Operation Pridefall, Groomers, and Kink at Pride: Part 1

to It could happen here? A podcast about things falling apart and how we can maybe put them back together. I'm Garrison, Um, I'll be I'll be leading leading this sod um with me is as as Chris and uh this this random person that we brought on from the street named Robert yep Um, and we'll be talking about some things that are not great and kind of current problem.

So I I spent I spent a lot of my formative youth lurking, studying and kind of documenting some of the some of some of the bad places on the internet, you know, Nazi chat, rooms, chance sites, Facebook, hate group you know whatever, all all of all the things, um, and you know, growing up in Portland, Oregon in like the twenty teens, this was this was something that felt kind of foisted upon me as as a kid discovering my own queerness and coming out of an extremely homophobic,

like insular Christian community. Um. Meanwhile in Portland's having you know, self described fascist march alongside gay hating Christians on my city streets, Nazis murdering people on our public transit. You know that. Uh, that that that that put a lot of fellow fellow scrawny gay kids uh to put on black black cuti symball oklavas to mason fight far right extremists that were like two or three times their size. Um. But the problem is, of course, what what what one

d pounds? Depressed teens aren't aren't necessarily the best brawlers, um under under some circumstances, although they can handle uh fire extinguisher filled with paint pretty well. That's true. But a lot of us also started doing like online research and stuff, um to find like the names of dresses of like fascists and members of hate groups and all all that kind of all kind that kind of stuff. I I still remember the kind of the the thrill and the buzz of my first like big find as

as a as a baby online lurker. Um it was I think it was. It was the leader of the hell shaking Street Preachers who was living at the time, fucking prick that that was. That was the first guy I did. UM, And I remember being very excited being because yeah he was he was a massive asshole of so, yeah, he's he's like a you know, very extremely homophobics quote

unquote street preacher, just a big old show. Yeah. But a lot of like this, like online research work wasn't wasn't just crush referencing social media posts with the white pages, property records, and voter registrations to send nice postcards to hate group members. Uh. Time was often spent tracking the use of like memes and cataloging and sharing fascists plans for projects and events, keeping keeping tabs on like their

current propaganda trends that online white supremacists were. We're trying to we're trying to push and um. One of one of the things that I came across about about two years ago was called Operation Pridefall. This was this is one of the one of the one of one of these like it was an organized campaign ran by people on Fortune, Discord, and Telegram. I I came across it a few a few days after the the plans were published online. And if you already know what Operation Pridefall

is or or heard that term before, uh. And if you're you know, like me and we're on similar online spaces, you've you've probably found the past few months of antiqueer propaganda, the massive increase in the gay and transpeople are groomer ship and the shutters can get pride discourse to be all very very predictable, a strangely familiar, like the worst case of deja vu, and in large part of the result of years of work behind the scenes by social

engineering online bigoted trolls and self described fascists. So we're gonna we're gonna talk today about kind of the overlap between this this thing called Operation Pridefall, uh, the groomer discourse and how that kind of feeds into can get pride discourse. So three things that are not great, that don't go great but actually do kind of go great together.

So a first, first of all, a little a little background on the whole recent Groomer thing, because we haven't actually discussed the Groomer stuff in depth on the pod yet, haven't you know why we haven't. I'd be like, whenever like horrible things happened in the news, I try to push back on just releasing an episode immediately covering it in case we have something like actually good to say. Um So, we've kind of waited to talk about the

group of discourse stuff for a long time. Um And I think now is is totally is totally fine to do so because we've had we've had months to let it, uh, to let it simmer, look at like the types of things they're encouraging, look at all of like the physical action they're trying to do. And with Pride Month approaching, we're going to see a resurgence of it in the

next few weeks here. Um So, as mentioned in our in our week long War on Transpeople episodes which was released like right before the new wave of the Groomer ship,

accelerate it. But in those episodes, we talked about the long history of conservatives and evangelical organizations promoting the false narrative targeted at parents, and like concerned citizens that gay people, especially gay men, are more likely to be child predators than their heterosexual counterparts, along with the idea that queer people are out to quote, groom you're definitely on straight child into being gay, right, uh so in insinuating that

