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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.
Seems to me like in this post and your replies to people, you did publicly touch it in a space like this.
But I appreciate you doing so. I think the Motte is usually pretty rational, but I've been surprised at how much people subscribe to the "the Left is full of pedophiles" narrative around here, which to me really does seem to be a purity spiral. And I think your identification of the motte and baily strategic equivocation is pretty spot on. I don't really understand how people come to these conclusions. It just seems so much like people on the Right/Center trying desperately to find a weapon to strike their enemies with, and it seems too close to essentially what the Left has been doing for over a decade. Except replace "racist" with "pedophile", because both are equally hateable by society.
I understand the Right's desire to do this. Since all forthright arguments seem doomed to fail against the Left, why don't we fight fire with fire? Except that for people like me, that just makes me dislike the Right/Center more. I hate the use of fire, not the Left.
This is a liberal-traditionalist space; you won't find many progressives around here to defend them against that charge. The last one that put serious effort into doing so has, as far as I know, left the forum- sure, his argument wasn't as solid as it needed to be, but this is something progressives seem to take really personally and I've yet to charitably understand the life outlook that demands that.
Because (from a liberal perspective) they're failing the [Turing] tests that should clearly predict [sexual] incentives on purpose?
If the Left is trying to advance pedophilia, they're clearly doing an absolutely terrible job of it, considering the average age of virginity loss and general age of consent has done nothing but rise (making these ages gender-neutral is not really a liberalization of the law) and the newer generations are more sensitive to this, perhaps as a reaction to constantly having gross sex stuff they hate forced into them every waking hour. Considering the cultural power they have to change these things, this failure is out of character.
They aren't following the gay rights playbook of "fix the perception that X is a complete and utter rejection of social norms so that the average Joe thinks you're sufficiently like him that he no longer sees fit to stop you"; instead preferring only to ride the wave of gunboat diplomacy that is the trans rights movement (which, in fairness, doesn't exactly follow that playbook either).
It should be extremely telling that there's basically zero "groomer literature" that features a relationship the average boy or man would ever be interested in (given all the pairings are gay men, gay boys, or gay men with gay boys; if a woman is ever featured it's lesbians- my evidence is that the spiciest stuff the Right can dig up only includes [young-ish] boys, because if it were [young] girls they'd trumpet that instead). One would assume that if the movement was purposefully pro-sex-with-kids thing their literature would feature a lot more girls or straight women for what should be obvious reasons, but since that's not the case that claim is obviously false.
Now sure, that's still damning with faint praise given that we already know the Left is perfectly fine portraying boys like that (and will not hesitate to call them bigots for complaining about/resisting the same kind of unwanted sexual attention from men that women have been trying to banish for decades now), but I think the trads doth complain too much; their brand of Junior Anti-Sex League has the same end result, they just doesn't like the concessions the progressives leave for man-on-man (or the bullying potential progressives leverage from the narcissism of this small difference, as viewed from a liberal perspective).
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Why?
I'm not exactly saying every leftist is a paedophile, but I'm pretty sure that most paedophiles would vote for the left, given they're currently going all in on expanding the capacity of children to consent to major things and normalising children keeping major secrets from their parents (and adults helping them do so). Maybe it's not explicitly paedo-advocacy, but it's a hell of a windfall for paedos and a step in the direction they would be delighted to go. And nobody major on the left seems too concerned about that, either...
(Replying here, but @anti_dan's sibling reply makes some similar points, so tagging them, too.)
I pretty often see low-effort comments on /r/politics and similar spaces accusing the Republican Party of being the party of pedophiles, providing evidence like their support for child marriage (which, in current law, is actually pretty mixed between red and blue states, more common in blue states, if anything), inspecting children's genitals to maintain sex segregation in sports (that link is Politifact calling BS on that claim), and politicians convicted of child molestation (obviously, that was an older case, actual comments often include more recent cases that haven't actually made their way through the legal system, so it's less clear they're even actually true).
