The more things like this flourish, the more it sort of builds up and sort of pops out when you least expect it to attack you in real life. The petifil version is a way of basically dismissing whatever they're saying by lumping the in with child reditors and child sexual abusers. Partly, this is a meam. It's been around for a while. But i think it also functions as a dog whistle to sort of identify people you've labelled and targeted as being liberal or promoting the queer or gender queergenda,. Whatever objection you have this day of the week.
Accounts like “Libs of TikTok” are fueling right-wing media to label people who speak openly about sexuality and gender as “groomers.” Vox’s Aja Romano and the Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz explain this age-old practice.
This episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Will Reid, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Paul Mounsey, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained
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