With the United States tearing itself apart over sexual allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s pick for a vacant place as one of the Supreme Court justices, today’s guest blogger, veteran NAMBLA activist Peter Herman, gives us his take on dramatic Senate Judiciary Committee public hearings in which the stakes are huge. The outcome will potentially tilt the balance on the court in a way that could have massive implications for the future of gender relations and sexual mores in America – and even the wider western world – for a generation or more. Peter watched at length the testimony given by Kavanaugh’s main accuser, psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford, and the embattled judge’s self-defence.
WHEN THE CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST
“What goes around comes around.” Those are words that Brett Kavanaugh used in anger as he lashed out at some of his questioners during Senate confirmation hearings. Though he meant these words in a different context, they have further significance, which I will come to.
As of this writing, no one knows whether the candidate for one of the highest judicial posts in the United States will get a pass. In either case, it will be bad for him. As with Justice Clarence Thomas, who was also accused of sexual misbehaviour, the taint will always remain.
I have strong feelings against Kavanaugh; but as for whether his appointment to the US Supreme Court will be a good thing for the country, I cannot predict. Again, I will come to that.
I watched almost all of Ms Ford’s and Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony, and it would seem that almost any reasonable person witnessing both accounts cannot but see that the judge is either lying outright or lying to himself. Most telling was his refusal on several occasions to agree to an FBI investigation where at one point there were several seconds of silence as he could no longer rely on the canned responses he had been giving to these requests.
Of course, the FBI has done a lot of underhanded things in the past, especially under the tutelage of Edgar Hoover, but with the glare of responsible news media it is unlikely the agency would prevaricate. It is almost impossible to believe that Kavanaugh did not fear the uncovering of very uncomfortable events in his life.
He could not hide his past heavy drinking, but what he could try to hide was the strong likelihood of his belligerent demeanour while drunk and his inability to remember his behaviour while drunk. People who drink know that there are “mean” drunks and “mellow” drunks. Under the influence of brain-altering chemicals, there is no way of choosing the type of behaviour you will succumb to. Such people most often have no or little memory of their actions while drunk. It is a real life Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde situation.
What is most likely is that Kavanaugh did have some memory of what he did but was so horrified of behaviour he would not otherwise do while sober that he could not face the reality. As an adolescent, he had to deal with a strict Catholic environment and parents who had high ideals for him. This may be why as a jurist he has employed a large number of women all of whom report exceptional kindness on his part. It may be that he is like those Calvinists who, faced with a predetermined choice by the God they believe in, lead virtuous lives to prove to themselves that they are indeed the ones whom God has determined to save.
This is why I earlier said I could not predict whether, in my own view, Kavanaugh would be good for the country. Like the composer of Amazing Grace, a sinner can, when facing his own terrible sins, make amends. Kavanaugh, in his testimony, said very partisan things that would show him not to be the impartial and measured jurist needed for the highest court in the land; but that could have been a desperate move to save himself from the precipice of shame. Though no one can predict what kind of Justice he would be, I personally would not take a chance with him.
There is great irony in the predicament that Kavanaugh finds himself in. For decades now, lawmakers at all levels have whipped the flames of hysteria regarding sexual behaviour, and judges have obliged by imposing outrageous sentences. As awful as Kavanaugh’s alleged act against Ms Ford was when both were teenagers, a more understanding culture would have provided a way for the perpetrator to apologise, somehow make amends and not be labelled for life. This did not happen then, and it is surely not happening now. How long will it be until sufficient chickens come home to roost?
There is a further irony, at least for those who love boys and are persecuted for it, in that we may side in this case with the “Me Too” movement. Too many women who have been truly abused have erroneously projected their hurt onto those truly loving and consensual relations between men and boys. The answer to those who are therefore hostile to undifferentiated feminism is that we, male and female, boys and girls, men and women are one species and often subject to irrational conclusions.
I read about early gay liberation in the 1970s last night and earlier and i read about a trans man called Erickson something who i recall being in the banking business and donated to a few other gay rights movements whilst doing this little bit of research i was surprised to find that during these times transgenders where not accepted by the gay community for some reason, I also read about the early history of the AOC and i found that tom is right about the 1st statue of westminster but it wasn’t what i would call a real aoc law especially if all that breaking such law would only result in a mister meaner for ravishing a woman of age.
the aoc laws really started to take radical effect during the 19th centary.
Very true!
Tom do you know anything else about this movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_purity_movement
Yes, quite a lot. But, forgive me, I am not going to write about it now as I have several urgent projects in hand and I am also trying to finish a new blog, which should be out today or tomorrow with luck. So watch this space!
Politically accepted minorities of the contemporary era often forget what it was like during the days when they were truly oppressed groups. Including the fact that they were often against each other for fear that mutual acceptance would hurt their cause. For instance, they like to ignore the fact that the black community was often more hostile to the LGBTQ community than the white community, and that the pre-1970s women’s rights/feminist activists shunned lesbians as harmful to their movement. But shhh, the SJWs don’t want you to acknowledge these things! Especially since they live in a fantasy reality where people of color, women, LGBTQ people, and disabled folks remain as systematically marginalized as contemporary minority groups who are actually oppressed in modern WEIRD societies: MAPs and underagers (albeit in different ways).
This was Reed (born Rita) Erickson, who was wealthy and founded the Erickson Educational Foundation, which helped fund work on trans people, including the work of pioneer psychiatrist Richard Green, who also did great things for gay rights and has also had good things to say about my writing on paedophilia.
