Megyn Kelly is joined by Charles C.W. Cooke and Jim Geraghty of National Review to discuss kids at a middle school in Utah coming to school dressed as “furries,” one furry named “Strudel” having a nuanced opinion, and more.
Video courtesy of Adam Bartholomew at: https://mainstreetmediautah.com/
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America has become a comedy show for the world. 😅
Being a furry is just a hobby where you can draw art and dress up to have fun with other furries at conventions or other things (not genuinely thinking you are an actual animal). It is very similar to something like a comic fandom or anime fandom. I really hope this is fake but those kids are taking it WAY too far, and they definitely shouldnt be taking it to jobs/ school
Where are their parents
This happened in Utah? Well, there goes the neighborhood.
How can they bite and eat anything with full head coverings?
Anyone who claims kids are Furry's ether have a sick porn addiction or have no idea and should read up a bit more before they post a video OR Protest about it. Call them anything else, kids with animal ears and tales or something.
This is the insanity of the left, and if I were the parent, I would press charges and file a lawsuit against the school
This is what happens when you allow Football Mascots and Smokey Bear in the Education system! :/
Trust ABC to try and play the "we've listened to both sides now" card. If only that's what they did in their day to day reporting rather than the narrow biased narrative they espouse.
Clown world. But hey this is liberals. They're progression is weird, grooming and always surrounded by gaslighting. How is this something to be seen as not inappropiate.
Where is this generation heading? 😔
Doesn’t human bites cause serious infections on the victim? This is serious
Insanity!
I don’t see ANYTHING funny about this story or this porn filth making its way to elementary and middle schools. This is a sex fetish and should be treated as sexual abuse of minors!
Who is grooming these middle school kids into this sexual perversion so deeply they think they need to act out at school?
Just another example of the decline of western civilization. 🤡 🌎
When mentally ill is becoming the norm…utah is a toilet.
Got to see…
People need to understand that the furry trend is another trend aimed at sexualizing children. I know some of the comments I will get will say this is a right-wing conspiracy theory. But I actually read some articles from very liberal publications (including Rolling Stone magazine), where they were actually trying to PROMOTE the furry fandom, that allude to this in their own words. They are saying the quiet part out loud.
The Rolling Stones articles are behind a paywall but feel free to look them up if you think I am making this up. Below, I've included some excerpts from the actual articles in case you can't access them. Feel free to pass this along to anyone who may want to cover this on a podcast to make parents aware. And they have explicitly said that a lot of the fandom consists of people in the LGBTQ community and children with emotional problems. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why they would want to attract minors like this.
From the Rolling Stone articles, “Will Furries Ever Go Mainstream?” JANUARY 6, 2020
“It is one of the world’s largest conventions aimed at furries, a highly stigmatized, oft-misunderstood subculture comprised of people who have an affinity for anthropomorphized animals.”
“Like most subcultures, the furry fandom is a largely internet-driven phenomenon, providing a label for a pre-existing feeling that has always lived, dormant and unnamed, inside a select number of people. While there is a contingent of furries who do derive sexual pleasure from the subculture, the fanbase is much more broad than that.”
“Maybe you really liked drawing wolves during eighth-grade homeroom. Maybe you’ve always felt an inexplicable affinity with Tony the Tiger. Maybe you’ve long thought it would be rad to buy a $10,000 curvy hippo costume and enter a breakdancing competition. If you fall into any of these categories, then furries are your kind of people, and FurFest the place to unleash the human-size sergal (a fictional rabbit/shark/wolf amalgam).”
“While the con saw only about 1,000 attendees in 2005, it reported more than 10,900 guests in 2018, and Matt Berger, media-relations lead for MFF, estimates that 12,000 were in attendance this year. That’s in part due to the increasing number of younger children and their families who are gravitating to furry culture — during my time at Midwest FurFest, I saw children as young as seven attending dance competitions and meet-and-greets accompanied by their parents, having stumbled on the fandom via YouTube or TikTok.”
“In so keeping with its increasingly family-friendly image, the fandom has become intent on promoting itself as a beacon of acceptance and inclusivity, and MFF is no exception.”
