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.
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.
And when you try and tell anyone who bought it they say there is evidence, while never being able to provide any.
They will say this legislation proves its real. Why else would this legislation exist? I’m sure the lawmakers have all the evidence.
If there’s one thing we can be certain of with Texas legislators it’s their competency
I’ve just taken to saying “provide me with evidence or shut the fuck up” usually followed closely by “how about one that’s from multiple independent sources and not from a fox opinion piece or personal blog”
how about one that’s from multiple independent sources and not from a fox opinion piece or personal blog”
and oops it isnt actually proof its just a headline because the article debunks it immediately.
The lesson here is don’t troll these idiots, they’ll fucking believe it and then start passing idiotic laws for non-problems.
Throwback to when 4chan started memeing about pizzas, and the resulting chain of events led to a real pizza parlor being shot up by a right-wing nut job who thought it was full of pedophiles.
I don’t see how they ignored an actual case of sexual assault at a pizza parlor…oh it’s because he was a Republican mega donor.
Also, the Google results for ‘Vander Esch assault pizza ranch’ have at least five different “digital newspapers” pushed to the top of the results with a different story that does not match the record of the legal proceedings.
The weird thing is for some reason people will lie to perpetuate these falsehoods
Like I do therapy and I talk to teenagers regularly because teenagers need mental health support, obviously. And sometimes they’ll bring up shit like this: “my school installed a litter box because of these woke kids”
But even the most basic of prodding: “did they really” with a tone of like “come on” and they’ll backpedal, “well no, but like there are kids that have fursonas and shit”
It’s crazy to see it start so young. They’re realizing at like 16 they can get adults to gang up on the kid they think is weird by being dishonest, and adults buy into it because it’s a chance to bully someone weaker and politicians jump on it because it’s a new wedge issue to distract people from class consciousness
And what’s crazy is that by some perspectives if I call them out on this dishonesty and point out this cycle I’m indoctrinating them
Like I do therapy and I talk to teenagers regularly because teenagers need mental health support, obviously. And sometimes they’ll bring up shit like this: “my school installed a litter box because of these woke kids”
this is literally just how fascism works btw.
Step 1: lie, make it as preposterous as you can
Step 2: if you aren’t called out, further it, legitimize it, make it real, gaslight people into believing it ACTUALLY happened.
Step 3: If you are called out, downplay it, gaslight the other party, it’s such a preposterous claim that it couldn’t possibly be fabricated, otherwise why would anybody talk about it, it’s so easy to immediately disprove, surely you must be wrong if you haven’t already seen the proof, i mean everybody, EVERYBODY is talking about it? Haven’t you seen it? Would be a shame if you got caught up in the legislation (or similar legislation) yourself wouldn’t it?
Step 4: win.
It’s funny a Portuguese person just told me the same story happened in PT to justify anti-trans positions. So it’s the same bullshit story, localized, and repeated.
Just like how antisemitic stereotypes with no basis (blood libel etc.) have been repeated in many countries for hundreds of years. Even before the internet, memes were used for the effective spreading of suspicion and hatred.
Yep, we had the exact same fake news story spread in Canada, and used as cover for anti-trans policies. Can we put some tariffs on disinformation please?
This hoax actually started out in PEI and then spread everywhere.
Huh I didn’t know that! Fine, export taxes on disinfo then
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.
Ok, I’m new here and I HAVE to ask what’s up with beans. If it’s not too uncool to ask
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.
There’s not much more to understand. It was just a fun thing that happened. Sort of like all the void kitties that expIoded everywhere a few months ago.
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 are amazing. What else do you need to know?
Go beans
Ugh. So uncool. ~j/k I dunno either~
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/
Yup, camp toilets are a similar concept. It’s just a 5 gallon hardware store bucket with a snap-on toilet seat lid. You line it with what is essentially a trash bag, just to make disposal easier. Then you use a gelling agent (just like what is in disposable diapers to allow them to soak up a bunch of moisture) to reduce sloshing and smell. It’s handy for when you’re going to be away from toilets for a day or two, but don’t want to (or aren’t able to) dig a hole to shit in.
But the same concept applies for when you’re going to be trapped somewhere (like a classroom) for an extended period of time. Like, for instance, during a school shooting. When you have 30 kids in a classroom, there’s a very good chance that at least one of them will need to piss after an hour or two. And nobody wants to deal with human waste in something like an open trashcan during a lockdown.
And as an added bonus, the bucket can be used to store all of active shooter supplies when it’s not in use. So everything is in a single location to quickly grab and prep. Active shooter happens? Great, just grab the big bucket out of the closet, dump all of the supplies out, and you’re ready to go. Now all of your tourniquets, styptic bandages, etc are accessible.
But it quickly got distorted into “they’re making kids use litter boxes to indoctrinate them” instead.
As usual conservatives take something that makes them look like the evil shitbags they are and lie about it for political gain.
Meanwhile a percentage of the underpaid teachers are living in vans and shitting in buckets.
The we give these heroes a raise already!?
That’s how this whole “kids are identifying as cats and using litter boxes at school” shitshow started.
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.
