More Cultural and Moral Decay

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, Calm said:

Did you read it all?

Yes, I did. Why can’t we disagree without saying our perceived opponents are grooming students and “emotionally pressuring” them to believe their families don’t support them? I know enough gay Latter-day Saints to know no pressure is needed. The overblown rhetoric is bad enough without imputing evil intent to the event organizers. 

[ttribe]

7 minutes ago, Calm said:

Did you read it all?

I did. It doesn't get any better as it continues.

[jkwilliams]

10 minutes ago, ttribe said:

I did. It doesn't get any better as it continues.

If I were involved in Fair, I wouldn’t want to be associated with that. Fair is supposed to support the LDS church, not make church members look like cranks. I suspect this is going to backfire badly. 

[The Nehor]

3 hours ago, Durangout said:

I didn’t compare cross dressing to murder. I was making an analogy between a dragshow for kids ( the purpose of course is to groom children to accept and corrupt themselves w evil acts) but you knew that.  

can I assume that you approve of drag shows for adults and kids?  Do you approve of grooming kids to gay / transgender life styles?

 

The “purpose of course” is doing a LOT of heavy lifting in that statement.

It is amazing. Does no one realize that drag shows and even family-friendly drag shows have been around for a long time. Then suddenly some talking heads start opining, without evidence, that these constitute “grooming” (a neat rhetorical trick to imply child abuse and pedophilia without having to prove it) and suddenly they are the root of all evil. What changed? Just people being told who the enemy is? Were they the enemy the whole time or did they become the enemy when the propagandists decided they are now? DANCE PUPPETS! DANCE!

I wonder why they are so quick to scream pedophile when clergy child abuse scandals are so prevalent and a disproportionate number of people on the side making the accusations seem to have quite a problem with the whole child sex abuse thing. Projection? Attempting to set up a “both sides” thing? Or just hatred?

Edited September 2, 2022 by The Nehor

[MiserereNobis]

3 hours ago, Durangout said:

the purpose of course is to groom children to accept and corrupt themselves w evil acts

Quote

Do you approve of grooming kids to gay / transgender life styles?

It's not grooming!! 

Edited September 2, 2022 by MiserereNobis

[The Nehor]

45 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

This line was my favorite:

“Because parents deserve to know what’s being pushed on their children by rogue activists at BYU, because it could profoundly harm their faith”

They aren’t kindergartners…

 

Yeah. It is patronizing to college students. I am also not sure what “rogue” is meant to say beyond being inflammatory.

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

Can I just say that I'm disappointed that Fair has published that response? She makes it seem like the LGBTQ community is deviously trying to ensnare and groom LDS kids and alienate them from their parents. I don't know how else to describe this except as textbook homophobia. I'm far less concerned about icky puns from drag queens than I am about open hatred masquerading as defending religion. 

This. People at 18+ do not decide to be gay or lesbian or bi or transgendered. They have been dealing with it for a while now. No one picks up a flyer offering help in this area and gets sucked in even though they are confidently heterosexual.

It is also funny seeing in other places this being described as “grooming”. Now “grooming” applies to adults? That word can mean anything now.

[The Nehor]

7 minutes ago, MiserereNobis said:

It's not grooming!! 

This. Actual legit pedophile predators are going to get a lot of cover in the coming years. They can groom their victims in the tried and true predatory abuse way but when you try to describe it they might get lumped in with ‘drag show performers and being at a gay pride parade with children around’ style of grooming.

I also wonder if this ability to be soft of sex predators isn’t part of the point: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/04/from-hastert-to-gaetz-lets-talk-about-republicans-and-sex-crimes.html

[MiserereNobis]

5 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

It is also funny seeing in other places this being described as “grooming”. Now “grooming” applies to adults? That word can mean anything now.

[The Nehor]

7 minutes ago, MiserereNobis said:

Wait…..so letting people take a shower at my place would constitute grooming?

I am a monster!!!!!!!!

