Speaker 1: Welcome to It could happen here the podcast where we
Speaker 1: spend all of our time talking about skincare now personally
Speaker 1: and a lot of people say this is a bad idea.
Speaker 1: I enjoy using concentrated chlorine with a little bit of ammonia. Um,
Speaker 1: it just cleans the pores, It cleans the grout, It
Speaker 1: gets all of that pesky code out of your lungs. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, an entire generation of British and German and
Speaker 1: French boys all agree chlorine gas does the trick. How
Speaker 1: are we doing? What's this episode about? Hi, welcome Welcome
Speaker 1: to It could happen here? A podcast about things falling
Speaker 1: apart and how we can maybe put them back together.
Speaker 1: I'm Garrison, Um, I'll be I'll be leading leading this
Speaker 1: sod um with me is as as Chris and uh
Speaker 1: this this random person that we brought on from the
Speaker 1: street named Robert yep Um, and we'll be talking about
Speaker 1: some things that are not great and kind of current problem.
Speaker 1: So I I spent I spent a lot of my
Speaker 1: formative youth lurking, studying and kind of documenting some of
Speaker 1: the some of some of the bad places on the internet,
Speaker 1: you know, Nazi chat, rooms, chance sites, Facebook, hate group
Speaker 1: you know whatever, all all of all the things, um,
Speaker 1: and you know, growing up in Portland, Oregon in like
Speaker 1: the twenty teens, this was this was something that felt
Speaker 1: kind of foisted upon me as as a kid discovering
Speaker 1: my own queerness and coming out of an extremely homophobic,
Speaker 1: like insular Christian community. Um. Meanwhile in Portland's having you know,
Speaker 1: self described fascist march alongside gay hating Christians on my
Speaker 1: city streets, Nazis murdering people on our public transit. You
Speaker 1: know that. Uh, that that that that put a lot
Speaker 1: of fellow fellow scrawny gay kids uh to put on
Speaker 1: black black cuti symball oklavas to mason fight far right
Speaker 1: extremists that were like two or three times their size. Um.
Speaker 1: But the problem is, of course, what what what one
Speaker 1: d pounds? Depressed teens aren't aren't necessarily the best brawlers,
Speaker 1: um under under some circumstances, although they can handle uh
Speaker 1: fire extinguisher filled with paint pretty well. That's true. But
Speaker 1: a lot of us also started doing like online research
Speaker 1: and stuff, um to find like the names of dresses
Speaker 1: of like fascists and members of hate groups and all
Speaker 1: all that kind of all kind that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I I still remember the kind of the the thrill
Speaker 1: and the buzz of my first like big find as
Speaker 1: as a as a baby online lurker. Um it was
Speaker 1: I think it was. It was the leader of the
Speaker 1: hell shaking Street Preachers who was living at the time,
Speaker 1: fucking prick that that was. That was the first guy
Speaker 1: I did. UM, And I remember being very excited being
Speaker 1: because yeah he was he was a massive asshole of so, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's like a you know, very extremely homophobics quote
Speaker 1: unquote street preacher, just a big old show. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: a lot of like this, like online research work wasn't
Speaker 1: wasn't just crush referencing social media posts with the white pages,
Speaker 1: property records, and voter registrations to send nice postcards to
Speaker 1: hate group members. Uh. Time was often spent tracking the
Speaker 1: use of like memes and cataloging and sharing fascists plans
Speaker 1: for projects and events, keeping keeping tabs on like their
Speaker 1: current propaganda trends that online white supremacists were. We're trying
Speaker 1: to we're trying to push and um. One of one
Speaker 1: of the things that I came across about about two
Speaker 1: years ago was called Operation Pridefall. This was this is
Speaker 1: one of the one of the one of one of
Speaker 1: these like it was an organized campaign ran by people
Speaker 1: on Fortune, Discord, and Telegram. I I came across it
Speaker 1: a few a few days after the the plans were
Speaker 1: published online. And if you already know what Operation Pridefall
Speaker 1: is or or heard that term before, uh. And if
Speaker 1: you're you know, like me and we're on similar online spaces,
Speaker 1: you've you've probably found the past few months of antiqueer propaganda,
Speaker 1: the massive increase in the gay and transpeople are groomer
Speaker 1: ship and the shutters can get pride discourse to be
Speaker 1: all very very predictable, a strangely familiar, like the worst
Speaker 1: case of deja vu, and in large part of the
Speaker 1: result of years of work behind the scenes by social
Speaker 1: engineering online bigoted trolls and self described fascists. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna talk today about kind of the overlap
Speaker 1: between this this thing called Operation Pridefall, uh, the groomer
Speaker 1: discourse and how that kind of feeds into can get
Speaker 1: pride discourse. So three things that are not great, that
Speaker 1: don't go great but actually do kind of go great together.
Speaker 1: So a first, first of all, a little a little
Speaker 1: background on the whole recent Groomer thing, because we haven't
Speaker 1: actually discussed the Groomer stuff in depth on the pod yet,
Speaker 1: haven't you know why we haven't. I'd be like, whenever
Speaker 1: like horrible things happened in the news, I try to
Speaker 1: push back on just releasing an episode immediately covering it
Speaker 1: in case we have something like actually good to say.
