New York City Public Schools are celebrating pride month right now by shining a spotlight on the district's LGBTQ+ Supports, and recommending various organizations to students and their families.
One of the organizations recommended by NYC Public Schools, The Trevor Project, was just highlighted in an eye opening article.
The article talked about an online chatroom service called "TrevorSpace" available to young people who sign up for a free account. The service allows adults to communicate directly with minors about sex, gender and pretty much anything you can imagine.
No topic is off limits.
TrevorSpace even advertises that it connects adults "up to age 24" with children "as young as 13" to help explore their "identity" and to get advice, find support groups and make friends with adults.
The National Review spent time in TrevorSpace chatrooms last year and reported shocking discussions:
"In some cases, users under 18 spoke with adult users about sexual preferences, including BDSM and polyamory. In chats reviewed by NR, minors and adults discussed sexual fetishes, including “gokkun” — the act of drinking multiple male ejaculations from a container, “bukkake” — the fetish of being covered with ejaculate, “scat play” — deriving sexual gratification from fantasies involving feces, and “forniphilia” — a form of bondage in which a person’s body is incorporated into furniture for sexual acts."
This reporter confirmed how easy it is to access TrevorSpace with a fake name, a fake email and a birthday that made me appear to be 13 years old.
It took minutes before I entered TrevorSpace where more than 1,500 people were logged in and discussing the intimate details of transgenderism, the finer points of being a "furry" and such in page after page of chatrooms.
Children claiming to be 13-years-old were making posts in the chatrooms about how lonely they were, wanting to meet up in person and asking for strangers to private message them.
This appears to be a perfect set-up for predators — an online chatroom full of confused, lonely children who are desperate to meet up with anyone who will validate them and help them feel loved and accepted.
Why does the NYC Public School system refer LGBTQ+ children to a website where they can very easily get preyed upon and taken advantage of by unscrupulous people in chatrooms?
Can't NYC Public Schools find a safer, more appropriate resource to recommend, perhaps one that doesn't involve BDSM and kink chatrooms or potentially expose LGBTQ youth to dangerous predators who lurk online?
Predators do lurk online, of course.
In fact, the Wall Street Journal just published a disturbing article three days ago about a young teenage social media influencer… whose family discovered "the grim reality for young influencers on Instagram: the followers include large numbers of men who take sexual interest in children…”
The protection of children should be important to everyone, including NYC Public Schools.
