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Summary: In 2023, Republicans in the US began to propose laws (bills) that would be against furries or people who identify as animals. They continue to do so in 2024. The first two such bills of this year are Oklahoma House Bill 3084 (OK HB 3084) and Mississippi House Bill 176 (MS HB 176). Read on for information about these bills from this and last year, the urban legend that inspired them, what may happen next, and what you can do. This five page article (plus references) is a twelve minute read.
Humphrey’s anti-furry bill in Oklahoma
Republican Representative Justin Humphrey (he/him) specializes in writing bills that are intentionally bizarre so they will attract attention, and then cleaning them up later so that they will pass into law. On December 6, he wrote OK HB 3084, as its only sponsor. He prefiled it on January 17. It was introduced for its first reading on February 5. Here is the bill on Oklahoma’s official site, and on the third-party site Legiscan. It proposes a new law, which would read in full:
“Students who purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries at school shall not be allowed to participate in school curriculum or activities. The parent or guardian of a student in violation of this section shall pick the student up from the school, or animal control services shall be contacted to remove the student.”
In Humphrey’s interview with Rolling Stone about this, he specifically said that he wrote the furry bill in response to having heard about students using litter boxes in school. The Stone pointed out that that’s an urban legend that never happened at all, but he thinks it’s happened sometimes, if not widespread. He said that “furry” is the common name for a “mental illness” and “sexual habit,” and that there’s an “actual psychological term” for it, which he didn’t say because he found it “very, very difficult to pronounce” (Ehrlich, 2024).
He probably was referring to “anthropomorphic behavior,” which he wrote in his bill text. That isn’t a psychological term or a mental illness, it’s about cartoon characters. The furry fandom uses “anthropomorphic animals” as a synonym for furries, fictional talking animal characters. “Anthropomorphic” often gets misused to mean “animal-like,” but its literal meaning is “human-like.” Humphrey’s wording would suffice to expel all students from a school: kids who act like animals and kids who act like humans. He likely based his bill on last year’s dead Oklahoma Senate Bill 943, which he didn’t write, but which also used the word.
Humphrey’s bill is the first that says to call animal control on furries. Would they refuse to pick up a student, or could this really cause students to be arrested and detained? Animal control is dictated by the local government (Bradshaw and Vankavage). Sometimes it may be outsourced to contractors who wouldn’t respond to this bizarre request, but in many cases it’s managed by local law enforcement. For example, one Oklahoman city ordinance says that all its animal control officers who are not already part of law enforcement “possess all authority of a police officer of the city for enforcing these animal regulations” (Vinita city code 2005 5-3-19). Humphrey explained that this part is a joke that he doesn’t intend to stick to, though, saying,
“if you want to treat these people as actual animals, you call animal control. I’ll be happy to rewrite the language [to replace ‘animal control’ with mental health professionals]. But right now, I put that in there to make the point. A sarcastic point” (Erhlich, 2024).
(Bracketed text in original.) Introducing a bill with an absurd part and then deleting or altering it to let it pass is a tactic that we see in one of last year’s bills, and it’s a favorite tactic of Humphrey’s.
The day after Humphrey filed his furry bill, he called it his “crazy” bill, saying, “I’ve laughed and said, well, we ought to neuter them and vaccinate them and send them to the pound." KOCO News reported, “Humphrey said although it may not become law, he wants to bring attention to what he called a problem” (Jones, 2024). Perhaps, like the urban legend that inspired it, the bill’s purpose is to attract attention by being intentionally absurd. It makes up a guy to get mad at: it describes an invented situation that has never happened, then recommends penalties for that imaginary situation, and those penalties themselves are something that may not be realistically carried out, or which would have absurdly high-stakes consequences. Humphrey’s furry bill doesn’t mention transgender people, but he wrote it in reference to an urban legend that parodies transgender people. Humphrey has also made many public remarks against transgender people, and he has supported anti-transgender bills (Murphy, 2021).
Other Representatives believe he may have intended for the absurdity of his furry bill to distract attention from more serious bills. On the same day that he prefiled this, he also filed a racially discriminatory bill about Oklahomans of Hispanic descent, House Bill 3133 (Jones, 2024).
Part of Humphrey’s amusement here is that he has a beef with animal control. In addition to his hostilities toward LGBTQ people, one of his long-term goals is to reduce the legal penalties for cockfighting from felony to misdemeanor. Throughout the US, this blood sport is illegal, and it is a federal crime to bring a child under age sixteen to any animal fighting events (Humane Society). Humphrey approves of allowing children there, saying, “You’re dang skippy I’ll take my kid to a chicken fighting before I’m gonna take them to see a drag queen” (Leigh, 2023).
