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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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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.

This is definitely a valid concern. "Groomer" is certainly a potential superweapon, and partisans are well familiar with the Evil Overlord advice to use those at every opportunity, and it will eventually be abused. But I think this one is more at the phase "racist" was in the 70's/80's, where there is plenty of low-hanging fruit to call out where the phrase fits well enough. To your examples above, I think it's fair for 1, 2, and 4. And I honestly don't think it's hard to thread this needle, to apply the beneficial things progressives want, without doing groomy shit. But I think we could do with a phase where professional standards and best practices are enforced, and people figure out how to do what they need to do within those constraints.