site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36163 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

20
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I definately do not want to imply that you or any other blue here is a pedophile. I do not believe I or @naraburns has claimed that you or any other blue here is a pedophile. I have never understood the word "groomer" to be a synonym for pedophile, and in fact it is not a synonym for pedophile. It is explicitly a term for people who violate trust in an attempt to harmfully and secretly modify children's sexuality. Up until very recently, the only people who would even dream of doing that were in fact pedophiles, but it's the abuse of trust and the clandestine modification that's being objected to, not sex with kids. If the consernation is over percieved equivocation in language, allow me to be the first to apologize.

If you and others object to this so strongly, because suddenly conversation becomes impossible if one uses terms in a specific and unambiguous way that you don't agree with, let's not allow it to interfere with our communication. Give me a word. Give me a word and I will use it. you pick the fucking word to encapsulate "a person who is motivated to grossly abuse my trust and their authority in an attempt to fuck with my child's head, damaging their sexuality and their sanity, in secret and against my expressed wishes, to a degree that makes keeping them and anyone who associates with or supports them as far away from anyone I care about as possible", and scout's honor I will use that word unfailingly from now on. I will even translate quotes from others into that word, because I sincerely believe that is the idea most of them are trying to communicate.

This offer is open to any blue here. Pick the word that you think fairly encapsulates the above concept, and you will never hear "groomer" from me again. Make it as anodyne as you like, as anodyne as possible; it will pick up all the negative affect it needs in very short order.

(8 letters or less please for convenience, please and thank you.)

I have never understood the word "groomer" to be a synonym for pedophile, and in fact it is not a synonym for pedophile

I have used the term groomer several hundred times, and heard it used a thousand times more, outside the context of politics in the past few years. every single time, it referred to a sexual relationship of some sort - whether purely by chat or IRL - between a claimed minor and a claimed adult. almost every time, it was used to imply pedophilia-adjacent awful misconduct on the part of the supposed groomer. And our culture has a bizzare fixation on the idea of pedophilia (the fact that "it's actually ephebophilia" as a mocking term itself is bizzare, given almost all individuals actually accused of pedophilia are adults preying on 14-16 year old girls). There is a massive amount of unjustified taboo around that issue, and it makes every single person that touches it go completely insane. Conservatives are attempting to appropriate some of that taboo to 'fight back against trans'. Of course, it's totally ineffective and boxes at shadows, because 'sexually manipulating minors' and 'a kid is bored school, watches a bunch of ecchi anime, and goes to /r/egg_irl and wants to MtF' are not at all related.

This has nothing to do with whether trans or 'mixed-age relationships' are good or not, but the taboo on them is bizzare

Pick the word that you think fairly encapsulates the above concept

Transgender, trans children, transgender propaganda, gender marxism. You can pick any term! Grooming is just not a useful term. The fraction of kids who transition because an adult in their middle school personally targets them to transition is like 10^-5

I have never understood the word "groomer" to be a synonym for pedophile, and in fact it is not a synonym for pedophile.

The word groomer is used because to most people it codes to pedophile. It is an effective political attack for that reason. If I were still in politics and working for the Republicans I would certainly be encouraging them to use it as an attack, but if it didn't have that connotation it would not be an effective political attack in the first place. Fascist is an effective political attack on right wingers because people generally think Nazis are bad. Groomer is an effective political attack on left wingers because people generally think that people who groom kids for sex are bad. They wouldn't be used if they didn't carry that emotional valence.

As for other words you could use, how about priest, or vicar, or Rabbi or sunday school teacher. Not in the pedophile sense again, but in the sense that this is how sexual morality in adults was formed. By teaching kids that masturbation is sinful, that homosexuality is sinful, that sex before marriage is sinful and so on. And for a long period of time this was the dominant waters that kids growing up swam through, even if their parents did not want that. That is the genesis of the woke movement you are criticizing. The rebellion against this enforced cultural teaching and the harm (as they see it, but see below) it did to kids who did not do well in that system. Hold onto that idea for a moment.

You mention it being done secretly or against your wishes but that is not relevant to the groomer tag in this scenario. I could teach your kids how to fish against your wishes and secretly and you are unlikely to call me a groomer. The key must then be WHAT is being taught. Would you call these secular teachers groomers if they were teaching your kids secretly that America is great even if you thought it was terrible? So to answer the question what do we call people who try to adjust and manipulate the sexuality of kids? Society, priests, nuns, teachers, parents, peers, televangelists, therapists, writers, and yes pedophilic groomers. It's one of the core roles of society, to set and teach boundaries on all sorts of human interaction and that includes sex and relationships. Which doesn't mean that we can't make a value judgement about which are better and which are worse, just to be clear. But almost everyone trying to mold the sexuality of kids are not pedophiles, they are not grooming them for abuse.

My RE teacher taught me about how Onan was sinful and I very much did not want to be there to learn that. If teaching a kid that is ok to be trans or gay or to masturbate is grooming, then teaching the opposite should also get the same brush. Are nuns at Catholic schools groomers when they teach not to do X or that Y is bad and will get you sent to hell and have you grow hairy palms?

I come to you as a veteran of the Atheist wars. There once was a passion burning bright in my breast about religion. I would literally call religious parents and priests child abusers. Not for pedophilia (though that was of course a useful weapon!) but because they are teaching kids what (in my opinion!) is utter nonsense. They are damaging their mental and intellectual and moral development. They are monsters. Or so my old self would have told you long and loudly and quite possibly whether you wanted to hear it or not.

Now that fire has dimmed with age and experience, and I no longer think religious parents and rabbis and the like are evil child abusers. I still think they are wrong, but I now understand they are doing their best to try and raise their kids and other peoples kids with values they think are beneficial. Indoctrination isn't in itself bad. All societies must indoctrinate their children into something. It's the only way to get a cohesive polity. So even though I think they are harming these children (albeit without meaning to), I accept it.

To go back to the original question I would suggest not using any new term at all. Anytime we put labels on groups we don't like it makes it more difficult to be charitable and welcoming to that group, and for me the most important rules of this space are those around writing like we our opponents are reading and we WANT them to be here. My suggestion is simply to address particular instances of behavior without using a particular term for those doing it.

"I find it very worrying that there are teachers who have been revealed to be secretly supportive of kids transitioning without telling their parents. I think this is bad because it robs the parents of their agency, it assumes they are bad people, and because I believe that trans behavior is likely socially conditioned and no child would know at that age. I think that kids supported on this route may well have irreversible harm done to them through puberty blockers and other treatments. I find this to be infuriating at a visceral level."

Now that is a lot wordier than "Did you hear about those groomers trying to sterilize our kids" but it at least gives us specific actions to discuss rather than whether telling kids that masturbation is natural is grooming or whether telling kids masturbation is sinful is emotional abuse. And we are after all at The Motte so we're not scared of a little wordiness are we?

To add on a little more, I do think that both the people who want to teach kids that sex is ok and nothing to be ashamed of and the people who want to teach kids that sex is sinful and shameful both can attract actual pedophiles and abusers. In one case it gives an excuse to broach a subject that can deflect suspicion and in the other it can allow the idea of the shame to coerce kids into not revealing their actions or because the kids don't even realize what it is that is happening through ignorance. Predators will use different tactics in different situations and both situations have failure modes. This absolutely should be kept in mind in both scenarios by everyone who is involved. Most people who want to teach either thing are not pedophiles but both absolutely can and do give cover for "real" child sexual exploitation.

As someone who was involved in anti-CSE activities in government I also am a little worried that using groomers in this context conflates the two and will lead to both false positives and negatives and thus leave kids at more risk of harm. But that cat is probably out of the bag and about to drop a dead bird on the doormat in the wider context unfortunately.