Speaker 1: Um So, we've kind of waited to talk about the
Speaker 1: group of discourse stuff for a long time. Um And
Speaker 1: I think now is is totally is totally fine to
Speaker 1: do so because we've had we've had months to let it, uh,
Speaker 1: to let it simmer, look at like the types of
Speaker 1: things they're encouraging, look at all of like the physical
Speaker 1: action they're trying to do. And with Pride Month approaching,
Speaker 1: we're going to see a resurgence of it in the
Speaker 1: next few weeks here. Um So, as mentioned in our
Speaker 1: in our week long War on Transpeople episodes which was
Speaker 1: released like right before the new wave of the Groomer ship,
Speaker 1: accelerate it. But in those episodes, we talked about the
Speaker 1: long history of conservatives and evangelical organizations promoting the false
Speaker 1: narrative targeted at parents, and like concerned citizens that gay people,
Speaker 1: especially gay men, are more likely to be child predators
Speaker 1: than their heterosexual counterparts, along with the idea that queer
Speaker 1: people are out to quote, groom you're definitely on straight
Speaker 1: child into being gay, right, uh so in insinuating that
Speaker 1: that that they can then like have sex with them
Speaker 1: or something. Um, it's but yeah, they're trying to scare
Speaker 1: parents to be like gay people are out to get
Speaker 1: your kids. Um. So it's the actual like idea of
Speaker 1: what being a groomer means changes based on who you're
Speaker 1: talking to. Um. In part two, I'm gonna going to
Speaker 1: quote a conservative writer who like admits this as as such,
Speaker 1: but still defends the use of the term um because
Speaker 1: at the very least, if they used grooming within the
Speaker 1: context of turning your again absolutely completely heterosexual child totally
Speaker 1: um into a gay person. Thus they would, you know,
Speaker 1: begin to hate you and resent you as a parent
Speaker 1: for your godly Christian values. They also consider that grooming, Um,
Speaker 1: it's not, it's not. It's not actually just as a
Speaker 1: general rule, the attitude as if they do not turn
Speaker 1: out to be the exact kind of weirdo Christian as
Speaker 1: their parents they were groomed by somebody and it's merely
Speaker 1: a matter of picking the topic of the person to blame. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And all of that sort of rhetoric was extremely popular
Speaker 1: through like the eighties and nineties and the early two
Speaker 1: thousand's UM. But then came the knots in the twenty
Speaker 1: teens and this this this kind of had an attitude
Speaker 1: shift and some of that started to go away. We
Speaker 1: got we got queer eye, we got ellen. The rate
Speaker 1: of conversion therapy started to decline. It was getting banned
Speaker 1: in more states. There was more queer acceptance in certain
Speaker 1: in certain sects of the church, even of course the
Speaker 1: gay marriage went national, and eventually being like aggressively homophobic
Speaker 1: became like not a good look. It did. It was
Speaker 1: not you were not able to do that anymore, um
Speaker 1: and still be able to have and and and and
Speaker 1: do it as like nonchalantly as you were as you
Speaker 1: used to be able to, whether that's in your like
Speaker 1: TV show, or whether that's you as a corporation UM
Speaker 1: or you know, some random other sectors of public life.
Speaker 1: But then, of course Trump got elected year after gay
Speaker 1: marriage went national, and then there's this resurgence in far
Speaker 1: right extremism and the more commonly accepted kind of nonchalant
Speaker 1: gay bashing of old gets passed down to the next
Speaker 1: freak down the line, which is trans people. So with that,
Speaker 1: the the adage of like the disgusting groomer freaks are
Speaker 1: going to turn your kids gay turns into the gender
Speaker 1: ideology freaks are going to turn your kids trans. It's
Speaker 1: all the same stuff, just passed on to the next,
Speaker 1: to the next thing. Um. And so we have that
Speaker 1: like anti trans and therefore anti queer hate festering for
Speaker 1: a few years, and this inevitably opens up the door
Speaker 1: just a revival of classic homophobia. Um. Even even liberals
Speaker 1: like Friend of the pot at J. K. Rowling um
Speaker 1: and lots of the original turfs got to apply the
Speaker 1: same homophobic rhetoric to trans people, um and gender nonconforming folks,
Speaker 1: which then obviously results in that propaganda and rhetoric being
Speaker 1: used to attack LGBTQ people on a whole once again.
Speaker 1: So it's it's resurrecting these old homo tropes and just
Speaker 1: applying it to a new generation of queer people. Um.
Speaker 1: And uh So for this next part, we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about lives of TikTok because they did play
Speaker 1: a big, a big part in what's what some current
Speaker 1: discourses today. And I promise we'll get to Operation Pride
Speaker 1: Fall here shortly, just just hanging there with me. But
Speaker 1: before we talk about again, other friend of the pod,
Speaker 1: Lives of TikTok Um, do you know what else it
Speaker 1: wants to turn your kids gay? Oh? Are you talking
Speaker 1: about the Washington State Highway Patrol? Because yes, they absolutely do. Garrison.
Speaker 1: That's the one guarante the Washington State Highway Patrol makes.
Speaker 1: They'll make your kids gay. Okay, Lives of TikTok joins
Speaker 1: the fight today. God and I let's just take a
Speaker 1: moment to acknowledge how fucking frustrating it is that we
Speaker 1: have to discuss seriously TikTok that it matters, like the worst.
Speaker 1: It's terrible. It's terrible. People always criticize the show and
Speaker 1: being like why do they talk about all these dumb
Speaker 1: social media things? So like, yes, I know that they're stupid,
Speaker 1: but the bad part is that they actually matter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe, yeah, we talked about him because of
Speaker 1: the seventeen year old trans girl in Texas who just
Speaker 1: got assaulted by like five dudes, because she was blamed
Speaker 1: on the shooting, and she was blamed for the shooting
Speaker 1: because in part of a lot of ship that lives
Speaker 1: of TikTok helped to stir stir up because they proved
Speaker 1: there was a market for it, that if you're like
Speaker 1: a right wing shit grifter, attacking trans people is a
Speaker 1: great way to get an engagement. Anyway, Sorry, Garrison, Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: Lips of TikTok is a social media account turned to
Speaker 1: social media campaign started in April one by a Brooklyn
Speaker 1: area real estate agent named Chaia Chickum, who, by the way,
Speaker 1: attended the January six attempted fascist insurrection. Um when when
Speaker 1: when violence broke out that day at the Capitol, she
Speaker 1: actually tweeted a play by play on a previous Twitter
Speaker 1: account of hers, uh posting videos from the crowd and
Speaker 1: the talking about tear gas and rubber bullets being like
Speaker 1: shot right next to her. Um. And then after she
Speaker 1: left the riot, she she tweeted on Twitter that uh
Speaker 1: that the the event was peaceful compared to a BLM protest.
