I really don't get this use of the word grooming. Looks completely empty and purely rhetorical.
As I understand grooming, it's what happens in Molière's
School For Wives. A man uses his seniority to educate a very young girl in order to make her his very obedient wife later.
Societies always educate children in order to make them compatible citizens. They are being taught values, by the parents (is it grooming), by schools (is it grooming), by the medias (is it grooming) and by their peers. Churches, fairy tales, fictions, parents, teachers, all teach them to, say, be polite, be helpful, and (let's be generous ourselves I know it's far from always the case) be generous, don't be racist, don't pull the other kids' hairs, don't kick dogs, don't litter, don't judge people on appearances, don't follow strangers, don't be an absolute twat. All the stories have meanies (look how mean they are) and nice people (look how nice). Models, counter-models. Is it grooming ?
Now, don't be homophobic, don't be transphobic, are being added to don't be racist. It switches from "education" to "grooming" because of that ?
If anything, conservatives were even more on education than progressives ("wife, fetch me my respect-inducing belt"). So it's just the old "theirs is propaganda, ours is education" with a new fashionable word ? A moral panic using new moral panicky words in order to denounce the fact that children are taught to be polite and accepting in front of sexual minority just as well as in front of ethnic minorities ?
Does it even
feel self-serious to use that word ?