Gays who “aren’t like the other gays” have always been an unfortunate faction of the LGBTQ+ community. But in recent years, as transphobia has become an animating force behind the global rise of fascism, it’s become clear that queer respectability politics are more than annoying — they can sometimes become an actual threat to the community.
On Wednesday, the Daily Dot published a report on “Gays Against Groomers,” or GAG. It’s a Twitter account that is basically a Great Value version of the notoriously toxic Libs of TikTok, except it’s run by a lesbian, Jaimee Mitchell. She is apparently a creative designer at a right-wing marketing firm, one who (surprise!) follows open white supremacists and has promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories on her personal account.
According to the Daily Dot, GAG has been around for less than a month, and has racked up tens of thousands of followers on Twitter and Instagram, probably because of inflammatory posts like this tweet claiming that “young boys” were being forced to participate in a “nearly-naked kinkfest.” (Translation: there was a Boy Scout troop marching in a pride parade.) Other tweets claim that pride month activities that cater toward children count as indoctrination, or that explaining to kids what “trans” means is tantamount to propaganda, all in an effort to make people think that teaching children that LGBTQ+ people exist is “grooming.”
It’s worth noting that smearing queer and trans people as inherently pedophilic is pretty much the oldest trick in the book; in fact, some of the earliest organized anti-gay movements also claimed that children needed to be saved from supposedly predatory LGBTQ+ teachers.
GAG’s Twitter claims that the LGBTQ+ community “has been hijacked by radical activists who are now pushing extreme concepts onto society, specifically targeting children in recent years,” according to a mission statement of sorts that it posted on Twitter on Wednesday. It claims that the acceptance of trans people has set the rest of the (cis) LGB community back; namely, GAG claims that the supposed sexualization of children includes “drag queen story hours, drag shows involving children, the transitioning and medicalization of minors, and gender theory being taught in the classroom.”