Speaker 1: So that's yes, anyway, five five people died. We you know,
Speaker 1: we we've we've we've now reached the party were now
Speaker 1: in tragedy of as farce of the thing that happens
Speaker 1: in every single state that goes fascist, where all the
Speaker 1: fascist trying to do a coop when it fails and
Speaker 1: then nothing happens and then they take over the state,
Speaker 1: like serously our version of that instead of like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, weird fascist yakuta guys, it's the libs of TikTok.
Speaker 1: It is the limbs of TikTok. So the limbs of
Speaker 1: TikTok was around like the third attempt by right check
Speaker 1: to start a vital social media account. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the saying three times the charm, but in this case
Speaker 1: it actually was. So the account's gimmick is reposting and
Speaker 1: often grossly misrepresenting select clips from quote unquote libs on
Speaker 1: TikTok a big big shocker, big big surprise. Uh. But
Speaker 1: more often than not, that really just means posting videos
Speaker 1: of queer kids and transpeople, uh, captioning it with something reactionary,
Speaker 1: and then leading a targeted harassment campaign against those individuals.
Speaker 1: On on May thirty one, so just about a year ago,
Speaker 1: she made her first grooming related post, just tweeting stop
Speaker 1: grooming kids and all caps this is the first time
Speaker 1: she tweeted anything related to grooming um. The day before that,
Speaker 1: she tweeted a video of a transperson um alongside the
Speaker 1: vomit emoji and a caption that just says men should
Speaker 1: not wear dresses. You can't change my mind. Her first
Speaker 1: super viral video related to LGBTQ people was later in
Speaker 1: June next month during Pride, by posting a TikTok of
Speaker 1: a kid explaining the concept of gender fluidity. Pretty pretty
Speaker 1: basic concept. Uh, but she lives lives a TikTok commented,
Speaker 1: this is so messed up in so many ways. Her
Speaker 1: Her post racked up half a million views and indicated
Speaker 1: to her that the way to grow her little social
Speaker 1: media project into a right wing viral sensation was going
Speaker 1: to be with homophobia and transphobia. Uh that this is
Speaker 1: how she decided to continue her online career. Essentially, she
Speaker 1: called the prominent lgbt Q youth suicide prevention group the
Speaker 1: Trevor prod Eject a grooming organization, and towards the end
Speaker 1: of two she kept using that term grooming groomer uh
Speaker 1: at A at an ever increasing rate. Right It's it
Speaker 1: starts starts in like May and June continues throughout the
Speaker 1: summer and fall, and then in the fall and winter
Speaker 1: she starts really kicking up all of the stuff around
Speaker 1: around grooming and queer people. I mean, all of her
Speaker 1: posts are already mostly about trans people and like trans
Speaker 1: people at schools. Obviously she was a big part of
Speaker 1: like the the whole school board thing from last year.
Speaker 1: So but towards the end one though, is when the
Speaker 1: groomer things started becoming more of a recurring trend quoting
Speaker 1: quoting slate uh. Towards the end of one and into
Speaker 1: the new year, right Check found her rhythm with memes
Speaker 1: and videos calling LGBTQ people and those who supported l
Speaker 1: g b t Q youth quote unquote groomers. She has
Speaker 1: even attempted to smear one of the most prominent game
Speaker 1: and in the country as a groomer. Uh. In a
Speaker 1: deleted tweet, right Check's account accused Transportation Secretary Secretary Pete's
Speaker 1: husband Chastin, of grooming kids for his work at at
Speaker 1: supporting lgbt Q youth organizations. This isn't fair, but I
Speaker 1: hate that his name is Chastin. I know, I don't
Speaker 1: like I don't like that name. I don't like that name.
Speaker 1: I'm not a big I'm not a Chaston's stand either,
Speaker 1: but but but yeah, it's like finding the most prominent
Speaker 1: libby gay men and being like, hey, these people probably
Speaker 1: groom kids, and you know that that obviously riles up
Speaker 1: their base. Um. She's she's called for any teacher who
Speaker 1: comes out as gay to their students to be quote
Speaker 1: fired on the spot. Uh, which actually has happened since then.
Speaker 1: Uh has has has happened multiple times since since since
Speaker 1: this account has been has been launched. UM. The account's
Speaker 1: popularity grew alongside last year's racist, homophobic, and transphobic attacks
Speaker 1: on school boards across the country. She would often posting
Speaker 1: videos of queer teachers and lying about them grooming kids
Speaker 1: into being gay or whatever. She was promoting organized harassment
Speaker 1: campaigns against those teachers. Uh interspersed with tweets and screenshots
Speaker 1: of news articles about teachers who sexually assaulted students, importantly
Speaker 1: not posting the article, but just like a screenshot of
Speaker 1: the headline, along with comments like funny, how this keeps happening?
