This is perhaps off topic or out of the realm of this forum, but can some one tell me what is an "anti-grooming law?" Perhaps i am being a bit thick headed, but... I think I know what term "grooming" is but then again perhaps that is my difficulty
This is perhaps off topic or out of the realm of this forum, but can some one tell me what is an "anti-grooming law?" Perhaps i am being a bit thick headed, but... I think I know what term "grooming" is but then again perhaps that is my difficulty
There is a small group of people who are using that term to scare people that anyone who supports liberal views the same way they are using the word "Woke" Like anyone who supports equal rights for all people including LBGQ+, drag queens, Trans people that their goal is to groom kids to have sex with adults. One of the biggest group they claim are groomers are teachers who teach kids they should love everyone must be that they are talking about sex.
What's strange is they never mention proven groomers like priests.
Like anyone who supports equal rights for all people including LBGQ+, drag queens, Trans people that their goal is to groom kids to have sex with adults. One of the biggest group they claim are groomers are teachers who teach kids they should love everyone must be that they are talking about sex.
hmmm, I wonder who gave people that idea:
https://twitter.com/timcastnews/status/1672410287251529735
Maybe because it's TRUE?
You should know that the number of children sexually used by priests is miniscule compared to the numbers abused by public school staff.
The DOE estimate is that 10% of kids will be sexually abused by school employees.
You should know that the number of children sexually used by priests is miniscule compared to the numbers abused by public school staff.
That statement is a bit disingenuous. There are far more public school staff than priests, so of course there are going to be more of them caught by law enforcement.
To get a better idea, you would need to know the total number of public school staff in circulation and then find out the percentage of them who have been caught abusing children. Then you would need to do the same for the priesthood. Whoever has the highest percentage is going to be the more deviant.
That statement is a bit disingenuous. There are far more public school staff than priests, so of course there are going to be more of them caught by law enforcement.
To derail a discussion, focus on arguing the most minute irrelevant details.
Hundreds of cases of teachers abusing children every year, but no, don't pay attention to that! Pay attention to that one case of a priest molesting kids few years ago.
Any case of child abuse/molestation is terrible. But to try to defend the biggest offenders clearly shows which side you're on.
How about you produce evidence of wide-spread, recent abuse by the clergy.
I agree that the stat is a matter of numbers. There are a hell of a lot of more public school teachers and students compared to those with whom priests had close contact.
In reality very few teachers, priests, coaches, other clergy, scout leaders or physicians are sexual predators. The ones that are generally abuse large numbers of kids.
There is a small group of people who are using that term to scare people that anyone who supports liberal views the same way they are using the word "Woke" Like anyone who supports equal rights for all people including LBGQ+, drag queens, Trans people that their goal is to groom kids to have sex with adults. One of the biggest group they claim are groomers are teachers who teach kids they should love everyone must be that they are talking about sex.
It's not a small group anymore. People are waking up to the deparvity that's going on around them. There has been an arrest of a teacher almost every day in 2023.
The reason that people are now waking up to it is that the LGBT+ people are now secure enough not to care what is said about them and their agenda. They are supported by every governement agency in the US and every major corporation.
It's now hilariously funny that they claim marginalization and oppression when they are now the most powerful group in the western world.
Yes, they are after kids and yes, they are grooming kids in school into the alphabet soup.
What's strange is they never mention proven groomers like priests.
Yes, of course, the whataboutism attack. When was the most recent instance of a priest accused of molesting children?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/181-teachers-charged-with-sex-crimes-during-first-half-of-2022/ar-AAZPLgz
https://thepointer.com/article/2023-01-07/teacher-abuse-of-students-reaching-historically-harmful-levels-schools-boards-are-failing-to-protect-children-report-finds
https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2022-06-03/feds-call-on-states-to-stop-shielding-teachers-accused-of-sex-misconduct-with-students
The list is endless.
Why would there be less number of priests caught? Could it be that unlike schools the church have the ability to move priests around the world?
