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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.
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
creepywacky 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
groomhelp 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.
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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
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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".
Aight, hold up, calling you on this one.
No, the activists do not have the intent of convincing kids to mutilate and sterilize themselves.
If you'd said something like:
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?
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."
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!)
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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.
This has been the rule of The Motte since the rules were written. It's literally the point of the place.
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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.
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Please see the many links in my other post, all of which use definitions which include the intent to have sex
That might well be true. But it is not relevant to the issue of whether those people are engaged in "grooming."
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.
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.]
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?
Is the teacher obtaining sexual gratification from ... the abuse? What abuse?
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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.
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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.
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