Feline Furious

In which I discuss an absurd news story...

If you are to look on the website of any right-leaning newspaper for education stories you will almost certainly find articles about schools where students are 'identifying as cats'. Yes, this is widely being reported in sources including The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Sun, LBC, Metro and many, many others. These articles say that parents of these children are demanding schools respect them, that these children are wearing ears and tails and occasionally are using litter trays in classrooms. Oh, and according to a handful of these sources some children are also identifying as horses and dinosaurs. 

This week, the media was whipped into a frenzy. Because this has been reported in the media, year 8 pupils at a school in East Sussex had a discussion about whether a person can identify as a cat and one of them filmed part of the discussion and put it on TikTok. This went viral and the right-wing media jumped on it and politicians started to comment on this 'issue'. The school meanwhile calmly stated that 'no child at the school identifies as a cat or any other animal'. 

The thing is, this story is complete nonsense. There doesn't appear to be any evidence of any children or young people actually doing this. No respected educator from Ofsted, any teaching union or any other organisation has said they have met or even heard of this happening. It's perhaps only a matter of time before a parent desperate for cash in a cost-of-living crisis gets their child to pose for a photo in front of a bowl of Whiskers but as of yet, there has not been a single confirmed case of this happening. Articles talking about it always say that it is 'reportedly' or 'supposedly' happening because they know there isn't actually any hard evidence. 

Where has this nonsense come from? No-one seems to know for sure but the story certainly originated in the US and some believe it may have come from the fact that some schools have cat litter available in classrooms because it could potentially be needed for young children to use if there is a shooter on the premises, alongside things like candy for diabetic students, first aid kits and torches. This sounds horrific but plausible. 

In truth, it appears this story is an angle that is being used as a way of criticizing trans people, comparing children identifying as cats to those identifying as a different gender to the one they were born as. It's pure propaganda and one which is deeply harmful to the trans community. 

I don't claim to be an expert in trans issues. I was pleased though to receive training on LGBTQ+ issues in education at the start of the year which was full of science, statistics and legal stuff so I feel that I have a decent grasp of them from an education viewpoint. These issues can be complicated and every individual case is unique and should be treated as such. 

The anti-trans community say gender at birth is absolute and defined by genitalia. For a start, more than 1% of the population is physically defined as intersex (even if you or they may not know it) so immediately the absolutes of gender fall apart. There are repeated concerns that young people are being brain-washed into transitioning and that their bodies are changed at too young an age. This argument shows complete ignorance of the challenges of transitioning. It's an enormously long process with an enormously long waiting list. No surgery can take place until the age of eighteen and the process involves huge amounts of psychological work to confirm it is the right thing for each person. The process is so long that some trans people opt to go private but it's hugely expensive and only a small number can afford this option. 

Another argument given is that young people may regret their transition. The thing is, studies have shown that this virtually never happens. No large studies have been completed but most studies that have been done found that between 97-99% of people who transitioned said when asked that they didn't regret it and felt the happiest they had ever been with their life. We are very much a world that claims to care about and value mental health and yet a worryingly large portion of society believes that young people with gender dysmorphia are wrong and therefore should be left to suffer. 

I fully expect that in a hundred years' time, probably much less than that, transitioning will be seen as normal and transphobia will be something held by a tiny, tiny minority. Historians of the future will look back at this age when newspapers are reporting that children are identifying as cats and laugh at how absurd and stupid people of the early 2020s were. 

Thanks for reading and I hope I've done right by this often controversial issue. Because I don't want to be accused as one of those people making stuff up on the internet, below you'll find some links that contain the various information I've pulled for this piece.

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