The myth that children are asexual and “innocent” is crucial for those would crush us (and the kids). But the reality is now proving harder for them to escape thanks to the social media.
Appallingly for the haters, but thrillingly for heretics, primary school kids are now encouraging each other to watch online porn; they are making sexy selfies and also involving their friends in sexually explicit films. British children’s charity Barnado’s has told parliament that “self-generated child sex abuse images” (kids “abusing” themselves!) have shot up fourfold, with children as young as five involved. In evidence given to the House of Commons science and technology committee, the organisation said three-quarters of referrals for “child sex abuse” are now internet-related.
The Daily Mail’s report unsurprisingly tried to spin this by dragging in talk of “grooming” by adults. But Emily Cherry, of Barnardo’s, said young children are “increasingly becoming perpetrators as well as victims”.
In the good old days, of course, kids did not need to go online. They could roam freely and find hot action with each other in all sorts of locations, from behind the bike sheds to in the long grass – or even within Dr Barnado’s Homes. Barnardo’s was set up in 1866 to provide residential care for orphans and other needy children. In order to facilitate their better welfare, founder Dr Thomas Barnado was not above kidnapping the young housemates! Nor has the organisation been entirely free from sexual scandal.
If these reflections on the history of Barnado’s offer a hint of the hypocrisy that often goes hand in hand with moralising about child protection, a couple of other recent news stories reveal it in spades.
A prime example came up in the case this week of former pop impresario Jonathan King, after a judge blasted Surrey Police for multiple failings in an historic sexual abuse case they brought against him. King’s trial was aborted in June. It was the fourth he had faced, including the only one in which he was convicted, back in 2001, a conviction he is now seeking to have reversed.
The reasons for the fiasco in June were not reported until this week, when Judge Deborah Taylor finally set out in detail what had gone wrong.
Also held back until now was the verdict in another trial of a big name from yesteryear, radio DJ Chris Denning, who at one time worked for King’s company UK Records. While King’s latest trial was still in progress, Denning was cleared of an historic sexual abuse case against a 14-year-old boy. The verdict could not be reported at the time because it was feared the result might improperly influence the outcome of King’s trial. I was delighted for Chris because he is a great guy, as I knew from being a fellow inmate with him in HMP Wandsworth over a decade ago. Sadly, though, he is still in prison, serving two 13-year sentences handed down some time ago in relation to other cases dragged up from events decades ago, so he will not be released until about 2020.
I knew Jonathan King as well through a mutual friend I had also met inside, but let’s not get too diverted by that.
I feel pleased for Jonathan, too, but he is not the main character in my story today. Instead the focus should be on Mark Williams-Thomas, former detective turned “investigative journalist”. Remember him? It was his dodgy documentary for ITV on Jimmy Savile that finally set ablaze the dry tinder of rumour about the late entertainer, who never seemed to have an adult partner but flirted with young girls quite openly on his TV shows.
Williams-Thomas relied for his revelations on the word of a woman who has since been credibly dismissed as a serial fantasist. The BBC, presented with similar gossip, quite rightly turned down the opportunity to screen a similar documentary made by one of its own producers.
Whereas the BBC soon found itself vilified for cowardice over its refusal to trash the late star’s reputation on a slender basis, unscrupulous chancer Williams-Thomas was the hero of the hour.
Now, though, he has been put in the dock himself, metaphorically at least. This follows his role as a police detective in an investigation of the King case that followed perceived failures in how Surrey Police had handled things at an earlier stage.
It has been revealed that in 2014 Surrey Police learnt that Williams-Thomas was said to be offering to sell information on King’s alleged victims, and even introductions to them. This put a massive question mark, to say the least, over the ex-detective’s integrity. Judge Taylor said it meant King should never have been charged on evidence taken by him.
So much for Williams-Thomas. As for Surrey Police, they have been forced into an apology for a litany not just of blunders but of acts that would seem deliberately designed to rig the case, if the Daily Mail report is correct. That account shows the judge making numerous swingeing points of criticism, including the claim that officers misled the court and hid evidence that would have undermined alleged victims’ stories.
After the jury was discharged back in June, we are told, Detective Chief Inspector Joanne Hayes, the senior investigating officer, went off sick due to “mental illness”. Prosecutors have now announced that they will not be seeking a re-trial.
Judge Taylor said the case had not even been driven by concern over getting justice for any victims. Instead, it was all about Surrey Police trying to repair the reputational damage they had incurred through their previous failings, in their investigations both of Jonathan King and Jimmy Savile.
You want more evidence of police hypocrisy? You want further proof that even the higher realms of government plainly don’t give a toss about kids’ welfare despite constantly banging on about it?
How about the recent disclosure that British police and intelligence agencies have been deliberately exposing children to the danger of extremely violent physical reprisals by using them as spies in covert operations against terrorists, gangs and drug dealers? A committee of the House of Lords revealed the practice while raising the alarm over government plans – yes, this is Her Majesty’s Government we are talking about – to give law enforcement bodies more freedom over “their use of children”.
The committee expressed alarm over proposals to extend from one month to four the period of time between each occasion that child spies go through a re-registration process. In other words, the plan is to allow the authorities to embed kids within criminal networks for a lengthy period. How bizarre is that? As Richard Littlejohn would say, you couldn’t make it up.
Neil Woods, a former undercover police officer who investigated drugs gangs around the country, told The Guardian, “It’s going to rack up the violence because as soon as gangsters think that there are more spies in their ranks then the classic arms race reaction is to increase the amount of terror, to make sure that those people are more scared of the gangsters than they are of the ramifications of the police.”
I found it particularly shocking to learn that this use of child spies is overseen by the investigatory powers commissioner, Lord Justice Fulford. A Home Office statement said, “Throughout any deployment and beyond, the welfare of the young person is the paramount consideration.”
Really? Really? I find this official complacency quite stunning. Many years ago Adrian Fulford and I were fellow members of the NCCL gay rights sub-committee. He struck me as a pleasant and decent person, a man of integrity. It just shows, perhaps, how compromised establishment figures can become, tainted as they inevitably will be by being forced to ponder, in many awkward contexts, whether the end justifies the means.
Or perhaps, though it seems unlikely, he takes the robust view that kids are more capable than we think and that their lives will be massively enhanced by being entrusted with such an excitingly grown-up role. Many of us heretics, indeed, might see some romance in the thought of a junior James Bond getting the better of a sinister, cat-stroking, international criminal mastermind, or foiling a dastardly jihadi plot for a new 9/11.
Well, sure, but there are limits. As with child soldiers or chimney sweeps, this undercover kids scheme goes way beyond them in terms of acceptable difficulty and danger.
Still on the theme of hypocrisy over serious child abuse – and of undercover work – I wonder if anyone saw an amazing edition of Dispatches on Channel 4 last month called “Inside Facebook: Secrets of the Social Network”?
For an investigation of Facebook’s methods, a reporter worked undercover after getting a job as a moderator with the social media behemoth’s UK operation based in Ireland.
About ten minutes in, there is footage of a woman saying she reported seeing on Facebook a video of a man repeatedly kicking and punching a little boy, aged about three. She was told it would not be deleted as it did not violate Facebook’s terms and conditions. The undercover guy is heard asking his supervisor about such material, for which they have a policy aptly called M.A.D.. This is their shorthand for stuff the moderators are supposed to “Mark As Disturbing” rather than remove.
The supervisor explains this by saying that if there is too much censorship “people lose interest in the platform… It’s all about making money at the end of the day”. In the first two days after it was posted, we are told, the video with the little boy was shared more than 44,000 times.
We also see a sign on the wall of the moderators’ office giving an instruction to mark certain categories of material as disturbing (but not to delete), including videos showing an adult “inflicting burn or cut wounds” on a child”, or “tossing, rotating or shaking of an infant too young to stand by their wrists, ankles, legs or neck”.
Shockingly, we are told via the programme’s voiceover that unless they are streamed live, “in our experience videos of child abuse are not usually reported to the police”.
In the case of the little boy mentioned above, though, it was discovered that the video originated in Malaysia. The child had gone to hospital. The culprit was his step-father, who had been arrested and jailed for a year. The video went on Facebook in 2012 and was still there six years later when the Dispatches programme was being made. It is used by Facebook as an illustrative example to train new moderators on what is acceptable as M.A.D. content.
Mad indeed.
Not that there is never a case to be made for showing violence, including violence against children. I have in mind a classic newspaper photo from the Vietnam war showing a little girl running naked on a road after being severely burned on her back in a napalm attack. She was later identified as Phan Thi Kim Phuc. The photo shocked the world. Its publication did not end the war but certainly helped build up public sentiment against it.
The justification for perpetually showing images of extreme violence against children on Facebook is much more tenuous though. Arguably it might be possible to identify a perpetrator by doing so, but if Facebook had a track record of success in this regard I suspect they would be telling us about it.
As for child nakedness, that would of course be far too horrific to show – unless the child was being horribly burnt at the same time!
A THREAT WE SHOULD RESPOND TO
My attention has been drawn to a recent Boychat post by Queer Furry headed “IMPORTANT: a threat we should respond to”. He writes:
The DSM Steering Committee considers changing the DSM entry about pedophilia by omitting the sentence “Pedophilia per se appears to be a lifelong condition”.
This would likely encourage even more doctors to “cure” MAPs by making them submit to electro shocks or other inhumane treatments. And yes, such treatments are still in use and have been used on MAPs who are minors as well. Parents can literally force their children to this kind of torture.
We need to respond to this. And fortunately, we can. There is a 45-day public comment period which ends on August 29. Here you can submit your own comments. Here you find more information about the proposed change.
I completely agree with Queer Furry over this. DSM is the bible of American psychiatry and its influence extends far beyond the United States. Those who are seeking this change are clearly reluctant to accept what scientific research has confirmed in recent years, namely that paedophilia is a sexual orientation. As such, it is not amenable to change through therapy. Attempts to bring about such change are bound to fail, as with now discredited “gay reparative therapy”, and typically result in nothing but misery, disappointment and psychological trauma.
Queer Furry cites an important paper on this by Allyson Walker and Vanessa Panfil, titled “Minor Attraction: A Queer Criminological Issue”, published last year in Critical Criminology. The official link to this paper is here. A very relevant quote from it can be seen in QF’s BoyChat post.
In a recent comment here, I wrote: “As with party politics, there will be some occasions when it makes sense for kind radicals to work with those who are usually opponents. I will be talking about one such occasion in a blog coming up shortly.”
What I had in mind was the Virtuous Pedophiles, who posted their own draft response to the proposed DSM change on SexNet. I am happy to say they did an excellent job. While there is no need to work jointly with them on this in a direct way, it is worth saying that we see eye to eye on this issue, so we can support the same cause at the same time.
[…] Comportamento sexual entre crianças é simplesmente… comum. […]
Hi Dissident,
I am old enough to remember seeing horses wearing blinders so that when pulling wagons they would not be distracted by anything other than what was directly in front of them. I am also old enough to have survived Nazi occupation that destroyed a large part of my family including my father who before being murdered was a slave laborer in Nazi occupied France.
I mention blinders because some of our perspectives are very different. First understand that I am totally secular and don’t give a fig about religion. My perspective was never tribal but pragmatic. If born Jewish, one would have to be a fool not to have learned the lessons of history covering more than two thousand years of persecution. The Nazis did not care if you were secular or a believer. The virulent hate they spewed had roots that were centuries deep. There are still toxic spores from those evil plants that only seem to have disappeared. They barely lie dormant just needing the right soil to again sprout vigorously. I see Israel for better or worse as the bulwark against the horror of the industrial killing of 11 million human beings ever happening again.