My RE teacher taught me about how Onan was sinful and I very much did not want to be there to learn that. If teaching a kid that is ok to be trans or gay or to masturbate is grooming, then teaching the opposite should also get the same brush

Unlike the UK, US public school teachers are in theory prohibited from religious instruction. But the new religion is of course exempt from such rules.

Well wokeness isn't a religion. Rather the opposite a religion is just an ideology with a supernatural skin on top which is why the behaviors are so often the same. But that doesn't mean it actually IS a religion. You can after all teach trickle down theory and that socialist policies don't work.

I've always thought the distinction between religion and ideology was a crock. Both make claims about the objective world which may or may not be true, and normative claims which are unfalsifiable. If Confucius was born today we'd call Confucianism an ideology; if Hitler lived in ancient Assyria, we'd call him a prophet and Aryanism his religion.

You're right generally but clearly there's something different about the modern 'religions' that don't actually worship any deities, observe any miracles, sacrifice goats, etc, right?

I honestly think that's just presentism. Our ancestors had different magical beliefs than ours. The ancient mediterraneans believed the seas were controlled by fickle entities which could be assuaged with worship, sacrificing goats, etc. We on the other hand believe in an invisible property to human organisms which makes it evil to treat them in certain ways and which ties them normatively to objects. Both ancients and moderns become emotional and angry if you question these beliefs, despite not really being able to justify them.

Assuming our civilization continues to develop, future historians (probably no longer human) might consider this a change in religious fashion, must like how at various periods religions went from mostly animist (no gods there) to mostly polytheism then monotheist (in which gods and God share a word, but serve a different role), then whatever we have now. Changes in the manner of religion usually stem from changes in people's way of life. We post-industrials are in a similar boat to the Romans circa 200, who no longer really believed in the pantheon anymore and were primed to convert to something unrecognizable -- in their case, involving a benevolent omnipotent father surrogate.

There are significant differences between past religions and current progressivism that this doesn't capture, but you're decently correct here. A distinction between religion and ideology in a legal sense, like 'separation of church and state', is sort of incoherent.

Have you read how dawkins got pwned or UR generally? I'd guess so.

More comments

As it happens, whether Confucianism really qualifies as a religion is very debatable…

This whole discussion has helpfully provided me with a great example of the right quietly redefining a word for political advantage he way the far left redefined racism. Thanks guys.

I strongly disagree. Please tell me: do you believe my art teacher telling me I should come to school in women's underwear to get in touch with my true self qualifies as grooming?

I've brought this up twice now, and nobody in the "groomer is a slur" camp has deigned to state their opinion on it. I'm curious why, when it seems like such a clear example they could build trust by reassuring people they are against it. If they are, in fact, against it.

Please tell me: do you believe my art teacher telling me I should come to school in women's underwear to get in touch with my true self qualifies as grooming

To be clear - are you claiming this physically happened to you? If so, I'd appreciate if you elaborated a bit, gave context, etc, although it makes sense if you don't want to.

I know a lot of trans people, many of whom transitioned in high school, and at least 80% of them weren't encouraged at all by their school / parents to be trans, and despite knowing a lot of personal details of several I've never heard of anything like that happening, so it's not really representative of the median 'trans kid'.

I am certainly against teachers making suggestions about their students' underwear, that is messed up and should not have happened.

I've brought this up twice now, and nobody in the "groomer is a slur" camp has deigned to state their opinion on it. I'm curious why, when it seems like such a clear example they could build trust by reassuring people they are against it. If they are, in fact, against it.

Are you expecting anyone to say "Yeah, that sounds fine"? Because I doubt anyone here would. Do you want a "I'm sorry that happened to you?" like you'd get from the wokes you hate (and which I personally have always thought seems pretty damned patronizing)?

People who think "groomer" is being used too broadly are not denying that groomers do in fact exist. Just like most people who object to "racist" being used as a boo-word do not generally deny that actual racists exist.

Not a single one has said that it's categorically not ok, which confirms my suspicions that people don't want accurate use of the word to catch on.

And no, I don't want anyone's sympathy; I found the whole thing hilarious rather than creepy because she didn't have any personal influence over me. But if my history teacher had suggested it I'd have just asked him what color he wanted, so I'd rather like if we could draw a bright line here for the benefit of future mes who might be tempted into doing far more harmful and permanent things than wearing a bit of lingerie for a nonce.

That we can't completely validates the entire groomer narrative in my eyes.

Not a single one has said that it's categorically not ok, which confirms my suspicions that people don't want accurate use of the word to catch on.

Look, if you want to assume that everyone who didn't respond personally to your emotive anecdote to say "That's not okay" secretly believes it's okay, I can't stop you, but you've been told by several people now why that is not, in fact, a good faith litmus test.

Several people have told us that they think a clear case of grooming a kid into weird sex shit doesn't actually count as grooming to them, which tells us all we need to know about the whole conversation.

It's just another Virginia school bathroom rape story. "I don't support that, besides it won't happen, and even if it did happen you're weird for still caring about it, yikes". Pure fucking tribal ass covering, and an absolute embarrassment to watch. The whole "groomer fragility" meme is actually true, isn't it?

Several people have told us that they think a clear case of grooming a kid into weird sex shit doesn't actually count as grooming to them, which tells us all we need to know about the whole conversation.

Please point me to the actual post in which someone said grooming a kid into weird sex shit doesn't actually count as grooming to them. I don't want to read your dishonest paraphrasing, I want to read the actual words you are claiming mean that and ask the person(s) who posted them if that is indeed what they meant.

It's just another Virginia school bathroom rape story. "I don't support that, besides it won't happen, and even if it did happen you're weird for still caring about it, yikes". Pure fucking tribal ass covering, and an absolute embarrassment to watch. The whole "groomer fragility" meme is actually true, isn't it?

I assume you are referring to @FiveHourMarathon's reply to you below.

"I don't support that, besides it won't happen, and even if it did happen you're weird for still caring about it, yikes" is not an honest characterization of what he said. The fact that you stealth-edited your comment after he replied makes it clear that you're not actually seeking authentic responses here.

Nobody here is defending grooming, or the behavior of your high school teacher.

More comments

I'm just going to say, I don't know that I have a dog in this fight really, but I will basically never engage with someone who brings up a highly emotionally charged experience like that in an intellectual discussion. Especially online. It's likely to lead to extreme discourtesy and hurt feelings. Whether affirming or disaffirming, it's just stupid to reply to that.

I'm highly anti-war, my politics are all basically downstream of "Iraq was a horrendous multi-level failure that cannot be allowed to be repeated." I've been going to anti-war protests for twenty years now. I don't bring that topic up around veteran friends, they've staked their lives on their position, it would be crass for me to toss off my little Noam Chomsky anecdotes or Pat Buchanan monologues to men who lost friends or body parts in that particular mistake.

I could explain to them that their youth, and perhaps the rest of their lives too, were wasted in an imperialist venture that benefits no one but the Islamic Republic of Iran. I could wax poetic about the post war international order, the failure to understand the Shia-Sunni conflict and balance of power, the absurd belief that inside every Iraqi is an American trying to get out. But I don't, because I don't want to be an asshole to a friend who still has friendly fire nightmares.

So that might be why no one would engage with your story. I sure wouldn't.

I... Don't really understand the "emotionally charged" thing? It's one of the funny anecdotes I tell about my retarded school that was well ahead of its time, like the trips to Cuba to witness the glorious communist future, or the Buddhist convert teachers who never realized the monks were laughing at them behind their backs.

If it's a war story, it's the mildly embarrassing one about finding out that one guy wasn't just really good at gay chicken only after two dates and a very awkward shower.