In case I haven't made it clear in my tone, I think claiming the Republicans are pro-pedophile is absurd. As far as I can tell, everyone is anti-pedophile (and, similarly, anti-rape) right up until someone in their in-group (for some scope of in-group) is accused and then they don't want to do anything about it. I doubt there's a meaningful difference there between the left and right on that, and trying to cherry-pick examples is just culture warring.
I think there are obviously the bad guys like NAMBLA and the like. My point is actually that there is no Schelling point when you subscribe to consent sexuality + underage people can make permanent sexual life decisions.
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How is that a windfall for us? As far as I'm concerned, the "left's" behavior you cite is just making my life all that much harder with no upside for me. They are normalizing sexual and sexualized behavior in kids, rubbing my attractions in my face while making interacting with society feel even more like navigating a minefield than it already does all the while dumping the blame for problems it causes at my feet because they supposedly don't have sexual motivations. And I'm supposed to be delighted by this?
I mean they're also the rehabilitation instead of punishment camp, as well as the general defund the police and soft on crime camp.
What about that is an upside for someone who hasn't committed a crime and doesn't intend to?
I suppose the theory at work here is that those who want guardrails to be lowered will vote for the people whose policy objectives optimize for lowered guardrails (political mesa-optimization, perhaps). Your contention is whether or not those who want guardrails to be lowered exist--to which, I have no idea what the answer is. I personally suspect that a pedophile without the self-restraint/closeting you mention doesn't have the sort of political acuity/consciousness to optimally vote in their benefit in this way.
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We have a handful of actual pedophiles on here. Why don’t we ask them?
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You sound like someone on the Left saying that even if the average conservative isn't racist, it's creating a haven for racists to normalize their racism, which is bad because we need to stop any and all racists at all costs. Therefore, we need to throw all support behind the left to stop the proliferation of racism. Just replace racist with pedophile and right with left.
And I think that argument is just sheer projection coming from them, the ones who tell us it's not only alright, but imperative to put racial concerns first and foremost when dealing with people.
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Why? The Left's sexual morality is compatible with pedophiles, even though there are some very prudish elements in other valences such as California having one of the highest age of consents, and left wing universities having sexual kangaroo courts. Fundamentally, this comes down to their emphasis on a broken sexual system that revolves around a concept of "consent". Now, the standard redoubt to this critique of consent would be something like, "children cannot consent." Alas, this is broken by their transgender pivot (and frankly practically broken by the homosexuality pivot before that), because it has a heavy emphasis on the feelings of kids, and allowing them to make choices that are, frankly, much more impactful than your average sexual encounter.
You're entirely putting words and thoughts into their mouths when you say this. You seem obsessed with the notion that pedophilia is wrong specifically because it's very impactful on the child's future, and you always talk about that. That could make sense. But maybe other people think pedophilia is wrong for other reasons. Leftists think pedophilia is wrong because it's an unfair power dynamic, and takes advantage of children, who are weak and need our protection. That reason could make sense too. But it's not okay for you to wave that away and say "sure, they say they're against pedophilia, but what they really mean is something else, because of <roundabout justification regarding how underage sex is impactful just like trans surgeries>".
No value system is bulletproof, and all are subject to people finding edge cases and random gotchas. But when you do that, you're not really listening to them, you're just attacking them because you want to attack them. Your values aren't theirs. That doesn't mean they are okay with pedophilia any more than you are. This all just comes off as you trying to find any random justification to believe that your outgroup is a bunch of monsters. You're specifically focusing on pedophilia being wrong because it has impacts on the child's future because it allows you to attack the left for not seeing it quite that way.
No. My point is that their consent system is broken with regards to this question (and others), and that they will probably be easy to exploit along those line as the progressive consent system has proven easily exploited in other areas like homosexuality (it wasn't happening until it was), Title IX kangaroo courts, transing the kids, etc.
