Heretic TOC

Not the dominant narrative

I had to apologise to Claude AI

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“Fuck you, Claude!”, I blurted out in pained protest after being publicly shamed and humiliated by the global front runner in Artificial Intelligence. AI tools famously flatter their users, but this time I was not the user but the used, and I definitely had not been flattered. I was one of five people in a discussion forum who, without warning, involuntarily found ourselves subjected to an AI evaluation, in which Claude’s legendary capabilities were harnessed to assess the quality of our contributions to the debate between us. And I had been judged harshly. The stakes had been high in terms of

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Listen up! Radical Case goes audio

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A topic of “immediate relevance and personal significance for many MAPs” was promised last time as today’s blog. The theme I had in mind has of necessity been pulled from the schedule for the moment. I intend to return to it soon, when all will be revealed, but for the moment I have another revelation that I trust will also be considered significant. The volunteer team behind it certainly think so. I refer to their magnificent work in bringing out an audio version of my book Paedophilia: The Radical Case, which continues to attract an extraordinary level of interest even though

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Time to STFU – sort of

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I’ll be hopping off abroad for a quick trip in a day or two. Soon after my return I should be able to put out a blog on a topic of immediate relevance and personal significance for many MAPs in a way that some of my recent work has not been. A notable example of that was the most recent one, on Robert Trivers, an evolutionary psychologist whose heyday was half a century ago. Not exactly hot news, then, and his highly abstract theory of sexual psychology isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But that does not detract from its importance to

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The non-trivial legacy of Robert Trivers

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Be warned, this one is a blockbuster: just one main blog item, considerably longer than usual and it will help a lot if you put your thinking cap on and take it at a gentle pace. Actually, the ideas involved are fundamentally quite simple but you will need to pay attention if most of this stuff is new to you. What’s it about? It’s a reflection on the work of Robert Trivers, a pioneer of evolutionary psychology who died recently. It’s a discipline often dismissed by Foucault fans (of whom I am one) on what I believe are misconceived grounds. What

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Lies, damned lies, and the ‘Epstein files’

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Not one but two princes now metaphorically await their fate in the Tower of London after the sensational arrests of the Andrew formerly known as Prince, and Peter Mandelson, so recently Ambassador to the United States and famously dubbed the Prince of Darkness long before the current scandals. They represent the most elite UK casualties so far in a crisis that could yet see off the current prime minister and threaten the monarchy itself. The precipitating factor has been the whiff of financial, rather than sexual, misdeeds – very serious allegations, actually, that could be said, if true, to have treasonably

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Don’t let Microsoft give you a bricking

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What does Heretic TOC have in common with the International Criminal Court (ICC)? It’s not that I have been indicted for crimes against humanity, although I’m sure there are those who think I should be. Rather, on this occasion I find myself on the victim side of the justice system in common with – amazingly – the court’s judges. The court’s woes began when the infamously infantile US president threw a tantrum against them for upsetting his little playmate Benjamin Netanyahu. As may be recalled, the ICC indicted Israel’s prime minister in November 2024 for alleged war crimes in Gaza. Trump

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Fictional ‘abuse’ goes through the roof

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The figures are amazing and appalling, with huge implications for freedom of expression in the UK. New data released following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show that prosecutions for real “child sexual abuse images” in the UK  have fallen by more than half since 2017, even as cases involving purely fictional or AI-generated material have surged to nearly 40% of all image offences. The information is drawn from the CPS Case Management Information System. Who is telling us? The new and ambitious California-based Center for Online Safety and Liberty (COSL). The revelations were announced this week at a webinar to launch

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It’s high time to rethink consent

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The first part of this two-part guest blog by “Marco” appeared under the main heading “Like cutting off my own limb” on 24 September. TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN In the first part of this guest blog, last month, I explained the devastating consequences that repression (self-inflicted) and oppression (exercised by others) of my homosexuality, had on me over the course of my adolescence, leading to several suicide attempts. I also explained that, as an adult, I had been chatting on Grindr with a 13-year-old boy who showed interest in a sexual encounter, and I told of the horrible experience

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Like cutting off my own limb

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Today’s guest blog is by “Marco”, who tells me he is “just a citizen of the world” and that he is “permanently stuck at that stage of life where he can’t help asking ‘why?’ all the time”. This is far too modest. He is not “just” anything. He has a powerful intellect and an impressive career record. This will not be clear from the first part of this two-part blog, which focuses on his early life, but you may in due course feel that evidence of his thoughtfulness emerges strongly in the second part. I AM A SURVIVOR One of the

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Two cheers for ‘barely legal’ Bonnie

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Love it or loathe it, you can’t help but be impressed. The TV documentary 1,000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story, which aired on Channel 4 late last month, told – and discreetly showed – the story of how “adult content creator” Tia Billinger had sex with over a thousand men in a London “event space” in January, in the space of just 12 hours. Wow! I don’t know which is more impressive, the sheer durability of the lady’s lady parts or the men’s required shagging speed, given that on average they would have had no more than 40 seconds

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