that that they can then like have sex with them or something. Um, it's but yeah, they're trying to scare parents to be like gay people are out to get your kids. Um. So it's the actual like idea of what being a groomer means changes based on who you're

talking to. Um. In part two, I'm gonna going to quote a conservative writer who like admits this as as such, but still defends the use of the term um because at the very least, if they used grooming within the context of turning your again absolutely completely heterosexual child totally um into a gay person. Thus they would, you know, begin to hate you and resent you as a parent for your godly Christian values. They also consider that grooming, Um,

it's not, it's not. It's not actually just as a general rule, the attitude as if they do not turn out to be the exact kind of weirdo Christian as their parents they were groomed by somebody and it's merely a matter of picking the topic of the person to blame. Yeah, And all of that sort of rhetoric was extremely popular through like the eighties and nineties and the early two thousand's UM. But then came the knots in the twenty teens and this this this kind of had an attitude

shift and some of that started to go away. We got we got queer eye, we got ellen. The rate of conversion therapy started to decline. It was getting banned in more states. There was more queer acceptance in certain in certain sects of the church, even of course the gay marriage went national, and eventually being like aggressively homophobic

became like not a good look. It did. It was not you were not able to do that anymore, um and still be able to have and and and and do it as like nonchalantly as you were as you used to be able to, whether that's in your like TV show, or whether that's you as a corporation UM or you know, some random other sectors of public life.

But then, of course Trump got elected year after gay marriage went national, and then there's this resurgence in far right extremism and the more commonly accepted kind of nonchalant gay bashing of old gets passed down to the next freak down the line, which is trans people. So with that, the the adage of like the disgusting groomer freaks are going to turn your kids gay turns into the gender ideology freaks are going to turn your kids trans. It's all the same stuff, just passed on to the next,

to the next thing. Um. And so we have that like anti trans and therefore anti queer hate festering for a few years, and this inevitably opens up the door just a revival of classic homophobia. Um. Even even liberals like Friend of the pot at J. K. Rowling um and lots of the original turfs got to apply the same homophobic rhetoric to trans people, um and gender nonconforming folks, which then obviously results in that propaganda and rhetoric being used to attack LGBTQ people on a whole once again.

So it's it's resurrecting these old homo tropes and just applying it to a new generation of queer people. Um. And uh So for this next part, we're gonna we're gonna talk about lives of TikTok because they did play a big, a big part in what's what some current discourses today. And I promise we'll get to Operation Pride Fall here shortly, just just hanging there with me. But before we talk about again, other friend of the pod, Lives of TikTok Um, do you know what else it

wants to turn your kids gay? Oh? Are you talking about the Washington State Highway Patrol? Because yes, they absolutely do. Garrison. That's the one guarante the Washington State Highway Patrol makes. They'll make your kids gay. Okay, Lives of TikTok joins the fight today. God and I let's just take a moment to acknowledge how fucking frustrating it is that we have to discuss seriously TikTok that it matters, like the worst.

It's terrible. It's terrible. People always criticize the show and being like why do they talk about all these dumb social media things? So like, yes, I know that they're stupid,

but the bad part is that they actually matter. Yeah, I mean maybe, yeah, we talked about him because of the seventeen year old trans girl in Texas who just got assaulted by like five dudes, because she was blamed on the shooting, and she was blamed for the shooting because in part of a lot of ship that lives of TikTok helped to stir stir up because they proved there was a market for it, that if you're like a right wing shit grifter, attacking trans people is a

great way to get an engagement. Anyway, Sorry, Garrison, Yeah, So, Lips of TikTok is a social media account turned to social media campaign started in April one by a Brooklyn area real estate agent named Chaia Chickum, who, by the way,

attended the January six attempted fascist insurrection. Um when when when violence broke out that day at the Capitol, she actually tweeted a play by play on a previous Twitter account of hers, uh posting videos from the crowd and the talking about tear gas and rubber bullets being like shot right next to her. Um. And then after she left the riot, she she tweeted on Twitter that uh that the the event was peaceful compared to a BLM protest.

