debunking anti-trans "social contagion"/"grooming"

[virgosplaining]

The incredible Julia Serano shared another essay pulling apart more anti-trans rhetoric. (x) It continues to be no surprise that all these sorts of things go right back to white supremacy and its purity politics, but it's fascinating to see her so easily lay it all out. I can't wait to get my hands on her books!

While degeneration is not a real phenomenon, unfounded fears about “pure” and “untainted” members of our ingroup being “contaminated” or “corrupted” by some “lowly” outsider or “Other” is an extremely common trope. In fact, it’s a popular reaction to stigma. In Sexed Up, I cite research demonstrating that people imagine stigma to act as a “contagion” that can be “contracted” via interactions with stigmatized individuals. Once “contaminated” by this stigma, the person in question is imagined to be permanently “dirtied” or “spoiled” by it.

So returning to our late nineteenth century examples, it’s not that people of color, or sex workers, or LGBTQ+ people, and so on, had “de-evolved” or were “degenerates,” but rather that these groups were socially stigmatized. And fears that these groups might “corrupt” the “pure” straight white majority stemmed from a deep-seated belief that their stigma was “contagious” and had the potential to “contaminate” (and thereby “ruin”) those who are otherwise “untainted.”

[...]

Clearly, these anti-trans/LGBTQ+ “grooming” charges have nothing to do with CSA. But they do perfectly fit the stigma-contamination mindset that I described in the previous section: As LGBTQ+ people, we are imagined to be imbued with stigma that has the potential to “contaminate” anyone who is “exposed” to us, potentially “turning them queer” in the process. In other words, this is merely the failed theory of “degeneration” all over again. And just as “degeneration” was imagined to spread via “sex,” the “grooming” charge — as well as the related accusation that we are “sexualizing children” — insinuates that LGBTQ+ people (but not cis-hetero people) are inherently sexually “contaminating” and “corrupting.”

[...]

There are many facets to fascist and far right thinking, but a major recurring theme involves stigmatized outsiders (whether they be immigrants, people of color, people with disabilities, Jews and other non-Christians, and of course, gender and sexual minorities) as an imagined “contaminating” force that is insidiously “corrupting” society and the traditional family, and which must be eradicated for the greater good. This is what allows them to perpetually cast themselves as the “aggrieved victim” even when they are members of the dominant/majority group in society. And it’s why they often continue to refer to said minority groups as “degenerates” — in other words, they still believe in “degeneration” as a threat to their own “purity” and “superiority.” The stigma-contamination mindset is central to fascist and far-right thinking.

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

1) Grooming in negative sense, and bonding in a positive sense, use a majority of the same actions -- paying attention, talking, touch, gifts, etc. What differs is the motive, whether it is malicious or benevolent, and thus what outcomes it leads to.

2) For people who think their paradigm is better -- whether it's gender or sexuality or race or whatever -- the people who obsess over "protecting" it actually act like it's very flimsy and not at all attractive, that it takes so much work to perform and defend.

Re: Thoughts

[jerrbear_81]

One thing I've noticed (also everyone here has noticed, so I'm probably not adding anything new) is the opposition's insistence that anything LGBTI+ has to have some nefarious purpose behind it. It's frustrating dealing with those attitudes.

Hell, I'm surprised they haven't accused our community of "grooming" animals whenever we adopt one or do something nice for one. Plenty of their other claims are just as ridiculous

Re: Thoughts

[virgosplaining]

I mean, I remember when the fight was going on for marriage equality in the first place, and people would make "slippery slope" arguments about next we'd be fighting to marry dogs. Or, in keeping with the "groomer" accusations, children. You know, nevermind that in the United States, child marriage is "currently legal in 43 states (only Delaware, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island have set the minimum age at 18 and eliminated all exceptions), and 20 U.S. states do not require any minimum age for marriage, with a parental or judicial waiver. Nearly 300,00 children were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018. The vast majority were girls wed to adult men, many much older." (x)(+ + +). Or that it's overwhelmingly the GOP who defends the practice. (1; 2; 3; 4; 5)

Infuriating.

Re: Thoughts

[jerrbear_81]

Holy shit! I didn't realize how many of our states don't have their age of consent set at 18+! That's just fucking insane

Re: Thoughts

[virgosplaining]

Right? Completely disturbing.

[jerrbear_81]

Totally borrowing this!

[virgosplaining]

Absolutely! Serano's stuff is always golden.

[jerrbear_81]

At this point, the words "groomer" and "grooming" have lost their meaning because of right-wingers using them to describe anything they are against, as well as overusing them. Nobody is going to take that phrase seriously anymore