If you are even remotely paying attention, you have very likely been hearing a great deal about grooming. Grooming is the process by which an individual, typically an adult, establishes an emotional connection with a child to gain the child’s trust in order to manipulate the child into sexual activity or sexualized behavior for the gratification of the abuser and the corruption of the child.
Given all the present attention on the subject, I thought it might be useful to hear from an expert on child sexual abuse. I’ve been publishing and talking about the problem of child sexual abuse for decades, my work showing that child sexual abuse produces continuing trauma in adulthood and indicates a persistent situation of powerlessness across the life course.
In 2004, I published a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma concerning the life-course effects of child sexual abuse. I’m also the author of the essay “Child Sexual Abuse” in Sage’s Encyclopedia of Social Deviance, published in 2014. As a sociologist of religion, I am also qualified to speak about the related phenomenon of the cult, which the sexual grooming of children under the LGBTQ+ banner strongly resembles. Indeed, the methods for both grooming children for sexualized exchanges and grooming individuals for induction into cults are essentially the same.
Child sexual abuse is a form of criminal deviance involving inappropriate contact with an adolescent or a child. Child sexual abuse and the sexualization of children are serious problems that carry profound and long-lasting effects on their victims. The effects of childhood sexual abuse may take the form of psychological maladies and conduct disorders that obscure the initial trauma, often compounding with the unfolding of time. Childhood sexual abuse is associated with continuity in sexual and other forms of victimization over the life course.
There are several factors that play into the severity of the impact of sexual abuse. These include the frequency, duration, and intensity of the abuse, as well as the perpetrator-victim relationship. The evidence indicates that the earlier authorities find out about the abuse and address it the more positive the post-abuse experience, displaying fewer of the long-term consequences of abuse. A child’s temperament, a major component of which is resilience, plays a significant role in recovery. For example, children with low self-esteem are prone to suffer more than those who have high self-esteem.
Some victims of child sexual abuse and child sexualization display few if any obvious consequences. However, the absence of outward manifestation of abuse does not mean that there are no less obvious or latent effects. The traumatic effects of childhood sexual abuse are recorded in a number of psychiatric conditions, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), eating disorders, cutting behaviors, drug seeking and taking, and various behavioral problems coded as conduct disorders, as well as withdrawal from social activity and frequent and intense associations with antisocial circles.
Children often blame themselves for sexual abuse perpetrated on them, which not only makes it less likely that they will disclose the event or the process, but makes it more likely that their trauma will remain unaddressed. There is also the problem of internalization of the sexual norms of abusers, which may cause the victim to rationalize the abuse. Failure to address sexual victimization can perpetuate the patterns of interaction that contributed to the initial event. My findings suggests that the likelihood of future sexual victimization, even into adulthood, is greater among those who have abused in the past.
The popular impression of the phenomenon is that it involves anal, genital, and oral penetration using the penis, as well as anal and genital digital penetration. Also considered serious are acts of fondling a child’s breasts or genitalia with sexual intent and genital contact without penetration. These are defined as touching offenses. Use of a child in sexually exploitative activities, such as pornography, can either be a non-touching offense or touching offense depending on the circumstances.
However, other acts are often and should be included in the definition, including indecent exposure, exposing a child to pornography and age-inappropriate sexual ideas, materials, and practices, and facilitating or sexual relations between minors, all acts of sexualizing children. Research indicates that all of these situations put children at risk for emotional and psychological trauma. Reducing child sexual abuse to child molestation obviates the full scope of the phenomenon and harm to children.
The problem of conceptualization and definition leads to complications and inconsistencies in reporting the incidence and prevalence of sexual abuse. Inadequate or problematic definitions of the phenomena facilitate rationalizations denying its presence or downplaying the harm caused by the child sexual abuse of child sexualization. However defined, the evidence shows that childhood sexual abuse is a widespread and chronic problem in the United States.
Another popular impression of the phenomenon is that the abuse involves a minor victim and an adult perpetrator with the operative mental image of a strange adult male using his physical size or position of authority as an adult to coerce a child into an encounter of a sexual nature. A more accurate understanding incorporates situations of trust and ties of affection, thus moving conceptualization away from the stranger-predator assumption. Research finds that the majority of perpetrators are individuals close to the child, including members of trusted institutions, such as those actors found in educational and religious institutions.