But if you think it's a serious issue worth being emotional about, why can't you come out against teachers doing it?

Let's say I brought up being raped as a child in a discussion about abortion or parents' rights or something. Any individual should be able to have precise intellectual conversations about that, one with strong disagreement, clear claims, and details - in principle, right? But unless you frequent 4chan or WPD, that's just not gonna happen - it's a taboo topic and saying anything other than "that, and 6 degrees of kevin bacon from it, are cursed ground and must be righteously condemned lest we harm the victim" is just not okay.

In order to discuss the topic, we need to consider how the your teacher telling you to wear girls' underwear might, actually, be good. (note the immense cringe it takes to type that out - i'm basically a pedophile for saying it!). Sure, it isn't, but there are multiple ways something can be bad! And not being able to consider that it might be good means, essentially, you can't discriminate between the ways that it's bad - because "realizing it's not bad in one way" and "realizing it's good" are, in the moment, rather hard to tell apart. After all, if the reasons you previously believed it's bad are mostly wrong ... And there isn't any "uh, it's still actually bad though" you can fall back on to ensure you're safe from "dangerous questions", because that's just an empty claim that prevents you from finding the real reasons.

Notably, that teacher doesn't actually want to have sex with you. At all. Which makes it ... not ... grooming. And not pedophilic. At all!

It can still be bad for being sexually degenerate or anti-nature or a simulacra of appearances or something, there's lots of approaches. But it's not pedophilia. And if it's not pedophilia, why is it grooming?

But if you think it's a serious issue worth being emotional about, why can't you come out against teachers doing it?

And this is just a struggle session. You need to personally condemn the outgroup, or you're as bad as them! What? What does this have to do with ... figuring out why something is happening, what its causes are, why it matters? Why does any person need to "come out against" anything? This is a discussion forum, not a cult.

Do you actually think it's bad? Why? Isn't it a good thing to nurture and encourage children's "gender expression"? If we look at all the teachers on Reddit talking about "hatching their little eggs" by doing this kind of thing, they and their supporters obviously don't think it's wrong.

And you are using a much narrower definition of "grooming" than anyone ever used during Me too. Why is that? Why do you constantly manipulate definitions like this? What do you even gain from it?

Do you actually think it's bad?

If I gave you a representative sample of my statements about trans people across all platforms, you'd recoil in horror at how much of a disgusting reactionary I am.

Please stop the personal accusations. It doesn't matter at all if I'm morally disturbing for wanting to groom trans people or anything. Let's just discuss the actual physical events that occur, the people who are transitioning, the circumstances under which they do, motivations, effects, etc.

Yeah, not how I read it this time or the first time I read it, and I don't have access to your emotional state so I'm going to avoid guessing. It reads more like something I saw regularly on Reddit in the past, where someone would derail a debate about the exact borders of consent or a prominent rape allegation with a post that similarly challenged the reader: "OH, so you're saying it was ok that man raped me while I was blacked out drunk?" Discrediting someone's victimization rarely persuades anyone, and especially not the poster. And you risk inciting an outburst.

Anyway because the only details provided to me are in the one sentence challenge comment, while the poster challenging me has all the details, it's a no-win situation for the reply, because even if you think you analyze it properly the poster can always just reply with new details which weren't in the original post. Like, if you reply to the above hypo "Well, if you chose to drink and your boyfriend didn't know things had changed;" she'll probably just reply "Actually it was a stranger and he slipped everclear into my drink."

If you really want to use your personal experience, you need to provide that kind of context in advance. Like "Hey, this wasn't traumatic for me at all, I'm just presenting it as a narrow hypothetical, no additional facts."

What would be your "well what if X made it ok" in that scenario then?

That's why I asked the question: what would make a bunch of people who were super into "Me Too" and abolishing any potential for sketchy behavior in school and the workplace suddenly get so evasive about this?

If It's never ok for a 25 year old professor to talk to a 22 year old student without the office door open for fear of grooming, why the reluctance to call out weird sex stuff with leftist teachers and kids? Because to an observer the explanation looks an awful lot like "we don't want to prevent that, and oppose any attempt by concerned parents to prevent it until it's fully normalized."

Quibbling over the terminology and trying to prevent any word being used to describe the behavior is just Freddie's "please just tell me what word I am allowed to use" post in action yet again.

If It's never ok for a 25 year old professor to talk to a 22 year old student without the office door open for fear of grooming, why the reluctance to call out weird sex stuff with leftist teachers and kids

Well the premise is false, so who cares? A->B is always true, and usually not very interesting, if ~A. If we're willing to lynch witches on obviously false accusations, why not lynch my neighbor for calling me an asshole, which he at least did do something wrong? If those communist democrats love their violent black soros-funded mobs so much, why can't we firebomb a few abortion clinics? If my grandma's a monkey, then i'm a mixed-species freak of nature, and I can make billions by selling my tissue to biolabs. These are stupid statements! You know the former is a dumb left-wing thing, and is being done for stupid, hypocritical reasons, so - why bring it up - and what does it prove about the latter? They could entirely hypothetically correctly understand the latter doesn't matter, and that the former doesn't matter, and just be delusional about the former - and be in the wrong only in the former case.

More comments

Please tell me: do you believe my art teacher telling me I should come to school in women's underwear to get in touch with my true self qualifies as grooming? [...] I've brought this up twice now, and nobody in the "groomer is a slur" camp has deigned to state their opinion on it.

A teacher who independently "goes rogue" and talks to a student about their underwear should be reprimanded and the incident should be investigated. But that is also the case for a teacher playing a multiplayer videogame with a student, or driving the student home, being alone in a closed room with them, etc. Those actions are not intrinsically evil. Whether they are "grooming" depends on the intent which is unknowable. So schools have protocols to regulate student/teacher interaction to make sure teachers never do anything that gives the appearance of foul play. When teachers break protocols, they (should) get investigated, disciplined, and possibly fired.

My problem with "groomer" is that it is motte-baileying. It is equating secretive intimate behavior like you're describing with (a) a trans activist teacher talking about transgenderism informally with students, (b) school psychologists helping transition a child through formal channels with the full knowledge of school admins and their colleagues, and (c) generally, encouraging children to abandon their birth gender or addressing the child as their non-birth gender, in general.

For the record, I do not support (b) and only partially support (c). However, activities (a), (b), and (c) cannot reasonably be called "grooming" and calling them that is using an intentionally inflammatory insult IMO.

  1. Insufficient information. Intent to abuse was part of "grooming" prior to redefinition.

  2. Whether or not this behavior should be called "grooming" is totally seperate from whether teachers should be engaged in it. (And they shouldn't in my book).

I agree with @Gdanning that I think you are using a nonstandard definition of "groomer." Groomer usually implies willfully and intentionally eroding a child's natural inhibitions in order to make them more receptive to abuse. It's a deliberate tactic by predators.

Whereas the meaning you (and @naraburns!) are using is more like "Someone who serves as a useful fool by desensitizing children in a way that will make them more vulnerable."

In a sense this is Mistake Theory vs. Conflict Theory. If you're making a child more vulnerable, does it matter whether your intentions were good or you're actually trying to feed them to predators? Nonetheless, I submit that people who think sexually explicit books about blowing older men are appropriate for children, or that girls shouldn't be allowed to object to people with penises in their changing rooms, are mostly not people who actually want children to be preyed on - they actually think they are doing what's best for children! (At least some children.)

I don't know if I can come up with a single word to distinguish them from groomers (I suppose in a venue like this, "quokka" would work), but I do think "groomer" should be reserved for predators who know what they're doing and are doing it on purpose. There is no way you can call people (even by implication) "groomers" and say "I didn't mean to imply you're a pedophile, I'm just saying your beliefs are very favorable to pedophiles" and expect that conversation to proceed in a calm and reasonable manner.

