Oklahoma bill would require 'furries' be picked up from school by parents, animal control

Jordan117@lemmy.world to Not The Onion@lemmy.world – 608 points –
Oklahoma bill would require 'furries' be picked up from school by parents, animal control
oklahoman.com
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Not gonna lie, if a Furry told me they got arrested by animal control I'd be impressed.

Is there anyone at cons who plays that role? Like walking around with a big net and a villainous smirk?

Considering fur is a kink for a bunch of people, I'd say this is entirely likely. Even more so: your animal control Dom is also a furry.

This is a thing at burning man every year. A group goes out as animal control with nets and catches furries. It’s an ongoing feud

Considering how terminally online one has to be to find themselves on this platform, I'm surprised how little any of y'all know about furries

And well, it's not literally animals in that sense. At least not the entire community.

Kind of like getting a speeding ticket on a bicycle...

That happened to me once! I was 15 and going to school, was riding a Lotus Eclair I'd fixed up. I entered the school zone and wanted to see if I could get over 25 mph. But there was a cop hiding and I got a ticket. I had to tell my parents, and I think they were impressed with my 31 in a 25 speeding ticket.

The best part was having to go to court, and the judge asking how I got a Lotus (she was thinking of a car) and then upon learning the truth, asking the officer why he was wasting his time stopping a kid on a bicycle.

I've got to admit that Republicans are always finding new and creative ways to be outrageously villainous and hateful

It’s because furries are overwhelmingly queer and often used as a stand in for fear mongering about trans people (ex: the “litter boxes in schools” rumor).

Furries are the next target after trans people.

I would say it’s more that they recognize furries are largely a queer subculture (regardless of the fact that straight furries exist) and correctly recognize it as less objectionable to most people’s sensibilities to say you’re getting furries removed from schools by animal control than it is to say you’re getting queer kids removed from schools by animal control.

It sounds really outlandish until you remember that in the 80s, DnD was used to make everyone afraid of a literal Satan, and we ended up with children testifying they were flown across the country and back to participate in Satanic rituals or flushed down toilets into hidden chambers where people were sacrificing live animals to the Dark Lord in the 8-9 hours they were at daycare.

People went to prison over this.

In the early 90s my mom was convinced Satanic women got pregnant and gave birth to babies to murder in rituals, and nobody could prove it because they gave birth outside a hospital and no record of the children existed.

I get some of the 80s/90s nostalgia but SO much of it was just actual hell lol.

I mean, furries have been targeted by the right for a long time, but they are nothing if not famous for winning the battle but losing the war when it comes to trying to stamp out subcultures they don't like. They've finally given up on trying to legislate homosexuality away, so now they're turning their attention to a less understood and more marginalized subculture of individuals. They'll give up on that eventually too when they realize they'll never win and turn their attention to the next vulnerable group to rally and galvanize their base.

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Not to mention wrong. Sounds like a result of the litterbox panic from a little while ago.

Which stemmed from an active shooter measure that would have allowed kids to relieve themselves without out having to leave the safety of their hiding place.

Is that really what it's from? If you could share a link I'd much appreciat it!

Well, it’s not from a school allowing children to use a litter box instead of a toilet because they’re a furry, because that doesn’t happen.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/urban-myth-litter-boxes-schools-became-gop-talking-point-rcna51439

The [Jefferson County] district — where Columbine High School is located — has been stocking classrooms with small amounts of cat litter since 2017, but as part of “go buckets” that contain emergency supplies in case students are locked in a classroom during a shooting. The buckets also contain candy for diabetic students, a map of the school, flashlights, wet wipes and first aid items.

Thank you! I mostly want that to shove in people's face when they go on about it.

I'm pretty sure kids are going to do that regardless of the legality....

I know 11 year olds who would rather take a chance with a gunman than piss themselves in front of their whole class. Giving them a more dignified way to do things is only a good thing

Being a politician is all about getting attention. The more outrageous the bill or the thing the bill is addressing the more attention. This bill will hopefully never pass, but here we are talking about it.

And projection that a bunch of them are probably into furries, or domination, or both.

We clearly need Barney Frank’s ‘expose em when they oppress’ tactics back in the house.

