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Either you misunderstood me pretty bad, or I'm misunderstanding you -- to be clear, do you actually believe that a significant number of the teachers etc who go around 'affirming' transness are doing it for purposes of future sexual gratification? If so you are one of the rare exceptions, but I think it's a pretty uncommon belief even among those who are calling people groomers.
I (obviously) agree that it is, de facto, functionally, just grasping around for weapons, but I do think 80%+ of people who say 'groomer' genuinely believe that drag queens and teachers something children something sex. The belief is incoherent enough that rendering it into direct causal statements that aren't obviously false is basically impossible. But, if you're just a normal 100iq person who follows libsoftiktok or watches right-wing media ... what incentive do you have to explicitly lie or propagandize, mostly to your fellow normal right-wing media consumers, about grooming? They're just making what they see as actual factual they're genuinely upset about.
Compare to the satanic panic from OP, or the 'covid is killing our babies' people, etc
Fuck it, I'll draw the line that you don't seem to be willing to because frankly I'm with the normies on this one
This is not "teachers something children something sex". This is why are you taking elementary school kids to drag shows and talking to them about how to give a good blow-job if you aren't trying to sexualize them? Why are you urging them not to tell their parents if you didn't know that you might be doing something their parents would object to?
The abject failure to even acknowledge these very simple and obvious questions is how you can tell the "stop saying groomer" crowd are either idiots or "in the tank" with the LGBTQ+ types.
Let us speak plainly "Gender affirming care" (IE is things like puberty blockers, top and bottom surgery, etc...) is a euphemism for mutilating kids. Mutilating kids is bad. Those who do it, who enable it, or who simply run interference for those that do are bad people.
Yeah, this is my point. Teachers are not taking elementary school kids to drag shows, probably 1 in 300 progressive parents are. I'm not sure who specifically is talking to elementary school students about how to give a good blowjob - but I'd posit the rate of teachers doing that in a slightly-officially-sanctioned manner to random internet strangers doing that surreptitiously is at least one to ten thousand. But nothing like that is happening in even the 98th percentile of weirdness american public school, nor for the 98th percentile of weirdness trans child's experience in school. A combination of carelessness and intentional propaganda on right-wing media is smashing together dozens of different, rare incidents, folding the correct disgust at trans and queer perversion in with an incorrect claim of intentional predation by teachers to make it fit into the values of the average conservative parent. "Mutilating kids", "child drag shows", "elementary school blowjobs" do not co-occur in 99% of these situations, and the fact that those who say groomer claim they do, when they do not, is why the groomer accusation is stupid and distracting. And when you believe that, you can't figure out why kids are transitioning, and you try to stop it by homeschooling your kids or banning gay teachers, which does not work (a ton of trans people were homeschooled or had un-accepting authority figures).
They are though that's the thing, Prohibiting it is why DeSantis has been described by CNN the Washington Post and David French as "a Fascist" trampling upon American freedoms. Then there was that hilarious self-goal where having insisted that they weren't showing explicit material to minors, parents posting pics of the hand-outs got slapped down for posting explicit content.
The problem with the "Groomer" claim is not that it is stupid and distracting, it's that it has struck a corde with the normies.
I mean, if you have evidence of widespread "teachers taking classrooms of children to drag shows", "elementary school students being taught how to give good blowjobs", or even general efforts to make children queer or trans in schools that aren't that extreme but are still stronger than I say happen above, I'd just be wrong! And, if such exists, I'd want to see it. But "desantis is a fascist, says david french" is not that.
I don't feel like I should have to present evidence that it "was widespread", as the outsized reaction to it's prohibition has demonstrated that it was at least in the possibility space. Likewise, a problem doesn't need to be widespread to be worth trying to minimize or solve.
I also notice that you continue to dance around the questions pointed out above.
or
Evidence is generally useful in demonstrating the truth of claims!
What truth?
What Claims?
I would like to think that "don't show sexually explicit material to grade-schoolers" and especially "don't do it without talking to the parents first" would be a fairly uncontroversial stance but apparently that is not the timeline we live in.
This is not a "when did you stop beating your wife?" type scenario, this is one side saying "it is now illegal to beat your wife" and the other side replying with "how dare you impinge on my rights".
I also notice that you continue to dance around the questions pointed out above.
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Sure, I believe that too -- just that this is not really what "groomer" normally means.
One can try to pull off the leftist academic(/Red Queen) trick of redefining words to mean what you want them to mean, but I don't think the right has the institutional credibility to make it stick in this case.
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Regardless of whether "grooming" is literal grooming, it has enough aspects in common with grooming that the comparison becomes obvious; it's exposing children to sexual things and it's deliberately excluding the parents from being told. If you're going to do that, people are going to call it grooming regardless of any technicalities about whether it's being done for the personal pleasure of the groomer rather than in the name of ideology.
I'm not sure what, specifically, you're referring to here. I don't think keeping sex ed topics secret from parents is common. Do you mean the "a child can use pronouns or dress as the other gender and the school will assist with it without telling the parents"? That just doesn't feel like grooming.
This would be grooming: A teacher picks out specific students who have few friends / are shy / seem unusually influenceable, befriends them specifically, maybe shows them favoritism. They try to build (initially non-sexual) emotional intimacy. They'd spend some time in private doing shared, fun activities with the kid. They'd then move those fun activities to things like - dressing or acting feminine, doing weird (not sexual yet) things the teacher orders. If/when mild resistance occurs, pull the general friendliness temporarily. Then over time move more and more to more explicitly trans or sexual acts.
And - that's something that does happen, constantly! Sometimes with the explicit trans angle, although it's much more common w/o the trans angle. But the many-to-one nature of instruction, the generally regimented nature of school (there's usually somewhere you're supposed to be, doing the group activity), and the general cultural suspicion of authority figures being pedos makes it hard for a teacher to do that. But for a random old guy on the internet dming kids, all that reverses - 1 on 1 interaction is trivial, kids spend lots of time clicking away on their phones, many of them are lonely / don't have many internet friends, and you can start off making a connection just by sending memes or playing video games.
That's grooming! It describes a complicated and purposeful set of actions on the part of a specific individual towards specific, harmful ends. Alleged grooming in school is diffuse, done by different parties for small amounts of time, and is mostly just 'normal progressive stuff'. What part of "sex ed including gay/trans info", "kids can, if they choose to, come out in school if they want", "teachers putting pride flags up in their classrooms" is explained better by "grooming" than just "most people are progressives on gay/trans issues"?
Whether or not it's common is irrelevant. Murder and rape are uncommon.
No. Grooming has a much broader definition. The sudden restriction stems from it striking a chord.
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I actually believe that a significant number of teachers are sexually/satanically activating prepubescent children for the purpose of future sexual gratification. That does not necessitate the groomer is the ‘beneficiary’
People call Ghislaine Maxwell a groomer don’t they?
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Like I say, I think maybe one in a hundred people using the term right now agree with you -- that doesn't even mean you're wrong necessarily, just that lots of people will say stuff they don't quite mean if they think it will hurt their enemies.
I'm fine with it as an expression of hatred/frustration, but I don't think it's a way of winning.
It's just a personal preference, but I deeply hope you're wrong. Both about 'lots of people,' and the consequences.
Why the fixation on calling people groomers? If there are better ways of winning, why not use them?
Suggestions?
Well it's a hard problem, obviously -- I've been trying some variant of "think of the children" and "turning the gay kids trans" with a certain amount of success when talking to moderate normies. Obviously this won't work with the true believers, but their rhetoric has generated enough epicycles that there's quite a few you can turn around to bite them.
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