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Comment by kodah | Hacker News Reader

What is with the "grooming" language people are using? I had someone call me that on here last week out of the blue.

Edit: Since someone offered to kill me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32173179 I pretty clearly had nothing to do with that term.

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There's a bit of backstory to how this phrase evolved into a slur. It started out with rumors about trans people online who think transitioning will solve all of the problems for some people. They are often called pinkpillers. This became a pretty common stereotype on 4chan, epitomized as the "discord groomer" who teaches people how to buy dark web hormones. Then the news about gender stuff being taught in schools started. This, alongside increasing awareness of detransitioners (for example the book Irreparable Damage) gave a new narrative of teachers "grooming" students into being trans. At that point the whole thing began to snowball and with resentment toward corporatised LGBT stuff everywhere "groomer", started being thrown around as a slur for any and all LGBT, to imply that they're pedos.

Maybe those things happened. But the kind of people saying groomer now accused LGB of preying on children before they knew about T.

That's because those people only begrudingly tolerated LGB people. Now they have an excuse to voice their intolerances.

James Lindsay claims to be the first who used the word groomer in this way. See his blog on new discourses.com.

There is more context to this. Grooming is an established tactic of pedophiles and studied by scientists. It involves breaking the bond with parents ("it's our little secret"), desensitizing children - which have a natural aversion (yuk) - towards sex acts, and in general confusing them.

Many parents (not only conservatives) see the lgbtq+ materials presented to kids (even below 3rd grade) as accomplishing exactly these goals. Schools sometimes have policies of affirming gender changes and not informing parents (keeping secrets), lesson materials are seen as desensitizing towards sex acts. Children are sometimes told at a very early age they might be in the wrong body. And in school board meetings parents reading from books from the school library are silenced because the contents are 'pornographic'. Part of the outrage is of course fueled and carried too far by conservative Christians but that is not the story here.

Basically, "grooming" means adults doing things targeted at children that are of a sexual nature or put sexual thoughts in their heads (e.g., inviting children to dance on stripper poles). If someone called you that here on HN, it's more likely they were accusing you of being okay with others' behavior like that rather than actually doing it yourself (although still almost certainly inappropriate for them to do so).

“Groomer” and “pedo” are going to lose their weight the way mfs just throw it around.

It's a direct attempt to conflate queer people of all stripes (but especially trans people, since mostly it's clear even to the people who use such disgusting tactics that gay acceptance is too high to try that crap on them, too) with pedophiles. Pedophiles have been known to "groom" victims by desensitizing them to being treated sexually, so people who want to pretend queer people don't exist (or make them not exist) have adopted that language for talking about all sorts of education about queer topics, especially for children.

This is part of a long history of attempts to vilify queerness by association with pedophilia (and bestiality). It's disgusting not just because of how blatant a lie it is, but also because it makes it harder to separate out actual claims of pedophilia while campaigns like this are active—some real pedophiles can hide their activity amidst the noise.

I’m sorry, but queer child education sounds exactly Like grooming

It's not just child education where these efforts are underway. Despite the "everything on 4chan is fake news" meme, there are actually tons of Discord servers where this very activity of grooming takes place--knowingly, admittedly, and happily.

Propaganda, the same way the "phobia" in homophobia is also propaganda.

Wait until you hear about Chemists and their propaganda that molecules can feel fear of water.

I don't think that naive literalism is the best way to understand this. The term was coined by a psychologist in the 60's [1], and it is clearly designed to sound like the name of a psychological disease.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophobia#Etymology

Alt right rhetoric has labeled the lgbt and democratic elite and pedophiles and child groomers

Epstein didn't help that image problem.

It's a right wing epithet, a play on 'ok boomer'. It's proven a rhetorically effective insult for teachers/school officials who seem to be obsessed with discussing sex ed with very young children. Now it's banned on Twitter and other social media platforms.

If it's a play on 'ok boomer' one would expect it to be less offensive. 'Groomer' is categorically a terrible thing to be, often borderline criminal (if not outright) with implications of sexual abuse. Boomer, on the other hand, is more exasperation than dislike (after all, boomers are our parents/grandparents, they're hardly a group we're going to truly condemn in our personal lives).

The right wing have a habit of making their slogans more extreme.

Lol, it was bound to happen when even mainstream media began casually labelling a good third of the country white supremacists, racists, and the (other) dreaded N-word, simply for demanding IDs to vote or for insisting that borders should probably be enforced.

Sure, that's /totally/ all y'all did.

Define "right wing" and I might be able to comment.

Could say conservatives or traditionalists, but those labels only invite further sub-grouping (eg: do you mean economic or social conservatives?). I'll settle for defining "right wing" as anyone who decries "wokeism"; people who claim to want small government but actually just want to impose anti-progressive laws from a big government; people who think Critical Race Theory (a univesity-level legal analysis) is being taught in schools; etc. Effectively, just look at Trump's voter base for the definition of right wing.

Why would you expect it to be less offensive? They're accusing school officials, teachers, etc. of exposing children to sexually explicit material at too young an age to be ready for it. That's a core component of grooming. Whether they're right or not is another matter - but their intent is to cast these people as abusers.

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