It is furthermore a misconception about child sexual abuse that it typically involves physical force. Physical force is usually unnecessary when the child is being abused by a person she trusts and, especially, an individual for whom she expresses affection. Grooming tactics have developed the minimize the use physical force. Indeed, the stealth of grooming often makes it appear that children voluntarily participate in sexual encounters. That children appear to voluntarily participate and even desire intimate contact with adults is used by pedophiles to normalize their behavior.
Thus, some perpetrators and their allies have sought to move beyond stealth and make the practice of child sexual abuse and sexualization an acceptable practice. This appearance has led queer theorists, for example, to treat adult-child encounters as matters of consent. For example, Pat Califia (who today identifies as a man named Patrick) remarked in 1982, “Any child old enough to decide whether or not he or she wants to eat spinach, play with trucks or wear shoes is old enough to decide whether or not she wants to run around naked in the sun, masturbate, sit in someone’s lap or engage in sexual activity.” We see this idea in practice with the renaming of pedophiles with the label “minor attracted persons,” or MAPS, increasingly paired with the label “adult attracted minors,” or AAMs.
This is why grooming behavior is so important to see and admit. A child cannot today consent to engage in sexual activity and people need to see the signs that indicate a predator so they can fight against the movement to openly sexualize children. This awareness is not just to combat child sexual abuse as popularly understood. A corollary to the established fact that children cannot consent to sex is the fact that children cannot consent to puberty blockers or other medical-industrial practices that go under the Orwellian euphemism “gender affirming care,” or GAC. These practices include such extreme procedures of breast amputation in girls and the castration of boys. More extreme non-medically necessary surgical procedures of phalloplasty and vaginoplasty occur in adulthood, procedures often sought after years of preparation in childhood.
Given the horror of all of this (horror reminiscent of the experiments performed on children by doctors during Nazi period), why is there a concerted effort to blind the public to the presence of grooming? Prior to Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, tweets about grooming and groomers, even absent references to drag queen story hour and other public activities designed to entice children into the world of adult sexuality, were banned as a form of anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech—this despite opposition by many homosexuals, and even some trans identifying persons, to the sexualization of children.
In July 2022, Twitter confirmed the term “groomer” was banned speech citing the company’s Hateful Conduct policy. Spokespersons for Twitter explained that the social media platform was following the lead of other platforms like Facebook, Reddit, and TikTok, which banned the term when used to suggest a link between the LGBTQIA+ community and pedophilia.
“We are committed to combating abuse motivated by hatred, prejudice, or intolerance, particularly abuse that seeks to silence the voices of those who have been historically marginalized.” Lauren Alexander, Twitter’s health product communications lead, said in an email. “For this reason, we prohibit behavior that targets individuals or groups with abuse based on their perceived membership in a protected category.” Alexander specified the context: “Use of this term is prohibited under our Hateful Conduct policy when it is used as a descriptor, in context of discussion of gender identity.”
In effect social media has collaborated with those who deny grooming behavior when occurring under the cover of LGBTQIA+ activism. While care should be taken in attributing to all members of that community the actions of some who rationalize their behavior (and whether LGBTQIA+ is a community at all has been cogently challenged by openly gay critic Douglas Murray), one must also be wary of rationalizations that falsely appeal to civil and human rights. A person engaged in sexualizing children cannot escape criticism of his arguments or responsibility for his conduct because he claims that he is a member of a protected category.
I ask you to consider whether there any other type of criminal or harmful conduct the consequences of which an individual is allowed to escape because his status redefines his conduct as no longer what it is? Wouldn’t such a move effectively normalize and even mainstream criminal or harmful conduct? Isn’t that the work it’s already been doing? If the sexualization of children is wrong when so-called cis-gendered heteronormative individuals do it, then it is just as wrong when transgendered and homosexual individuals do it. But the horror correctly expressed by progressives at the sight of child beauty pageants, and discomfort at the thought of minors at clubs for straight adults, disappears when boys perform as exotic dancers for adults in gay bars. Indeed, these acts of extreme sexualization become celebrations of “pride progress” and “queer joy.”
