The Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education, or FURRIES, Act, filed by Austin-area Republican State Rep. Stan Gerdes, would “prohibit any non-human behavior by a student, including presenting himself or herself, on days other than exempt days, as anything other than a human being.”
The law would allow for exempt days, such as Halloween and other school dress-up days.
The law defines “non-human” behavior as “any type of behavior or accessory displayed by a student in a school district other than behaviors or accessories typically displayed by a member of the homo sapiens species,” with provided examples being:
Using a litter box for the passing of stool, urine or other human byproducts
A personal or outward display, except during a school play or by a school mascot, through surgical or superficial means of features that are non-human such as using tails, leashes, collars or other accessories designed for pets
Using fur, other than naturally occurring human hair or a wig made to look like human hair
Artificial, animal-like ears
Other physiological features that have not historically been assigned to the human race through a means of natural biological development
Students who bark, meow, hiss or make other animal noises that are not human speech
Licking oneself or others for the purpose of grooming or maintenance.
What is it with them and this absolute conviction that kids are pretending to be cats, it’s literally not happening and yet they’re upset about it.
If they are going to make things up and then be upset about those made up things can they not come up with something less weird than kids being cats? Why not be upset about all the Dark Lords in schools, or the uptake in alien abductions?
Man they are still caught up on that fake story somebody sent to one of these morons claiming kids were using litter boxes in school. It never happened but they’re going to try to legislate it away anyway.
The lesson here is don’t troll these idiots, they’ll fucking believe it and then start passing idiotic laws for non-problems.
While you’re right about that being fake, it’s just pandering to their base who do take issue with forms of self-expression that are common amongst queer, trans and/or autistic students. Things like wearing a collar, a tail or cat ears are absolutely relatively common and this bill targets those all the same.
My daughters love wearing cat-ear headbands. It’s cute, they like it, end of story. Nobody has thrown a fit about it yet… 🤞🤞
The lesson here is don’t troll these idiots, they’ll fucking believe it and then start passing idiotic laws for non-problems.
Exactly this. Just like flat earthers (and that super bizarre one about time cubes or whatever), the rubes will gobble it up and eventually people will get hurt over it.
Another one is the Birds Aren’t Real meme, which I think is pretty funny, but you just know that an innocent birdwatcher will get shot some day because an extremely mentally unwell person will assume that they’re some government spook checking on the “drones”.
These are the same sort of dumbfucks that absolutely believed the “LSD stickers/tattoos” bullshit way, way back and would insist on schools passing out flyers based on that stupid urban legend.
I remember being in sixth grade when they had a bout of that going around our school, and I was like, wait, what? And I had a lot of doubts. And that’s when I was in sixth grade. Years later, you could look it up and see what nonsense it was. Anyway, I was at TWO different jobs where someone was trying to “inform parents” with some printouts they had about you guessed it, the bullshit LSD stickers nonsense. The first time, I told them “you know, this is urban legend, right?” I get immediately treated like I’m some kind of criminal that does not want to protect the children.
I suspect the bullshit around litter boxes will have a similar lifetime among those that are hard of thinking.
And when you try and tell anyone who bought it they say there is evidence, while never being able to provide any.
I did a small dive and found an account of an apparent legit case of a litter box in a school, but it was for an option for extended school shooting drills
https://www.denverpost.com/2018/03/03/school-shooting-preparations/amp/
That’s how this whole “kids are identifying as cats and using litter boxes at school” shitshow started.
I always love using that example to dismiss some concerns about deepfakes sparking national conspiracies.
Nobody even tried to fake a picture of it. I’ve seen photos on lemmy of people shaving their heads in weird ways or making some horrible bean-themed food just for the karma. Throwing an empty litter box in an empty classroom takes much less effort yet nobody even bothered.
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It is uncool to ask. Fortunately that doesn’t matter as none of us are cool.
Beans are a lemmy meme. As are jeans. And German sturgeons though the last one is the least enduring and mostly just was an ich_iel meme that happened to coincide with the last exodus
Beans were just some sort of meme that popped up randomly. I think it was one of those “mods are asleep quick post [x] before they wake up” types of things, and it quickly spiraled until half of everyone’s feed was just beans.
