The uptick in the frequency of the term “groomer” occurring several months ago 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 hour programming, typically with readings about matters around 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.
Those who use the term in association with those things are scolded and social media has been aggressive in punishing those who raise consciousness about grooming. “Grooming,” the scolds insist, only refers to the behavior of sexual predators seeking children to molest; it doesn’t apply to drag shows or classrooms festooned with pride and transgender flags. Those who disagree are censored, de-platformed, harassed, marginalized, punished, and even targeted with violence. The reaction is telling; 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.
In February of this year, I penned a blog on grooming that was built around cases reported in the news that indicated the problem. There, I argue that grooming is not only the activities of sexual predators but also the process by which individuals are induced into joining cults, as well as exploited by fraudsters. (See Seeing and Admitting Grooming.) A glitch prevented that essay from being posted in real time. Given the botched rollout, considering Twitter’s recent high-profile streaming of Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman? which I recently viewed (see Scientific Materialism and the Necessity of Noncircular Conceptual Definitions), and with the film The Sound of Freedom, a true story film that exposes the realities of child trafficking generating remarkable apologia from corporate state media, I thought it would be helpful to distill from that February blog a summary of my analysis of grooming sans cases and commentary. I hope this blog will be a useful guide to parents and others concerned about this issue.
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When talking about a sensitive matter such as child sexual abuse and sexualization, one expects that people want to know one’s background and expertise. Why am I qualified to address this issue? While I could appeal to being a parent, I think just being a moral and reasoning human being qualifies me to speak about the practice of manipulating and exploiting children. This sentiment was expressed well by Walsh at the 5:32 mark of his interrogation by Tennessee’s House Health Committee about a bill that would ban minors from receiving puberty blockers and other “gender-affirming care.”
But if being human is not enough, the reader might appreciate that I have an advanced social science degree with a specialization in criminology from the flagship campus of University of Tennessee at Knoxville. I have taught courses in criminology, criminal justice, and juvenile delinquency for more than a quarter of a century at different universities. In 2004, I published a scientific article in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma concerning the life-course effects of child sexual abuse. In 2014, I wrote the entry “Child Sexual Abuse” in Sage’s Encyclopedia of Social Deviance. Moreover, I have taught courses, given talks, and published essays on the sociology of religion, which qualifies me to speak about the related phenomenon of cult induction, which the sexual grooming of children under the LGBTQ banner not merely strongly resembles; the methods for both grooming children for sexualized exchanges and agendas and grooming individuals for induction into cults are essentially the same.
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Child sexual abuse is a form of criminal deviance involving inappropriate contact with an adolescent or a child. Child sexualization refers to the process of portraying or treating children in a sexualized manner beyond their developmental stage and age-appropriate boundaries. It involves the objectification and sexual objectification of children, where their appearance, behavior, or characteristics are emphasized in a way that is primarily focused on their sexual appeal and identity. Child sexualization can occur through various means, such as clothing choice, explicit conversations and interactions, as well as advertising and other media representation.
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. Sometimes children don’t realize they have been molested until later in the life when they are old enough to understand what happened to them or learn that what happened to them was sexual abuse.
Child sexualization is harmful and inappropriate as it undermines the healthy development, safety, and well-being of children. It can lead to numerous negative consequences, including distorted self-image, emotional and psychological harm, and low self-esteem. Child sexualization is further associated with sexual abuse and exploitation. If readers are wondering why so many girls are terrified of puberty, it is in part because of the way they are sexualized by the adults around them. It is essential to protect children from such practices and create an environment that promotes their healthy growth, where they are respected and treated as individuals deserving of dignity and protection, where they can live in the real world unclouded by the deception and lies of those who wish to use them for their own purposes.
There are several factors that play into the severity of the impact of sexual abuse. These include the duration, frequency, 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.
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 own research findings suggests that the likelihood of future sexual victimization, even into adulthood, is greater among those who have abused in the past. This is a process criminologists refer to as cumulative disadvantage.
