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Last week, right-wing gadfly David Cole wrote a banger exploring the parallels between the childhood transgender craze and the “childhood sexual abuse”/“ritual satanic abuse” panics of the 1970s and 80s. Cole points out the irony of the “say groomer” obsession on the right, and the larger moral panic in right-wing spaces about how the “trans kids” phenomenon is primarily about “sexualizing children”, given that the first wave of moral panic about the molestation of children was driven primarily by leftist women, which is the same demographic now primarily driving the movement that is in turn being accused of molesting children. I think Cole makes a very convincing case that the “groomer” thing is a red herring, a distraction which has blown up into a full-blown purity-spiraling moral panic in the hothouse ecosystem of the Extremely Online right. If you think that the people teaching kids that they’re trans are primarily doing so because they’re interested in molesting kids, why are they so overwhelmingly women?
His observations ring true for me; from the constant sharing of the Auron MacIntyre sign-tapping meme and the Sam Hyde quote, to Pizzagate and the obsession with Epstein, the right wing is proving that it’s every bit as susceptible to purity spirals and moral panics as the left wing. And as Cole points out, it’s especially odd because the “groomer” panic on the right is itself a response to the “trans kids will all kill themselves unless we affirm them” panic on the left. The “groomer” panic also features the same obnoxious and cancerous motte-and-bailey strategic-equivocation tactics that rat-adjacent rightists despise so much when it’s used against them; figures like James Lindsay, Rod Dreher, and even Marjorie Taylor Greene, are all involved in a linguistic shell game, wherein they use a word which they know for a fact is supposed to refer to grooming children for direct sexual abuse, and when pressed they retreat into “well, they’re saying that children have a sexual identity, which is kind of like sexualizing them, which is the same thing that child molesters do.”
There are certain topics that I won’t publicly touch even in a space like this; I’ve thought about one day trying my hand at starting a Substack and joining the right-wing online commentary/content-creation ecosystem, and there are certain subjects where I fear that if I deviate too much from the party line, I will be cast out into the outer depths before I even begin. The whole issue of child sexuality, how it relates to teen sexuality, whether or not queer theorists want to rape kids, etc., seems like the most high-voltage of any of those third rails. Being seen as an apologist for child molestation is a hell of an accusation to face, no matter how specious and lacking in credibility, and it’s nice to see a writer with some level of clout in right-wing commentary stick his neck out there and identify this moral panic for what it is.
I’m even hesitant to offer too much more of my own larger commentary on the issue, but I wanted to put this piece out there for commentary, particularly for those who do take the “groomer” thing more seriously than I do.
I'd read your Substack, if for no other reason than to see whether it would be the right or the left who devours you first. The left for obvious reasons, the right because you've been doing this thing for a while as an ex-lefty Blue Triber where you try to remind your fellow rightists that woke leftists are people too, with recognizably human motives, and you don't quite seem to realize that outside of places like the Motte (and only barely here), that is not a message they're trying to hear.
As for comparing groomers to the Satanic abuse panics of the 80s, it is really saying something that you've made me agree with @The_Nybbler twice in one day. You have observed that some moral panics are irrational, and that all moral panics tend to look superficially similar. That does not mean all moral panics are irrational. (Well, by definition, "panic" is irrational, but not all such panics are based on nothing.)
Now, I do personally think that "groomer" is slung around too casually, including by people who are just trying to cynically weaponize it against their ideological enemies (i.e., GLBT folks). But as I've said before, while I don't think every drag queen who wants to read books to children at a library is a groomer or a pedo, I also don't think "WTF are you up to?" is an unreasonable reaction. There is something deeply disturbing about thinking that drag is some kind of family-friendly show that should be normalized for children, and if intentional grooming isn't behind it, it sure seems to be groomer-adjacent to me.
Ditto all the trans people saying they want to be a "trans mommy" to any random kid who needs one, the very deliberate invitations to chats and Discord servers where they can talk about things they won't share with their parents - like, even if most of those people have good intentions, how is it not obvious that this is creepy and would code as predatory in any other context?
None of this wariness (I will say, instead of "moral panic") requires some Victorian notion of the pure and sexless innocence of children.
Would you say the same about panto? Now of course there are probably individual drag artists who do inject an odd level of quasi-sexualisation into their act, but I don't think that is inherent to drag. Drag definitely can be family-friendly, because otherwise most British parents are apparently unwittingly exposing their children to 'groomer-adjacent' behaviour.
Drag queens typically perform in 18+ establishments, as a rule.