I was around when it happened, and even I don’t understand it.
The lesson here is to actually troll these idiots, but with stuff that lead to idiotic laws so inconvenient that even their voter base will hate them for it.
Give them enough rope, and they’ll hang themselves with it.
Or they’ll lynch us.
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Besides them being stupid as hell to conduct this ridiculous culture war, I take issue with another thing, the name:
Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education
It’s not unlawful until you forbid it. So the title makes no sense. You’re not forbidding the unlawful. You’re forbidding the previously lawful, making it unlawful.
Stupid assholes.
The law defines “non-human” behavior “any type of behavior… [not typically] displayed by a member of the homo sapiens species,”
NATHON!! STOP ACTING LIKE A HOMO ERECTUS YOU NEANDERTHAL!
also im pretty sure “human” means ‘under the homo genus’ not ‘homo sapien’ but its not like it matters to them
Surely any behavior performed by a human is behavior that is performed by humans and therefore anything is authorized under this act. Lots of humans do dress up in cat ears, so dressing up in cat ears is human behavior.
Wow there sure is a lot of behavior and accessories not “typcal to homo sapiens” makes me wonder what the hell they even mean here by “typical”, it’s like calling someone “objectively not normal” while ignoring that your entire view on normality is based on what you have been exposed to. I am not a furry or a therian or anything, but the flaws in this law absolutely allow it to be applied to just about any “behavior or accessory”
There are enough furry conventions that you cannot say it’s not typical. Also have you not interacted with children at all? Because they play as if they’re cats or dogs or wolves and many other animals all the time, are you saying that typical child behavior is not typical human behavior?
I feel there has been a misunderstanding here.
Im not saying anything against furries, I am instead stating that our ideas of normality are entirely socially constructed, meaning this bill could be applied to basically any behavior depending on your interpretation of what is “typical to homo sapiens” I could, for example, state that it is normal for someone to be a furry, as humans have a long history of portraying themselves in similar ways. I could also say that a piercing is an “atypical” accessory not permitted by the rules. There is no such thing as normal. To call something weird is just to simply state that you haven’t been exposed to it enough for it to qualify as weird for you.
My barking at people is protected under the first amendment.
100%
Unfortunately students give up their first ammendment rights when they go to school.
That needs to be challenged in court. I get having rules in a school setting, but locking up misbehaving children is mental.
False Tinker v. Des Moines asserted that students at public schools can be forced to not be disruptive to learning, but retain their rights as held under the first amendment within those grounds.
In fact, if the Supreme Court practiced common law and based their decisions on anything other than bribes, pre existing beliefs, and whatever they pulled out of their ass I’d say that this law was blatantly unconstitutional and would get thrown out immediately
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I’m frankly shocked it hasn’t already, the pay for government IT jobs is kinda shit, and they’ve been trying to slash federal employee benefits for years (theres been recent rumors of increasing mandatory FERS deductions and turning insurance into a voucher program). they’ve started going after anyone LGBTQ+ federally as well.
Ultimately the problem is that that works in their favour. Remember the Republican position is “The Government doesn’t work and if you put me in charge of it I’ll prove it!”, so the only thing they need to do is destroy anything they can get their hands on. The only part of the government they care about (other than their specific seat) is the military. They will gleefully watch everything else burn and then point at the ashes as proof they were right all along.
Trump is attacking the military too. He hates anyone who swears an oath to anyone or anything but himself, and also the military is one power center that could (and should) remove him and his cronies from office. The military leans right, but takes a very dim view of treason.
I bark at them using my very human vocal cords (I don’t even have any other). Prove me on court that I was not using human vocal cords to bark. Or maybe I was using totally non-human made recording-speaker device?
Or maybe my 1.7m tall fursuit was designed to be weared by my cat? No way even lololong house cat could be that big. (lie, I don’t own a fursuit, in any size, but point still apply).
Oh I know! Some tailed buttplugs were totally designed for pets and it is all about being pet care!
tailed buttplugs
The whole comment aside, just for those unaware, if you see someone with a tail in public, or just anywhere outside of sex-centered environment, it’s almost surely a belt.
if it’s not a belt, they aren’t wearing pants…
Unless pants have hole, or are some not wear them fully up, or they may even use skirt!
non pants based attire would most definitely allow for butt plug based tail shenanigans. Though you would still have to be quite silly for that one to get anywhere.
