The Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education, or FURRIES, Act, filed by Austin-area Republican State Rep. Stan Gerdes, would “prohibit any non-human behavior by a student, including presenting himself or herself, on days other than exempt days, as anything other than a human being.”

The law would allow for exempt days, such as Halloween and other school dress-up days.

The law defines “non-human” behavior as “any type of behavior or accessory displayed by a student in a school district other than behaviors or accessories typically displayed by a member of the homo sapiens species,” with provided examples being:

Using a litter box for the passing of stool, urine or other human byproducts

A personal or outward display, except during a school play or by a school mascot, through surgical or superficial means of features that are non-human such as using tails, leashes, collars or other accessories designed for pets

Using fur, other than naturally occurring human hair or a wig made to look like human hair

Artificial, animal-like ears

Other physiological features that have not historically been assigned to the human race through a means of natural biological development

Students who bark, meow, hiss or make other animal noises that are not human speech

Licking oneself or others for the purpose of grooming or maintenance.

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I always tell people, that they won’t stop at LGBTQ+ people, and will eventually go into persecuting other subcultures.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    1 day ago

    What is it with them and this absolute conviction that kids are pretending to be cats, it’s literally not happening and yet they’re upset about it.

    If they are going to make things up and then be upset about those made up things can they not come up with something less weird than kids being cats? Why not be upset about all the Dark Lords in schools, or the uptake in alien abductions?

    • Dultas@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      Because their base thinks it’s real so they can claim a win over a non existent issue and their base will eat it up.

      It also distracts from real issues impacting people. So they can say yeah we haven’t gotten to that yet but look at all this other stuff we “fixed”.

    • obvs@lemm.ee
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      If you’re complaining about gay people, you’re not complaining about us denying you a living wage.

      If you’re complaining about transgender people, you’re not complaining about us denying you medical care.

      If you’re complaining about furries, you’re not complaining about us denying you education.

      I guess we really want you to complain about those things.

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    i cannot begin to describe how utterly fucking stupid this is.

    I genuinely thought i died and went to hell when i first read this, this bill doesn’t even make any fucking sense. Child exhibiting “non human behaviors” could be considered “child abuse” according to this bill.

    How the fuck do you even enforce this?

  • Saint_La_Croix_Crosse@midwest.social
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    2 days ago

    Fascists are so stupid, they start to believe their own propaganda. Can’t even remember, or at least be bothered to remember, that they made this up to scare normies.

    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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      1 day ago

      well also. once you drum up enough fear, you can act on that fear. when you act on that fear you can do something that masquerades as something else. they say this is about keeping furrie play out of school. but the powers they got themselves will go a long way to labeling any kind of “out of the ordinary” behavior autistic kids do as being furrie play. this is all going accrording to plan

  • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    Why on earth are they pursuing this. We all know this is not a real problem.

    If it was a scare crow to attack trans rights, they have achieved that. They have pulverized trans rights in many places, especially bathroom access.

    Who stands to gain from this? It is not a real problem!

  • luce [they/she]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    The law defines “non-human” behavior “any type of behavior… [not typically] displayed by a member of the homo sapiens species,”

    NATHON!! STOP ACTING LIKE A HOMO ERECTUS YOU NEANDERTHAL!

    also im pretty sure “human” means ‘under the homo genus’ not ‘homo sapien’ but its not like it matters to them

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 day ago

      Surely any behavior performed by a human is behavior that is performed by humans and therefore anything is authorized under this act. Lots of humans do dress up in cat ears, so dressing up in cat ears is human behavior.

      • luce [they/she]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        23 hours ago

        Wow there sure is a lot of behavior and accessories not “typcal to homo sapiens” makes me wonder what the hell they even mean here by “typical”, it’s like calling someone “objectively not normal” while ignoring that your entire view on normality is based on what you have been exposed to. I am not a furry or a therian or anything, but the flaws in this law absolutely allow it to be applied to just about any “behavior or accessory”

        • argarath@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          There are enough furry conventions that you cannot say it’s not typical. Also have you not interacted with children at all? Because they play as if they’re cats or dogs or wolves and many other animals all the time, are you saying that typical child behavior is not typical human behavior?

          • luce [they/she]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            21 hours ago

            I feel there has been a misunderstanding here.

