Misusing Words Like "Groomer" Is Dangerous

As noted in posts yesterday, Republicans and the far right fringe - frighteningly the two are increasingly synonomous - are exhibiting a new fixation on using homophobia as a way to stir up the Christofascists within the ugly GOP base and as a form of character assassination against political opponents.   This effort is dangerous for several reasons, not the least because it stirs up hatred and potential violence against LGBT individuals who are constructive members of society and politicians supportive of LGBT rights, but also because it belittles actual sexual abuse and the victims of real groomers, pedophiles and sexual predators.  Naturally, those pushing this new homophobia like Florida's decpicable Ron DeSantis care nothing about the damage they do or those they endanger as lonas they view their actions as politically expedient and in furtherance of their own ambitions.  A column in the New York Times looks at the damager this effort does to combating real child abusers and helping the victims of abuse.  Here are highlights:

The person who sexually abused me when I was 5 years old is someone I could describe as a “groomer,” a “pedophile” or a “child molester.”

I couldn’t find these words for over 20 years, in part because I didn’t understand what happened to me — I was so young — but also because I had to first reckon with the pain, horror, and shame I felt.

This is the norm for child survivors of sexual abuse. Our words carry weight, and we fight to say them out loud.

As we head into the 2022 midterm elections, calling someone a “groomer” or a “child abuser” has become the conservative attack du jour. What once felt like language reserved for the followers of QAnon, a fringe community united by a central conspiracy theory that America is run by an elite ring of pedophiles, has seeped into the mainstream. The use of these terms has even sparked the anti-gay slur “OK, groomer,”. . . .

Anyone who opposes Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida is “probably a groomer,” according to his press secretary, Christina Pushaw. Anyone pushing back on conservative ideology is a molester. With that logic, roughly 50 percent of the American electorate are “pedophiles.” Most recently, Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic state senator running for re-election in Michigan had to publicly denounce baseless claims from her opponent that she was a groomer.

If the politicians making those accusations were actually concerned about ending child abuse, the kinds of institutions they would be challenging would include religious organizations, youth sports and even the nuclear family — systems that exert control over children and their bodies. These are the venues where child sexual abuse commonly occurs. The misuse of these words is not about stopping abuse, but rather a reassertion of homophobia, gender hierarchy and political control.

Abusers often seek to gain the trust of their victims and, in time, use that trust to assert control over them. In my case, a medical professional used my reliance on health care, as a child with a life-threatening illness, to take advantage of me, stripping away any remnant of bodily autonomy I had left.

When I think about the root of that violation, it reminds me of what we are seeing conservatives do to the most vulnerable among us: proposing and passing laws that ban health care for transgender children or strip us of reproductive care. Our bodily autonomy is being ripped away by the same people who are crying abuse.

Calling political opponents “groomers” is clearly the latest in an unoriginal conservative strategy to name-call and character assassinate the opposition, it’s that exact frivolity that is so dangerous and corrosive to the very real and devastating experience of sexual abuse.

To weaponize this claim casually in a political debate is to degrade the lifeline of vulnerable children. When an adult uses your 6-year-old body for sexual gratification, words are the only power you have left.

A study by Child USA, an organization that investigates child abuse, found that survivors were 52 years old, on average, when they first reported childhood sexual abuse. To make matters worse, Department of Justice data suggests that 86 percent of this kind of abuse goes unreported altogether. Reasons for the delay or lack of reporting stem from a fear of not being believed and a pervasive devastating shame.

Terms like child molester are not the only ones fraught with conflict these days, but the stakes with these words are higher than most. The victims are children who cannot fight back. Words, in this case, are the mechanism of action. A child in danger cannot find safety if the language we use to define abuse is diluted.

No anti-LGBTQ education bill, book ban or health care ban, would have prevented my abuse or helped me in its aftermath. What could have helped me was comprehensive sexual education in which I would have been taught age-appropriate language around consent, like “good touch” and “bad touch.” That language would have also helped me understand that what happened to me was wrong and that it was not my fault . . . .

One in four girls and one in 13 boys will endure sexual abuse before their 18th birthday. That is far too many children to sacrifice for the sake of salacious political rhetoric. . . . If we can’t agree that the use of these words is sacred and worth protecting from daily politics, we are telling one another that our deepest, most intimate, heart wrenching wounds are empty — and that we may as well be, too.