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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44948 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Boise Pride cancels "Drag Kids" event after a number of sponsors withdrew, with a predictable dose of corporate doublespeak.

I have a lot of thoughts about this, but what is actually bothering me most right now is the coverage. Particularly this gem:

Several opponents of the festival on social media repeatedly referred to supporters as “groomers” – a nod to the unfounded QAnon conspiracy theory that Democrats and the elite run an underground pedophilic, satanic, sex cult.

As far as I can tell, this is a publicly-funded news organization actively spreading outright disinformation--FUD, really--about the term "groomer." It reminds me of when "cultural Marxism" became an "anti-Semitic conspiracy theory" practically overnight (no big deal, the term "critical theory" recaptured the energy). It reminds me of the sudden fluidity of online dictionary definitions every time a Democrat politician tells an obvious lie. It reminds me of Clarence Thomas being referred to by Harry Reid as a white man.

"Groomer" is effective rhetoric, so I can understand why certain groups want it killed. But like... how is "Drag Kids" even remotely plausibly not grooming? Some of the talking points I see floating on Twitter are, like, "What about child beauty pageants?" But this moves me not a single iota--I hate child beauty pageants for exactly the same reason. It's weird! It's creepy! Or to put it in less emotionally-charged terms: it's not something kids do, when they grow up in loving, healthy, stable environments. At best it's a symptom of deeper troubles; at worst, it's a direct cause of some of those troubles. I mean, yes, emotional and physical and sexual abuse, but also just long term psychological problems. Have you seen the stats on child movie stars? Olympic athletes? I don't think it's necessarily fair to insist that we strip away the culture war angles entirely, but if I'm steelmanning "Drag Kids" the best I can come up with is "this is a new manifestation of an old and widespread form of child abuse, namely, using children for adult entertainment, often by putting inappropriate pressure on them to participate." Are we really going to say Hollywood isn't rife with child abuse? (Hmm, they're also mostly Democrats...) And when someone says "Drag Kids is sexualizing children" only to be met with "no, you're making it sexual, you right-wing pervert, we're just having silly fun"--it's maddening. Like, really? I'm supposed to believe that you're putting your kid in a leather thong for silly fun? Be serious. If that's not grooming, nothing is.

Am I ranting? This feels pretty ranty. But I do have a serious question. What's the appropriate mistake-theory response to strategic abuses of language? How should I react, if not with ranting, to a transparent attempt to tar people who clearly want to protect children from manifest harms as mere conspiracy theorists? I am a bit old school, I learned to hate the phrase "think of the children" before many of you were born, but surely sometimes we do, in fact, need to protect children. Not incorporating child-sexualizing events into our civic religion seems like a pretty obvious way to do that.

And, I suppose, someone will point out that Boise Pride's "Drag Kids" grooming hour did indeed get canceled! The system works! The subtext there being--what am I complaining about? Well, in brief, I'm still complaining about the news coverage, which has very big "Republicans pounce" energy. I would like to be able to seriously criticize that sort of thing without actively culture warring, but I don't feel like I have a lot of good mistake-theory tools to respond with. Maybe that's the point, I guess--to try to maneuver people into a position where they feel sheepish for acting like an "aggressor" in the face of kids having "silly fun." Which seems, to me, like an especially evil way of being a conflict theorist.

It is pretty rant-y. Speak plainly, and maybe don't try to sneak assertions that Democrats are into child abuse.

I think all of the following are more or less true:

  • "Grooming" is a real, terrible thing that should be prevented

  • Any event which gets children dressing provocatively on stage is going to appeal to actual pedophiles

  • QAnon does not have a monopoly on the term "groomer," and it's irresponsible for the news to imply they do

  • QAnon is correlated with using "groomer" as a general-LGBT slur

So the FUD about "groomer" is part of a battle over one of those strategic abuses of language. Q et al. would like to apply it to things which are definitely not child abuse, like telling students that homosexuality exists. LGBT supporters would like it to remain very selective. Yes, this does involve a false alarm/sensitivity tradeoff. No, I'm not convinced that Q is rationally setting the threshold--not when the rhetoric is so useful.

I don't know where you're getting news of "leather thongs," and I don't really want to go looking. I could imagine a perfectly chaste drag show which is purely about affirming the participants, about announcing pride rather than erasing it. Of course, that's not in line with historical use of drag, and I would expect provocative content from Boise's performance. That's a pretty damn good reason to keep kids out of it. Are supporters secret MAPs trying to get their rocks off? Or are they mistaken, and genuinely have a horrible blindspot for how pedophiles would get value out of their show?

The mistake-theory approach is not to wage war over the term "groomer." It's to convince supporters that their action is wrong and dangerous. You should be able to do this without relying on a single rhetorical flourish.

I could imagine a perfectly chaste drag show which is purely about affirming the participants, about announcing pride rather than erasing it.

Maybe it's a boy scouts thing, but I see a drag show for kids more like a Summer Camp skit gone too far than anything about LGBT rights or whatever. Frankly, I could see having boys and girls dress up as and mock each other as stereotypes being a very normal, traditional activity.

Well, there's the famous kid Desmond Is Amazing, who was out there as a Drag Kid performing in shows aged 10, having first been noticed at the NYC Pride Parade when he was 8.

He (or rather they, the pronoun they now go by) is 15 now, which is at least a bit older. A true veteran of the scene at that age. May God have mercy on all our souls.

This is not harmless playing dress-up or the kind of cross-dressing for things like Hallowe'en which were traditional practices. I have to think that the parents (or at least the mother) was heavily involved in encouraging the kid along this path and bringing him out to these kinds of events and arranging the publicity around it. I would indeed be more inclined to call it pimping, but if grooming is forbidden, I suppose that is even worse.

See also: Rudy Giuliani and Trump.

Culture is weird.

To be clear, a lot of the stuff getting called ‘grooming’ does actually raise worrying grooming red flags- fostering secrets from a child’s parents is like thing #1 I was taught to watch out for when I took mandatory reporter training- even if the term is way overused. I was also unaware that Chris Rufo and libs of TikTok were Qanon.

I agree that there’s a better way to point that out, but culture war dynamics being what they are, it was going to go like ‘so you’re calling LGBT+ educators groomers!’ ‘Yes’ regardless of how well the initial critique was phrased.

No idea who Chris Rufo is, but I actually did think LoTT was explicitly pro-Q. Outgroup homogeneity bias in action, perhaps.

I don’t like being in a position where I’m perceived as defending actual groomers either. That’s the whole point of using the term as a portable motte and bailey, and it’s why LGBT advocates are so against it. If nara is serious about looking for the mistake-theory response, it’s to avoid the name-calling and make outcome-specific criticisms like “this will enable pedophiles.” I’d like to think that would be better received than proclaiming defenders want to abuse children.

Chris Rufo is the activist behind the anti-CRT push in Virginia that arguably got Youngkin elected. He has also been majorly involved in pushing the groomer/radical trans activists in our schools thing.

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