As noted at the start of this essay, while grooming is a manipulative process used by sexual predators, including pedophiles, to gain the trust and compliance of their victims, it is also characteristic of cult induction. The steps involved in both, as well as in human trafficking and online predation, are highly similar. Indeed, given that pedophilia, and paraphilias more generally, comprise a deviant subculture, i.e., a group exhibiting characteristic patterns of behavior sufficient to distinguish it from others within a greater culture or society, pedophilia is often not merely analogous to other forms of child exploitation, but a major element across phenomena. I will cover all these areas in this blog.
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The uptick in the frequency of the term “groomer” is associated with criticism of the practice of exposing children to sexualized themes at drag shows, where children watch and even interact with adult entertainers, the proliferation of drag queen story hours, typically with readings about sexual activities and identities, and curricula and classroom discussions about sexual and gender matters that intend or at least function to disrupt the development of the child’s perception of gender. Thus the organized effort to suppress the use of the term comes with growth in the scope of sexualization of children and the increasing frequency of grooming behavior.
I will write more about the organized effort to sexualize children in the future (for now, this and this are good places to begin developing a more in-depth grasp of the phenomenon), but I want to emphasize here that what concerns parents and others is that the typical age of the children involved in these activities is 4-8 years, as well as widespread acceptance of gender ideology in public and private schools, principally queer theory, an ideology founded by intellectuals and activists preoccupied with the sexuality of children and the removal of age of consent laws restricting adult-child sexual interaction (I have a pending blog on this subject).
Children are incapable of abstract and even consequential thinking at this age (many remain incapable well beyond this cohort). At age four, children are just beginning to the develop theory of mind, where they can see the world from the perspective of others, as well as internally represent the world through language and mental imagery. This is a critical phase in childhood development, as it is only towards the end of this period, around age eight, that children can confront the world with the understanding that the objects and relations in it are real and possess the ability to differentiate between those things and things that are not real.
What is internalized during this stage of development makes up fundamental assumptions about the world, such as a falsity of the Santa Claus and other obvious fictions and the “truth” of God, also a fiction. Children start doubting, often at the encouragement of their parents, the existence of Santa and the Tooth Fairy around the ages of six or seven. By age eight, most no longer believe in such things. However, many families do not allow the children to doubt the existence of God. Belief in this fiction is reinforced across the life-course. That a child can be convinced to believe that the thing she will never sense is the most real thing in the world tells us that a child can be made to believe anything.
Exposure to sexualized materials is for this reason age-inappropriate, as untruths or problematic conceptions about the world may be placed in the child’s head and continually reinforced by authorities in the child’s surroundings, including language and images coming from virtual sources, such as Disney and other fantasy programming. Indeed, media appealing to children (cartoon characters, ponies and unicorns, rainbows, etc.) are effective vehicles for colonizing children’s pre-rational minds with language and imagery designed to implant ideological beliefs and political agendas.
It’s not Disney executive producer Latoya Raveneau “not so secret gay agenda” that’s the problem. It’s the act of “adding queerness” wherever she can. Queering is a political agenda designed to disrupt perceptions of gender and transgress sexual boundaries, in this case, the perceptions that children have about the word by intentionally sexualizing their experiences. As Murray and other gay and lesbian observers have stressed, homosexuality and queerness are very different things. One is a sexual orientation. The other is a proselytizing program. The gays rights struggle was a struggle for equal rights. The queer project is a cult that seeks members.
Continually reinforced and forbidden to question or criticize, the ideas that inhere in queer theory become assumptions that inform and shape thinking into adulthood. This is well understood. Yet sexualized curriculum is being aggressively pushed in schools and other public activities across the country, pushed in classrooms festooned with the symbols of ideological and political commitments. One need not ask, to what ends? The end is obvious—it’s to change the way we think about sex, gender, and boundaries rules. Queer theory makes no secret of this. This is not is conspiracy. It’s in our faces.
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Willy Villalpando taught children in pre-kindergarten in Rialto, CA, from 2016 through 2021. He now works at Santa Ana College teaching early child development.