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On one hand, this has got to be public trolling. On the other, it’s still a bill calling for a classification of people to be removed from society. If it weren’t so scary it would be funny.

Fascism demands outlandish "enemies" in order to justify punishment as policy. Usually, no suitable ones exist, so they are created through outlandish fantasy.

it's both fucking insane and scary. remember that furry hate has always been thinly veiled homophobia

This is a wild take

Non-furries love anthropomorphic animal characters. Our culture is full of them; all cultures are. Furries didn't invent sports mascots, Looney Tunes, the Easter Bunny, Aesop's fables, or the Egyptian pantheon. Obviously it's not the appreciation for talking animals that people actually hate. So why is it that, out of all the weird subcultures that exist, the one that gets the most hate thrown at it is the one centered around a love of something universal to all human cultures?

It's because the founders of the modern furry fandom were gay and poly, and the fandom has always had an overwhelmingly LGBT membership because it used to be the only non-fetish community that openly accepted gay and trans people. All anti-furry hate is either a negative reaction to the fandom's queerness or a deliberate attempt to attack the LGBT community by proxy.

I'm sorry but the only way I can describe that perspective is "delusional". First of all, I'm going to point out that by starting your conclusion with "All furry hate", you've already revealed that you're simply here to make generalizations instead of to be accurate. Nearly no statement that starts with "all", "none", "every", etc. about such a large group (furry haters) is even worth considering.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way: No, people don't hate furries because they're LGBT. Most people know nothing about the movement or its founders, and don't care to. People dislike the furry community because:

  1. Fursuits look weird. Mascots and the easter bunny fall into this category too. Non-fursuit anthropomorphic animals (eg. Looney Tunes) are generally well-regarded, even somewhat if they're from the furry community.

  2. Someone told them about yiff or showed them a vore picture and now they hate all furries.

  3. Their primary interactions with furries lead them into direct contact with "the weird kids" aka assorted cringy 12 year olds. Any community with a significant number of preteens will have this same repulsive effect on older teenagers and young adults, or even other preteens. See also: Fortnite, Skibidi Toilet, FNAF to some extent, Roblox, etc.

That's it. There's no grand anti-lgbt conspiracy. Furries are just weird. If you want, I have access to a discord server that's like 60-70% queer and I can make a google form to prove this.

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anthropomorphic behavior

Anyone else morbidly curious about what happens if they don't fix the bill's wording and accidentally ban "human-shaped behavior" at school?

Oklahoma conservatives vs word with more than 3 syllables challenge, who will win?

This is going to really suck for the school mascot.

How does Oklahoma have nothing else to legislate on?

They have plenty, but they'd rather distract from society's issues as much as possible so their arctic temperature IQ constituents don't realize how bad they have it

If they can keep everyone distracted by The Gays™ or whatever other sexual deviancy the redhats can dream up, then maybe people won't notice the roads falling apart or the useless police, or more importantly, which people are stealing all the money.

Not saying this justifies it (kinda the opposite), but there's a massive furry community in Oklahoma. They even used to have very large conventions there (still might?)

At the same time, this douchebag wants to specifically target kids who are playing pretend to make their miserable lives bearable, just to distract from real issues like trans bills, don't say gay, and governmental corruption.

Humphrey's bill, House Bill 3084, would ban "students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries at school" from participating in class and school activities.

This is, hands down, the worst description of furries I have ever read in my entire life.

Hell, it sounds like something Kindergarteners have been doing since forever.

I used to pretend to be a monster at that age. Would they have to call Monster Control?

(I was a nice monster, like on Sesame Street.)

So what I'm hearing is if I tell the teacher I'm a platypus I don't have to go to class?

Guaranteed if this law got passed there would be a high school somewhere where the entire student body shows up wearing cat ears.

Ironically also means that it basically wouldn't apply to anyone unless that person specifically wants it to. Performative outrage bill.

yeah you see you can't do the intelligent thing of just saying "you have to come to school with normal clothes on" which is literally what countries with a brain did. Also this is generally left to the school to set up. In France the law just says that a school is allowed to implement rules regarding clothing. Just simply think of P.E clothing. The law has a couple safeguard like you can't ban a specific outfit for being from another culture (obvious) and the rest is left for the school to decide

Like basically every school in the US has a dress code already. Don't get this twisted into something else, this is purely performative nonsense by some backwoods inbred redneck.