As for indoctrination, The right wants to do that to kids with religion. They want to force religion in school in order to get a head start on making it easier on forcing religion on all. They just want to do the same thing they claim the left are doing.
Why would there be less number of priests caught? Could it be that unlike schools the church have the ability to move priests around the world?
Because there are tens of thousands education staff than there are priests.
There are numerous instances of it being "suggested" that teachers leave a district when sexual abuse is discovered. Then they move to another district without the new district being informed.
You're simply accusing the right of wanting to do exactly what the left is currently doing.
Alternatively, perhaps you're just paranoid.
The vast majority of people on the left are emphatically opposed to the notion of conditioning a child to be receptive to sexual advances. There's nothing about actual 'grooming' that is something 'the left is currently doing.' It's just not happening.
If it were happening, you would be seeing horror story after horror story showing how a child endured inappropriate sexual contact, or was just barely saved from it by the valiant heroes. There's a resounding lack of such stories connected to anything but old-fashioned traditional 'grooming' - which has nothing to do with the modern use of the word.
If no child experienced inappropriate sexual contact or was ever at risk of it, it ain't 'grooming', and the word is being misused in hopes of manipulating you.
The vast majority of people on the left are emphatically opposed to the notion of conditioning a child to be receptive to sexual advances. There's nothing about actual 'grooming' that is something 'the left is currently doing.' It's just not happening.
You left out the second part.
It's just not happening, and it's a good thing it is.
This is one of those things where the conversation is easily derailed, and has been here.
'Grooming' has been turned into a nonsense word, like 'Woke'. Woke pretty much means 'People advocating being nice to people who aren't like me.' 'Grooming' means 'Anything that in any way can be twisted to possibly apply to sexuality and that might in some way relate to a minor.'
Arguing about whether more priests, youth ministers, youth counselors, etc or more teachers actually 'groom' kids in the actual and real sense of the word is pointless and off topic, really. It's horrific when churches or school districts cover that up (and they do), but the behavior is clearly illegal, they have an obligation to do something (whether or not they do), and someone has really been 'groomed' in the sense of what the word meant up until two years ago.
Now, people are using the word to denigrate any book that contains any relationship other than two straight cisgender people kissing in the dark with the lights out. They're using it to denigrate Pride events entirely. They're using it to apply to a teacher showing respect to a student by using their chosen pronouns or name. They're using it to apply to drag performers.
Pretty much no one's writing those books so they can have sex with children. Pretty much no one at your average Pride event wants to have sex with your, or anyone else's, children - and the people that do would be looked down on by nearly everyone else there. A teacher respecting a student is probably not trying to sleep with them. Drag performers, by and large, aren't trying to 'groom' kids either.
Yes, there are unquestionably some bad people. Some bad teachers, some bad drag performers, some lousy people hanging out at the Pride festival. There are also bad priests, bad youth ministers, bad religious counselors, and so forth. If picketing a Pride festival with signs saying 'Groomers repent' is appropriate, so is picketing a random church and doing the same thing.
The whole point of this is that 'grooming' - in the classic sense - is a bad thing, a thing people don't like. So, people who don't like something else - something not at all the same - grab the word and start applying it to things they don't like.
It's the same as the insane far-right predilection for calling everyone 'Marxists' or 'Communists'. Those words have meaning (or, at least, they used to - they're at risk of losing that meaning, sadly). Karl Marx wrote a discussion of economics based on the theory of communism, which is itself a theory of economics. Unless you're talking about economics, the word simply doesn't apply.
Or, from the opposite side, leftists calling right-wingers 'Fascists' or 'Nazis' is usally wrong, too. Fascism is a specific thing. So is Naziism. Yes, they're both right-wing political/economic structures, but not everyone on the right is even vaguely aligned with most of what those terms encompass.
