Sex education in UK schools but not as we knew it!

CheersMeDears

^What is the behaviour of a self identified cat?^

From experience I'd say they change their minds about what they like and dislike at the drop of a hat. They pretend to like you but have absolutely zero loyalty if they see something or someone better elsewhere. And they crap on your bed. They demand 100% tolerance of their abhorrent behaviour.

They tolerate humans but know they are Gods.

There is no such thing as cat gender. There's pretending and fantasy.
Cats come in two sexes, male and female, whether neutered or not.

TerriBull

Mollygo

Glorianny says (nice diversion)

You do know that male cats often mate with other male cats don't you?
🤣🤣🤣
Glorianny that depends entirely on your understanding of mate.
They certainly don’t do it To transfer their genes to the next generation successfully
any more than AHM mate with AHF.

Most people who have domestic cats get them neutered if they don't want a wild Tom or umpteen kittens to re- home.

It doesn't mean they identify as female.
It just means they'll bonk anything.

Callistemon said It doesn't mean they identify as female. It just means they'll bonk anything.

Our female dog used to bonk the cushions and, on one memorable occasion, an official’s briefcase. Afaik, she didn’t identify as either a cushion or a briefcase, though we do think she may have thought she was a third cat, as we already had two.

For those who prefer links to papers other than the Mail, here is the Telegraph’s take on things. Dinosaurs, cursing moons - it seems that cats are at the bottom of the ‘peculiar’ pile. If anyone is wondering about ’furries’, Google it - but not from work.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/19/school-children-identifying-as-animals-furries/

‘They meow rather than answer a question’: The school children now identifying as animals
An extraordinary report from a Sussex school has shed light on the growing trend of pupils insisting on being addressed as animals
By
Gordon Rayner,
ASSOCIATE EDITOR ;
Eleanor Steafel
and
Louisa Clarence-Smith,
EDUCATION EDITOR
19 June 2023 • 8:32pm

Difficult as it may be to believe, children at a school in East Sussex were reprimanded last week for refusing to accept a classmate’s decision to self-identify as a cat.

The Year 8 pupils were told they would be reported to a senior leader after their teacher said they had “really upset” the fellow pupil by telling them: “You’re a girl.”

The incident at Rye College, first reported by The Daily Telegraph yesterday, was not a one-off. Inquiries by this newspaper have established that other children at other schools are also identifying as animals, and the responses of parents suggest that the schools in question are hopelessly out of their depth on the question of how to handle the pupils’ behaviour.

The Telegraph has discovered that a pupil at a secondary school in the South West is insisting on being addressed as a dinosaur. At another secondary school in England, a pupil insists on identifying as a horse. Another wears a cape and wants to be acknowledged as a moon.

Stories about children self-identifying as animals – sometimes referred to as “furries” – have been circulating for some time. Some of them, such as tales of schools providing litter trays to cater for children identifying as cats, have turned out to be hoaxes, which has made it all too easy to assume that the problem is either a myth or is wildly exaggerated.

But it is not difficult to find genuine examples of children in UK schools insisting on being addressed as animals, raising two important questions: why is it happening, and how should teachers respond?

Perhaps tellingly, the incident at Rye College – a Church of England school – happened at the end of a class on “life education” in which children were told by their teacher that there were lots of genders, including “agender – people who don’t believe that they have a gender at all”.

An argument ensued in which two pupils disagreed with the teacher, saying there was no such thing as agender, because “if you have a vagina, you’re a girl and if you have a penis, you’re a boy – that’s it”.

When the pupils told their classmate: “How can you identify as a cat when you’re a girl?” the teacher reprimanded them for “questioning [the child’s] identity”.

In this instance, the teacher in charge of the class appears to have bracketed a child’s desire to be treated as a cat with other children’s desire to be treated as another gender, or genderless.

The school, which does not dispute that the incident happened, said it was committed to inclusive education, but would be “reviewing our processes to ensure such events do not take place in the future”.

The school, then, seems to have accepted that the teacher in question was wrong, but it is hardly surprising if teachers find themselves struggling to make sense of the fast-paced societal changes in which pupils can not only decide to change their preferred pronouns overnight but also their preferred species.

Schools have established protocols when it comes to transgender pupils, but the issue of “furries” is more complex.

Is it simply a spillover from early childhood imaginative play, or the growing phenomenon of cosplay – in which participants dress up as superheroes, aliens, animals or whatever else they choose – being brought into the classroom, where children should be politely told to leave their fantasies at the gates?

Is it a mental health issue, used as a coping mechanism by children who have autism or other difficulties, and who should be treated sympathetically in the same way as other pupils with special needs?