I have been planning on writing a blog about the problem of grooming for some time, but two recent news stories moved me to come to it sooner than planned. The first case crossed my desk a few days ago. It concerns Willy Villalpando, who currently works at Santa Ana College in California where he teaches early child development. Given his background, he should know better. Then again, perhaps this explains his interest in the subject. From 2016-2021, Villalpando was a pre-kindergarten teacher.
In 2020, while still a pre-kindergarten teacher, Villalpando called the idea of “childhood innocence” an example of “mythology.” In 2021, he said, “Not talking about queerness in the classroom, is not letting children be children. It’s telling those people they do not deserve to exist.” He added, “Kids are never too young.” But they are always too young. Note that Villalpando openly uses the term “queerness.” The project has become so widespread and normalized, that cult members have no problem openly using the terminology. This tells us that they know they enjoy institutional support.
I will blog more about this in the future but for now: to “queer” a space, in this case a classroom full of young children, is to transgress the boundaries of normative systems where, in this instance, the sexualization is believed to be (in fact known to be) harmful and wrong. Taking a position against recognizing the norms that protect children from the harmful effects of sexualization, Villalpando says, “Let’s work to deconstruct some of our own biases,” adding parenthetically, “Adults incorrectly link discussions on sexuality and gender as equating to discussions about sex.” Here he is telling people that talking to children about sex is not discussing sex. This claim that not letting children be children, with children conceived of as sexual beings, is “erasing their existence” is a common emotional blackmail tactic used by the cult.
Villalpando uses the jargon of queer theory at every turn. “There is a common mythology that children live in this world of pure innocence, and that by introducing or exposing them to the real-world adults are somehow shattering this illusion for them,” Villalpando wrote in a 2020 Instagram post. These arguments come straight out of the founding documents of queer theory (as I will show in a future blog). “Therefore, there is a banning of topics and issues that children should not be exposed to, as if they are not experiencing them already.” In another instance, he writes, “I’m tired of the ‘Childhood Innocence’ argument.” He adds: “Stop blaming a phenomenon that doesn’t exist.”
Villalpando characterizes the view that children should not be exposed to sexuality as “very white, Christian, upper-class, cis-gendered, and hetero-centric.” Fallacious thinking is typical to those advocating crackpot theories. You see this in critical race theory with the notion of “white fragility.” Villalpando is saying that the validity and soundness of an argument determined not by reason or facts but by the arguer’s race, religion, class status, gender, and sexual orientation—all things that have nothing to do with the validity or soundness of arguments. Yes, even for those who oppose child sexual abuse and sexualization on religious grounds, since it is entirely possible that the religious argument against harming children is based on the same logic as the secular argument.
Villalpando does no better when he tries his hand at the science. Children, he insists, can “have a sense of their gender identity” when they are still babies. “At 3 years old, a child can label their perceived gender identity,” Villalpando continues. “By 4 years old, children have a stable sense of their gender identity and have assumptions and beliefs of what they can and cannot do based on their gender (i.e. dolls are for girls, cars are for boys).”
What does the science tells us? Gender identity, that is the understanding that boys are boys and girls are girls, develops in stages. At around age two children become aware that there are boys and girls. Before the age three, they identify themselves as a boy or a girl. They recognize that there are physical differences. Boys are not girls because boys are different from girls. Boys can’t be girls. Children are adamant about this. It’s why they ask whether a person is a boy or a girl when their gender is ambiguous. By age four, most children have a stable sense of their gender identity. They know all this without any help from adults.
However, and this is the crucial piece to understand, especially since this was not a problem until yesterday, this sense may be disrupted by throwing into question what is otherwise a normally occurring understanding (one with evolutionary force). It is in this critical developmental period of ages four through eight that children learn to doubt the things that occur to them or that they have been told. I explained this earlier when I wrote that children can be convinced there is a God when their doubting of fictional things emerges. This tells us that children are vulnerable to the introduction and incorporation into their system of assumptions beliefs that are not naturally occurring, that would not normally occur to them, or that would be abandoned with cognitive development. God is an external imposition that can nonetheless become as real in a child’s mind as anything. The same is true with gender ideology. And this is why groomers and cultists (and the Chambers of Commerce) want access to children during this crucial stage of development.
