We’ve had the Satanic Panic, the Trans Panic (I call it the Tranic), and now… the Furry Worry.

Just more proof that most people just do not understand furries

In this bill it talks about students “displaying anthropomorphic behaviour” like…. anthropomorphic LITERALLY means to have human-like characteristics. Furries use the word anthropomorphic to mean when they have added human attributes onto animals (for example making them walk on 2 legs, talk, or have human intelligence). They 100% meant to say the word animalistic, instead they literally said that students displaying human-like qualities will be taken away by animal control :/ You would think they would at least google the definitions of the things they are trying to legislate against

Good point about DnD. Roleplaying of all kinds attracts LGBTQ and neurodivergents of all kinds because it's a place to be yourself when you don't fit in anywhere else.

I remember when the internet just fucking HATED furries back in the early to mid '10s. Damn shit is just going on

I literally get more death threats for being a furry than for being trans. It’s getting ridiculous

When I was a girl in highschool, I thought all the BS furries got was pretty bad, but I never would have predicted that it would still be going far after.

I feel like, as a furry who is also (not coincidentally) non-binary and autistic, I've just been watching this really unsettling lurch in culture where, as a backlash against the greater move towards the liberation of marginalised people across all spectra, you see all these targeted attacks on especially vulnerable groups which already have a lot of stigma and misunderstanding surrounding them, as well as proxies for those groups. Going after furries is obviously a proxy for queer and especially trans people, but as with that panic there's a heavy overlap with the contempt for neurodivergence. Like, there's a very clear demographic and ideological overlap between modern "gender-critical" types and what a friend of mine dubbed Autism Martyr Parents-the kind of people who treat their children's neurodivergence as some terrible affliction which has ruined *their* lives and thus makes them authorities on all parenting matters by default-and the moral panic over the furry fandom feels like a very clear expression of conservative rage over neurodiverse and gender-diverse people, particularly children and teenagers, finding community outside of these oppressive social confines. They don't want us knowing that other people like us exist.

We should have two budgets in terms of politics, one for real problems: inflation, benefits for citizens, healthcare and education, and a second budget for imaginary problems Republicans waste money on, the money is just as imaginary as the problems.

fun fact: the green light heart rate monitor in smart watches, a cooling vest used under plate carriers in the us military, and one of the covid vaccines were all developed by furries

Republicans out here banning school mascots.

From satanic panic to... furry worry lololol wtf are these crazy people even on?

This is the same guy who also wrote up a Bigfoot hunting bill. He is one of our many nutters in the OK legislation.

Someone should tell these lawmakers about the furred reicht and the nazfurs. then those lawmakers will try protecting them

Ironically, the majory of furries dont even want or own fursuits Were just a bunch of cool artists

I am a trans woman who has found a community in the fandom and im scared of everything that’s happening i just want to live my life and go to school

Our history of forced sterilization in the USA is not _nearly_ far enough in the past for his comment about neutering furries to be anything other than horrifying to me 🤬

That’s the weirdest affirmation of furries I’ve ever seen. Getting escorted out of school by Animal Control = Instant Legend status

Cat litter is also used to clean up vomit, so the school janitor might have some cat litter in the janitorial closet. If cat litter is in a school it's for like, normal, sensible reaons, 'cuz it turns out cat litter is useful for more than just litter boxes.

i love referring to a fursuit as "Regalia" like yes, this is the adornments of a knight of the royal furry court and you will show respect.

Ya know as a furry myself, all of the stuff that conservatives say about us all seem super crazy, and i think it all just comes from the fact that we are one of the most queer and accepting communites out there. And probably cuz we "deviate from the norm" by just enjoying a hobby and livin our best lifes with sonas that we make up to help us represent ourselves more/ just have fun with OCs.