This year’s anti-transgender and anti-furry bill in Mississippi
Introduced on January 17, MS HB 176 would require schools to out transgender students to parents, and to allow faculty to not accommodate any student who
“identif[ies] at school as a gender or pronoun that does not align with the child's sex on their birth certificate, other official records, sex assigned at birth, or identifying as an animal species, extraterrestrial being or inanimate object.”
As the nonprofit journalism site Mississippi Free Press noted, “There are no known incidents of Mississippi schoolchildren identifying as aliens or inanimate objects, but the idea of children identifying as animals may stem from an unsubstantiated urban myth about litter boxes that spread among Republican officials in recent years” (Harrison, 2024). Here is the bill on Mississippi’s official site, and on the third-party site Legiscan. The bill’s seven authors are all Republican Representatives: Charles “Chuck” Blackwell (main author), William Arnold, Randy Boyd, Larry Byrd, Dan Eubanks, Jimmy Fondren, and Donnie Scoggin. In the same month, Blackwell also sponsored the bill MS HB 303 (about digital currencies) and co-sponsored the bill MS HR 17 (for deporting undocumented immigrants back to Mexico) (TrackBill).
An overview of last year’s anti-furry bills
Important background for what’s happening is that last year in the US, sexists introduced more than five hundred bills to limit the rights of transgender people (Reed, 2023). Four of those were also against furries or people who identify as animals. They were mainly against the rights of transgender students, and also opposed “a student's perception of being any animal species other than human” (North Dakota House Bill 1522) or “anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries” (Oklahoma Senate Bill 943).
The text of the third, Indiana Statehouse Bill 380, only talked about dress codes and “disruptive behavior.” Later, this was amended to say “distractive behavior.” However, its writer said that it was to prevent “imitating or were behaving like a furry” (Herron, 2023). The bill’s unspoken real aim was to prevent transgender students from dressing as their gender.
The fourth was a proposed amendment to Montana Senate Bill 544. It would have changed this internet censorship bill to also censor “acts of transgenderism,” which it defines as “a person being in the mental state of believing the person is transgender or transspecies” (Scribner, Shepard, and Sol, 2023). The word “transgenderism” is a dogwhistle used by people who oppose transgender rights. “Transspecies” is not typically thought of as a subset of it.
By the end of 2023, what came of those four bills? The line about animals was later deleted from the North Dakota bill, though it was still anti-transgender (Scribner, March 14, 2023). It passed on May 18, becoming law that will oppose the rights of transgender students. Last year’s Oklahoma bill died in committee. The Indiana bill passed on May 4, and will prohibit “distractive behavior” in schools. The Montana bill passed on May 19, and it’s still a clumsy plan for internet censorship, but the final text did not use the amendment that talked about transgender or transspecies (Legiscan). So far, no laws have passed with texts that mention anything along the lines of furries or identifying as nonhuman.
What are anti-furry bills really about?
These bills happened because of an urban legend. In parody of transgender students, Republicans made up a story that schools have litter boxes for students who identify as cats. Fact-checking site Snopes has been debunking this legend (Palma), as has Reuters Fact Check. This panel by a historian gives very detailed information about the legend’s development (Chimeras, 2022). Republicans imply through this legend that letting transgender students use the restroom that matches their gender identity would be as ridiculous as giving litter boxes to students who identify as animals.
What are the facts about people who identify as animals, if any exist? Surveys of the furry fandom show that most people who call themselves furries do not identify as animals (Plante et al, 2016, pp. 113-114). However, there are real people who sincerely identify as animals or nonhuman beings. Many call themselves therianthropes or otherkin (Scribner, 2023, “Simple introduction”). Sexists use the word “transspecies” to parody transgender people. However, a few transgender people call a nonhuman aspect of themselves transspecies (Chimeras, 2021). None of them did the things in schools that the urban legend says, so the legend isn’t true, and the legend wasn’t created in response to them. The threatening intent of the legend and bills is toward transgender people, but could cause trouble for furries and people who identify as animals.