[SeekingUnderstanding]

34 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Does no one realize that drag shows and even family-friendly drag shows have been around for a long time.

I’ve got a picture of my Grandpa circa 1950 dressed in drag at a show in Blackfoot Idaho. They are playing the long game for sure. 

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

This line was my favorite:

“Because parents deserve to know what’s being pushed on their children by rogue activists at BYU, because it could profoundly harm their faith”

They aren’t kindergartners…

 

Parenting has gone off the deep end these last few years.

[jkwilliams]

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Yeah. It is patronizing to college students. I am also not sure what “rogue” is meant to say beyond being inflammatory.

This. People at 18+ do not decide to be gay or lesbian or bi or transgendered. They have been dealing with it for a while now. No one picks up a flyer offering help in this area and gets sucked in even though they are confidently heterosexual.

It is also funny seeing in other places this being described as “grooming”. Now “grooming” applies to adults? That word can mean anything now.

I feel sorry for college students whose parents treat them like small children.

[california boy]

I have attended a handful of drag shows.  Not really a drag fan.  Nor have I ever wanted to participate in drag.  But coincidently, this past week I attended a LGBT gathering that lasted for several days.  During that event, I gained a much better insight to why a person might want to do drag.

I was having breakfast with two men I had met earlier in the week.  One of them was a drag performer.  It gave me an opportunity to ask him questions about this very subject.  Why did he do drag?  You see, he is a very unassuming man.  Stays quietly in the background and hates to draw attention to himself, yet gave so much of himself to the community throughout the week.  He told me that he does everything he can to not draw attention to himself.  This seemed to be in direct conflict with his stage persona of over the top eye make up, loud red sparkly sequenced dress and a wig that would have made Dolly Parton jealous.  In the course of our discussion, we both disclosed that we used to be members of the Church.  Perhaps it was that connection that prompted him to open up about his life.

When he was just 2 years old, his Mormon father, someone that he should had complete trust in, started physically abusing him.  That abuse continued for years.  Eventually his mother found out what was going on.  She went in to full Momma Bear mode.  The police took his father away and he never heard from him again.  His mother moved to another state to try and put as much distance from her son and her former husband.  While he was still in grammar school, his mother remarried and even went to the work of changing his birth certificate to list her second husband on his birth certificate so that he would never ever know who his real father was, maybe even hoping that her son would be able to block out what had happened to him.  But he couldn’t block it out.  He remembers in detail what his father and other men did to him at a very early age.  This guy never recovered from what was done to him.

The children that he grew up with sensed that his insecurities and caused by that abuse made him vulnerable to teasing and ridicule that continued daily throughout his childhood and into high school.  He was an easy target and did not have the confidence or self worth to protect himself from the continued abuse children are able to easily give.  He told me with tears in his eyes that he never had a SINGLE friend throughout high school and was targeted every single day. Even though he has since been able to put his life somewhat back together, he has never been able to have a meaningful relationship with another person.  When someone starts to get physically close to him, he tenses up and pushes them away.

Several years ago, some friends of him encouraged him to try drag.  He really had no interest in dressing up as a woman, but he didn’t want to disappoint them.  By then, he had found a community that accepted him for what he was.  What he found is that he could create a stage persona that was everything he was not, confident, attention getting, beloved by an audience, while the whole time hiding behind the sequins and outlandish makeup.  It was not just a performance, but an empowerment that he had never felt in his entire life.  He felt like for the first time, he had control of his life, even if it was just during those performances.

As my new friend opened up to me, the other man on my right told us that when he told his parents that he was gay at 17, he had already packed a bag in anticipation of the very real possibility that he would be thrown out of his house.  Sometimes those scars are the very reason why some drag performers choose very provocative names.  It is their way of saying that despite the rejection that they have experienced during those formative years from their family, their churches, their class mates, they are stronger than all of them, and they wear their sequin dress and outlandish make up as their armor and war paint against their painful past.  Maybe the ones that choose the most provocative names are the ones that are lashing out against all those “christians” that instead of offering love and understanding, told them throughout their growing up years that they were broken.