As noted, 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 numerous and serious psychiatric conditions, including anxiety, cutting behaviors, depression, drug seeking and taking, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and various behavioral problems coded as conduct disorders, as well as withdrawal from social activity and frequent and intense associations with antisocial circles. It is therefore imperative for parents and others who safeguard children be on the lookout for signs of abuse and sexualization so they can intervene early or even stop the grooming before it starts. They should work with children to raise their self-esteem and steel them against those who would prey on their vulnerability and rob them of their innocence.
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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 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.
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 most 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. We have arrived at a point in the arc of the gender ideology project where perpetrators and their allies moving beyond stealth and working openly to make the practice of child sexual abuse and sexualization an acceptable practice. This appearance has led queer theorists to treat adult-child encounters as matters of consent.
This is not a new development, of course. Pat Califia 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.” What we are seeing is the project mainstreaming Califia’s sentiments, for instance in renaming of pedophiles “minor attracted persons,” or MAPS, increasingly paired with the label “adult attracted minors,” or AAMs. (I have a major essay pending that takes a deep dive into the history of queer theory and pedophilia.)
This is why grooming behavior is so important for parents and others 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 or a grooming situation so they can fight against the movement to openly sexualize children. However, 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.
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Given the horror of all of this, why is there a concerted effort to blind the public to the presence of grooming, an effort that has been rather successful given the decline of the term since its peak use several months ago.? 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 prominent trans identifying persons. e.g., Blaire White and Buck Angel, to the sexualization of children.
Last year at this time, 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 LGBTQ community and pedophilia. Most recently, Twitter de-boosted Walsh’s What is a Woman? claiming that it was “hate speech” until Musk pushed out the movie using his own Twitter feed.
“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 addressing the banning of the term “groomer,” during the pre-Musk era. “For this reason, we prohibit behavior that targets individuals or groups with abuse based on their perceived membership in a protected category.” This policy has been changed, but the Walsh incident tells us that some at Twitter are still attempting to reign in awareness of LGBTQ child-centric activities.
In effect, then, social media has collaborated with those who deny grooming behavior when occurring under the cover of LGBTQ activism. While care should be taken in attributing to all members of that community the actions of some who rationalize their behavior (and whether LGBTQ is a community at all has been cogently challenged by openly gay social critics Douglas Murray and Andrew Sullivan, among others), 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 trans activists have 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. Yet, 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.
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What concerns parents and others is that the typical age of the children involved in these activities is between four and eight years old, 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, whether as untruths or problematic conceptions about the world or manipulation, 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. (I should note that The Sound of Freedom was shelved for several years after Disney bought the 20th Century Fox movie studio that was set to distribute the film back in 2019.)
It’s not Disney executive producer Latoya Raveneau “not so secret gay agenda” that’s the problem. There’s nothing wrong with homosexuality. It’s the act of “adding queerness” wherever she can to is at issue. 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, Sullivan, 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.
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 for the same reason. Children are adamant about this, and their intuition is an evolved trait (see Neutralizing the Gender-Detection Brain Module). 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’s Junior Achievement programmers) 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.
It is typical of the grooming argument that transcultural/historical indicators of innate gender sensibilities represent a problematic grand narrative, that really gender is culturally and temporally circumscribed activities and genders, gender is not 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 truth, sex and gender are the same thing. See Sex and Gender are Interchangeable Terms.) Groomers, desperate to get to children with sexualizing language, argue that keeping kids away from discussing gender identity confuses them about their own sexuality. In fact, it is the other way around. Groomers attempt to establish a self-fulfilling prophecy and then reverse 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. Obviously transitioning gender is a form of conversion therapy, on that is profoundly patriarchal and heterosexist. This contradiction escapes people because they have been conditioned with prior false assumptions and, also because because of party and tribal affiliation, have a priori accepted the validity of gender ideology.
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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 called 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. The reality is that public school teachers are line workers in an industrial process of education where corporate state administrators develop and impose curricula on children designed to prepare them for life in corporate bureaucracies. Children are taught to follow orders, not challenge authority, and teachers are trained to entertain children in such a manner as to short-circuit their critical thinking abilities and increase the likelihood that students will fall in love with the teacher. The system is set up for grooming.
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.
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freedom and reason 