To me this doesn’t sound like anything out of the ordinary to me, when i was between the age’s of 8 to 10 i was on the local estate and i wanted to go to a friends house but i was worried about getting beaten up by another boy the same age, and a couple (man and woman) approached me in their car and asked me what was wrong so i told them and they asked me if i wanted to get in their car and i was thinking about saying yes because of the situation i was in at the time and it took me a good few minutes to decide but in the end i ended up saying no now i am not saying that they didn’t have genuine intentions but well we will never know so anyway if anyone would like to comment?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/two-thirds-teenage-girls-sexually-harassed-a8523181.html
If you were merely “worried” how on earth did a couple driving by in their car know that? They could not have been mind readers. They had not seen you getting beaten up because nothing had happened at this point.
Is there something missing from your story? Did this couple know you? Did they have some prior reason to suspect something was wrong?
>If you were merely “worried” how on earth did a couple driving by in their car know that? They could not have been mind readers. They had not seen you getting beaten up because nothing had happened at this point.
Tom i didnt say i got beat up the friend i wanted to go to was just a few streets away and the boy who was picking on was giving me a hard time and i was worried about walking up the street i was stood around on my own wondering how to get to my friends house when the couple in the car asked me what is wrong and did i want a lift to my friends house plus i had never seen them before.
>Tom i didnt say i got beat up the friend
I know you didn’t. I didn’t say you did. Please read my previous post carefully and this time see if you can answer it instead of simply repeating what you said before.
Tom
well maybe they wer curious i was 8 or 10 god knows why a couple in a car wud want to approach a child it sound like u want me to use my imagination to try and read their minds which is something i cant do
>god knows why a couple in a car wud want to approach a child
Well, if you were not showing any signs of distress it does seem rather suspicious for them to stop their car out of the blue and invite you into it for no reason whatever. What seems far more likely to me if that you have missed something out of your story, but I don’t seem to be getting anywhere in trying to prise it out of you.
>What seems far more likely to me if that you have missed something out of your story, but I don’t seem to be getting anywhere in trying to prise it out of you.
Tom
I wanted to go to my friends house (not the bullies house) but the child bully was hanging around the area and i wanted to avoid him and i was stood in the street trying to find a way of getting to my friends house without confronting bully. so i guess the question i have to ask you is what wud u think if a young boy is walking around on his own trying to sneak over to his friends house ie walking round 1 corner realising the bully is nr by so he takes another street to avoid the bully, maybe the couple had the empathy to understand something was wrong with me, like u sed the couple wer not mind readers and neither am i.
OK, let’s try again.
So the couple in the car had not simply been driving past? If that had been the case they would have had no time to understand what was going on or to think about it, right?
So had they perhaps been sitting in a stationary car, maybe getting ready to drive off, when they noticed something unusual (if so, what would have been visible?) in your behaviour. Could that be it?
What I am struggling with, you see, is that if you were simply standing in the street, or even going from one street corner to another, what would be odd about that? Kids do that all the time when playing hide and seek in the neighbourhood for instance. Why would anyone be worried for you if they saw it?
Was the bully in view at this time? Could the people in the car have seen that he was blocking your path?
Tom
the car was in motion and stopped and the couple asked me whats wrong im i ok and when a was talking to the couple no the bully was not in view.
>Was the bully in view at this time? Could the people in the car have seen that he was blocking your path?
>the couple asked me whats wrong
In that case I have to assume you were looking quite obviously distressed in some way. In that case their reaction could have been an admirably kind one.
Tom, I think you’re reverting to your days as a school teacher. -:)
No, in those days I was far more impatient and sarcastic! 🙂
stephen6000
i mentioned earlier that they could very well have had good intentions and also i believe even wen tom was growing up might not be as bad these days but we have heterosexual parents and just other people of the community who are terrified of approaching children even if they really do have good intentions towards the child and unfortunately wont help a child today because they don’t want the public to shout THOU ART A PAEDOPHILE.
>Tom, I think you’re reverting to your days as a school teacher
In response to JB but not directly….Just to add some more complexity into the argument: What if anal penetration was involved between the two brothers. We know that (at least in this culture) being a ‘taker’ has feminine connotations.
But if you know your history, This seems to not have been such an issue (Ancient Greece). The only hole you end up down is a Rabbit Hole!
Okay, unlike most of the other people I could find who are against you, let me instead of just screaming at you about how awful you are, I’ll just tell you my story. When I was younger (9 maybe 10) my brother (12 maybe 13) started playing a game with me, where he would rub his genital on genitals, this didn’t happen often maybe once every week, I never told him to stop because I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO ME! So yes my brother never raped me, it had nothing to do with mixing genetics or anything, but the fact that this happened made me feel awful, it completely broke me when I started to understand what sex was. It was completely psychologically damaging to me.
But since you believe that kids should be able to explore their sexual urges and I never understood what was happening so I didn’t say no, its ok right? HELL FUCKING NO! So maybe children that young shouldn’t be exploring sex because even if they don’t say no they won’t understand.
And on the matter of incest; because of what happened I have some fucking terrible repercussions when it comes to my relationship with my brother and the rest of my family. I didn’t tell anyone what happened, I didn’t understand and I was far too scared when I did realise. But I can’t stand in a room with my brother without freaking out entirely, I can’t talk to my sister, or my dad or my mum because I’m scared they wouldn’t believe me and I don’t wanna make everything worse. I have felt isolated from my family since I was 10 because it absolutely ruined me.
So don’t you dare going around and spilling this shit all over the internet like you have any idea what it’s like, because you don’t, you don’t know what it does to people. And the worst part is that people listen to you and your arguments people who could think that because your argument agrees with their messed fetishes or things that they’ve done that it’s ok and their won’t be a victim. Shit like your blog literally makes me sick. (I’m sorry I know I was going to try and not get angry but god shit like this makes me furious)?