“Far from the mainstream depiction of the fandom as a sex-crazed monolith, the furries I met really had only a handful of traits in common: They were largely white, LGBTQ, and almost without exception, friendly and sincere, nearly to a fault.”
From the Rolling Stones article, “Why Are So Many Gen Z Kids Becoming Furries?” DECEMBER 12, 2019
“JEN’S DAUGHTER IS nine years old, with shoulder-length brown hair and darting, fearful eyes. She’s anxious and withdrawn, and her mother says she doesn’t get asked to go on play dates very often.
Emily and Jen have just attended a meet-and-greet for furries who are influencers on TikTok, the hugely popular lip-syncing app used primarily by teens. The pair have driven about an hour from their home in the Chicago suburbs to attend Midwest FurFest, an annual convention for people who are involved with the furry community, a stigmatized, highly misunderstood subculture for people who identify with anthropomorphized animals. Although the common conception is that the culture is inherently sexualized, the reality is that being a furry means different things to different people: some furries like drawing character art, while others enjoy dressing up in fursuits (full-body costumes) or creating their own fursonas (animal characters).”
“Emily is one of a growing number of Gen Z members joining the fandom, despite some of the stigmas and misconceptions that have propagated around it. At the conventions, the number of attendees who are minors has “steadily increased,” says John “KP” Cole, the director of communications at Anthrocon, a similar convention in the Pittsburgh area.”
“Like most trends, the popularity of the fandom can largely be attributed to digital culture; the mainstreaming of so-called geek culture also may play a role. The anime fandom, for instance, has some overlap with the furry community, and many stumble on the fandom by searching for fan art in general. “If there’s a character in the world there will be a furry version of it, so if kids are trying to find fan art of, say, Hermione Granger from Harry Potter, they’ll go, ‘Oh, a weird animal version of her, let me find more,'” says Pyxe, a fox/cat hybrid who attended the meet and greet.”
“The fandom is also blowing up on TikTok, where furries like Pyxe (195,000 followers), Halfy (119,000 followers), and Barry Angel Dragon (98,000 followers), have amassed large audiences in a relatively short amount of time due to their cuddly and colorful fursonas.”
“A 23-year-old from Houston, Texas, Pyxe says 73% of his followers are between the ages of 13 and 18, and that most of them are female; a gender breakdown that actually deviates from that of the furry fandom as a whole, which tends to skew male. (Teenage girls tend to be drawn to the more “cutesy” side of the fandom, as opposed to the “drinking, partying, more adult” side, which skews more masculine, he says.)”
“A lot of kids will be on TikTok because it’s very catered toward a young [demographic] and the content is short and kids have a very short attention span,” he says. “A lot of times they’ll see a furry and they’ll want to see what it’s about, and they’ll join the fandom that way.”
“The influx of kids and teenagers into the fandom is surprising, not just because the demographics have traditionally skewed older (most attendees at Anthrocon were between 25 and 29, says Cole), but because of the perception that the fandom is inherently sexualized, thanks in large part to stereotypes perpetuated by shows like Entourage and CSI. Indeed, most parents of kids who have become involved with the fandom have had to grapple with this perception upon first learning of their kids’ interest. “At every panel I’ve been to, I’ve had a parent at least come up to me saying, ‘I’ve seen this thing on CSI and I’m worried my kid might get into this,’ or ‘I was in the dealers’ den [the vendors’ section of Midwest FurFest] and I saw all these provocative things being sold there,'” says Pyxe.
In reality, there are indeed some who are drawn to the fandom for sexual reasons, and there have been a handful of instances where adults in the fandom have preyed on minors, most notably a pedophile ring that was busted in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 2017. Yet most furries say that those who sexualize cartoon animals represents only a sliver of the community, which is far too broad to be defined by any one of its subgroups. “People know more about the fandom now, and they’re learning it’s not just about sexualization and all that stuff,” says Crowflight, 16, whose fursona is a cat.”
