Talk:groomer

RFV discussion: December 2022–February 2023
RFV-sense "an LGBT person" just added by an IP. The current cites are mentions (and don't support the claimed definition, as they only mention that LGBT people are slurred with accusations of grooming, they don't AFAICT say "groomer" is defined as "an LGBT person"). AFAICT, when priests project that gay people are pedophiles or groomers or are grooming or converting children, or that providing healthcare to twentysomethings is child abuse — it seems like they mean those words in the usual sense, even if they're wrong and trying to be insulting, rather than that all of those words have acquired a second definition,, , etc, because I don't think the terms can refer to "an LGBT person" outside of accusing the person of what the term usually means. But perhaps cites will show otherwise. - -sche (discuss) 21:47, 16 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Never heard it in that sense and the two citations do not support that definition. The contemporary American online use is sense 5, "One who grooms, or attempts to gain the trust of a minor etc. in order to exploit them."  If we need a new definition it would be along the lines of, "An adult who talks inappropriately about sexual topics with children."    Vox Sciurorum (talk) 21:57, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
 * It makes one see the advantage as a definition of "One that grooms", which is what one finds in the OneLook dictionaries that bother to have any entry for groomer. There's also the advantage that one doesn't need to manually coordinate the two entries, not to mention the absence of need for citations for each trivial definition of groomer. Verbs are also harder than nouns to define offensively. DCDuring (talk) 02:30, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Speedied, until citations are given, this is more likely just trolling/vandalism. - TheDaveRoss  20:59, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
 * @loaxxere has added cites; however I disagree with the fact that they qualify. The definition is extraordinarily shaky, doesn’t warrant a separate line, and doesn’t address the fact that the term is also mainly directed towards drag queens which may or may not be LGBTQ+, as the second cite illustrates. Also AFAIK, Fox News (and NBC for that matter) does not have a print version, so it’d need to be voted upon like Vox and HuffPost were, and honestly I still don’t know how I feel about tweets being cited through online news for this purpose, but that’s for a consensus to decide upon. AG202 (talk) 18:48, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree that none of the cites support the claimed meaning; they're all just accusing the people in question of grooming in the usual sense. Indeed, some of the same people do accuse their targets of groom ing , or of being pedophiles, etc etc, as I pointed out above—it's not lexical to the word "groomer". - -sche (discuss) 20:00, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I disagree - if they were being used as direct insults then you might have a point, but they're being used as descriptors to refer to specific groups. From context, it's pretty clear that they aren't being used only to exclusively refer to those who are grooming children. Quite frankly, it would be dishonest of us to pretend that this word does not get used to refer to LGBT people as a whole, because the entire point of the sleight of hand is to intentionally paint all LGBT people as being child groomers. Theknightwho (talk) 20:32, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The word as a whole is a mess to even start defining. Like I mentioned on Discord, the usage is a mess, people claim that it doesn’t apply to all LGBTQ+ people and then the folks it’s directed towards are often random or targets of doxxing. The only group that I’ve seen directly targeted over and over are drag queens, which again may not be LGBT to begin with. Also as someone who’s queer and knows folks who were directly affected by incidents nearby and have had direct threats, I am not pretending nor am I being dishonest in what I’ve been describing. I just A. Don’t think that it’ll be easy nor clear to define, B. Don’t think that it’s necessarily a separate sense, and C. On a personal note, don’t want the project to give cadence or legitimacy to this “movement” AG202 (talk) 21:15, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Also as seen here, these attacks are not even limited to those who are LGBTQ+. AG202 (talk) 21:57, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * And crucially, the attacks take the form of accusing the targets of grooming — they're not using "groomer" to mean "queer person", they're using "groomer" to mean "person who engages in [activity that the speaker views as] grooming", and accusing their targets, which may include individual- or all- queer people, of that (usually wrongly, and sometimes even knowingly wrongly just to tar them, but nonetheless intentionally). Just like they accuse those targets of being pedophiles, of groom ing  or pedophilia, etc, or accuse other targets (e.g. Democrats) of being unpatriotic, etc: it's not a lexical characteristic of the words groomer, grooming, groom, pedophile, pedophilia, and pedophilic, just like we shouldn't add a definition "# Belonging to the Democratic Party of the United States" to unpatriotic. They also believe queerness and transness (and drag, etc) is inherently sexual and/or a kink, and even pass laws to that effect, while saying straightness and cisness is normal and there's nothing sexual about insisting a small boy is a ladykiller and stud or making girls kneel to check that their skirts are the right length, etc, ... but we shouldn't add "# Queer or trans." as a sense to sexual, either. - -sche (discuss) 22:27, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I could see having a usage note about how slurring certain people (if we can sort out the issues above of who, exactly) with accusations of grooming has become a thing, similar to the usage notes we have at globalist and uppity. There are some other words that might benefit from usage notes, too (perhaps articulate). - -sche (discuss) 22:52, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The difference between a slur and literal language is intent: when anti-LGBTQ activists say "groomer", they are using it as a dogwhistle because they understand exactly how it will be understood by their base. The point of having a dogwhistle is that they can rail against "the groomers" all they like, maintaining plausible deniability, while still being understood exactly by the target audience., by failing to recognize this, you're playing into the hands of these people (which I assume is not your goal).
 * Even if you will never be turned on this, the fact is that multiple reliable sources have declared "groomer" to be an anti-LGBTQ slur    and I don't see why we shouldn't be reflecting this in a descriptive dictionary. Ioaxxere (talk) 00:13, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Those are not reliable sources for the meaning. An editorial in the Times by somebody who claims to have been groomed (traditional sense) and does not want the word to be weakened by overuse.  The Atlantic article only mentions it in passing: "the slur groomer".  They provide evidence that some uses of groomer cause offense, but any perceived-as-false accusation of sexual grooming is liable to cause offense.  If you want to know what it means you ask the people who use it, not the people who are offended by it.  I think it means "sexual groomer" or "acting like a sexual groomer", not "he sticks his dick in other guys".  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 00:48, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * If you want to know what it means you ask the people who use it, not the people who are offended by it.
 * We're a descriptive dictionary, not a prescriptive one. We describe terms as they are actually used, and shouldn't take dog-whistles at face value. Theknightwho (talk) 06:47, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * A slur isn't the same as any term which happens to cause offense. Ioaxxere (talk) 20:36, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Funnily enough I’ve seen those sources, and I’m quite aware that it’s a dogwhistle, please do not assume what I do or do not know. Again, I’ve witnessed this firsthand and do not appreciate those sorts of claims. And then again, I still disagree that we as a project need to have this term, but more relevantly, as shown, the usage is not limited to nor has it been applied to all LGBTQ+ people, which makes defining it a lot harder. AG202 (talk) 00:53, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Exactly. Those who use the term are concerned about the over-sexualization of children and see the so-called "groomers" as pushing an agenda that is harmful for children's psychology and sexuality. Whether or not it's accurate, they perceive the "grooming" as abusive. It's a rhetorical use of the term in order to paint one side as being bad (just like the "Don't Say Gay" catchphrase was used to grossly misrepresent the actual concerns of proponents of the bill in question). I see this as being very much in line with the tendency of labelling people to the left and right of you on the political spectrum, "commies" or "nazis" regardless of whether that's even remotely true in a strict, literal sense. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:54, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * And that "grooming" just so happens to consist of "anything that acknowledges LGBT people's existence in any way", which means they level the accusation en masse against LGBT people themselves. It's clearly deceptive, and we should not take that at face value. Theknightwho (talk) 06:45, 28 December 2022 (UTC)


 * See, I agree that "when anti-LGBTQ activists say 'groomer', they are using it as a dogwhistle because they understand exactly how it will be understood", but I think adding a definition accepting their POV that groomers are definitionally LGBT and that being LGBT or a drag queen makes a person a groomer [in some sense] is what'd be playing into their hands, which I likewise assume is not your goal. The dog whistle is something to have a usage note about like at globalist, but IMO it operates at the level of concepts not words, since they convey the same thing when instead of groomer they say e.g. that they don't want kids [teens in high school] to learn about sexual topics : their side understands they don't want a drag event or for a teacher to have a picture of him and his husband on his desk, but a teacher talking about how he'll be away because his wife is having a baby (because they had sex) is fine. In the UK, they rail that trans women existing is erasing lesbians, and never doubt that their desire to eliminate the visibility or existence of trans or cis lesbians is fine. They rail against immigrants (or immigration, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, people coming here from other countries) flooding the US, and their side understands they're not coming for blondes from Norway, they're after brown folks, including ones who were born in the US and never migrated ("anchor babies!" etc). They rail against looters and rioters when brown folks taking food from stores after a hurricane, not when white folks taking food from stores after a hurricane, and when brown folks block a street to protest for racial justice, but not when white folks torch cars to celebrate a sports game. It'd be a good idea to add usage notes to some of these words warning about the dog-whistle connotations, but I'm not convinced that outright redefining the words would be the right approach. BTW, they seem to regard the people who host drag shows in their venues (...or run discreet Trevor Project helplines...or provide healthcare...etc), who may be straight/cis and not themselves drag performers, as likewise grooming and exploiting or sexualizing [potentially twenty-year-old-] kids, so this use of groomer doesn't even seem to be limited to LGBT people or drag queens, it's "anyone who is introducing anyone we think of as children to anything we think of as inappropriately sexual" combined with their notion of what counts as inappropriately sexual (and who counts as children). - -sche (discuss) 06:26, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I think it does the precise opposite of playing into their hands, by making it very clear what their deceptive accusations are in reality. Theknightwho (talk) 06:40, 28 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Hmm... the conviction of the people arguing that this is lexical is making me less sure that it's not; I'm persuaded to change my opinion/!vote to "abstain", re whether at least some citations support a sense in this vein, assuming we figure out how we'd define it — it seems to include cis/het people if they're doing something significant to inform kids about the existence of LGBT people. (Assuming these have made it into a similar number of durable sources,) we'd need to expand groom#Verb and grooming#Noun too, and sexual, and sexualize — just today I saw [//i.imgur.com/RyQnIhv.jpg this meme] pointing out how they rail against "sexualizing children" and know that their side understands they only mean "acknowledging that some kids and teens or adults are queer" (e.g. showing queer kids holding hands), but that acknowledging straight relationships is fine. But do these words definitionally mean a specific sexual orientation for them, in the way straight or lesbian does? Or, if they would define groomer, sexualize, etc in a similar way to other people and are just taking, albeit perhaps consciously and intentionally, a skewed stance on what counts as sexual, is that a matter of definitions (as opposed to usage notes)? Hmm, maybe it is, if they're (functionally) defining e.g. sexual differently. (Regardless, there seem to be enough sources that we should write a usage note; perhaps I'll take a crack at that later.) - -sche (discuss) 08:54, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
 * To me the uses seem to show groomer being used as a predicate, in the nature of an accusation, for some members of whatever grouping of LGBTQ+ folks it is applied to, rather than as a hyponym, let alone as a synonym. DCDuring (talk) 16:15, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
 * It could be perhaps a difficult judgement to make if a usage is still in the process of lexicalisation. I do not wish to weigh in on this matter, but here are two articles quoting an older attestation:  ←₰-→  Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  19:39, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Currently no consensus either way, and the default is usually to Keep. Calling this one ✅. Ioaxxere (talk) 19:19, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

RFV Passed. Ioaxxere (talk) 22:14, 27 February 2023 (UTC)