EVANSVILLE – Evansville schools, Peter Adams said, are the latest victim of a “feedback loop.”
Last week, a debunked online rumor landed at the feet of the Evansville Vanderburgh School Board. Ruth Baize, a retired teacher and former school board candidate with a history of inflammatory remarks, claimed the EVSC was providing litter boxes in bathrooms for students who identify as cats.
For a visual aid, she hooked a leash around Evansville woman Theresa Finn, who wore plastic ears and a tail and meowed loudly as Baize spoke.
More:Superintendent: No, EVSC doesn't provide litter boxes for students who identify as cats
EVSC officials denied the claims and dismissed them as “ridiculous.” But they are far from the first to have to do so, said Adams, head of the education team at the News Literacy Project, a collective that fights online disinformation.
Erroneous stories about litter boxes in schools have wormed their way through social media for almost a year, he said. They’ve been pushed by everyone from misinformed parents at school board meetings to right-wing radio hosts to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
At their root, he said, they are exaggerated and offensive takes on the real debate over allowing transgender students — who are nothing like the “furries” evoked in litter box arguments — to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
Even the use of the word "furry," a subset of people who dress up in animal costumes for fun, is being used incorrectly. Still, the claims have taken hold by playing on people's fear and confusion, Adams said.
No one pushing the litter box stories has ever produced first-hand evidence of them occurring, but the rumors show no sign of slowing down. When the Courier & Press posted a story to Facebook Tuesday with the headline “No, EVSC doesn't provide litter boxes for students who identify as cats,” several commenters still assumed the rumors were true.
“There is a kind of feedback loop at play here that has caused localized versions of this anonymous second- and third-hand claim to get repeated in communities across the country,” Adams said.
Where the litter box claim started – and why it’s so popular
Jokes about furries and their supposed use of litter boxes have lurked around the Internet since the 1990s, Adam said. But the rumor didn't blossom into widespread political disinformation until late last year.
On Dec. 21, 2021, a woman speaking at a Midland Public Schools Board of Education meeting in Central Michigan said she had “heard” that “at least one of our schools” had planted a litter box in a unisex bathroom for kids who “identify as cats.”
“I am really upset, as a parent, that my child is put in an environment like that,” she said.
She later admitted she had no evidence any of it was true. Still, Meshawn Maddock, co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, shared the woman’s comments on Facebook, and the rumors took off.
More:Carroll Community School District superintendent: No litter boxes in schools
An Iowa school superintendent had to issue a statement denying a similar rumor when it hit his school system in February. And a month later, Nebraska state Sen. Bruce Bostelman apologized for repeating the claim during a debate over a bill aimed at helping children with behavioral problems.
Litter box rumors rooted in transphobia
Other instances have landed in the news since. And Greene repeated the litter box claim as recently as this month at a Donald Trump rally in Pennsylvania.
Adams said even though the rumors are bizarre, they’re rooted in an actual problem: transphobia.
The litter box claims went wild after several states fought over transgender bathroom use. And at Monday’s school board meeting, Jim Baize, Ruth Baize’s husband, compared gender identity to “animal dysmorphia.”
“This particular falsehood has spread so widely because it taps into a larger political controversy,” Adams said. “It’s an attempt to scare parents — particularly conservative parents — and is also deeply distortive and transphobic because it implies that accommodating or discussing different gender identities in schools is absurd and perverse.”
'People just dig in'
Kirt Ethridge normally doesn’t comment on Facebook.
The dad and trans Evansville writer who uses they/them pronouns has found that doing so is a waste of time. It’s unlikely they’re going to change anyone’s mind, Ethridge said.
But when the Courier & Press’ initial story about the litter box claims hit Facebook on Tuesday, Ethridge felt they had to say something.
“I couldn’t let all that stand without calling out how odd it was,” they said.
In the thread, Ethridge urged people to use critical thinking. That sparked dozens of replies, many from people who swore, with no evidence, that the controversy was “actually happening” where they lived.
“If you are going to allow your child to identify as any animal, then you should take responsibility for their education and home school them,” one person wrote. “My tax dollars are to educate the YOUTH and future adults (not animals) of our country.”
Part of Ethridge was “shocked” to see all that. But social media can easily act as an “echo chamber,” they said.
“People just dig in and circulate what they think and don’t engage in a meaningful way. Like any other Internet site, you don’t have the benefit of looking another human being in the face,” they said. “The best success I’ve had in changing people’s minds, especially in regards to transphobia, have been times where I’ve sat down with someone in person and had a conversation – where that person has had to look at me and see me as fully human.
“I think it’s very easy to say cruel things, or things that might not make as much sense, when … you’re a step removed.”
Election season brings transgender issues to light
Transphobia, Ethridge said, tends to spike around elections or when trans-related stories make the news, such as when Indiana passed a law banning transgender girls from playing school sports.
That’s part of what makes the litter box situation so frustrating, Ethridge said. Despite these unfounded claims of schools bending over backward to accommodate cat people, in reality even simple accommodations for students don't always come to fruition.
In 2019, a federal judge ruled the EVSC had violated a transgender boy’s Title IX protections when it wouldn’t let him use the men’s restroom at his school. The case was eventually dismissed with prejudice, court records state.
“People are so willing to believe in these conspiracy theories that say schools are giving these ridiculous accommodations. That schools are going provide accommodations to people who will then abuse them,” Ethridge said. “But many kids who would benefit from (actual) accommodations, including transgender youth, don’t receive those accommodations.”