Any my claim is not that my sexual morality has no tough cases and no flaws, simply that from what I can tell, the consent system can't deal with any of the hard cases at all, and in fact generates a whole slew of other issues that the older religious and nonreligious systems didn't have. I prefer an objective conduct standard.
I fail to see how their system deals with pedophilia any worse than a traditional system. You say elsewhere that "there is no Schelling point", but there is a clear Schelling point to Leftists, which is where basically everyone on the Left found it, which is that you shouldn't have sex with young children, because young children can't consent, because there are power dynamics in play and children will be taken advantage of, which is wrong. Just like @token_progressive says, people on the Left will say the converse thing, that people on the Right are more likely to engage in pedophilia, and they'll point to all kinds of things like Catholic sex scandals and the like.
Consider as well, something that Jonathan Haidt writes about in The Righteous Mind, that people's moral judgements are not reasoned out, but are instead driven by intuitions and post-hoc rationalizations. From Haidt:
You'll likely find that most people are against pedophilia (along with necrophilia, incest, and anything else that people have strong moral disgust reactions to) and will be against it for many different reasons. Their intuitions and disgust of pedophilia are there first, and then they come up with the reasons afterward as for why pedophilia is actually bad.
All of that should apply to transgender activists being in classrooms and MDs and etc.
Yes, which they intentionally miscategorize, or do so because they were misinformed by other people on the left who intentionally miscagtegorized it as something other than homosexual pederasty and grooming. Which they further warped because guess what is an even bigger pedophilia and pederasty organization that the media mostly ignores to this day? Public schools!
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if sexual morality should not be about consent, then what do you think it should be about?
Consent is a sort of ideal system that works in all the easy cases and just about none of the hard ones. I suppose it is a good, fictional, moral system. But practically systems need to deal with the hard cases. A closed door rule works better almost all the time. As does a chaperon rule. Or a ban on premarital sex that is enforced against adults but not minors.
Consent, has the weakness in that it breaks down wherever it is pushed on. It gives you polygamy and pedophilia, and takes away sexual adventurism more or less randomly (from the point of the accused, and often the accuser).
Are these rules meant for reducing sexual coercion? I am not sure what flaw of the consent based morality you think these rules can fix.
but then you say that it
which your proposals all do even more.
yes, it is hard to prove that consent occurred but I don't think this justifies further restrictions on sexual freedom. If a woman wants to be safe, they can take precautions when around men. And if your problem is that it is too easy to falsely accuse people of sexual coercion then the solution is to raise the bar for evidence required to the 'innocent until proven guilty' level.
No. My proposals restrict sexual freedom very non-randomly.
That is, indeed, one of my problems. The solution of raising the bar has proven unpalatable to the people who are most on board with the consent standard (evidenced by college campuses, #believeallwomen, etc), and isn't even really the legal standard. Where it is well applied in the law, the consent portion makes up a trivial part of the legal trial.
Do you want society to place additional restrictions on sexual freedom mostly so that less people fall victim to sexual coercion, or are there other causes for which you think that certain restrictions are warranted?
Not really. I think that idea has motte-bailey'd itself so hard that there is no there there. Sexual cohersion that does not fall into old common law crimes is a small problem. Its not something a sexual morality or legal system should worry itself much with.
Indeed. For example, sexual confusion is the much bigger problem in society. There is a real lack of courtship norms, a real lack of understanding what a relationship is and what its boundaries are (even for many people's marriages), and there is the problem of the confusing hookup (all examples of a wide problem).
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They're not, but, that child drag queen performing for adult gay men was too much. That's obviously not common, but what little exists is abhorrent.
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I’m keeping my commentary very much at the object level of the article and of the efficacy/coherence of the “groomer” discourse, but there’s a much larger discussion about the range of possible right-wing views about the “age of consent” policy sphere that I’m just not willing to stake any public position on at this time.
Any specific age of consent policy is going to entail some degree of legal absurdity, but you have to draw a line somewhere or else you’ll get defendants arguing in front of a jury that that 8-year-old girl was totally into it.
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