The tag implication #67308 child_grooming -> child_abuse has been rejected.

Reason: Child grooming is child abuse.

EDIT: The tag implication child_grooming -> child_abuse (forum #448087) has been rejected by @Beholding.

I was about to say that the child_abuse wiki supports this but you literally just edited it to say that lmao

Saying "child grooming is child abuse" is a bad argument. This is akin to saying bestiality is inherently animal_abuse.
Everything here works differently within the realm of furry logic and TWYS.

For your suggestion, child_abuse needs the "physical, emotional, or sexual trauma" to be readily apparent.
In addition, the implied abuse tag needs the "cruelty or violence" to be visible as well.
On the other hand, child_grooming may or may not show the physical or sexual abuse happening in the same frame.

nin10dope said:
I was about to say that the child_abuse wiki supports this but you literally just edited it to say that lmao

Yeah, to the OP, do not preemptively edit the wikis to reflect whatever you are trying to suggest.
It is bad practice and makes people think you are trying to justify your suggestion "because the wiki says so".

thegreatwolfgang said:
On the other hand, child_grooming may or may not show the physical or sexual abuse happening in the same frame.

I don't follow. Child grooming is inherently sexual abuse. If the post is showing child grooming, it's showing sexual abuse.

Saying "child grooming is child abuse" is a bad argument. This is akin to saying bestiality is inherently animal_abuse.

And, tangential, but I think one could make a fair case that sex with nonsapient animals is inherently animal abuse. The bestiality tag gets a pass because it includes sex with sapient ferals.

Yeah, to the OP, do not preemptively edit the wikis to reflect whatever you are trying to suggest.
It is bad practice and makes people think you are trying to justify your suggestion "because the wiki says so".

Sorry, I thought it was self-evident. It can be reversed at your discretion.

I would never dare say this in any other context or in any other setting, but grooming isn't inherently sexual abuse. Grooming starts at the "I'm your friend, you should trust me over anyone else, don't tell anyone about us" conversations and interactions.

However, I will also say that child_abuse as a tag is not just abuse + young with extra steps. It's its own category

nin10dope said:
I would never dare say this in any other context or in any other setting, but grooming isn't inherently sexual abuse. Grooming starts at the "I'm your friend, you should trust me over anyone else, don't tell anyone about us" conversations and interactions.

That is abuse. It's abusing the power differential between the adult and the child, the child's naivete, and the child's trust.

I'm pretty sure all posts with the tag depict sexual grooming specifically, as well.

beholding said:
That is abuse. It's abusing the power differential between the adult and the child, the child's naivete, and the child's trust.

I'm pretty sure all posts with the tag depict sexual grooming specifically, as well.

Is it still child_grooming if it's young_on_young?

thegreatwolfgang said:
Is it still child_grooming if it's young_on_young?

That scenario doesn't exist at present. child_grooming young_on_young returns only 5 posts, all of which involve an adult groomer.

I could theoretically imagine a scenario where an adolescent grooms a younger character, but that's still abusing age and power differentials. "Child grooming", as a concept, inherently involves abusing the elements I mentioned.

I intentionally specified sexual abuse

beholding said:
That scenario doesn't exist at present. child_grooming young_on_young returns only 5 posts, all of which involve an adult groomer.

I could theoretically imagine a scenario where an adolescent grooms a younger character, but that's still abusing age and power differentials. "Child grooming", as a concept, inherently involves abusing the elements I mentioned.

Yet, it is a scenario that can theoretically happen at any point in the future. No matter how fucked up it can sound, artworks can hypothetically depict an adult-minded child grooming a child-minded adolescent.

By the definition of child_abuse, it is "the act of adult characters inflicting physical, emotional, or sexual trauma on young characters."
Therefore, this implication would not even be entirely accurate or applicable to those hypothetical scenarios.

Sure, you can suggest redefining child_abuse to just simply mean "the inflicting of physical, emotional, or sexual trauma on young characters."
But then again, you have to ask yourself in these hypothetical scenarios whether a child physically or emotionally abusing another child can be considered child_abuse (i.e., regular school bullying).

thegreatwolfgang said:
Is it still child_grooming if it's young_on_young?

