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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.)
"Recruiter" is nine letters.
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 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.
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