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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.
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?
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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