No.
The same is true when you replace grooming with abuse in that question.
Bullying isn't inherently child abuse, it only counts if you wanted to use the term bullying when an adult is abusing a child in a specific way (see: Daddy of Five or whatever that evil youtube channel was called)

nin10dope said:
No.
The same is true when you replace grooming with abuse in that question.
Bullying isn't inherently child abuse, it only counts if you wanted to use the term bullying when an adult is abusing a child in a specific way (see: Daddy of Five or whatever that evil youtube channel was called)

Hmm, I find it odd that there isn't a general sexual_grooming tag, especially for adult_on_adult sexual grooming scenarios.

Regardless, I think it's safe to still tag young_on_young scenarios as child_grooming.
However, it would be a different argument entirely as to whether the tag should imply abuse or child_abuse.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Hmm, I find it odd that there isn't a general sexual_grooming tag, especially for adult_on_adult sexual grooming scenarios.

Regardless, I think it's safe to still tag young_on_young scenarios as child_grooming.
However, it would be a different argument entirely as to whether the tag should imply abuse or child_abuse.

Yeah a few times I was thinking of just shortening my terminology to grooming but I've never seen a (sexual)grooming tag, cuz I imagine grooming is reserved for the well intentioned, mostly sfw version.
Young on young and child grooming can definitely overlap in scenarios I don't feel like pondering, but I think it's fair to say that the young tag very explicitly doesn't refer to anyone even (visibly) close to the age of 18. The groomer being an adult is a prerequisite for the grooming to being the child variant in nature. At least traditionally.

Edit: ehhh the more I think on it I guess it just requires the offender to not also be a child. Do we use adolescent for (roughly) teenage characters? Cuz I can imagine that could qualify too

nin10dope said:
Yeah a few times I was thinking of just shortening my terminology to grooming but I've never seen a (sexual)grooming tag, cuz I imagine grooming is reserved for the well intentioned, mostly sfw version.
Young on young and child grooming can definitely overlap in scenarios I don't feel like pondering, but I think it's fair to say that the young tag very explicitly doesn't refer to anyone even (visibly) close to the age of 18. The groomer being an adult is a prerequisite for the grooming to being the child variant in nature. At least traditionally.

Edit: ehhh the more I think on it I guess it just requires the offender to not also be a child. Do we use adolescent for (roughly) teenage characters? Cuz I can imagine that could qualify too

Adolescent used to be teenager
A teenager could absolutely groom a child (ex an older sibling and their younger siblings)

thegreatwolfgang said:
Yet, it is a scenario that can theoretically happen at any point in the future. No matter how fucked up it can sound, artworks can hypothetically depict an adult-minded child grooming a child-minded adolescent.

I'm not sure I would consider that child grooming, just regular sexual grooming. As I said, child grooming specifically involves exploiting a difference in power due to an age difference. I also question the wisdom of arguing we shouldn't make an implication that currently applies to 100% of cases because there might be a post in the future with an extremely strange and unlikely scenario that might be an edge case. If absolutely necessary, we can reverse the implication later.

By the definition of child_abuse, it is "the act of adult characters inflicting physical, emotional, or sexual trauma on young characters."

Yeah, I guess we should change that. Teenagers can absolutely abuse children.

To be absolutely clear here, is the argument against this implication "teenagers can groom children but can't abuse them", or is it "teenagers can abuse children but can't groom them"?

beholding said:
I'm not sure I would consider that child grooming, just regular sexual grooming. As I said, child grooming specifically involves exploiting a difference in power due to an age difference...

Yeah, I guess we should change that. Teenagers can absolutely abuse children.

To be absolutely clear here, is the argument against this implication "teenagers can groom children but can't abuse them", or is it "teenagers can abuse children but can't groom them"?