It doesn't matter if Joe Rogan himself said "it was a blatant lie to whip my audience into a frenzy." It wouldn't matter cuz his audience only cares about the outrage porn he serves them, he knows they don't care about "clarification", their investment ends at outrage

For one side thats goofy and it makes no sence because furries are normal people outside the internet that contributes a lot more to society than conservative media, in the other, furries are one of, if not the moast diverse group on the internet, the chance of a furry being gay is way bigger than for us to be straight, and that means a lot of progressive people

Im just imagining how the hell are they going to enforce this if it happens to pass? How will they be able to tell whether or not someone is a furry? Are they going to ask for their social media? Are they going to ask for their fur affinity profile? Plus, involving animal control is just a waste of resources. Their job is to control and contain dangerous animals, not kick some kid who likes Nick Wilde out of school.

As someone who is both a furry and a therian, something else that i dont see anyone talk about is that furries are a completely different thing from therians/otherkin. The whole “identify as a cat” thing is far more applicable to therians than furries

You know, I was sitting around wondering what the next moral panic was going to be after trans people aren’t as fun to go after anymore… you know, I should’ve known it was going to be furries

Another thing, cat litter is really good at cleaning up vomit and extraordinarily large spills because of its ability to absorb moisture

this is a tiny detail but i kinda love that joe refers to it as "installing" a litter box as if its a process involving power tools or something. man has never owned a cat and it shows

"Why do you want to dress up a an animal and take kids to a place where people get spanked" Well let's never take a kid to a sports game where fellow players give the team mates a little spank. It's so sad how they act like there's overt danger to kids in places where there isn't but I bet you a million dollars they'd leave their kids in sunday school without batting an eye.

Oh no! the furries have gotten to me (Like, 20 years ago) I have become one of them! I am currently displaying anthropomorphic behavior! By writing this youtube comment! Ooooooh *Spooky noises* I am scaring off conservatives with my human behavior!

Furries are an easy target (we always have been). Society now is much, much, much more accepting of it than it was back in the late '90s for me, and it's honestly kind of insane to have attended some of the largest conventions when they had less than a thousand attendees, to now, when some of them are pulling ten times those numbers. The beauty of the furry fandom is that it isn't constrained to one piece of media, like with similar fandoms such as Sonic, or Supernatural, or Harry Potter. And, I mean, to be fair, furries can kind of be a virus where we furry-fy everything we love! But there's a very, very strong sense of freedom of creative expression within the fandom, and I think that's what conservatives fear more than anything else, is the assertion of individuality and personal choice.

i feel like asking "why do you want kids to be at events where people in squirrel suits are getting spanked" is like asking "when you go camping with your kids, why do you want them to be near you shitting in the woods?" it's like "people do that in private" and the other side is like "YEAH SUUUUUURE, EVERYBODY BELIEVES YOU"

obsessed with the way that news anchor says "who filed this legislation". it sounds like what she wanted to say was "what dipshit is responsible for this nonsense"

Yanno I wish "gender madness" was real. I graduated in 2022 from a very queerphobic school where even some teachers were pretty awful about queer people. I'm gonna be 20 soon and I'm closeted as trans, the way I was closeted as bi in school. The only supportive adult I ever had in my life was my older brother who is bi and trans.

Furries may be cringe, but hating on them is even more cringe.

who in the world is believing the kitty litter stories??? nobody is peeing out in the open like that

Oh no! I hath been caught by animal control with thou comically large net!

I’m convinced conservatives just don’t like to see anyone experience joy unless it fits their narrow script

Officer no, it’s not a fursona, it’s a furbysona, totally different.

It's always so funny how the people that have the most to say about any given group of people usually know the least about them... 🙄

Being in a news clip and the only way they describe you in the lower third is “furry” is so fucking funny

Literally, what is animal control gonna do to a human person? (I mean, like, they're school children. I hope to some god that we can hold on to our humanity and not rope children into cages as if they were rabid dogs, if that helps clarify my thoughts-)

My grandma always told me to be careful what you say if you get in a position where a lot of people will listen to you because once something is out there, you can't take it back. And even if it gets disproven, you've already ruined someone's reputation.