Going back to the original term, no less a figure than Ronald Reagan - by no one's definition a 'groomer', or a fan of 'grooming', certainly not a 'liberal' or a 'leftist' - campaigned vociferously against a California proposition that would've made it easier to fire gay teachers. His argument - fairly radical for 1978 - was that being gay is a biological fact, incapable of being taught, inculcated, 'groomed,' or anything else. The notion of teachers turning kids gay, or even seeking to, was absurd in 1978, and it's absurd in 2023.
Seriously: the number of people on the right or the left actually trying to 'groom' children is very low. What they're doing is against the law, and they should be blocked from doing so and prosecuted if they do.
The people that are trying to remove books, block the use of pronouns, ban drag shows, ban Pride festivals, and so on and so forth aren't fighting 'grooming.' Those aren't 'grooming,' by any normal definition of the word. They're just pirating a word that 'everyone is against' and hoping people follow. They're acting along the lines of those in Germany who applied words of disdain to Jews in hopes that people would associate the two and, in so doing, despise the Jews, who were almost never guilty of that with which they were accused.
'Grooming' has been turned into a nonsense word, like 'Woke'. Woke pretty much means 'People advocating being nice to people who aren't like me.' 'Grooming' means 'Anything that in any way can be twisted to possibly apply to sexuality and that might in some way relate to a minor.'
Who gave you that definition? I'm neither Left nor Right, but even I'm not ignorant to enough to fall for that.
Wokeness is the extreme radicalization of liberal/progressive ideas to the point that men can be women, words can be redefined, being a woman can no longer be defined, you can use "Vamp" as a pronoun if you feel like a Vampire, etc., etc. Some liberals and progressives I know aren't even considered liberal and progressive because they don't agree with the extreme points of views of people who supposedly share their politics.
Anti-grooming has coming along because a certain portion of the progressive movement want to teach other people's children about sex, gender identity, gender politics, LGBQ stuff, etc., etc., whether the parents consent to this teaching or not. Not only do they want to teach it to other people's children, they want to do it as young as possible and as explicitly as possible when children don't know anything. They also want to influence a child into thinking certain ways before a child can discover, through living life, their own opinion. If you tell a child a fork is a spoon, would they know the difference?
Parents have the right to raise their children as they wish (and even then, there are laws that state the legal way to raise a child) and for good reason. A child, as they grow older and gain knowledge and wisdom have the right to branch out and pursue their own desires, regardless of what their parents wish. (And yes, everyone is governed by rules and laws, which is how a society functions.) Rarely is a situation perfect, especially if you ask every individual their opinion, but no reasonable parent wants their five-year-old being taught about sex, let alone being taught sex by adults who are basically strangers.
Normal Definitions: From what I've seen, there's no such thing in politics.
Wokeness is the extreme radicalization of liberal/progressive ideas to the point that men can be women, words can be redefined, being a woman can no longer be defined, you can use "Vamp" as a pronoun if you feel like a Vampire, etc., etc. Some liberals and progressives I know aren't even considered liberal and progressive because they don't agree with the extreme points of views of people who supposedly share their politics.
This is a ridiculous definition, in my view. Most of the things you're citing are phrased in a silly, one-sided way that's useless to conversation. I could argue each point, but that would make this a 'political' reply instead of merely a comment on politics, so I won't.
However: Words are obviously being redefined; you're just done it. The original meaning of 'woke' meant 'to be awake to the fact that there is injustice in society'. No more, no less. It's now come to mean what I said: 'People advocating being nice to people who aren't like me.' Aside from your 'words can be redefined' comment (which is silly - you do realize you just declared yourself 'woke', right?), that's what all of your other examples are about: being nice to people who aren't straight and cisgender.
'Vamp' isn't a pronoun linguistically and would produce terrible sentences. If, however, someone wanted to be referred to abstractly as 'vamp', one can be polite or one can be rude. It's their choice. More broadly, pointing out that someone who intentionally uses the wrong pronoun for someone is being rude isn't 'woke', it's just what the word 'rude' means. You have to redefine 'rude' to make it acceptable to insult someone by intentionally referring to them in a way you know is offensive to them.
