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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 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
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
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