Jamie, your anger is understandable but I believe it is misdirected. Your brother didn’t cut your penis off. He did nothing mean or violent, or even coercive. Only a culture as crazy as our own could turn such intrinsically harmless intimacy into a lasting source of trauma.
Unfortunately, I am under time pressure today. Perhaps another heretic would care to expand on my answer? Jamie’s account certainly deserves a careful and courteous response.
OK, I’ll try. But maybe I can start by asking Jamie a question. You say your brother’s actions ‘broke’ you when you started to understand what sex was. Can you say a bit more about this? How did you learn about sex? What sort of understanding of sex did you get? I ask because I think this may be crucial to understanding the real cause of your distress.
Tom, while I agree that the brother’s actions were not violent, I don’t necessarily agree they were not coercive in nature, as I’m not aware of the exact situation. The lack of a “no” is not the same thing as a “yes.” The fact that Jamie did not fully understand the sexual nature of their brother’s “games” could potentially mean that their brother lied or refused to explain, or there might be other factors Jamie didn’t bring up (for example, their brother insisting that their activity should be kept secret).
I think the questions Stephen raises are interesting, and also important. I read a story by a woman yesterday in which she discussed the way that she was re-traumatized by her (definitely non-consensual and abusive) first sexual experience by the way that other people talked about sex and rape, which made her feel broken and weird. Maybe I lived in a rather progressive household, but not knowing about genital pleasure or sex by age 9 seems rather strange – which might be another reason that Jamie felt used, because their household was sexually repressive in some way. Of course, I don’t actually know whether that’s true or not, so I’m not going to claim with certainty that that’s true.
I’m of the opinion that sexual experimentation and play between youth can obviously be just fine and dandy – sexual experimentation should be fun, freely chosen, and mutual, but that doesn’t always happen. I’m aware that youth can coerce, abuse, and bully other youth, sometimes without meaning to. If that happens, I think the best thing is to have an open discussion and apologies should be made – and as Jamie brought up, that obviously did not happen with them and likely added to any shame or feelings of trauma. They felt trapped in silence, afraid that people would think they’re lying or perhaps even react like some of the people here do – insisting that they actually wanted what happened, even when they say they didn’t.
So, bottom line for me is that I think it’s natural for Jamie to feel like their brother used them, because maybe he did whether he knew or not.
I think another important thing is to change the culture around youth sexuality to one of more openness and less shame. Keeping sex a secret, or making it seem like something dirty, is a great way to oppress youth and lead to more abuse where there doesn’t have to be. Open and clear communication about sexuality, about the body and what you can do with it, and ultimate ownership of the body need to be taught – about being able to say “yes” or “no.”
>The lack of a “no” is not the same thing as a “yes.”
So you’re a not a non-rapist until you can rigorously prove not being a rapist? Is the latter even provable in a system in which logic is denied and “victims believed”? How does the system handle bad actors?
I agree with much that you say, Peace. But once again, you make this unfounded accusation against people here due to what I believe to be your loyalty to sentiment above rationality:
hey felt trapped in silence, afraid that people would think they’re lying or perhaps even react like some of the people here do – insisting that they actually wanted what happened, even when they say they didn’t.
I will again re-iterate an important point I have made before and hope that this time you will listen so that you cease mis-representing the pro-choice camp here on the basis of your belief that those who consider themselves victims must always be believed. Otherwise, I will call you on this every time it needs to be done.
Here is the problem once again, Peace: Your frankly absurd insistence that youths saying “yes” carries the same moral capital in the eyes of the contemporary general public and media as they’re saying “no.” That is utter nonsense that is crystal clear when you look at the cultural and political situation empirically rather than being emotionally focused on one side of the issue over the other. Youths are clearly coerced by the media and the culture into believing that “no” is the only response. The public does not scrutinize it fairly, and they only listen to what younger people have to say if the latter happens to say what they want to hear; that is, make statements friendly to the common narrative. You are more than smart enough to know this, but you feel compelled to ignore this blatant reality in order to favor the words of anyone who claims the mantle of “victim.” It’s part of this obsession with identity that has become an unfortunate and outright regressive part of the Left over the past two decades. It has made “Victim” into an actual social identity that people who adhere to identity-based politics believe should be respected above rational scrutiny and evidence.
Hence, we ask the difficult questions that those of your ideology will not ask, and which the contemporary media certainly will not ask either, because we feel rational analysis and consideration of the overall socio-political climate demands that they be asked. It’s not like we deny that coercion can happen; it certainly does! But you know as well as any of us that the law, the media, and the culture at large conflates coercion with willing experimentation, sometimes even when the latter occurs between underaged peers. Youths are made to felt ashamed and/or mentally “abnormal” if they claim they looked positively upon sexual experimentation with others. On the other hand, they are typically coddled and often become media darlings and leaders of lucrative career positions if they claim the permanent mantle of “victim who can never heal.” The risk of ostracization and negative labeling, coupled with the prospect of acquiring privileged treatment and to become respected leaders of financially beneficial careers, can both be acts of pressure-based coercion or insidious temptation to encourage people to either go along with the narrative (in both cases) or keep their mouths (in the case of sociogenic cultural pressure). This climate of equality of consideration that you frequently make mention of does not exist in reality.
It has nothing to do with always insisting that the younger person “wanted” it. Sometimes, as in this case here, it’s simply and IMO obviously about not trying to make younger people feel shamed about an encounter that may have happened spontaneously and otherwise would have simply been viewed in a neutral fashion rather than traumatic. For the record, I do not think Jamie felt the encounter was positive or wanted, but I also do not believe that s/he would have been traumatized as a matter of course if not for all the negative societal encouragement of family and peers. In a sex positive, youth liberated society I believe that Jamie would most likely have looked back on the experience in a neutral “neither here nor there” type of fashion.
