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Won’t Somebody Think of the Children

Laura Jedeed
7 min readApr 14, 2022

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Dispatches from the Gay Agenda

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It’s Thursday. Let’s talk about the children.

Why not? No one can shut up about the children lately. I truly did not think I could hate Twitter more than I already did until my timeline became wall-to-wall discourse of pedophelia and child marriage. I’m used to Twitter being profoundly stupid. I’m not used to it being abhorrent.

I pray that some of you remain ignorant of this, somehow, and apologize for what I’m about to explain: it has, in recent weeks, become popular among certain people on the right to accuse anyone who exposes children to obscene literature of “grooming.” By obscene literature, they mean anything that acknowledges the existence of sex, gay relationships, or trans people.

Until this horrific trend took hold, the word “grooming” in the context of abuse meant cultivating a trusting, emotionally deep relationship with a child, then using that relationship to manipulate the child into sexual contact.

This is, fascinatingly, not the way the right is using the term. Instead, they believe these groomers work to normalize sexual behaviors and activities so that children are primed to fall victim to any adult who might take advantage of them.

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Laura Jedeed
Laura Jedeed

Written by Laura Jedeed

Freelance journalist, filthy pleb. Politics mostly. Find my work at NYMag, Politico, Rolling Stone, New Republic, and https://bannedinyourstate.com

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