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This is a naked assertion. I don't believe it. I mean, maybe if we were in a court of law, and someone was being prosecuted for "intent to rape a child", if that's even a charge, splitting these sorts of hairs would be a worthy defense.
I'm unconcerned with whether these teachers and activist want to fuck kids. The behavior that ticks every checkbox of grooming except, maybe, intent is a harm in and off itself.
But I also view convincing kids to mutilate and sterilize themselves as abuse, and these activist absolutely have that intent.
And furthermore, you seem awfully determined that only people who rape children can be called proper "groomers". What about people who just want to isolate and murder children? What about people who want to torture children? Groomers want to harm children, and all this gender activism with the intent to convince them to mutilate and sterlize themselves is harm. Groomer fits, even with your unnecessary insistence that they must have "intent".
Aight, hold up, calling you on this one.
No, the activists do not have the intent of convincing kids to mutilate and sterilize themselves.
If you'd said something like:
then I'd be fine with it. But right now you're drawing a direct line from your opinion of the outcome to what you believe is the activists' intention, and that direct line implies cartoon-supervillain evil.
And is probably wrong.
So either bring evidence or knock it off with that kind of rhetoric.
Does the commercial for puberty blockers, all cartoonish and targeted at children, which organically popped up for my wife and I while watching Youtube count? I couldn't fucking believe my eyes when I saw it. There it was, piped directly into our fucking home.
I mean seriously, how can you deny this?
That is the terminal reality of living as trans. Being permanently medicalized, mutilated and sterilized. If you are attempting to get the maximal number of children "trans health care" as you possibly can, as early as you can possibly get away with, that is what you are doing to them. Or are we playing silly intent games here to? Oh, the activist don't mean to convince children to mutilate and sterilize themselves. It's just the only path to some other terminal goal they have.
You - and all other social conservatives - want to keep children away from sex education so they get pregnant young, maybe not consensually, and then deny them abortions to force them to have children.< / blockquote >
Obviously that's not true! At all! Some conservatives do dislike the current form of sex eduction, and some conservatives don't want minors to have abortions. A few even claim they don't want raped minors to have abortions. but they don't want ... all of that, above. Most of them would prefer the minor doesn't get pregnant young, in particular! You can do this for any controversial position. Democrats are RACIST and have JEWISH QUOTAS IN COLLEGES just like HITLER!
Similarly, trans activists would not say "i want to mutilate and sterilize children. and i'm jerking off as I type this. Hail Marx."
The point of charitability rules here is that people don't generally discuss 'children being sterilized and mutilated', or 'hitler jew segregation racism', in a particularly useful way. While I'd rather have a totally-freeze-peach style moderation where you can say whatever you want and get moderated if it's not useful, there's clearly a correlation between the two. What productive response do you expect your interlocutors to have to "you are literally mutilating children!" How does that work!
Ideally, the interlocutor would carefully investigate the meaning of that, referring to many irl examples, and figure out precisely what is happening to children, how it matters, how it relates to the traditional nature of sex and modernity or whatever. But, again, that doesn't usually happen when you call someone a "child mutilator".
The thing is, sometimes things as bad as "child mutilation" do happen. And trans may be even, in a broad sense, as bad as "child mutilation". So saying mean-sounding things can be useful, when they are happening. But saying 'child mutilation' doesn't help at all, it just says it's something bad ... happening ... to children. But the disagreement is if it's bad, if wearing girl underwear and getting euphoria <...>s are bad, if HRT and SRS are bad, etc. Both sides are aware that is happening to children. And it distracts from the fact that all of that is happening whether or not teachers push it, because people are coming across it on the internet and deciding to do it themselves. (even censoring the internet isn't a good option!)
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No, that does not count, unless you can actually show that the people doing this are trying to mutilate kids. I'm willing to bet what they actually are trying to do is some combination of "provide a service for trans people", "raise trans awareness", and "make money".