I mean the impression I had for like a decade was essentially this. Then a guy sent me links on how to be his specific type of fantasy creature. It was sergel or sergal iirc. It had some really weird backstory and lore to the species detailing how they were warlords or something and I was really weirded out. It was very much like how some kids I went to school with would loose it if you told them that they weren't whatever comic or movie character they were hyperfixated on, only more socially awkward and adults doing it.

Anyway I feel like that's as close as you can get without reading out someones entire backstory novel.

...yeah that sounds about right for sergals, tbh

Generally speaking, once you get past the "traditional" species like foxes, rabbits, cats, etc., and start getting more into the esoteric fantasy/scifi species like sergals, protogens, and yinglets, the people who create characters for those species tend to fall into one of two camps:

  • super srs "you must follow this lore to the letter or I will end you, by which I mean I will post a FurAffinity journal for my 7 followers complaining about your character diverging from the lore that nobody will pay attention to" types

  • "oh this looks cool I'm gonna make one and put my own twist on the design" types

Funny story, the person who originally designed protogens tried to be the first type, but pretty much everyone ignored him and just did their own thing anyway

what the devil is that contraption your describing ? What is a protogens ?

I'M SCARED

They're literally fluffy cyborgs with an LED monitor display for a face lol

Fucking child murder

The fuck?

I think (hope) they're referring to the last panel of that comic.

Yeah but also why do people care that much about a one-off gag in a two-panel comic

It's like going "well ackshually if Superman tried to lift the plane like that he'd just rip off its nose" except even dumber

So many people need to remember the MST3K mantra: "it's just a TV show/movie/game/comic, I should really just relax"

Literally the computer equivalent of a lobotomy has happened in that comic and their guardian is like "lol lmao". Idk why that Erkul guy is hella mad when I pointed out the plot

Don't be scared. Protogens run on 2015 Bayesian Inference search results from Google before Google became inherently evil.

So as long as long as they don't update...

Sergal

It's originally from a Japanese series or something I'm not really well versed into that specific lore

How would you describe furries?

The above description would fit many many circumstances that are not furry related or problematic at all. Saying "I'm a cat. no, really" or meowing or licking your hand would all fit that description, (except not really because the word anthropomorphic is used wrong), but don't mean a person is a furry. Moreover these behaviors by themselves don't cause any problems unless you imagine a bunch of other stuff that's not included in this definition.

So it is an overbroad law that allows prosecutors to apply it selectively and at the same time is very hard to defend against.

A better definition for the purpose of the law would describe some behavior that actually causes damage to society, like disrupting class or arresting kids at school for saying they are a cat.

A better definition of a furry would probably include some kind of pattern of behavior and the extent to which it impacts daily life, as here

I wouldn't use a definition that includes some kid prancing around race track pretending to be a horse. That's just kids being kids and politicians need to stop sexualizing them.

Not even sexualizing, right?

I love furry culture because I can see the art that's intended for Magic The Gathering cards before it goes into print.

The internet has to get over this furry shame and start collectively recognizing that a tail is like a necktie for your butt, and everyone should have one, because it's rather flattering.

Imagine being an animal control guy and having a school seriously call you and ask you to take a stranger's child because of that child's participation in a subculture.

“Here kiddy kiddy kiddy”

Imagine having the cops called on you for being a child predator when you're just animal control.

I don’t think I’d have the willpower to avoid responding by calling them pigs on the loose. I’d already want to be dead as animal control tasked with catching furry schoolchildren.

Pretty sure that will leave the animal control people open to being charged with botched citizen arrests. Not sure what Oklahoma's particular arrest laws are like but for most States you are pretty limited in what you can do to perform one and the standards of places you can use to detain an arrested person in are usually at least required to be humane and actively monitored.

The answer to "Little Timmy wore a tiger costume to school for Halloween do you have a cage available? " should properly be "Get fucked authoritarian scum I have actual work to do."

