Transgender Furries

Rolling Stone reported regarding the the pre-game warmup show for former president doll-hands’ recent hate-fest in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania:

Speaking to a reporter for Right Side Broadcasting Network, who told [U.S. Congressperson Marjorie Taylor-] Greene about a student he heard about in Texas who, according to him, identified as a cat, Greene added her views on the topic with the following quote:“They’re embracing lies. I mean, literally embracing lies. Okay, if some student wants to pretend like a cat and use a litter box after school, that’s their prerogative, whatever. But no, the school and school resources and the other students and teachers should not have to be put through that, cuz it’s a lie” Greene said.

The article goes on to say

This claim — that students who identify as “furries” are now requesting to use litter boxes instead of restrooms — is anti-trans rhetoric that has been debunkedtime and time again in many states.

Well, of course the comment seeks to create (for the intellectually impaired) a false equivalence between fantasy and the lived experience of the congressperson’s fellow citizens, and of course it’s coded language for justifying unfair treatment of trans kids, and opens a space for whatever legislation elderly white cisgender male lawmakers choose to conjure up in their apparently abundant spare time, otherwise unencumbered by having to deal with numerous actual crises they would otherwise be forced to work on.

So, Okay I am shocked that (not having a right wing approved megaphone — where does one get one of those things? ) I will once again have scream into the unfeeling ether to make a case that locating oneself along the actual gender identity continuum (which, yes is a real thing) is as different to being delusional about anything as fish are to bicycles.

It pains me that we have to keep saying these things over and over and over. I regret that I have to share my gender with Taylor-Greene and Caitlyn Jenner, but there it is.

My knowledge of furries (a curious enrobing of ones avatar in a game space) comes largely from having spotted a few of them in the Second Life corner of the metaverse. They were a rarity a decade ago, and even more rare now. When I talked with them, they seemed to be reasonable people who seemed to be able to differentiate between reality and illusion, between life within a game and life outside it.

Who knows though? Maybe the erstwhile legislator from Georgia is onto some hot new emerging trend of which the rest of us are unaware. I do know that either being or openly identifying as transgender is not an emerging trend. We are as ancient as humanity and always have been.

While saying that, I do know too that a willingness to come out as gender non-binary may be an emerging trend. A recent Gallup Survey found that 50% of U.S. adults under 30 know someone who is transgender and 12% of LGBTQ+ Millennials identify as transgender or gender non-conforming. So memo to our legislators who seem so weirdly obsessed with my need to find a safe place to urinate: How about legislating gender neutral lavatories? And dare I hope, how about acknowledging our existence.