Tucker Carlson (Fox News, 9/19/22) invents an imaginary phenomenon in which young children are being trained in sexual practices by elementary schools. So whose “sexual fantasies” is he really talking about here?
In front of a graphic of fluffy pink handcuffs and “Kink for Kids” spelled out in blocks and crayon font, a red-faced Tucker Carlson (Fox News, 9/19/22) ranted about the story of a transgender Canadian high school teacher whose photos went viral on social media for wearing comically large prosthetic breasts to work.
This is a specialty of Carlson’s: taking one weird example of an individual’s behavior and attributing it to an entire movement or community to stoke moral panic. Carlson declared:
It’s hard to believe this is happening, but we’re sad to tell you it’s not just happening in Canada. You see versions of it everywhere, including in this country. And to be clear what this is, children being used as props in the sexual fantasies of adults.
From this single Canadian teacher’s cartoonishly inappropriate outfit, Carlson leaps—to teachers on social media talking about how they validate children when they disclose their sexualities and gender identities to them.
Then he leaps back to talking about pedophilia. This conflation is where the danger lies, both for LGBTQ individuals, and children who are actual survivors of sexual abuse.
What ‘grooming’ is—and isn’t
The term “grooming” has become a favorite of anti-LGBTQ politicians and right-wing media. Carlson said in the segment:
Some people describe what was happening, it is grooming. We’re not exactly sure what that means. But if it’s sexually abusing children, yes, that is what’s happening.
In fact, we do know what grooming means. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) describes grooming as “manipulative behaviors that the abuser uses to gain access to a potential victim, coerce them to agree to the abuse, and reduce the risk of being caught.” It involves isolating victims, gaining their trust, and desensitizing them to inappropriate touch, sex and other forms of abuse.
Teaching children that some kids have two moms, or that certain people identify with a gender that does not match the one assigned to them based on their body parts, is not grooming. Having a drag queen in theatrical makeup read books to them is not grooming.
Vince Everett Ellison, on Tucker Carlson Tonight (1/24/23) to talk about “endless lies,” claims Democrats “want you to castrate little boys and cut off the breasts of little girls.”
Age-appropriate discussions about bodies, boundaries and relationships have been a regular part of school curriculums. It’s the introduction of LGBTQ-related topics in these discussions that sparked hysterical headlines and TV rants. A Carlson guest, author and documentarian Vince Everett Ellison—whose latest film is about how voting Democrat will keep you from Heaven—said in a January screed (Fox News, 1/24/23):
This is a party that believes in this transgender grooming thing to a point where…they want you to castrate little boys and cut off the breasts of little girls, and they’re telling people they’re not going to be held responsible for this.
Not only is the depiction of young children being castrated and receiving mastectomies graphic, it’s also untrue. If “little” children—i.e., those entering puberty—express a desire to transition, doctors may put them on reversible puberty blockers (which have been shown to reduce suicidal ideation in trans youth). Surgeries for youth under the age of 18 are relatively rare, and generally only done with the consent of the patient, their guardian and a doctor. And of course the language aired on Fox isn’t only meant to suggest child abuse; it also deliberately denies the gender identity of the young person requesting the gender-affirming surgery.
‘Your kids are ours’
Fox‘s Jesse Watters, towards the start of his September 23 show, discussed the story of a Florida teacher convicted of sexually assaulting her 14-year-old student (Media Matters, 9/23/22). He moved on to bemoaning Covid school closures interrupting children’s education, then rounded out his segment by arguing that educating children about LGBTQ issues, like Critical Race Theory, is a form of Democratic indoctrination:
Sex and CRT become the new math and science. Kids are learning racism instead of reading. Do you think parents are pissed off about this? Of course, why wouldn’t they be? But, when they speak up, Democrats tell them to sit down, shut up and stay out of education: “Your kids are ours.”
To help him make his argument, Watters brought on Mario Presents, a “concerned uncle” who condemned LGBTQ education at a California school board meeting. Watters asks Presents about his shirt—which read, “Groom Dogs, Not Kids.”
“We love a pretty pet, but we don’t love kids being sexual,” Presents replied. “We don’t love…confusing them. We want kids to just be themselves.”
Presents also praised the work of “Gays Against Grooming” a conspiracy theorist, far-right operative -run anti-trans group masquerading as a grassroots organization (Media Matters, 2/7/23).
Validating a child’s stated identity, preferred name and pronouns is not “grooming.” There is, of course, nothing more inherently sexual about being homosexual or transgender than there is about being heterosexual and cisgender.
Dehumanizing myths
Julia Serano (Medium, 11/29/22): “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.'”
