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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 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 mean, pedophiles are probably the most terrifying groomers. But I've heard it used in reference to cults and scientology.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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?
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.
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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.
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Alexandra Rowland, a fantasy writer also.
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It doesn't seem like they are against it.
I almost moved there BTW. So it hits a little close to home.
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
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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.
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I actually said the exact opposite. I called the librarian stupid, after all.
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.
I specifically said that the issue is how to help these students, "after making the report to child services"
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.
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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.
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