Should people never be blamed for carrying water for atrocities?

Or rather, is your argument that within mistake theory, intent is (virtually always) an acceptable and invincible excuse?

Both of those could be interesting arguments and I'd enjoy seeing them fleshed out.

I think if you read my entire post, you'd see that I argued neither of those things.

I think the other side of it, is that I think there needs to be a standard on where and when intent actually matters. I think largely that's what's being talked about here. And one of my...let's just say frustrations, is that it tends to be used in almost an entirely partisan/tribal fashion. And I don't think that's helpful in any way, shape or form. So I'm not sure where I sit on the discourse argument...just that I feel like it needs to be sorted out one way or the other. (Same way I feel about a lot of topics actually)

That said, my own personal belief is that I do think there's a LOT of recklessness in terms of certain parts of Progressive culture in terms of the effect that their culture has on people. I've said that down below, it's THE issue for me. I don't think people actually mean to hurt people....people see this in more of a political sense, maybe changing who they vote for or so what rather than something that deeply influences who people are....but I do think that not everybody gets that super secret decoder ring, as I've always put it. Note: To put this in a non-partisan frame, I'd make, and have always made the same criticism about religion, that I think that it's a problem with kids not having religion framed in a proper way either, to where they take it too seriously/internalize it too much.

I somewhat agree with this, but I think it's important to note that e.g. exposing children to pornographic material is also per se sexual abuse. So it's not only about being a fool who accidentally causes later harms, it's about causing actual harm that may or may not fit the definition of "abuse." Separating children from their parents and subjecting them to experimental medical interventions over parental objections, for example, strikes me as deeply objectionable, and yet that is now the state of the law in California.

Proposing legislation to require parents to go along with whatever gender ideology their child dreams up, or be guilty of a felony, is more that just "useful fool" territory--that seems like "actual harm" territory. And that is the context of the original discussion.

I have never understood the word "groomer" to be a synonym for pedophile, and in fact it is not a synonym for pedophile. It is explicitly a term for people who violate trust in an attempt to harmfully and secretly modify children's sexuality

I have literally never heard it used that way except by you. Rather it has always, and for years, been used to refer to a strategy employed by child abusers: RAINN defines it as "manipulative behaviors that the abuser uses to gain access to a potential victim, coerce them to agree to the abuse, and reduce the risk of being caught," and a search of Google Scholar's case law database for cases which include the terms grooming and pedophile turns up 420 hits. A search for grooming -pedophile "sexual abuse" leads to 2600 hits. Some of those are mishits, but most are not, and at least as far back as 1987, in State v. Hansen, 304 Or. 169 (1987), the court quotes a police officer using the term to describe the process used by pedophiles to lure victims.

This review article notes several definitions used by researchers, including "A course of conduct enacted by a suspected paedophile, which would give a reasonable person cause for concern that any meeting with a child arising from the conduct would be for unlawful purposes[,] "the steps taken by paedophiles to ‘‘entrap’’ their victims", "The process by which a child is befriended by a would-be abuser in an attempt to gain the child’s confidence and trust, enabling them to get the child to acquiesce to abusive activity."

Dictionary.com has the pedophile definition, but not yours. Ditto the urban dictionary Ditto the Cambridge Dictionary

The idea that the people who make "groomer" claims re trans activists or whatever are not familiar with the standard meaning of the term is dubious in the extreme. It is meant to imply that those persons are akin to, if not actual, sex offenders or wannabe sex offenders.

I'll ask the same question, then: Fine, "groomer" isn't really accurate. What word should be used instead?

This is the crux of the problem, and the crux of the strategic equivocations. Over decades of study, we have identified certain behaviors that people intent on harming children tend to use to enable that harm. Encouraging children to look at porn. Engaging them in sexually charged conversations. Pushing them to keep secrets, especially from their parents.

During the ruinous lawsuits against Boy Scouts of America, information from the records was released demonstrating the sort of things that had happened in the organization. One example in my local area was something like "Man becomes scoutmaster in 1984. In 1984, he takes 6 boys camping, and provides them with porn and alcohol," No act of pedophilia was even alleged. Phrased like that, it sounds like something The Onion's version of VP Joe Biden would do, roll up to the Jamboree with a keg and hand out some Playboys, haha what a wacky joke, what kind of insane prude freaks out at 15 year old boys getting access to porn and some beer?

And yet, that sort of thing wasn't tolerated even in the 80's (that scoutmaster was banned in 1985). And this was before the regulations and protections were seriously heightened in the 90's. Currently, any adult who wants to volunteer with BSA is required to take a Youth Protection training course. That course includes video demonstrating grooming behavior, including an adult man encouraging a teenage boy to look at porn, to talk about his sexual feelings and interests, and to hide those things from his parents.

Those are grooming behaviors. That is what grooming is.

And responsible organizations categorically ban those behaviors because it's just not worth trying to separate the adults who take the next step and actually molest a kid from the creepy wacky uncle Joe Biden who is just kind of inappropriate and unfiltered. It doesn't matter if they're not actually a pedo, they're wearing a pedo uniform. But the criticism is even more restrained than that; they're not being called pedophiles, they're being called groomers. Because they're doing groomer shit.

And frankly, the literal pedos are common enough. Stats for public school employees seem roughly comparable to Catholic priests, and far in excess of the Scouts. And that's not even getting into the people who have Typical Minded themselves into believing that some huge portion of the population is secretly sex or gender queer and they need to groom help kids understand that.

Here's a bunch of claims - the percentage of teachers who introduce trans stuff in their classrooms that go on to sexually abuse children is similar to the percentage of teachers who don't mention trans stuff at all and then go on to sexually abuse children. >95% of teachers who introduce children to transgender material do not do so with the intent of sexually abusing them, in any form. >90% of children who transition were not introduced to 'trans' by a teacher or other school official, nor did said teacher or school official play a primary/causal role in the child's transition.

Which do you disagree with? What evidence is there for any of them? And - if they are all accurate - how does 'trans grooming' make sense as a claim leveled against most instances of trans stuff in school?

Again this is entirely orthogonal to 'should children transition', or 'should adults transition'. Gender/sex are a constellation of traits arranged around finding a suitable mate to have children with, so transitioning genders is like painting a rock like an apple and eating it. It's pointless in every case. But grooming is not, at all, involved.

Those are grooming behaviors. That is what grooming is.

No, grooming is not merely a set of behaviors. You are ignoring the intent to molest, which is the key part.

that sort of thing wasn't tolerated even in the 80's . . . And responsible organizations categorically ban those behaviors

Yes, and well they should ban those behaviors, for the reasons you discuss; bright-line rules are adopted in the law for similar reasons, even though, in the words of the linked article, that sometimes leads to inequitable outcomes. But that is not the topic at hand. The topic is what is meant when people use the term "groomer."

PS: Although the BSA is correct to have a bright-line rule re those behaviors, I am not sure that BSA is the most representative example re these general issues, since they banned gay scoutmasters until 2015

No, grooming is not merely a set of behaviors. You are ignoring the intent to molest, which is the key part.

And plenty of teachers and activists have that intent, in rates at least comparable to other organizations that have faced reputational and financial ruin over their association. And as you say, we have bright-line rules to make it easier to detect bad people. Actively generating shrouds of chaff in which bad people can operate is a bad thing. It deserves criticism. "I'm not molesting children, I'm just deliberately cultivating an environment conducive to child molestation" is not the defense you think it is.