It never was about being silly or not, but being able to be silly or being enforced to not be silly.
Also about not letting anyone dictate what is or is not silly tier legal.
even funnier when itself goes silly - such as silly law from above, punctured by my first comment above, how silly law trying to enforce not being silly on clothes and personal, unharmful expression.
i love this comment, silly/10
Wow.
I remember learning about dinosaurs as an elementary schooler after Jurassic Park came out, and spending a few months on the playground pretending to be a velociraptor (well technically they’re closer to deinonychous but w/e) … apparently that is now banned, because otherwise I might have become a scaly, for life?
Wonderful.
apparently that is now banned, because otherwise I might have become a scaly, for life?
I’m not seeing a denial…
Closest I ever got to being a scaly was… enjoying those old dinosaur comics from almost two decades ago, where the gimmick was it was the exact same 4 panels every time, buy with different dialogue?
But uh no, I do not have a … scale suit? Scale-sona? I don’t even know if thats the right terminology.
I just had a few friends who were DeviantArtists decades ago, and am vaguely aware via osmosis that there is a subset of furries with dino personas.
are you a furry though? Conveniently avoided that one.
And technically, i think a scalie would still count as a fursuit/fursona, it’s just a weird offshoot of furry to refer to people who like scaled creatures instead, though i guess nothing stops you from calling it a scalesona/scalesuit, lol
jfc, no I am not a furry.
I don’t even have programmer socks.
I’ve cosplayed a few times at conventions… Dr McNinja, Dr Who, Alan Wake, … think I was L from Death Note once…
…I once made my own Drive jacket for a halloween party.
Taught myself how to sew, found a pattern, made the jacket within the roughly 2 months between when the movie came out and the next halloween. I could only find one place on the entire internet selling the jacket, but they were basically either high quality repros or actual left over warddrobe from the movie, going for over a thousand bucks, wouldn’t ship until after halloween.
I had to just use a felt cut out of the scorpion on the back, as … yeah, didn’t have enough time or skill to embroider it. It wasn’t reversible like the one in the movie was, but I did get the brown as the inside color/material, just with all the stitching exposed willy nilly.
I’ve known a few furries, across the internet, but no I’ve never had a fursona or fursuit or any of that, never used a furry ingame avatar, nope.
… I guess maybe I had an alt FFXIV character that was one of the … Miqote? I got bored and stopped playing after about 6 months, I don’t think I got that character beyond level 10.
jfc, no I am not a furry.
i’m just giving you a hard time, don’t sweat it.
I don’t even have programmer socks.
i thought this was for the femboy certification, relevant to furries, but only in relation.
pretty sick story though, cosplaying is neat, wouldn’t ever get into it myself, too computer pilled personally.
I’ve known a few furries, across the internet, but no I’ve never had a fursona or fursuit or any of that, never used a furry ingame avatar, nope.
aw, you’re missing out, it’s fun! (i jest)
anyway, judging from this comment you’re like, once, maybe twice removed from the furry community. It may or may not crop up in your future, long term or short, anyway enough palm reading or whatever the fuck this is.
Why on earth are they pursuing this. We all know this is not a real problem.
If it was a scare crow to attack trans rights, they have achieved that. They have pulverized trans rights in many places, especially bathroom access.
Who stands to gain from this? It is not a real problem!
The rage machine requires fuel.
This is at the very core of everything that is happening.
Fascists are so stupid, they start to believe their own propaganda. Can’t even remember, or at least be bothered to remember, that they made this up to scare normies.
well also. once you drum up enough fear, you can act on that fear. when you act on that fear you can do something that masquerades as something else. they say this is about keeping furrie play out of school. but the powers they got themselves will go a long way to labeling any kind of “out of the ordinary” behavior autistic kids do as being furrie play. this is all going accrording to plan
Play Duck Duck Goose? Jail
Face paint? Beleive it or not Jail
Old McDonald? Straight to jail
Leapfrog? Execution.
Can we start torso-kicking these people? Why do we have to be civil?