But these far-right tropes aren’t new. Baselessly accusing a group of people of one of the worst crimes imaginable is a pretty surefire way to dehumanize them. Stigmatizing queer people by claiming they are sexually deviant is an age-old tactic. As Julia Serano notes in her blog for Medium (11/29/22), the “groomer” accusation recalls late 19th-century pseudoscience that claimed stigmatized people—like queer people, sex workers, poor people and disabled people—were evolving backwards, and that the mere exposure to them could make you evolve backwards, too.
The idea that merely learning about LGBTQ people and identities “causes” children to become queer has also been debunked. As Serano points out, several peer-reviewed studies have debunked the concept of transgender “social contagion,” an idea coined by a trans-skeptical parent online in 2016 and elaborated in a 2018 paper, “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD),” by Lisa Littman. Flaws in the paper were called out in three peer-reviewed studies (Restar, 2020; Ashley, 2020; Pitts-Taylor, 2020), and the journal that published it later issued an apology and correction (PLoS, 3/19/19).
Serano also draws on earlier research to point to the likelihood that children like those in Littman’s study were most likely already trans or gender-diverse in some way, and seeking out access to information and support from peers similar to them. At least one study debunked the idea that same-sex attraction “spreads” among peer groups (Brakefield et al., 2014).
Serano also discusses the phenomenon of reduction of restraint. When a behavior is stigmatized, people who are inclined to engage in it are more likely to refrain:
In a 2017 essay, I argued that the current increased prevalence of trans people is akin to the increase in left-handedness (from 2% to 13%) during the 20th century once the stigma and punishment associated with being left-handed abated.
Hypocrisy and hatred
The incorrect use of the term “groomer” is rooted more in thinly veiling right-wing media’s anti-LGBTQ hatred than it is in an actual desire to protect children from sexual content—or other dangers. As Serano astutely summarized in her blog:
They also often use “grooming” in reference to completely non-sexual things, such as rainbow flags hanging in classrooms, efforts to accommodate trans students, or when schools have nondiscrimination policies protecting LGBTQ+ people. While anti-trans/LGBTQ+ campaigners may frame their interventions in terms of “safeguarding children,” they rarely if ever express similar concern over actual cases of grooming and [child sexual abuse], the overwhelming majority of which are perpetrated by cis-hetero men who are family members or close acquaintances of the child.
The issue clearly isn’t about discussions or experiences involving cis-heteronormative sexuality or gender. It’s queerness itself that’s believed to be perverted. The Murdoch empire demonstrates this.
A father bragging about taking his nine-year-old son to Hooters didn’t prompt concern from the New York Post (11/23/22) about sexualizing children, but rather an array of boob puns.
A New York Post article (11/23/22) profiled a British father who took his 9-year-old son to Hooters to celebrate his good grades. “Tit for tot?” the article begins, later describing the restaurant as a “ta-ta temple.” It highlighted both critical and supportive responses to the stunt.
Teaching kids about gender diversity causes hosts like Fox’s Laura Ingraham to beat their chests in preparation for a culture war (Fox News, 4/7/22), and parents taking their kids to a drag show “normalize[s] the sexualization of kids” (10/19/22), yet this story evokes nothing more than a few lighthearted boob puns from Murdoch’s New York Post.
Meanwhile, children’s actual physical safety takes a backseat to “Don’t Say Gay” hysteria on Fox. Media Matters (4/1/22) documented Fox hosts melting down over Disney’s public opposition to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill in at least 53 segments over a week in 2022, accusing the company of grooming, indoctrinating and sexualizing children.
To compare, in December, a bipartisan bill supporting the welfare of child sex abuse victims was introduced in the House. Twenty-eight Republicans—including Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who have both referred to pro-LGBTQ advocates as “groomers” (CPR News, 11/22/22; Sacramento Bee, 11/25/22)—voted against the now-passed Respect for Child Survivors Act, which seeks to improve how the FBI handles cases of child sexual abuse (Newsweek, 12/22/22). FAIR’s Nexis search of the legislation’s name turned up no results on Fox News in the weeks preceding and following the voting.
The New England Journal of Medicine (5/19/22) found that gun violence had become the No. 1 cause of death in children and adolescents in 2020. A Nexis search of Fox transcripts found no mentions of that report in the week following its release. Only after the Uvalde elementary school shooting, which occurred on May 24, was the report mentioned in passing (Fox News, 5/29/22, 5/30/22).
Centrist media complicity
Centrist and neoliberal media have also been slow to call anti-LGBTQ advocates’ bluff. While the New York Times (4/7/22, 5/31/22) has published op-eds that confront the term “groomer” as harmful to both the LGBTQ community and victims of child abuse, its news section continues to both-sides the issue, quoting Republican use of the term with little critique.