Because of their vulnerability during this period, children accept and often believe impossible things—and continued believe in the impossible makes their parents vulnerable to believing impossible things, as well. Consider the Satanic panic, a cultural phenomenon that emerged in the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s, characterized by a widespread fear of Satanic ritual abuse and a belief that Satanic cults were operating in communities across the country, engaging in everything from human sacrifice to mind control and sexual abuse of children. Many people became convinced that Satanic cults were responsible for a wide range of social ills, including drug abuse, teenage rebellion, and the breakdown of the family. These fears led to a wave of investigations and prosecutions, particularly in the child care industry, which resulted in false allegations and wrongful convictions. Over time, the Satanic panic was debunked as an unfounded moral panic, with allegations of Satanic cult activity found to be baseless. The Satanic panic remains a cautionary tale about the dangers of mass hysteria.
There are many other examples of mass hysteria and moral panics in history. I have written extensively on this matter on Freedom and Reason. See, for example, Why Aren’t We Talking More About Social Contagion? I write there: “Social contagion, or mass psychogenic illness, is the rapid spread of an irrational or pathological activity, behavior, belief, or perception in a population. Thoughts and actions can move rapidly through social networks of like-minded people or those who share similar traits, such as age, gender, and so on. Individuals calibrate their self-image to align with those with whom they identify or have an affinity; when one individual adopts a certain attitude or behavior those in her social network catch the pathogen. Girls and young women are especially susceptible to social contagion because of greater innate sociability compared to men. But men are susceptible to psychogenic illness, as well. Adolescence is a risk factor because of rapid changes in cognitive, emotional, and physiological developments occurring during puberty make a person vulnerable to suggestion.”
The New York Times ran a story recently that carried the headline: “How Teens Recovered From the ‘TikTok Tics.’” It is effectively a treatment of folks on the verge of getting it. In my blog about social contagion cited above, I report on a story by Robert Batholomew, a medical sociologist, titled “The Girls Who Caught Tourette’s from TikTok,” in Psychology Today. He cites several studies concerning the rise in Tourette’s syndrome, what researchers call “functional tic-like behaviors,” in users of TikTok and social media generally. Bartholomew’s article is a useful thumbnail sketch of the phenomenon and a taste of the vast literature on this subject. He writes, “In the future, we can expect more outbreaks of social contagion in which the primary vector of spread is the internet and social media.” It is almost as if the nation’s newspaper was trying to clue Americans into the problem of gender ideology.
It is typical of this argument that culturally and temporally circumscribed activities are transcultural/historical indicators of innate gender sensibilities—i.e., gender is not an expression of sex, thus denying that children are their bodies, but an expression of some transcendent essential self, what is often referred to as the “authentic” or “true self.” In this way, people like Villalpando flip reality, insisting that keeping kids from discussing gender identity confusing them about their own sexuality. It attempts a self-fulfilling prophecy and then reverses the order of events. It is denied that telling them they may not be the gender their sex indicates is confusing and casts it instead as acknowledging and affirming. This is how, while compelling a gay boy to be straight via conversion therapy is wrong, it is not considered conversion therapy to compel a gay boy to identify as a girl. This contradiction escapes people because they have a priori, and because of party affiliation, accepted the validity of gender ideology. This is how the Orwellian problem of doublethink works.
“Parents haven’t already had conversations about these things with their kids, that kids don’t know, that they might be intersex, that they might be a gender … non-binary,” Villalpando argues. Raising the matter of intersex conditions is a typical deception. Intersex conditions are extremely rare and, in any case, have nothing to do with queer theory. As for the notion of nonbinary, sex is binary. This is a biological reality. I will leave that there for now “And really,” he continues, “children have a right to see themselves in our classrooms.” The upside-down character of his thinking is strategic. “It’s not okay to just forget about them or push them out just because it might make us uncomfortable or may make others uncomfortable.”
After telling his audience that there was nothing wrong with saying the things he said, Villalpando scrubbed his social media. But the Internet is forever. And Villalpando is not an outlier. He conveys queer theory expertly and honestly.
