vwalker:

petiteviking:

forestkodama:

ayeforscotland:

hamenthotep:

ayeforscotland:

So obviously furries exist but the Tories and the British media trying to whip up a culture war frenzy about “Kids in schools identifying as cats” runs into one major problem…

Kids fucking love to wind adults up, especially those in positions of perceived authority.

Imagine sitting in class, knowing if you say something funny that it could end up on national news because your head teacher is a frothing culture war bigot.

Imagine all the other kids going along with it and backing them up.

There have been several articles about this. The Daily Mail is panicking about a ‘furry outbreak’ because some kids wear cat ears

Yeah, it’s also a story that’s entirely imported from Canada and the US where there’s been articles about kids requesting to use cat litter boxes instead of normal toilets.

All complete nonsense but idiot bigots love getting themselves all worked up about imaginary things.

Since cat litter is part of the emergency kit kept in classrooms in case of a school shooting lockdown (for some US schools), I wouldn’t be surprised if that request originated as some gallows humor by a traumatized student.

Because identifying as a cat is weird, but preparing to be stuck in your classroom while a shooter patrols the halls that you need a litter-based toilet is 100% normal.

It absolutely is a made up story conflating the emergency kit litter with right wing hysteria. The original story that started the kids identifying as cats hysteria has been disproven. It literally did not happen at the time and place they said it did.

Let 👏 kids 👏 be 👏 weird!

This entire era of taking anything kids/preteens/teens say as a massive life-defining moment…and then politicizing it just needs to Stop.

I’ve been working with preteens for a decade and a half at this point. Do you know how often they ask to be called a new name? Claim they’re part cat/dragon/unicorn/salamander? Identify as a variety of things such as “gremlins”? Wear animal ears or tails? Discuss at length their spirit animal, secret powers, mutant traits, etc etc etc?

Sure, there’s a handful of kids who are undergoing a major deep personality analysis and identity-seeking….but mostly? Mostly they are doing typical identity play in a developmental phase of deciding what sort of individual they want to be while also navigating how they fit in a rapidly shifting social environment. Or even less meaningfully, they’re just having fun messing with the adults in their orbit. It tends to pass quickly, unless someone causes them to double-down on a trait, same as little kid imagination scenarios. When adults see that moment of play and then try to turn it into a Large Important Thing with Everlasting Implications….it just makes so many problems. Imagine seeing a little kid play kitchen for the first time and deciding they will absolutely be a chef.

Imagine what it’s like to be growing up in an era where your weird quirky social experimenting is Posted and Documented and Analyzed. The stress and exaggeration that causes.

Do you remember being 10? 12? 14? 16? Our nonsense was less public, but I remember so many people choosing to go by different names. Many just switched from using childhood nicknames to full names, but I had more than one friend who fully change their legal name once we hit college because their birth name just “didn’t fit them.” I had a phase where I thought I could be part wolf. 🤣 Even adults are still trying to define themselves - Myer-Briggs, color personalities, enneagram….

Let kids be weird. Weirdness is normal development, not a red flag. Throwing adult-level stress and control issues into the mix is unnecessary.