Throughout human history, LGBTQ+ people have been existing and minding their business. They’re told they must love and partner with someone of the opposite sex, and they’re like “nah, I’ll take a same sex one”. They’re told they are the gender assigned at birth, and they’re like “nah, I’m a different one”. They’re like “I’m into same and different gender” or “I’m into no one of any gender“. Breaking the confines of the imaginary social construct that is gender. Badass.
And a wedge issue.
A library might host a drag queen reading a story to children. Then that library gets death threats.
JK Rowling was once a beloved author with a massive fandom and goodwill that most would give all of their limbs for. Then she decided to throw all that away because she’d rather be a transphobic piece of shit.
Are schoolchildren subjected to gender reassignment procedures at the school nurse’s office? Of course not, that’s absurd. So absurd that the Orange Thing sure enough spouted that claim on the campaign trail last year.
And we push back on all that. The lies. The hate. The idea that whether someone’s pronouns “match” what’s in their pants is anyone’s business, let alone a reason to exclude or vilify someone.
But what about the children, they say? Surely we can’t have children finding out about this stuff and getting any ideas that they might not be the gender assigned at birth.
After all, doesn’t all this homophobic and transphobic garbage become totally fine and acceptable as long as they pretend the real goal is to protect children, that they focus on children, on protecting them from “sexualization”, from “grooming”?
What is grooming?
Grooming refers to the practice of gaining a child’s trust and undermining their trust in others for the purpose of abusing them. They are manipulated into trusting someone who seeks to take advantage of them, and they are left with lasting mental health issues, among other things being made to feel it was their own fault and having lost their ability to trust others at all.
So, naturally, reactionary dipshits are weaponizing this concept as a means of curtailing youth and LGBTQ+ rights, by claiming that affirming a trans child’s identity is somehow in itself an act of sexual abuse, of “grooming”, rather than genuine support.
Which, I don’t know, kind of feels a bit manipulative and like a form of grooming in and of itself?
Oh, but it’s out of concern, right? There’s no such thing as a trans child, they say. If a child is trans, it’s only because their parents or other adults have made them to be. Really they’re the ones protecting the child’s rights then, from this “gender ideology” being “forced” upon them.
That’s funny. Even if we pretend for a moment any of that nonsense is true, where the hell are any of these people literally any other time parents or other adults are forcing a child into something?
And that’s obviously not what they believe. In fact, if the parents in these cases were forcing this on their children, I doubt these people would have much problem with it. With a trans adult, yeah, these people are still shitty about it, but at the end of the day, they might have to concede that as an adult it’s their own life and business. But a child coming out as trans, freely, confidently, with support from loved ones? That’s what’s terrifying.
What about the grooming? What about children being manipulated and coerced by a malevolent adult who seeks to take advantage of them to satisfy their own questionable intentions? Or at the very least being primed to be more vulnerable to such a predator?
Well…
Despite every reputable pediatric entity saying it is harmful and to stop doing it, most parents still discipline their young children by smacking their butts, with the intention to hurt and humiliate. They don’t have to do it. They shouldn’t do it. There’s a mountain of better ways to deal with children than that. Yet they still do it. They scream bloody murder when you tell them they shouldn’t do it, that it is their right.
They want to do it and like doing it. You know, out of “love”.
Most parents take and share naked photos of their babies and toddlers. There’s no real reason for doing so. They just for whatever reason want the memento of what their children’s genitals looked like at that age, and the “cuteness” of it is more important than those children’s privacy and dignity.
Children are routinely forced to eat foods they do not like and might even make them sick, because an adult wants them to. Because an adult’s desires for them are more important than children learning to listen to their own stomachs.
Children are denied privacy and forbidden from locking their bedroom doors even if they feel unsafe with someone who is in the house.
Children are forced to hug and kiss relatives even when they do not want to. Because as children they must ignore their own discomfort and judgment because it is more important they are pleasing to adults.
Read that one again. Because they must ignore their own discomfort and judgment because it is more important they are pleasing to adults.
Because adults are entitled to children’s affections on demand.
“But none of these things are sexual!”
So what? (And, well, how sure are you of that?) Something doesn’t have to have sexual basis or intent to be a violation.
“But all of that is normal!”
Yeah, that’s kind of my point.
Mainstream society is all about denying children the right to autonomy, to listen to their own instincts, to say no. That they exist for the use and pleasure of adults. There’s this belief that this is actually what keeps them safe, that they can’t make sound decisions themselves and need their parents to have such absolute power to save them from themselves. Though I don’t see how keeping pictures of them naked on the toilet at age 3 or making them kiss their creepy uncle is supposed to accomplish that.
What all items listed above do accomplish is to assert power for its own sake. As such, many absolutely relish it. The Venn Diagram of the worst offenders in treating their children in this “normal” way and those who shriek that LGBTQ+ culture is “grooming” them is a circle.
And I for one don’t want to hear a goddamn word about drag queens or trans healthcare being “sexualization” or “grooming” from these sick fucks who want to slap kids’ butts so badly!
A culture that does not let children say no, even to parents or teachers, is a culture that grooms children and makes them even more vulnerable to pedophiles or other bad actors. If you really give a shit about children being manipulated and exploited, sexually or otherwise, then do something about all that. If you ignore all that but believe that a book about two male penguins raising a chick is what’s corrupting and endangering kids, just shut the entire fuck up already.
Those who consider themselves allies or defenders of LGBTQ+ youth need to keep this in mind as well, particularly when it comes to the kids who aren’t lucky enough to have supportive parents. If your queer youth advocacy ends where “parents have the right to do as they wish” begins, your advocacy is shit.
It’s not just the fact of being non-cis and/or non-straight that marginalizes and persecutes these kids, but also that of being young. It is this acceptance of denial of autonomy and rights to the young that allows these kids to be such easy targets of homophobia and transphobia (and sexism and racism and ableism for that matter). When you decide ageism is the acceptable bigotry, this leaves the door open for all the bigotries you claim to oppose.
That’s why, if you hear some QAnon-adjacent losers are threatening your local library because a book saying gay people shouldn’t be stabbed is on a shelf where someone under 18 might conceivably notice it, do not argue against it with anything along the lines of “that’s your right to control what your own kids read, but leave the rest of us alone”. No! Their kids shouldn’t have their literature choices controlled like this either! Stop being an “I don’t want to tell anyone how to parent” chickenshit and stick up for them. If you can’t do that, you don’t support LGBTQ+ youth.
And ignore these dipshits when they pretend they care about children’s safety and well-being. They don’t. They see this pretense as a means of legitimizing their bigoted nonsense, and it’s time we as a society stopped falling for it. They have no good intentions. They just want to stamp out anything even remotely supporting non-cishets and are making ample use of the ageism loophole our society has so carelessly left wide ass open.
If anything, all they care about is children’s “innocence“, which does not mean they care about children themselves, as human beings. This just means that a child who is too aware of the world, who is thus no longer “innocent”, has in their eyes fallen from grace.
That such a child is no longer pleasing to them.
No longer useful to them.
No longer under their complete control.
And if drag queen story time or they/them pronouns make children more informed, more open-minded, less vulnerable, and thus less pleasing and useful and to these homophobic and transphobic groomers… Good!