“Many kids and teenagers who self-identify as furry (and many furries in general) are marginalized in the culture at large. For instance, surveys suggest that furries are disproportionately more likely to self-identify as LGBTQ, and Pyxe says that many kids see coming out as furry, and interacting with happy and well-adjusted out LGBTQ furries, as a stepping stone toward coming out as LGBTQ themselves: “the fandom is so open that they feel safer exploring their identity more than if they were living in a traditional household.”
“Other furries also have disabilities or are struggling with mental health issues: Jen, for instance, says her daughter Emily has been diagnosed with anxiety, as has the 17-year-old dressed as Wyatt, an Australian kettle dog/TikTok micro-influencer at the convention. “Throughout this whole con, people have recognized me and wanted to hug me and it just warms my heart because it feels like people care about me and I don’t have to worry about what I’m doing. I’m just a dog,” Wyatt says.”
“Yet as content creators like Pyxe continue to amass an even larger audience, and as nerd culture in general becomes increasingly mainstream, it’s possible that furry fans, like other members of previously marginalized and misunderstood subcultures, won’t have to linger in the shadows forever."
I'm a proud furry but I agree that it has no place in school it will cause a distraction and make some kids uncomfortable you don't make one set happy and upset somebody else it's about a equality any anti furries you just need to actually go get a life
Wow, 3 bigots on one screen. The furrys aren’t harming anyone. Get with the times people!
“Gotta sexualize the kids” seems to be the current trend in America.
Based
Just to be clear, furries do NOT identify as animals. Those are called otherkin.Furries is just a fandom, like people who like classic cars or Marvel movies. We are just interested in animals with human traits, like talking or walking on two legs.Think Bugs Bunny or the Lion King
Uncle Rudolph about killed me 😂😂😂😂
Do they have their rabies shots?
I've wondered why any kid would pretend to be a furry. Now I know: you can bully and even actually bite your classmates without any consequences.
My daughter's high school had furries when she got there in the fall of 2020. In middle America – Loveland, CO. Fully tolerated!
I live in Utah. A junior high near our home has issues with litter boxes in bathrooms. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
No one cares it does no attempt for you
My Grand daughter is going to this school and now wants to stay home. She no longer wants to go and wants to be taught at home.
It's yet another example of administration incompetence😢
It is regression. Children love to act like animals all through elementary school. It's just play but now kids are regressing to earlier years. In Las Vegas furries are not cool in high school!!!
Whatever happened to dress codes? I'm sure the schools dress code doesn't include allowing students to come to school as a furry!
A sub who works there said it's been happening for a year
I just feel sorry for my nephews who have to endure this nonsense in America…………………
Imagine how priviledged you must be if all you can worry about is whether you think you are a dog?
How disgusting…………………
Meanwhile, there are 740 millions people with no access to drinking water today…………………..take your furies and shove it america.
You cant bring a american flag to school but you can do this bullshit!! Our country is so screwed.😮
The concept of tough love needs to make a comeback. Pandering to children out of 'compassion and understanding' is not parenting. Kids need guidelines and rules. Get the kids off social media and enforce societal norms. Adults that allow this to go on are setting these children to have a failed future.
The district is not trying to downplay. I am a mom of kids who have attended this school in the past few years. The “furries” are kids who belong to the LGBTQ group at school and are heavily bullied and struggle with mental and emotional problems. Sure there may be kids in that group who have erratic and disturbing behavior who freak other people out, but it doesn’t mean the school is letting these kids dominate other kids with their animalistic behavior. My daughter belonged to a group like this in that same school. There are crazzies in that group, but things do not happen on the level the media, or this group of kids are portraying. This story is totally taken out of context text and misconstrued.
The way the district explained things to parents is truly how it is.
The kids protesting are quite over dramatizing it. I don’t completely believe my teenager when they complain about things at school. As an adult we understand kids manipulate situations. It doesn’t mean there isn’t truth to what they say, but I wouldn’t support my kid in a protest like this knowing how things really are at that school.
If we use these peoples logic these furry people shouldn’t even be going to school. They should be in dog school, seeing a vet, in a zoo etc. Changing our society construct isn’t the answer.
put them in with the special ed kids
Gosh what’s happening in this world
Society has gone completely insane. I can't tell anymore if this is America or the worst days of the Weimar Republic!