In a piece that sterilely chronicled right-wing political attacks on LGBTQ rights, the Times (7/22/22) reported:
Officials and television commentators on the right have accused opponents of some of those new restrictions of seeking to “sexualize” or “groom” children. Grooming refers to the tactics used by sexual predators to manipulate their victims, but it has become deployed widely on the right to brand gay and transgender people as child molesters, evoking an earlier era of homophobia.
Washington Post (4/5/22): “In the charged debate over what and how children should learn about sexual orientation and gender identity, some mainstream Republicans are tagging those who defend such lessons as ‘groomers,’ claiming that proponents of such teaching want children primed for sexual abuse.”
The article later went on to briefly cite a survey by the Trevor Project that showed the staggering suicidality rates of gender non-conforming youth. However, the piece ultimately treated the issue as a political game, outlining Republican tactics and the risks they face of losing centrist votes due to homophobia. It ended with a quote by Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, who is calling for legislation that allows parents to sue school districts that host drag shows (despite no evidence of any district doing so). “We’re taking the first step today to protecting children,” Dixon said, getting the last word.
At the Washington Post (4/5/22), the article “Teachers Who Mention Sexuality Are ‘Grooming’ Kids, Conservatives Say” devoted its first 12 paragraphs to coverage of anti-trans bigots using “groomer” rhetoric. As FAIR (4/12/22) pointed out:
It barely matters that the Post brought in some “experts” later to offer the “other side”—that actually talking about these things in fact helps curtail sexual abuse (which in schools primarily happens at the hands of heterosexual male teachers, noted all the way down in the 37th paragraph of the Post article) and bullying against LGBTQ+ kids. In giving the GOP the headline and the (extraordinarily lengthy) lead, Natanson and Balingit gave a bigoted and dangerous campaign the right to frame the story as a debate with two somehow comparable sides.
Other outlets are sometimes even worse. NY1 (6/16/22) platformed a Queens council member who called drag queen story hours in schools “grooming.” The Salt Lake Tribune (10/21/22) dedicated a whole article to outlining Utah politicians’ moral panic about drag shows. It quoted write-in Washington County clerk/auditor candidate Patricia Kent in the unhinged headline: “They are grooming our children for immoral satanic worship.”
The real danger
NBC‘s Today (5/9/22) on “grooming”: “Misusing the term also puts people, particularly children and teenagers, at risk of being groomed and eventually victimized.”
LGBTQ people are nearly four times more likely to be victims of violent crime—including sexual assault—than their non-LGBTQ counterparts. They’re nine times more likely than non-LGBTQ people to be victims of violent hate crimes. The November 2022 mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs is only one recent example of this danger.
Misusing the term “groomer” is also counterproductive to helping real victims of child sexual abuse. While it didn’t directly address LGBTQ education, a Psychology Today piece (4/10/22) asserted that referring to Disney movies, sex education and other sexual content as “grooming” is clinically inaccurate, and has the potential to make it “more difficult to detect and identify actual manipulative behaviors and prevent actual sexual offending.”
NBC’s Today (5/9/22) published a laudable piece on the topic based on an interview with Grace French, a former dancer and gymnast whom USA Gymnastics national team doctor Larry Nassar groomed and molested. She explained why careless use of the term is harmful to survivors like her:
It’s so incredibly important to use this term correctly, because if we don’t understand it—and we have these assumptions about what it can or can’t be—then it’s harder and harder for grooming to be identified, and perpetrators are going to be able to get more access to children and to victims.
The New York Times (5/31/22) echoed this sentiment with a guest essay from a survivor, who concluded:
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.
Conservative politicians’ and right-wing media’s reckless use of the term “grooming” is intentionally inaccurate and dehumanizing. It not only harms LGBTQ people, but also the children these figures claim to be fighting to protect.
I think Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is “grooming” Floridians and other Americans outside Florida exposed to his hateful policies to accept authoritarianism and anti-democratic government. I now think of him as “Ron DeFascist” because of his right-wing extremism. Aren’t the biased Fox “News” propagandists also “grooming” their viewers to accept intolerance, exclusion, and hatred of anyone not cisgender, White, gun-loving, and Christian?
To say that puberty blockers are “reversible” implies that there are no long term side effects. According to the Mayo Clinic, puberty blockers have long term effects on growth spurts, bone growth and density and future fertility (depending on when pubertal blockers are started). It’s almost as if FAIR journalist have become incapable of critical thinking and simply affirm their own preconceived biases, basically a failure of their core mission and values. Please, someone correct me if I’m misinterpreting the claim.