So I am convinced that enough is enough and that “never again” is the best approach. Again, I am not tribal and have never been. I do not even follow sports teams, and when I first came to the US as a young kid thought that pledging allegiance to the flag was utterly silly. When I asked my post war first grade teacher in my native country what was the purpose of a flag, she laughed. Now I know. People are indeed tribal and in many cases necessarily so. Jews, because of cultural and religious customs, stayed one people throughout their Diaspora. Part of that culture was a constant yearning for Jerusalem and the ancient land of Israel. That was the principal unifying tribal identity that made possible a return to a nation that a persecuted people needed to finally protect itself.
Arabs of course, have a different perspective and too many believe that Islam needs to dominate the entire Middle East. Most see Israel as a European upstart – a foreign cancer. Even before Israel’s war of independence, Jews in many Middle Eastern countries who lived there for many generations were never allowed full citizenship. When expelled from these countries, they managed to establish new lives. Even the many who survived the Holocaust somehow made new lives for themselves. Palestinians are entitled to feel what they feel and think they were unjustly usurped, but somehow I may have missed something when I learn that under Ottoman Turks or the British Mandate they never had a need to have their kids confront the then occupiers. Only when Jewish pioneers then began developing peacefully obtained lands did there seem to see a need for a Palestinian identity and nationhood.
As for the nasty things that the US has done, I would probably agree with you. But I also see that when your existence as a nation is under mortal threat – and believe me Israel despite its seeming huge military power has been from its inception – you will accept help from any bully willing to help protect you. I will spare you the history of oppression of the US and European powers against Native Americans, the Irish, Africans and so on. By comparison, despite the awful things you think Israel is doing, it is a paragon of virtue.
My wartime experience as a child was such that I was not traumatized by it as were older children who could understand the utter terror they were facing. But that experience has informed my activism regarding the demonization of bls (as I am one) and MAPs in general. As the founder of the NAMBLA Bulletin, I penned (among other articles) an editorial denouncing Bush the Second pushing an Iraq invasion even if many Israelis might have approved of it. I saw the invasion (as the rest of the editorial board did) as destructive to the Iraqi social fabric and consequently of children and their families. Now with the massive incarcerations in the US with special focus on “sex offenders” and NAMBLA only a shadow of itself, I have been concentrating on direct communications (under other identities) with such prisoners.
For the especially weak as we are, violence is certainly not a viable option. But besides being “Kind” I would hope we can be smart, nimble and creative. Of course, it is always good to be kind, but using the term conveys a namby pamby idea of weakness. Instead of philosophizing ad nausea let’s find practical and solid ways of uniting.
I had to get this off my chest, and if I have not gotten through to you, so be it. I am sure you and I have many more pros and cons to fire at each other, but this will be my last attempt at explaining my position.
Dissy will not be deaf to the eloquence, passion and personal engagement Peter brings to this fraught subject and will surely grasp that he has very good reasons for thinking as he does.
In personal terms I find myself totally on Peter’s side. At one time I would have been fully in political agreement with him too on this issue. As a young man I was a strong supporter of Israel and debated the matter vigorously with anti-zionists. My enthusiasm was largely based on the idea that what had happened to the Jewish people under the Nazis made it imperative to ensure there would be no repetition; if rules needed to be bend somewhat to accommodate the need for a Jewish homeland, then so be it. But I also saw Israel as an idealistic project, whose early pioneers included socialist visionaries committed to building a fairer society through the kibbutzim. In its early decades, Israel was essentially a left-wing project. It was as late as 1977 before the first right-wing Likud government came to power.
Unfortunately, that rightward shift, and along with it a decline in idealism (except of a very regressive sort, appealing to a supposedly God-given right to the land) has continued ever since, to the extent that crushing all opposition now appears to be the only objective, rather than peace. So I do not find it at all difficult to sympathise with the plight of the Palestinians and with Dissy drawing attention to young peoples’ confrontations with Israeli soldiers.
The politics of the Middle East are somewhat off-topic in terms of this blog, however. Peter has indicated that he will not be saying more. Dissy, I hope you can live with that and that any response you make, if you feel you must, will be very carefully considered.
I can’t help wondering to what degree we would warm to one another’s personalities should we all manage to meet somewhere somehow! Ha! Now there’s a scary thought… (achieving) “unity” of any kind is a really a bitch and invariably no more than unanimity against a commonly perceived enemy… I for one was rather startled by Dissy’s (if I a stranger may call him by that handle) attempt to assimilate (in some fashion) THE cause to the P*lestinian one (gak!), which seems to me..well, just plain daft! For are they not the ones whose principal tactic is placing their offensive HQ in basements of hospitals etc? Children’s hospitals even? To ensure that any attack on them will generate INSTANT worldly favour? Is Dissident here to tell us that these dreadful facts are baseless? Anyhoo, I do think it’s great that we are as apparently (wait for it) ‘diverse’ in our ‘political orientations’ here as we are singular in our apprehension of.. of juvenile jouissance (if you will!)? But I think the point at which a wo/man comes down on the side of Israel or P-P-P-Palestine is the very apogee of mimetic frenzy, a last-ditch attempt to finally differentiate oneself amidst a disorienting global crisis that nonetheless has Israel situated always right at its attentional centre. One could say much more but I reckon this is probably not the place. In effect, one second we’re ‘Israel’ the next second we’re ‘Palestine’ and the ability to differentiate which one at any moment oscillates faster and faster all the time.
I love Dissident’s bright, careful analyses of things directly pertaining to (in a word) the war on kids n’ paedos but find his comments about the ME to be rather facile and jejune.
I said I would not weigh in again on the Israel-Palestinian issue, and I will not. But I will play the Devil’s advocate and present a possible counter argument for Dissident as to the use of schools and hospital for launching of missiles. One might say that the Gaza area is just too small for strategic depth. Of course, I would then have a counter argument, and so we both would ad infinitum.
I do believe however that despite our various differences we would indeed warm up to each other. I had a gay Jewish friend (who sadly recently died) who was vehemently anti Israel but always supportive of me as a bl. We often presented counter arguments to each other on the Israel situation but remaining friends to the end – literally – I last visited him just hours before he died.
For what it’s worth, Peter, I have already warmed up to you. I’ve been a fan of your blog for a long time, and I hope to continue gleaning insights from your writing in the future. We may not agree on everything, but I think in essence we both want the same thing: the end of innocent people being persecuted or “othered”. I greatly admire you for being there for your friend literally right up until the end, and for appreciating what you shared in common over any disagreements you may have had along the way.
Let me set the record straight here, Warble (may I call you that?). Nothing I said was intended to defend what Hamas or any other institution claiming to represent the Palestinian people has done in its war against the Israeli state. I do not consider Hamas to be “the Palestinians” anymore than I consider Israel to be “the Jews”. The side I took was the Palestinian people against the Israeli state, not the Palestinians against the Jews. As a socialist of the Marxian stripe, my thinking is very international in scope, and I support both the Palestinian people and the Jewish people as a whole, as well as all other groups of people. I would defend no institution comprised of Palestinian people that behaved in the same manner as the right-wing Israel state. The only reason anyone got this (mistaken) impression is because I happened to use Janna and Ahed as examples of young people who choose to place themselves in dangerous situations of their own volition and display great capability in the process. It was never my intention to ruffle partisan political feathers in the process or cause a segue into an off-topic thread of discussion (as interesting as it has been).
As for the matter of that segue, this is how I see it: Most Palestinian people have nothing directly to do with Hamas any more than the great majority of Jewish people, whether Zionist or not in ideology, have anything to do with the operations of the Israeli government. They are all mostly just people wanting to live happy and secure lives free from war, turmoil, and bloodshed. No right-wing or reactionary state, organization, or ideology that pits one group of people against another is going to accomplish this, nor does any single body run by a small oligarchy ever represent anyone but the few who hold power. And these are always the people with the most money and control over the biggest weapons, not anyone of any particular race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. We need to stop looking to any state on this planet as the answer to the problems of any oppressed people, because history has shown that the oppressed can eventually grab the reins of a state and become the new oppressor. All that does is galvanize the hatred of whichever group is being oppressed and eventually force them into a situation where many of them develop the same behavior and tactics as their oppressors.
I will make this brief, for the benefit of Tom’s moderating, out of respect to you, Peter, and for the purpose of keeping things as on-topic as possible.
I greatly sympathize with your own experiences as a child. However, this is the reason for my position, for whatever that may be worth to you: Right now, the U.S. is under siege — from within, despite its claims to be under siege from without by “terrorism” and any nation in the Middle East that is not compliant with U.S. business interests. Too often I have seen formerly oppressed groups becoming the oppressor themselves, and using their past oppression as a justification for some among their number to engage in the same basic type of activities towards others as was previously done to them–only expecting and even demanding different standards of conduct being applied to them. Such groups likewise use the rationale that because of what they dealt with in the past, in behaving this way their group is merely “defending themselves” against anyone who might try to oppress them again. They will then claim that anyone who may disagree with any of their various institution’s policies against others is a form of “oppression” or “harassment” against their group. The recent proposed U.S. policy of considering any type of criticism of the Israeli government to be a “hate crime” against all Jewish people is a chilling example of this, and a clear display of how much power the Zionist lobby group AIPAC has in the U.S. (for the record, I consider them representatives of Zionism and the right-wing Israeli state, and not of Jews as an ethnic group).
Hence, though I dislike Sharia law and would never support it, I have often criticized Saudi Arabia and the worst of those nations–which the U.S. government is very much in bed with. This is the same bully we mentioned playing both sides, as long as they are both good for business. This is what is supporting both the Saudi Arabian and Israeli state. Similarly, I do not think an ethnocracy like Israel and the Zionism behind its government policy is a bulwark against tyranny but merely a militarized excuse to conquer and claim what they please while insisting that different standards be applied to them because the people whom government claims to represent are Victims and Oppressed. This is a moralistic and emotionalistic shield that all manifestations of this policy often use. You see the same thing here with the SJW phenomenon in the U.S. and U.K. that is seeking to end due process in law for anyone who is not part of the designated Victim group.
So, this is what it ultimately boils down to. I judge any institution, system, or ideology-driven focus group based upon its tactics towards others and the nature of the policies they support, not on the basis of whom the ideological group happens to be (note there are many white male heterosexuals who are SJWs, much as there are many women and LGBTQ people who are not; and just as there are many Jews who are opponents of Zionism). If we do not want another Holocaust event, then we need to work to build a better world order that includes the uplifting of everyone. What I think we do not need is the militarization of different groups of people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or geographic location against other arbitrary groups of people. Hence, I do not see Israel or Zionism as a bulwark against a repeat of a Holocaust event, but as part of the overall problem and another manifestation of this reactionary tendency I mentioned up above that can lead into and rationalize such an event. The types of policies promoted by Zionism & the Israeli state and SJWs alike are precisely what lead us down the road to fascism, all in the name of attempting to prevent it. The oppressed of the past can easily become the oppressors of the present and/or future if they fall into this emotional trap. No group of people are immune to falling into that, as it’s a very human flaw we can all be prone to if we are not careful.
Before I moved onto your newest post, Tom, I wanted to commend you for this one and its many insights! It’s good to see you back on a regular basis! Before I do so, I did want to comment on this one thing you mentioned regarding the police hypocrisy:
Many of us heretics, indeed, might see some romance in the thought of a junior James Bond getting the better of a sinister, cat-stroking, international criminal mastermind, or foiling a dastardly jihadi plot for a new 9/11.
