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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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Haven't seen a thread yet on the gay bar shooting last weekend so I figured I would start it.

Sticking to facts in this post, opinion will go in reply.

  • The shooter killed 5 and injured 25

  • The shooter is a 22 year old, Anderson Lee Aldrich

  • The shooter previously was charged after he threatened his mother with homemade explosives and kidnapped her, but the charges were dropped

  • The shooter is the grandson of a prominent local Republican

  • The shooter was stopped by a drag queen combat veteran, who used his high heels to stomp him

In the context of the present culture war, and in particular as regards young people who don't conform to gender norms, I see an expansion of the term, in particular eliminating the context of a close relationship and intent to form a sexual relationship with a particular minor. Then, grooming just becomes introducing sexually related content or concepts to minors, especially when those relate to non-conventional concepts.

As part of the reputationally and financially ruinous lawsuits against the Boy Scouts, many examples of flagged behavior from their private archives were made public. One example in my area was a scout leader in the mid-80s who was banned from the organization after giving a half dozen teenaged boys access to beer and porn on a camping trip. There is no indication that he singled one out to try to rape. If we want to be charitable, it sounds like something The Onion's VP Joe Biden would do, "Hey boys, here's some Bud and a Playboy, then I'll show you how to do donuts in the 'Vette!" That guy was still banned from the organization, decades before anyone got serious about youth protection, because that behavior is such an obvious red flag that you don't need to wait around for a kid to get raped.

Actively trying to prevent and shut down that sort of behavior is so thoroughly not enough that the organization responsible was dealt reputational and financial ruin by the courts. So, by that standard, how should we think of, e.g. librarians who fight tooth and nail to ensure child pornography is kept in elementary schools? "Oh, it's not grooming, it's just being wildly sketchier and more cavalier with children than the organization that just had the shit kicked out of it for insufficient zealousness in protecting kids." It should not be a tall ask to have the "what I wish I'd had growing up" to be restricted to normal standards for age appropriateness.

I am a high school teacher in Canada, and I see this type of thing all the time. We have a token gay teacher at my school who runs the GSA (formerly the gay-straight alliance, but now the gender and sexuality alliance) but the flag is really waved by straight, childless women who crave the trappings of emotional intimacy that come with long, private discussions about sexuality, gender, coming out and whatever else. So they co-op the GSA (which has itself been co-opted by homely “trans” girls, and contains very few gay kids) and get to emotionally masturbate and play confidante every lunch hour with the neediest kids, and feel just like cool moms! They really are using these kids for their own purposes, those purposes just aren’t sexual, and they cheerlead (“affirm”) the girls who come to them relentlessly, so it’s not weird to see the explosion of trans-identifying girls as a partial result of this. It’s maybe a tortured definition of grooming, but it is damaging kids for personal gain, and it’s definitely a bad thing.

You're making a lot of assumptions about the behavior that you're seeing. Why do you assume that women in the GSA are craving emotional intimacy and/or using the GSA explicitly for their solely for their own benefit? Do you not think there could be any other alternative explanations for their interest in the GSA? Have you ever asked them about their involvement? I doubt they told you that they were there to emotionally masturbate with their kids, so why would you assume that?

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