This is why we scrutinize these described situations and try to look past the emotion and venting into what can be reasonably and empirically discerned. As opposed to just going along with whatever we hear at face value, as you would have us do as a result of your loyalty to victim-centric sentiment and identity politics (which has caused “Perpetual Victim” to become an actual social identity). Further, for those who really do get traumatized because they do experience something that is truly awful, we want them to be able to heal, rather than spend the rest of their lives being “damaged” so they can appeal to the emotions and politics of others on the one hand, and for some to attempt to manipulate the emotions of others to get privileged and coddling treatment regardless of their personal behavior on the other hand.
Sorry, this was supposed to be a direct reply to Peace, not to Nada.
I’m not reaaaaally sure I can “mis-represent the pro-choice camp here” when I’m stating my own opinions and not attempting to say that my words represent the whole of those who are pro-choice/pro-reform. I’m fully aware that even those with the same baseline ideology will have different opinions on things, so I’m not going to insist my opinions are the correct ones when that can’t be objectively proven.
I am not obsessed with “victimology” insofar as I believe that the words of someone who calls themselves a victim trumps all; if I was, then I would have to believe the words of those who claim pedophilia is a mental disorder or that fictional erotica involving youth is just as harmful as real sexual abuse. What I’m interested in is figuring out why somebody feels like a victim or a survivor (or felt, in the past, like a victim or survivor) and extrapolating what we can do to make it so such trauma or pain or even just discomfort won’t happen to others. In fact, I make the exact point that “keeping sex a secret, or making it seem like something dirty, is a great way to…lead to more abuse where there doesn’t have to be” – because perhaps in a more sex-pos world, the story Jamie told would have a happy or neutral ending instead of ending with them feeling traumatized. We can’t change the fact that Jamie viewed the encounter as abusive, but we can attempt to change the world so encounters like that can be seen as non-abusive.
I mentioned in my post about a story where the reaction to the revelation of a girl’s abuse led to more trauma than perhaps the original abuse, so I’m not unaware of the societal damage, sometimes greater than the original, which is often inflicted afterwards, as well as the narrative that is pushed upon youth who do not feel like victims or like any damage was done. I agree that we need to change the mindset that any youth involved in a sexual situation, especially with an adult, was not able to truly consent and so they were abused.
(I’m also not sure where you got the idea that I want people to remain “perpetual victims”? Helping people to heal and move past trauma is something I’m in favor of, as well as restorative justice.)
I’m trying to straddle the line between my personal pro-reform beliefs and the realities I’ve seen in which girls and boys are blamed for their abuse when they’re told they “really wanted it” or they were “leading the adult on.” Perhaps, like you claim, I am stuck in the wrong mindset; however, while I appreciate your explanations, I feel that I have to reach my own conclusions based upon my own worldview and values.
Please note that I have to make my responses to your points as terse as possible.
I’m not reaaaaally sure I can “mis-represent the pro-choice camp here” when I’m stating my own opinions and not attempting to say that my words represent the whole of those who are pro-choice/pro-reform. I’m fully aware that even those with the same baseline ideology will have different opinions on things, so I’m not going to insist my opinions are the correct ones when that can’t be objectively proven..
Um, yes you do, Peace, when you say things like, “or perhaps even react like some of the people here do”. That is clearly taking a poke at the pro-choice camp who ask questions and put justified scrutiny on certain cases if they feel the evidence warrants it. Instead of “just believing” at face value in all cases.
I am not obsessed with “victimology” insofar as I believe that the words of someone who calls themselves a victim trumps all; if I was, then I would have to believe the words of those who claim pedophilia is a mental disorder or that fictional erotica involving youth is just as harmful as real sexual abuse.
Yet you adhere to many other aspects of the “SJW” narrative. To the contrary of your above statement, your routine complaints about questioning victims make it clear that, IMO, you are fully immersed in ideology that always supports claimed victims. You give special consideration for MAPs, and argue against those who demonize us, simply because you are a MAP yourself, and this way of thinking does not benefit you individually (even though I believe that what you generally say about it is spot on).
What I’m interested in is figuring out why somebody feels like a victim or a survivor (or felt, in the past, like a victim or survivor) and extrapolating what we can do to make it so such trauma or pain or even just discomfort won’t happen to others.
Questioning the prevailing narrative that imposes such sociogenic trauma is one way to do that. Refusing to ask difficult questions because they seem “insensitive” to someone claiming to be a victim is only bolstering that narrative in a sense, as opposed to finding a resolution to it. Especially considering the numerous examples of revealed liars and fantasists that Tom has discussed on this very blog.
In fact, I make the exact point that “keeping sex a secret, or making it seem like something dirty, is a great way to…lead to more abuse where there doesn’t have to be” – because perhaps in a more sex-pos world, the story Jamie told would have a happy or neutral ending instead of ending with them feeling traumatized. We can’t change the fact that Jamie viewed the encounter as abusive, but we can attempt to change the world so encounters like that can be seen as non-abusive.
We have to acknowledge that people who claim to be victims will sometimes lie, and that society rewards them for doing this as much as it sometimes actually makes it beneficial to them to appear traumatized. Claiming society at large would respect it if they said otherwise is clearly untrue from an empirical standpoint.
(I’m also not sure where you got the idea that I want people to remain “perpetual victims”? Helping people to heal and move past trauma is something I’m in favor of, as well as restorative justice.)
I was making this statement about the general victimology mindset, not you in particular.
