I hadn't thought of the "groomer" slur as a branch of the "contagion" theory, but now I see it, thanks. It's either an adult or a peer who at least "exposes" someone to the "disease" or more actively "recruits" them. The difference between "groomer" and "social contagion" may just be the age of the person who's accused of "spreading" the gender/sexuality (or at least the stigma associated with it).

I was recently thinking about a different kind of phobia—more like "War on Terror"-style Islamophobia where an out-group, relatively small in number or else geographically distant, is portrayed as threatening the majority. In that phobia, the alleged/perceived threat tends to be described more in terms of violent acts (terrorism, genocide, exile, etc.) rather than disease-spreading. The minority does not actually have the power to exterminate or kick out the majority, but the majority's fantasy says the minority does threaten them this way.

And I was thinking about how the cry of "cancel culture!" seems to involve the latter kind of hate. The expressed fear of being "canceled," a.k.a. deplatformed or silenced, doesn't seem (to me) to invoke imagery of infection/stigmatization but rather more final acts of violence like murder/exile. It's not "the out-group is going to corrupt me"; it's "they are going to get rid of me."

I wonder if that's a separate branch of organized/ideological hate, and how they might be connected.