Well, sure, but there are limits. As with child soldiers or chimney sweeps, this undercover kids scheme goes way beyond them in terms of acceptable difficulty and danger.
I am certainly one of those heretics you mentioned! 😛 However, I certainly do not condone placing kids in danger just for the sake of “proving” anything or as a matter of course in a police investigation. Nevertheless, evidence does exist that kids do sometimes choose of their own volition to adopt a dangerous lifestyle, and for some of them, it does seem very much within their capabilities. Just three examples so as not to make this too long (with two of them interconnected):
We have Janna Tamimi (a.k.a., Jenna Jihad) resident of the ultra-dangerous Gaza Strip, who became one of the world’s youngest journalists at age 7, and currently at age 12 is a veteran of having faced down numerous dangerous situations as a crusading activist for the Palestinian people of her small village against Israeli oppression:
https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/world/2018-07-13-watch–meet-janna-jihad-the-youngest-journalist-in-the-world/
Then we have her equally brave older cousin, Ahed Tamimi, who has already been arrested by age 16 for confronting Israeli soldiers. Both of these girls have followed in the footsteps of an activist family:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4FM9WGRWdQ
Then, in America, we have 10-year-old crusading journalist, Hilde Lysiak, founder of the Orange Street News at age 8, who has tackled many serious and dangerous topics in her short but already amazing career, including the controversy she garnered when she was the first newshound in her vicinity to break a local murder case. She is now an author who has begun publishing horror fiction on her newspaper, openly not content with limiting herself to the younger detective books she has co-authored for Scholastic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=las4_mZoMcs
However, I want to point out that these examples in no way negate the point you made. The police are routinely a bunch of hypocrites when it comes to “protecting kids from danger.” The fact that they consider deliberately involving kids in clearly demonstrable forms of danger like those undercover criminal operations more acceptable than allowing them to learn about and consensually explore their sexuality; and have less problem with them spending time with truly violent criminals rather than Kind people with no inclinations towards actual violence, truly speaks volumes about the utterly twisted priorities of WEIRD society and its law enforcement agencies.
Have you yourself watched the video you present? It is obvious that those kids are in absolutely no danger. It is also quite evident, given the presence of adults filming the confrontation (most, if not all other than the soldiers, being Palestinians), that the kids have been put up to this by other parties with influence over them. “Of their own volition” is therefore subject to interpretation. You apparently have drunk the same Kool Aid (of Jone’s Town fame if you are too young to remember) that those who rail against MAPs have. Given this lack of discernment, I despair that we will ever make any progress on our own behalf.
The only “Kool-Aid” I drank, Peter, is the reality-flavored version. There is no definitive proof that Janna and Ahed are put up to confronting those soldiers, and considering how the latter recently got arrested, and considering the hotbed the Gaza Strip happens to be, they’re being children in no way shields them from danger. Quite the contrary, in fact. The soldier laughing at Ahmed in one video may only have been doing that since he knew he was on cam. She got dragged into prison when she confronted a soldier when no filming was taking place!
Giving kids this type of credit is not paramount to actually supporting the placing of them in grave peril. But to say they do not sometimes choose this of their own volition is what actually constitutes going the route of our detractors, by claiming kids never take risks unless some nefarious adults “put them up to it.” Sound familiar?
I do not think you understood my point. There seems to be a piling on of fault finding with Israel as there is with MAPs. This appears to me to be mainly from people who think of themselves as liberal, progressive, or choose your term. The media they consume paint MAPs as predators and bullies and do the same for Israel without much analysis or nuanced thinking. That is the “Kool Aid” they have been led to consume. Were you to show a concern for the demonstrably horrific things done to children in a good part of the rest of the Middle East, I might be a little more attentive to your earlier narrowly focused post. Perhaps you do show equal concern for the children maimed and killed in Syria (a great number who are also Palestinians), but I have no evidence of this.
I doubt that any child hitting one of Assad’s soldiers would fare nearly as well as a child hitting an Israeli soldier. There is hardly a country I know of where this would happen without much more serious consequences than the one you allude to. We do not see videos of Assad’s soldiers torturing civilians because Syria does not have the free press that Israel has. Even in the relatively more civilized US or Britain, were a child to hit a soldier or veteran because of the awful things done in Iraq or Afghanistan, I can just see the uproar against at the very least the parents of these children.
Understandably, cute children tug at our heart strings, but they can be as mindless as the adults who influence their attitudes. I do not doubt the children in your video truly feel angry, but it appears to me that violence and confrontation is the solution to their society’s problems they have been taught. Perhaps we as MAPs should be less “Kind” and more violent. Where would that get us?
Thank you for clarifying your point here, Peter. I will attempt to do the same in response.
First, the bullying of Israel matter. Israel receives an enormous amount of financial aid from the United States each year. The Israeli lobbyist org AIPAC is extremely powerful, and forces all politicians who are endorsed by the two major parties to promote the Zionist agenda of repression against the Palestinians, to the point where the U.S. is now considering legislation that considers any criticism of the Israeli government to be tantamount to “hate speech” against anyone who is Jewish. Israel continues to hide behind this shield, while its right-wing government seeks to create nothing less than an ethnocracy within its borders. People of the Left correctly, IMO, find that a horribly tragic irony, and many consider it a prime example of how those who have been victims of oppression in the past can carry the Victim Card to justify similar forms of oppression by them against others. This is the entire basis of the “SJW” issue, in fact.
I can assure you that I do indeed show much concern for children in Syria, but the U.S. has likewise turned that nation into a battle zone. Assad is not benevolent, but blindly supporting everyone the U.S. government calls a “friend” and blindly demonizing anyone whom the U.S. calls an “enemy” is a serious problem in the world today I do not abide by, and whom many on the Left refuse to abide by. Let us not forget such “friends” of the U.S. include Saudi Arabia, whose government is one of the worst supporters of terrorism across the globe. But because they are good for U.S. business interests, they are given a free pass. I have often protested, both within and outside the MAP community, on the number of kids killed throughout the world in the Middle East. But much of it is due to the U.S. policy of pre-emptive war, imperialism, and deliberate destabilization of popularly elected governments that are not compliant with U.S. business interests. I simply used the examples of Janna and Ahed since they were well known youth activists.
As for the promotion of violence issue… it was not my intention to do any such thing. In fact, I have opposed a tiny contingent of MAPs on GC over the years who have discussed using such tactics via the usual excuse “we’re at war!” I would never encourage any MAP or youth to use pre-emptive violence against anyone else. I saw Janna and Ahed as facing down violence and the threat of violence, which you see at many check points in the Gaza Strip, and by soldiers raiding the homes of people there on a regular basis, which served as the catalyst for Janna herself choosing to enter activism. I didn’t see any of the activists in Janna or Ahed’s company holding guns.
To avoid the string effect, I have tried to post at the head of the page.
Noted!
Basically, Peter complains that Dissy shows videos about Palestinian children fighting Israel, but not about Syrian children resisting Assad. Unfortunately, since Islamists dominate the Syrian opposition, they have sent women and girls back home, so their videos show anti-Assad events involving only men and boys. Now everyone should know that Dissy is not interested in boys, and he shows only girls here. ;o)
Dont know if any 1 saw this documentary last night it was on at around 11pm.
https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2018/09/207381/channel-4-married-to-a-paedophile
Yes, I am just finishing a blog about it. Aim to post soon.
I look forward to the blog, Tom! I read as much of the article as I could stomach, and it sounded like the author is trying to start a mass panic! The article claims there are “more than 80,000 pedophiles operating online in the UK”! That they all pose a “threat to children.” That the crime is getting “worse”. This sounds like the wet dream of any dictator hoping to establish a police state and complete surveillance society. This is the textbook M.O.: make the public believe there is a horrific threat of astounding numbers, that the problem is constantly growing, that extreme measures must be taken by law enforcement to keep us “safe”…next, throw anything about children and sex into that toxic rhetorical brew, and what do you have?
>I look forward to the blog, Tom!
Dissy, If you have been replying to messages in your mailbox alerting you to new comments in your current thread you may be unaware that the blog in question has already been posted. It came out a week ago!
Ooops! I got the time frame confused.
I missed this post until now, and a week or two ago I sent off my encouragement to the DSM steering committee to axe that bit about paedophilia being a “lifelong condition.”
I didn’t read the Virpedery of which you speak in uncharacteristically dulcet tones, yet speaking with one of their more prominent figures I was convinced that neither of us knew the reasoning behind the proposed change, and that our divergent guesses led to opposite feelings about it.
Rather than as an(other) assault on paedos, I think it’s most likely the APA was proposing the change to limit the potential for corrections institutions to incarcerate people for life in the United States after they’ve served their official sentence.
Though I cede the argument that pundits will misuse this change willy-nilly, and I warned them of this in my five fulminating responses–some of which tested the character limits of the text fields–I do not see that this is reason for the professional organisation which has become the de facto gospel authors on these issues to keep questionable phrases on the books.
And the fact is, the change is a proposed change to the definition of a PARAPHILIA. We and several of them as well are aware that paedophilia as an orientation appears to be lifelong.
But the paraphilia, the iatrogenic sequelae of having ones love turned to bile, that can in fact change or disappear. ‘Mine’… such as it was, is in near-complete remission. Paedo-as-ever, but no longer ‘paraphilic’.
So I told them I was fine with them chucking that little bit in the bin, and suggested they go a little further and consign to the wastebin the entire dodgy, unscientific body of bullshit known as their section on ‘Paraphilias’. While it may be a usable term to lump-together very real patterns of behaviour and felt experience, ‘paraphilia’ is a shaky concept.
My final comment was a shorter tirade spurred by what they did not propose changing: the admission that adolescent boys are expected to be attracted to adult females or males, and the fundamental incongruity that brings up…
Thanks for another informative post. I’ve said and written similar things, and as usual you provide other references than I had seen before, vindicating heretical observations. This world is sheer madness.
It’s good to hear about your energetic input, djvinno.
>Rather than as an(other) assault on paedos, I think it’s most likely the APA was proposing the change to limit the potential for corrections institutions to incarcerate people for life in the United States
That would be good; but I cannot find much enthusiasm for tactical moves that rely on distorting the known facts.
Better would be a case grounded in US constitutional law against “cruel or unusual punishment” (or “treatment”) designed to sweep away post-sentence civil commitment entirely. I suspect that such an action would be viable at the federal level. The problem seems to be progressing a test case beyond state jurisdictions.
Yes, that would be better. However such a challenge lies far outside the APA’s scope of direct influence. The line between treatment and punishment in the US has been argued ad nauseum, and the APA is not going to step in and have any success reforming things there.
There are groups working on exactly that, though, (Reform Sex Offender Laws, in the US for example) but the APA has been roped into this mess because of the way the DSM is used in courts. They can edit their own publication, and I’ve strongly advised them to go way further in chopping questionable material out of it.
They are not distorting facts when they say that the paraphilia is subject to change, because by their own definition the paraphilia is the complex of all the attendant stress-related phenomena, not the attraction to minors itself.
Is their definition a distortion? Hell yes. But who’s talking about that other than me? You didn’t mention it, although no doubt you agree. But if you agree, than why fight the removal of a statement which is true in other contexts but in the given context is false, when the definition the whole section is built upon is not only ‘a’ problem but in fact is the very reason that the thing they’re removing is not true?
If I am playing make believe with my young friend, and–for gits and shiggles–we decided that we’re going to make her math homework more interesting by playing an inflationary game such that each numeral is really code for the one two integers above it, looping back through zero, and then someone comes along from the outside and criticises our answers, what sense does that make? By our definitions, our conclusions make sense.