Speaker 1: Which is like neglects to mention that like all these
Speaker 1: incidents are from heterosexual teachers uh, or like that one
Speaker 1: story from last year of a cop and his wife
Speaker 1: who was a teacher working together to sexually abused children,
Speaker 1: Like none of them are actually about gay people. It's all.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not certain if a school resource officer
Speaker 1: has ever stopped a mass shooting, but I know that
Speaker 1: something like fifty of them have been fired from a
Speaker 1: lesting kids. Yeah. It's it's it's it's really it's really
Speaker 1: insidious because she's she's posting all this to about, you know,
Speaker 1: teachers grooming kids, uh, you know, and into being like
Speaker 1: queer teachers grooming kids, like alongside headlines of teachers actually
Speaker 1: assault like sexually sexually assaulting kids, but those headlines are
Speaker 1: all of stories about heterosexual teachers. Like but you know,
Speaker 1: so she posts both of those things. So it's like
Speaker 1: to like to have this correlation for her audience despite
Speaker 1: them not actually being related. Because yeah, lives of TikTok
Speaker 1: Shore ain't posting about how cops should be kept away
Speaker 1: from kids for the safety of the children. Um, they're
Speaker 1: they're they're they're never going to post about how many
Speaker 1: people who can grooming stuff have been arrested because like
Speaker 1: several of the organizers of of of this whole like
Speaker 1: gave people like grooming kids, things like have been arrested
Speaker 1: for child abuse since this started, which yeah, no it's not,
Speaker 1: it's never it's never gonna matter. But you know, posting
Speaker 1: and lying about queer teachers grooming children next to headlines
Speaker 1: about teachers sexually abusing kids to manufacture this correlation, which
Speaker 1: is of course false, but it's still highly effective. Now.
Speaker 1: Believe me. I would love to not talk about Twitter nonsense,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately Twitter accounts like lips of TikTok actually do
Speaker 1: play a massive role in shaping offline conservative politics. Lips
Speaker 1: of TikTok was very soon being interviewed by New York Post,
Speaker 1: being boosted by Joe Rogan going on Tucker Carlson. Other
Speaker 1: Fox News hosts like Jesse Waters began featuring content straight
Speaker 1: from the lips of TikTok twitter feed, uh and Tucker
Speaker 1: encouraged his viewers to follow the account before it's a band.
Speaker 1: If you want to know, quote what may be happening
Speaker 1: in your child's school. Lass March, when lips of TikTok
Speaker 1: posted the video of a woman teaching sex ed to
Speaker 1: kids in Kentucky, like you know, preteens or whatever, she
Speaker 1: called the woman a predator. In the next evening, the
Speaker 1: same clip was featured on Laura Ingram's Fox News program,
Speaker 1: with the host saying, when did our school, any of
Speaker 1: any schools become essential become what are essentially grooming centers
Speaker 1: for a gender identity radicals. Um so, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the content straight from lista TikTok being put onto the
Speaker 1: most watched news programs in the world. Um and as
Speaker 1: we'll see, also being taken in by some of the
Speaker 1: most powerful conservative politicians. Mainstream conservative politicians quickly joined in
Speaker 1: in the tuting of the lips of TikTok grooming. Horn
Speaker 1: Uh obviously wrote around as Santis is a big, big
Speaker 1: part of this, of one of Florida Governor Rhda Santis's
Speaker 1: top aids and press secretary is a huge fan of
Speaker 1: lips of TikTok um and is in frequent communication with them.
Speaker 1: Quoting the Washington Post quote by March two, lips of
Speaker 1: TikTok was directly impacting legislation, Rhonda santiss Press secretary Christina
Speaker 1: Pershaw credited the account with quote opening her eyes and
Speaker 1: informing her views on the state's restrictive legislation that bands
Speaker 1: discussion of sexuality or gender identity in kindergarten through third
Speaker 1: grade referred to critics as they don't say gay bill.
Speaker 1: The bill has been unquote. So this bill has has
Speaker 1: already been used to get middle school teachers fired for
Speaker 1: for for saying that they are not straight. Um, and
Speaker 1: you'll notice that middle school is not in kindergarten through
Speaker 1: third grade. Uh So, remember when we were all saying, hey,
Speaker 1: the actually it actually doesn't matter that the bill says
Speaker 1: it's only up for kindergarten through third grade. It's just
Speaker 1: gonna be applied for anyone. Yeah, it turns out we
Speaker 1: were right. Uh so it's this. The bill has already
Speaker 1: been specifically cited in the firing of multiple teachers from
Speaker 1: Florida for for just not not you know, conforming to
Speaker 1: the heterosexual Christian hegemonic worldview. And Lips of TikTok is
Speaker 1: still currently among the most prominent influencers affecting actual material
Speaker 1: conditions and shaping both the rhetoric and propaganda while impacting legislation.
Speaker 1: UM friend of Lips of TikTok and des Sentences, Press
Speaker 1: Secretary Christina Persia has said, quote the bill that liberals
Speaker 1: inaccurately called Don't Say Gay would be more accurately described
Speaker 1: as an anti grooming bill. If you're against the anti
Speaker 1: rooming bill, you probably are a groomer, or at least
Speaker 1: you don't denounce the grooming of four to eight year
Speaker 1: old children. Silence is complicncy. This is how it works, democrats.
Speaker 1: This is how it works, democrats. And I didn't make
Speaker 1: the rules. So yeah, see you see how we have.
Speaker 1: See how that works. You called you called the Don't
Speaker 1: Say Gay bill a anti grooming bill, so that everyone,
Speaker 1: anyone who criticizes it is now a groomer? Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it? That a fun way to play with words?
Speaker 1: Isn't that nice? That is a fun way to play
Speaker 1: with words? Garrison love it. So the past few months
Speaker 1: we've seen this. You know, queer people are groomers. Meme
Speaker 1: reach seemingly never never before seen heights, and uh at
Speaker 1: least is and at the very least is the highest
Speaker 1: and most me medic has ever been in the past
Speaker 1: two decades. You know, it's it's really building off of
Speaker 1: all of the killer local pedophile ship, right, It's it's
Speaker 1: the Robert, do you want to briefly, briefly talk about
Speaker 1: killer local. I mean, it's a bunch of bumper stickers.
