My kids don’t watch as much Disney as I do, as I did at their age. It’s not as shocking as when my son informed me that he doesn’t like superheroes much, but it’s kind of surprising in kids their age. Still, I do watch all that Disney, and I’m very aware of what Disney is theoretically teaching my kids and what they’re not. Probably more so than most of the people complaining about it online, because I’m also well aware of what my kids actually take in and what they don’t. As in, I actually talk to my kids and have an awareness of how they think.
To accuse Disney of grooming kids into accepting the LGBTQ+ community is simply ludicrous. If anything, you’d think they’re grooming my kids into thinking housework is fun, and they certainly don’t do that. (How many Disney heroines are shown cleaning? So many.) There are a lot more heteronormative relationships, and that’s even with the dead parents. There’s also this strange assumption that the only influence on children is Disney and that Disney’s influence is stronger than anyone else’s, and that wasn’t even true with me, and look how I turned out.
It’s partially that I know I influence my kids still. We spend at least as much time watching anti-creationist content together, and I know that’s influenced my son more than the chaste teenage relationship in Strange World, about the only Disney he’s seen with an explicitly queer character, because, come on, it’s about the only Disney out there with an explicitly queer character. My son is more aware of intricate arguments for evolution than he is the fact that Disney put out an extremely tepid complaint about the Don’t Say Gay law.
Is that to say no one’s grooming my kids through their content? No. There are shows my daughter, in particular, watches that are very much intended to influence her—or really my—spending habits. They want to get me to buy Cocomelon and Ryan’s World merchandise for her, and they are trying to get her to ask for it. That’s much closer to grooming than what Disney’s doing, and I’m a lot less happy about it than I am about, say, drag storytime at a public library which no one’s forcing us to attend anyway.
What’s more, I’m starting to worry about my son—he’s nine, and he’s starting to get to the age where he’s absolutely being groomed by the right to believe the way they do. We know this happens. It’s not even just the absolutely horrific ads that the gun industry is putting out, trying to encourage him to want guns. It’s the video games that make guns seem cool. It’s the PragerU for kids nonsense. It’s how a lot of things are made to sound “reasonable” for him that really aren’t and that I don’t want him exposed to.
The solution to this is to continue to know my kids. To continue to talk to them. We have queer friends and family, and we are very open about supporting them. We have PoC friends and family, same. Grooming relies on a certain amount of parental negligence. If you keep up with your kids, you can be more aware of what’s going on in their minds. I’ve even known parents who had good relationships with their teenagers, so I know that’s possible—and failing that, you can at least have good relationships with the adults with whom your kids have a good relationship and be aware of that. We can fight grooming, and the way to do it isn’t to build a prison next to Disney World.
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