            Im not saying anything against furries, I am instead stating that our ideas of normality are entirely socially constructed, meaning this bill could be applied to basically any behavior depending on your interpretation of what is “typical to homo sapiens” I could, for example, state that it is normal for someone to be a furry, as humans have a long history of portraying themselves in similar ways. I could also say that a piercing is an “atypical” accessory not permitted by the rules. There is no such thing as normal. To call something weird is just to simply state that you haven’t been exposed to it enough for it to qualify as weird for you.

    • umbraroze@lemmy.world
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      The law defines “non-human” behavior “any type of behavior… [not typically] displayed by a member of the homo sapiens species,”

      “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Florida forever.”

  • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    ‘non-human’

    this could go much darker than anti-furry biotry, which already isn’t great, real fast. is your nose too big? in a non-human way? does a man have tits that are too large? in a non-human way?

    • Glytch@lemmy.world
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      Is your skin too dark to be considered human? Are you acting in a manner that the white elite deem thuggish non-human?

      Considering this is a Texas bill it’s not hard to see how it will be abused.

  • Radioactive Butthole@reddthat.com
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    2 days ago

    Man they keep coming back to the litterbox thing, it really freaks them tf out. Even though its been debunked dozens of time, my conservative friends all swear they know a guy that knows a guy that swears he saw one for real!

    • Vreyan31@reddthat.com
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      The litterbox thing is so outrageous that it gives their tyrannical proposals the vineer of addressing a real problem.

      But the litterbox story was fabricated, and the only grain of truth of it is that some classrooms did keep kitty litter as a mitigation against being trapped by an active shooter - another conservative-created problem.

      They will continue to glom onto outrageous stories, to justify their outrageously oppressive proposals.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        I was always confused by this active shooter argument. Don’t classrooms have fire doors to the outside isn’t that a requirement that all rooms have at least two exits.

        The school I was in had both fire doors to the outside and bathrooms between the classrooms right up until upper education. Even then they still had fire doors to the outside so everyone could just leave.

      • phx@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        Oh, that’s fine then. School shootings are an American tradition so Republicans won’t prevent that

    • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.ml
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      This is no more outlandish or unscientific than the WHOLE anti-trans thing:

      Men pretending to be trans to access woman spaces does not happen any more frequently than furry students shitting in litterboxes.

      The right is consistently and historically mobilized by fantastic beasts their cult leaders brainwash them about.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      I would not be able to stop myself from laughing if i saw that happening for real but these people think of it as a threat to their existence, as a crime.

      What a witless world we live in.

      • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        This started out as a far-far-fetched construction to attack trans rights. In fact, whoever designed this hoax is Goebbels-level diabolical. If you break it down, it subconsciously re-arranges the notions of self-identification and toilet use, in a way that presents “reckless liberalism” as an immediate threat to normalcy.

        The people who eat this shit up may be stupid, but the people who design it are not. This goes beyond straw-man attack and slippery slope fallacy. It rather combines both into a powerful manipulation technique that bears resemblance to mass hypnosis. They have someone really malevolent on the propaganda payroll, folks.

    • Match!!@pawb.social
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      2 days ago

      The kitty litter is not for pooping in. It is for covering up the blood. (The bucket is for pooping though)

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Surgical means‽

    Also why are they legislating about this. Texas schools have real problems like gun violence and illiteracy. Furries and animal role play are just things some people have always done that don’t really harm anyone and given how they persist across so many cultures and times could actually be considered a natural behavior of homo sapiens like parrots’ mimicry

    • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      and if parents are whining about THE FURRY MENACE and don’t want their kids to learn how computers work, then they won’t be making a fuss about the difficult or expensive problems, like keeping their children from being murdered or giving them an education.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        1 day ago

        It’s going to be real hard for them to maintain their dictatorship if no one knows how to operate any of the devices of authority.

        Presumably at some point they’re going to want to implement some kind of American firewall. Presumably that will require people who know how the command line works at the very least. Although I suspect that it’s already too late to keep these people on side.

        • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          the devices of authority

          oh they’re doing this with the figurative machinery of authority too. just completely dismantling it.

          but of course these dipshits don’t know bash. they won’t talk to the linux greybeards, they hate trans women, and they hate furries. everything will run windows.

  • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 days ago

    Besides them being stupid as hell to conduct this ridiculous culture war, I take issue with another thing, the name:

    Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education

    It’s not unlawful until you forbid it. So the title makes no sense. You’re not forbidding the unlawful. You’re forbidding the previously lawful, making it unlawful.

    Stupid assholes.

    • Iceman@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education

      In Texas parties only lawful alignment is allowed. We don’t care if your Good or Evil, as long as your not chaotic or neutral.