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”.
what? absolutely troll these idiots now that you know they are very susceptible.
just do it in a way they pass good laws out of fear instead.
This idiocy must be weaponized
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… 🤞🤞
IIRC it did have a hint of truth, like most things do. They then spun a totally different story from it. The hint of truth is it was for school shootings where they couldn’t leave the classroom for an extended period of time.
Instead of addressing the real issue, which is that school shootings have become so common that preparations like this need to be made, they spun it into a story that the schools were pandering towards furries. As always, it’s all smoke and mirrors to keep people distracted and give them an enemy, so they don’t force representatives to actually help them.
i don’t even think it was a litterbox even, it was just litter in a bag, or a bucket. That was it. Someone then probably made the joke, somewhere online, 4chan or something, that it was litterboxes, and furries, because haha funny, look how stupid everything is, and then it exploded.
troll them, troll them relentlessly, and this is coming from a furry, this shit is fucking hilarious.
The more they live outside of reality, the harder it becomes for them to exist. The quick the fall, and the harder they fail.
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.
The lesson here is don’t troll these idiots
Maybe the lesson is to troll harder until they legislate themselves into ruin?
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.
not all of it! some of it is just exploitation and pillaging.
I swear to fuck; nobody ever gives pillaging the credit it deserves.
the rage is the point. the feeling of a win is the point.
the cost to the tech industry is an acceptable cost; these people do not connect cause and effect.
Fascists are always trying to enforce their idiotic worldview as a display of power - it also has a bonus of distracting people from their disasterous economic policies.
They’re
stupidsimple.deleted by creator
i cannot begin to describe how utterly fucking stupid this is.
I genuinely thought i died and went to hell when i first read this, this bill doesn’t even make any fucking sense. Child exhibiting “non human behaviors” could be considered “child abuse” according to this bill.
How the fuck do you even enforce this?
Overreaching Authoritarianism.
Standard Republican kit.
pretty much.
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.
Plus the acronym rules are inconsistent. It should be FURRE or FURRORIE
Repugniklan Anger Withering our Rights
Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education
In Texas parties only lawful alignment is allowed. We don’t care if your Good or Evil, as long as your not chaotic or neutral.
I always tell people, that they won’t stop at LGBTQ+ people, and will eventually go into persecuting other subcultures.
Man they keep coming back to the litterbox thing, it really freaks them tf out. Even though its been debunked dozens of time, my conservative friends all swear they know a guy that knows a guy that swears he saw one for real!
Oh, the litter boxes are real…
It’s just that their purpose is to be used during a school shooting lockdown.
Oh, that’s fine then. School shootings are an American tradition so Republicans won’t prevent that
The litterbox thing is so outrageous that it gives their tyrannical proposals the vineer of addressing a real problem.
But the litterbox story was fabricated, and the only grain of truth of it is that some classrooms did keep kitty litter as a mitigation against being trapped by an active shooter - another conservative-created problem.
They will continue to glom onto outrageous stories, to justify their outrageously oppressive proposals.
I was always confused by this active shooter argument. Don’t classrooms have fire doors to the outside isn’t that a requirement that all rooms have at least two exits.
The school I was in had both fire doors to the outside and bathrooms between the classrooms right up until upper education. Even then they still had fire doors to the outside so everyone could just leave.
I would not be able to stop myself from laughing if i saw that happening for real but these people think of it as a threat to their existence, as a crime.
What a witless world we live in.
This started out as a far-far-fetched construction to attack trans rights. In fact, whoever designed this hoax is Goebbels-level diabolical. If you break it down, it subconsciously re-arranges the notions of self-identification and toilet use, in a way that presents “reckless liberalism” as an immediate threat to normalcy.
The people who eat this shit up may be stupid, but the people who design it are not. This goes beyond straw-man attack and slippery slope fallacy. It rather combines both into a powerful manipulation technique that bears resemblance to mass hypnosis. They have someone really malevolent on the propaganda payroll, folks.
This is no more outlandish or unscientific than the WHOLE anti-trans thing:
Men pretending to be trans to access woman spaces does not happen any more frequently than furry students shitting in litterboxes.
The right is consistently and historically mobilized by fantastic beasts their cult leaders brainwash them about.
The kitty litter is not for pooping in. It is for covering up the blood. (The bucket is for pooping though)
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
They’re going after easy targets like schools because if they targeted furries in the state government, all of the IT infrastructure would crumble.
Hah, that made me chuckle. I recently attended an outdoor market in my area that for some reason had an unusually high number of furries wandering around it. I was really curious what the bus factor of that market would actually be.
Yeah in this case I kind of meant the corollary to a bus factor. Essentially if everyone at that market disappeared, how many companies would be severely impacted?
No worries, I understood what you meant. It’s like that photo of all the furries on an airplane… Pray it doesn’t crash or else the world infrastructure is done for 😂
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.
They piss on the DoD and call it rain too, just not as much. Contractors generally make more than the civilian employees at the cost of potentially getting screwed over at the end of the contract or during a shutdown (realistically, I’ve heard it doesn’t happen that often, they’ll usually just get hired by whoever gets the next contract), and civilian employees just get more stable work hours and benefits (separate annual/sick leave pools, insurance, etc); if shit needs done after hours, they’ll call the active duty folks in, and if they cant make things work it’ll wait till morning.