Imagine working for the state and being ordered to engage in a random citizen's kink.

Yes, I know being a furry isn't just a kink.

being ordered to engage in a random citizen’s

That's called oppression. Also furry is an identity, believe it or not.

I'm not buying the "furry isn't just a kink" thing at all, but please enlighten me. How does it qualify as an identity?

Belonging to a fandom or other special interest community is typically something that is done through self-identification, which is different than identities that are not chosen, but still part of a broader idea of identity. There are plenty of examples of these self-chosen identities: Trekkies, Potterheads, Bronies, Cumberbitches, etc. Simply watching Star Trek doesn't make you a Trekkie though, it's a label people apply to themselves when they feel invested in that thing and want to be part of a community of people who feel the same. That's all. I also hate to tell you that there are themed sex parties at Star Trek conventions too, so does that make being a Trekkie a kink? Is doing the Vulkan salute and telling someone to "live long and prosper" in public forcing that kink on others?

"Furry" is just yet another accepting group that is easy to get into for people who feel like they don't belong anywhere and others. It's quite simple and the same as many other things.

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Be a furry. But do you really think fur suits belong in a classroom?

There aren’t fursuits in class and the bill is worded so broadly that saying “meow” would violate it.

Ah well I guess I assumed the bill was written to remove people wearing fur suits to class. In general yeah, you shouldn't remove someone from class because they're a furry.

A bill prohibiting fursuits in class, beyond how rare it would be for a student to have one in the first place, would be redundant anyway, because I'm pretty sure such things wouldn't fit most schools dress code anyway

No, it's not. There's just some things that shouldn't be normalized.

I doubt any kid is gunna wear a full mascot costume to school outside of the actual school mascot. Those costumes cost thousands of dollars to buy and at least half a grand to make from scratch and proper cleaning and maintenance means it fits into furry culture in the same function as wearing a tux . It's a rare highschool student who can afford one and a rarer one who would risk wearing one where it might be ruined.

The most you are likely to see is Halloween style cat ears and tails of the variety that are readily bought at the gift shop of a zoo... Which kids love to wear because kids like animals in a "I'm pretending I'm a tiger grrr rawr!" schoolyard kind of way.

Kids like weird stuff and have a narrow band of time to play pretend and express themselves beyond adult judgment. Trying to up the humiliation factor and traumatizing kids for doing regular kid stuff and coming down hard on a largely made up problem is just double mild weak sauce in action. Guy's a jerk.

I don't know if any kid beyond the age of like 5 that acts like an animal. 30 years ago when I was in school it was never a thing either.

There's a huge difference between a kid (under 10) and a young adult (17, 28 or older) doing this stuff. You know as well as I do that Furries aren't just a group of kids playing as animals on the playground for an hour, it goes a lot deeper than that.

I mean 20 years ago it was already a thing. I have enough friends who were at very least furry adjacent to know that for the majority of them it was basically a lower key funny art thing with an element where people were expressing themselves kind of the same way they resonated with like horoscopes and things with a fashion element. Like we had people who wore cat ears because they thought they were cute or drew avatars of themselves and their friends as animals because of some sort of perceived caracature of your traits physical or personality based.

Cosplay culture was something that was on the rise when I was a kid but being a goth was huge when I was in school. It was all skulls, vampire shit, and leather spiked collars, bracers , trenchcoats and fishnets and kind of kitschy fake witchcraft you pretended was actually spooky ... But of all the kids that kind of were into it most were completely oblivious to how many of those fashion elements came from the bdsm and fetish community and really couldn't have cared less because that wasn't why they liked it. SO many of us were complete prudes by any standard. Like, of my cohort of goth kids about 75 percent of us were still virgins when we graduated.

Teenagers like to play dressup just like your 5 year old does, that's why anime conventions are so dang popular. We're just old now and the stuff changes and it doesn't make sense to us.

Wearing cat ears or drawing someone as an animal isn't as extreme wearing a full-body animal suit and telling people to call you "buttercup", that's the shit I'm talking about.

Also you can't even compare being Goth to being a Furry.

Yeah I can. I know enough furries through the queer community that I can see the parallels.