You don't get to claim that people have evil motivations just because you think the outcome of their actions will be banned.
This has been the rule of The Motte since the rules were written. It's literally the point of the place.
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Can you find and post it for him to watch? On this issue I'm still torn between "there's legitimate ignorance caused by people's controlled media diet" and "we are being deliberately gaslit by child-mutilating demons," so bringing evidence and seeing how people respond to it is important.
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Please see the many links in my other post, all of which use definitions which include the intent to have sex
That might well be true. But it is not relevant to the issue of whether those people are engaged in "grooming."
So, because all groomers harm children, all who harm children are groomers? You are arguing that, because all Xs are Ys, all Ys are Xs. That is a logical fallacy. The people you describe are evil. But they obviously are not within the meaning of the term "groomers," since that term refers to those who intend to engage in sexual activity. And, for all I know, gender activists are evil, too. But they are nevertheless not groomers, because they lack the requisite intent.
That's obtuse.
Think of "grooming" as a long con. It's a program of psychological manipulation that targets vulnerable children and conditions them to a mindset that accepts abuse as a form of care. Obviously, if a stranger walks up to child out of the blue and abuses them, they are not a groomer. A groomer assumes a role of a trust and care in a child's life and convinces them that abuse is good for them. Whether the end product of that abuse is sexual or physical or psychological, the grooming approach is the same. And, IMO, a groomer doesn't even need to acknowledge to themselves that they are harming the child. A lot of abusers trick themselves into thinking that their abuse is utilitarian.
[For a look at a masterful real-life groomer, watch the doc Abducted in Plain Sight on Netflix or the new drama miniseries of the same story, Friend of the Family on Peacock. That guy was a genius in all the worst ways. He groomed an entire family, methodically.]
That's cool but what abuse specifically?
We're in a sixth grade social science class. The teacher is covering a history of the liberation movements of the 60s, and is describing how they bravely fought for gender exploration, which is good and everyone should consider their gender and here's some resources and links and support communities, join the school LGBTQ alliance discord, try out identities like clothing see which ones you like that are better, three years later sally is steve and john is jane. Okay. That isn't a major path to children transitioning, but let's just say it is, for the hypothetical.
So - what was the grooming? Was it the 'here's the discord, here's the links, here's the resources'? Okay. If grooming is 'preparing a child for abuse' - where was the abuse at the hands of the teacher?
Is the teacher obtaining sexual gratification from ... the abuse? What abuse?
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That would suggest that if you believe religious indoctrination is psychologically harmful to the kids, that pretty much all religious figures are groomers. They build up a relationship, assert authority, define what is good or bad, have specific places where they instruct kids. They of course don't see it as harm but your definition means that is irrelevant, and many ex-Catholics do feel that the level of guilt they were subject to was harmful.
At which point I think the definition is too broad to be useful.
I mean, yes? A key difference is parental involvement, and those indoctrinations being time-tested for not being wildly destructive for most people. But I would be similarly dismayed if there were some small but visible on social media movement of conservative youth pastors to infiltrate the school system and use their position to convince teen girls to immediately marry an older man and birth a quiverful of babies. This happened an ocean away, and it was still considered worthy of the news bringing it to my attention a few months ago; I am comfortable suggesting that girl was groomed.
But if they groomed the parents first into their beliefs....
See this is the issue with expanding the definitions that much. It becomes way too broad. It also favors first movers as to who can groom 1 generation into some kind of belief.
And we do see people here criticizing parents who push their kids into trans behaviors even. So that again would also transfer that complaint to religious parents. If everyone is a groomer then no-one is basically.
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I know what groomers do. What does that have to do with whether someone whose intent is to murder or torture children, rather have sex with them, is a groomer, as WhiningCall said? Your comment seems to respond neither to his claim, or mine.
And, yes, I know that a groomer does not have to think of themselves as harming the child. See the guys featured here, several of whom are clearly delusional. Again, I am not sure how that is relevant.
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