Anti-grooming has coming along because a certain portion of the progressive movement want to teach other people's children about sex, gender identity, gender politics, LGBQ stuff, etc., etc., whether the parents consent to this teaching or not. Not only do they want to teach it to other people's children, they want to do it as young as possible and as explicitly as possible when children don't know anything. They also want to influence a child into thinking certain ways before a child can discover, through living life, their own opinion. If you tell a child a fork is a spoon, would they know the difference?
None of that has anything to do with 'grooming'. That's the objection to the use of the word in that way.
This is grooming:
the action of attempting to form a relationship with a child or young person, with the intention of sexually assaulting them or inducing them to commit an illegal act such as selling drugs or joining a terrorist organization.
Nothing you just cited is that.
How would you feel if 'the left' decided to use the word 'pedophile' to refer to 'anyone who wanted to teach a child about traditional values, religion, or traditional gender roles'?
That's what anyone who uses the word 'grooming' the way you just defined it is doing. You're taking a word with a well-defined meaning that people react negatively to and applying it to things it just plain has no connection to. That's why it's offensive and wrong, and why I'm upset with anyone who uses it that way.
If you object to that form of education, by all means, object to it! I have no problem with that. Complain to the school board, complain to the school, complain to the teachers. Please! That's what you're supposed to do!
But don't try to ban LGBTQ+ books from school libraries. Kids who aren't straight and cisgender need those. Your right to influence yourown child's education gives you no right to deprive other children of resources.
If you don't want your kid taught age-appropriate things about gender and sex, by all means, keep them home! Don't deprive other children of knowledge along the way. And, no, teaching 5-year-olds the details about sex isn't age-appropriate, but in the incredibly rare cases where someone has advocated for that, people on the 'left' are as likely to condemn it as people on the 'right'.
Telling a 5-year-old that some kids have two mommies or two daddies isn't age-inappropriate, though, and that's reality. Some do. That's not going to change. Parents are welcome to lie to their kids about that, but schools shouldn't be in the business of lying to kids, and someone who's 5 needs to know that, because they're going to meet other kids whose families are structured that way.
A child, as they grow older and gain knowledge and wisdom have the right to branch out and pursue their own desires, regardless of what their parents wish.
I agree. Therefore, don't (in the name of being 'anti-woke') pass laws that make it illegal for teachers to support children by using their chosen pronouns or force high school teachers to betray their own students by telling non-sympathetic parents things shared in confidence. By high school, children absolutely have the capacity to understand a lot of things, including who they wish to be. Laws like that aren't 'anti-woke,' they're anti-teenager. Their entire point is to make life as difficult as possible for non-straight, non-cisgender children and on teachers who would dare support those children.
As far as I'm concerned, anyone who uses the word 'grooming' the way you defined it has so little respect for language that conversation is questionable at best. I can never be sure what they mean, because any word might suddenly mean something that only a small minority of the population would use it to mean. I might as well call those people 'murderers,' because they're intentionally destroying the meaning of language in an attempt to demonize their opponents.
But I won't, because that would be wrong. 'Murderer' has a meaning. It doesn't have to do with destroying language.
'Grooming' has a meaning. It has literally nothing to do with what is taught in schools, unless the school is intentionally trying to create a terrorist or influence a child to have sex with them.
'Woke' has a meaning. It has relatively little to do with what you claimed it does, and your definition would exclude the way many people in the 'anti-woke' community use it (for instance, supposedly Disney is 'woke', yet it's done nothing that fits under your definition). Either restrict it to its original definition, or use it and admit that it's a content-free word that means 'stuff I don't like'.
Normal Definitions: From what I've seen, there's no such thing in politics.
In English, words are defined by usage. Up until two or three years ago, 'grooming' had literally nothing to do with the definition you produced, and 'woke' had nearly nothing to do with it. The fact that a bunch of politicians grabbed onto those words and started misusing them isn't a compelling argument, in my opinion, to redefine them. Nor is the fact that a small minority of people on one political extreme are trying to misuse those words in support of their ideology.