Imagine a Scoutmaster or priest actively arguing that they should be allowed to engage kids in sexually charged conversations, make sure they had access to porn, and set an official policy of keeping secrets from parents. Oh, but don't call us groomers, only an increasing-by-obvious-incentive portion of us are literally raping kids! In the real world, Scout leaders are not allowed to talk to kids at all without another adult present, or CCed in any written communications.

Frankly, this seems like a wildly isolated demand for charity.

I am not sure that BSA is the most representative example re these general issues,

Yes, that was definitely erring too far on the side of protecting kids, which rather undermines your point.

So, you are agreeing with me: Those with the requisite intent are groomers, and those without it are not. I have not made any claims about how many people have that intent.

I do not agree, for the exact reason it's fair to call Ghislaine Maxwell a groomer. Same as it would be fair to say it about a wife who lured children to her husband, but deluded herself about what was going on. Intent may be necessary for a criminal charge, but willful idiocy is not a defense against social criticism.

I’m of two minds on this one. On the one hand, the behavior that public school employees are fighting tooth and nail to defend is textbook grooming by behavior if not intent. Abandoning child protection best practices for political reasons in an organizing that overwhelming works with children and youth as much as the public school system has obvious and foreseeable consequences for child protection. Yes, these best practices are a pain in the ass, as any volunteer for the RCC or BSA could tell you. But public school employees are by and large not fighting about the pain in the ass bureaucracy parts, they’re fighting back against the obvious common sense parts.

On the other hand, intent seems like an important part of the definition. It’s pretty clear that at least most of these teachers are not wanting to have sex with kids, or to have them have sex with other adults(I’ll side step the question of ultra progressive sex Ed which takes for granted that adolescents should be having sex with each other). Their actual goals are not good for the child either, but that’s because they hold false beliefs, not because they’re perverts.

I do not agree, for the exact reason it's fair to call Ghislaine Maxwell a groomer.

Groomer -> Pedophile

Groomer -> Ghislaine Maxwell

Groomer -> Guzman (whoever that Virginian legislator was)

Groomer -> Educators showing their charges books like lawn boy

Groomer -> Educators showing their charges media that has trans/nonbinary/gay characters not doing sexually explicit things

Groomer -> PM me classic memes

Groomer -> pro-trans people (always unclear how wide a net this is casting, sometimes allowing for plausible deniability)

All of these claims have been made in this thread, by numerous different people. At one end, groomers are pedophiles who want to fuck your children (serious and immediate threat!). At the other end, for someone doing something categorically different, you're casting a wide enough net that tens of millions of Americans are now Maxwell-Groomer-Pedophiles (yeschad.jpeg the trolls will say).

I stopped using the words racist, sexist and misogynist for the same reasons that the definitions have gotten so amorphous that some people would call tens of millions of Americans racist (yeschad.jpeg, their response is). Y'all are just playing the same game as the normie Blue tribers you love to hate, to a remarkable degree.

More comments

And where did I say that trans activists, or anyone else, should be immune to social criticism? What they should be immune from is being given a pejorative label that does not apply to them.

More comments

No, grooming is not merely a set of behaviors.

This is a naked assertion. I don't believe it. I mean, maybe if we were in a court of law, and someone was being prosecuted for "intent to rape a child", if that's even a charge, splitting these sorts of hairs would be a worthy defense.

I'm unconcerned with whether these teachers and activist want to fuck kids. The behavior that ticks every checkbox of grooming except, maybe, intent is a harm in and off itself.

But I also view convincing kids to mutilate and sterilize themselves as abuse, and these activist absolutely have that intent.

And furthermore, you seem awfully determined that only people who rape children can be called proper "groomers". What about people who just want to isolate and murder children? What about people who want to torture children? Groomers want to harm children, and all this gender activism with the intent to convince them to mutilate and sterlize themselves is harm. Groomer fits, even with your unnecessary insistence that they must have "intent".

But I also view convincing kids to mutilate and sterilize themselves as abuse, and these activist absolutely have that intent.

Aight, hold up, calling you on this one.

No, the activists do not have the intent of convincing kids to mutilate and sterilize themselves.

Be charitable.

Assume the people you're talking to or about have thought through the issues you're discussing, and try to represent their views in a way they would recognize. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly. Beating down strawmen is fun, but it's not productive for you, and it's certainly not productive for anyone attempting to engage you in conversation; it just results in repeated back-and-forths where your debate partner has to say "no, that's not what I think".

If you'd said something like:

But I also view convincing kids to mutilate and sterilize themselves as abuse, and I think gender transition surgery counts as that, and the activists are trying to convince kids to undergo gender transition surgery.

then I'd be fine with it. But right now you're drawing a direct line from your opinion of the outcome to what you believe is the activists' intention, and that direct line implies cartoon-supervillain evil.

And is probably wrong.

So either bring evidence or knock it off with that kind of rhetoric.

Does the commercial for puberty blockers, all cartoonish and targeted at children, which organically popped up for my wife and I while watching Youtube count? I couldn't fucking believe my eyes when I saw it. There it was, piped directly into our fucking home.

I mean seriously, how can you deny this?

No, the activists do not have the intent of convincing kids to mutilate and sterilize themselves.

That is the terminal reality of living as trans. Being permanently medicalized, mutilated and sterilized. If you are attempting to get the maximal number of children "trans health care" as you possibly can, as early as you can possibly get away with, that is what you are doing to them. Or are we playing silly intent games here to? Oh, the activist don't mean to convince children to mutilate and sterilize themselves. It's just the only path to some other terminal goal they have.

You - and all other social conservatives - want to keep children away from sex education so they get pregnant young, maybe not consensually, and then deny them abortions to force them to have children.< / blockquote >

Obviously that's not true! At all! Some conservatives do dislike the current form of sex eduction, and some conservatives don't want minors to have abortions. A few even claim they don't want raped minors to have abortions. but they don't want ... all of that, above. Most of them would prefer the minor doesn't get pregnant young, in particular! You can do this for any controversial position. Democrats are RACIST and have JEWISH QUOTAS IN COLLEGES just like HITLER!

Similarly, trans activists would not say "i want to mutilate and sterilize children. and i'm jerking off as I type this. Hail Marx."

That is the terminal reality of living as trans. Being permanently medicalized, mutilated and sterilized

The point of charitability rules here is that people don't generally discuss 'children being sterilized and mutilated', or 'hitler jew segregation racism', in a particularly useful way. While I'd rather have a totally-freeze-peach style moderation where you can say whatever you want and get moderated if it's not useful, there's clearly a correlation between the two. What productive response do you expect your interlocutors to have to "you are literally mutilating children!" How does that work!

Ideally, the interlocutor would carefully investigate the meaning of that, referring to many irl examples, and figure out precisely what is happening to children, how it matters, how it relates to the traditional nature of sex and modernity or whatever. But, again, that doesn't usually happen when you call someone a "child mutilator".

The thing is, sometimes things as bad as "child mutilation" do happen. And trans may be even, in a broad sense, as bad as "child mutilation". So saying mean-sounding things can be useful, when they are happening. But saying 'child mutilation' doesn't help at all, it just says it's something bad ... happening ... to children. But the disagreement is if it's bad, if wearing girl underwear and getting euphoria <...>s are bad, if HRT and SRS are bad, etc. Both sides are aware that is happening to children. And it distracts from the fact that all of that is happening whether or not teachers push it, because people are coming across it on the internet and deciding to do it themselves. (even censoring the internet isn't a good option!)

No, that does not count, unless you can actually show that the people doing this are trying to mutilate kids. I'm willing to bet what they actually are trying to do is some combination of "provide a service for trans people", "raise trans awareness", and "make money".

You don't get to claim that people have evil motivations just because you think the outcome of their actions will be banned.

Or are we playing silly intent games here to? Oh, the activist don't mean to convince children to mutilate and sterilize themselves. It's just the only path to some other terminal goal they have.