[jkwilliams]

9 minutes ago, california boy said:

I have attended a handful of drag shows.  Not really a drag fan.  Nor have I ever wanted to participate in drag.  But coincidently, this past week I attended a LGBT gathering that lasted for several days.  During that event, I gained a much better insight to why a person might want to do drag.

I was having breakfast with two men I had met earlier in the week.  One of them was a drag performer.  It gave me an opportunity to ask him questions about this very subject.  Why did he do drag?  You see, he is a very unassuming man.  Stays quietly in the background and hates to draw attention to himself, yet gave so much of himself to the community throughout the week.  He told me that he does everything he can to not draw attention to himself.  This seemed to be in direct conflict with his stage persona of over the top eye make up, loud red sparkly sequenced dress and a wig that would have made Dolly Parton jealous.  In the course of our discussion, we both disclosed that we used to be members of the Church.  Perhaps it was that connection that prompted him to open up about his life.

When he was just 2 years old, his Mormon father, someone that he should had complete trust in, started physically abusing him.  That abuse continued for years.  Eventually his mother found out what was going on.  She went in to full Momma Bear mode.  The police took his father away and he never heard from him again.  His mother moved to another state to try and put as much distance from her son and her former husband.  While he was still in grammar school, his mother remarried and even went to the work of changing his birth certificate to list her second husband on his birth certificate so that he would never ever know who his real father was, maybe even hoping that her son would be able to block out what had happened to him.  But he couldn’t block it out.  He remembers in detail what his father and other men did to him at a very early age.  This guy never recovered from what was done to him.

The children that he grew up with sensed that his insecurities and caused by that abuse made him vulnerable to teasing and ridicule that continued daily throughout his childhood and into high school.  He was an easy target and did not have the confidence or self worth to protect himself from the continued abuse children are able to easily give.  He told me with tears in his eyes that he never had a SINGLE friend throughout high school and was targeted every single day. Even though he has since been able to put his life somewhat back together, he has never been able to have a meaningful relationship with another person.  When someone starts to get physically close to him, he tenses up and pushes them away.

Several years ago, some friends of him encouraged him to try drag.  He really had no interest in dressing up as a woman, but he didn’t want to disappoint them.  By then, he had found a community that accepted him for what he was.  What he found is that he could create a stage persona that was everything he was not, confident, attention getting, beloved by an audience, while the whole time hiding behind the sequins and outlandish makeup.  It was not just a performance, but an empowerment that he had never felt in his entire life.  He felt like for the first time, he had control of his life, even if it was just during those performances.

As my new friend opened up to me, the other man on my right told us that when he told his parents that he was gay at 17, he had already packed a bag in anticipation of the very real possibility that he would be thrown out of his house.  Sometimes those scars are the very reason why some drag performers choose very provocative names.  It is their way of saying that despite the rejection that they have experienced during those formative years from their family, their churches, their class mates, they are stronger than all of them, and they wear their sequin dress and outlandish make up as their armor and war paint against their painful past.  Maybe the ones that choose the most provocative names are the ones that are lashing out against all those “christians” that instead of offering love and understanding, told them throughout their growing up years that they were broken.

Thank you for that. Imagine, these are real people with real feelings and experiences. Who knew?

[california boy]

4 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

Can I just say that I'm disappointed that Fair has published that response? She makes it seem like the LGBTQ community is deviously trying to ensnare and groom LDS kids and alienate them from their parents. I don't know how else to describe this except as textbook homophobia. I'm far less concerned about icky puns from drag queens than I am about open hatred masquerading as defending religion. 

The FAIR response was SO out of line.  All about judgemental assumptions interpreted in the worse possible way.  As others have pointed out, reading a story to children (with their parents right there, unless you believe that parents let their children wander to the library on their own) is not grooming.  