Speaker 1: It's a slogan like I know dudes who are not
Speaker 1: at all fascists and say that because they're like new
Speaker 1: Dad's and they're horrified at the But like the whole,
Speaker 1: like the core of it is this right wing and
Speaker 1: it kind of started off in like the sort of
Speaker 1: libertarian gun nut communities. But it's it's, it's it's really
Speaker 1: used a lot as sort of it's a group that
Speaker 1: you can talk about doing anything too. You can talk
Speaker 1: about killing, you can like fetishize murdering, um. And if
Speaker 1: you can then like define other groups as inherently pedophilic,
Speaker 1: then you can do anything to them, right, Like that's
Speaker 1: the basic idea is if you can get people saying
Speaker 1: it's always okay to use vigilante violence against this group, um,
Speaker 1: And obviously no one's gonna defend child molesters, But then
Speaker 1: you start making the case that people who are not
Speaker 1: in fact molesting children are somehow pedophiles or you know,
Speaker 1: or somehow related to pedophiles, and then suddenly it's okay
Speaker 1: to kill them. It's okay violence massive social groups like
Speaker 1: all of gay and trans people, so if you conflate
Speaker 1: these two things are able to make these things sent
Speaker 1: the same thing in someone's mind that makes homophobia now
Speaker 1: not a bad thing, but like a moral imperative, Like
Speaker 1: you have to be homophobic because these people are grooming children. Yep,
Speaker 1: and you can get you get this interesting thing to
Speaker 1: which like there are people who are like not quite
Speaker 1: as far in who will do who will say? I
Speaker 1: see things a lot where it's like someone's like, oh,
Speaker 1: well I don't have a problem with gay people, but
Speaker 1: like they shouldn't groom kids, and it's like this is
Speaker 1: that's not what's happening, bro. Yeah, no, do you know
Speaker 1: do you know what else doesn't groom kids? I mean,
Speaker 1: the Washington State definitely does. But let me tell you,
Speaker 1: if you want somebody to groom your children, the Washington
Speaker 1: Highways State Highway patrob will do that. But you know
Speaker 1: what they won't do is protect those children in the
Speaker 1: event of danger because that might endanger them. So look, look,
Speaker 1: sometimes sometimes right someone who's try someone who's killing your kid,
Speaker 1: and you need to get pepper sprayed, and when that
Speaker 1: time calls you, you will beg for the Washington Highway
Speaker 1: State Patrol. Well, you'll beg for a different police department.
Speaker 1: But when those police get in trouble because of their
Speaker 1: failure to act, than the Washington State Highway Patrol will
Speaker 1: show up to protect those cops. Anyway, here's here's the bads.
Speaker 1: We're back. Um. So as the queer people are Groomer's
Speaker 1: ship was reaching the most me medic and the highest
Speaker 1: rate of of of trending that it's has had in
Speaker 1: decades this past April, at the height of the recent
Speaker 1: increased wave of anti queer legislation and anti lgbt Q rhetoric. Um.
Speaker 1: This this is when some terminally online teenagers tried to
Speaker 1: start can get pride discourse once again. And I do
Speaker 1: not want to talk about this, but I've written off
Speaker 1: about it, so I'm going to this Legitimately, what I
Speaker 1: was like thinking about I realized I was gay, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, I should come out,
Speaker 1: and then I would like. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I spent a long time thinking about was does this
Speaker 1: mean I have to do can't get pride discourse? And
Speaker 1: for a long time I would have said no, of
Speaker 1: course not, I'm never going to do this. But here
Speaker 1: we are, so anyway, uh do I kick doing kink
Speaker 1: get pride discourse? Uh? Then, and even still now, while
Speaker 1: the antiqueer onslaught is accelerating at the highest pace it's
Speaker 1: had in years. Sure seems to be like dumping fuel
Speaker 1: on the fire. Uh what's up with that? Kids? Why
Speaker 1: so anyway, Uh, the discourse itself revolves around whether kink
Speaker 1: apparel or paraphernalia render the pride space unsafe for miners
Speaker 1: or quote unquote non consensual observers. Uh heavy heavy quotation
Speaker 1: marks there by the way. Uh. But also it is
Speaker 1: heavily rooted in assimilationist and respectability politics and a push
Speaker 1: for l g B t Q people to be seen
Speaker 1: as more acceptable or more normal while still existing in
Speaker 1: a heteronormative society. Um. And now, obviously I'm not a
Speaker 1: fan of this discourse happening in the first place, especially now,
Speaker 1: Like why are you doing it now during all the
Speaker 1: groomer stuff? Stop it, that's stop it, don't do that,
Speaker 1: quit it? Why are you doing this? Uh? But first
Speaker 1: of all, I also want to point out how this
Speaker 1: entire discourse runs on the same train of thought that
Speaker 1: fuels all of the groomer stuff in the first place.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's picking at the same part of human brains.
Speaker 1: So here's I'm going to read this post that went
Speaker 1: super vital about a month ago, that that's sparked, that
Speaker 1: sparked the new wave of this uh much much frustrated discourse.
Speaker 1: Quote l g B t Q, youth being uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: kinks at Pride is not homophobia. Kinks at Pride might
Speaker 1: have been fine if this was still the nineteen hundreds
Speaker 1: or adults were the only ones attending Pride, But it's
Speaker 1: not the nineteen hundreds anymore, and now kids are way
Speaker 1: more involved in celebrating our identities. The celebrating our identities
Speaker 1: part there is really important and well, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: this more soon, but look, largely in the past like
Speaker 1: twenty years, there's been this shift with queerness and sexual
Speaker 1: orientation being less about who you fuck and more like
Speaker 1: a personality aspect or a social identity with a branded aesthetic. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's this, it's like, it's it's which is in
Speaker 1: some ways good, like in some ways good that people
Speaker 1: are more able to express themselves however they want. But
Speaker 1: you know, kids at school aren't getting bullied for being
Speaker 1: gay anymore, which again is good less than they were,
Speaker 1: they're they're getting bullied less somewhat depending on where you live.