Or does it conceal something much darker going on in the child’s life?

Tracy Shaw, of the grassroots Safe Schools Alliance, said children coming to school and insisting on being addressed as an animal should sound loud alarm bells, and teachers already have all the tools they need to deal with the issue, if they would stop conflating it with gender diversity.

“Teachers should be dealing with this under existing safeguarding frameworks,” she says. “If a child is coming to school identifying as a cat or a horse, that should immediately raise red flags.

“The teacher should be asking themselves, what are these children looking at online? What forums are they on? What is going on in the home? What is happening in that child’s life and who else is involved?

“The problem is that teachers have a blind spot where anything involving identity comes in, because they are frightened of doing the wrong thing. They think they are being kind by affirming these behaviours, but they are not being kind, because they are likely to be missing all sorts of things that are going on in that child’s life.”

The teachers are also letting down other pupils whose education is being disrupted by the affirming of children with abnormal behaviour.

One pupil at a state secondary school in Wales told The Telegraph of a fellow pupil who “feels very discriminated against if you do not refer to them as ‘catself’”. She added: “When they answer questions, they meow rather than answer a question in English. And the teachers are not allowed to get annoyed about this because it’s seen as discriminating.”

The student in question is in Year 11, but began using the pronoun “catself” in Year 9 “when the whole thing with neo pronouns started”, the pupil said.

She described how lessons could be completely derailed if a teacher attempted to get the child to reply to a question in English rather than meowing.

“It’s affecting other people and their education and everybody in their lessons. It’s distracting to sit in a lesson and have someone meow to a teacher rather than answer in English, especially at secondary school age.

“That’s going to take a lot out of a lesson because people are going to spend the entire lesson talking about whoever it is over there meowing to the teacher.

“It’s a big ask to sit there and listen to someone answer like that and not have that be the main talk of the classroom rather than the lesson going on.”

The pupil blamed social media, saying students were being influenced by accounts run by people who identify as trees and animals. It started “around Covid”, she says.

“When it first started, it didn’t really go out into real life that much. It stayed confined to social media, but then as it got more popular and more people were finding out about it, people then started bringing it into real life situations.”

The Telegraph also spoke to a pupil at a school where one student, who identifies as “moonself”, wears a cloak to school, described by a fellow pupil as “like a Harry Potter wizard cape”.

The child in question did not identify as the Moon, but as a moon, and said they could put curses on people.

But while other pupils would be pulled up for wearing non-uniform items, such as facial piercings or dyed hair, children who identified as cats or moons would be allowed to wear cat ears or cloaks to express their “true self”, breeding resentment among other pupils.

Teachers are not helped by the fact that respected organisations to which they might turn for guidance can themselves be caught up in the confusion between cosplay and self-identity.

The Safer Schools organisation (not to be confused with the Safer Schools Alliance), which claims to be a “multi-award-winning safeguarding ecosystem” has issued guidance to parents and teachers in which it says: “The furry community itself is a complex one, made up of many different identities and definitions of what it means to be a ‘furry’.”

It also advises parents and teachers to “engage in conversation about what it means to be a furry and the benefits of the furry community”.

It hardly constitutes clear instructions on how to react to a child who insists on being recognised as a cat or a dog, and does not mention the fact that children identifying as an animal may be highly vulnerable and in need of help.

If teachers – or parents – hope that the Government will clear up the whole mess when it issues its new guidance on self-identity this week, then they will be sorely disappointed.

The Department for Education said the issue of children identifying as animals will not be addressed in the guidance, with a spokesman saying that the department trusted teachers to apply “common sense” in each individual case.

Unfortunately, as parents up and down the country are finding, the problem with common sense is that it is not so common.

When I was out patrolling my grounds, bird in mouth, a big ugly ginger cat attacked me and bit me. I have a sore leg now and my human mummy forces nasty tablets down my mouth all the time. She won’t let me outside now, what a nasty dog she is. I think I’ll do a crap under the bed.

Thank you Doodledog.
The Year 8 pupils were told they would be reported to a senior leader after their teacher said they had “really upset” the fellow pupil by telling them: “You’re a girl.”
This paragraph is very reminiscent of the treatment of pupils at DGD’s school where pupils were reported and punished by a group of transgender girls for using the wrong pronouns (which could change following the leader’s dictat).
Like the cats, they were allowed to dress as their chosen gender, not hard in a school where uniform was skirt or trousers, shirt and tie.
Whether or not they really felt they were boys is immaterial. It was power play by teens, who made the lives of other pupils including my DGD a misery for a whole year, and was and exacerbated by staff who didn’t know how to deal with it without being called phobic.
The horrific and threatening emails/texts/WhatsApp messages from this group of would-be-trans to other girls is on record. I suppose at least cats can’t use social media, without giving away the fact that they know they aren’t cats.