It's funny how they're blaming all of this on some trans agenda. Meanwhile I ended up being completely gaslighted into believing that I was an actual demon. My mom actually attempted to perform an exorcism on me. And because I didn't cooperate, they threatened to kick me out of the house. Thankfully, my parents realized that I was just dilusanal, not like they helped me out with that problem ether. Yeah, no wonder some of us don't really see ourselves as human. Christianity kind of dehumanizes people all on it's own. All well not like I lost anything of value. 👹🏳️‍⚧️

"My friend...his wife, is a school teacher..." He didn't just repeat a fake story without fact-checking it, he purposefully lied about it being real. He claimed that it happened to someone he personally knew. Between this and every other time he's been called out for getting facts completely wrong, how could anyone legitimately trust anything he says?

Ah cool, more laws trying to be pushed by the "why wont my kids open up to or visit me" squad.

I think the "not all furries are into the lewd side of the fandom" argument is incredibly weak because like. What mature person gives a crap about how adults engage with sexuality? It's so puritanical to try to set apart the "good", _clean_ furries from all the dirty, dirty perverts.

I’ve seen a lot of this sentiment on Reddit. It feels like a euphemism for anything LGBTQ+ or what they deem to be a paraphilia

Me as an adult playing MW2 as an anthropomorphic housecat fully kitted with level 4 plates and forest camo: y'all know this is just for fun right? Nothing wrong with being a furry.

The fact this is real just boggles the mind.

I'd say Furry is a fandom more than a hobby (Of what? I think the usual answer to that is 'Each other.' but more generally 'of art across a range of media depicting anthropomorphic characters' is probably the closest), though obviously there are hobby artists and writers and musicians and costume manufacturers and ... Performance artists, I suppose is how you'd generalize fursuiters?... within it who make media relating to the fandom, just like any other fandom. The difference is that since it's a fandom of a concept that goes beyond corporate owned media it's easier for those hobby artists to go professional within that fandom, and a lot of furries have a lot of disposable income to commission art or bespoke costumes of their OCs (or, rather, fursonas) (That might sound like a nitpick but I just don't view "I enjoy x media" as a hobby? I'm happy to accept 'reading' or 'watching television' as hobbies, going out of your way to spend a lot of your free time engaging with a specific medium - someone has to read the stuff writers (both hobby and professional) write, but... Liking something? Even if you're actively liking it and spending time around other people who like it to discuss it such as on forums, that's... Still not a hobby to my eyes, it's engaging with a community, you know?) And yes, there are not great furries, but... I think last time I looked up the demographics 80% of furries are some flavour of queer, and furry cons seem to have a better track record at banning nazis than most fandom conventions. The thing that gets my goat, so to speak, about the 'people dress as animals for sexual fun' thing is... Fursuits aren't exactly cheap, or easy to clean. They're also extremely hot - as in one of the things you get told when you attend a con is 'if you see a fursuiter lying down, check up on them to make sure they're ok because it might be heat stroke' (though apparently good suits these days have internal ventilation). Like, sure, maybe some people have sex in fursuits, but... That's the equivalent of having sex in a very expensive - 20 years ago when I was going to cons I think a fairly cheap suit was typically, like $500-750 for a full suit rather than a half suit, and I've definitely heard $2k+ - dry clean only thermal outfit. Even if that's your fetish, you're going to find another way to get your rocks off.

Conservatives will rail against anything except for something that actually matters.

The key thing with the far right is that they always need to feel superior to *some* other group. If they take too much criticism for going after one, they pick (on) the other. Plain and simple. Whoever is a minority that can be grouped under an umbrella term is on their wheel of misfortune.

I just want to pretend to be a fluffy creature online before I wake up and sell myself for 8 hours a day so I can pay my bills lol

I'm not a furry but seeing conservatives go after them makes me want to become one

They literally made something up, admitted to making it up, and we watched in real time as they took this made up thing and made a whole panic about it

It's very nice to see this issue cared about by so many people far and wide, it's really dumb we have to but it's important. thank you