Are there people who think of their gender identity as something nonhuman, and is that based on or part of the concept of being transgender? Transgender people who don’t feel they are a woman or man only or all the time have a nonbinary gender. Some people feel so different from a woman or man that they say their gender is something other than human. Since 2014, some call themselves xenogender, meaning “alien gender.” This can be a metaphor for something difficult to put into words, and they do not necessarily think of themselves as literally nonhuman, though some do. Surveys show that most nonbinary people define their gender in relation to being a woman or man; only 1.7% of nonbinary people call themselves xenogender or a variation on that word, and no other xenogender identity comes close to common (Gender Census, 2023). However, identifying as nonhuman is not inherently a form of being transgender, and was not developed based on the concept of being transgender.
What happens next for Humphrey’s anti-furry bill?
On February 5 and 6, it had its first and second readings, and it was referred to the House Rules Committee to read it next. That Committee has seven Republicans and two Democrats (State of Oklahoma). We’ll see if they let it die the same as last year’s Oklahoma bill, or if they vote for it to progress toward passing in some form. Remember the aforementioned interview where Humphrey said he doesn’t expect it to pass. Its purpose is to make “a sarcastic point” and attract attention away from other bills.
What happens next for the Mississippi bill?
The day it was introduced, MS HB 176 was referred to the Mississippi House Education Committee and still waits for them to vote on it. Given that the Committee has a majority of Republicans (according to its government site and legislation tracking site, BillTracker.com), and the bill’s similarity to the North Dakota bill that passed last year with the portion about non-humans deleted, they’re likely to pass this bill in some form. The director of the Mississippi branch of the Human Rights Campaign, Rob Hill (he/him), said,
“We’ve not seen this kind of bill in Mississippi before, and we hope that our leaders will resist another effort to stigmatize and isolate transgender and nonbinary youth and their peers [...] This is a very dangerous bill. It’s dangerous for the lives of youth … and it further perpetuates Mississippi’s image of being a place of discrimination” (Harrison, 2024).
What can you do?
Page Shepard (they/he), House of Chimeras (they/them), and I presented a panel about the bills last August. In the recording of our panel, skip to the timestamp 23:44 to hear what ordinary people can do about bad bills. In the written script of our lecture, see Slides 21 through 25.
About the author of this article
I’m Orion Scribner (they/them), and I’ve been writing and researching as an alterhuman community historian for more than ten years. I’m a moderator on Otherkin News, a volunteer-run blog about current events relevant to the alterhuman communities. My partner N. Noel Sol (she/her) did some editing in this document, especially in regard to animal control. Thanks for proofreading by my partner system the House of Chimeras (they/them), and my colleague Xylanth (it/its). I never write articles with the assistance of procedural generation or so-called artificial intelligence (AI), and that type of content isn’t allowed on Otherkin News.
References
BillTrack50. "Mississippi House Education Committee." https://www.billtrack50.com/committee/4245#billReferral
Bradshaw, A. and L. Vankavage. “The Role of Local Government in Animal Control.” Humane Animal Control. https://resources.bestfriends.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/Chapter%202_Role%20of%20Local%20Government%20in%20Animal%20Control.pdf?bG9ehcLSrIR08a1N_X1wbpYDzgy8_orb
Vinita city code 2005 5-3-19: ANIMAL CONTROL OFFICER; IMPOUNDMENT OF ANIMALS; REDEMPTION; SALE; EUTHANASIA. American Legal Publishing.
