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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:
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.
Because at least 95% of people who do "drag kid" shows do not, personally, want to molest the children involved. It may be 'grooming' in the sense that it's grooming to put a kid in violin classes or to 'groom a successor' for a company. It isn't grooming in the sense of manipulating a child into being sexually available. And the latter is a sense, and implication, that the term 'groomer' is primarily used for. Both may, in fact, be bad - just in crucially different ways.
This kind of rhetoric isn't useful, because it just distracts people from what causes kids to become trans, or gay, or whatever. "teachers / drag queens grooming them into being trans/gay/whatever" ... is not a common cause. Maybe /r/egg_irl is.
Same for calling it "child abuse". Child abuse usually means either beating or having sex, or sometimes 'severe psychological neglect'. Having a male kid get in a dress and dance - which can, still, be perverted, degenerate, and disgusting - isn't really child abuse in that sense at all, and calling it so is just distracting people with vaguely relevant but mostly meaningless assertions.
Is taking a child to a strip club abusive? Is encouraging a 9 year old girl to get up on the stage and twerk around the pole while grown men throw dollars at her abusive?
We might quibble over the term "abusive", but does anyone want to argue this is an appropriate activity for a child?
Tier 1: Some children of both genders would like to wear clothes and accessories traditionally associated with the other gender. This has been widespread for a long time, or at least I've ready many stories of parents coming home to their young boys dressed up in their mother's pearls. I dressed up as a woman for halloween in grade 6, one or two people did it most years. I'm pretty sure there's a picture floating around somewhere of me wearing my mother's heels, necklace and TMNT pyjamas, although I was too young to remember it.
Tier 2: We should tolerate such behavior. Rationally, there's nothing wrong harmful about men wearing dresses and makeup or women wearing overalls or suits. Even historically, fashion trends have been ephemeral and men wearing foppish or feminine clothes has come and gone.
Tier 3: We should provide a supportive environment for people who feel this way. People should be validated and feel positive about their chosen identities without being shamed by society.
Tier 4 (going to have to try and model this one): Sexual attraction is the ultimate form of acceptance/'passing.' The way we can best support/validate trans or gay children is to validate their attractiveness to the other sex...? Someone would have to explain this one to me as well.
Thing is, most events I've seen are somewhere between 1-3. It's likely that had the event happened, some children wearing makeup, wigs and dresses would have walked across a stage and been applauded and told they were beautiful, brave members of society with bright futures as the 'twerking with stripper poles and dollar bills' seems to have been the vast minority of such events. Mr. Burns immediately dialed it up to 10 the least charitable take and I respect his intelligence too much to think that he's doing anything other than culture warring, but maybe my expectations of someone living in a red bubble are unfair.
For the record, I get off the train somewhere between 3 and 4. If I had to guess I'd say that the worst excesses of #4 are driven by hyper-liberal moms thrilled that their children are brave culture revolutionaries rather than pedophile groomers, but I confess I'm not very close with people in those circles. The closest thing I've seen is parents pushing feminine toys on their boy-tots, only to be heartbroken that they want to play with monster trucks.
What if they identify as White?
Then you should be shamed and excluded from the Hugo awards.
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