The story of Willy Villalpando was covered extensively in the media, the headlines often conveying the outrage the public has expressed over learning of this arguments. But what has not been conveyed is the extent to which Villalpando’s speech is standard rhetoric in queer theory. He is not saying anything that Michele Foucault, Gayle Rubin, or Judith Butler hasn’t either explicitly said or suggested in their writings and interviews. Moreover, the act of taking a four-year-old child to a drag show at a gay bar with dollar bills in hand to stick into the g-string of a queen with visible genitalia performing a sexually-explicit dance routine screams as loudly as anything could advocacy of the doctrine. How else could a parent come to believe that forcing her child to participate in such an audacious act of sexualization is an expression of devotion to the LGBTQ community if there were not members of the community preaching that children are already sexual beings who need to publicly signal their sexuality to advance the agenda?
The other news story crossed my desk today. Reuters is reporting that “More than 100 priests suspected of abuse remain active in Portugal’s Catholic Church.” According to the commission investigating the matter, more than a hundred priests suspected of child sexual abuse remain active in church roles in Portugal. The commission, which started its work in January 2022, said in its final report published on Monday that at an “absolute minimum” at least 4,815 children were sexually abused by members of the Roman Catholic Church in Portugal—mostly priests—over 70 years. They describes the number as the “tip of the iceberg.”
How big is the iceberg? The Catholic Church child abuse scandals are global in scope and involve members of the Catholic clergy, particularly priests and bishops. The scandal first gained international attention in the 1980s, and since then, tens of thousands of cases of abuse have been reported worldwide. The allegations of abuse have ranged from inappropriate behavior to sexual assault and rape of minors. The victims have often been vulnerable children, who were in positions of trust, such as altar servers, students, or children from Catholic schools and orphanages. The scandal has caused significant damage to the reputation of the Catholic Church and has raised serious questions about the handling of abuse allegations by the Church hierarchy. The Catholic Church has been criticized for its response to allegations of abuse, including a lack of transparency, cover-ups, and a failure to adequately address the issue. The Church is facing ongoing litigation and investigations in many countries, and there are ongoing calls for greater accountability and transparency in the handling of abuse allegations.
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As we go through the process of grooming, keep in mind what we are witnessing in public school classrooms across America. Everything a groomer does to secure a victim is what administrators and teachers do under the cover of LGBTQIA+ acceptance. For example, victim isolation, which I discuss below, in the public school context involves hiding from the parent the transitioning of the child. In an increasingly common occurrence, parents are chagrin to learn that the school has been “transing” the child, using different names and pronouns for their child, even keeping on hand clothes and accessories for the child to pretend they are not the gender their parents know them to be. Tragically, some parents are shamed into silence when they learn about this. But some parents complain. When attempts are made to stop this practice, the groomers appear before school boards and angrily decry the safeguarding measures. Some wail about “trans genocide.” The intersection of grooming and cult induction could not be more obvious in the way the gender ideologists come after children in public schools. Indeed, their hallways and classrooms festooned with flags and placards, their libraries filled with propaganda (often supplied by activists organizations such as GLSEN), public schools have become cult induction stations.
The stages of grooming can vary, but are commonly recognized as targeting, trust (or confidence) building, need filling, and victim isolation. The predator selects a potential victim and begins to gather information about them. The potential victim is often near, either a member of a church congregation or a student in the classroom. The predator looks for those who are vulnerable children, those who suffer emotional and psychological difficulties, as well as problems in social relations, such as being teased or bullied by other kids. This is targeting. The predator gains the trust of the victim by offering attention, affection, and sometimes gifts. The predator identifies and fills a need in the victim’s life, such as emotional support, friendship, or material goods. This is trust building. If the victim feels alienated from family and friends, the predator portrays offers himself as a substitute of the replacement for those relations. A predator might tell a child, for example, that she is now the child’s mother. This is need filling. Need filling often include manufacturing the need by alienating the child from parents and peers, by creating separation. The predator may try to isolate the child from their family or friends, making them more vulnerable to abuse. The alienation experienced by the child may be the work of the predator isolating the child. This is the process of victim isolation. The predator sexualizes the relationship by gradually introducing sexual language, images, or behavior into the relationship.