This has been the rule of The Motte since the rules were written. It's literally the point of the place.

Can you find and post it for him to watch? On this issue I'm still torn between "there's legitimate ignorance caused by people's controlled media diet" and "we are being deliberately gaslit by child-mutilating demons," so bringing evidence and seeing how people respond to it is important.

This is a naked assertion

Please see the many links in my other post, all of which use definitions which include the intent to have sex

I'm unconcerned with whether these teachers and activist want to fuck kids. The behavior that ticks every checkbox of grooming except, maybe, intent is a harm in and off itself.

That might well be true. But it is not relevant to the issue of whether those people are engaged in "grooming."

And furthermore, you seem awfully determined that only people who rape children can be called proper "groomers". What about people who just want to isolate and murder children? What about people who want to torture children?

So, because all groomers harm children, all who harm children are groomers? You are arguing that, because all Xs are Ys, all Ys are Xs. That is a logical fallacy. The people you describe are evil. But they obviously are not within the meaning of the term "groomers," since that term refers to those who intend to engage in sexual activity. And, for all I know, gender activists are evil, too. But they are nevertheless not groomers, because they lack the requisite intent.

So, because all groomers harm children, all who harm children are groomers? You are arguing that, because all Xs are Ys, all Ys are Xs.

That's obtuse.

Think of "grooming" as a long con. It's a program of psychological manipulation that targets vulnerable children and conditions them to a mindset that accepts abuse as a form of care. Obviously, if a stranger walks up to child out of the blue and abuses them, they are not a groomer. A groomer assumes a role of a trust and care in a child's life and convinces them that abuse is good for them. Whether the end product of that abuse is sexual or physical or psychological, the grooming approach is the same. And, IMO, a groomer doesn't even need to acknowledge to themselves that they are harming the child. A lot of abusers trick themselves into thinking that their abuse is utilitarian.

[For a look at a masterful real-life groomer, watch the doc Abducted in Plain Sight on Netflix or the new drama miniseries of the same story, Friend of the Family on Peacock. That guy was a genius in all the worst ways. He groomed an entire family, methodically.]

accepts abuse as a form of care

That's cool but what abuse specifically?

We're in a sixth grade social science class. The teacher is covering a history of the liberation movements of the 60s, and is describing how they bravely fought for gender exploration, which is good and everyone should consider their gender and here's some resources and links and support communities, join the school LGBTQ alliance discord, try out identities like clothing see which ones you like that are better, three years later sally is steve and john is jane. Okay. That isn't a major path to children transitioning, but let's just say it is, for the hypothetical.

So - what was the grooming? Was it the 'here's the discord, here's the links, here's the resources'? Okay. If grooming is 'preparing a child for abuse' - where was the abuse at the hands of the teacher?

A groomer assumes a role of a trust and care in a child's life and convinces them that abuse is good for them.

Is the teacher obtaining sexual gratification from ... the abuse? What abuse?

Whether the end product of that abuse is sexual or physical or psychological, the grooming approach is the same. And, IMO, a groomer doesn't even need to acknowledge to themselves that they are harming the child. A lot of abusers trick themselves into thinking that their abuse is utilitarian.

That would suggest that if you believe religious indoctrination is psychologically harmful to the kids, that pretty much all religious figures are groomers. They build up a relationship, assert authority, define what is good or bad, have specific places where they instruct kids. They of course don't see it as harm but your definition means that is irrelevant, and many ex-Catholics do feel that the level of guilt they were subject to was harmful.

At which point I think the definition is too broad to be useful.

More comments

I know what groomers do. What does that have to do with whether someone whose intent is to murder or torture children, rather have sex with them, is a groomer, as WhiningCall said? Your comment seems to respond neither to his claim, or mine.

And, yes, I know that a groomer does not have to think of themselves as harming the child. See the guys featured here, several of whom are clearly delusional. Again, I am not sure how that is relevant.

I mean, pedophiles are probably the most terrifying groomers. But I've heard it used in reference to cults and scientology.

"The process by which a child is befriended by a would-be abuser in an attempt to gain the child’s confidence and trust, enabling them to get the child to acquiesce to abusive activity."

Yes, that is precisely, 100%, what a Kindergarten lesson about the gender spectrum looks like to me. Especially when kept secret from parents. And especially when the end goal is having them mutilate and sterilize themself after years of imbibing these secret activities.

The techniques I see trans activist use on children are every bit as chilling and manipulative as anything I've read or seen depicted about pedophiles. And falling back on "But the child wants it" doesn't make it sound any better. Adults know how to manipulate children into wanting things. It often requires little more carrot and stick that making them feel special, or withholding attention. Used properly, you can get them to brush their teeth like their are supposed to. Used improperly, you get them to jack you off and feel legitimately awesome for doing so. At least until the harsh reality of adulthood sets in and they realize what was done to them.

Speaking of, we're hitting the first generation of aggressively groomed trans adults, and their regrets look an awful lot like the groomed victims of pedophiles.

The goal is to teach that gay and trans people aren't perverted freaks and you should accept them.

And if their parents don't agree, and do anything but toe the Progressive line about it, we're going to send gunmen to kidnap their kids so they can be parented properly.

That is the argument to which you were originally responding, and if it's "right wing" to think this is an uncharitable characterization... well, no, it's just a fact.

The goal is not to alter the gender identities, sexuality, or anything else about children's identity.

But it's important that the people with the most power to alter that need to not know about how we teach, so they have less chance of countering if they don't like it. Of course, if they counter, see above.

So yeah- whether or not this is grooming is irrelevant because these actions are far more serious. It's cultural genocide, with the same arguments, the same justification, and the same mechanism of action that it was in the '60s against literal tribes (coincidentally, red in color). I'm sure this will only be applied in the most egregious of circumstances and not just in response to other Red Tribe behaviors that offend Blues but can't yet be similarly litigated, though- besides, they already have other laws to use in this way. I'm sure that, say, exercise of 2A rights as written has no bearing on deciding if a couple gets to adopt or not.

The continously applied, wholly uncharitible assumption, that trans people are a collective of AGP freaks trying to fuck minors

Is it unfair? Probably, yes, but the boundary-blindness of ex-men in particular really doesn't help the appraisal given that breaking one boundary implies breaking others; one would assume that Bs and capris would be sufficient to assuage the psychological requirement to feel like a woman, not side-cut skirts and fake tits large enough to require reduction surgery were they real. The fact that this is usually dismissed as "merely bad fashion sense, Stop Oppressing Women(tm)" does not help- I just can't form a mental model where "I need to take it to parody levels" isn't AGP- so, please, indulge me.

As far as fucking minors goes... I've yet to come across any evidence supports they're more predatorially-successful than average, so I'm not really worried about that (if they were, and it was substantial, we'd have a 12/52-style meme for it). Sure, it would be nice to make sure that a particular predator doesn't get away with it merely because they're society's chosen morality pet (in much the same way that flat abortion bans mean 10 year olds are forced to carry to term, which already happened), but this doesn't seem to be happening in outsized proportion for LGB so I'm not convinced it's happening with T either.

and that's the only reason why anybody would ever want to teach about gender identity in school

Do they teach about racial identity in school? If not, why not? It's clearly much more relevant as to how the world treats you, so teachers should obviously treat black students differently just because they are black. Imagine if you're a teacher talking to Jamal's parents and you're very concerned if they'll have a problem with him "acting white", so you ask ham-fisted questions about how they'd feel if they knew he was turning assignments in on time and scoring well on tests since, because he's black, his parents obviously expect Cs.