Don't give me that full body animal suit bullcrap. Most your particularly well off kid can afford is a head, gloves and tail and you can't even wear those things for more than a couple of days a month without ruining them. The heads and bodysuits are big sweaty nasty things that need to be aired out regularly and break down internally over time because foam doesn't hold up forever. Even your hardest core furry isn't going to waste the limited hours of wear of their precious suit to school barring maybe a show and tell assignment or Halloween.

Laws like this are just gunna target the kids who are harmlessly wearing animal ears and tails like we wore spiked collars and bracers and wasting everyone's time on an imaginary problem that's gunna hit the struggling "weird kids" in desperate need of joy. It's tiring.

Regardless of all that, dressing up as an animal and taking on that persona is odd. Goth kids are still dressing like humans , Goth kids are about as close to Furries as Punk kids are to Furries.

So your argument is that Furries are weird? You've met teenagers right?

Both subcultures are a self expression thing. Is it cringe? Sure, to us but so is Goth kid ennui and the obsession with The Craft and putting in fake vampire fang. But to that kid it's a fun something that helps alleviate some of the stress and boredom during a stressful time where they don't have a whole lot of autonomy yet.

And the whole "fursona" thing is generally fairly tame. I doubt they really choose to express that much in a school setting just like we left the Vampire the Masquerade Tabletop RPG at home because letting your full freak flag fly at school still has consequences of other people not understanding your niche and being jerks about it.

The exception is those that have have some sort of mental disability in which case the animal aspect of chosen presentation is really not the problem because the kid will still be odd. The autistic kid really into anime who Naruto runs through the hallway between classes would just find something else to be odd about because that's just how it is. Teachers still enforce boundries of what is acceptable non disruptive behaviour in their classes and all but the least able kids know that there is a place and time for doing as they please. Do we really have to care what harmless weird things kids are up to between classes?

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Lawmaker: "If these flurries think they're animals, we're gonna treat them like animals! "

Furries: "Yes, that's exactly what we want."

Lawmaker, 5 minutes later: "Who is responsible for this farce??"

Moral panic.

The right isn't happy unless it's panicked about some moral outrage. In the absence of anything to be panicked about they make things up to be panicked about.

I just described this phenomenon to a friend of mine today. We were talking about how racism evolved by the same people to be disgust against gay/trans folk. I explained to him that conservatives require an outgroup to hate on in order to operate and be happy.

This mother fucker took a second and said "Do you think modern conservative discrimination was caused by the fall of the Soviet union? I mean, when communism was a big threat everybody was united and happy hating the soviets"

My boy really trying to paint the red scare as a good thing

technically he was right. Indeed if we all hate communist, we don't hate gay or blacks. Whomstever The red scare was used to fuck over those same folks

Is it "whoeverthefuck" or "whomeverthefuck"?

You seem like the right person to ask.

Whomstever

  • Whomever
  • Wherever
  • However
  • Whomever
  • Whenever
  • st

i call that efficient english

the thing is if they solve the real stuff the don't have anything to campaign next time

(this work for all parties)

both sides

Really? What is the current moral panic of the Democrats?

I'm personally unhappy with arms being sent to Israel workout approval of shitbox Congress (no typo), and how bad housing and food prices have gotten.. But not really a panic, those are very real things.

Not this anti-furry shaming bullshit. What a waste of people's time for something hurting nobody.

Almost as dumb as that (both sides) argument.

The high cost of living isn't a moral panic. The satanic panic, the satanic messages in rock music panic, the drag queen story time panic, and the furry litter box panic are moral panics.

The potential death of democracy is probably pretty forefront, but they certainly don't focus on it enough.

Imagine if this passes and the next day the entire school staff dresses up as furries in protest. "Okay Timmy you see that person with the fox outfit on? That's your teacher today."

honestly small children might love that

Those masks are expensive as shit though, aren't they?

Yeah, a decent one is going to be $300-500. For a partial, the head is the most expensive part, and cheaping out on it is a great way to get some S-tier nightmare fuel. Full suits are minimum $1000, but I'd say a good one is at least double that, and they can go into the $5k+ range.

You can source all-natural fursuits from your local animal shelter!

