man sometimes friendship really is just “I saw this and knew it would give you psychic damage. please respond with agony” and then they do. and it’s great
okay already i desperately need u.s. americans to practice the phrase, “not where i’m from, but maybe in other parts of the u.s.”
because it’s genuinely insane the things i’ve heard americans say ‘america doesn’t have’ when it’s just factually incorrect.
for some perspective: during my longest move i did by-car in the u.s., i drove ~3,000 miles. That’s ~4,800 km. It took nearly 50 hours drive-times alone. Meaning, if I could have driven without stopping once, it would have taken nearly 50 hours. Of course I split that up over several days.
Driving that same distance here, If there’s a ferry+road from Rabat (in Morocco) to Kyiv (Ukraine), I could take it and keep on going another several hours.
So you can understand how silly it is for someone from the u.s. to be asked to answer a question on behalf of the entirety of the u.s.—geographically, culturally, etc.
So now that we’ve said all that, I need you to know that I listened to a guy from Idaho tell an Irish person today, “yeah, we just don’t really get snails much in America.”
Snails.
Next. Even if someone does say, 'not where I’m from,’ you might still want to check that out for yourself:
People keep popping up in the replies on that post to insist that adults are and can be groomed and I am the world’s most exhausted whack-a-mole champ.
The thing a lot of the people who keep returning to that post to yell YUH HUH ADULTS ARE GROOMED don’t get is that I’m actually trying to advocate for children too, here. I work in Trust and Safety, which is a largely digital field devoted to all things terrible you can do online: terrorism, self-harm, and, of course, CSAM and CSA, which are my career speciality. I’m considered an expert in my field. I helped to build anti-abuse tooling that the (Biden) White House shouted out as a revolutionary step forward in combating grooming online. I was part of the team who first ousted and identified the people and behaviors behind 764, a really hideous ring of abusers whom I don’t recommend you look up unless you have a strong stomach. Some of the arrests in those cases are directly my doing.
Simultaneously, I’m an adult who, in my spare time, enjoys engaging in adult fiction spaces. As a result of that, I have, unfortunately, been shouted at a decent number of times by young adults (18-25 seems to be the common range) about children, and their well being, and how what happens in adult fiction spaces causes harm to children, and themselves by proxy. (I’ve also been yelled at by actual children, but I’m happy to ignore them, given many of them have been influenced by the previously mentioned young adults to behave that way.)
“Grooming” isn’t truly a technical term, though my industry uses it as one often. It doesn’t have a precise definition or pattern of behavior beyond “inappropriate conduct with a child.” It’s had other uses, of course, like saying someone was “groomed to inherit a title” or similar. But generally what we mean online is “this has to do with child abuse.”
Children are, no joke, one of the most uniquely oppressed classes of human being in the world. Most of the time, they simply have no recourse, no legal right to self-advocate, no ability to retain counsel, choose their own living environment, what they do, how they dress, what they eat. To even report their own abuse — which I assure you, most children are perfectly aware is abuse — they must first be believed by an adult, who may then choose to do something on the child’s behalf, or not. Any option a child has for safety or freedom of choice is entirely dependent on an adult deigning to humor them in the first place.
When you turn the age of majority in your country, you are automatically given a new set of legal and social rights. Even a severely disabled adult, in most places, may advocate for their rights on the basis of their legal adulthood. (There are constant failures here by the legal system, of course, but the point is that you are allowed to advocate in the first place.) You become a different class of person, who can do and ask for things that children are simply not allowed to.
When you try to say that “adults can be groomed,” by bringing up all kinds of random possibilities like “well what about cults” “what about age gaps and different levels of life experience” “what about this or that,” you’re still ignoring the idea that the exploited adult has recourse, in those situations (again, leaving out that there are many failings with the system that allows that recourse does not eliminate the fact that recourse is an option.) Restraining orders. Moving away. Going no contact, with no parent to force you to continue to see that person on holidays. Even if you are young, you are not helpless. You have an agency allowed to you that children simply are not given.
Of course, an 18 year old can be abused and exploited. And I absolutely am wary of a 19 year old dating a 40 year old — personally, I question the shit out of that. I’d even suspect that that 19 year old was previously groomed in some way. But the distinction is important to me, here, not to diminish the abuse that young adults can face, but to ensure that the plight of children is properly understood.
Children matter to me. Their harms and their rights matter to me. And just as I find it reprehensible to compare the fictional behaviors of fictional characters to real world harm, I am frustrated with the constant need to insist that young adults are on the same harm level as children are. It is the very opposite of “who gives a shit about kids and young people suffering.”
Once in a while I still see people going on about young adults being “groomed,” so here again is my take on why that’s wrong and unhelpful.
I hope I’m online when it happens. I want to see a sudden flood of crab rave memes right after refreshing my dash, and in the middle of it all, the Castiel news meme. That’s how I want to learn of it; not through anything solemn or serious, but via overwhelming silly celebration.
Peachicks - all sexes under “yearling” age (this DOES NOT necessarly mean 1 year old)
Yearling - (Northern Hemisphere) A juvenile peafowl who has passed their first January 1st, but not their second January 1st. (Southern Hemisphere) A juvenile peafowl during their first breeding season year after their hatch year.
2yo - (Northern Hemisphere) A juvenile peafowl who has passed their second January 1st, but not their third January 1st. (Southern Hemisphere) A juvenile peafowl during their second breeding season year after their hatch year.
Mature peafowl - Any breeding-age peafowl past their third January 1st and/or experiencing their third full breeding season after their hatch year. Peacocks must have a full train, peahens must be laying.
There’s also some other fun terms
Spalding - A hybrid peafowl with lineage from Pavo cristatus and Pavo muticus. Any percentage of mixed blood is considered a Spalding. There are actually VERY few known pure blooded individuals from either species in the USA anymore. Most “Indian blue” peafowl you see are actually low percentage hybrids.
A “Bevy” is a family group of peafowl, blood related.
A “Party” is a group of peafowl (some people now use other terms, such as ostentation or muster, but Party is actually the correct term), not necessarily blood related.
ALT