I suppose if I had access to the VirPed post on SexNet I may have a clearer idea of what approach you were recommending in commenting, but from the quotes you’ve offered from Queer Furry and from discussing it with a number of people on a conference call, I’m unconvinced that challenging the APA not to remove this statement makes any sense.
Here’s a relevant mention of the situation the APA is in, the delicacy of which paedos usually fail to appreciate. I’m guilty of this on a regular basis, so I spent nearly twelve hours re-writing my comments in an effort to bring as much love and indignation as I could to the subject without losing sight of the humanity of the people voting mental ‘illnesses’ in and out of existence by fiat [i]in a punitive culture[/i] barely descended from puritanical fanaticism.
I had not read the following post until yesterday, but I have encountered many examples of people outside the APA and outside the psychology/psychiatry professions wielding the DSM both in court records and in online discussions by presumed experts in related issues. And random people on the internet love to use narrow slices of the DSM (and usually from the flimsy paraphilias section) as if it’s a document they’ve read or understand in context. They will continue doing so. I think the body of the APA is justified in hiding the limb targeted by the courts and ignoring the limb that will continue to get scratched at by pundits and quack the-rapists claiming to be able to rid individuals of this ‘illness’.
https://philiaresearch.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/danger-and-difference-the-stakes-of-hebephilia/
After all, 2+2 isn’t 4, it’s 0. Y’all got excited when you saw us scribbling out that stray equation that actually looked right to you for a change.
You wrote:
>I suppose if I had access to the VirPed post on SexNet I may have a clearer idea of what approach you were recommending in commenting, but from the quotes you’ve offered from Queer Furry and from discussing it with a number of people on a conference call, I’m unconvinced that challenging the APA not to remove this statement makes any sense.
The full text of the post on SexNet is a bit long for posting here. Would you like me to email it to you?
The following two paragraphs from the text strike me as the most important ones for present purposes:
>The rationale offered for this change is to allow more people to escape a questionable diagnosis of pedophilia that has negative consequences for them within the criminal justice system. We agree that is a worthy goal, but trying to make progress on a social issue by denying the truth is not going to work in the long run. Even more important, the change might help a few people who are visible to clinicians, but it will hurt far more people who rarely show up to meet clinicians face to face. The APA has an obligation to consider the big picture.
…
>Next consider the proposed additional text, “Pedophilic disorder includes elements that may change over time with or without treatment”. The DSM-5 separated out “pedophilia” from “pedophilic disorder”. The latter is diagnosed when additional criteria are met: acting on the attractions or experiencing serious distress. It is well known that acting sexually with children may disappear — the fact that child sex abuse by pedophiles has a low recidivism rate is a simple fact that suggests that. A pedophile’s distress can also be alleviated to the point where they would no longer qualify. But the overwhelming evidence is that pedophilia per se cannot be changed. A more accurate and honest formulation could be, “The extra diagnostic criteria that warrant a diagnosis of pedophilic disorder (beyond pedophilia per se) may change over time with or without treatment” But by making no distinction between which elements might change, the proposed change suggests that pedophilia per se can change with time or therapy. Perhaps this wording is an attempt to lull into acquiescence scientists who would not agree that “pedophilia per se includes elements that may change over time with or without treatment”. The proposed statement is not literally false, but the practical effect will be to imply that pedophilia per se frequently disappears over time.
You continue:
>I think the body of the APA is justified in hiding the limb targeted by the courts and ignoring the limb that will continue to get scratched at by pundits and quack the-rapists claiming to be able to rid individuals of this ‘illness’.
You have clearly thought a lot about this.
VP said: “the change might help a few people who are visible to clinicians, but it will hurt far more people who rarely show up to meet clinicians face to face”.
This is true. But it’s not just a matter of numbers, is it? A relatively small amount of hurt to a large number of people is arguably outweighed by the terrible depth of misery and continuing injustice that will inevitably be experienced by the unlucky few who face the extreme fate of rotting away for the rest of their life under civil commitment.
We are left, it seems, with a stark exercise in consequentialist calculus. It’s the Trolley Problem in real life! Not an easy choice unless we can bring some other arguments to bear.
An interesting article about the ugly consequences of the overprotection of children and youth:
https://quillette.com/2018/09/02/is-safetyism-destroying-a-generation/
Now I’m trying to point the people from the leading critical psychiatry / anti-psychiatry / post-psychiatry Web portal “Mad in America” (MiA) to child liberation ideas: very cautiously, without provoking the emotional overdose by mentioning the Unthinkable – this is, positive child sexuality / paedosexuality / intergenerational sexuality – with the link to the article I mentioned above:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/08/adolescent-suicide-and-the-black-box-warning-stat-gets-it-all-wrong/#comment-138927
Responses were diverse, yet happily, Robert Whitaker, the MiA founder, has agreed that children and adolescents nowadays are indeed overprotected, and this overprotection is a factor in developing psychological problems in the youth.
In the end, I directed people there to the “Free Range Kids” website: a good place to start on the child-lib without being emotionally overwhelmed by the encounter with the Unthinkable.
Who knows, maybe a few people will examine the arguments for the child-lib, find them valid, sound and clear (since they are!). Maybe a very few of them will search even further – a quest for knowledge may lead one to the areas that are Unthinkable for most!
Especially given that the “Free Range Kids” makes a strong case against the Sex Offender Registry as well…
Good move!
this piece, the Disappearance of Desire, does not investigate mimesis as such, but describes how ‘identity’ politics eliminates all real consideration of desire, so very well! https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-disappearance-of-desire/
Yes, its a superb article. Thanks for linking it.
as xmas is comming up can tom make heretic toc page look more xmasey
Jeez, Daniel, give Autumn a chance!
r u a humbug tom lamo?
Shortly before last Xmas a friend and I visited Charles Dickens Museum, Doughty St, Holborn.
After an interesting tour around what had once been the London home of the celebrated author of A Christmas Carol – in which the mean, anti-Christmas, Ebenezer Scrooge was of course the central character – we inevitably ended up in the museum shop.
I was far too miserly to spend any money on any of the cards, gifts, etc. but there was one item on which I could not resist spending a few pennies. This was a lapel button bearing the slogan “Bah, humbug!”
You may feel this answers your question, Daniel!
forget sex robots, scrooge robots so they can help scrimp more
not interested in card no need for just a merry xmas from 1 soul to another will do
Daniel, why are you obsessing about Xmas? It’s months away.
3 months, sometimes i have these thoughts theres nothin wrong with that i dont think
Nothing wrong at all. There’s also nothing wrong with me preferring not to bother my head with Xmas at this time of the year.
fine
To be fair, it’s too early to be talking about Xmas. If that makes me a scrooge / grinch then ‘Baah, humbug!
With that being said, it’d be nice to think we could organise an Xmas pedo meet up if anyone would be interested…?
Ed Chambers
>To be fair, it’s too early to be talking about Xmas.
I didn’t say Tom was a scrooge I was trying to have a joke with him but I guess it backfired so I suggest we forget about it.
No problem, Daniel. You clearly signalled your humorous intent. It’s just that it is too early (for me at least) to be bothering about Xmas.
Some time back i asked the heretics here why they oppose the sex offenders register and one person said why have a drink drive recidivist register? I am not a driver myself but i think that a drive register would probably be a good thing so i was wondering if anyone would be able to give me a more point by point critique please.
but the ‘sex offenders’ register is not a recidivist register, it’s a virtual Akashic record etching the original, one offense in social stone, for is it not?
Sad news I found this on a blog:
https://malesexualismarchive.home.blog/2018/08/12/the-optics-of-noticing-james-a-donald/#comment-2
“Dr Nigel Leigh Oldfield has sadly passed away at home earlier this morning. R.I.P
A tribute article will be posted later on the usual platforms.
R.I.P and God Bless Katherine his loving partner who was with him to the very end..”
Sad if true. Please post any confirmations you see, whether via links to “the usual platforms” or the general news media.
According to Katy, He had a fall but still alive, So I don’t know what ‘fake news’ is circulating.
As I said, “Sad, if true…” Good to hear it wasn’t.
Definitely alive but possibly with a trace of post trollmatic stress.
Thanks, Kamil. How is the Twitter -sphere these days?
I would ask him that question, But he ‘blocked’ me!
It’s interesting to see you here Kamil. I noticed your endorsement of Fay Brown’s therapy initiative, Project Snowball, on Virped. To be fair, after spending a couple of days texting with Fay, she is BY A LONG WAY the best hope for therapy for our Kind atm. This is after being in communication with so many ‘therapists / providers’ over many years. However, despite the positives to come from my communication with Fay, there should be great caution in any approach to her and her workshop, despite the fact I believe she is genuinely open to considerable nuance on topic and with regards to the concept of abuse. Unfortunately she is a survivor of abuse, genuine or iatrogenic it’s not my place to say. She was even open to the idea of communication with Tom. I would not endorse her work, at least for now, as the emphasis is, still unfortunately, on prevention rather than helping pedos for the sake of helping pedos. For sure, she is likeable and when faced with such monsters of therapy such as Juliet Grayson, Sarah Goode, StopSO et al, I would offer a cordial and considered recommendation for contact with her, should it make any difference to a fellow kind’s outlook.
is this the Fay Brown who is petitioning for ‘Infant Sexual Abuse’ (sexual abuse of a child aged six or under) to attract ‘similar sentences to murder’?
“everyone convicted of ISA should be given a life sentence with a minimum term set by a judge.”
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/220852
Damn….I’m disappointed but not surprised…that she has what one may regard as a side agenda to her humanism.
Hi Tom, I personally know Nigel and his partner Katy. I too can confirm he is alive, though recently had a bad fall. That said, Nigel is not well and is presently getting treatment.
As for the person who claimed he was deceased, an Angela Disney, either this was a genuine mistake or possibly a deliberate sick joke by a similar named person who is very pedophobic. She much blogs/vlogs about Satanic child abuse and other mass hysteria. The comment was on the very pro-contact campaigner Tom Grauer’s blog ‘Male Sexualism Archive’. It was unrelated, I think, to the post.
Katy appreciates your kind concern here.
Thanks, Pete. Sounds like Nigel couldn’t be in better hands than Katy’s.
Regarding this particular troll who claims Nigel is dead… I have had him or her – I suspect it is the same person making all the comments but don’t know for sure – placing many comments on my blog, over a long period of time, claiming that Nigel is dead or is dying and celebrating it. The aforementioned comment is the last one that this troll has left and it seems that the troll has now moved from my blog to other blogs which is why it got published as I vigorously censored all comments made by said troll. This was one of the more mild – albeit totally fake – comments left by the troll.
Honestly, such comments are in breach of the malicious communications act – not that I am in favor of that act – but if the act applies to anti-feminist trolls then surely it should apply to feminist ones as well? It seems there are one set of rules for some and different rules for others.
Damn….no one will need any reminder to stay strong, keep fit and active in these dark times. A brother has passed, may we acknowledge his notable contribution to our demographic, and wish his family the best for the future.
i never met nigel but i am still shocked he was an honest man treated very badly can’t imagine how his wife is feeling right now R.I.P
I never met him, (not many MAPs meet each other) but we used to chat quite a lot on Twitter before my account got suspended. I did chat with his girlfriend about Nigel’s mental state; He was knocking back the drink to unsafe levels, I did tell her that he should, at least, go for a walk as much as possible, But I think he was too far gone by then. The end result is what he was wanted in the end.
I think people who know Katy should support her. i just came back from an expensive holiday, more expensive then I thought, (the usual pedo predicament, having to pay off the Police in Philippines) that was a joke!
