The ABC’s Media Watch program has cast its eye over the latest round of Australia media personalities claiming that there are students in schools who identify as cats and dogs.
This time round is was Sydney radio station 2GB making the claim that some students were being ‘furries’ and given special treatment at their school to allow them to live out their fantasies that they are a dog.
The claim was made by sports journalist turned women’s rights activist Lucy Zelic during a chat with Drive host Clinton Maynard.
Zelic shared that a parent had told her of a Catholic schools where a student was being allowed to identify as a dog, and other students were being told to also recognise the student as a dog. Zelic also claimed Brisbane schools were putting litter boxes in classrooms.
“It’s an absolute and utter embarrassment that we have a western society have allowed things like this to happen.” Zelic said, suggesting that kids needed to be smacked.
After the radio station got lots of comments on their social media the station picked up the story a few days later putting a series of calls to air of people who shared their second hand accounts of people identifying as cats and dogs.
The station eventually noted that authorities including the Education Department, The Catholic Schools Association and the Independent School Association all denied there was any truth to the claims.
Zelic and Maynard are the latest in a long of media personalities giving air to claim that has been debunked as an anti-trans urban myth on multiple occasions. The radio station has defended the content saying that they’d presented them as “unverified claims”.
Across the world there’s been many similar reports but none have ever been verified
Incidents of media personalities and politicians claiming they are young people identifying as cats have occurred regularly around the globe over the last few years, but the urban myth has been traced back over many decades.
The stories are generally designed to voice transphobia drawing a link between recognising transgender people and allowing them to use the bathroom of their choice as being a slippery slope to people identifying an animals.
From Brisbane and Melbourne to Indiana, Ohio, Utah, Idaho, Michigan, Arkansas, Texas and Canada, there have been claims of students identify as cats, and time and time again it’s been thoroughly debunked as an urban myth.
Last year Perth radio station 6PR claimed there was a serving police officer who identified as a rabbit. Their claim came a few months after they also made the claim that local school children were identifying as cats.
The stories never have any directly verifiable information, they’re always cases of hearsay based on second or third hand accounts.
The story also was follows the same template accepting diversity has gone too far and now delusional people are being given special treatment. Often its students identify as cats demanding to have kitty little trays in the bathroom, or a variation is they’ve asked for lower tables in the cafeteria so they eat from bowls not using their hands.
As Australian school’s don’t have cafeterias when the story began appearing locally it was adapted to students are allowed to cut holes in their uniforms for their tails.
But time and time again politicians believe it, the conservative media report it, and the social media outrage machine kicks off.
Here’s just a few of the incidents that OUTinPerth has document in recent years.
15-05-2021 Journalist Leisa Goddard says students identify as cats
19-03-2022 Courier-Mail claims Brisbane school has cat identifying students
21-03-2022 Sky News shares the ‘students identify as cats’ story
29-03-2022 Media Watch questions Sky News’ ‘students identify as cats’ story
29-03-2022 Tell us if you’ve heard this one before, students are identify as cats
09-04-2022 US radio hosts claims schools are making adjustments for furries
23-05-2022 Why do politicians keep falling for the students identify as cats myth?
24-08-2022 News Corp claims to have found more cat identifying students
25-09-2022 Indiana school officials deny there are cat identifying students
08-10-2022 Schools ask politicians to stop claiming students identify as cats
06-11-2022 As the US heads to mid-term elections, cat-student claims keep coming
23-06-2023 Cats, and dogs and horses and moons and dinosaurs – oh my.
23-09-2023 “Love is love, cat food is cat food” – Scots College apologises
16-09-2023 Sky News is suggest students are identifying as cats again.
24-02-2024 Rita Panahi has found more evidence of ‘cat people’.
15-03-2024 6PR’s Karl Langdon and Steve Mills share ‘cats and kitty litter’ urban myth
16-05-2024 Margaret Court says children are going to school as cats!
23-07-2024 6PR hosts claim police officer identifies as a rabbit
05-10-2024 British newspaper claims Scottish child “identifies as a wolf”
07-02-2025 Hobart Councilor Louise Elliot says there are kitty litter trays in Tasmanian schools
16-02-2025 Queensland teacher denies she was acting like a cat throwing doubt on news reports
There really should be some kind of annual award for this gullibility. The Furry Furphy perhaps.
