I’ve (thankfully) never encountered a reference to helicopter genders IRL, however I can’t seem to escape the fucking “they’re putting litter boxes in classrooms!!” myth. It’s such an utterly absurd, inane, asinine idea yet I’ve seen real people, who are seemingly functional adults, actually believe this.
Even if you buy into the conspiracy theories and think that the education system is some globalist socialist catgirl plot, do you think teenagers equipped with cell phones and social media wouldn’t meme the shit out of the classroom litterbox? And yet, we still haven’t seen a single picture proving this has ever happened anywhere. That doesn’t stop people from believing it though, and somehow using it as an excuse to delegitimize and attack trans people.
and think that the education system is some globalist socialist catgirl plot
I want to believe
I completely diffused someone who believed in the litterbox thing by laughing as hard at it as it should be laughed at and pointing out how hard republicans are getting trolled
I had never heard about litter boxes. Can you elaborate?
There was a very real conversation about putting litter boxes in classrooms as a way to give kids locked in a classroom during a school shooting for hours a way to use bathroom. That got twisted by far-right pundits that kids are identifying as cats and that’s why they are putting litter boxes in classrooms. It’s just another way to attack people that “identify” as the “wrong gender”. It’s complete bullshit and anyone with more than 2 brain cells to rub together that can use Google could figure it out, if they weren’t completely focused on denigrating anyone outside their strict interpretation of gender.
Wikipedia has a source for the “lockdown kitty litter” concept mentioned above:
The only known official instance of cat litter being placed in school classrooms for potential use by students was in the late 2010s by the Jefferson County Public School District in Colorado, where the 1999 Columbine High School massacre took place. Some teachers were given “go buckets” that contained cat litter to be used as a toilet in an emergency lockdown situation, such as during a school shooting.[4][43][44]
Weird, but I suppose it’s sensible. Better than having kids pee themselves in an extended lockdown.
If someone were to go about wearing a helicopter costume, hanging out with other helicopters, in short if their lived experience were such that they could reasonably say they identified as a helicopter, then I’d have no problem with it.
The world needs more weird people and less authoritarian followers.
Unfortunately most people claiming to identify as attack helicopters are actually self identifying as cunts.
I feel like the attack helicopter crowd as you’re describing would be fucking lit. Have you seen how complicated fursuits can get?
Be honest, you see a fly-past of a crowd of human helicopters it would make most people’s day.
Fuck yeah it would, id probably wanna join them, flying sounds fun
I hear that they have been telling people that school bathrooms now have litter boxes for the kids that identify as cats, something that is completely absurd, and yet for some reason people believe that
I mean I’ve met someone who actually identified as a fox… I’m like 95% sure they were just doing a bit, but they were pretty adamant and actually never let on that they were joking, and there was a lot of detail to it… so I actually don’t know
But I mean that has nothing to do with being trans but instead the furry subculture, so irrelevant anyway here
Actually they may have been a Therianthrope or an Otherkin, but this kind of person wouldn’t use a god damn litterbox and the claim there is usually spiritual and not neurological as it is with gender dysphoria.
@HawlSera @Azzu Gender dysphoria is a neurological thing in the same sense that *everything* is a neurological thing. Afaik, they haven’t found anything reproducable in the neurological department beyond “the brain lights up in pain when pain is experienced!”, so I find it weird to say that one’s neurological and the other isn’t.
In a utopian anarchist sci-fi setting, would they be treated much differently? Or would it just be “oh, you want your body to be different? Marcy’s down the hall”?
The neural circuitry must exist for people to think like this, so naturally every human behavior is neurological.
But what they were referring to is that gender dysphoria is likely (some evidence has been produced) a condition with an innate genetic cause. Some chemistry related to hormones being different makes it very “easy”/logical that a born man may feel like a woman (and vice versa), the genetic code is almost completely identical. However it’s much harder, if not impossible, to make the link to feeling like a completely different species, thus it is more akin to religion, “just” a culture-based belief system.
All conditions have an innate genetic cause: ever seen a diabetic rock?
I get what you’re saying, but this isn’t one of those things where allele X causes phenotype Y. At best, there’s genetic predisposition.
Mammal brains are quite generic. Perhaps the body map is hardcoded, but not even the visual system is hardcoded, and humans with >5 fingers or tails rarely have problems using them, so that would surprise me. If it develops from body feedback, a “disruption” to that could cause all sorts.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about/what point you’re trying to make. I understand that all our behavior is genetic in some way, since that’s what we’re built based on. However there is still a qualitative difference between an innate condition that is not majorly affected by the individual environment/circumstances (gender dysphoria), and a condition that only manifests through a specific environment/circumstances (identifying as a fox). One you can do something about, the other not really.
That dichotomy is non-exhaustive. What about innate conditions that are majorly, but not entirely, affected by circumstance? What about conditions that present identically, but are “really” multiple different things, each with distinct causes?
When we don’t know, I don’t think it’s useful to try to talk about things as though we do.
You don’t know enough to classify those things the way you’ve classified them – or if you do, please share the research because I’m interested in this topic!
The veracity of the claim is not the point. It’s like the groomers claim or if we go old enough, blood libel and the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
It’s a justification for outrage and violence and requires a willingness to believe without healthy skepticism.
Deceptions like this work only because its intended audience wants to believe it, especially when alternative, fact-based explainations are complex and uncomfortable.
The venn diagram of people who claim kids are identifying as attack helicopters or believing that schools have litter boxes for kids to use the restroom in, and people who fall for Nigerian Prince scams is just a circle.
- tygerprints ( @tygerprints@kbin.social ) 8•11 months ago
When I was a kid we sometimes ran around with our arms outstretched, imitating airplanes. Yet, even as a dumb kid, I knew I was not under some asinine belief that I was actually becoming an airplane. Playing “helicopters” and imitating what they see around them is what kids do. It is not the same thing as identifying as if you were that thing. We have to stop this insane and perverted usage of kids’ behaviors to justify bigotry against others.
TBH I’m more concerned with helicopter parents than I am about helicopter kids.
I see no problem people identifying themselves as helicopters or mouse, whatever. How on earth would it impact me? It’s a free country, so to say. Where I would have problem is if the law of the land would require to call them so. It should be my choice.
Where I would have problem is if the law of the land would require to call them so. It should be my choice.
I don’t disagree and ultimately it’s one of those things that gets fixed with time. But also as someone who lives in the Southeast US and hears on a pretty often occurrence old shits calling black guys just doing their job “boy”, I can understand why folks get upset about using terms to demean others.
I don’t think we should require legally the racist fuckers to not be themselves, but I’m pretty okay with younger people calling out the older fuckers that demean others. So no, no need for legal requirements, I think social shunning and embarrassment good enough.
Yeah. And it’s perfectly acceptable to legally require people in government jobs to be respectful – a teacher who used racist language would also be fired, and rightly so.
My partner is a WWII fighter plane