School safeguarding organisation is blasted for issuing guidance for parents and teachers on how they should support pupils who are ‘furries’ and like to dress up and behave like animals
- It is unclear how many pupils in the UK currently identify as ‘furries’
- The Safer Schools organisation has given guidance on how to respond to furries
A school safeguarding organisation has issued guidance for parents and teachers on how to support pupils who like to dress up and behave like animals – known as ‘furries’.
It’s unclear how many – if any – UK pupils identify as furries but the Safer Schools organisation this month published a lengthy piece of guidance for parents and teachers on how to respond if they encounter one who does.
The series of observations about furries includes reassurances that it’s in no way unusual for pupils to want to do this: ‘It’s normal for young people to express themselves through ”dressing up”.’
The post on the organisation’s website explains how members of the furry ‘community’ like to take on the persona of an animal – a ‘fursona’ – and interact with other like-minded ‘fursonas’ by chatting and in acts of role play.
It further outlines how furries take on the personality and physical attributes of their chosen animal and some members make or buy vibrant costumes of their characters, known as ‘fursuits’. Conventions are held around the world where these like-minded people can meet up in their altered animal ego, it says.
A school safeguarding organisation has issued guidance for parents and teachers on how to support pupils who like to dress up and behave like animals – known as ‘furries’
The Safer Schools organisation published a lengthy piece of guidance on how to respond if they encounter students who identify as ‘furries’
The series of observations about furries includes reassurances that it’s in no way unusual for pupils to want to do this: ‘It’s normal for young people to express themselves through ”dressing up”’
The post is makes plain that ‘furries are not innately sexual’ – and advises parents or teachers who encounter one to ‘engage in conversation about what it means to be a furry and the benefits of the furry community’
Litter boxes in schools?
The litter boxes in schools hoax is a rumour alleging that certain schools in North America provide litter boxes in bathrooms for students who ‘identify as cats’ or ‘furries’.
A Michigan school district last year denied that litter boxes were provided to students who identify as ‘furries’ after a woman made the claim in a school board meeting.
The woman, Lisa Hansen said: ‘So yesterday, I heard that a least one of our schools has – in one of the unisex bathrooms – a litter box for the kids that identify as cats, and I am really disturbed by that. And I will do some more investigation on that.’
Superintendent Michael E. Sharrow said it was ‘unconscionable’ that he had to address the issue in an email to parents that was also posted on Facebook.
‘Let me be clear in this communication. There is no truth whatsoever to this false statement/accusation! There have never been litter boxes within MPS schools,’ Sharrow said.
The post acknowledges that a number of reports suggesting that ‘students within multiple UK schools identifying as cats and engaging in disruptive behaviours, such as crawling on all fours and demanding litter boxes be placed in toilets’ have turned out to be hoaxes.
But it goes on: ‘The furry community itself is a complex one, made up of many different identities and definitions of what it means to be a ‘furry’
It illustrates the post with pictures of a number of people dressed as animals including cats, dogs, bears and badgers. BUT NO DONKEY BEASTS OF BURDEN
Safer Schools describes itself as ‘a multi-award-winning safeguarding ecosystem, created to educate, empower and protect your entire school community, in a digital World’. It’s financially supported by insurance giant Zurich Municipal,
But last night the idea of ‘normalising’ this ‘demented’ past-time by providing guidance on how to support ‘furries’ was condemned as ‘madness’ by schools watchdog, The Campaign for Real Education.
Chairman Chris McGovern told MailOnline: ‘This sounds like complete madness.
‘By providing guidance, Safer Schools are legitimising and normalising demented, delusional and deranged behaviour.
‘They are giving the go ahead to anarchy in schools.
‘Kids are likely to use the guidance as a green light for misbehaving and having a laugh.’
The furore follows outrage on the Isle of Man last month when it emerged that controversial school education lessons saw a drag queen guest tell pupils as young as 12 that there were 73 genders – and students who questioned this assertion were punished with detention.
Safer Schools have been contacted for comment.
People who are furries ‘create for themselves an anthropomorphized animal character (fursona) with whom they identify,’ according to scientists who study them. [File image]
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