Speaker 1: But it's also kind of it's made people forget the
Speaker 1: whole like, uh, like gays bash back or gaze, don't
Speaker 1: bash back, but shoot first. Like it's forgot. We don't
Speaker 1: have that. That's not as a core component of queerness anymore,
Speaker 1: because queerness is now able to be kind of more
Speaker 1: safe and sanitized. Uh. And it's it's a right. It's
Speaker 1: like it's and it's it's it's a personal identity in
Speaker 1: a way that it's not it's not just about who
Speaker 1: you fuck anymore. It's like this like personal identity aspect um,
Speaker 1: which I'm not saying is bad. It's just that there's
Speaker 1: this thing that's happened that's changed the way we talk
Speaker 1: about sexual orientation. Hey, quick pause, This is Garrison from
Speaker 1: the Future here, just popping in to clarify a bit
Speaker 1: on what I mean regarding this note on identities and
Speaker 1: identifying as various shades of queer. What I'm getting at
Speaker 1: is that when observing some of the baby queers around
Speaker 1: my age or maybe a bit younger, queerness is seen
Speaker 1: as a more available option for young people when putting
Speaker 1: together their personality or sense of self and more separated
Speaker 1: from the aty gritty details of who you fuck now
Speaker 1: that queerness is generally more tolerated. Now, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: I do like the idea of being free to choose queerness.
Speaker 1: In many ways, I consider myself as having chosen to
Speaker 1: be gay. The thing about framing that as your quote
Speaker 1: unquote personal identity, as opposed to simply choosing to be
Speaker 1: what you are, is that the former lets you wield
Speaker 1: that quote unquote identity against other people, or other queer people.
Speaker 1: I disagree with you. It's it's this thing where queerness
Speaker 1: is filtered through the lens of brands and like brand recognition,
Speaker 1: which is definitely made worse by social media, dating apps,
Speaker 1: personal profiles, and personal bios. And it's part of this
Speaker 1: cultural push to like have everyone create their own personal brand.
Speaker 1: And like, I don't want to identify as gender queer,
Speaker 1: I just am gender queer. I don't identify as gay.
Speaker 1: I just like catboys. Therefore I am gay. It's a
Speaker 1: different ontological framing and one that I think is less
Speaker 1: susceptible to heteronormative assimilationist ideas. And like the capitalist marketing
Speaker 1: to queerness as a brand or as a market demographic.
Speaker 1: If your queerness is a personal identity that's more sanitized,
Speaker 1: more approachable for a head normative society, then you get
Speaker 1: to use your identity to attack gay people whose queerness
Speaker 1: is more based in deviant sexuality and alternative communities. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna read the the follow up tweet to this,
Speaker 1: to this thing that sparked the new discourse quote. Not
Speaker 1: even all lgbt Q adults are comfortable with seeing kings
Speaker 1: at Pride. There's nothing from there's nothing stopping you guys
Speaker 1: from adjusting or having after events strictly for adults when
Speaker 1: they're partaken that y'all need to adjust that every lgbt
Speaker 1: Q person feels comfortable attending. So let's let's just do
Speaker 1: some like queer history here for a second. The first
Speaker 1: Pride was a riot um on on on on that
Speaker 1: night in June in the nineteen sixty nine nice Uh,
Speaker 1: the police raided the Stonewall in one of the largest
Speaker 1: private private gate clubs in the US at the time.
Speaker 1: The patrons of the bar, you know, trans women of color, homeless,
Speaker 1: queer teens, drag queens, lesbians, and leather daddies fought back
Speaker 1: lots of trans teenagers through bricks at cops, and like
Speaker 1: a fair number of those trans teenagers were also sex workers. Uh.
Speaker 1: Kink including you know, like leather daddies and lots of
Speaker 1: aspects that are we now views as like kink or
Speaker 1: b d s M has been a part of Pride
Speaker 1: since its literal inception, like way back in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Um And while like, while drag isn't considered king now
Speaker 1: in two it still is considered it's actually deviant. But
Speaker 1: back in like the twentieth century, uh in in ninety
Speaker 1: you know, in nineteen sixty nine, New York City still
Speaker 1: had laws that prohibited cross dressing. So drag used to
Speaker 1: be way more kinky than it is now. Uh And
Speaker 1: like basically all queer sex used to be unacceptable kink
Speaker 1: or just a crime. It was a crime in Texas
Speaker 1: until like do you like, I think around when I
Speaker 1: graduated high school two thousand three was when the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court also, it's no longer an enforceable laws, and it's illegal.
Speaker 1: It's still illegal to own more than five dildos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's five, but it might be six. So
Speaker 1: like all queer sex used to be unacceptable, kink and
Speaker 1: many logistical aspects of gay fucking used to happen in public.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna quote an article from them dot
Speaker 1: us quote. For some people, gay rights and gay liberation
Speaker 1: do not hinge on particulars of sexual desire. For years,
Speaker 1: I've heard that we aren't just our ironic identities, But
Speaker 1: for many of us, it does begin there, and it
Speaker 1: does revolve around the ways we organize our erotic choices.