You are misinterpreting the science, not the claim.
“Limited studies have suggested that where bone density is impacted in young people using blockers, it is due to the absence of hormones rather than the result of the blockers, as hormones are essential for bone health.
This supports the argument for the timely use of gender-affirming hormones in trans youth and not allowing prolonged periods without sex hormones. This is an active area of research.
…the use of puberty blockers in early adolescence reduces the likelihood of future invasive treatments in patients who do go on to medically transition.
For instance, trans men who used puberty blockers in adolescence are less likely to need a mastectomy (top surgery), and trans women who used puberty blockers in youth are less likely to pursue facial feminisation surgery.”
https://www.gendergp.com/puberty-blockers-side-effects/
“Because puberty blockers disrupt and ultimately lessen the production of certain sex hormones, these medications may negatively impact bone mineral density when taken for a prolonged period.
Many healthcare professionals prescribe a calcium supplement alongside puberty-blocking medication to help counteract this potential side effect. They also monitor for any negative changes. If your bone health has been negatively impacted, it will likely improve after you discontinue the medication or start taking gender affirming hormones.
The effects of puberty blockers are reversible. If a person stops taking puberty blockers, the effects of puberty will return or resume.”
https://www.healthline.com/health/are-puberty-blockers-reversible#takeaway
“Limited studies have suggested that where bone density is impacted in young people using blockers, it is due to the absence of hormones rather than the result of the blockers, as hormones are essential for bone health. This supports the argument for the timely use of gender-affirming hormones in trans youth and not allowing prolonged periods without sex hormones.”
So the problem isn’t puberty blockers per se, it’s the absence of hormones, but it’s the puberty blockers which are preventing the production of natural hormones. This seems to suggest that the people most at risk are those who ultimately choose not to transition. A patient who chooses to transition would be able to immediately receive hormones where as a patient who does not choose to transition would have to wait for the natural production of hormones to begin (which presumably could take some time). If the patient who chooses not transition takes hormones to make up the difference, then the use of puberty blockers can not be called “reversible” because they would require additional medicalization. Either way, it seems to imply that puberty blockers are inherently dangerous.
“For instance, trans men who used puberty blockers in adolescence are less likely to need a mastectomy (top surgery), and trans women who used puberty blockers in youth are less likely to pursue facial feminisation surgery.”
Unfortunately, the exact opposite is sometimes the case. During the original Dutch study a patient died “necrotizing fasciitis during vaginoplasty.” Because of the use of puberty suppressants “the patient’s penis, prevented from developing normally, was too small for the regular vaginoplasty and so surgery was attempted with a portion of the intestine, which became infected.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2121238
“Because puberty blockers disrupt and ultimately lessen the production of certain sex hormones, these medications may negatively impact bone mineral density when taken for a prolonged period.”
It’s amazing how the simple claim, puberty blockers are reversible becomes puberty blockers are reversible when used under certain conditions and can potentially be dangerous. Perhaps FAIR should start publishing it’s articles with asterisks like you see on drug ads for when they make claims that require clarification but are too embarrassing to print in the main text. The truth is we do not know all the potential side effects of puberty blockers physically or psychologically and claiming they are reversible is irresponsible journalism. We do know the majority of kids placed on puberty blockers continue onto cross sex hormones which means puberty blockers are a poor diagnostic tool.
I call you out for highlighting negative effects of puberty blockers in bad faith. Your comments are clearly aimed at preventing young people from obtaining the health care they are desperately asking for and which they need. I can only suggest that you learn more about trans people and our health care before you comment again.
A careful balance of positive and negative effects is critical for good medicine, and even more so for proper consent. Affirmative care is deeply problematic, susceptible to diagnostic bias. By positioning transgender care as explicitly affirmative, you are shackling doctors to a predetermined outcome. By sweeping negative outcomes under the rug, you are burying malpractice beneath ideological fervor. For all the definitive claims made by activists we don’t have a better understanding of transgender identity now than we did twenty years ago. If you want to put young kids on a pipeline towards lifelong medicalization, you better have better evidence than you are providing. Consumer driven healthcare needs to be backed by serious science lest it falls victim to psuedo-science. Medical intervention comes at a cost. How is a doctor or patient suppose to know whether puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, double mastectomies, chest masculation, facial feminzation, vaginoplasty, penoplasty, or any of the other surgeries promoted by activists are medically necessary if their are not objective standards for diagnosis? If the only standard for making a decision is give the patient what they want, you can expect negative outcomes. What will malpractive look like if you cannot hold doctors to a standard?