So that's yes, anyway, five five people died. We you know, we we've we've we've now reached the party were now in tragedy of as farce of the thing that happens in every single state that goes fascist, where all the fascist trying to do a coop when it fails and then nothing happens and then they take over the state, like serously our version of that instead of like, I don't know, weird fascist yakuta guys, it's the libs of TikTok.

It is the limbs of TikTok. So the limbs of TikTok was around like the third attempt by right check to start a vital social media account. Uh, you know, the saying three times the charm, but in this case it actually was. So the account's gimmick is reposting and often grossly misrepresenting select clips from quote unquote libs on

TikTok a big big shocker, big big surprise. Uh. But more often than not, that really just means posting videos of queer kids and transpeople, uh, captioning it with something reactionary, and then leading a targeted harassment campaign against those individuals. On on May thirty one, so just about a year ago, she made her first grooming related post, just tweeting stop grooming kids and all caps this is the first time

she tweeted anything related to grooming um. The day before that, she tweeted a video of a transperson um alongside the vomit emoji and a caption that just says men should not wear dresses. You can't change my mind. Her first super viral video related to LGBTQ people was later in June next month during Pride, by posting a TikTok of a kid explaining the concept of gender fluidity. Pretty pretty basic concept. Uh, but she lives lives a TikTok commented,

this is so messed up in so many ways. Her Her post racked up half a million views and indicated to her that the way to grow her little social media project into a right wing viral sensation was going to be with homophobia and transphobia. Uh that this is how she decided to continue her online career. Essentially, she called the prominent lgbt Q youth suicide prevention group the Trevor prod Eject a grooming organization, and towards the end of two she kept using that term grooming groomer uh

at A at an ever increasing rate. Right It's it starts starts in like May and June continues throughout the summer and fall, and then in the fall and winter she starts really kicking up all of the stuff around around grooming and queer people. I mean, all of her posts are already mostly about trans people and like trans people at schools. Obviously she was a big part of like the the whole school board thing from last year.

So but towards the end one though, is when the groomer things started becoming more of a recurring trend quoting quoting slate uh. Towards the end of one and into the new year, right Check found her rhythm with memes and videos calling LGBTQ people and those who supported l g b t Q youth quote unquote groomers. She has even attempted to smear one of the most prominent game

and in the country as a groomer. Uh. In a deleted tweet, right Check's account accused Transportation Secretary Secretary Pete's husband Chastin, of grooming kids for his work at at supporting lgbt Q youth organizations. This isn't fair, but I hate that his name is Chastin. I know, I don't like I don't like that name. I don't like that name.

I'm not a big I'm not a Chaston's stand either, but but but yeah, it's like finding the most prominent libby gay men and being like, hey, these people probably groom kids, and you know that that obviously riles up their base. Um. She's she's called for any teacher who comes out as gay to their students to be quote fired on the spot. Uh, which actually has happened since then. Uh has has has happened multiple times since since since

this account has been has been launched. UM. The account's popularity grew alongside last year's racist, homophobic, and transphobic attacks on school boards across the country. She would often posting videos of queer teachers and lying about them grooming kids into being gay or whatever. She was promoting organized harassment

campaigns against those teachers. Uh interspersed with tweets and screenshots of news articles about teachers who sexually assaulted students, importantly not posting the article, but just like a screenshot of the headline, along with comments like funny, how this keeps happening?

Which is like neglects to mention that like all these incidents are from heterosexual teachers uh, or like that one story from last year of a cop and his wife who was a teacher working together to sexually abused children, Like none of them are actually about gay people. It's all. I mean, I'm not certain if a school resource officer has ever stopped a mass shooting, but I know that something like fifty of them have been fired from a

lesting kids. Yeah. It's it's it's it's really it's really insidious because she's she's posting all this to about, you know, teachers grooming kids, uh, you know, and into being like queer teachers grooming kids, like alongside headlines of teachers actually assault like sexually sexually assaulting kids, but those headlines are all of stories about heterosexual teachers. Like but you know, so she posts both of those things. So it's like to like to have this correlation for her audience despite