Speaker 1: Before l g b t Q plus people had pride parades,
Speaker 1: our community spaces were not just bars, but cruising spots
Speaker 1: like bathhouses, dungeons, and public restrooms. It should be no
Speaker 1: surprise that many queer folks find their sex lives and
Speaker 1: their sense of community to be intertwined. B D s M,
Speaker 1: subversive sexuality, and leather culture have enjoyed a long history
Speaker 1: within the lgbt Q rights movement. They are inherent expressions
Speaker 1: of queer culture and sexuality. Being free to signal your
Speaker 1: sexuality out in the open within a queer context is
Speaker 1: the entire point of pride unquote. So like all of
Speaker 1: this discourse around pride and kink, it pride reflects a
Speaker 1: modern but regressive idea that sexuality is inherently damaging to see, experience,
Speaker 1: or think about in a public context, especially if that
Speaker 1: sexuality is inherently queer. And there's this other idea that
Speaker 1: we see a lot of in this type of discourse,
Speaker 1: and it's mirrored a little bit with like the groomer
Speaker 1: stuff too, that if you see someone quote unquote engaging
Speaker 1: in kink, and like in the case of Pride, that's
Speaker 1: like what wearing a collar, harness or a pop mask,
Speaker 1: that just the act of observation is somehow a violation
Speaker 1: of consent. And it's really frustrating because indication of sexuality
Speaker 1: in a non vanilla sense, while in public, is not
Speaker 1: a violation of consent. Like I didn't consent quote unquote
Speaker 1: consent to see the rainbow cops, right, But public indication
Speaker 1: of sexuality is not a consent of violation. And again,
Speaker 1: indicating sexuality is like the entire point of Pride. Weaponizing
Speaker 1: quote unquote consent to call out people that we see
Speaker 1: but don't interact with, who are quote unquote dressed to
Speaker 1: se actual in our own mind is bad for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: It also potentially dilutes legitimate claims of non consent in
Speaker 1: cases of actual sexual violence. And it's it's like this
Speaker 1: thing like if you look at someone in a pup mask,
Speaker 1: there is no consent violation there. That's a really weird
Speaker 1: thing that people that people talk about. And it's not
Speaker 1: it's not like I'm not trying to start fights on
Speaker 1: the internet with like these tender queer children, um, because
Speaker 1: like and I I don't want anyone to find like these,
Speaker 1: like you know, months old posts and start harassing these people.
Speaker 1: But that post has like over thirty thousand likes and
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands and thousands of retweets, and it basically
Speaker 1: just repeats like old queer bashing talking points that conflate
Speaker 1: kink and queer visibility with public sex that endangerous children,
Speaker 1: and like conflating gaze being visible and semi clothed with
Speaker 1: being like dangerous to children. Are the same talking points
Speaker 1: that it gets used for book bands conversion therapy, and
Speaker 1: they don't say gay bills, right. This idea that if
Speaker 1: you look at a gay person shirtless, that's dangerous to
Speaker 1: a kid, that's the same that's the same underlying motivation
Speaker 1: that fuels all of the screwbery discourse. Uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's the whole thing where it's like I'm okay with
Speaker 1: gay people, I just don't want to see it, right.
Speaker 1: It's like that that that that idea in and of
Speaker 1: itself is like is still like exists on that you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't consent to look at it type of thing.
Speaker 1: You know. This This is other other tweet from somebody
Speaker 1: being like forcing people to see kicky stuff without consent
Speaker 1: is really weird. I'm sorry, but I don't want pop
Speaker 1: masks at Pride events for families. I saw that ship
Speaker 1: in real life and it made me uncomfortable. Don't involve
Speaker 1: other people in their kinks. I if they don't consent
Speaker 1: and like looking at someone in a mask, it'sn't involving
Speaker 1: you in any of these kinks. You're if you're looking
Speaker 1: at someone in an other mask, Like, if that makes
Speaker 1: you uncomfortable, that that's your problem. You do have a
Speaker 1: right to not be uncomfortable with how people look or
Speaker 1: are in public. Look, every time I go out into
Speaker 1: the world, I see something that makes me a comfortable. Um,
Speaker 1: I see a lot of people with children. Now, do
Speaker 1: I think it should be legal to have children? I
Speaker 1: do think that it should be it should be illegal exactly.
Speaker 1: So I like, look, we all have to deal with
Speaker 1: things that make us uncomfortable. Look like we have a
Speaker 1: clear solution here that the way to deal with events
Speaker 1: not being family friendly used to get rid of families.
Speaker 1: That's it's exactly right. We have to eliminate the concept
Speaker 1: of the family. Yeah, come on, come on, come. Communist
Speaker 1: manifesto was what this is? One oh one ship people?
Speaker 1: You were you were? You were quoting from the Communist manifesto. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, That's that's not where I got it from.
Speaker 1: But I I feel like I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of these people, many of them like young teens, who
Speaker 1: are complaining about being forced to look at ute unquote
Speaker 1: inappropriate things that pride, have never actually been to a
Speaker 1: pride because most of most of modern pride is like
Speaker 1: really sanitized and chill like it's like it is. It
Speaker 1: is overrun with corporate sponsors, politicians, and cops. Like you
Speaker 1: are you you are way more likely to see armed
Speaker 1: police at like a Pride march then you're then you'll
Speaker 1: be likely to see like tits or like gags or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like most It's funny to me because like I started
Speaker 1: going to these and this is before the internet was
Speaker 1: what it was or moral panics were what they were.
Speaker 1: But like in Texas, I would go to these events
Speaker 1: where there would be people of all ages and families.
Speaker 1: These are like little burning regionals. People would be like
Speaker 1: at like on the big night when people are doing
Speaker 1: like the fire shows and the fireworks stuff, people would
Speaker 1: be like fucking and like manning flamethrowers, like while having sex.