I’m trying to straddle the line between my personal pro-reform beliefs and the realities I’ve seen in which girls and boys are blamed for their abuse when they’re told they “really wanted it” or they were “leading the adult on.”
This is my main point: accusing the pro-choice camp here of doing that if they ask important questions if a certain described scenario shows genuine signs of not measuring up at face value.
As I noted before, some things happen spontaneously, and even though someone did not actually want the contact, that doesn’t mean it was necessarily coercive and would likely not be retrospectively traumatic in a sex-positive society where kids actually had good education, free access to scientifically objective information/support, and full agency. Also, like it or not, it is possible for younger people to behave coercively, in a manipulative fashion, and to “lead someone on.” They are human, and therefore subject to everything good and bad about our imperfect species, and many of them are quite smart and able to work the system to their advantage. I think it can even be cogently argued that the current victimology-centric, SJW-influenced political climate actually encourages some of them to behave that way, because contrary to popular belief, in dealings with adults they’re being kids will often give them the advantage rather than the opposite. And in simpler and more benevolent terms, sometimes they do take the initiative themselves. The idea that the adult is “always” to “blame” is a part of the mainstream narrative that you seem to swallow hook, line, and sinker. Always believing the alleged victim is just as bad as blaming the victim, especially if the evidence suggests the claimed victim may not actually be such.
Perhaps, like you claim, I am stuck in the wrong mindset; however, while I appreciate your explanations, I feel that I have to reach my own conclusions based upon my own worldview and values.
And, IMO, I believe the worldview and values of the reactionary left are ill-suited in coming to conclusions that are based on reasoned evaluation rather than sentimentally-derived default defense of those who belong to a specific identity group. That is my main point here.
i would like to ask JB one simple – or paradoxically not so simple – question :
What would/could/might it ever have “meant” AT THAT TIME – for you to have “understood” what was going on?
Can you venture a guess at that?
Is not the very prospect of “understanding” not something that you are only capable of grasping, and indeed even forming a desire to know – in retrospect? To what degree do you reckon that all these disastrous notions you entertain today were any part of your experience AT THE TIME?
At what point did you come to “understand what sex was”? In what way did you believe it to be “understanding”?
Wouldn’t you agree that this new arrival at “understanding” sheds no more than the most grotty kind of shadow on your experience and not any sort of light AT ALL?
I think it so ‘funny’ how crazily willing we are to have out simple experiences exploited to the nth degree, and in any way possible, that they might achieve at any cost a *significance* they might well otherwise not have at all..
What i say is quite possibly not “polite and courteous” enough for some, but I think that if Jamie is game enough to enter upon a room full of very *experienced* people, then he ought to be happy enough to see the ball kicked into play…?
I received the same comment to an old post, except that the author calls himself “Jack” instead of “Jamie black”, and that his brother was 21 or 23 instead of 12 or 13. This comment was automatically marked as spam. Indeed, this is a troll.
Not to make accusations without actual proof, so this is just supposition here, Christian–but do you also get the impression that “J.B.” could be the same individual as Sara Ahmed who lambasted me in another of Tom’s comments section? I’m starting to see a pattern here, and it’s similar to other patterns and individuals I have seen on other Kind forums through the years.
Only the blog owner can compare two anonymous commentators by examining their IP addresses and emails. To me, “Sara Ahmed” was a troll, because her arguments were an absurd caricature of the anti position; I felt that it was one wanting to make fun about the antis. This is different from “Jack” / “Jamie black” who uses the classical CSA trope. BTW, “Jack” indicated a fake email address in his “comment” to my blog.
I thought you were probably right when you made your point earlier, Christian, and I have not changed my mind.
However, trolling or not, Jamie Black’s story was well calibrated as an item for ethical discussion. I have been very pleased with the high quality of the responses made by heretics here.
Hi Jamie,
I had some sex play with other boys when I was the age at which you had your negative experiences with your brother. I knew next to nothing about ‘sex’ per se, I just knew that our play was naughty and forbidden and mysteriously exciting and pleasurable. It also fostered a kind of intimacy and affection that I still recall vividly 50 years later.
My current understanding of human sexuality is that our sex play was normal and more likely to be helpful than harmful.
Unfortunately, our homophobic adult ‘caregiver’ thought differently. He reacted to my involvement in particular, because I was by far the youngest, and not only beat me up but subjected me to years of humiliation and emotional abuse. That experience has taken as heavy a psychological toll on me as the one you describe has on you.
The point is, there are no absolutes here. How we experience any life event is mediated by the attitudes we bring to it and the social context in which it unfolds. This can be especially true of sexual experiences. Along with punitive and disgusted moral outrage, our heritage of sexual ignorance, secrecy and shame does nothing to raise the chances of ourearly sexual experiences being positive ones.
The potential for exploitation and coercion alway exists, but the best protection against that is knowledge and openess. I’m sorry for the injury you suffered, but I utterly reject your characterization of it as a consequence of sexual liberty. You were not freely exploring sex with your brother, you were paying the price for his frustrated curiosity. In turn, that frustration was generated in a culture that polices and denigrates child sexuality and controls children’s access to sexual knowledge.
I loved sex play when I was a child, especially with girls but also with other boys. It never hurt me or anyone else. What did hurt me was the wider atmosphere of intolerance, ignorance and shame that hung like a pall over any hint of acceptance or celebration of the body and its pleasures.
As a person who spent my childhood years in culture that were quite sex-positive – 1990s Russia – I find it hard to imagine how one can have entirely no idea about sex and sexuality being 10 years of age. Russian kids of comparable age of that era had an easy access to the loads of sexual imagery and narratives, and very early mutual sexual experimentation was a common occurrence. I personally know cases of heterosexual sex-plays between 8-10-year old children – these children were my classmates in school – which were the source of great fun and excitement for all their young participants, boys and girls alike.