them not actually being related. Because yeah, lives of TikTok Shore ain't posting about how cops should be kept away from kids for the safety of the children. Um, they're they're they're they're never going to post about how many people who can grooming stuff have been arrested because like several of the organizers of of of this whole like gave people like grooming kids, things like have been arrested for child abuse since this started, which yeah, no it's not,

it's never it's never gonna matter. But you know, posting and lying about queer teachers grooming children next to headlines about teachers sexually abusing kids to manufacture this correlation, which is of course false, but it's still highly effective. Now. Believe me. I would love to not talk about Twitter nonsense, but unfortunately Twitter accounts like lips of TikTok actually do

play a massive role in shaping offline conservative politics. Lips of TikTok was very soon being interviewed by New York Post, being boosted by Joe Rogan going on Tucker Carlson. Other Fox News hosts like Jesse Waters began featuring content straight from the lips of TikTok twitter feed, uh and Tucker encouraged his viewers to follow the account before it's a band. If you want to know, quote what may be happening

in your child's school. Lass March, when lips of TikTok posted the video of a woman teaching sex ed to kids in Kentucky, like you know, preteens or whatever, she called the woman a predator. In the next evening, the same clip was featured on Laura Ingram's Fox News program, with the host saying, when did our school, any of any schools become essential become what are essentially grooming centers

for a gender identity radicals. Um so, yeah, this is the content straight from lista TikTok being put onto the most watched news programs in the world. Um and as we'll see, also being taken in by some of the most powerful conservative politicians. Mainstream conservative politicians quickly joined in

in the tuting of the lips of TikTok grooming. Horn Uh obviously wrote around as Santis is a big, big part of this, of one of Florida Governor Rhda Santis's top aids and press secretary is a huge fan of lips of TikTok um and is in frequent communication with them.

Quoting the Washington Post quote by March two, lips of TikTok was directly impacting legislation, Rhonda santiss Press secretary Christina Pershaw credited the account with quote opening her eyes and informing her views on the state's restrictive legislation that bands discussion of sexuality or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade referred to critics as they don't say gay bill.

The bill has been unquote. So this bill has has already been used to get middle school teachers fired for for for saying that they are not straight. Um, and you'll notice that middle school is not in kindergarten through third grade. Uh So, remember when we were all saying, hey, the actually it actually doesn't matter that the bill says it's only up for kindergarten through third grade. It's just gonna be applied for anyone. Yeah, it turns out we

were right. Uh so it's this. The bill has already been specifically cited in the firing of multiple teachers from Florida for for just not not you know, conforming to the heterosexual Christian hegemonic worldview. And Lips of TikTok is still currently among the most prominent influencers affecting actual material conditions and shaping both the rhetoric and propaganda while impacting legislation.

UM friend of Lips of TikTok and des Sentences, Press Secretary Christina Persia has said, quote the bill that liberals inaccurately called Don't Say Gay would be more accurately described as an anti grooming bill. If you're against the anti rooming bill, you probably are a groomer, or at least you don't denounce the grooming of four to eight year old children. Silence is complicncy. This is how it works, democrats. This is how it works, democrats. And I didn't make

the rules. So yeah, see you see how we have. See how that works. You called you called the Don't Say Gay bill a anti grooming bill, so that everyone, anyone who criticizes it is now a groomer? Is it? Is it? That a fun way to play with words? Isn't that nice? That is a fun way to play with words? Garrison love it. So the past few months

we've seen this. You know, queer people are groomers. Meme reach seemingly never never before seen heights, and uh at least is and at the very least is the highest and most me medic has ever been in the past two decades. You know, it's it's really building off of all of the killer local pedophile ship, right, It's it's the Robert, do you want to briefly, briefly talk about killer local. I mean, it's a bunch of bumper stickers.