Sorry I don’t but it. I saw half of the confessional GOp members at my last furry convention. …we have a secret handshake, “pawshake”

okay haven't watched the whole video yet but I have been thinking abt this for SO LONG: the litterboxes in school thing is so, SO obviously fake if you're a furry/furry-adjacent and are even remotely aware of the community + culture. going to the bathroom in a litterbox would almost 100% be a kink thing, and people would NOT do that in a school environment, where A.) most people there are minors and B.) you don't have full consent from everyone involved. there's almost certainly a furry/therian/etc out there who owns a litterbox either as a fetish thing or for completely non-sexual reasons, but the chances that they're going to bring it to use in public is next to nil. also I imagine it would be WAYYY less comfortable to use/difficult to clean than just.... getting a squat toilet, which would feel like it fulfills a lot of the same purpose. just a ridiculous lie all around

You know this is a product of social media, it's just a game of telephone on a massive and insanely fast scale in an echo chamber with no fact checking.

I'd just like to say, as someone embedded in the world of MMA, no one should ever listen to Joe Rogan on any subject, ever.

Litter box for kids who identify as cats, no evidence but considered a sign of dangerous activity effecting kids. Litter in schools in case of shootings, which are evident in the constant onslaught of youths dying, doesn't mean there is a problem with the ease of people bringing very deadly weapons to schools. Dont follow the evidence, move back from ur conclusions and make the evidence fit or dismiss it. Also much love to those getting hate for just harmlessly being them.

The logic behind sending kids to pounds because they're a furry is the same logic as sending a teen to the frontlines because they like playing COD. Besides, wouldn't this count as cruel and/or unusual punishment?

for the record, people with nonhuman identities are a thing. they're called therians or otherkin. and they don't want shit like litterboxes in schools either. this crap is frustrating.

Do these people expect to suspend any kid with a fursona? It's not like students come into class in fursuits and even in the few cases they do, I doubt it's a huge issue.

“My wife taught at a school that had a litterbox in the girls’ room for cat girls!” Joe Rogan “I’m not sure where this rumor came from but it’s probably not true.” Also Joe 👀

There is the rare therianthrope (I fall into that category) it is rare but is typically more of a spiritual thing that is the closest thing to identifying as an animal but yes people can identify as animals but it is rare and quite often just spiritual

Can we just take a moment to pause? Did any of you ever sit there when you were a kid and think “in the future the government is going to persecute those weirdos in the fursuits”. I… is this reality? What the actual hell… like come on… what kind of dystopia is this. You know what? Next they’ll come for the weebs. I guarantee it. Then the table top gamers “Billy thinks he’s a space marine!” 🤦‍♂️ God just let me off of the world please. Every single day reality becomes more like south park

Joe told the litter box story like it was a personally known fact -- my friend's wife -- so obvious lie

I LOVE WHERE MY TAX PAYER DOLLARS ARE GOING TO. MY POCKET FROM THE AUDITS THEY DO AND FIND OUT THEY'VE MADE A MISTAKE, AND SENATOR JJ HUMPHREYS PERSONAL BANK ACCOUNT. I love nowhere near him but I'm still happy that I'm going to be indirectly funding him with my presence in the USA.

He had to specify "getting spanked" because having kids around people dressed as animals is pretty normal. People will pay for it, even.

This can only backfire. Imagine a huge wave of politically active furries! Minus the weird Nazi ones.

We're such a fucking deeply unserious country.

Really? A statewide problem? Can that yahoo name one ACTUAL problem that furries are causing in schools in one town of that State? What statewide issue(s) exists that has any attribution to furries? What's the crime? And parents won't be allowed to pick their kids up from where? School or the pound? Who would allow the passing of a bill to allow for animal control to seize your child and lock them in a dog kennel without any obstacle? Again, what is the crime of being a furry and what are these statewide issues they cause?

A moral panic needs a target group that is perceived as weak, degenerate and craven but at the same time as powerful enough to be manipulative, influential and stepping out of line. The group committing to the moral panic needs to see themselves as "moral majority". The reason for the moral panic in the first place is societal pressure and other factors often resulting in a loss of privilege or status for this group. How many moral panics do we need to have before people trying to commit to those instantly get shut down by people with a little self awareness and ability to learn from the past?