And, when adults learned that such sex-play is taking place, they were calm and tolerant. Nobody was punished or intimidated. Everybody thought it is entirely natural that kids are sexually curious and thus participate in such plays.
And no one suffered any negative consequences – not by themselves nor in society’s hands.
Jamie
I understand what you mean about confusion and one of the problems re child sexuality is the lack of education on how relationships work, and i believe this is something that parents,gardiens, teachers ect need to educate children on in a much more direct way rather that hiding behind the birds and the bees, children need a better understand of how and when it is appropriate to enjoy safe and equal relationships in order to grow up healthy.
Jamie Black
I understand what you mean about confusion and one of the problems re child sexuality is the lack of education on how relationships work, and i believe this is something that parents,gardiens, teachers ect need to educate children on in a much more direct way rather that hiding behind the birds and the bees, children need a better understand of how and when it is appropriate to enjoy safe and equal relationships in order to grow up healthy.
REPLY
I think Sean said it best, Jamie. Taking your experience as a legitimate account, I do not think sexual liberty for exploration was what caused your trauma. I am also not saying that you actually “wanted” it (the type of misunderstanding we often get from others in the community). I think it was an event that sometimes spontaneously occurs between many younger people when close physical horseplay ensues privately, and your trauma resulted from being shamed into feeling that way about it at a later point. I also think, in contrast to the blame you put on sexual freedom, much of the blame lies on the fact that the majority of kids are deliberately kept ignorant about sexual matters and conduct, are not taught to take agency for themselves, and then later come to “understand” it through an extremely biased cultural lens. Imposed ignorance is not freedom and only results in the failure of understanding that you lament here.
If you were accurately informed about this at an early point in your academic education, and taught how you can stand up for yourself in regards to what you genuinely do or do not want, you would have been likely to look back on this in a neutral fashion and simply integrated it into the overall tapestry of life experiences. Much like you did with many other events in your life that were neither actively sought out by you but need not have been emotionally damaging either.
putting this at top for fear of being turned to a string-of-beads below again..
“So contorted it seems you are in danger of disappearing up your own exhaust pipe.”
GAD! Okay, so let me see… what I’ll have to do next I reckon is sample part of an analysis made by one much more capable than me, in an anthropoetics post from Jan 2011 (following shooting in Arizona) called “Obama & Palin: Opposing Anthropologies”:
There are opposing anthropologies here. For Obama, speech and violence lie in a continuum, and only carefully composed and tightly monitored speech can be removed from a vicious circle of speech in which marking others in virtually any way intiates the descent into scapegoating itself. “Civility” is the name of the process by which elites do the monitoring. For Palin, speech, vigorous, unregulated, “passionate” speech, unafraid of being “mocked” by the guardians of “civility,” is the antidote to violence. Indeed, it may be that the more the speech draws upon metaphors from violence, the more it models the transcendence of violence: “As I said while campaigning for others last March in Arizona during a very heated primary race, ‘We know violence isn’t the answer. When we ‘take up our arms’, we’re talking about our vote’.”
Shall i link you to (gasp) the whole thing?
“The pro-rapist, thus, gives the whole spectrum of dissenting opinion a chance to shine. ”
– Holocaust21
Irony can be extremely effective in terms of making a strong socio-political point. But sometimes when you are dealing with extremely sensitive/emotionally volatile issues, particularly if you are from a group that is severely hated and misunderstood at this point in the historical record, doing so in this manner is extremely counter-productive and even foolish. Calling yourself “pro-rape” or “pro-abuse” etc. in the current political climate for the purpose of irony is just asking for trouble. Much as people need to pick their fights, people likewise have to pick their method of rabble rousing wisely.
Forgive me if these be but half-formed thoughts, Dissy (do I ever have anything else?) but IS the purpose in understanding the nature of all this rape talk best described as an aim at *irony*? Half the time i have very little idea of what on earth people could ever be intending to mean by ‘irony’, and sense that the term is used mostly as little more than an attempt at cauterization of dialogue, to stop it (get ready) *bleeding* in directions we don’t really want it to….or going back & forth with no resolution.. to prevent infection (with tangential and lesser ideas) and at the same time put a brand on it, a stamp of easily recognizable ownership. IRONY. Only in NY, y’all. Oh no, that’s in NOLA. No f**kin’ way, d00d (etcetera)
The person who composed his words on the deceased DailyAntiFeministBlog was not pissing in the ironic wind. And he was far more than ‘another guy on the lost highway’… Methinks he recognized that signs are all we have to truly play with at any time, and if the sign of ‘rape’ is what situates itself at, or designates above all the ‘stake’ between men and women in our times, then who can even guess at the real parameters of the game we are now expected (at any point) to play?
The deferral of conflict, of even violence itself, surely must prove to be more than a matter of obscure ‘irony’. How many people who regularly participate in the online vilification and excoriation of ‘paedos’ have ever actually met one, or even have any idea whatsoever how one might tick in the flesh?
Almost none of them, right? They simply truck/trade in signs, and the sign that says ‘paedophile’ points directly to the free-range pissing-pot of the world (thankyou takeariskNZ). So why not take them at their word-signsworth and lead them to the pissing-pot by their very hand that points?
and show them who DRINKS THERE?
As I say, I have zero idea of how the PPF (pro paedo frontage) goes about things on social media. Perhaps this is the (inevitably idiosyncratic) path i’m trying to clear to a better understanding of that!
Thanks to everybody who answered my query about Scott Lilienfeld! It’s not all news to me but the whole thread is very interesting and introduces some very interesting stuff I wasn’t aware of.