It's a slogan like I know dudes who are not at all fascists and say that because they're like new Dad's and they're horrified at the But like the whole, like the core of it is this right wing and it kind of started off in like the sort of libertarian gun nut communities. But it's it's, it's it's really used a lot as sort of it's a group that you can talk about doing anything too. You can talk

about killing, you can like fetishize murdering, um. And if you can then like define other groups as inherently pedophilic, then you can do anything to them, right, Like that's the basic idea is if you can get people saying it's always okay to use vigilante violence against this group, um, And obviously no one's gonna defend child molesters, But then you start making the case that people who are not in fact molesting children are somehow pedophiles or you know,

or somehow related to pedophiles, and then suddenly it's okay to kill them. It's okay violence massive social groups like all of gay and trans people, so if you conflate these two things are able to make these things sent the same thing in someone's mind that makes homophobia now not a bad thing, but like a moral imperative, Like

you have to be homophobic because these people are grooming children. Yep, and you can get you get this interesting thing to which like there are people who are like not quite as far in who will do who will say? I see things a lot where it's like someone's like, oh, well I don't have a problem with gay people, but like they shouldn't groom kids, and it's like this is that's not what's happening, bro. Yeah, no, do you know do you know what else doesn't groom kids? I mean,

the Washington State definitely does. But let me tell you, if you want somebody to groom your children, the Washington Highways State Highway patrob will do that. But you know what they won't do is protect those children in the event of danger because that might endanger them. So look, look, sometimes sometimes right someone who's try someone who's killing your kid, and you need to get pepper sprayed, and when that time calls you, you will beg for the Washington Highway

State Patrol. Well, you'll beg for a different police department. But when those police get in trouble because of their failure to act, than the Washington State Highway Patrol will show up to protect those cops. Anyway, here's here's the bads. We're back. Um. So as the queer people are Groomer's ship was reaching the most me medic and the highest rate of of of trending that it's has had in decades this past April, at the height of the recent

increased wave of anti queer legislation and anti lgbt Q rhetoric. Um. This this is when some terminally online teenagers tried to start can get pride discourse once again. And I do not want to talk about this, but I've written off about it, so I'm going to this Legitimately, what I was like thinking about I realized I was gay, and I was like, oh my god, I should come out, and then I would like. One of the things that I spent a long time thinking about was does this

mean I have to do can't get pride discourse? And for a long time I would have said no, of course not, I'm never going to do this. But here we are, so anyway, uh do I kick doing kink get pride discourse? Uh? Then, and even still now, while the antiqueer onslaught is accelerating at the highest pace it's had in years. Sure seems to be like dumping fuel

on the fire. Uh what's up with that? Kids? Why so anyway, Uh, the discourse itself revolves around whether kink apparel or paraphernalia render the pride space unsafe for miners or quote unquote non consensual observers. Uh heavy heavy quotation marks there by the way. Uh. But also it is heavily rooted in assimilationist and respectability politics and a push for l g B t Q people to be seen as more acceptable or more normal while still existing in

a heteronormative society. Um. And now, obviously I'm not a fan of this discourse happening in the first place, especially now, Like why are you doing it now during all the groomer stuff? Stop it, that's stop it, don't do that, quit it? Why are you doing this? Uh? But first of all, I also want to point out how this entire discourse runs on the same train of thought that fuels all of the groomer stuff in the first place. It's it's it's picking at the same part of human brains.

So here's I'm going to read this post that went super vital about a month ago, that that's sparked, that sparked the new wave of this uh much much frustrated discourse. Quote l g B t Q, youth being uncomfortable with kinks at Pride is not homophobia. Kinks at Pride might have been fine if this was still the nineteen hundreds or adults were the only ones attending Pride, But it's not the nineteen hundreds anymore, and now kids are way

more involved in celebrating our identities. The celebrating our identities part there is really important and well, we'll talk about this more soon, but look, largely in the past like twenty years, there's been this shift with queerness and sexual orientation being less about who you fuck and more like a personality aspect or a social identity with a branded aesthetic. Um, it's it's this, it's like, it's it's which is in some ways good, like in some ways good that people

are more able to express themselves however they want. But you know, kids at school aren't getting bullied for being gay anymore, which again is good less than they were, they're they're getting bullied less somewhat depending on where you live. But it's also kind of it's made people forget the whole like, uh, like gays bash back or gaze, don't bash back, but shoot first. Like it's forgot. We don't