Speaker 1: There there were like there was a whole chunk of
Speaker 1: it that was just like the kink row and you
Speaker 1: could walk down it and watch people get like whipped
Speaker 1: and fuck a sybian and stuff. It was just like
Speaker 1: I don't remember any of this fucking. Like the only
Speaker 1: discourse was like, well, okay, we should probably like make
Speaker 1: sure that people know where that kind of stuff mainly
Speaker 1: happens so that like they don't have to walk around
Speaker 1: it if they don't want to. But like it was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like this idea that like not even full nudity,
Speaker 1: but like semi nudity than a queer context is inherently
Speaker 1: more dangerous to children if it's if it's in a
Speaker 1: queer context than a straight context. Right, we have all
Speaker 1: of these even like queer kids can like complaining online
Speaker 1: about being forced to see things at Pride just like
Speaker 1: they would see way more skinned if they went to
Speaker 1: like a beach in the summer, Like it's it's there's
Speaker 1: It revolves on the same homeophobic idea that like if
Speaker 1: if you look at these things in a queer context
Speaker 1: that is like more adult than looking at it within
Speaker 1: a straight context. Yes, um, it's I don't know, frustrating,
Speaker 1: it's frustrating and like another another reason why that I
Speaker 1: think many of these like baby leftist tender queers are
Speaker 1: who are who are crusading against kink ap Pride and
Speaker 1: complaining about like leather and or like sexy underwear. Um,
Speaker 1: but lots of them even uh, first of all, most
Speaker 1: of them, I think lots of haven't been de Pride
Speaker 1: because there hasn't really been Pride for the past two years,
Speaker 1: and lots of these people are like fifteen years old. Um,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them also just like admit to
Speaker 1: never be going to Pride because they're too terrified to
Speaker 1: see a pop mask, Like they openly say like I've
Speaker 1: never been because I don't want to see these things,
Speaker 1: Like sure, you're allowed to do that, But then don't
Speaker 1: make don't like, don't campaign against king Pride, which will
Speaker 1: result in your posts getting used by like homophobic trolls
Speaker 1: and bigots. I don't go to because I don't want
Speaker 1: to see a deep dish pizza, but I don't try
Speaker 1: to ban them, like I understand that that's the thing
Speaker 1: you people. Like, Like, the first time I saw a
Speaker 1: pop mask was that fucking comic Con. Like it's like
Speaker 1: like like it's not you don't see like band pup
Speaker 1: masks from comic con, Like what Like these these people,
Speaker 1: like these kids are are basing their fears off of
Speaker 1: like a few viral photos that are often shared in
Speaker 1: a disingenuous context. Now, well we'll talk about these photos
Speaker 1: in a bit, but you know, these these people are
Speaker 1: like fifteen years old, have never been to p and
Speaker 1: are just like simply terrified of like actual sexuality. Like
Speaker 1: they enjoy, they engage with queerness is like a personal
Speaker 1: identity and stuff. But once they get into like the
Speaker 1: nitty gritty of like sex, that makes them really uncomfortable
Speaker 1: because their teens, because they're kids, that that's okay, you
Speaker 1: can be uncomfortable with sex. That makes sense. That is
Speaker 1: that it's appropriate for your age, but then don't make
Speaker 1: your entire online presence about trying to shut down this
Speaker 1: massive aspect of queer history. Um because like the kinky
Speaker 1: stuff that I've seen at Pride is yeah, on par
Speaker 1: with what you see at Comic Con. I often will
Speaker 1: see more more nudity at Portland's Comic Con than I
Speaker 1: than I will at any of the Pride events I've
Speaker 1: been to. Um Like, all of the more like openly
Speaker 1: like fetish folks or kinky folks are really responsible and
Speaker 1: act pretty appropriately at Pride, and and the people who
Speaker 1: like say otherwise online generally just have not actually been
Speaker 1: to Pride in their entire life. Um Because like this
Speaker 1: complaining about quote unquote like inappropriate fetishes or like kinky conduct,
Speaker 1: it's basically code for I am uncomfortable with you being
Speaker 1: positive about the way you view sex, and I want
Speaker 1: you to not show it, and I want you to
Speaker 1: not and I want you to not talk about it,
Speaker 1: which is the same underlying thought process that people use
Speaker 1: to be homophobic. It's the it's the exact same thing. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of this discourse oversimplifies kink and b d s.
Speaker 1: M Um, right, queerness can be about it can be
Speaker 1: about love, it can be about it can be about
Speaker 1: sexual attraction um and both uh or sometimes for a
Speaker 1: sexual people in lacking one or the other um or
Speaker 1: both uh. But but by that same token, right, kink,
Speaker 1: leather and b D s M aren't all exclusively about
Speaker 1: sex to a large extent, they're also about community building um.
Speaker 1: And I just think these these like earnest think of
Speaker 1: the youth arguments are very silly because even when it
Speaker 1: comes to youth, because if you're uncomfortable things, that's totally fine.
Speaker 1: But in a lot of cases, like queer teenagers also
Speaker 1: have sex generally with other career teenagers, sometimes even in
Speaker 1: a kinky context, and that's okay. Pride it's about celebrating
Speaker 1: everyone's individual ability to do that. And I don't like
Speaker 1: it when when people just rehash old homophobic talking points
Speaker 1: to to and especially during during all of this, all
Speaker 1: of this groomy discourse, because a key key part of
Speaker 1: key part of kink, keep part of like queer sex,
Speaker 1: is consent. And once you're start you start complating what
Speaker 1: consent is by saying that me looking at you wearing
Speaker 1: a collar is a violation of consent. Once you start
Speaker 1: undermining what consent actually means. That's like not a good thing,
Speaker 1: it's actually not that is actually a bad thing, especially
Speaker 1: right now during all of the during all of all
Speaker 1: of all of the grammar stuff. So that is we
Speaker 1: are we've gone kind of over on on time here. Um,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna make We're gonna make this a two parter.
Speaker 1: In the next episode, we'll talk a bit more about
Speaker 1: like tender Years and we'll actually get into the plans
Speaker 1: of Operation Pridefall and talk about how we kind of
Speaker 1: got to this point because man, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: kids sharing sharing pictures online and oh boy, do those
Speaker 1: pictures originate in some dubious, dubious places. Um. So that
Speaker 1: that that does it for us today. We will we
Speaker 1: will see you tomorrow. Um. Pride's fun. We should not
Speaker 1: police what other people do. So yeah, anyway, bye bye.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: Well more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
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Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could
Speaker 1: Happen Here, updated monthly at cool Zone Media dot com
Speaker 1: slash sources. Thanks for listening.