In all seriousness, All who knew him should contribute what they can spare so he can have a decent burial, Only if Katy needs this help, of course.
… me again… just hoping against hope to open up a discussion if I can, which I sort of succeeded in so doing but once before, I think, in relation to the actual durability (or otherwise) of radically ‘intergen’ relationships etc… I myself couldn’t decide what I finally thought about that, having never known myself to really be ‘in love’ at any point, and well…
So…I haven’t had much success in exchanging with others here, I readily admit, and I probably do have a mind that tends to ‘overthink things’ at a moment’s notice… it does seem to me raaaather important however, to say exactly why we believe the work of Kincaid to be best described in terms of an ECP? Extreme Constructivist Position? So far as I can tell he has scarcely had a thing to say about the (essential) nature of the *genuine article* ITSELF, ie paedophilia per se, let alone contributing in any way to the sort of extreme mind-matter dualism that involves severing the links between bodily sex, gender identity, and erotic desire – as exemplified most obviously by the trans movement, say…
Mr Kincaid of course is interested in how an undying, ‘subliminal’ paedophilia *connects* everyone of us… from absolutely reckless haters all the way to virtuous wannabes, and insofar as the (missing?) Mr Kennerly understands paedosexuality to be the #1 “BIPARTISAN ISSUE” before us we are talking about something which is never less than socially extraordinary indeed.
So what I hope to do today is encourage sound offered notions on how to best..erm…’proceed’ within social media, when it comes to ‘letting ’em know we’re here’, when what invariably happens is that one gets talked about in the 3rd person from the moment go, and one’s tweets (for example) quickly agreed by all in shouting-distance to be but the nefarious outworkings of some ‘larger pedo force’ in the whithersoever of the twitterverse?
I lost 300 contacts, comrades and goodness knows how many useful accessways overnight last year when a truly vicious little chav (how we foreigners do chortle at that oh so choice term-of-ensmearment) straight outta Blighty reported me to the FaceBuro, which then paid some attention to my deets and decided that I’d breached the proper name rules…imagine my surprise to know now the same online fate as Stumbling Deer (of North Dakota) or Baked by the Moon (of New Mexico)!
I cannot say otherwise – I’d really like to continue stepping out there.. but (but) I fear that I do not know the… the Equivocal Way.. Every blurt I ever made it seems has ended up assuredly (too) “OUT THERE” for wordly taste…
>Every blurt I ever made it seems has ended up assuredly (too) “OUT THERE” for wordly taste…
The heresy sniffers have very good noses!
?
Turp wrote>
>…it does seem to me raaaather important however, to say exactly why we believe the work of Kincaid to be best described in terms of an ECP? Extreme Constructivist Position? So far as I can tell he has scarcely had a thing to say about the (essential) nature of the *genuine article* ITSELF, ie paedophilia per se
This is just the point. It may be inferred from his lack of attention to the possibility of any “essential” aspects of paedophilia, such as it being a fixed sexual orientation that has been caused by some aspect of individual biology (with genetic anomalies and pre-natal exposure to unusual hormonal regimes in the womb being notable candidates), that he regards the “essential” side as either unreal or insignificant.
These days there is a lot of excitement over the co-evolution of biology and culture in humans, an enthusiasm I share. Traditionally, going back two or three decades, thinking was much more sharply binary, divided into warring camps that went into battle under various banners (nature v. nurture, biology v. culture, essentialist v. constructivist) but if you were not in one camp you were sure to be in the other because that was the only default position.
As a professor of English with a special interest in “cultural studies” it is not hard to see which camp Kincaid was in. Biology appears to play no part whatever in his thinking and writing. He at least implicitly attributes all our mental constructs and behaviours to cultural influence. Press him hard in an interview with waterboarding as part of the interrogation and he might admit that we have bodies, and that what goes on in our minds bears some sort of relationship to the fact that we have brains that have evolved, but it doesn’t come out in his writing.
My feelings concerning the limitations of Jim’s analysis are very much like those regarding Judith Levine, another important writer who has seemed very relaxed about paedophilia while denying its (essential) existence.
Jim talks it out of existence by saying we live in a subliminally paedophile culture (i.e. everyone is a paedophile but it’s just below the threshold of consciousness) so it’s not a monstrous aberration.
Judith talks it out of existence by denying that it is a fixed sexual orientation, and that sexual attraction to children has been hyped up too much as a social problem.
Neither of them gets anywhere near to reality as I understand it.
You can get some idea of what I mean through my review of Levine’s book Harmful to Minors. It is here:
https://www.ipce.info/library_3/files/tomoc_rev_lev.htm
..and what an, oh, so very beautifully-written review that is, TO’C! Thankyou for linking…
And here is surely where things get very, very in!ter!est!ing! indeed (sorry it’s my habit to write the word that way in constant protest against excessively laconic ‘Murkins use of it as all-purpose substitute for response)…cutting most directly to the chase, I’m going to need you now to link me to a source of what you believe to be THE best intel out there on “co-evolution” of the brain with culture.. the Big E-word itself has always seemed to me to have the power of disengaging brains, its mere mention as explanatory agent suffices to ensure so very often that one’s interlocutor need think no more – if it ‘evolved’, then say no more guv’nor, it evolved!
… the biggest problem for me then is that all the “hard” scientific lit seems hellbent on making the absolutely ‘e-centric’ error of positing at the outset a (gnostically-conceived) BRAIN that grows, expands or “e-volves” graaaadually, SOMEHOW making language, world and meaning possible, whereas I think it incontrovertibly true that anybrain can do this only because – yes only because – of the fact that *language* now lives in it!
Because a scene-of-representation has now been born (in the originary event) and the relationship between what is collectively-and-individually ‘understood’ by hominids has henceforth been changed forever.. whence cometh the whole existence of irreducible *paradox* and the consequent ability for us to think at all..
In a word, Tom I reckon need to know (much) more about these “unusual hormonal regimes” of which you speak! Given that I as thinking unit cannot ascertain what the “essential” aspects of my desire might really be at any moment (or have been at any point in my life), I probably ‘lean’ very much towards trying to better grasp (haha impossible, I know) that which most furiously arouses my desire, and which I understand to have everything to do with what is most fundamental from the beginning, ie interdiction and the ceaseless interplay of sacred & profane, these doubtlessly at work all the way to the ‘hard’ scene-of-the-laboratory!
I fully accept the example you give re the pertinacious (hehe, I learned that word from E Michael Jones) quality of homosexual boys… but need an introduction to the genetical mysteries that is…that is not obviously contaminated by ideology or stale dogma from the first..
*I also have before me what one could probably call an epochal work of investigative journalism, 1996’s “A Separate Creation: How Biology Makes Us Gay’ (the binding has completely disintegrated), a book I’m quite sure you’re aware of.. The Hunt was on for the Gay Gene, a hunt which, if this work is any indication, proved ultimately to resemble a wild goose chase more than anything else… perhaps it would be useful to outline if possible where we have gotten research-wise since then? Looking over the interviews with the hottest geneticists in town at the time, the basic talk (and its associated conundrums) seems not to have been superceded by something different ? Please correct me if I’m wrong…
The gay gene “discovery” was a huge news story initially and was very fashionable for a while; then it was assumed to be discredited when further advances in the field were slow.
But not so. Wikipedia has a pretty good up-to-date article on this:
Biology and sexual orientation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation#Chromosome_linkage_studies
See the section on “Chromosome linkage studies”.
I will single out just a couple of points:
(1)
>Meta-analysis of all available linkage data indicates a significant link to Xq28, but also indicates that additional genes must be present to account for the full heritability of sexual orientation.
(2)
>In 2017, Nature published an article with a genome wide association study on male sexual orientation. The research consisted of 1,077 homosexual men and 1,231 heterosexual men. A gene named SLITRK6 on chromosome 13 was identified, and contains an area or DNA sequence which is different for gay men than for heterosexual men.
But the bigger question is What does all this mean? This is also worth noting in the article:
>In interviews to the press, researchers have pointed that the evidence of genetic influences should not be equated with genetic determinism. According to Dean Hamer and Michael Bailey, genetic aspects are only one of the multiple causes of homosexuality.
Mike Bailey is a scientist I know and respect. He rightly gives a bit of perspective.
Also in this article is a section on “Birth order”. This is about the issues I touched upon when I mentioned unusual hormone exposure in the womb.
“Birth order”
yes, I suspect a lot of this is epigenetic, i.e., genes are expressed in a specific *environment*, including a specific cultural environment. interactions between biology and culture are as complex and subtle as those between biology and the physical environment.
for example, early puberty in girls is linked to the presence of unrelated adult males in the home. in the research this is typically a step-father or a mother’s boyfriends, but it could also be a consequence of child marriage, where that occurs. Aisha entered Muhammad’s household from age six and it’s suggested that she would have been pubescent at nine or ten when the the marriage was consummated. this seem young, even by contemporary averages.
age of puberty is a fundamental factor in overall fertility so has a powerful effect on population genetics, so here is a case where family structure (primarily a cultural phenomenon) impacts directly on biology. so yeah.
>I’m going to need you now to link me to a source of what you believe to be THE best intel out there on “co-evolution” of the brain with culture.
Depends what you mean by “best”, Turp. Arguably the best is the deepest and most rigorous, but that can be a very difficult way into the subject. Earlier this year I read anthropologist/neuroscientist Melvin Konner’s huge (944 pages) multidisciplinary book “The Evolution of Childhood”, which is tremendous but very technical and heavy-going. I would have been completely bamboozled had I not been around evolutionary studies for many years, with a background of reading Dawkins and others. So, I’ll have to give some thought as to what might make a good introductory text.
As for your point about language, these are very deep waters indeed and I have barely dipped a toe myself. Lots of 20th century philosophers thought and wrote about little else but what language is and does. As for science, we are talking Chomsky and post-Chomsky here. Again, I will ponder – possibly for a long time!
“As for your point about language, these are very deep waters indeed and I have barely dipped a toe myself. Lots of 20th century philosophers thought and wrote about little else but what language is and does. As for science, we are talking Chomsky and post-Chomsky here. Again, I will ponder – possibly for a
long time!”
dear Heresymeister, I would argue that those 20th century philosophers were far too busy generating fresh language to really knuckle down and think about it minimally. To squeeze presuppositions from the thing as water from a massively, constantly absorbent sponge. We are (in GA territory) as far from the Chomper and his ‘LAD’, his supposed grammatical demonstrations that lingo is first-and-foremost cerebrally embedded, as it’s possible to get (so far)!
But I fear I (will somehow always) manage to digress from the path. The path one hopes is at least vaguely discernible here at TO’C. I’m trying to formulate a good question. One that might express the understanding that what I think of as ‘my’ desire, ie desire *per se*, is an almost purely mimetic production. It grew in me precisely from the value I observed to be conferred on its gradually dawning objects by manifold others. Observed both consciously and unconsciously (you probably don’t need me to invoke Shakespeare here…)
And the question I’m trying to shape is one that ..asks if this truly metaphysical desire is no less ‘permanent’ a fixture than those viscerally-rooted aspects that of course must sponsor and support every twitch of it? And thus not exactly something can be subjected to the ideological inroads of ‘constructivism’ that easily?
=So far as I can tell he has scarcely had a thing to say about the (essential) nature of the *genuine article* ITSELF, ie paedophilia per se=
I absolutely agree with this! I’ve read a couple of Kincaid’s books and he makes important and valuable observations, but has nothing to say about paedophilia per se.
a very interesting perspective on constructed vs essential concepts of sexual orientation is in Jonathan Dollimore’s “Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault”. Dollimore himself is in the constructivist camp [boom tish] but he presents the schizm in the context of the lived experience and identities of people’s own understanding of their nature. recommended!
