Open Collections

Cassisa, Susanna Leigh

University of British Columbia

Over the last four years, the term “groomer” has emerged as a political weapon against the LGBTQ+ community to conflate queerness with child abuse and “recruitment.” Although this particular iteration is new, the sentiment behind it has deep historical roots that can be traced to nineteenth-century Germany. Groomer Rumor is a podcast and experimental master’s thesis that explores the history and functions of this ongoing moral panic that labels queer people as sexual predators. The podcast uses historical examples from Germany and the United States to critically analyze the weaponization of this trope against the LGBTQ+ community. Incorporating archival audio footage, interviews with scholars, and original narration, Groomer Rumor traces a transnational genealogy of the “groomer” trope over the course of more than a century to emphasize the deeply entangled queer histories of Germany and the United States, while highlighting the distinct characteristics and implications of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in unique political, cultural, and temporal contexts.

Text

2024-07-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88822

Germanic Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/