So I have a similarly hard time with teaching gender identity in school, aside from enforcing that students treat each other with the same lack of one the State does- a "your [protected characteristic] doesn't make you any less or more of a person" is sufficient to ensure classmates don't treat [minority] like freaks, and has been for the last 40 years. And I expect what in that light is "some people like pants, some people like skirts" to be treated the same way; and I want someone who constantly inserts their pet religion into everything to be treated just like someone who inserts their pet sexuality into everything regardless of whether or not it's shared by any student- not employed by the State.

Most of the anatomy stuff is probably OK; puberty comes earlier than ever before these days thanks to better nutrition, and stressful home situations reportedly make it occur even faster (probably an evolutionary response), so lessons before that are probably fine.

But whether or not it's grooming is ultimately secondary- because given this law passes, whatever is happening (or changes afterwards) will become physically dangerous to oneself and one's family to campaign against. They want this enforced at gunpoint, and to the extent that people voting for politicians that introduce these laws do not change their vote in response, I'm having a hard time assuming they're not at least sympathetic to the idea.

The techniques I see trans activist use on children are every bit as chilling and manipulative as anything I've read or seen depicted about pedophiles

That might well be. I am perfectly willing to concede that for the purpose of argument. But the term "grooming" means more than chilling or manipulative behavior; it means behavior done for the ultimate purpose of sexually assaulting the child. The intent is the key part. Hence, if I call you a groomer, that means I am accusing you have wanting to have sex with children. Is it your understanding that that is the intent of people who advocate for the policies in question?

it means behavior done for the ultimate purpose of sexually assaulting the child

Rephrase that to "the ultimate purpose of sexually exploiting the child." What the people using the term "groomer" now are seeing is even worse than your definition: instead of one lone perpertrator running the entire grooming schedule, there's a diffused but coordinated grooming operation with multiple points of contact that is conditioning children for sexual exploitation. Perhaps many of these so-called "groomers" were groomed themselves by snowballing social conditioning to ignore past limits on sexual definition and expression and encourage further erosion of sexual norms, as if those norms had no utility.

But the term "grooming" means more than chilling or manipulative behavior; it means behavior done for the ultimate purpose of sexually assaulting the child.

There's also this usage, which means to subtly prepare someone for something over a long period of time.

The term grooming is also in common usage to describe progressive women in their late 20's who regret sleeping with an older, high-status man.

By anyone other than Evan Rachel Wood?

I had a list with a few others, too, but blew that effortpost load early on a comment and stopped keeping track.

Alexandra Rowland, a fantasy writer also.

Hence, if I call you a groomer, that means I am accusing you have wanting to have sex with children. Is it your understanding that that is the intent of people who advocate for the policies in question?

It doesn't seem like they are against it.

I almost moved there BTW. So it hits a little close to home.

A chapter of the book describes so-called "sex work" as a normal and acceptable job. "It's a job like being a store clerk, an architect, or a freelance writer. We all, unfortunately, have to do work in order to make a living. Some of us hate our jobs and some of us love them -- the same goes for those who do sex work," the chapter claims.

"She started talking about how there's kids who come to the library who do sex work, and this makes them feel validated," the teacher reportedly said in the interview with police. "As a teacher, if you get an individual student coming to you because you're abused, you have to go to the police immediately."

The book was only to be checked out by eighth-graders and not younger students, the member of the school's staff allegedly said.

Prostitution is illegal in the state of Virginia under VA Title 18.2. And many prostitutes are sex trafficking victims who were groomed, sexually abused, pimped, and forced into so-called "sex work" against their wishes.

Loudoun County Deputy Jamie Holben told The Daily Wire the school is located in a neighborhood where law enforcement suspects child trafficking may be occurring.

Listen, I get it, biased source, whatever. But that school district has been caught lying relentlessly about everything. And no "legitimate" news source will touch the stories coming out of there. They just parrot the press releases bold faced lying about material facts, claiming the story is "debunked". Until real reporters do some on the ground investigating, and it becomes undeniable. Then the school comes up with a new lie, and the MSM updates it's "fact check" from debunked to misleading. So this is all we get.

I honestly don't understand why you think that, if I tell someone, "yes, being a prostitute is a legitimate career choice" implies that I want to have sex with that person.

That makes even less sense in this context, since, as even that source quotes the librarian as noting that there are children in the district who engage in sex work, and that the book is meant for them. Now, maybe that is a bad decision, or counterproductive, or whatever, but nevertheless the question of how to help students who are engaging in sex work, after making the report to child services, is not exactly an easy one -- should , and it seems clear that the librarian is motivated by a desire to help those students, rather than a desire to harm them, or to encourage them to become prostitutes, and certainly not a desire to "groom" them for have sex with them or others. The page reproduced in the link indicates that the book is a poor choice: it seems to be intended for an older audience than eighth graders, and hence, while the librarian's intent might be to avoid shaming the students who are engaging in prostitution it is certainly possible that an 8th grader will take away a different message, as they are wont to do.

However, as stupid as the librarian might or might not be, the incident in question is hardly evidence that she is supporting of children having sex with anyone

...

I uh...

You don't see any problems with a school official being supportive of people fucking kids for money? Pushing material that encourages fucking kids for money, like it's any other sort of thing a kid would do for money. Like delivering papers, or setting up a lemonade stand? "But the librarian wasn't the one fucking them!" That's all you have to say? Especially when the librarians form of "help" isn't to, I don't know, report child rape to the police, but instead to try to convince the child being raped that there is nothing morally wrong with them being raped?

Funny way of helping, that. I call that grooming. And if it doesn't occur to the librarian at all, she's just doing as she's told, it's institutional grooming.

In fairness, if this is what is truly happening, it's useless to go after the librarian when the failure has occurred elsewhere.

You don't see any problems with a school official being supportive of people fucking kids for money? Pushing material that encourages fucking kids for money, like it's any other sort of thing a kid would do for money. Like delivering papers, or setting up a lemonade stand?

  1. I actually said the exact opposite. I called the librarian stupid, after all.

  2. Where do you get anything about the official being "supportive of people fucking kids for money"? I referred to "how to help students who are engaging in sex work" -- how to help them, not to assist them in engaging in sex work.

But the librarian wasn't the one fucking them!" That's all you have to say? Especially when the librarians form of "help" isn't to, I don't know, report child rape to the police, but instead to try to convince the child being raped that there is nothing morally wrong with them being raped?

  1. I specifically said that the issue is how to help these students, "after making the report to child services"

  2. Again, this entire thread is about what "pedophile" means, and it should be obvious that a librarian can 1) be stupid; 2) have a book on the shelf that makes matters worse for students, rather than better; 3) be deserving of being fired; yet 4) not be a pedophile nor a supporter of pedophiles.

Hence, if I call you a groomer, that means I am accusing you have wanting to have sex with children.

That is not quite true - many groomers have done so, so that someone else such as a spouse, relative, or authority figure could have sex with them.

"Recruiter" is nine letters.

Pretty sure this is already tabooed in LGBT discourse, "there are no gay recruitment drives" etc. But may be worth a shot anyway.

That works just fine for me. Done and done.

Expanding it explicitly to “trans recruiters” the first time in a post/reply should work pretty darn well, like my verbose replacement for “woke”: “purity spiral progressives.” It’s descriptive without being pejorative.

I’ll probably use it too, except in the cases where instances of clear sexual grooming occur, like taking kids to strip clubs or giving them pornographic books in schools.

I'm gonna push back a bit on the 'porngraphic books' side of things, here (and I guess in response to @naraburns at here). I'm sure that the central examples of this behavior exist -- creepy school teachers or Boy Scout leaders providing copies of Playboy or Lolita or Curiously Named Porn Movie XXX to their charges, or less direct stuff like Channel 5 -- but the actual example brought here is from this link, and it's not like LibsOfTikTok or affiliates are soft-pedaling their opposition.