Thanks all!
New madness of these criminals against humanity (comments by Eivind Berge):
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45829820
“British police sends antisex hate-propaganda to law-abiding citizens. Also I think they are lying about the grooming age which was 16 rather than 18 last I checked (the law which criminalizes merely talking about sex).”
“It’d be funny if the grooming age were really 18 while the AoC is 16. That would mean you can have sex with 16-17yr-olds but not communicate with them about it, which effectively would be an underhanded way to raise the AoC to 18. Child porn law is a less extreme version of this.”
“In order to be politically correct about sex crimes you have to accept such a staggering amount of self-hatred and inhumanity and delusions and contradictions that OMG I thank God I am not like them!”
Fascist Britain
>AOC 16yr to 17yr
All these legislation’s do is make parent’s feel all warm and toastie inside in my book its like the placebo effect.
Tom
I would like to request that this song be put on heretic please ive been listening to it lately and i think it strongly relates to us im sure i dont need to explain why.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08QH3rVqokw
Brilliant!
I love this song
A few thoughts here.
For one thing, I agree that Kavanagh was a very bad choice for the Supreme Court due to his atrocious ultra-conservative political record. I think the main point for us is whether or not he should be denied a lifelong seat on the Supreme Court over the nature of specific allegations rather than his aforementioned record, an in-depth discussion of which would be largely off-topic on this blog (though important in its own right!). The fact remains, if you are correct in your assessment that he seems to be a chronic liar (and I’m not saying you aren’t) then the presentation of evidence to back those allegations up should be held as more important than the nature of the allegations (if unprovable), our personal opinion of the man overall, and any type of sentiment we may hold for any given group of people. Otherwise, you are certainly correct in one sense: we’re damned if he gets affirmed (which he has, btw) for one set of reasons, and damned if he doesn’t due to unprovable allegations for an entirely different set of reasons.
Basically, I agree with anyone who says Kavanagh was a bad choice for the seat due to his record; but I will disagree with anyone who says the most important thing is that we keep him off the seat at any cost with all principles be damned.
There is a further irony, at least for those who love boys and are persecuted for it, in that we may side in this case with the “Me Too” movement. Too many women who have been truly abused have erroneously projected their hurt onto those truly loving and consensual relations between men and boys.
They aren’t much kinder to Kind folks on the girl-loving side of the attraction pole, and arguably less so since it’s commonly and even arrogantly believed that girls (and females in general) are inherently more vulnerable than males. That is in many ways the very crux of the #MeToo movement and “third and fourth wave feminism.”
The answer to those who are therefore hostile to undifferentiated feminism is that we, male and female, boys and girls, men and women are one species and often subject to irrational conclusions.
It’s very possible to sympathize with people for their natural human foibles while still being justifiably harsh on their ideology and the policies & attitudes which stem from it. We can all understand and empathize with the factors that may break a person and set them on the path to behavior that is self-destructive and extremely injurious to many others & society as a whole, but it doesn’t change the fact that these people need to be stopped, and that the factors underpinning these tendencies need to be identified and opposed even more so. Not at all costs, of course, but most certainly with all due vigor.
BJ Muirhead is back to active blogging:
https://bjmuirhead.wordpress.com/2018/10/08/cantor-blanchard/
https://bjmuirhead.wordpress.com/2018/10/11/self-efficacy-and-self-understanding/
And ProPedoFront, too:
https://propedofront.wordpress.com/2018/10/11/guia-introductoria-a-los-maps-personas-atraidas-a-menores/
During the media circus with Kavanaugh, congress quietly passed a bill greatly increasing surveillance powers under the PATRIOT act, with emphasis on cracking down on sex. Kavanaugh is exactly the sort of judge who would uphold such legislation, perhaps as a way to “virtue signal” or look like he’s making amends for his past misbehavior. It was likely done on purpose, creating a spectacle to distract everyone from what congress was up to.
One presumes you’re referring to ‘HR6729’ here? Another gesture in the monumentally vague direction of “human trafficking”? By way of Treasury increasing the ability of financial institutions to share info and hopefully prevent ‘money laundering’ into the bargain? The language in which it’s cast is of course similar but I do not see any intrinsic connection to the Patriot Act? Could you perhaps explain further?
Interesting article on myownworstenemy
“World renowned psychological skeptic and evidence-based treatment advocate Scott Lilienfeld joins us to explore the topic of pseudoscience and misleading claims in the field of mental health”
Oh the irony!
can you explain? who is Scott Lilienfeld?
Sean, you wrote:
>can you explain? who is Scott Lilienfeld?
Well, as Debauch said, in the post to which you replied, he is a “World renowned psychological skeptic and evidence-based treatment advocate”
Finding out more is not that hard. Just googling the name brings up this as the first item on the first page:
>Scott O. Lilienfeld is a professor of psychology at Emory University and advocate for evidence-based treatments and methods within the field. He is known for his books 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology, Brainwashed, and others that explore and sometimes debunk psychological claims that appear in the popular press.
This is from a quite informative article in Wikipedia, but it does not mention the main reason the prof. is of interest to heretics here. Back in the day, Lilienfeld gave significant support to Bruce Rind and his team, who famously got into hot water for putting out a major study demonstrating that “child sexual abuse” is not significantly (in the ordinary English language use of the term) associated with psychological trauma. As you know, Sean, Rind et al.’s 1998 meta-analysis also gave strong grounds for supposing that if it had been possible to separate out the data dealing only with encounters in which the child had been a willing participant, there would have been zero association with trauma.
