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.
Texans, next time you look at the prices in the grocery store, remember that this is what your representatives are spending their time on.
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…
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.
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
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”.
And when you try and tell anyone who bought it they say there is evidence, while never being able to provide any.
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”
They will say this legislation proves its real. Why else would this legislation exist? I’m sure the lawmakers have all the evidence.
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.
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.
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
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
Ugh. So uncool. ~j/k I dunno either~
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.
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… 🤞🤞
So children are not allowed to play anymore. It breaks my heart knowing how important expressing the connection to a favourite animal is for many kids. I know nazis go for easy targets, but the fact they target children is just nauseating to me.
Man, republicans really fucking hate freedom.
“You are only allowed to express yourself in ways that are approved by the state!”
Play Duck Duck Goose? Jail
Face paint? Beleive it or not Jail
Old McDonald? Straight to jail
Unless it’s blackface
Play Stray? You better believe it, jail
Red rover? Also jail
They’re going after easy targets like schools because if they targeted furries in the state government, all of the IT infrastructure would crumble.
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.”.
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 😂
It’s incredible that republicans can constantly waste tax dollars on worthless shit like this and still be viewed as the party of financial responsibility by their dumb ass voting base
Bigotry is a big seller with that crowd.
That’s a really good point I didn’t consider. Just like it was with “eggs”, the “financial responsibility” crap really is just a front they put up in bad faith to avoid admitting that it’s all about racism
Licking oneself or others for the purpose of grooming or maintenance
Wtf, they can’t lick their fingers after eating meow? Or use a little spit to fix a popped up hair or eyebrow? This is stupid woof.
Nope. You gotta piss on it like a good god fearing Christian.
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
Any behavior humans do is human behavior, this law is legally dubious at best. Mimicking animals has been a human thing since humans came to be.
Okay seriously, did someone write this law just so it could be contested in court??
The forbid non human speech is written as onomatopoeias. Like how can you call that stuff nonhuman speech after literally writing it in human language? If I read this part of the law out loud am I violating the law?
I could also see the rights to perform cultural religious dances being infringed upon by this law.
I’d argue that the most inhuman behavior is coming from the Texas legislature.
fReE sPeEcH
What the fuck are they looking to do, arrest kids who say “meow” in school?
Gives them excuses to punish “weird”/non-perfectly-conforming kids. The definition of the actual law is broad and open to more or less any interpretation you want it to have.
No, they’ll arrest their parents if they aren’t white
Republicans outlawing catboys? That’s gonna make the republicans mad.
I feel they put more effort into coming up with an acronym that into planning the actual act. I’m pretty sure in the early 90s punk phase people wore collars for fashion too.
How about focusing all this effort and passing a bill to prevent officers being pussies during an active shooter situation like in Uvalde??