Grooming can occur in person, online, or through a combination of both. Groomers may be strangers, but they are more typically somebody who knows the child, such as a priest or a teacher. In exchange for sexual and sexualized activity, groomers exploit the child’s trust and use manipulation and deceit, such as giving the child attention or recognition. Grooming can occur over an extended period, with the abuser gradually increasing the frequency and intensity of the exchanges. Drawing upon the above list, some of the hallmarks parents should look out for: fake trustworthiness, which involves befriending a child to gain trust, as well as gaining the confidence of the child’s caregivers, blaming and confusing, filling needs and roles appropriate to family, intimidation, keeping secrets, often around children, children become part of the abusers his persona, sharing sexual images and materials, suggesting difficulties and insecurities, testing and crossing physical boundaries, such as discussing sexual matters or playing sexualized games, treating the child as if he is older or more mature than he is. Again, we see all this happening in openly in public spaces going under the name of “Pride.”
I have been noting throughout this blog the intersections of grooming and cults. Cults use a variety of tactics to induce or recruit individuals, including deception, manipulation, and persuasion. They may use emotional appeals or promises of spiritual fulfillment. They tell you you’re broken and then promise to fix you. They deploy a range of psychological manipulation tactics such as control over information, isolation, and love bombing. Cults prey on individuals who are vulnerable, such as those who are going through some life changes or who have trouble at home. Keeping secrets with targets and concealing activities from family members are typical tactics for developing influential relationships.
Part of the failure to see the agenda of gender ideologists is that it is so open. The popular perception of grooming is that it is difficult to detect, as the abuser typically works to conceal his actions. Moreover, the child may be reluctant to report the abuse—indeed, the child may not even realize he is part of a sexualized exchange. He can then become resentful when his sexualization is confronted. Grooming may also be difficult to detect because the parent may not recognize the signs of grooming. Here’s trusting one instincts is the right choice; if the situation of an adult with your child doesn’t feel right, then you need to remove the children from the situation. But some people are reticent to jump to conclusions. They are afraid of judging others. Grooming may also go unacknowledged by an adult because her political commitments disrupt her more sensibilities. The problem of grooming may be most difficult to see in the educational setting. Education is a strong value in the West and teachers enjoy high prestige. It is even harder to see how curricula and choice of instruction may function systemically as a form of grooming. This is how the queer agenda operates in the open: it feigns virtue.
I want to emphasize how important it is to recognize that children don’t think consequentially until they are around ten years old. Children in grades 4K-3 are not logical thinkers and their conscience is undeveloped. Considering these vulnerabilities, it’s important to recognize that teachers have an outsized effect on what children believe and how they behave. Words and actions build in assumptions that shape the thinking of children going forward. Indeed, the grades 4K-3 are a critical period in childhood development. If the cult gets to your children early, and convinces them to believe that it is actually possible for a gender to be trapped in a wrong body, an utterly supernatural and irrational belief, then, like belief in God, the belief will persist as deep cognitive and emotional structures that shape behavior patterns and relationships across the life course. And if the physical transitions of the child follows, they will never live a normal life.
It is therefore imperative parents get involved in the curricular and pedagogical developments and practices affecting their children. What and how are teachers being trained to teach? What politics become embedded in teacher training? What’s the lesson plan and what’s in the lesson? What books are assigned? What type of person is drawn to teaching? Do they have an agenda? What are their beliefs? Most teachers have only a bachelor’s degree; are they actually qualified to mold a child’s social and emotional selves and according to doctrine? Which doctrine? That parents are being told or that it is said behind their backs that they should leave all that to administrators and teachers is outrageous and dangerous.
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Grooming behavior can be used by individuals who seek to gain trust and control over others in a variety of contexts beyond pedophilia (and queer theory and its praxis are at heart manifestations of pedophilia and paraphilias more broadly). Human traffickers use grooming tactics to lure and control their victims, promising them a better life or opportunities that they may not be able to access on their own. Many of those coming across the southern United States border are the victims of groomers who make money off of human trafficking, as well as using the children for sexual gratification. Human trafficking is facilitated by churches, NGOs, corporations, and the governments, including the Biden administration. Cult leaders use grooming behavior to recruit and control members, isolating them from their family and friends and gradually introducing them to the group’s beliefs and practices. Online Scammers use grooming tactics to build trust with their targets, gradually introducing them to more elaborate schemes and eventually defrauding them of their money or personal information.