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I have a friend who makes mascot costumes. She and her husband sometimes wear them out for entertainment. Little kids absolutely ADORE seeing human-sized Pokemon walking around the mall, bowling alley, or the like.

I see all these silly rules being floated and part of me almost wishes I was back in high school so I could be really annoying.

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Can't wait to see the reporting on the fallout from this, if it goes forward.

Bureaucratic backlash from department heads at Animal Control, and whichever state administration or department that their chain of authority ultimately flows down from.

Overzealous Animal Control officer who assaults a child that a school administrator called in for pickup.

Mass student protests of dozens of kids going to school as furries

And that's just a few off the top of my head. The possibilities are endless.

Mass student protests of dozens of kids going to school as furries

This sounds like the kind of protest id participate in when I was in school. As a parent I'd totally wear a fur suit to pick up my kids as a form of protest

For real, shit-disturbing teenage me would have immediately flipped from "furries are dumb and weird" to "what's the minimum requirement to count as a furry" as soon as I found out that animal control would have to pick us up.

The thought of an old-school dog catcher chasing me with a net while I ran away wearing floppy dog ears is just too amazing to pass up.

What about a fish. Could I be a fish? Oh, what a time to be grown up and with kids of my own instead of being able to be a ridiculous jackass.

Can't drive with it on though. At least not morally and legally

Who is Oklahoma Rep. Justin Humphrey?

Humphrey has made headlines in recent years in his advocacy of prison reform, capital punishment reform and rural development.

Oh I see now, he's a dumb fuck white, rural, racist dumbass who saw something on the internet that made him feel funny and then tried to pray and then legislate the feelings away.

Also more on Justin Humphrey via wikipedia:

Humphrey's efforts to introduce cockfighting legislation[27] has led to the outcry from animal rights advocates[28] and the former attorney general.[29] Oklahoma has been called the "Cockfighting Capitol of the United States."[30] HB 2530, pushed by Justin Humphrey, died on April 13, 2023, for the second year in a row. Tulsa District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler said he was glad cockfighting remained a felony.[31] Transphobia and homophobia

Humphrey has made multiple transphobic comments. In an email responding to a constituent Humphrey said "I understand transgender people have mental illness".[32] This view is not supported by the World Health Organization or the American Psychiatric Association.[32] In an interview published after the incident on April 15, 2021, Humphrey doubled down by saying "I want to tell your audience there is no transgender. There is male and there is female. And transgender would be a mental health issue... So those people that say I'm bigoted, I will say you're insane and you're doing the people wrong by doing that."[32] Freedom Oklahoma, an LGBT advocacy group, denounced Humphrey's comments calling them "a long-debunked myth".[32]

Humphrey was quoted as saying “You’re dang skippy I’ll take my kid to a chicken fighting before I’m gonna take them to see a drag queen."[31]

On the flip side, myself and my high school friends way, way back in the day would have a had a field day with this type of dumbass law. Would be a shame if this passed and students were to test the law and their parents and their state/local traffic engineers who probably didn't think of this type of dumbass shit ever happening.

When I was in high school, for some reason I will never know, the library had a concrete box of sand next to the two staircases that went to the library's second level (it was a pretty big school). The mascot was the Panthers, and I always wanted to do a senior prank where I put fake dog shit in the sandbox and put a sign up that said 'the panther's litter box.' Sadly, I never got around to it. But if this had been a law when I was in high school, I was such an asshole punk kid that I would have taken a shit there myself while meowing like a cat just to make a point.

Maybe it was for electrical fires?

No, it was like a planter except instead of soil and plants, it was just sand.

I wonder if this will be the end of school mascots in Oklahoma

$10 says the state legislator responsible for the bill is whatever the most-outlandish type of furry possible is.

Cockvore and hyperscat fan FOR SURE

Cockvore is outlandish?

Huge difference between cockvore and dick sucking

Maybe I've just fallen too far behind in the times, I don't think people usually consume the penis with their teeth these days.

Sorry to inform you, but... Cock vore is the other way around, friend

Only when you're a fan, but also a state legislator introducing an anti-furry bill.

Otherwise, I'm sure I speak for everyone here when I say: every single one of us loves cockvore. Totally normal!