have that. That's not as a core component of queerness anymore, because queerness is now able to be kind of more safe and sanitized. Uh. And it's it's a right. It's like it's and it's it's it's a personal identity in a way that it's not it's not just about who you fuck anymore. It's like this like personal identity aspect um, which I'm not saying is bad. It's just that there's this thing that's happened that's changed the way we talk

about sexual orientation. Hey, quick pause, This is Garrison from the Future here, just popping in to clarify a bit on what I mean regarding this note on identities and identifying as various shades of queer. What I'm getting at is that when observing some of the baby queers around my age or maybe a bit younger, queerness is seen as a more available option for young people when putting together their personality or sense of self and more separated from the aty gritty details of who you fuck now

that queerness is generally more tolerated. Now, don't get me wrong, I do like the idea of being free to choose queerness. In many ways, I consider myself as having chosen to be gay. The thing about framing that as your quote unquote personal identity, as opposed to simply choosing to be what you are, is that the former lets you wield that quote unquote identity against other people, or other queer people.

I disagree with you. It's it's this thing where queerness is filtered through the lens of brands and like brand recognition, which is definitely made worse by social media, dating apps, personal profiles, and personal bios. And it's part of this cultural push to like have everyone create their own personal brand. And like, I don't want to identify as gender queer, I just am gender queer. I don't identify as gay.

I just like catboys. Therefore I am gay. It's a different ontological framing and one that I think is less susceptible to heteronormative assimilationist ideas. And like the capitalist marketing to queerness as a brand or as a market demographic. If your queerness is a personal identity that's more sanitized, more approachable for a head normative society, then you get to use your identity to attack gay people whose queerness

is more based in deviant sexuality and alternative communities. I'm gonna I'm gonna read the the follow up tweet to this, to this thing that sparked the new discourse quote. Not even all lgbt Q adults are comfortable with seeing kings at Pride. There's nothing from there's nothing stopping you guys from adjusting or having after events strictly for adults when they're partaken that y'all need to adjust that every lgbt Q person feels comfortable attending. So let's let's just do

some like queer history here for a second. The first Pride was a riot um on on on on that night in June in the nineteen sixty nine nice Uh, the police raided the Stonewall in one of the largest private private gate clubs in the US at the time. The patrons of the bar, you know, trans women of color, homeless, queer teens, drag queens, lesbians, and leather daddies fought back lots of trans teenagers through bricks at cops, and like

a fair number of those trans teenagers were also sex workers. Uh. Kink including you know, like leather daddies and lots of aspects that are we now views as like kink or b d s M has been a part of Pride since its literal inception, like way back in nineteen sixty nine. Um And while like, while drag isn't considered king now in two it still is considered it's actually deviant. But back in like the twentieth century, uh in in ninety you know, in nineteen sixty nine, New York City still

had laws that prohibited cross dressing. So drag used to be way more kinky than it is now. Uh And like basically all queer sex used to be unacceptable kink or just a crime. It was a crime in Texas until like do you like, I think around when I graduated high school two thousand three was when the Supreme Court also, it's no longer an enforceable laws, and it's illegal. It's still illegal to own more than five dildos. Yeah,

I think it's five, but it might be six. So like all queer sex used to be unacceptable, kink and many logistical aspects of gay fucking used to happen in public. I'm gonna I'm gonna quote an article from them dot us quote. For some people, gay rights and gay liberation do not hinge on particulars of sexual desire. For years, I've heard that we aren't just our ironic identities, But for many of us, it does begin there, and it does revolve around the ways we organize our erotic choices.