But, if that's a compelling argument to you, then by your own definition of 'woke', anyone who uses 'woke' or 'grooming' the way you use them is 'woke' ('words can be redefined'). All those people fighting 'grooming'? Woke, every one of them! You, yourself? Woke! By your own definition!
And, hey! That means that when I say that I despise people who misuse 'grooming,' I myself am 'fighting the woke mob!'
What utter nonsense.
This is a ridiculous definition, in my view.
I don't doubt that. You're close too the topic, proven by the essay you wrote and that "cisgender" word.
I am not too close.
(for instance, supposedly Disney is 'woke', yet it's done nothing that fits under your definition).
I guess you missed my etc., etc., line.
You spend too much time deflecting and using extreme "arguments" to deflect from the topic. Such as your silly redefining of "Woke" to fit your statement. Everyone (who is knowledgeable of the current word-changing climate) knows we are talking about specific words such as "Gender" and "Woman" and not redefining any word we see fit. That's more childish deflection on your part.
Think of me as David Attenborough observing the animals and you are one of those animals that are unable to step outside of their environment to view what logical people see.
Anyway, I don't have the time or desire to write down the Woke Appendix, so I'll leave you to your essays.
Anyway, I don't have the time or desire to write down the Woke Appendix, so I'll leave you to your essays.
That's fine, then. I see little point in trying to have a discussion with someone who proudly says they won't read what I wrote.
But, if you will read a few short, easy to digest paragraphs:
Your definitions redefine both words from their common usages (ones that a large percentage of the population would agree with, that dictionaries document, etc) to a highly specific alternative meaning used by a small group. If you are defining them that way, you are far 'too close' to the topic.
'Grooming' is a common word (which I quoted). You have redefined it in a way that has virtually no commonality with that definition. You are guilty of that which you condemn, pure and simple. You are playing Humpty Dumpty: '[A word] means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.' My definition of 'woke' was intended to point that out: it's become a fluid, ever-changing, meaningless word which has nothing to do with the original definition and is so non-specific that one must fall back on 'everyone knows' and 'etc etc' to define it. And, yes, everyone who is knowledgeable of the current word-changing climate knows that 'Woke' and 'Groomer' are two of the specific words that are most commonly changed.
As for 'logical people,' the audacity of claiming that one who refuses to even read what they are replying to is on the side of 'logic' boggles the mind. I encourage you to step outside of your environment and see what logical people see: the damage that is done by painting people who are neither harming children nor trying to harm children, and who are horrified by the idea of harming children, as 'groomers.'
The point of this thread had to do with why people see the word 'grooming' used for 'anti-grooming laws' that have absolutely nothing to do with 'grooming'. My contention is that it's because people have taken a pejorative word and are using it inappropriately to score political points and demonize their opponents. You are, of course, welcome to disagree.
I see little point in trying to have a discussion with someone who proudly says they won't read what I wrote.
Making up bullshit is very easy and you're engaging in it very well.
Refuting bullshit requires hard work and research and is very time consuming.
We choose not to fall for your bullshit strategy.
Up until two or three years ago, 'grooming' had literally nothing to do with the definition you produced, and 'woke' had nearly nothing to do with it.
You want to use word in a way that suits your leftist agenda. You can claim anything in that endeavour, but we can all see what's going on. The left has pushed all kind of bad policies and grooming techniques into schools and public life in the name of 'wokeness'.
The left constantly defines and redefines words as needed to suit their agenda and that's exactly what you're engaging in right here.
You do it so much it has become a meme: What is a woman?
what is an "anti-grooming law?
A law making it illegal to pick lice and fleas from the fur of another person? ;-)
AJ
What we need to do is create two different school systems because no two parents can agree how their kids should be taught.
Or allow school choice.
But who get's to choose? Thats the whole problem.
