Tag: grooming

When the Truth Is Uncomfortable – and We Want to Look Away

Both the UK grooming scandals and the medicalisation of ROGD teens highlight how the visceral reality of body horror drives us to turn away from deeply unsettling truths.

It’s striking how two seemingly unrelated issues can sometimes reveal the same deep-rooted problems in society. On the one hand there are the UK grooming gang scandals – horrifying crimes, ignored for decades, involving networks of Pakistani Muslim men who targeted vulnerable teenage girls. On the other, there’s the sudden explosion of teenagers, particularly girls, identifying as trans – many of whom are suffering irreversible harm as a consequence of inappropriate medical transition. At first glance you may not think these two crises have much in common, but scratch the surface and a disturbing pattern emerges.

In both cases, the adults in charge looked the other way. Institutions minimised. Social workers made the wrong calls. Mental health professionals rarely helped – and often caused harm. Journalists stayed silent. Officials deflected. Very few people in positions of authority had the courage to confront the shocking reality, and those who did were labelled as bigots.

Meanwhile parents’ pleas were ignored and dismissed as either “Islamophobic” or “transphobic” depending on the context. And because the parents found no societal support when they needed it, their children became out of control and their lives were ruined.

At a conference in the US earlier this year, I found myself facing blank stares when I mentioned the parallels between girls caught up in the grooming gang scandal and teenagers swept up in the world of rapid-onset gender dysphoria. One delegate pushed back, insisting that victims never feel glad to be targeted while plenty of ROGD kids say they are happy with their medical transition. But sadly, that’s not true. Many of the targets of grooming gangs believed their abusers were their boyfriends. Just like many ROGD teens, they felt flattered by the attention and even encouraged their friends to join in what they saw as fun. The gifts, the glamour, the sense of being wanted – it all had a powerful pull. Quite a number went as far as converting to Islam and marrying their abusers.

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Hasbro Recalls Toy With Secret Button on ‘Private Area’ That Makes Doll ‘Gasp and Giggle’

A “Troll” doll made by Hasbro was revealed to carry a secret button on its “private parts” that made the children’s doll “gasp and giggle” when pressed. The revelation of the button and its inappropriate sexual connotations sparked a social media firestorm and a Change.org petition that has amassed nearly half a million e-signatures.

The “Trolls World Tour Giggle and Sing Poppy” doll was exposed across social media, accumulating tens of thousands of engagements. The question “Is @Hasbro normalizing grooming & facilitating child abuse?” was asked in one tweet that showed a video of a disgruntled mother showcasing the doll.

The narrator to the video exposing the doll’s button began by saying: “I wanted to do a quick video because I find this disturbing, and I find it something that needs to be shared.

“As you all know, stuff that has been going on in the world about the sex trafficking in kids and the stuff that is thrown in our kids’ faces to kinda groom them, and make them kind of a little bit more oblivious to things that are really happening.”

The narrator goes onto explain: “It was my daughter’s birthday a couple of days ago and she turned two. And she was given this gift: a little Poppy doll–it is adorable.”

She then goes onto outline the features of the doll, including the 10 phrases and sounds that the doll makes when a button on its belly is pressed, but no mention of the button in the doll’s intimate parts under her skirt.

The woman filming touches the doll’s belly to demonstrate the promised feature on the box, causing the doll to sing. She then reveals a button on the doll’s “private” area that makes a “gasping sound” when pressed, before reiterating the lack of any mention of the “private” button on the box.

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