Before l g b t Q plus people had pride parades, our community spaces were not just bars, but cruising spots like bathhouses, dungeons, and public restrooms. It should be no surprise that many queer folks find their sex lives and their sense of community to be intertwined. B D s M, subversive sexuality, and leather culture have enjoyed a long history within the lgbt Q rights movement. They are inherent expressions

of queer culture and sexuality. Being free to signal your sexuality out in the open within a queer context is the entire point of pride unquote. So like all of this discourse around pride and kink, it pride reflects a modern but regressive idea that sexuality is inherently damaging to see, experience, or think about in a public context, especially if that

sexuality is inherently queer. And there's this other idea that we see a lot of in this type of discourse, and it's mirrored a little bit with like the groomer stuff too, that if you see someone quote unquote engaging in kink, and like in the case of Pride, that's like what wearing a collar, harness or a pop mask, that just the act of observation is somehow a violation of consent. And it's really frustrating because indication of sexuality in a non vanilla sense, while in public, is not

a violation of consent. Like I didn't consent quote unquote consent to see the rainbow cops, right, But public indication of sexuality is not a consent of violation. And again, indicating sexuality is like the entire point of Pride. Weaponizing quote unquote consent to call out people that we see but don't interact with, who are quote unquote dressed to se actual in our own mind is bad for multiple reasons. It also potentially dilutes legitimate claims of non consent in

cases of actual sexual violence. And it's it's like this thing like if you look at someone in a pup mask, there is no consent violation there. That's a really weird thing that people that people talk about. And it's not it's not like I'm not trying to start fights on the internet with like these tender queer children, um, because like and I I don't want anyone to find like these, like you know, months old posts and start harassing these people.

But that post has like over thirty thousand likes and thousands and thousands and thousands of retweets, and it basically just repeats like old queer bashing talking points that conflate kink and queer visibility with public sex that endangerous children, and like conflating gaze being visible and semi clothed with being like dangerous to children. Are the same talking points that it gets used for book bands conversion therapy, and

they don't say gay bills, right. This idea that if you look at a gay person shirtless, that's dangerous to a kid, that's the same that's the same underlying motivation that fuels all of the screwbery discourse. Uh, it's it's it's the whole thing where it's like I'm okay with gay people, I just don't want to see it, right. It's like that that that that idea in and of itself is like is still like exists on that you know, I didn't consent to look at it type of thing.

You know. This This is other other tweet from somebody being like forcing people to see kicky stuff without consent is really weird. I'm sorry, but I don't want pop masks at Pride events for families. I saw that ship in real life and it made me uncomfortable. Don't involve other people in their kinks. I if they don't consent and like looking at someone in a mask, it'sn't involving you in any of these kinks. You're if you're looking at someone in an other mask, Like, if that makes

you uncomfortable, that that's your problem. You do have a right to not be uncomfortable with how people look or are in public. Look, every time I go out into the world, I see something that makes me a comfortable. Um, I see a lot of people with children. Now, do I think it should be legal to have children? I do think that it should be it should be illegal exactly. So I like, look, we all have to deal with

things that make us uncomfortable. Look like we have a clear solution here that the way to deal with events not being family friendly used to get rid of families. That's it's exactly right. We have to eliminate the concept of the family. Yeah, come on, come on, come. Communist manifesto was what this is? One oh one ship people? You were you were? You were quoting from the Communist manifesto. Okay, that's interesting, That's that's not where I got it from.

But I I feel like I feel like a lot of these people, many of them like young teens, who are complaining about being forced to look at ute unquote inappropriate things that pride, have never actually been to a pride because most of most of modern pride is like really sanitized and chill like it's like it is. It

is overrun with corporate sponsors, politicians, and cops. Like you are you you are way more likely to see armed police at like a Pride march then you're then you'll be likely to see like tits or like gags or whatever. Like most It's funny to me because like I started going to these and this is before the internet was what it was or moral panics were what they were. But like in Texas, I would go to these events where there would be people of all ages and families.

These are like little burning regionals. People would be like at like on the big night when people are doing like the fire shows and the fireworks stuff, people would be like fucking and like manning flamethrowers, like while having sex. There there were like there was a whole chunk of it that was just like the kink row and you could walk down it and watch people get like whipped and fuck a sybian and stuff. It was just like