Assuming that (a) the power in age difference between a baby/toddler/child and a teenager is considered child_grooming, and that (b) teenagers are still classified as young, the possibility of young_on_young child_grooming remains.
The question is whether or not a young character grooming another young character is considered as child_abuse.

I also question the wisdom of arguing we shouldn't make an implication that currently applies to 100% of cases because there might be a post in the future with an extremely strange and unlikely scenario that might be an edge case. If absolutely necessary, we can reverse the implication later.

We absolutely do. We always consider hypothetical scenarios when it comes to arguments about implications or aliases.
Just because it hasn't or rarely happens doesn't mean we should ignore it until it does happen and becomes a problem.

Why do you think we regularly reject requests to imply species/gender tags to personal character tags, even though in 99% of the cases the character owner would never consider making their characters alternate_species or crossgender?

I think part of my problem here is that "abuse" in any sense indicates some kind of harm being done. In the real world, absolutely grooming a child is harmful to their emotional and physical development. But in fiction or fantasy, anything can go, however distasteful it may be. Grooming can have no adverse affect on the other character, no harm and thus no abuse. So this implication makes it feel like the tag is being added as a moral stance on the subject, rather than reflecting what's actually happening in a given image.

The question is whether or not a young character grooming another young character is considered as child_abuse.

From a quick Google, the legal answer is "yes". The question then is if we want to concur for fictional situations. I don't see a reason not to, at present.

We absolutely do. We always consider hypothetical scenarios when it comes to arguments about implications or aliases.
Just because it hasn't or rarely happens doesn't mean we should ignore it until it does happen and becomes a problem.

Okay, but the scenario you described is really, really out there, and I'm not sure I would consider it child_grooming in the first place. I don't think it's fair to compare it to alternate_species and crossgender, which are common scenarios. I, again, question the wisdom of reducing site functionality just because we can imagine some vanishingly unlikely hypothetical that doesn't currently exist.

watsit said:
I think part of my problem here is that "abuse" in any sense indicates some kind of harm being done. In the real world, absolutely grooming a child is harmful to their emotional and physical development. But in fiction or fantasy, anything can go, however distasteful it may be. Grooming can have no adverse affect on the other character, no harm and thus no abuse. So this implication makes it feel like the tag is being added as a moral stance on the subject, rather than reflecting what's actually happening in a given image.

I think that calling it "grooming" is already doing that, given sexual grooming is generally considered to be a harmful and manipulative act. "We only see a single moment in time, so we can't tag a concept that in real life connotes lasting harm" also feels like a rabbit hole. Taken to its logical extreme, that would require replacing all or most depictions of physical abuse with violence or wounded.

Also, if we really want to get into the weeds of this, some sources define child abuse as "mistreatement" of children rather than "harm", and the general definition of "abuse" is "to use something for the wrong purpose in a way that is harmful or morally wrong. " Child abuse is called such because it involves abusing (misusing) the child's trust or naivete, which is still true even if no direct harm is depicted.

beholding said:
I, again, question the wisdom of reducing site functionality just because we can imagine some vanishingly unlikely hypothetical that doesn't currently exist.

Trust me, you will find that more and more often the longer you are on the site.

beholding said:
I think that calling it "grooming" is already doing that, given sexual grooming is generally considered to be a harmful and manipulative act. "We only see a single moment in time, so we can't tag a concept that in real life connotes lasting harm" also feels like a rabbit hole. Taken to its logical extreme, that would require replacing all or most depictions of physical abuse with violence or wounded.

There are ways to depict violence or wounds in a way that indicates an ongoing pattern of behavior. Though I could agree that the abuse tags are overused, based on external knowledge or subjective feeling that it's more than mere violence. Similar to how we assume consent by default, even in cases of sex while intoxicated, as we can only see that one moment in time and not how they feel about it when sober (unless that's also in the same post). As it is child_grooming doesn't even really depict the grooming (gaining their trust, lowering inhibitions), but the sexual exploitation that comes after they've already been groomed.

