Supporting Trans Youth is Good. Using Technology to Produce Sexual Images of Children is Bad
In the debate on child grooming, there are abundant easy answers and one side is obviously correct.
by Evan Urquhart
Protecting children from sexual exploitation and abuse is something nearly everyone agrees is both important and good. In our highly polarized political moment, however, a divide has opened up between people on the left, who are concerned about the proliferation of technology to sexualize images of children against their will and people on the right who claim the acceptance of transgender people is related to childhood sexual abuse in some way. Giving full weight and consideration to both sides, it quickly becomes clear that those on the left are completely right while there is absolutely no merit to the concerns of those on the right.
It is an undisputed fact that Twitter (also sometimes called X) hosts an AI called Grok, and that Grok has created child pornography when asked. It’s not difficult to understand why this is wrong, as the harmful effects of deepfakes on adult women have been well documented. Subjecting children to the intimidation and disgust of seeing sexualized images of themselves created without their consent is obviously as bad or worse. For those images not based on a photo of a real child, it’s still completely reasonable to believe realistic depictions of abuse can normalize acts of abuse and lead to actual abuse.
The arguments against allowing Grok to create child pornography are straightforward, easy to follow, and based on information about something widely reported and true.
Recently, the owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, threatened to sue for custody of one of his children. The child’s mother, Ashley St. Clair, had recently apologized for making anti-trans statements in the past. Musk claimed this meant St. Clair was planning to “transition” his son. This is typical of the claims on the right that trans acceptance is connected to child sexual abuse in having nothing to support it at all.
Conspiracy theories have posited a vast network of child exploitation that uses trans acceptance as a lure, but nothing of the kind has ever been shown to exist. (Ample evidence has shown wealthy, powerful straight men abuse girls and young women, with links the current US president as well as a large number of other men.)
Other conservative claims suggest that treating a minor for gender dysphoria is abuse itself, but research into youth transition in the treatment of gender dysphoria has found widespread evidence of benefits, and no evidence of harm. Even reports claiming to have reviewed this evidence and found it lacking have presented no evidence of harm.
People who closely follow the debate over youth trans medicine know the right has politicized and confused the issue, and that parts of mainstream press has legitimized this effort by giving undue credence to activists and dismissing expertise. However, members of the public could be forgiven for believing the evidence for gender-affirming care is weaker than that of other care, despite this being fundamentally untrue. The same cannot be said for claims of harm, which are wholly unsubstantiated and false.
This exercise of judging the left vs the right’s claims on the question of how to protect children from sexual abuse feels deeply futile. The right’s concerns are bigoted lies. The left’s claims are urgent and obviously true. This is true on a wide range of issues, and true in every case involving trans people’s rights. However, a paralysis has taken over the country where acting on genuine concerns is stymied by a need to give space to nonsense and lies. Until that changes, don’t expect children to be protected from being victimized by Grok’s deepfakes in the US.
Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media.