https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/vinitaok/latest/vinita_ok/0-0-0-2467
Ehrlich, Brenna (January 17, 2024). “Students Dressed as Furries Could be Collected by Animal Control if New Oklahoma Bill Passes.” Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/furries-school-bill-animal-control-1234948434/
Jones, Alyse (January 18, 2024). "How many newly filed bills will become law in Oklahoma?". KOCO-TV. https://www.koco.com/article/oklahoma-new-filed-bills/46431213
House of Chimeras (Aug. 12, 2022). "Litter Boxes in School Bathrooms: Dissecting the Alt-Right’s Current Moral Panic." https://houseofchimeras.neocities.org/Lectures
House of Chimeras (Aug. 14, 2021). "The Use and Misuse of The Term Transspecies." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miSyXSesyzw
House of Chimeras, O. Scribner, and P. Shepard (2023). “Litter Box Hoax 2: Legislature Boogaloo.” OtherCon 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsXy_ctC4Jc&t=1425s
Harrison, Heather (January 19, 2024). “Teachers Required to Out Trans Students to Families Under Proposed Mississippi Bill.” Mississippi Free Press. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/39193/teachers-required-to-out-trans-students-to-families-under-proposed-mississippi-bill
Herron, Arika (Jan. 26, 2023). "Indiana lawmaker targets furries in schools. Schools say there's no problem." IndyStar. https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/26/indiana-statehouse-bill-targets-furries-schools-say-no-problem/69840839007/ Archived Jan. 26, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230126101035/https://eu.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/26/indiana-statehouse-bill-targets-furries-schools-say-no-problem/69840839007/
Humane Society Legislative Fund (February 4, 2014). “Farm Bill Strengthens Animal Fighting Law, Maintains State Farm Animal Protection Laws.” The Humane Society of the United States. https://web.archive.org/web/20141025151239/http://www.humanesociety.org/news/news_briefs/2014/02/farm_bill_passed_020414.html
Legiscan, IN SB 380. https://legiscan.com/IN/bill/SB0380/2023
Legiscan, MT SB 544. https://legiscan.com/MT/bill/SB544/2023
Legiscan, MS HB 176. https://legiscan.com/MS/bill/HB176/2024
Legiscan, ND HB 1522. https://legiscan.com/ND/bill/HB1522/2023
Legiscan, OK HB 3084. https://legiscan.com/OK/bill/HB3084/2024
Legiscan, OK SB 943. https://legiscan.com/OK/bill/SB943/2023
Leigh, Sunny (April 15, 2023). "Bill to reduce penalties for animal fighting shut down in Oklahoma Senate". KTUL. https://ktul.com/news/local/bill-to-reduce-penalties-for-animal-fighting-shut-down-in-oklahoma-senate-cockfighting-chicken-fighting-dogfighting-humphrey-kunzweiler-humane-society-animal-wellness-gamefowl-lawmakers Content warning for animal cruelty. This article goes into some detail about the more criminal and violent extremes of animal fighting.
Mississippi Legislation. House of Representatives Committee Listing. https://www.legislature.ms.gov/committees/house-committees/
Murphy, Sean (15 April 2021). "GOP Oklahoma lawmaker criticized for transgender comments". AP. https://apnews.com/article/legislature-oklahoma-bills-oklahoma-city-5db54da2949c3398d3fc7c53714bdc36
Palma, Bethania. (January 30, 2023). “How Furries Got Swept Up in Anti-Trans 'Litter Box' Rumors.” Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/30/how-furries-got-swept-up-in-anti-trans-litter-box-rumors/ Archived on March 30, 2023.
Plante, C., S. Reysen, S. Roberts, and K. Gerbasi (2016). FurScience! A summary of five years of research from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project. FurScience: Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. ISBN: 978-0-9976288-0-7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304540208_FurScience_A_summary_of_five_years_of_research_from_the_International_Anthropomorphic_Research_Project The relevant section of the book is also on the project’s official web page here: https://furscience.com/research-findings/therians/7-2-animal-identification/
Reed, Erin (December 30, 2023). “Erin's 2024 Anti-Trans Legislative Risk Map.” Erin in the Morning. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/erins-2024-anti-trans-legislative
Reuters Fact Check (October 18, 2022). “Fact Check-No evidence of schools accommodating ‘furries’ with litter boxes.” https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-furries-rogan-litterbox-idUSL1N31J1KT Archived February 13, 2023.
Scribner, O. (March 14, 2023). “A formerly anti-alterhuman but still anti-transgender bill will be heard Wednesday.” https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/88744.html
Scribner, O. (April 13, 2023). “A Simple Introduction to Otherkin and Therianthropes: Version
2.4.7.” The Works of Orion Scribner. https://web.archive.org/web/20230603220035/http://frameacloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/simpleintro.pdf
Scribner, O. (February 22, 2023). “In US, three anti-transgender bills also oppose alterhumans; similar recent Supreme Court cases.” Otherkin News. https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/86709.html
Scribner, O., P. Shepard, and N. N. Sol (April 24, 2023). “Proposed amendment to Montana net censorship bill would ban transgender and transspecies people.” Otherkin News. https://otherkinnews.dreamwidth.org/89561.html
State of Oklahoma House of Representatives. Oklahoma House Rules Committee. https://www.okhouse.gov/committees/house/rules
TrackBill. “Mississippi Rep. Charles Blackwell (R).” https://trackbill.com/legislator/mississippi-representative-charles-blackwell/981-27365/
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Date: 2024-02-14 04:30 am (UTC)[Edit] Okay, did that fix it when you view it in your theme? I can't tell because it looks all right in mine.
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