The grooming process typically involves a gradual and systematic manipulation of an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, which serves to increase the person’s emotional dependency on the group and its leader. Cults use a variety of tactics to initiate the grooming process, such as offering friendship and support, providing recruits with a sense of belonging and acceptance, which can be especially attractive to those who feel isolated or disconnected from others. Groomers provide an explanation for suffering and then prey on the desire for salvation and purpose by offering what sounds to a confused mind—minds they often confuse—a compelling vision for the future, promising members a meaningful and fulfilling life as part of the group.
Cults isolate members from the outside world by restricting members’ access to information and contact with family and friends outside the group, which can serve to create a sense of dependence on the group and its leader. Cults controlling access to information using a variety of tactics to control what members read, watch, or hear, by creating a highly controlled environment where the group’s beliefs and practices are the only acceptable truth. Those who contradict the doctrine of the cult are accused of bigotry, hatred, etc. As the grooming process continues, members may become increasingly committed to the group’s beliefs and practices, even when these beliefs and practices may be harmful or dangerous. This is because the grooming process is designed to create a strong emotional bond between the member and the group, which can be difficult to break.
Gaslighting is often used as a technique in grooming. Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or group makes someone question their perception of reality, memory, or sanity. This can involve denying or twisting the truth, making the victim doubt their own judgment, and making them feel like they are going crazy. Gaslighting is be used by groomers to control and manipulate their victims. For example, a groomer may use gaslighting to make their victim doubt their own intuition about the relationship, making them feel like they are overreacting or being overly suspicious. This technique can also be used on parents. Doing this, the groomer may be able to convince the victim to overlook warning signs and stay in the abusive relationship. Gaslighting is used in cults and other groups to control members and maintain group cohesion. For example, a cult leader may use gaslighting to convince members that their doubts and concerns are unfounded, and that the group’s beliefs and practices are the only valid truth.
Transgressing norms is a tactic in grooming. Groomers may use a variety of techniques to push the boundaries of social norms and acceptable behavior. By transgressing social norms, groomers can make their victims feel like they are participating in a secret or taboo relationship, which can create a sense of intimacy and trust. This can make it more difficult for the victim to recognize and report the abusive behavior, as they may feel like they are complicit in the transgression. Groomers may test their victims’ boundaries by engaging in behaviors that are slightly outside of their comfort zone. For example, a groomer may make a sexual comment or gesture to gauge the victim’s response and see if they are receptive to further advances. This is boundary testing. Groomers may gradually expose their victims to increasingly inappropriate or sexually explicit content or behaviors, with the goal of desensitizing them to the behavior and making it seem more normal or acceptable. This is known as desensitization: Groomers may try to convince their victims that the behavior they are engaging in is acceptable or even desirable, despite being outside the boundaries of social norms. This can involve using flattery, reassurance, or emotional manipulation to convince the victim that the behavior is not wrong. The is normalizing deviant behavior.
Sexualization is often used as a strategy in grooming. This is the main strategy of the gender ideology cult. By sexualizing the relationship, groomers make the victim feel like they are participating in a secret or taboo relationship, a special relationship, which can create a sense of intimacy and trust. Since dominant voices tell parents that it is wrong to teach children to be aware of this when it comes to LGBTQIA+ activities, the secret or taboo relationship is perceived not as a threat but as a welcoming to a legitimate world, one where they will feel welcome and loved. The world is full of stickers, rainbows, and stuffed animals, glitter, reflective surfaces, and multicolored light strips, costumes, chokers, and cat ears. The children are flattered and showered with attention, making them feel special and desired, deepening the sense of intimacy and trust. Groomers use gifts or other rewards to reinforce sexual behavior or to make the victim feel indebted or obligated to the groomer, even thankful for the opportunity to be their authentic selves. Groomers expose their victims to sexual content, pornography, explicit images or videos, and sexual conversations, with the goal of normalizing sexual behavior and desensitizing the victim to sexual content. Groomers may use emotional manipulation, threats, or coercion to pressure the victim into sexual behavior, or to keep them from disclosing the abuse and sexualization to others.
freedom and reason 