I kinda wonder if this should even be a tag. To start, it's not tagged very often. On top of that, it falls into the issues a 'pedophilia' tag has (discussed in topic #45088)- making calls that the tag doesn't apply to instances that would be grooming in real life. There's also a few different themes going on ranging from coercion, bribery, and manipulation to stuff that, if the characters were both adults, would be explicitly_stated_consent.

I think that "you are wrong for tagging child_grooming on this image that resembles your lived experience" is a bad situation to get into and should be avoided.

regsmutt said:
I think that "you are wrong for tagging child_grooming on this image that resembles your lived experience" is a bad situation to get into and should be avoided.

If we carry this to its logical conclusion, we'd also need to remove all abuse-related tags, and probably rape and some others as well. I can see your reasoning and you're welcome to suggest such a thing to see if it has support, but you are opening a can of worms here.

...I think we might be getting lost in the weeds here. Ultimately, our priority should be supporting the usability of the site. Do users want to search for or avoid the situations currently tagged with child_grooming, and is there a way for them to accomplish this through a set of other, less contentious tags?

Actually, maybe we should make a separate thread in Tag Discussions for debating child_grooming's existence.

beholding said:
If we carry this to its logical conclusion, we'd also need to remove all abuse-related tags, and probably rape and some others as well. I can see your reasoning and you're welcome to suggest such a thing to see if it has support, but you are opening a can of worms here.

I'll grant you that it can get complicated and slippery. I do though think that, in general, rape and abuse are less contentious and easier to define through twys. You are also less likely to have to debate between explicitly_stated_consent and rape.

beholding said:
From a quick Google, the legal answer is "yes". The question then is if we want to concur for fictional situations. I don't see a reason not to, at present.

I feel obligated to say that it has been confirmed that the legal answer to questions has no bearing on tag implications/aliases.
See the sleep_sex forum thread for that

nin10dope said:
I feel obligated to say that it has been confirmed that the legal answer to questions has no bearing on tag implications/aliases.
See the sleep_sex forum thread for that

I'm aware, but that thread provided arguments for why the site should diverge from the legal definition. In the absence of any arguments to the contrary, legal/dictionary definitions are a reasonable basis for tag definitions.

beholding said:
I'm aware, but that thread provided arguments for why the site should diverge from the legal definition. In the absence of any arguments to the contrary, legal/dictionary definitions are a reasonable basis for tag definitions.

We tend to bend (or in some cases completely alter) the definitions of a particular word in order to fit into the context of artworks more cleanly.
Whenever possible, we refrain entirely from linking real-world legal phrasing or questions about legality into a tag's wiki since that is not what the tags are for.

For example, feral diverges completely from textbook/dictionary definition and means an entire different thing in the context of furry art.
Another example is bestiality which sees many attempts to redefine it to be more inline with a dictionary's human-centric definitions.

Having a tag (i.e., child_grooming) inherently imply another tag (i.e., child_abuse) just because the dictionary/legal textbook says so is bad practice.
We should always consider TWYS and whether or not it is practical to imply the two tags together, without encountering any hiccups.

As it currently stands, this request already has 15 opposing votes and no supporting votes.
The main problems I see here is (a) the possibility of seeing child_grooming but not child_abuse (in cases of teenager_on_child, etc.) and (b) the question of validity (extended from discussion on topic #45088).

beholding said:
I'm aware, but that thread provided arguments for why the site should diverge from the legal definition. In the absence of any arguments to the contrary, legal/dictionary definitions are a reasonable basis for tag definitions.

In this case, I think it's reasonable to diverge since "abuse" typically means some form of harm, whereas here "grooming" means to prepare them for sexual activity, to gain their trust and lower inhibitions. In the real world, doing this to a child is harmful so it is abuse, but in fiction, it doesn't need to be. The term "grooming" on its own isn't negative; a master may groom an apprentice to take over a business when they're gone, a king/queen may groom the prince/princess to handle the responsibilities of ruling. These aren't harmful/abuse. Similarly, unless you want to say all young characters in fiction having sex is a depiction of abuse, a young character in fiction being prepared for sexual activity isn't necessarily a depiction of abuse either.

thegreatwolfgang said:
For example, feral diverges completely from textbook/dictionary definition and means an entire different thing in the context of furry art.
Another example is bestiality which sees many attempts to redefine it to be more inline with a dictionary's human-centric definitions.

