressing up and messing about like they always have done. There is a huge difference. People need to stop telling these kids that they are "furries" (which is a sexual kink) or that they "identify" as anything (which is a nonsense concept). Stick to the uniform and behaviour codes at school, and by all means dress up in fancy dress and indulge in fantasy games in your own time. Like we all did when we were kids.

My brother spent three years of primary school dressed as a cowboy literally all the time when at home. No-one thought anything of it or tried to make it into a sexual "identity" which had to be indulged at school, thank god.

@WhatAMessWales "But most of all, when most kids have moved on, the ones who are still all-in on this are the most socially isolated and vulnerable kids, who are being encouraged to isolate themselves further, and have basically been primed to seek out 'furry culture' online. And guess who they're going to find."
This needs to be said often, and loudly.

Also, a furry tail isn't a clip on tail. It's attached to a butt plug and comes through a specially tailored hole in the wearer's trousers.
It sounds like lots of teens are wearing costume tails but they shouldn't be reffered to as furry tails unless you know they're fetish wear.

They interviewed a teacher on R4 relatively recently, who said he did have a "litter tray" in his classroom (which had been picked up by the media and turned into a moral panic) but it wasn't for Furries it was to be used in an emergency during a lockdown/live shooter scenario. (Also it was a bucket with a bag of cat litter, not a tray)

Because schools have been told over and over again that they must respect a child's "identity". Why should children who identify as wolves be treated any differently from children who identify as the opposite sex?

Many / most children who identify as furries aren't aware of the sexual side of it, but once you identify as a furry, and start searching the internet for information about your identity you become very vulnerable.

Yes furry club and room at the school my dd attends. I'm quite proud that after an assembly about being kind and identities etc she jokingly said she was going to identify as a t-rex and to be kind they had to let her eat the furries. I've won the fight over be kind with her I think

One comment in response to my friends original statement was 'but this will reduce trans rights if you can identify as any random thing' ergo trans id is serious and furry id is not - as in that's what I took the comment to mean not what I actually think.
I'm not sure what I th

What you're looking at OP is people who've been taught to parrot "all identities must be respected, all identities are valid" who find that there are situations where they can see those mantras don't work in the real world.

So you get the current refinement: "But not that identity. Or that one. Or that other one. Or that one you've just said. Or .... etc".

Or people who can't deal with the cognitive dissonance so go to extreme lengths to assert that it isn't happening and is all a hoax.

Though I can't make up my mind. I find the broadening to absurdity of 'identities' might kind of burst the whole thing. Maybe this is a post peak thing.

Yes furry club and room at the school my dd attends. I'm quite proud that after an assembly about being kind and identities etc she jokingly said she was going to identify as a t-rex and to be kind they had to let her eat the furries. I've won the fight over be kind with her I think

Your DD is amazing!

I'm reminded of my first encounter with furry culture on twitter. I think I was saying something about I could no more become the opposite sex by identifying as it than I could become a squirrel. Someone with a squirrel identity or a squirrel friend or something very earnestly took umbrage.

I'm sure school kids aren't likely to be into the whole sexual fetish aspect that online furry culture has. Whether they call what they're doing furry or therian or playing dress up, most secondary schools have uniform rules that should preclude wearing ears and tails, and behaviour rules that should rule out crawling around the building. If kids are being allowed to do these things then yes, they /are/ being pandered to.

I also love this

Not sure about furries as such, but there's definitely a bit of therian bullshit in my DD's school. From what I can gather, other students are pretty scathing of it.

At least the animal-identity stuff doesn’t come with medical/surgical intervention.

The NHS isn’t making people into tattooed cats and dragon people hybrids (not yet anyway).

Agree it’s harmless as long as schools enforce uniform rules and parents have tight internet controls to prevent teens coming across actual fetish-furries.

Sadly, most of us are pretty rubbish at knowing exactly what our teens are seeing online. Need to bring back flip phones and a family computer in the living room.

It's like any other subculture. Parents freaked out about Dungeons and Dragons, remember? We're not supposed to get it :)

It is and it isn’t. D and D wasn’t about sex.

Wasn't it? Missed that memo, lol.

Furries aren’t new, that CSI episode was back in 2003.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0534691/

I think it’s really sad that zoomers haven’t really managed to come up with a new subculture, just regurgitated old ones and gotten accidentally caught up in niche adult sexual communities.

D and D isn't creepy

Creepy people can make anything creepy.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Brony