So you tell me, how do I differentiate between someone who is transgender and someone who is experiencing transient gender in-congruence? Show me the standard for making that decision.
The level of hate-filled and scientifically ignorant comments that any article about transgender people on FAIR attracts shows, perhaps, that the commenters care far more about eliminating trans people than about far more important problems confronting us, such as militarism, poverty and climate change.
“We want kids to just be themselves” claimed Mario Presents but not, it is obvious, when children express the wish to be the gender they feel most comfortable as.
Please, answer the question, how are puberty blockers reversible if they have long term effects?
Children can “be themselves” without mutilating their bodies. Most states forbid children under a certain age to marry, and severely punish adults who engage in sexual contact with children. Children lack the knowledge and experience necessary to change their bodies with surgeries they may later regret. Adults have the right to do pretty much what they please with their bodies, and children should have the right to behave as gendered inconsistently with their physiology, but they should not make irreversible changes until they become adults. Too many young women wish they had their breasts back.
How many of these young women do you know personally? If they can’t get their breasts back, how are so many women out buying breasts to please men who think that the big ones are best?
It seems to me that when a child has organs of both sexes, it would be terrifying to grow up in this culture. I feel very sorry for families facing this difficulty while right wing nuts are encouraging absolute hatred for them.
“How many of these young women do you know personally? If they can’t get their breasts back, how are so many women out buying breasts to please men who think that the big ones are best?”
You cannot say that the solution to someone who has been misdiagnosed and mistreated is simply more corrective surgery. Imagine if someone was having heart surgery but the surgeon mixed up their file and accidentally removed their kidney. You wouldn’t say, well lot’s of people receive donated kidneys so there’s no issue. Medical malpractice is a serious problem and we cannot simply brush it under the rug. Consumer rights our not just about access to good medical treatments but also protection from bad medical treatment.
“It seems to me that when a child has organs of both sexes, it would be terrifying to grow up in this culture. I feel very sorry for families facing this difficulty while right wing nuts are encouraging absolute hatred for them.”
I may be confused by what your are saying, but you appear to not understand what a transgender person is. Transgender children do not have “organs of both sexes.” You seem to be thinking of some extremely rare difference in sexual development. Any child who has been born with ambiguous genitalia deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. They deserve to have access to good healthcare, including cosmetic surgery if desired. I don’t watch or listen to nonsense like Tucker Carlson, but I very much doubt even he is saying anything about children with differences in sexual development. It’s an extremely difficult situation and my heart goes out to those families.
A transgender person is someone who “identifies” as the opposite sex. There is no diagnosis. There are lots of people who experience extreme discomfort with their body and sexual organ. This is generally called gender dysphoria or gender identity disorder. In a lot of ways, it is similar to anorexia in which people experience an extreme desire to remove parts of their body. The only difference is that anorexia is generally treated by trying to resolve the discomfort by helping the person accept their own body. On the other hand, trans health care focuses on correcting the body itself. Trans children are understood as being misaligned, their identities don’t match their bodies. The solution is to correct the children’s bodies through puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and ultimately corrective surgery. It’s a rather crude science which hearkens back to a time when doctors attempted to “correct” gay people. It’s a regressive idea really, but for some reason people seem to struggle to understand it.
It seems you have been fooled by the religious zealots and trans-hating feminists (who are only a tiny minority of most people who describe themselves as feminist). Children are not being allowed surgeries; the whole purpose of puberty blockers is to allow children plenty of time to decide until they are old enough. In the UK, the problem is that the funding of gender clinics is much too small to manage the number of young people who need them.
Rebecca,
Do consider this….
“…engaging them by trying to rebut the misinformation was falling into their trap of making trans people a debate.”
– Anonymous
You cannot categorically say that “children are not being allowed surgery.” In 2020, Reuters reported 256 top surgeries for minors 13-17 and between 2019-2021, 56 genital surgeries for minors 13-17. These numbers are on the rise, so we can expect them to increase. Since WPATH removed age recommendations for surgeries in their latest standards of care, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that surgeries for minors are unrealistic. Considering that in 2020, 3,200 non-trans girls 13 to 19 received breast implants, there is clearly a strain of Americans who have no problem performing purely cosmetic surgeries on minors. But again, for you to claim that “children are not being allowed surgeries” is just false.
I know that some trans activists are very specific in what they consider a “child” but I would generally call anyone under 18 to be a child. We could argue about whether that cut off is arbitrary, too old or too young, but I would consider it to be generally accepted by most people.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/cutting-through-the-lies-and-misinterpretations-about-the-updated-standards-of-care-for-the-health-of-transgender-and-gender-diverse-people/
BULL SH_T