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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.
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.
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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