Having listened to some of myownworstenemy blog on ‘preventing abuse’, the woman from stopSO mentioned you, Tom, A few times. You could ask why am I bothering to listen to an interview like that, And that would be a good question, But since the interviewer had a three hour interview with Tom, I thought maybe he will ask less mainstream questions and maybe more nuanced questions. From the start he doesn’t take her to task on studies shat show ‘harmfulness’ (or lack of) but I only listened to the start.
Yes, I am disappointed with Danny. It seems he was just relieved to be back in his comfort zone.
Just thought I’d look through ‘myworstenemy, he has some interesting stuff, And he has this article on ‘preventing abuse’. Looks like the interview he had with Tom was somewhat wasteful, Though he did reluctantly agree with how stats have been selective in the reporting of ‘abuse’.
https://www.myownworstenemy.org/podcast/preventing-child-abuse/
In early August I met a number of pedos in Holland, and not a bad soul among them. Had a good time, consumed alcohol, all good. Once again recently, had the distinct privelege of meeting Tom once more, along with another distinguished pedo gentle person. It is what it is, I won’t dress it up any other way. I’m proud of such occasions, ie we meet in the face of such adversity and showed the Kind of fighting spirit and comradery that we as a community are capable of. I’ve also remained in contact with one particular Dutch pedo, and he’s a brave soul, clever and robust. He had mentioned in our last email correspondence that we should celebrate and socialise, to not be miserable or apologetic for who we are. To gather, albeit arguably discretely perhaps, and enjoy one anothers company. Obviously, there may well be geographical and financial constraints to such meetings. However, where there’s a will, there’s a way and I’d like to briefly take this opportunity to suggest, quite obviously perhaps and also cordially and benignly, that we should all try to make the effort to hook up more. It really adds to the feel good factor of any pedos life. Just saying….
I greatly enjoyed the evening’s dining out to which Ed refers. Thanks for joining us, Ed. It was great!
And here is Jonathan King’s court case ruling: http://www.chrissaltrese.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/King-Further-abuse-ruling-redactedapproved.pdf
Feminazis discover that water wets:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/18/mens-fixation-on-young-women-is-another-sign-of-masculinity-in-crisis
“Men’s preference for young women is a sign that masculinity is in crisis.”
Abstract: Studies show that men prefer 18-year-old girls, who are still teenagers, so men don’t like women if not “girls” and most men in their 30s prefer to pick up younger girls and that is.. bad.
Broadly speaking, I think we have always preferred 18-year-old girls (or even younger), so why does the Guardian think it’s a sign of ‘crisis’?
Well, exactly. I have kept a copy of this for reference in my own database under the title “Guys like girls – shock discovery”. Now my only problem is whether to file it in the folder “Feminism, excesses of” or “Media, distortions by” or just plain “Bonkers”.
=I have kept a copy of this for reference in my own database=
hey there Tom, you’re a journalist and seem to be well practiced at keeping track of information. do you use any particular software? index cards? rooms stacked to the ceiling with teetering piles of yellowed paper?
I really struggle to organize ‘stuff’ according to some semantic framework. the main problems are that things can belong to multiple categories and also that sometimes I have a rethink, the framework reorganizes itself, and my categories get outdated.
any suggestions?
>do you use any particular software? index cards? rooms stacked to the ceiling with teetering piles of yellowed paper?
Just a few hundred Windows folders with a branching system about 6 layers deep in places holding around 100,000 text files. My categories are a bit chaotic too. There simply isn’t time for precise filing. But looking for one or two key words in the most likely locations usually gets me to what I want. Plain old-fashioned memory (my own, not computerised) remains extremely useful as well.
I still find myself delving into old hard-copy books, journal papers and newspaper cuttings around the house as well. To find what I want in these is even more a matter of personal memory: for these I have hardly any filing system at all. Any archivist would recoil in horror from my “methods”.
well quite obviously it’s a kind of crisis because nobody really knows if ‘society’ is fully prepared for a surfeit of cat ladies?
Yes, more feminazi shite….you’re only a REAL man if you like women 30+.
Damn….I feel so effeminate right now….not that there’s anything wrong with that….
Well, I’m the (apparently rare) guy in my early 30s who is actually attracted to the women of his own age, and even a bit older (up to 40s)… Does it make me a sexual deviant? A “mesophile”, perhaps?
So this article’s author would probably like my sexuality… yet she will be outraged out of her mind by my pro-MAP, Child-Lib positions.
Yet it is funny to see the masses of the (borderline-)hebephilic men who at the same time hysterically rage at the “sick evil paedos”. Probably we should feel some pity to these sods, being painfully torn apart between the call of their bodies (and the bodies of the adolescent girls they desire) and the nonsensical content pushed into their minds by the culture they live in.
Well said, Explorer!
I am heterosexual enough to have been in a stable marriage for fifty years and yet I still fall passionately in love with the pretty little boys in the supermarket…
Go figure, as they say in Patagonia.
But don’t DARE to argue with those bitter, middle-aged women who know absolutely everything there is to know!
M T-W.
Yes, well…
When one reaches one’s 60s, one finds women one’s own age just a tad out of the desirable range. In fact, most of those whom I have encuntered (sic), just don’t like it anymore. Hence, anyone from 18 to 40 is just fine by me. If only they didn’t find me just too wrinkly and flabby and just plain old!
It’s always refreshing to meet outspoken non-MAP supporters of MAPs like yourself, Explorer, as you put paid to the oft-heard notion that only a MAP would defend another MAP. It also proves that there are many non-MAPs who can be persuaded by logical reasoning and a strong passion for civil rights principles in a general sense. Many such individuals are out there, and many others are sitting on the fence with a genuine willingness to be persuaded by logical arguments… they are just afraid to make their voices known. Yes, the Internet provides the opportunity for anonymity, but even then the fear of being attacked by mobs of hateful bashers can be a very disconcerting deterrent even if they will not know exactly who the speaker is. Thank you again for weathering these stormy waters on our behalf and setting the very important precedent that you do.
when I was 22 I started a relationship with a 35 year old that lasted over two years. I’ve also fallen head over heels in love with a four year old.
so what am I? real man or vile monster?
The study actually notes that ” The average woman’s desirability drops from the time she is 18 until she is 60.” Sixty definitely is not teenage.
In any event, the lovely Arwa Mahdawi doesn’t define what she means by “masculinity”, which necessarily leaves us wondering, no?
I am not going to put older women down and say they have no value as romantic partners. They are simply not the group of ladies that I am naturally attracted to on any level. The vicious jealousy many of them have towards younger women and anger towards older men who prefer them is not helping their cause. It only presents them as jaded, bitter old hags who have no confidence in their ability to score on the dating pool unless they can successfully shame men into thinking they have no choice in partners other than them. Using the “masculinity” argument is completely non-sensiical in this context, and suggests a desperate grasping at any available straw within grabbing distance.
If they want to be taken seriously as viable relationship partners, then bitterness and excessive anger is not the way to attract anyone. A decent attitude towards the many men of all ages who do find older women attractive on all levels would logically seem to be the better route to take. Many do, and these are the ones who most often tend to find fulfilling relationships at their advancing age. Accepting that not every straight man in their age group will have a preference for women in that same group should be every bit a part of common sense as accepting that not every man they meet will be attracted to women at all.
Ed Chambers’ Twitter page apparently disappeared:
https://twitter.com/EdChamb70386969?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Eembeddedtimeline%7Ctwterm%5Eprofile%3AEdChamb70386969&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftomocarroll.wordpress.com%2F2018%2F07%2F09%2Fmutual-support-aimed-at-self-acceptance%2F
Yet, it happened before – and the page then reappeared (look at the comment section for the previous blogpost). So, Ed, I want to ask: did something serious (such as ban) happened, or we should just wait?
Now his Facebook page disappeared as well:
https://www.facebook.com/ed.chambers.3194
Hi Explorer. The first time I took my twitter / Facebook offline temporarily for a number of reasons, I considered a number of things, then decided to go back online. Unfortunately I had a number of issues unfold over the weekend as a result of activism that have caused me to suspend them at the v least temporarily, perhaps indefinitely. I had a number of ‘discussions’ on both media and found that people were generally close minded and took what I was saying, deliberately or otherwise, as advocating for the sexual abuse of children (surprise surprise), which of course I never have / never will. To be fair, I am in no doubt that using both Facebook / Twitter is a waste of time. In my experience there is little point in trying to discuss things, as those who wish to correspond tend to be the hater / troll / ignorant types. I question the point of any presence there, as it’s only caused me a number of issues which I must now resolve. It leads me to continue to consider that the best way of ‘activism’ is to persevere within our community, help & support one another and invest in ourselves, as opposed to trying to reach out to people, ie those who aren’t MAPs etc. We will never be accepted / understood etc. We are best to simply consider our own community aside from anything and everything else.
Ed, I understand you, and this is your choice. Yet I (and, certainly, many others) would be very happy if you decide to return to Twitter and Facebook one day – we desperately need pro-contact people there. It is important that the pro-contact message is being heard outside of the limits of the small Paedo-Sphere.
As for the haters – ignore them. Block and ban them from your pages. Make it clear that insults, threats and slander are not allowed on your pages. And yet continue to provide the information for the small number of potential allies.
Even your very presense outside of the Paedo-Sphere is a sign of defiance of the slanderous and repressive attitude to which MAPs are subjected.
So, Ed, I hope you’ll be back on the social networks!
Explorer
I have a pro maps facebook page https://www.facebook.com/login/?cuid=AYiTWiCN-MfYWaeHc-bYAXFBMhye_I8uHpXwsr1Q-libnxuPDsrceSbJV4GTKLRD0G8NZucEMioD3Na3JmV9xl4FNTXFGB_S9ctMw1ubCNCqG0XgMJqgTwv9EswT_7sjqUk
Ed, I understand you, and this is your choice. Yet I (and, certainly, many others) would be very happy if you decide to return to Twitter and Facebook one day – we desperately need pro-contact people there.
Ed…I see your response to Explorer the reasons for leaving Twitter, I totally understand; The only reason I signed back up was to see how Oldfield was doing, not so good I hear, but he has a good Woman to look after him.
I even got blocked by securityconcern the other day. I think some haters accused him of supporting some of my ideas, So maybe he felt compelled to attack, then block. I will wear it as a badge of honour!
I am disappointed in him though, He used to argue with me and holocaust etc, but always respectful if not sometimes heated.
Debauch, what is your Twitter page (if I understood you correctly, you do have one)?
@Patrick88592043
Thanks!
Update : I was wary of what to say previously. Simple truth is I lost my job because of my FB & Twitter. Officially, they said the ‘work had moved’ but the simple truth is I will have been reported and complained about to the company several times, saying I was promoting CSA etc. I received a nominal payout from them, I suppose what one may regard as a ‘no trouble, all the best, hand shake’. I have nothing to complain about as it was a reasonable sum, I have a good reference, and start a new job Monday. The only thing I’d say that remains to be considered is whether or not to go back online (?). Aside from the Kind comments here, and thank you, is there any point?
This is a really ugly situation, Ed. Yet it is sadly quite “normal” for an open MAP in our modern society. Especially if this MAP refuses to self-castigate, “virtuous”-style, and boldly confronts society’s prejudices rather than tries to submit to them.
As for being online… You had your coming-out as a pro-contact MAP already. What is the point of hiding now? What do you have to lose now, Ed?