How can anyone identify as a cat? It's nuts but not so bad as the people enabling it. They need a secure unit.

Mollygo, how very upsetting for your daughter and other pupils, to be at that school. Just who are these teachers and a Head that sanctions such bullying of pupils. It's bad enough by being bullied by other pupils never mind adding the staff into it. Can't Ofsted intervene is pupil safety is at risk.

I had just finished reading the Telegraph article about Rye College and turned to Gransnet to resume reading this thread from yesterday. Unbelievable that such behaviour is being tolerated in schools, but understandable in view of the way staff are being treated if they mishandle gender issues; not the same I know, but no definitive guidelines to follow. Four teachers to my knowledge have been sacked for gross incompetence for refusing to acknowledge a pupil's (still technically a child) change of gender.
The most concerning part of the article was the effect this behaviour has on the rest of the pupils, whose education is being disrupted, and who fear accusations of bullying if they mishandle their approach to these pupils.
The official advice from the Department for Education: 'teachers should use common sense when deciding how to deal with children who insist on being addressed as a certain type of animal.' This issue will not be covered in the forthcoming guidance for schools on gender identity. Teachers have been disciplined, sacked and refused permission to teach anywhere again for mishandling this situation although there has been no official guidelines for them to follow.
Get it wrong, and they will suffer. For the pupil, nothing.
Have the pupils who recorded teachers in the classroom, then posted the recordings online, been identified and suspended by their schools? I doubt it.

although there have been no official guidelines...

I remember mentioning ’furries’ some time ago, and saying that it was a matter of time before they too would demand to be accommodated. I was told that I was ‘pathetic’ by someone who has insulted me in that way before.

The thread is here:
www.gransnet.com/forums/news_and_politics/1316374-Are-young-people-turning-gay?pg=19

The relevant posts are a few down the page if you don’t want to read the whole thing.

It’s exactly as many people have been saying- allow ‘identification’ as one clearly untrue thing and there is no logical reason to deny that other identities are undeserving of acceptance. Where does it stop?

I wonder if you'll get an apology Doodledog now that your forecast has proved to be correct, and not at all pathetic. Children love to push boundaries, so the 'identities' will get more and more outlandish. Does anybody truly believe that a child without any other problems really believes they're a cat, dog, moon etc. The other children and their parents will rightly feel aggrieved that uniform and behaviour rules can be varied for some pupils on the basis of a self declared condition. When one child is disciplined for having a tiny logo on their black shoes but another is able to wear cat accessories the discrimination is plain to see.

eazybee Have the pupils who recorded teachers in the classroom, then posted the recordings online, been identified and suspended by their schools? I doubt it. I don't think we have any information about what's happened to the girls. Without that public record of that teacher the whole thing would likely have been denied by the teacher and dismissed by the school. Even with the recording there were people commenting on social media that it was false, a set-up, the girls were lying. The school have confirmed the recording is genuine, so that justifies the whistle blowing by the girls.
If a teacher wouldn't be prepared to have their words heard by anyone outside of the classroom, then I suggest they reconsider the words they're using.

Glorianny

Lathyrus

The mouthing of inclusion stands alongside such phrases as

If (your views) make another child uncomfortable that is not acceptable

But those who have been made uncomfortable by having a different sex in toilets with them have not been shown that consideration.

And what if the behaviour of the self identified is uncomfortable to anyone close to them. Is the cat permitted to rub itself against people’s legs or to try to sit on their laps?

What is the behaviour of a self identified cat? How do they express their catness and what level of tolerance is expected from others?

Teachers don't mouth inclusion. They struggle to develop and grow a society in which every child feels happy and fulfilled. They do so whilst coping with people who are happy to condemn them the minute they slip up. They do so trying to balance one group of parents who think their beliefs should take precedence over another groups. They do so whilst steering children through an increasingly polarised and discriminatory society. One where refugees are castigated, politicians encourage division and people insist only their views matter.
Identifying as a cat when you think about how humanity is going is actually pretty sensible.

Well said Glorianny! The teachers in the schools I have worked at have an incredibly hard job, keeping every child (and parent and headteacher!) happy.

You might like to read my following comments to that post choighd

Sorry.

If you read my following comments you’ll see I taught for 45 years and never had to denigrate or bully a child.

35 years.
I need my coffee

Apology? I doubt it.

