Politics

Marjorie Taylor Greene declares war on Walmart

She had a meltdown on Twitter when she saw that most people disagreed with her that the retailer is "grooming" children.
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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Marjorie Taylor Greene Photo: Screenshot

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has declared war on Walmart – and Twitter – over sex toys.

The anti-LGBTQ+ congressmember posted a picture of vibrators and lubricant being sold in the health aisle of what she said was a Walmart in Dalton, Georgia, which is in her congressional district.

“Many of your customers in my district are reaching out to me about sex toys being sold in your Dalton store,” she tweeted, tagging Walmart. “They’re extremely upset and absolutely horrified that sex toys are being sold openly right next to children’s toothbrushes!”

“This is grooming.”

“Grooming” is a set of manipulative behaviors sexual predators use to gain access to potential victims, to coerce them to agree to the abuse, and to reduce the risk of getting caught, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. The process usually involves training the victims to keep secrets from adults they trust and desensitizing them to sexual discussions and touching, and the goal is the sexual abuse of children.

Selling vibrators in discreet packaging – no matter one’s opinion about whether it’s appropriate – is not grooming.

People responded by mocking Greene – “Guns good. Sex toys bad”; “Will somebody think of the children who are too young to see contextless sex toys but are buying themselves Paw Patrol toothbrushes!”; “Marge is struggling for attention” – but, instead of ignoring the mockery like she normally does, she had a meltdown.

“Selling sex toys openly where children are exposed to them is wrong, inappropriate, immoral, indecent, perverted, shameful, and incredibly harmful to children,” she wrote in a follow-up tweet.

“The district I represent, GA-14, is firmly opposed to any and all grooming and sexualization of children,” she wrote in another.

“I do not believe this repulsive grooming represents Walmart,” she wrote in another tweet.

“If you want to know where all the people are who support grooming children with sex toys, check out the sick comments and quote tweets on this thread,” she wrote, turning attention to the people making fun of her.

“I would tag the @FBI,” she wrote, tagging the FBI and effectively people responding to her of being child molesters, “but after Twitter Files apparently the 7th floor cares more about censorship than groomers & predators.”

Ever since the right popularized terms like “grooming” and “pedophile” over the past year as all-purpose – and often anti-LGBTQ+ and particularly anti-transgender – epithets, Greene has been using them liberally to attack anyone she doesn’t agree with.

This might have something to do with her past support for QAnon, the rightwing conspiracy theory that posits that Donald Trump was fighting against a vast and international child sex abuse ring that included former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and actor Tom Hanks, along with others. Conservatives often see themselves as defenders of children against attacks from historically disenfranchised groups like LGBTQ+ people, Jewish people, and racial minorities as a way to justify their policy preferences.

LGBTQ Nation has reached out to Walmart and will update this article if they respond.

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