Well, maybe you do have something to lose still – how can I know? I would definitely like to see you on Facebook and Twitter once again, as well as many others, yet it will be you who will have to face the consequences of boldness.
So, think and decide for yourself, Ed. You are not obliged to make any decision.
It seems to me that there is no real point in going back online: the abuse you and Daniel received on Facebook was extreme, though perhaps not unexpected. Hence, if you were to go back online, a slightly friendlier online space would be better, I think, though I don’t know where you could go to find this, other than the obvious sites where activism is not necessary.
I don’t really know what to say about losing your job, except to say that I’m glad it was only your job, and it’s good that you already have another..
Whichever way you choose to go, all the best with it.
Thank you
We will never be accepted / understood etc. We are best to simply consider our own community aside from anything and everything else.
I understand how upset you are, Ed. And you have good reason to be. But I also urge you to listen to what Explorer said and take heed in the example he presents. Despair not, my friend, because despite the multiple haters and trolls pretending to be haters our voices attract, there are many silent folks listening but considering what we have to say on its own merits. They are afraid to come forth at this point in time, but many of them are now discovering their longtime best friends, beloved family members, children, and even spouses are MAPs. Some of them, like Explorer, simply have natural critical thinking skills coupled with a strong passion for civil rights that enable them to think outside the usual box. Every one of them is a potential non-MAP voice coming out for us in the future. And then there are the courageous, open-minded researchers gradually coming out of the woodwork in greater numbers, just like Alyson Walker and Vanessa Panfil that Tom mentioned in his post. We are not destined to be alone as a community in this struggle forever.
Thank you, it’s a tricky line to tread. Let’s see how we go.
Ed Chambers
>On a more positive note, I met the good Dr Frans Gieles a couple of weeks back
Do u have any contact details for him? Maybe I could speak to him myself.
Thanks for you latest blog Tom and I hope you are well.
I am not surprised by the double standards and inconsistencies in moral reasoning when it comes to consensual production of child erotica and violent imagery involving children. As we all know, the world in which we live glorifies hate and violence, and often does the complete opposite with regards to love and sex.
I am interested to learn of your ideas for joint work in some areas with the anti contact part of our demographic. Whilst I would concede that if anyone could encourage the likes of Edwards and Devin to suck it up and dismount from their sanctimonious pale steed, it may well be you, but for now I can’t imagine what suggestions you may have that haven’t already been tried. But for sure, we can always live in hope. If Devin starts slashing away with his ‘I’m sorry, I thought I made myself clear’ detritus, none of us will be surprised.
On a more positive note, I met the good Dr Frans Gieles a couple of weeks back as part of experiencing the JORis concept in Holland. A nice guy, and a good cook, he shared with us his generous hospitality and I experienced first hand his ability to gel groups of people together. I know that the group has been going for a long time, and appears to have a core group of members, but I think it could be developed in such a way to become stronger and spread outside of Holland. We’ll see, but I was heartened by what I saw.
>I met the good Dr Frans Gieles a couple of weeks back…
Ed, it’s great to hear you had a good time with Frans and felt heartened by his approach.
As for Nick and Ethan, I have no plans for working with either of them. Sorry if my comment was misleading. It was more a matter of just noting (in relation to the proposed DSM change) that sometimes even they can do something useful and that we can all be, as I might have said, on the same page, or singing from the same hymn sheet. VP made a very useful response to the DSM move.
For what it’s worth, Tom, I think there are indeed many members of VP that we can reach and work together on this matter with. The problem, of course, is getting past the leadership/administration of the org, who would likely be hostile to us at every turn even on occasions (as regards this matter) that they share a goal with us. As Ethan has made it clear during his most recent go-round with me at GC over the last week (though it was likely obvious to you already), he has a concern that we in the pro-choice camp are an embarrassment to the “virtuous” camp because we potentially turn away supporters from outside the community, or create the impression that all MAPs are pro-choice despite the bigger forum given to VP in the sponsor-controlled mainstream press than any pro-choice voice or ideologically neutral patient support orgs like B4U-ACT that he often boasts about. This is based on his continued belief that ideology, not personal conduct and behavior, are the most important things to win the acceptance of the public. Other VP members, who curiously never seem to make it into the administration, do not feel that way. They are truly interested in not focusing overly much on the ideological barrier and more interested in finding ways of providing support for all MAPs who may need it. This is just such an occasion, I think, that could provide such unity of purpose.
>Other VP members, who curiously never seem to make it into the administration
Yes, I have certainly never heard of any, although sheer distaste deters me from all but the rarest visits to their site so I cannot say I am well versed in their latest developments. It is also curious that they expect to be trusted but nobody really knows anything about them.
ED, is your Twitter account closed down already? Was that self-inflicted or the moderators at work. There only seem to be Vir-peds left, At least they can claim that victory; They get censored less! It is quite depressing to see how many call themselves ‘anti-contact libertarians’.
I’m sceptical about moral absolutes. If you had a 15 or 16 old, say, who could get information needed to prevent a terrorist atrocity and if you could be sure that they understood the dangerous position they would be putting themselves in, then I think their recruitment as a spy might be justified. However, I concede that this would be rare. For one thing, it could (in my view) only apply in cases of terrorism or something similarly serious. It would be quite wrong for busting a drug ring, for example.
On the issue of violent images on social media, I find this a difficult issue, as there are plausible arguments to be made on both sides. But what is clear (and I think already acknowledged by you in your quip about nakedness) is the hypocrisy of the organisations involved. To be prepared to tolerate these kinds of image and yet go ballistic over an image of a child masturbating, say, is absurd and grotesque.
When it comes to children, you don’t need a photographic full nudity to be censored by Facebook:
– A photograph by a reputable artist of a young girl in a two-piece swimsuit holding her doll: “Desiree” from the collection “American Girls” by Ilona Szwarc (also censored by Google+).
– A nude painting of his daughter by a famous American painter: “Narcissa” by William Sergeant Kendall.
For those who do not know these artworks, you can find them on Pigtails in Paint, and their censorship is mentioned in the comments. Many more posts mention art censorship (see the corresponding tag).
Bigots tolerate violence to an infinitely higher degree than nudity.
This is to be expected in a society that is very pro-war and pro-military, yet anti-sex.
Re the hypocrisy exemplified by allowing the ‘distribution’ of violent imagery but the prohibition of images of sexy kids, Richard Mohr sums it up best in his The Pedophilia of Everyday Life. An excerpt:
“Pedophilic images are surprisingly common in society – surprising given that society careers from hysteria to hysteria over the possible sexiness of children. Society seems to need these images. And the images are allowed to the extent that they are buffered, not read in the first instance as sexual representations, and do not develop beyond mere suggestive idea into a pedophilic discourse, a context of meaning for the pedophile. Indeed the social requirement that the pedophile’s existence be shadowy helps realize the social requirement that sexy images of children will not be read as such. Society needs the pedophile: his existence allows everyone else to view sexy children innocently. But his conceptualization by society must not be allowed to be rich enough to be interesting, to constitute a life. Sexy images of children abound, but NAMBLA remains a universal whipping boy.”
Yes, Richard Mohr makes the point very succinctly. Jim Kincaid took about 400 pages to say the same thing, although in fairness he did give lots of theory and examples.
haha yes. and the complete theory is encapsulated in the term ‘scapegoat”.
Oooooh that hurts. Tom. I think your comment does a huge disservice to J R Kincaid who has always gone where no man – at least no man published in ‘respectable houses’ has ever gone before. And that is right into confrontation with the relentlessly sucking maw of culture, kulchur, and its hypocrisy-factory that proceeds from very Hollywood itself.
I do not think Mohr’s analysis, such as it is presented here, is a ‘succinct’ version of Kincaid at all. For does it go any way to explaining exactly why the broad mass of wo/men wish to “view children innocently”? Why is there a social requirement that sexy images of children will not be read as such? Why does society needs the pedophile: why does his “existence” allow everyone else to view sexy children innocently? What does it do, we must ask for the cultivation and perpetuation of their own individual desires and collective resentment ?
Does Mohr come anywhere near the perspicacity of JRK writing during the interminable McMartin trial: “We are both here to take our parts in a process whereby the end and the truth are centered and held in suspension by being textualized in a way so remarkably sophisticated that our interest will never be exhausted”?
Does Mohr have anything to say about why “society” does not have – or apparently no desire even for – a better story to tell about children?
>I think your comment does a huge disservice to J R Kincaid…
Yes, it certainly does. My comment was too casual, and now that you have reacted I can see it might reasonably have been interpreted as a deliberately stinging barb. It was not meant to be. It was just an observation that Mohr had commendably managed to put Kincaid’s thesis in a nutshell, albeit without giving the very broad and in some respects strong foundation underlying the latter’s ideas.
My view of Jim’s work was better expressed in a footnote to my book on Michael Jackson. In Note 490, on p.571, I wrote:
It is a comment which captures the subversiveness of the gesture even as it evades the overtly sexual implications of that subversion.
My Jackson book came out in 2010. In a letter of much earlier vintage (1993) to a friend I wrote:
So, as you see, Turp, I am among Jim’s many admirers although I do not agree with everything he sees.
I am greatly in his debt, as well, as he contributed a glowing pre-publication endorsement of my Jackson book that was used on the back cover of the paperback.
While I am talking about that book I might also just mention that I will soon be bringing it out in an e-book edition at a much more affordable price than the paperback, which was a huge tome that needed a high price just to cover the production costs. Also, I am sure many potential customers must have been deterred by the high cost that had to be charged for packing and postage (especially to distant countries). None of these issues will affect the electronic version of course.
Thankyou so very much for this… a fine and noble response that one has rather come to expect from El Tompo (hehe, you’ll note my dire attempt there to ascribe to you Trumpian qualities of leadership)!
I will ponder in particular your assertion that the problem of “power” cannot be completely eluded in the wildest search for… homo ludens? ..and remains obstinately before us. I shall ponder also the import of “Trouble is, I do not actually agree with Kincaid’s extreme constructivist position. For me paedophilia is essentially to some extent goal and genitally orientated. To claim otherwise would for me be an enormous fib”
For the moment I would note that your use of “orientated” here is somewhat curious, for what, in all of human experience, is not at the most basic level always viscerally sponsored? So how should one understand today the idea of ‘orientated’? Does it suggest that the focus is on genitals as much as it is on the erotic capital emanating from the whole psycho-sexual, cultural entity – those of the child’s OR the Kind’s ?
I would be intrigued if you could direct me to a paragraph or two in Kincaid where he clearly demonstrates what can be called an ECP (extreme constr…)? In the only thing of his I have right here to hand (that review of Victorian Child Lovers called “We Have Met The Paedophiles and They Are Us”), the reviewer writes of KIncaid’s view of ‘paedophilia proper’ as understood largely pathologically, so I think we have to sort out whether, when speaking of “constructivist”, what it is we are saying has been/is being constructed?
Again, Tom, my apologies in advance if you have explored such questions elsewhere and are too time-pressed to address them once more for me here!
Jim Kincaid took about 400 pages to say the same thing,
Damn! Didn’t anyone teach that guy a thing or two about the virtue of brevity? Maybe I can give him a few pointers 😉
LOL! 🙂
Speaking of violence, I refer you to the Daily Mail article in which the word ‘rape’ is used to describe sexual contacts that occurred over a relatively long period between a 13 year old boy and a pair of younger children.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6060101/Schoolboy-13-raped-two-children-aged-just-six-eight-repeatedly-nine-months-jailed.html?ito=email_share_article-top
As usual with any article covering notional CSA, it is full of hyperbole and the wholesale hi-jacking of the meanings of simple English to describe acts that were so ‘violent’ that they were not reported at the time they were committed, in fact, not until years later.