I suspect that on the whole children ’identifying’ as furries are either attention-seeking or disturbed in some way, but there is a way more sinister side to it that should be investigated.

Doodledog

Apology? I doubt it.

I suspect that on the whole children ’identifying’ as furries are either attention-seeking or disturbed in some way, but there is a way more sinister side to it that should be investigated.

There certainly is a sinister side, the Pride marches where fetishly dressed adult furries encourage children to pet them etc. And that's in plain view, what on earth is going on under cover of secrecy?

Rosie51

Doodledog

Apology? I doubt it.

I suspect that on the whole children ’identifying’ as furries are either attention-seeking or disturbed in some way, but there is a way more sinister side to it that should be investigated.

There certainly is a sinister side, the Pride marches where fetishly dressed adult furries encourage children to pet them etc. And that's in plain view, what on earth is going on under cover of secrecy?

Oh, paedophilia in plain sight! 😲🤬

The similarities between identifying or something you aren’t, but remaining human and identifying as a non-human is that in both cases, the state of affairs can be used as a power play by children out to make life difficult for others children and adults, by shouts of phobia, and bullying (but refusing to acknowledge that that is what the identifier is doing).
Both groups demand special treatment outwith what their peers receive, e.g. the right to answer in mews, the right of a male to be in female spaces etc.

The differences between identifying as something you aren’t, but remaining human and identifying as a non human are more complex.
Re gender. It has been shown that some people feel strongly enough about this to irreversibly modify their bodies.
There have been studies of the mental stress caused by feeling “in the wrong body” and the “relief” felt by those on changing.
Also the mental stress suffered on realising that surgery hasn’t removed their problems.
However, they still wish to live as humans.

The problem with humans identifying as a furry, e.g. a cat is that they do not want to be a cat with all that involves.

Cats are fed by time and foodstuff at their owner’s whim.
They are neutered to prevent sexual reproduction,
expected to perform bodily functions with no privacy,
and to lick themselves clean.
They are obliged to accept worming and flea/tick protection.
They are expected to entertain themselves for long periods of time *with no access to the internet*-(a big game changer for would-be non-humans).
Cats do not go to school, because they are unable to function as pupils. They do not identify as other animals.

It could be argued that identifying as a cat is a mental health issue, but rather than waste scarce human resources on cats, let’s be sympathetic and allow them to be what they want, with all that entails, as detailed above.

Any human identifying as a non human animal should take the responsibility of being that animal, so would not be in school to cause any of the problems we hear that teachers are expected to deal with.

Allsorts

How can anyone identify as a cat? It's nuts but not so bad as the people enabling it. They need a secure unit.

Hope, if she identifys as a cat, her bowl is on the floor, and theres a litter tray in the corner. Pandering to children rather than finding out why she holds this ridiculous idea should be the right thing to do surely.The world has gone bloody mad.

I wonder how amenable these schools would be to a pupil determined to wear their Nike trainers rather than plain black shoes, if said pupil identified as Usain Bolt (other athletes are available) and therefore needed to be shod for a quick run at any time? No more ridiculous than wearing a cape because you're 'a moon'.

I have no idea what is "going on" nor I suspect do most on GN. Children have presented and developed many problems over the years and most (but not all) teachers cope with them. It is all you can do. A child identifying as a cat is probably no more or less disruptive than a child who comes into school, without any breakfast, having spent the night moving house and talking to the police and who is now staying at his nanna's, because his dad smashed all the windows of his mum's house last night. Children do not come into school nicely balanced little individuals who just want to sit down and learn, they come in as the product of the society they inhabit and teachers are now not only supposed to educate them but to deal with the myriad problems they bring with them. Choosing one area of those problems and becoming hypercritical of teachers dealing with that area helps no one.

I've said the teacher who was recorded didn't deal well with the situation. I have yet to see on this thread any positive ideas about how a teacher should deal with the problems which many seem to think are rife . (I don't consider saying a child should be referred or needs help a positive idea, the child still needs to be dealt with whilst they wait assessment)

Rosie51

I wonder how amenable these schools would be to a pupil determined to wear their Nike trainers rather than plain black shoes, if said pupil identified as Usain Bolt (other athletes are available) and therefore needed to be shod for a quick run at any time? No more ridiculous than wearing a cape because you're 'a moon'.

I don't know Rosie51 what would you do?

Mollygo I hadn't refreshed the page. Very good points, especially furries being denied internet access, my cat could never have managed it and she was really clever! I imagine the cat child would then have to be like Eddie Izzard, gender fluid, picking and choosing according to the moment's wants.