Probably one of those weird fascist ones that everyone else in the fandom wishes didn't exist.

Right?! Furries aren't even remotely on the public conscience so how the fuck does he even know about them otherwise

As a sad citizen of Oklahoma, I wish I could upvote you more than once.

I wouldn't joke about that if I were you, vote manipulation is a big problem on Lemmy and since the tools for detection aren't very good (if even there at all) it might cause people to suspect you of cheating the system.

Jesus christ do these law makers just have nothing going on? We should really be revoking their pay for what is a complete dumpster fire of a waste of our taxes. I don't want my money going to some white racist dumb fuck basing reality off of Fox news rage articles in his Facebook feed.

They observed that half of the population loves catty, bitchy, high school mean girl Jerry Springer drama. It's intentional.

My daughter got bullied by other kids for being a furry because she likes leather chokers and they were saying she was wearing a dog collar.

Considering how much school administrations support bullies (while claiming to be anti-bullying), I'm glad we weren't in Oklahoma.

We had to take her out of school due to all of the bullying anyway, but that would have made it even worse.

School administrations often are the bullies.

but the fun stuff is that they manage to beccome the bullies not out of will but because of their sheer lack of competence and backbone

My boyfriend used to wrap his collar twice around his wrist and wear it as a bracelet. I've taken to it myself and it seems like a great way to let your freak flag fly while not pushing social boundaries too hard.

Also, iirc didn't you disagree with me about students having the option to opt out a schooling several months ago?

several months ago

Jesus Christ man, let it go.

Lol, not like I'm stalking them, I just remembered it, it seemed contradictory

We didn't opt out of schooling. The online school is a state program paid for with taxes like any other state school. No tuition is charged.

I'd like to clarify, I never made an argument for private schools (I don't think). I just made an argument against trapping students in mandatory public schools. I agree online state school is a massive step forwards but also giving that option recognizes that trapping kids where they don't want to be isn't a good thing. Even if it exposes them to something adults think is important, like a social environment of their peers.

Can't wait to see the rest of this conversation in several more months

I don't even remember that conversation. I just wanted to clarify that we didn't opt out of schooling because that would be terrible parenting.

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Furry here and just want to say: isn't this entire discussion super disrespectful to the important job that animal control personnel actually do?

Like, animal control has an important role in protecting communities from animals and helping animals that are injured. They shouldn't have to be dragged into this stupid outrage farming.

If I worked for animal control and some dipshit school administer asked be to come collect a human child from their school, they would receive the following with the minimum amount of tact needed to keep my job:

  • "I don't care that's it's a law -- that law was written by morons. You're a moron too."
  • Variations of "What the hell is wrong with you?", "I don't work for you", and "Go fuck yourself".

I'd like to think most of the people actually employed as animal control officers would respond the same way.

I work in animal control.

It wouldn't even get to that point because as soon as our admin called me, I'd laugh and refuse the job. No animal control person will do this, it's a fucking ludicrous idea and absolutely filled with issues to be sued over.

Kid doesn't willfully come? Do I use a catch pole and drag him out of school? He'll be dead before we get to the front doors. Everybody is sued.

What if the kid attacks me, tries to stab me etc because I'm basically attempting to execute the function of the police with no training (yes yes, I know the cops have fuck all training but at least they are legally able to restrain etc, they are in the legal position to deal with it). I'll take an angry dog over a kid with a knife any day.

In short- the guy is an absolute fuckwit and this idea makes no sense.

It's for show, pandering to the right wing base. They want those they deem as lesser to suffer.

It won't actually happen.

Government is speedrunning a civil war by punishing 2 groups of people at the same time, for absolutely no reason.

It's not legal for animal control to pick up a person even in Oklahoma, right?

we cannot legalize drugs because drugs are illegal

At first I thought this was satire, but I'm seeing similar articles in tons of other places like Huffpost and Vice. So this is actually true?! Stay strong, my friends...

(I don't have a fursuit or see myself as an animal or anything, but this is crazy. And a total waste of resources too. Hopefully voters are educated enough to see that this is absurd.)

It's true that such a bill was introduced, but wacky bills are introduced all the time. This is proposed legislation, they haven't even voted on it yet, and it's extremely unlikely to pass.