Edit; forgot where i was going with this and rambled a bit. TL;DR, they want to replace everyone DoD with contractors and active duty. People who can easily be fired (ran by companies that bribe politicians) and people who can be imprisoned for saying “no.”.
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.
Maybe the constitution of the United States of America says something about this? Maybe like the first thing in the bill of rights? Nah I must be mistaken.
Schools have to maintain a certain level of order and conformity to function as intended. Courts have already ruled as much. You can’t engage in behavior which would prevent the system from working as intended e.g. walk around topless, yell profanities, play loud music, etc - things which you can obviously do in other public spaces. Wearing full body animal costumes or barking randomly, claiming its your identity, is just as ridiculous and just as disorderly.
With that said, schools probably already had the tools they needed to stop this, so I’m not sure why a law was needed. Unless there was actually some furry zealot fighting against a school board.
I just had a read through the bill and, as written, it would prohibit elementary school children from playing pretend as animals on the school playground during recess. Obviously, if a student were using that as pretext to, like, bite someone, you’d want a supervisor stepping in, but to straight-up ban harmless elements of play-pretend like this is frankly asinine.
As long as it does not infringe on the rights of school shooters I don’t think there’s any limits on how much students can be oppressed in school.
yeah ok but like schools can make policy. If someone is doing something thats an issue there’s a dean for a reason.
Also, I don’t think a headband with ears is really the biggest issue of our times right now. This is entirely useless and just for control. Same with banning books, there’s already systems in place. Globally banning things -that AREN’T an issue- does not help anybody at all.
This is ONLY for erasure of demographics and control over the people. Starts with furries, then men in skirts, then anything queer at all.
You can’t engage in behavior which would prevent the system from working as intended
So, enforcing uniformity?
To the degree necessary for education, absolutely.
Courts, are an illegitimate instrument of power their decisions irrelevant, their ruling moot. This contentible organization will be dismantled along with the rest of the establishment.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
2008 called and they would like their meme back
That doesn’t matter anymore
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
The law defines “non-human” behavior “any type of behavior… [not typically] displayed by a member of the homo sapiens species,”
“My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Florida forever.”
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.
These are the same people that defined us all as female afterall.
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?
If you’re complaining about gay people, you’re not complaining about us denying you a living wage.
If you’re complaining about transgender people, you’re not complaining about us denying you medical care.
If you’re complaining about furries, you’re not complaining about us denying you education.
I guess we really want you to complain about those things.
Because their base thinks it’s real so they can claim a win over a non existent issue and their base will eat it up.
It also distracts from real issues impacting people. So they can say yeah we haven’t gotten to that yet but look at all this other stuff we “fixed”.
Can we still say “what’s up, dawg?”
It is funny that the litter box story was taken as gospel.
What a time to be alive.
Yea, but you can’t say “I got that dawg in me.”
Only if there’s an updawg leak in the school.
What’s a leak?
Like a really big spring onion
Not much, leak. What’s a dawg with you?
Depends on who you are. If you’re Brock the quarterback, you’ll be fine. If you look a bit queer or neurodivergent or are from a racialised minority, probably not a good idea.
Students who bark, meow, hiss or make other animal noises that are not human speech
I’m not quite sure what it is exactly (/s), but maybe—just maybe—this is yet another attempt to fuck over and ostracize transfem and autistic people, but instead of being direct about it, using furries as the boogeyman.
Also to arrest basically any kindergartner.
There are very many normal human sounds that are not speech, including, but not limited to: laughter, crying, yelling/screaming/yelping (in surprise, pain, fear), groaning, moaning, yawning, sneezing, coughing, vomiting, singing, whistling.
What constitutes human speech? There are languages that have sounds that don’t exist in other languages (said as someone still trying to get a hold on rolling my Rs).
In any case, we should all learn some sign language. Seriously, it’s useful to be able to communicate silently or just visually (e.g. Across a noisy room), plus it makes life way more inclusive for Deaf people.
In any case, we should all learn some sign language. Seriously, it’s useful to be able to communicate silently or just visually (e.g. Across a noisy room), plus it makes life way more inclusive for Deaf people.
that would probably count as roleplaying as an animal, and therefore, you must be abused by your parents, say hello to CPS. /s
unlikely, though im sure they would push MORE legislation in the future based on the ideas of this bill specifically. It’s just written so poorly that’s catching strays from every conceivable direction, because most republican legislation is batshit insane these days.
I fully agree but it’s really only associated with transfem people because of the high rates of autism in our community
For once Im halfheartedly glad it’s not related to transgender. Still shitty nonetheless,
My barking at people is protected under the first amendment.
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
100%
Texans, next time you look at the prices in the grocery store, remember that this is what your representatives are spending their time on.
Or, you know, when your kids are dying of measles.
Or when your kids are dying from school shooters…
Sadly I think the Texans responsible for voting in these idiots aren’t on Lemmy and are going to keep drinking all the propaganda