The judge, of course, uses the ghastly, tired old terms about ‘taking away the younger children’s innocence’, but then I suppose that she feels that she has to?
It is almost as though there is only one voice who speaks of these ‘horrific crimes’ and it doesn’t matter how many inconsistencies there are in the ‘story’ that appears in print?
It is as though we — the public — are to stupid to notice?
Yet we are gullible enough to be raised into some kind of moral-rectionary rage by this totally SHODDY article.
M T-W.
I find myself in a difficult situation regarding newspapers and the reading of. Abstinence from consumption of arguably means falling behind on current affairs, however by reading them on is subjected to the kind of sensationalism, hysteria and provocations to moral outrage that you describe. I don’t read them, I can’t see the point. Perhaps if I wanted to be a politician or journalist / correspondent of some sort, I would have to. Fortunately I have neither the intelligence or desire for such a job. I’m quite happy in my ignorance of this house of cards.
I do wonder why people still pay for ‘news / newspapers’. I know this article was online, but still. After all MTW, this is the Daily Mail we’re talking about…arguably on the same level, or beneath if it were possible, the red tops.
You are right, of course, Ed! I suppose that I rage on about such shoddy ‘journalism’ because I can; and I speak in the hope that some marginal people might br prompted actually to THINK about what they are reading, instead of swallowing that garbage whole?
Fat hope, of course, but might it not set the author of that grindingly moral-reactionary piece to thinking what she is writing in the future?
FAT HOPE!
OK, but one must speak out or simply die?
M T-W.
You are right to keep bringing this thing to people’s attention. As you know, the editors crave, and certainly enjoy the policy of publishing, this inaccurate detritus. We see this kind of thing for what it is, guess there are those who never will..can’t argue with you trying to make people see though this MTW, perhaps you’ll wake a few people up here & there 🙂
Thanks, Ed! We live in hope… M T-W.
I was a younger child to a 12-year-old. I think he remained in love with me till he died of old age. I will be following at some point — hope not too quick. ***smile***
MTW
Speaking of violence, I refer you to the Daily Mail article in which the word ‘rape’ is used to describe sexual contacts that occurred over a relatively long period between a 13 year old boy and a pair of younger children.
Whenever i read about this kind of case they never seem to mention if the relationship was consensual or not so i always find it difficult to know weather the alleged victims really are victims or if the alleged perpetrator is the victim.
The 2001 film “Enemy at the Gate” deals with the battle of Stalingrad. In it, a boy of about 10 is recruited as a spy against Germany with fatal consequence for the child character. I do not know how common the use of child spies were at that time or at any other time.
Well, General Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, used boys as look-outs and messengers during the Boer War in South Africa. Using a spy glass is not quite the same thing as spying though, and I think Baden-Powell’s actions were probably far better justified than those of the British government today.
Here’s what I wrote in a blog a couple of years ago:
https://tomocarroll.wordpress.com/tag/baden-powell/
So you might think the very last place to look for inspiration would be an organisation that began not merely with regimentation but with actual military assignments undertaken by boys in the course of the famous Siege of Mafeking in 1899-1900. I mean the scout movement. Robert Baden-Powell, a general in the British Army, had the bright idea of forming the Mafeking Cadet Corps. This was a group of youths who supported the troops by look-out tasks and carrying messages, including under enemy fire, which freed the men for military duties and kept the boys occupied during the long siege. The Cadet Corps performed well, helping in the defence of the town – led by 13-year-old Sergeant-Major Warner Goodyear. This early success gave Baden-Powell the kernel of an idea that he would develop into scouting over the following few years.
But don’t worry about indoctrinating kids with military values. The key thing about Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts, as they were later to become, was a focus on self-reliance and kids patrolling independently of adults in small teams of their peers. It came to be genuinely about scouting skills – scouting out the land as backwoodsmen and explorers must do for survival in the wild. I have referred to it above as a hybrid model, because it combines adult values and background guidance with active children’s culture.
Thank you for that. I’ve been looking for this source for ages!
“according to his biographer Tim Jeal he had a great fondness for seeing naked boys bathing and also delighted in “artistic” nude photography of boys that would get him into trouble these days.”
And let us not forget Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Ivan’s Childhood (1962). An ironic title as Ivan (12 year-old actor Nikolay Burlyaev) had no childhood other than in dream sequences, his innocence lost whilst fighting as a partisan on the front line against the German invasion.
To my mind a haunting film with Nikolay an absolutely beautiful young Russian boy actor.
Yes I saw that Russian film, Nice boy; (there is also a bath scene, like so many old films). Also, As for ‘Enemy at the Gates’, He was a perfect age in that. Looked about 12 to 13 to me. That actor was in the famous UK comedy ‘my family’.
They always showed it on BBC Prime, An expat channel that was closed down about a decade ago. Having a Polish girlfriend, that was one of the UK channels on Polish satellite along with Russian, Italian, and the french Canal+.
They would often show old films on some of the Polish channels, And channels from Eastern Europe: They often had kids films with beautiful girls and boys, many are probable on Youtube.
“Appallingly for the haters, but thrillingly for heretics, primary school kids are now encouraging each other to watch online porn; they are making sexy selfies and also involving their friends in sexually explicit films.”
Excellent news Tom, and doubtless, given time, the encouragement will match that already shown by secondary school kids. I hear from an unimpeachable source that a number of pre-pubescent boys are even interacting in a sexy, mutually beneficial way with the dark side’s Boy Vids 4, submitting hot videos of their naked selves whilst, for example, huskily moaning “I Love You BV4”. The myth that children are asexual and “innocent” is clearly just that: a myth.
Great Post: Thx.
“We need to respond to this. And fortunately, we can. There is a 45-day public comment period which ends on August 29. Here you can submit your own comments. Here you find more information about the proposed change.”
Both links are to the comment page. Can you add a link for the changes themselves?
Oops! Sorry. The original link on Boylinks was the right one. I screwed up through being tidy, incorporating the URL into the text. I’ll fix it. Meanwhile, here is the raw URL:
https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm/proposed-changes
thanks!
This is what I sent under my legal name:
Omitting the phrase will encourage medical solutions which at best will cause great emotional harm and at worst encourage invasive techniques such as drugs or even surgery. The thirties saw frontal lobotomies with horrific results and for conditions that today we no longer consider in the same light. We do not want this history to repeat itself.
A better way is to keep the phrase and encourage therapies that enable individuals to work within a society’s laws. This would be a solution that allows the possibility for change without causing irreparable harm.
Great! This strikes me as a careful, sensible response. There is nothing in it to frighten the horses but it makes the essential point that is needed.
I think we should start by asking them this: If the previous versions of the DSM contained that postulate that pedophilia lasts for life, on what scientific basis did they think so? And what groundbreaking scientific discovery made them suddenly change their minds?
Thanks. The correction has now been made on the page.
Tom
just read the DSM changes and it says that a paedophile has to be 16yrs plus so does that mean that children can no longer be diagnosed as paedophiles?
First of all, to be clear, I think you must be talking about the latest proposed changes (or rather just one change, essentially), not actual changes made in recent years, right?
>does that mean that children can no longer be diagnosed as paedophiles?
Paedophilia has always been considered from a medical point of view as an adult condition only, and to the best of my knowledge it has never been medical practice anywhere to diagnose paedophilia in adolescents or younger children.
Even since the age of Sigmund Freud a century ago the medical profession has been inclined to admit that kids are sexual beings (and doctors long before Freud promoted the use of devices not unlike medieval instruments of torture to prevent children’s masturbation). But they have not seen children as having a fixed sexual orientation. Instead, as Freud put it, they are “polymorphously perverse”, meaning that at least in early childhood they might find almost anyone or anything sexually stimulating.
When and how children’s sexuality becomes firmly set in a particular sexual orientation is still an open research question. Nobody really knows.
You may have been misled where it says:
>the proposal pointed to a statement in the text that it claimed was inaccurate: “pedophilia per se appears to be a lifelong condition.”< [my emphasis]
Nobody had ever suggested that paedophilia is literally a lifelong condition, lasting from birth to death. Lifelong in this context means once you've got it, it lasts for the rest of your life. It is this that the people wanting to make the change disagree with.
They are simply saying that if you are diagnosed with paedophilia at age 20, say, you might change by the time you are 40, or that you might be changed by therapy.
However, there is no good evidence for this, or not for males at least. Our sexual orientation tends to be firmly fixed throughout adulthood.
As for when a child has sexual activity with another child, it might lead to that child being labelled as a sex offender but the medical profession does not call them paedophiles. It is very likely these days, though, that a 13-year-old, say, who is caught sexually touching a 3-year-old, or even a 10-year-old, will be called a paedophile in the red-top press and the more downmarket online media.
Indeed, Tom, I was quite certain of my primary orientation when I was fourteen. It was a huge relief — after a period of uncertainty — and it was terrifying at the same time.
Fortunately, I had been so thrown onto my own mental resources by my life-experiences to that point, that dealing with being a despised and reviled ‘monster’ was relatively easy…
What young people who NOW discover similar elemental feelings within themselves, I cannot imagine!
Youth suicide, perhaps? I mean, who CAN they talk to?
M T-W.
I knew I was attracted to 10-year-old boys when I was aged 10. Anyone wanting to apply a label might have more reasonably called it homosexuality rather than paedophilia because there was no age difference. The boys I liked stayed the same age (10 or thereabouts) as I grew older.
Arguably my sexual orientation did not change at all, as I remained attracted to exactly the same body type; but it did change in the sense that the best-fitting label changed!
A different way of describing the attraction was appropriate later on though because there was a big change over the years in the emotional attraction I felt towards 10-year-olds: it became far more loving rather than just physical.
Sorry Tom, I should have said that at fourteen I was always attracted to boys younger than myself.
And yes, like you, though the prepubescent state of those boys remained the same, my feelings for them became much more tender and emotional as I grew older.
M T-W.
So Tom, When did you discover that you liked girls also. You said you were an English teacher, was that at an all boys school? We can guess that you would’ve been attracted to girls at the same time when you consider similar body type.
Discovered girls very late, at about 25. Was teacher before that – just boys, as you say.
LOL….I asked him that very question once.
I have responded to them. I just hope we amount enough replies to be taken in consideration…
Quick work. Well done!
My dear Tom,
Thanks for this truly excellent article! The simplest, most idiot-proof test of childhood innocence that I can think of is: if children are truly innocent, why are they so rigorously separated in school lavatories, showers, changing-rooms and so on? Surely, unisex changing, showering and the other necessities would be acceptable if our children had no physical interest in each other?
Also, why are older kids separated from younger kids, particularly in boarding schools, but generally throughout the world of unrelated children?
These questions seem to access the bleeding obvious to MAPs, but not to those bone-headed ‘haters’ that you mention.
Another bleedingly obvious thing is the fundamental flaw in police procedures. That is to say: arrests = kudos; convictions = more kudos; lots of convictions = lots of promotion!
In the Australian state in which I have lived for many years, there has been no less than five cases of men accused of murder who were later found to be not guilty. This is not only the best reason that I know for the abolition of the death-penalty, but it shows the extremes that the police will go to in order to get a conviction in the full knowledge that even a life-sentence will follow.
Thanks again, Tom. M T-W.
When I was in boarding school around 1990, they had separate dormitories, but after games everybody used the communal showers; couldn’t stand them, they were mostly lukewarm at best. Remember being fixated on a boys butt in there, I digress!