But i think it's also true that you can tell where legislator's minds are based on what wacky bills they introduce.

What bugs me about bills like this is that many state legislatures have limits on how many bills a single member can introduce per session. Lots of good stuff gets put on hold because nobody is willing to use one of their slots on it. Then some asshats use their slots to introduce shit like this.

As far as I can tell, Humphrey's job appears to be one where he proposes bullshit legislation ad nauseam, just to waste the legislature's time.

I wonder how the dude who wrote the bill would fare against real animals, considering he's so afraid of people dressed like them.

My guess is not too well. He’d crumble into a tiny ball and wait for it to be over. Man just when you think someone in the US can’t make things look any worse than they already are…

2 more...

I once met a person that was made to believe that "animal-kin" children were being given their own litter boxes in a similar way that transgender children would get their own bathrooms.

The issue with the people who think like this is that they see a few things not like them (a few transgender people) and extrapolate it to utter nonsense (millions of children declaring themselves animals and demanding litter boxes).

If they would think about what they are saying; they would reliaze that their claims are impossible. But then again, they are in their own reality where everything they do makes sense..?

I'm sorry for using such an absurd example but it's a thing older conservatives I know actually believe in.

Oh you have no idea how far that rumor spread. School systems had to issue public denials. One not that far from me did-

https://www.courierpress.com/story/news/local/2022/09/20/evsc-addresses-rumors-of-furries-and-litter-boxes-in-local-schools/69506009007/

There were apparently some schools that had cat litter around because children can't go to toilets during school shooting lockdowns, which is terrible in its own way.

I think that's also made up propaganda. Kitty litter is used by janitorial staff basically everywhere (at least in the US) to clean up vomit and other semi-wet solids. Children are prolific pukers so it's not surprising that basically every school has a bunch of kitty litter in their janitorial closets.

That link explained what a fury is using the word "fursona." 😂

Also, thank you. I guess that rumor has to come from somewhere. Though the redirect for the article of where the tumor came from was behind a pay wall.

I know I'm late to the party, but my go-to refutation is "Ok, name one school that's doing that. Go ahead and look it up on your phone."

Then point out if a single school actually did have litter boxes for the kids the name of the school and everyone involved would be easy to find. It's not something that could be kept secret: just one person has to say something -- a kid talking to their relative, faculty, a parent, etc. Once that happened FOX, OANN, etc would be on that like flies on shit ... and they would name and shame.

But they aren't, because it's bullshit.

So he is just trolling to get headlines and get his name in the papers.

And assholes should be required to be picked up by proctologists.

I'm temporarily unlocking this post again, but I'll be keeping an eye on it. I don't want to see it descend into vitriolic lashing out at one another again. Come on, people, keep it civil. This is supposed to be a fun and welcoming community for everyone, and I want it to stay that way.

Unrelated to the actual content but why is removing words to add a super confusing comma so common for headlines? I had no idea what this was talking about until I read some for context because that comma turns the headline into nonsense

It's interesting that his official government website doesn't really have any basic defenses. It allows you to message him without even making up a fake address in his district. Doesn't even seem to check to see if you enter in bogus information like a phone number with all 5s. Also interesting that outside of hours calls to his office go right to a non-full mailbox.

I do hope no one just calls outside of their posted hours and leave long messages talking about nothing or uses the website to contact him.

Please no one do things like that.

Bro, I don't even care. This shit is hilarious. Pass it.

They're doing it all wrong, though.

If the furries start acting out, just toss a pokeball at them & they'll act however you want!

Bro, I wanna get a poke ball for this express purpose. Just gotta make sure it won't shatter on the floor. I don't see a lot of futures basically ever, but when I do, I'll be ready.

This will be devastating to all those horse girls too 😟

Gone are the days when your buddy is like "Hey check it out I drew you as a snow leopard!" at recess. That shit is now contraband.

Lol I read about this while hanging out at a furry con after fursuiting for five hours

We gotta test people as how they identify amirite?

Yep if I slap ur balls and you say "owo" then I'm calling animal control

If you slap my balls, animal control won't get there fast enough to save you.