They tried to co-opt the fandom multiple times and each time got absolutely bodied, so i guess they've given and up and have settled for trying to erase it instead

I honestly can't see a reason for the recent furry panic other than the repubs think the trans panic won't last. But that may just be my conspiracy brain talking.

And to think, I was planning on going to a furry convention in Oklahoma…

I heard that furries are inherently and deeply connected to autism, and this changed my perspective on even casual furry shaming. I try to defend and accept in casual conversations. Honestly have never truly understood the hate, i was always interested in furry interests but never fully found myself in the furry community.

The first furry we saw, their costume was just amazing! As someone that loves and has always wanted to try cosplaying, that was really well made. 😁

to me one of the most frustrating things is that there are people who identify as animals fully and unironically, and they are some of the coolest and chillest people. The therian community is weird and has its own issues, but like it really shows that the whole panic over "what if kids identify as animals" is bullshit because guess what! It already happens and it isn't ripping society apart at the seams! We have concrete evidence that even their fear mongering is completely wrong

Wales mentioned? :O Yeah news sources over here are talking about it too, very cringe. Thank you for the accent compliment! it's often mocked over here.

This is the original video from the legislator. I legitimately thought it was parody. /kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fr6UZJBl1avNmWQ.htmlsi=KylEW0XA3puAfapp

I find it funny that so many people think being a furry is a kink, but I'm an avid furry, and I'm asexual, up yours asleep immoralists.

Furries are a mix of artwork and performance. It's like drag queens. My first ex is a furry and while I think the costumes are a bit creepy I can still appreciate the love, effort and creativity on display.

Pretty sure the kitty litter was part of a biohazard cleanup kit designed for vomit, blood, etc and its part of contingency kits, its not for #1 or #2 unless theres a spill of it. My university had them.

Damn I thought furry haters were just edgy teen obsessed with Russia

More than 80% of furries are LGBTQ+ including 13% who are transgender. A lot of furries are also neurodivergent, with as much as 15% being autistic. I'm all of the above, myself. So this moral panic is little more than a way of justifying other forms of discrimination without it looking that way on the surface.

I feel like a crazy person because I can see a representation of an identity that isn't mine and *not* have an emotional meltdown.

This just makes me feel so bad for all fellow furs who still go to school, I remember being a very out furry(and bi) in HS so they would have probably expelled me and my boyfriend 😅

From the moment I noticed furry hate emerge back in the early 2000s, i knew it would end this way. Hate is not a harmless feeling.

where did that fox news reporter hear about fucking spankings at furry conventions?! well he does do his job well. I guess. you really don't hear any of the weird shit because that's such a minor part of the WHOLE GENRE OF THE HOBBY.

THANK you for bringing up that mass shootings have caused a horrific item to become standard place in classrooms

Thanks for including my vid! Means a lot

it really tells just how stupid America has gotten

I was looking through comments for the person who always says "Its true Ive seen pictures" and then wont tell you wheree to find the picture they saw. OMG just realized Durango was where I went to High School!

As somebody who's been a furry since fuckin... 199×, "furry" ranges from fursuiter art commissioner (lewd or not), to full-on Therian/neopronouns, to... just a person who likes cartoons, and a person can be any amount of any, or only some of one. Furry, is not easily definable into one blanket term.

i think another part of it is the confusion of therians and furries (as a therian)

Furry is NOT GENDER!! Furry is an outfit choice, it's Mascot Chic!! It's not what the repugnicunts think it is. I'm not a Furry myself but I'm Furry friendly, you do you and if that means dressing up as a purple fox with bright yellow tiger stripes then that's okay!! It's not hurting anyone, it's harmless fun. For some people Furry Cons are really their only source of healthy social interaction because of crippling anxiety issues and serve a good purpose by allowing them the shield of their Fursona to protect them while out in the world. Furry is to Trans like aardvarks are to tuna fish absolutely no connection or similarity whatsoever

Conservatives literally taking the word of a guy who spends half his podcast gibbering nonsense because he finds it funny. Oh yeah guys, scientists just make stuff up but the shock jock who makes funny noises for a living is the last word in hard hitting fact finding. How do they even start calling anybody else disfunctional 🤦🏻‍♂️