Moreover, pantomime dames don't actually dress like that outside of the theatre for any reason that I'm aware of. Once he's done for the night, Jim takes the wig off and doesn't think about it until the next performance. He certainly doesn't make a separate social media profile for his dame alter-ego, nor list it on his other social medias. It's entirely contained within that one specific context... and nobody had a problem with drag while it was confined to its specific context, either.
Pantomime dames are performing the role of a type of desexualised older woman (often, but not always, the hero or heroine's mother) and wear "ugly" makeup and padding everywhere, not just the chest. The borderline-inappropriately-sexualised character in panto is the hero, who is played by an attractive young woman in skin-tight trousers (leather if there is the slightest excuse).
Drag queens are performing a caricature of female sexuality - in that the character they are playing is supposed to be attractive to hetrosexual men (in some traditions of drag performance the actor in character also is, and in others she isn't).
If someone launched "pantomime dame story hour" in the UK, nobody would complain.
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Shouldn’t there be a Victorian notion of pure sexless innocent children? I’m not talking even teenagers. But…what is so bad with me wanting my future 8 year old (only a few years away) to be innocent?
No? South Park is more of a documentary than anyone ever wants to admit to themselves and I'm still trying to figure out why nobody acknowledges this; third grade was a fine time for "I heard she got in trouble for doing lesbian stuff in the bathroom", making tons of dick jokes, and figuring out exactly how flexible the middle finger is when it comes to expressing oneself.
I have reason to believe my experience is typical, and as such I'm still trying to figure out why nobody else remembers this... or is simply motivated not to remember- that was a plausible enough explanation for 10 year old me (having an upbringing , and I have received no evidence suggesting he wasn't correct. Maybe being sophisticated enough to notice this stuff is connected to being able to remember it in the first place, I dunno.
Whose interest do you think that outlook serves and why?
("Only mine, I don't like the aesthetics of my little bundle of joy saying 'suck my balls, you fucking bitch'" is an acceptable and interesting answer.)
You sound like a dude. I’m a dude. I have zero clue how ten year old girls really talked. It wasn’t clear from my post but I have daughters.
There is even a difference between 8 and 10.
I have aesthetic reasons for wanting my daughters to remain innocent but also practical ones that aren’t as relevant for boys.
The answer is "just [as bad as] the boys". Well, not so much on the dick jokes for what should be obvious reasons.
Third grade, however, is not 10.
While that is the time in my life I developed the notion that "adults are forgetting on purpose", the evidence for that view was piling up prior to that.
Do tell; I'm very curious as to how "knows the words and the specifics" is supposed to translate into "loose virtue/an easy mark".
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I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting something but I do find it weird to bring it up here.
Culture is so saturated with straight sexuality that it seems like- unless you have different standards for queer sexuality and straight sexuality-
You must be spending way more of your time sheltering them from the straight stuff.
This here. Western culture rams straight sexuality down the throat I. Copius amounts and seems to be oblivious of what it's doing. However when to comes to queer sexuality that's far less intense than the staraight stuff suddenly we have a moral panic on our hands.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, if you don't like sexuality permitting everything then the way to do that is stop putting sexuality in everything.
Now I'd personally be quite happy with the proposed arrangement, sounds like a damn good deal to me, I don't care for how sexualised mainstream culture is. But I'd point out that there are actually some other options. Number 1 is to just suppress minority sexualities and continue allowing the promotion of the sexuality of the majority, in fact this is substantially easier than simply suppressing sexuality all together.
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Frankly I do intend to shelter them for both as long as I can. But I also have a different standard especially when it comes to trans stuff. I think trans is contagion (to a large degree; there probably are a very small subset with gender dysmorphia).
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Does "innocent" mean "My child should never be exposed to any hint of sexuality, ever?" A literal Victorian notion would be something like "Pregnant women should be kept out of public sight because it would cause children to ask awkward questions and then they might start wondering where babies come from."
My five year old has seen my wife pregnant with my five year old’s siblings. She understands babies come from mommy. But we haven’t explained to her how babies are made outside of a generic mommies and daddies make babies when they are adults and married. We can talk more about it when you are older.
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I'm far from an expert on the Victorian era, but I never heard of this, and a bit of Googling doesn't seem to turn up anything like that. Where did you get that idea from?
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I'm not sure quite what to label the phenomena but when I think back to being exposed to unimaginably hardcore pornography (goatse, lemonparty, 2girls1cup, that nail in dick thing) at ~8 years old I'm existentially horrified, but also just laugh it off like most of my peers.
It's also just occurred to me as I'm typing this your kids' experience with all that may be a great deal more sanitized than mine.
Wait, goatse qualifies as existential horror?
I guess it's true what they say: you gaze into that abyss, and that abyss gazes back into you.
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pain4 iirc
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