I don't think these books are appropriate for pre-teens, and I'd be very skeptical for early puberty puberty. And I'll admit that I'm not a parent, and for some pretty obvious reasons not going to become a parent, so my measures may be off, here. But I'm skeptical that they're harmful for 16+s, in the way that a strip club visit or a direct feed to a California studio's 'casting couch' would be -- and given the MPAA ratings for films like Ace Ventura or Logan's Run, I don't think this is some bizarre only-childless-wackos spot.

I don't want to go too strong in defense of these pieces as books: I'm also skeptical of graphic novels as a particularly good medium for helping people deal or understand sexuality, biography-as-storytelling is really prone to this obnoxious vanish-up-its-own-tailpipe that downplays difficult questions like 'what's the point of this story' or 'does this actually inform', and these particular books double-down on these problems and have their own issues.

((Flamer has a delightful blurb about how it will save lives, which is slightly at odds with a often depressing and sometimes simply not-pruriently-gross actual content; this just something simply known, rather than actually demonstrated or even considered as a claim to be evaluated.))

But these books are 'pornographic' in the sense that a lot of Heinleinian or McAffrey-esque fiction; they portray sex for small portions, not always in sanitized or even idealized lights. They're not solely or primarily depictions of sex: they're "obscene" in the colloquial sense of having adult content that you'd not expect on broadcast television, rather than the legal sense of being nothing else. They're about sexual orientation, in that sense critics are definitely right, and I'm sure a sufficiently horny teenager could manage to find them more interesting than a Victoria's Secret or Men's Health catalog... but probably not by much, and without nearly as much content. Flamer's a little over 350 pages; it spends probably an order of magnitude more treating homophobic jokes like a high-level radiation hazards than it does any level of nudity or sex, and most of the stuff that does is more an argument for asexuality than otherwise. Gender Queer's more marginal, on these lines, but it's still much closer to a low-R than anything you'd see in a porn shop, and I don't think the extent it's worse than Titanic is an extent that makes it grooming behavior.

Now, there are frameworks that specifically treat all of that mess as pornographic, and even do so well before stereotypical extreme-fundie ranges, and there are valid reasons for parents to not want to have to explain what, exactly, that friendly ghost was doing in to Dan Akroyd in Ghostbusters (or... a lot of the stuff in Heinlein). And any adult specifically pointing a student to those specific works would get my hackles up. But I think it fits in closer to FCfromSSC's 'betrayal of trust', and the mere presence of the book in a library doesn't really seem like it's part of gdanning's "manipulative behaviors that the abuser uses to gain access to a potential victim, coerce them to agree to the abuse, and reduce the risk of being caught," or even a broader "behaviors done to encourage or de-stigmatize unacceptable sexual behaviors in the target audience"

Nor do I think this is merely arguing over definitions: not being able to separate these two sets of problems leads pretty quickly to absurdity. Not just obvious stuff like ‘grooming’ that covers even abstinence-focused sex ed and VD-warnings and Reefer Madness (even when provided by a parent!) being meaningless, but that it doesn’t seem related to the hard objections.

I'll take "libraries" as my example context.

It's common in the US to have libraries in schools, at least in middle school and high school. There are also public libraries that are often after-school locations for nearby underage students. (Setting aside college/university libraries as not relevant to this point.) On the face of it, a library is a big collection of books--how much does the inclusion or exclusion of any given book matter, within the big sea of books? Some exclusion is inevitable, barring L-Space (sorry, PTerry).

Enter librarians. Sure, you can search the stacks yourself, but if you are in a rush or inexperienced, asking a resident expert is a very useful approach. Libraries are usually networked, so librarians can pull from a much larger pool of books, but most often, you're going to get recommendations for things that are in the stacks right now.

So you've got the availability of a particular controversial book, and the judgment of the librarian as to how much that book is promoted through placement and explicit recommendation. Librarians are probably the closest group to academia that isn't explicitly academia, and as you might expect, are biased to the left to an extreme degree. Their modal sense of appropriateness is generally governed by those ideological beliefs--among other things, that sexually descriptive material is not harmful to children, and may be helpful. As a result, Drag Queen Story Hour is now a thing, despite many parents' concerns about men wearing women's underwear that want to spend more time with their children.

That’s a valid class of concern, and one I’ve voiced whenever ALA Book Ban pieces are taken as fact. And it can be a ‘grooming’-style problem, if the adult is directly promoting specific titles to individual students, if the content is predominately sexual and sexy, or if there is an effort to encourage students to hide the material from parents.

But it’s often not, and the examples brought forth here aren’t that.

That doesn’t make them good, either as books or as librarian decisions. At the very least, they’re an intentional effort to bypass and contradict some subset of parent decisions about appropriate content.

But the differences between these two criticisms are severe. A parent can not betray their own trust when making these sort of appropriate content decisions, where a bad parent could groom their own child; a wrongly-trusted adult can groom a child while acting within accepted content.

I really, really like "purity spiral progressives" as a substitute for "woke." I must be one of the most prominent complainers around here about "woke" as a term, but, gosh, "purity spiral progressives" is just precise. It tells me exactly what you're referring to and why you think it's bad.

It probably helps that I also agree with you that purity spirals are both common and pernicious amongst people with views similar to mine. You say "woke" and I say "Well, okay, do you mean me or not?" You say "purity spiral" and I say "Oh, yes, big problem, yup, I can follow what you're complaining about."

I am less enthused by "trans recruiters." It's better than "groomers" by a long shot, and it shares the trait of telling me what you're concerned about (namely, I assume, causing people to be transgender who otherwise would be perfectly happy as they are). It's awkward in that nobody believes themselves to be "recruiting" transgender people, so you're describing your interpretation of their behaviour in terms that imply that it is their interpretation of their behaviour when it is not. I think it ends up being keyed more closely to your specific political beliefs, as a result. I can't know who is a "trans recruiter" without knowing which behaviours you think will have the effect of creating transgender people out of people who would have been otherwise happy. There are a wide range of views on that subject, so different people are going to use the word to refer to widely different sets of people.

Still, I appreciate your efforts to find more precise terminology.

It’s not necessarily “otherwise happy” kids I’m worried for, it’s kids at that stage where they’re discovering unexpected feelings about bodies and trying to pattern-match it to what the adults around them have been teaching them.

If they’ve been told happy things about switching gender being as easy as changing Tip to Ozma, they might endure the hormones in good faith until they figure out it was just bad pattern-matching and stop, at which point they might be sterile or otherwise physically disordered.

You don't think "purity spiral" is pejorative? I would regard it as having a strongly negative connotation even with things outside the culture war, even with things that I like outside the culture war. If I heard someone called someone a purity spiral Buffalo Bills fan, I'd think of someone that not only dislikes the New England Patriots, but someone that would chastise a fellow fan for admitting that Tom Brady was actually a great quarterback. In turn, the respondent might purity spiral down to, "yeah, but you probably still think he threw at least a few touchdowns without cheating, as where Real Bills Fans know that Bill Belicheat has never fairly accomplished anything".

Aren't purity spirals always bad?

Yes, they are. That’s why I’m referring exclusively to that subset of radical conflict-theory progressives who are using progressivism as a club against both their natural enemies in the red tribe and those who are somewhat or even slightly to the “right” of them: the Tulsi Gabbards and the JK Rowlings.

Liberals and progressives who are willing to explain and discuss their firmly held beliefs about privilege, poverty, race, and gender, and don’t reflexively fling “Nazi”, “racist”, and “fascist” are not “woke.” They’re not riding that endorphin-fueled purity spiral, they’re still trying to convince.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats