The thing a lot of the people who keep returning to that post to yell YUH HUH ADULTS ARE GROOMED donât get is that Iâm actually trying to advocate for children too, here. I work in Trust and Safety, which is a largely digital field devoted to all things terrible you can do online: terrorism, self-harm, and, of course, CSAM and CSA, which are my career speciality. Iâm considered an expert in my field. I helped to build anti-abuse tooling that the (Biden) White House shouted out as a revolutionary step forward in combating grooming online. I was part of the team who first ousted and identified the people and behaviors behind 764, a really hideous ring of abusers whom I donât recommend you look up unless you have a strong stomach. Some of the arrests in those cases are directly my doing.
Simultaneously, Iâm an adult who, in my spare time, enjoys engaging in adult fiction spaces. As a result of that, I have, unfortunately, been shouted at a decent number of times by young adults (18-25 seems to be the common range) about children, and their well being, and how what happens in adult fiction spaces causes harm to children, and themselves by proxy. (Iâve also been yelled at by actual children, but Iâm happy to ignore them, given many of them have been influenced by the previously mentioned young adults to behave that way.)
âGroomingâ isnât truly a technical term, though my industry uses it as one often. It doesnât have a precise definition or pattern of behavior beyond âinappropriate conduct with a child.â Itâs had other uses, of course, like saying someone was âgroomed to inherit a titleâ or similar. But generally what we mean online is âthis has to do with child abuse.â
Children are, no joke, one of the most uniquely oppressed classes of human being in the world. Most of the time, they simply have no recourse, no legal right to self-advocate, no ability to retain counsel, choose their own living environment, what they do, how they dress, what they eat. To even report their own abuse â which I assure you, most children are perfectly aware is abuse â they must first be believed by an adult, who may then choose to do something on the childâs behalf, or not. Any option a child has for safety or freedom of choice is entirely dependent on an adult deigning to humor them in the first place.
When you turn the age of majority in your country, you are automatically given a new set of legal and social rights. Even a severely disabled adult, in most places, may advocate for their rights on the basis of their legal adulthood. (There are constant failures here by the legal system, of course, but the point is that you are allowed to advocate in the first place.) You become a different class of person, who can do and ask for things that children are simply not allowed to.
When you try to say that âadults can be groomed,â by bringing up all kinds of random possibilities like âwell what about cultsâ âwhat about age gaps and different levels of life experienceâ âwhat about this or that,â youâre still ignoring the idea that the exploited adult has recourse, in those situations (again, leaving out that there are many failings with the system that allows that recourse does not eliminate the fact that recourse is an option.) Restraining orders. Moving away. Going no contact, with no parent to force you to continue to see that person on holidays. Even if you are young, you are not helpless. You have an agency allowed to you that children simply are not given.
Of course, an 18 year old can be abused and exploited. And I absolutely am wary of a 19 year old dating a 40 year old â personally, I question the shit out of that. Iâd even suspect that that 19 year old was previously groomed in some way. But the distinction is important to me, here, not to diminish the abuse that young adults can face, but to ensure that the plight of children is properly understood.
Children matter to me. Their harms and their rights matter to me. And just as I find it reprehensible to compare the fictional behaviors of fictional characters to real world harm, I am frustrated with the constant need to insist that young adults are on the same harm level as children are. It is the very opposite of âwho gives a shit about kids and young people suffering.â
