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.
The lib comments on here never disappoint.
This isn’t about furries, personal expression or suppressing queer identity. This isn’t about Republican lawmakers falling for rumors. This isn’t about cruelty for cruelty’s sake. This isn’t about the fact that a teacher in high-school didn’t like the way you dress or the gotchas of how they legally encode “non-human behavior”
I read the bill. It’s a transparent cash for kids play. The bill instructs every school district to create a
code of conductemployee handbook for students that explicitly lays out 4 punishment criterion and 6 punishment dimensions to judgeconductviolations on.The 4 punishment criterion are:
- suspension
- expulsion
- removal to disciplinary alternative education program (any kind of bullshit you can think of that can disguise itself as a education program from conversion therapy to those weird kid boot camps southerners love)
- placement in a juvenile justice alternative education program (private child jail)
The 6 punishment exception dimensions are:
- self defense
- intent or lack there of when committing the
conductviolation - disciplinary history
- a disability that substantially impairs the student’s capacity to understand the wrongfulness of the student’s conduct (we don’t give a shit if you’re disabled you’re going to kid jail because we think you’re
“cogent”worth money) - a student’s conservatorship or if they’re in the foster system
- if the student is homeless.
Along with that it says they must use the furry shit as lorem ipsum in the final doc.
They want each school to develop a school to prison pipeline for each and every kid possible. Criminalizing these behaviors is a way to incense their moronic base who can’t tell shit from shinola to allow schools to use their children as fucking financial instruments. And y’all are no better because you fell for it too just in the completely opposite direction. Being a furry doesn’t fucking matter! They want to allow transferring children to private corporations so those corps in turn can charge the government for warehousing and abusing them.
And you know who are the actual targets here? #4 on the punishment criterion. Disabled students. I clocked that shitty language from a mile away.
Neoliberal austerity and mandatory funding guidelines have created a structural situation where school administrators hate disabled students. They don’t want to figure out if kids have disabilities (like they’re mandated by law), because then they will have to pay for them. Now if this bill passes and you’re a school admin? What an easy fucking way to shed all those SPED teachers and paraprofessionals from the budget and fill admin pockets for a couple of years before claiming the win on local taxes and getting a promotion to city politics. They’ve got an easy out to send all those kids, who to them are just annoying expensive detrimental line items, to jail.
And the cool part? Child jail and alternative education programs aren’t school, so they don’t need SPED teachers or paraprofessionals. They don’t need to give support. They don’t need to do much of anything at all but jump through some paperwork hoops and show that at least 1 kid a year can do 1+1 in their head, it’s Texas after all. Pure profit baby, just like adult private prisons.
It’s quite literally doing the OSHA / unemployment / workers comp play on disabled kids, where for the purposes of regulation in this country and in many of it’s states your employers employee manual is an extension of labor law in some cases regarding safety, unemployment eligibility and workers comp eligibility. Same thing here: Sucks you’re disabled, the law says this isn’t discrimination because we posted signs everywhere telling you all the rules that if violated you’ll be sent to jail for. It’s “objective”. Now we can finally fire your teacher.
That’s what this is all about.
https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/Text.aspx?LegSess=89R&Bill=HB4814
Disabled students are already punished at significantly higher rates for subjective “conduct violations”.
https://hechingerreport.org/students-with-disabilities-often-snared-by-subjective-discipline-rules/
They are statistically overall suspended and expelled at higher rates and the discipline of disabled students exacerbates these problems and increases harms done to them because they are removed from their legally mandated support structure through these draconian exclusions.
https://epicedpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/working_paper_disabilities4WEB.pdf
And because of this cool thing called COVID-19, there are statistically more children that need support and qualify as disabled, not just the children suffering from long COVID effects, but the children affected by learning loss and stunted development due to social outcomes of the pandemic years especially in children that lived through the pandemic at age 8-18.
This belongs to all of you:
Stop fucking playing they’re dabbing on us.
I see your point but I also see why you’re banned. You dont have to be a smug asshole about it.
