- Public schools in Brevard, Florida, have banned clothing and accessories that imitate "non-human characteristics."
- The move is the latest response to conservatives claiming that kids identify as animals.
- Reuters fact-checking suggests students do not identify as animals or use litter boxes at school.
A school district in Florida voted unanimously last week week to ban attire associated with "furries" — the culmination of multiple meetings revolving around the debunked myth that schools are creating accommodations for students who identify as animals.
Florida's Brevard County Public School District's ban on clothing items of "non-human characteristics" was added to the new policy after board member Katye Campbell said students raised concerns about "furries" in a dress code survey, according to reporting by Florida Today.
The term furries refers to a small community of people interested in or identifying with anthropomorphic or animated animals. Under these new guidelines, items like cat ears, tails, and collars are not allowed at Brevard schools, according to Florida Today.
The policy does not explicitly mention furries, even though discussion of the policy among the community and board members previously revolved around furry-related dress.
"What it does is, they then do the barking and all the other weird stuff," board chair Matt Susin said while calling for "no furry behavior" in a previous board meeting covered by Florida Today.
Though seemingly unrelated, the myth has ties to conservative rhetoric targeting transgender students. As reported by MetroWeekly, Republican politicians have linked concerns about children identifying as animals to concerns about children "choosing their gender."
The ban is one of the latest responses to the accusations that school districts are making accommodations for students who identify as animals. At least 20 politicians have made the claim, despite the districts themselves denying that such a policy exists, according to an NBC News investigation from last year.
The Colorado Times Recorder reported Congresswoman Lauren Boebert's claim that schools in Durango, Colorado, had litter boxes in classrooms for students who identify as cats. A spokesperson for the district later said the claim was "absolutely not true."
Fact-checking from Reuters confirmed there is no evidence students are identifying as animals, nor is there evidence schools are recognizing such students as belonging to a protected identity group.
Such accusations, beyond being demonstrably false, feed into fear about gender nonconforming and transgender people. More reporting from Florida Today identified that the litter box issues were only "talking points" implying that protecting LGBTQ+ students opened the door for needing to accommodate students who identified as animals.
In a board meeting for Michigan's Midland Public School's district, for example, the claim that students were using litter boxes arose as parents protested the school's enforcement of federal regulations allowing transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity, reported LGBTQ Nation in Jan. 2022.
Nikita Shephard, a PhD candidate at Columbia University, said in an interview with Insider that throughout the 20th century, comparisons have been made between homosexual behavior and bestiality to stoke fear about the upending of traditional marriage.
After 2015, Shephard said, when same-sex marriage was legally recognized by the Supreme Court, a movement in Houston, Texas, attempted to overturn local anti-discrimination laws that protected LGBTQ+ people using the transphobic slogan "No men in women's bathrooms." The movement, Shephard said, marked a pivot away from anti-gay and lesbian mobilization towards anti-trans and nonbinary mobilization.
Shephard added furry subculture is not "analogous" to transgender identification or gender identity in general, despite recent comparisons between the two. Instead, they said, the comparisons gain traction by feeding into existing, centuries-long tropes comparing marginalized groups to animals.
"It's a way of mocking, poking fun at, and demonizing, in this case, young people's efforts to challenge the gender binary and live more expansive lives," Shephard said. "By associating young people with just being sort of confused and ridiculous and out of touch with reality, it's a way of associating extremely legitimate and medically validated claims like gender confirming medical care and associating them with something ridiculous and out of touch with reality."
While discussing the ban in Brevard schools at Tuesday's meeting, attendees raised concerns that the dress code was too vague and would be unenforceable, per Florida Today. Despite these concerns, the outlet reported that the ban was passed without alterations and will be in place for the next school year.
The Brevard district did not respond to Insider's request for comment.