Gays Against Groomers and the politics of digital ventriloquism.

Prior to its political appropriation, "groomer" characterized adults earning children's trust, so they can manipulate and sexually exploit them. Conservative activists have recently transformed "groomer" into an anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) slur. This critique of anti-"groomer" rhetoric examines an organization called Gays Against Groomers (GAG). GAG's website, which is presumably run by "gays," depicts children as especially vulnerable to queer "indoctrination" and "mutilation." Investigative probes recently conducted by The Advocate, the Anti-Defamation League ("Online Amplifiers," 2023), and Media Matters revealed that far-right hate groups and anti-LGBTQ conservative media strategists are largely responsible for the group's genesis. GAG participates in a duplicitous online discourse I call digital ventriloquism. In this context, digital ventriloquy describes online communication where anti-LGBTQ cadres throw their voices into a "dummy" organization that seemingly operates from a divergent social location. GAG's homonormative cooptation of the groomer pejorative results in a dangerous paradox of speaker location, or social identity, that virtually erases child molestation from anti-"grooming" speech, and recasts transgender people and progressive gender education as child pollutants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]