A conspiracy of cats
The curious case of the litterbox lie
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12670664 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Curran Nault (0000-0002-2819-3444, The University of Texas at Austin, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-08 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Feminist Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14647001251376303 |
| OpenAlex | W4417122918 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 22 |
This article concerns the curious case of what I label the ‘litterbox lie’: a false narrative propagated on social media that litterboxes are being installed in grade school classrooms for kids who identify as cats. This lie, first circulated in Canada in 2021, has been raised by rightwing forces in response to the perceived accommodation of transgender children in public schools. This article deploys discursive and semiotic analysis to critically reconsider three entwined areas of ideological intrigue that inform this litterbox lie: cats, computers, crap. This terminological trinity contours the keywords of the litterbox lie – what I cheekily call its CATegories. I follow this conceptual round-up with an exploratory unravelling of the litterbox lie, and conclude with a ‘clawback’, as I answer the rightwing ridiculous with some radical ridicule of the queered cat creative kind, including the inter-species academe of trans studies stalwart Sandy Stone. Across its pages, this article re-presents the litterbox lie as a paradigm of present-day conservative conspiracy theories, one that pulls from persistent gender panic patterns and successful social media strategies of the cat kind. In a conclusion that refuses respectability, I offer some ‘catty’ examples of semiotic guerilla warfare as enabling trans-cat alternatives to this online anti-trans disinformation and hate
Critical discourse analysis · Disinformation · Ideology · Moral panic · Narrative · Ridiculous · Semiotics · Social media · Terrorism · Gender Studies in Language · Human-Animal Interaction Studies · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism
Purity and Danger
Furry acts as non/human drag
Terrorist Assemblages
Misinformation as woman
Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers
The Empire Strikes Back
No Future
A Unified Theory of Cats on the Internet
Aids, Homophobia, and Biomedical Discourse
Profit, Porn, and Protease Inhibitors
Animacies
Is the Rectum a Grave
Fetal Images
The Laugh of the Medusa
Becoming Human
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |