We are in a time where you watch or read the media or social media and you think we’ve reached the maximum level of strangeness, but this week we’ve managed to reach a newer higher hurdle on the strangeness scale.
News.com.au featured an article about a Year 8 Melbourne Private School girl identifying as a cat. Even more strangely is that the school is allegedly supporting the student’s choice to identify as a cat. (1)
The year 8 student who is apparently nonverbal but described as ‘phenomenally bright’ has been allowed to go with (we assume) her new chosen identity as there are apparently no protocols in place for a child identifying as an animal. The school has suggested that this will not disrupt the school or other students, so they’ve chosen to accept this. The article included a statement from the family saying “The behavior is being normalized. Now more and more people are identifying as whatever they want to identify as, including “furries”, characters they choose meant to represent human values and characteristics.
The school stated that their approach to mental health “is always unique to the student and will take into account professional advice and the wellbeing of the student”.
Your next question may now be, what exactly is a ‘furry’. A Furry (or Furries – plural), is a person or people who have an interest in anthropomorphic animals, or in plain English, animals with human qualities. People who develop their own animal character known as a ‘fursona’ adopt some of those animal characteristics. These animals can be real or mythical.
These furries meet in online spaces, but also meet at conferences across the country. The community is known for its diversity and acceptance. Webmd.com states that One-third of the furry community identifies exclusively as heterosexual, and furries are five times as likely to identify as LGBT+” (2)
While this may sound fairly harmless, it’s the deeper sexual exploration that makes all of this take a darker turn. Furries are known for roll-playing, erotic art and sexual kink. Furry conventions are gatherings of these interested parties where they dress up and display their fursona, also have a darker side with swinger parties and fetishes explored with other members of the community.
A survey at furry convention in 2013 found that “96.3 percent of male respondents and 78.3 percent of female ones reported viewing furry pornography (which, it should be noted, is a broad category and typically quite similar to regular porn albeit with furry traits added); men reported looking at furry porn 41.5 times per month on average, while women reported looking 10.5 times per month.” (3)
In recent times, popular social media platforms such as TikTok regularly show young teens with various degrees of costume, sometimes with just character ears, tails and makeup to full elaborate costumes.
These TikTok members have huge fanbases. One 23 year old from Huston, Texas who dresses up as a fox and who’s name is Pyxe has over 230,000 followers.
With all this added information, I think it’s a fair question to ask why this is being allowed in a high school community.
Our children, teens and young adults are already in the midst of an identity crisis, with more and more succumbing to the radical gender ideology that is found throughout the internet, social media and unfortunately our schools, libraries, government offices and medical professional settings. Should a school setting allow anymore of the nonsensical ideology that is plaguing our society?
This ‘furry’ incident in school is not the only one reported, with recent news that schools in the US also having spoken about children identifying as animal characters. Will this be the new social contagion?
Around the world, including here in Australia, litigation is being talked about for youths who have been harmed by gender ideology. Should we then be allowing a school to start a precedent of having students identifying as animals? Should parents of these troubled young people expect schools and therefore all the other staff and students to go along with this new form of identity?
Where do we draw the line between fantasy and reality? What are the consequences for the brain development of children?
I believe it’s past the time that we stop and really think about the consequences of the decision to blindly accept everything. As a society, we have accepted the multitude of new genders despite knowing that it is a biological fact that sex is immutable. Will we dare to start accepting new animal identities also? Isn’t it about time that we all stood and said a collective “NO” to the social trends and focused instead on our children’s sorely lacking academic progress?
(3) https://www.vox.com/2014/12/10/7362321/9-questions-about-furries-you-were-too-embarrassed-to-ask