I don't remember any of this fucking. Like the only discourse was like, well, okay, we should probably like make sure that people know where that kind of stuff mainly happens so that like they don't have to walk around it if they don't want to. But like it was, Yeah, it's like this idea that like not even full nudity, but like semi nudity than a queer context is inherently more dangerous to children if it's if it's in a

queer context than a straight context. Right, we have all of these even like queer kids can like complaining online about being forced to see things at Pride just like they would see way more skinned if they went to like a beach in the summer, Like it's it's there's It revolves on the same homeophobic idea that like if if you look at these things in a queer context that is like more adult than looking at it within

a straight context. Yes, um, it's I don't know, frustrating, it's frustrating and like another another reason why that I think many of these like baby leftist tender queers are who are who are crusading against kink ap Pride and complaining about like leather and or like sexy underwear. Um, but lots of them even uh, first of all, most of them, I think lots of haven't been de Pride because there hasn't really been Pride for the past two years,

and lots of these people are like fifteen years old. Um, but a lot of them also just like admit to never be going to Pride because they're too terrified to see a pop mask, Like they openly say like I've never been because I don't want to see these things, Like sure, you're allowed to do that, But then don't make don't like, don't campaign against king Pride, which will result in your posts getting used by like homophobic trolls

and bigots. I don't go to because I don't want to see a deep dish pizza, but I don't try to ban them, like I understand that that's the thing you people. Like, Like, the first time I saw a pop mask was that fucking comic Con. Like it's like like like it's not you don't see like band pup masks from comic con, Like what Like these these people, like these kids are are basing their fears off of like a few viral photos that are often shared in

a disingenuous context. Now, well we'll talk about these photos in a bit, but you know, these these people are like fifteen years old, have never been to p and are just like simply terrified of like actual sexuality. Like they enjoy, they engage with queerness is like a personal identity and stuff. But once they get into like the nitty gritty of like sex, that makes them really uncomfortable because their teens, because they're kids, that that's okay, you

can be uncomfortable with sex. That makes sense. That is that it's appropriate for your age, but then don't make your entire online presence about trying to shut down this massive aspect of queer history. Um because like the kinky stuff that I've seen at Pride is yeah, on par with what you see at Comic Con. I often will see more more nudity at Portland's Comic Con than I than I will at any of the Pride events I've

been to. Um Like, all of the more like openly like fetish folks or kinky folks are really responsible and act pretty appropriately at Pride, and and the people who like say otherwise online generally just have not actually been

to Pride in their entire life. Um Because like this complaining about quote unquote like inappropriate fetishes or like kinky conduct, it's basically code for I am uncomfortable with you being positive about the way you view sex, and I want you to not show it, and I want you to not and I want you to not talk about it, which is the same underlying thought process that people use

to be homophobic. It's the it's the exact same thing. Um. Now, a lot of this discourse oversimplifies kink and b d s. M Um, right, queerness can be about it can be about love, it can be about it can be about sexual attraction um and both uh or sometimes for a sexual people in lacking one or the other um or both uh. But but by that same token, right, kink, leather and b D s M aren't all exclusively about sex to a large extent, they're also about community building um.

And I just think these these like earnest think of the youth arguments are very silly because even when it comes to youth, because if you're uncomfortable things, that's totally fine. But in a lot of cases, like queer teenagers also have sex generally with other career teenagers, sometimes even in a kinky context, and that's okay. Pride it's about celebrating

everyone's individual ability to do that. And I don't like it when when people just rehash old homophobic talking points to to and especially during during all of this, all of this groomy discourse, because a key key part of key part of kink, keep part of like queer sex, is consent. And once you're start you start complating what consent is by saying that me looking at you wearing a collar is a violation of consent. Once you start

undermining what consent actually means. That's like not a good thing, it's actually not that is actually a bad thing, especially right now during all of the during all of all of all of the grammar stuff. So that is we are we've gone kind of over on on time here. Um, but we're gonna make We're gonna make this a two parter.

In the next episode, we'll talk a bit more about like tender Years and we'll actually get into the plans of Operation Pridefall and talk about how we kind of got to this point because man, there's a lot of kids sharing sharing pictures online and oh boy, do those pictures originate in some dubious, dubious places. Um. So that that that does it for us today. We will we will see you tomorrow. Um. Pride's fun. We should not police what other people do. So yeah, anyway, bye bye.

It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. Well more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool Zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.