I have heard countless stories of kids growing up hearing anti gay remarks that often include slurs and judgmental false beliefs about the LGBT community by their own parents and church leaders while inside knowing that those judgmental remarks were also directed directly at them.  Most of us hide the scars of youth and are too afraid to speak out about how we feel and who we are because there is a clear message that society and the Church in particular, it is not ok to be gay.  It is not ok to be different.  Conform at all costs.  Don't color outside the box.  Yet, here, in one afternoon, those children see for themselves that you can be different.  You can even be very different.  You just have to be strong and believe in yourself when others around you are unwilling to accept you for who you are.  

I spent a half of lifetime trying to live a life that was a performance for others around me to reassure them that I was normal, fit in, and not like those deviant gay people.  When I finally decided that I could no longer play the charade that I was living, my life changed completely and I could for the first time, start loving myself for who I was and in turn, loving God and having an honest healthy relationship with Him.  I began to feel His love for the first time in my life.

How do others respond to these drag queens caring so much that other kids won't go through alone, what they went through?  Label them perverts and pedophiles.  What a tragedy.  

 

[The Nehor]

29 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Thank you for that. Imagine, these are real people with real feelings and experiences. Who knew?

No, I am sure that they are just incurably depraved instead.

[The Nehor]

Is this retroactively grooming now?

 

[Calm]

2 hours ago, california boy said:

Several years ago, some friends of him encouraged him to try drag.  He really had no interest in dressing up as a woman, but he didn’t want to disappoint them.  By then, he had found a community that accepted him for what he was.  What he found is that he could create a stage persona that was everything he was not, confident, attention getting, beloved by an audience, while the whole time hiding behind the sequins and outlandish makeup.  It was not just a performance, but an empowerment that he had never felt in his entire life.  He felt like for the first time, he had control of his life, even if it was just during those performances.

Why the necessity of doing that as female.  Why can’t someone do an over the top character as male?

[ttribe]

1 minute ago, Calm said:

Why the necessity of doing that as female.  Why can’t someone do an over the top character as male?

I'm just speculating, but I'm guessing it makes it a 100% departure from the person who has been hiding for it to be in drag.

Edited September 2, 2022 by ttribe

[Calm]

Quote

 

they wear their sequin dress and outlandish make up as their armor and war paint against their painful past.  Maybe the ones that choose the most provocative names are the ones that are lashing out against all those “christians” that instead of offering love and understanding, told them throughout their growing up years that they were broken.

Can you understand that some women feel men doing drag are appropriating what should belong to women rather than using what is their own to accomplish whatever needs to be accomplished and by doing so, the men are helping create a caricature of what womanhood is?

An analogy, one is uncomfortable living on a plot of land because it is filled with fire hazards.  Instead of working on their own land to be safe, they instead choose to move in on another’s plot of land that looks like just what they want and claim squatters’ rights.  And while there, they treat the land the same way and turn their neighbour’s field into a fire hazard or some other less than beautiful and useful state.

Added:  as CV points out, this parallels in some women’s views cultural appropriation and to do it as over the top entertainment, often with humor, it does seem strange that what would be viewed as inappropriate when it comes to race or ethnicity is somehow acceptable when it comes to sex.

Edited September 3, 2022 by Calm

[CV75]

4 minutes ago, Calm said:

Can you understand that some women feel men doing drag are appropriating what should belong to women rather than using what is their own to accomplish whatever needs to be accomplished and by doing so, the men are helping create a caricature of what womanhood is?

An analogy, one is uncomfortable living on a plot of land because it is filled with fire hazards.  Instead of working on their own land to be safe, they instead choose to move in on another’s plot of land that looks like just what they want and claim squatters’ rights.  And while there, they treat the land the same way and turn their neighbour’s field into a fire hazard or some other less than beautiful and useful state.

I’m wondering why, if the exaggerated race, addiction and other stereotypes of yesteryear are no longer funny, why are sexually exaggerated female characters played by men becoming so popular – what kind of entertainment void is being filled here? Seems like it will eventually be viewed as heartless, chauvinistic, ignorant, bigoted, cruel and behind the times as these other types are, which also undermined human empathy, respect, acceptance and diversity. Except perhaps in a fantastical, meta-humorous way, which is way over kids’ heads no matter how family-friendly it is supposed to be. What will replace it, and what identity-centric artistic outlet will those who find it therapeutic apply next?

