Oklahoma bill would require 'furries' be picked up from school by parents, animal control
3 years ago by Jordan117 to c/nottheonion
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).
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.
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.
Not to mention wrong. Sounds like a result of the litterbox panic from a little while ago.
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.
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.
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.
it's both fucking insane and scary. remember that furry hate has always been thinly veiled homophobia
This is a weird amount of preoccupation to have with a subculture of mostly queer people who just watched too much Disney and read too much Warrior Cats or Animorphs as kids.
In general furries embrace their cringe and are unashamed of the stuff they enjoy, can’t say I see anything near as wholesome from the company you keep when you’re hand wringing about sexual degenerates that should be banned from schools.
HEY i resemble that remark.
Gays. Black people. Non Christians. Your exact statement has been said about all of them.
Saying something is fucked up has been said about a lot of things. I’m sure there’s someone who’s said it’s fucked up to put pineapple on a pizza.
Also you do realise those are things people are born as? Whereas no furry was born a non-human.
The fact you would even compare them is a a revile as 4Chan trolls trying to link “maps” to LGBT.
You can not be homophobic and have similar thoughts on a subject with a group that is.
Very little has a strictly black and white separation in this world, it's all shades of grey.
Go tell that to uranium
furry hate has always been thinly veiled homophobia
You don't like Bugs Bunny?
I don’t want to fuck Bugs Bunny or be him.
I like pizza, I’m not a Pizza-ie.
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:
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.
Someone told them about yiff or showed them a vore picture and now they hate all furries.
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.
Oklahoma conservatives vs word with more than 3 syllables challenge, who will win?
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.
Oklahoma where the furries come yiffing down the planes
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.
Ran out of things to ban
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.
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
"What is my purport?"
"You are a furry"
"No"
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
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.
Child control
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."
"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.
There aren’t fursuits in class and the bill is worded so broadly that saying “meow” would violate it.
Who cares though. It's a fur suit. It's basically identical to a mascot costume.
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.
For the love of god, please don't. You're just making them hornier.
owo
UWU
Next we're gonna make the furries wear a collar. That'll show 'em!
I'm sorry you know this.
And it is true.
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
i call that efficient english
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic
It's been going on for a long time.
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.
He hit on a thicc furry who resoundingly rejected him and never let it go.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
No, it was like a planter except instead of soil and plants, it was just sand.
$10 says the state legislator responsible for the bill is whatever the most-outlandish type of furry possible is.
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!
Now I'm afraid
He eats da poo poo
Probably one of those weird fascist ones that everyone else in the fandom wishes didn't exist.
Dude just caught a rerun of the csi episode and went into panic mode
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.
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'd like to think most of the people actually employed as animal control officers would respond the same way.
It's for show, pandering to the right wing base. They want those they deem as lesser to suffer.
It won't actually happen.
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.
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.
That was her way of doing that. Now that she's no longer in that school, she wears a spiked collar and a leather punk jacket as part of her wardrobe. She was pretty much the only kid in her school listening to the Ramones.
several months ago
Jesus Christ man, let it go.
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.
wemird
It's not legal for animal control to pick up a person even in Oklahoma, right?
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.
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.
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.
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…
feed him to the lions
I’ve been to Anthrocon. Normal people love furries. Pittsburgh literally turns out with their kids to watch the furry parade and take pictures with fur suiters, lol.
Dressing up as a cartoon animal is the most Disney level hobby imaginable, disconnect from 2003-era 4chan.
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-
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.
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.
And assholes should be required to be picked up by proctologists.
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
Well that shows everything I hate about headlines
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.
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.
Fucking hilarious!
Yep if I slap ur balls and you say "owo" then I'm calling animal control

art station : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yD2Jy9
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Not gonna lie, if a Furry told me they got arrested by animal control I'd be impressed.
save