This doesn't contradict what I said, which was that in absence of arguments to the contrary legal definitions are a reasonable starting point. Our definitions and reasoning have to start somewhere, and the current wiki description of child_grooming doesn't significantly diverge from the legal definition.

The main problems I see here is (a) the possibility of seeing child_grooming but not child_abuse (in cases of teenager_on_child, etc.)

As I've already said, I don't see why teenager-on-child should not be considered child abuse.

watsit said:
In this case, I think it's reasonable to diverge since "abuse" typically means some form of harm, whereas here "grooming" means to prepare them for sexual activity, to gain their trust and lower inhibitions. In the real world, doing this to a child is harmful so it is abuse, but in fiction, it doesn't need to be. The term "grooming" on its own isn't negative; a master may groom an apprentice to take over a business when they're gone, a king/queen may groom the prince/princess to handle the responsibilities of ruling. These aren't harmful/abuse. Similarly, unless you want to say all young characters in fiction having sex is a depiction of abuse, a young character in fiction being prepared for sexual activity isn't necessarily a depiction of abuse either.

Thank you for providing an actual argument. I concede these are valid points.

beholding said:
As I've already said, I don't see why teenager-on-child should not be considered child abuse.

And as I have implicitly mentioned, the problem with recognising young_on_young/teenager_on_child as also being child_abuse is that it would be no different than with regular bullying (in terms of physical & emotional abuse).

I should have probably clarified that my stance with child_grooming is that young_on_young is applicable, while with child_abuse only adult_on_young should be applicable.

thegreatwolfgang said:
And as I have implicitly mentioned, the problem with recognising young_on_young/teenager_on_child as also being child_abuse is that it would be no different than with regular bullying (in terms of physical & emotional abuse).

Between two minors of the same age, sure. But an older minor abusing a younger minor can still be considered child abuse, I'd say. (Consider the case of an older teenager abusing their younger sibling.) Some such situations would be bullying, but not all.

beholding said:
Between two minors of the same age, sure. But an older minor abusing a younger minor can still be considered child abuse, I'd say. (Consider the case of an older teenager abusing their younger sibling.) Some such situations would be bullying, but not all.

Eh, calling it regular abuse or domestic_abuse would maybe be alright, but calling sibling bullying as child_abuse sounds off.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Eh, calling it regular abuse or domestic_abuse would maybe be alright, but calling sibling bullying as child_abuse sounds off.

I feel like it'd depend on the character's apparent status. if the characters are seemingly peers then child_abuse likely would not apply, if the older character/abuser appears to be in the position of a guardian (or some similar position of authority over the child), it might.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Eh, calling it regular abuse or domestic_abuse would maybe be alright, but calling sibling bullying as child_abuse sounds off.

Sibling abuse can go beyond bullying. Physical violence or rape, for instance.

Anyway, I'll reject the implication since that discussion seems to have run its course.

The tag implication child_grooming -> child_abuse (forum #448087) has been rejected by @Beholding.

all this being said, we really probably ought to have a tag(s) that better describe CSA/CSE-themed content. I'm not sure the way we use stuff like child_abuse and bad_parenting are really sufficient, let alone ideal.

dba_afish said:
all this being said, we really probably ought to have a tag(s) that better describe CSA/CSE-themed content. I'm not sure the way we use stuff like child_abuse and bad_parenting are really sufficient, let alone ideal.

Is child_grooming not sufficient?

beholding said:
Is child_grooming not sufficient?

It's relatively vague in TWYS

beholding said:
Is child_grooming not sufficient?

it's fine for what it is, but not all exploitation involves grooming, nor does it necessarily involve what would be described as abuse via TWYS.