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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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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.

Counter take. When you're taking flak, you're over the target.

Maybe the reason nazi-adjacent homosexuals like Cole and Yiannopoulos as well as various other figures on the alt-right are annoyed with the Boomercons and Barstool-types for latching on to the Epstien and Groomer stuff is that Boomercons and Barstool-types have correctly identified a vulnerability in the prog-left. One in which interests of the alt-right as sexually liberal blue-tribers are more closely aligned with the LGBTQ+ crowd than they are the mainstream right.

As others have noted, there is a distinctly predatory scent that these people seem to give off, and it's interesting that both the woke left and alt-right seem fixed on discrediting anyone who deigns to point it out.

A new low for you, truly. Are you going to offer any evidence or analysis to refute any of Cole’s claims? Hell, do you have any evidence to substantiate your accusation of Cole (a Jew) as “Nazi-adjacent” or “homosexual”? Or will this be yet another comment where you just lazily wave in a certain direction to add another epicycle to your tortured take on Horseshoe Theory?

What claims would those be? That people worrying about the trans stuff today are equivalent to those who were worried about satanists sacrificing babies?

Fine here's my analysis. The thing that sets more recent instances of organized sexual abuse like Rotherdam, Epstiens Island, or trans-activists advocating the permanent disfigurement of children (often against wishes of one or both parents) is that unlike the Satanic panic of the 80s there is ample physical and video evidence that this actually happening. In short, it's not "paranoia" if somone's actually out to get you, and the people telling you to relax and ignore the red-flags are not acting in your interests.

Likewise Cole coming from a Jewish background, doesn't preclude him from being nazi-adjacent, or from being a 60 year-old confirmed bachelor who seems weirdly preoccupied with teenage boys.

As for my allegedly "tortured" take horseshoe on theory, at least I have something that seems to cleave our current political realities at the joints

The thing that sets more recent instances of organized sexual abuse like Rotherdam, Epstiens Island, or trans-activists advocating the permanent disfigurement of children

You’re suggesting that the Rotherham grooming gangs - a cartel of Pakistani Muslims who have no relationship to the academic/medical complex whatsoever - is the same phenomenon as “trans-affirming healthcare”? Please explain the link. How are these two things connected, other than that they both resulted in bad things happening to children?

Again, Hlynka, nobody here is arguing that doing trans stuff to children is good, and certainly nobody here is arguing that it’s not happening. The argument is about whether or not it’s child molestation, and if not, why is it happening? Cole’s argument, which I basically agree with, is that the creepy gay men with a thing for little boys represent a tiny sliver of the people actually doing the day-to-day work of sustaining the trans-ing of kids. The vast majority of these people are women, who are doing what they do because of reasons that have nothing at all to do with being sexually attracted to kids. It is just simply not credible to accuse some mousy 23-year-old female elementary school teacher of wanting to rape little kids. The “groomer” discourse is laser-focused on a small and distracting side issue. That’s the argument. David Cole is not a friend to “the LGBTQ movement”, and he wants to see it defeated by actually good and true arguments.

If the mousey elementary teacher is advocating for porn and sex instructions to be available to children in the school library, talking to kids about how great being gay/trans/etc is compared to being straight/cis, talking to kids about sex and asking them to hide it from their parents, and inviting in the group that seems to consist of creepy gay men wanting to flaunt themselves in front of kids, should they be considered as groomers even if they aren't the ones who actively want to molest the kids?

Can you provide evidence that there is a epidemic of teachers logging onto PornHub and trying to show it it kids?