A state legislator in Oklahoma has pre-filed a bill that would ban students who identify as furries from schools — no, really. The legislation goes so far as to mandate that animal control services be contacted to remove offending students from campuses.
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Rep. Justin Humphrey (R-19th District) felt that the (nonexistent) epidemic of openly furry students was so urgent it needed legislative remedy in the form of House Bill 3084. The bill is short, defining furries as “students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior.” It does not define what that behavior might entail in the context of a school environment, however.
In addition to the ongoing moral panic over trans kids, conservatives have worked themselves into an absolute lather about furries in schools. In 2022, they were downright panicked over a right-wing urban legend that the woke epidemic was causing some schools to provide litter boxes for students who identify as furries. Despite the fact that this was untrue, several Republican political hopefuls and a handful of actual lawmakers used the fake litter box story to fire up their bases on the campaign trail.
Yes, furries have been a beloved punching bag of internet humor across the political spectrum basically since the birth of the World Wide Web. But as tempting as it might be to laugh off this bill, it’s worth acknowledging that the dual moral panics over trans youth and furries aren’t just concurrent — they are linked. (Stay with me here!)
This is a link that conservatives themselves have made. In 2022, NBC reported that a number of politicians had “issued warnings about children acting as cats during debates regarding school policies related to transgender and nonbinary youth.” Additionally, Rep. Humphrey — the same Oklahoma lawmaker who filed the anti-furry bill — also pre-filed a bill this legislative session that bans the usage of public funds for education on “sexual choice, sexual orientation, drag queens, or similar topics in public educational institutions.”
We need look no further than the U.K., famously a hotbed of anti-trans delusion, for proof that anti-furry panic isn’t really about furries. Last June, The Daily Mail published an article about the supposed “rise of the ‘furries,’” claiming that woke teachers were being too affirming of the nonhuman-identifying students in their classrooms. (Sound familiar?) That same month, U.K. educator Tabitha McIntosh wrote for the education publication Schools Week, arguing that these “unevidenced” stories were “terrifying” because they “aren’t about furries or dinosaurs or holograms.”
“They are aimed at undoing two decades of law that grant people the right to change their legal gender and protects them from discrimination if they do or plan to do so,” she elaborated, pointing to the fact that the U.K.’s minister for women and equalities used the furry kids’ story to call for an emergency investigation of a school with a teacher who affirmed trans identity.
Even if the anti-furry moral panic wasn’t really just a smokescreen for transphobia, it would still be cruel toward children in a way that we should oppose. Many might think furry culture is “cringe,” but it's ultimately harmless. If we believe that children deserve the right to self-expression, that holds true for whatever form that expression might take, whether that’s wearing clothing that doesn’t “align” with the gender they were assigned at birth or drawing themselves as an anthropomorphic dog. No matter what group they’re targeting, the Republican rallying cry to “protect the children,” used by many as political currency, only serves to further disenfranchise minors.
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