Edited September 2, 2022 by CV75

[The Nehor]

50 minutes ago, CV75 said:

I’m wondering why, if the exaggerated race, addiction and other stereotypes of yesteryear are no longer funny, why are sexually exaggerated female characters played by men becoming so popular – what kind of entertainment void is being filled here? Seems like it will eventually be viewed as heartless, chauvinistic, ignorant, bigoted, cruel and behind the times as these other types are, which also undermined human empathy, respect, acceptance and diversity. Except perhaps in a fantastical, meta-humorous way, which is way over kids’ heads no matter how family-friendly it is supposed to be. What will replace it, and what identity-centric artistic outlet will those who find it therapeutic apply next?

They aren’t “becoming so popular”. They are experiencing a slight craze right now because they have become a target so the news is full of all the latest updates on their latest perversities.

Interesting we have gone from “groomers” to “groomers who are unfairly appropriating ‘female culture.’” Is there no depths to which these ungodly perverts will not sink? I mean, I went years without even noticing them and now they are the root of all evil.

[Calm]

Nehor, can you explain the difference than to me between men performing drag and whites performing war dances in full regalia for entertainment or for them to express their inner warrior?  (Not being sarcastic here)
 

I have never ever called drag performing grooming and I don’t see how it can be.

Plus I have never been comfortable with drag performances from my youth because to me it feeds female stereotyping.

Edited September 3, 2022 by Calm

[california boy]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Why the necessity of doing that as female.  Why can’t someone do an over the top character as male?

I did the AIDS Lifecycle (bike) ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles for several years.  Their was this one drag queen that would dress up in a completely different outfit every day of the week long ride and stand at the top of the steepest hill of the day to encourage riders to make it up the hill.  Sometimes they would almost get to the top and she would run down and push their bikes up the last little bit, helping them reach their goal.  One day, I was having a meal and this man came and set next to me.  We started talking and it was only by him telling me that he was the drag queen that I had seen at the top of the hill did I recognize him.

I am guessing that dressing up as a woman gives the person complete freedom to become someone that they totally are not.  They can hide behind the outrageous make up, over the top wigs and flashy dresses.  You see them as someone completely different.  I think for many drag queens, they want to hide behind that second persona.  Like my friend that I met this week, it allowed him to shed completely this shy, very introverted self, to become something, even briefly, totally different that he couldn't be, for whatever reason, in real life.   

A man dressing as a man is just a change of clothing.  A man dressing as a woman, allows for a complete transformation.  Maybe rewatch Victor/Victoria or Some Like it Hot to give you a better idea of the difference.

[CV75]

45 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

They aren’t “becoming so popular”. They are experiencing a slight craze right now because they have become a target so the news is full of all the latest updates on their latest perversities.

Interesting we have gone from “groomers” to “groomers who are unfairly appropriating ‘female culture.’” Is there no depths to which these ungodly perverts will not sink? I mean, I went years without even noticing them and now they are the root of all evil.

In many mainstream circles it has been becoming a very popular means of introducing DEI, and getting backlash for it. Sure, the popularity and rejection are generated by awareness from the popular media and press, ads on streaming services, etc. but the topic is found on all kinds of news outlets both supportive of the causse and not for at least 5 years (per my google search). I’m not sure why some people were aware of that and others not.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/12/drag-mainstream-attacks-crossroads/

https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/drag-in-pop-culture-2017-8062558/

Yes, of course the trend is short-lived; that was part of my point: these trends are shorter-liveder every year, to be replaced by something more exaggerated and identity-centric. Whether it’s a good trend or bad trend for DEI/society, that’s a bad lifespan and bad direction.

Not sure how my post generated a reaction about grooming.

Edited September 3, 2022 by CV75