If you are talking about how school choice is ran right now let's step into the real world. It is more of the school's choice of who attends their school then the parents' choice their kids go there. That's why they have waiting lists and of course if you know how to work around it.
As for Charter schools many are loosely regulated if at all and many close if they are not making enough profits unlike what a pubic school can do. How much choice does a parent have if they can't afford to send their kids there.
The problem with that is that many parents will never get to choose, because each school can only accept a given number of people, because most alternative schools have resource constraints, and because most school choice systems allow most schools aside from government-run schools to have some control over their admissions (including but not limited to arbitrary non-educational barriers to attendance).
My children attended a two different (non-profit, by law) charter schools (one in earlier grades, one later) for about eight years each, before they opted to go to the public schools for high school. Great for them, right? Parents' choice!
That worked because we had a stay-at-home parent who could take them to the school, pick them up, and do the required number of parent volunteer hours, and we could purchase the expensive required uniforms or embroider the expensive required logos onto our own clothes (you could do it yourself for one year, with a very fancy sewing machine, but they required you to use their vendor after that), contribute the 'totally optional but in practice your child will be blackballed if you don't do it' yearly donation (and no, that's not a hypothetical, I've seen it in action towards other parents), and so forth.
If we couldn't do that - if I'd been a single parent, if my wife had had to work, if we'd been poorer, etc - we could never have chosen those schools. They don't have buses, they don't have a program to subsidize poorer families, and they couldn't run their classrooms without the mandatory parent volunteers.
Nor could they have had those things. The economy of scale would be preposterous. I'm not arguing that it's unreasonable of them - they absolutely needed the money and help.
What I'm saying is that there's little 'parents choice' there, unless you're the desirable parent with lots of time and money on your hands to provide extras for your kids. I was lucky to have that when I was a child, and I feel grateful for that. We were able to be able to provide that for our own children with some sacrifices - because we had the resources to be able to sacrifice.
Unless 'school choice' comes with enough resources so that every parent (single parents, extremely poor parents, etc) can pick on a completely even basis, even if their destination school has no buses, needs donations to stay afloat, has no after-school care, etc, then it's an illusion designed to cater to the already well off.
I know of nowhere, in the US at least, that is even vaguely proposing to offer that level of resourcing to 'parental choice'.
And, yes, I am well aware that highly successful character programs have been run in poor areas. The problem is that it's hit or miss. It can certainly work in a dense poor area where kids can walk to and from school and where there are plenty of relatively low-cost daycare options. In a scattered suburb with little public transport and freeways between the kids and the school? At a 5-10 mile walk? Not going to happen.
Unless 'school choice' comes with enough resources so that every parent (single parents, extremely poor parents, etc) can pick on a completely even basis, even if their destination school has no buses, needs donations to stay afloat, has no after-school care, etc, then it's an illusion designed to cater to the already well off.
There is a very simple solution to this 'Problem'.
The parents get to decide where their tax money is directed. Simple.
If the government allocates $15,000 per child to the school, then it's up to the parents to decide which school gets that money. It's actually very simple.
But it would be against your best interest to allow such a policy. You, a leftist, would want to make it as hard as possible for parents to take their children away from your schools. You take their money in taxes, but if they want school choice, you want to force them to pay for schools from their after tax money. Yes, that would be very hard to do for the regular person and only the well off would be able to afford to have their children taught well under your policies.
You want to keep their children so that you can groom them into leftism, wouldn't you?
But who get's to choose? Thats the whole problem.
Why is that a problem? It's actually very simple: the parents get to decide which school gets the portion of taxes they pay for the education of their children.
As for Charter schools many are loosely regulated if at all and many close if they are not making enough profits
Exactly. If parents don't want to send their kids to your school, then you close down, that's actually a good thing.
unlike what a pubic school can do.
That's the most apt typo ever. Freudian slip much?
How much choice does a parent have if they can't afford to send their kids there.
But they can. They get to decide where their taxes are directed. Simple.
But you won't like that would you? You want the parents not to be able to afford choice.