This was Lilienfeld’s supportive article.
http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-10795-003
Lilienfeld, S. O. (2002). When worlds collide: Social science, politics, and the Rind et al. (1998) child sexual abuse meta-analysis. American Psychologist, 57(3), 176-188.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.3.176
Abstract
A 1998 meta-analysis by B. Rind, et al (see record 1998-04232-002) in Psychological Bulletin indicated that the relations between child sexual abuse and later psychopathology were weak in magnitude. Shortly thereafter, the article was condemned by media personality Dr. Laura Schlessinger and numerous conservative organizations and was denounced by the US Congress. In addition, the American Psychological Association (APA) distanced itself from the authors’ conclusions. This incident raises questions regarding (a) authors’ responsibilities concerning the reporting of politically controversial findings, (b) academic and scientific freedom, (c) the role of the APA in disabusing the public and media of logical errors and fallacies, and (d) the substantial gap between popular and academic psychology and the responsibility of the APA to narrow that gap. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Malcolm Gladwell, famous as the author of The Tipping Point and other best-selling books on sociological and psychological themes, mentioned Lilienfeld’s article in The New Yorker, saying “In a recent history of the Rind controversy, the psychologist Scott Lilienfeld pointed out that when we find out that something we thought was very dangerous actually isn’t that dangerous after all we usually regard what we’ve learned as good news.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/11/08/getting-over-it
“Getting Over It”, Malcolm Gladwell. The New Yorker, 8 Nov 2004
Lol, yeah, but why irony?
Easy answer to this one too, but you’d need to know the myownworstenemy background.
Debauch, are you there? Care to explain?
Hi I am here. You pretty much answered both questions.
I was referring to Danny and his blog ‘Myownworstenemy’, And the fact that he himself is a psychologist who did a long video interview with Tom where various studies like Rind were put forward exposing the weak assertions from the child abuse industry. After interviewing tom he interviews someone from StopSO who generate funds through these very assertions. And now he interviews someone who examines ” pseudoscience and misleading claims in the field of mental health”…..Don’t you see the irony?
“As you know, Sean, Rind et al.’s 1998 meta-analysis also gave strong grounds for supposing that if it had been possible to separate out the data dealing only with encounters in which the child had been a willing participant, there would have been zero association with trauma.”
I think this is highly unlikely, as it ignores sociogenic effects. Consider in contrast Susan Clancy’s findings in The Trauma Myth. What Clancy found was that children involved in these encounters are often willing participants, but later in life felt guilty and ashamed about what they had been involved in. Admittedly, you did say ‘gave strong grounds for supposing’ rather than ‘proved’ but even that is debatable. I think you know all about sociogenic harm, Tom, but overlooked it on this occasion.
Thanks, Stephen2000, for an excellent point.
You are right but I am pretty sure I am right too. I had not forgotten sociogenic harm but I did not give an explanation for how we can both be right when we appear to be saying incompatible things.
What squares the circle is the time-shift involved. The research by Rind, Tromovitch and Bauserman (RTB) was published in 1998, based on surveys of adults looking back on childhoods that had occurred long before, in some cases going back to the 1940s and perhaps more typically to the 1960s.
The culture was very different then, even in the sexually conservative United States. In those days it was possible to have a sexual experience with an adult (whether a good one or even not so good) and grow up, and then spend decades as an adult without being constantly told in the media that such experiences are inevitably damaging. This message, dinned into people often enough, actually causes psychological harm by convincing people they must have been damaged. Hence the sociogenic harm you mention.
As I say, it was different then. The beginnings of heightened concern among “experts” over the supposedly lasting effects of “child sexual abuse” (CSA) go back to the late 1970s, and there was a media panic at that time over child pornography; but it was not until considerably later that the supposedly inevitable trauma caused by CSA became the insistent everyday media assertion we know today. Estimates will vary, but in my recollection the all-out cultural war against CSA, with its inevitably pervasive sociogenic harm, did not really get into gear until the late 1990s.
This was precisely when the RTB research was published, in 1998. Surely, it might be supposed, this sociogenic harm should have been reflected in their findings? After all, they were taking data from surveys of college students reporting on their own childhood sexual experiences with adults, which would generally have occurred not that many years before.
But remember that the RTB study was a metaanalysis. RTB were aggregating data from 59 earlier studies of college students, some of which were quite old. The students would typically have been at college in decades before the 1990s and in a number of cases long before. One of the larger studies, by Landis, was published in 1956, with the data collection inevitably done somewhat earlier. Some of the experiences being reported must have happened about 80 years ago from where we are today. Pretty well all the students would have experienced at least a couple of decades of adult life free from the all-pervasive sources of sociogenic harm we see these days.
This in my view, is why TRB found so little evidence of trauma years after the event. I would stake my reputation (OK, not much to lose!) that a metaanalysis done on a similar basis now, reporting the experiences of the millennial and post-millennial generations, would pick up quite a lot of trauma, nearly all of it sociogenic, with just a small proportion as victims of intrinsically traumatic events, such as violent rape or a very coercive prolonged relationship. There have always been some crimes of this sort – not that many but enough to account for the small amount of trauma picked up in the RTB data.
I might just mention that anyone can read the RTB metaanalysis here:
https://www.ipce.info/library_2/rbt/examination.htm
Coming specifically to consensual encounters, the point I made – that such encounters would have zero overall association with trauma – was first made not by me but by RTB themselves, in their paper. They could not assert the point strongly, though, because in most cases the original 59 studies had not asked about consent. It was simply assumed that the children had been assaulted, or passively gone along with an adult’s wishes. RTB drew their inference from the one or two studies that had asked about willing participation, but they did not make much of it.
At a later stage, though, after publication of the metaanalysis, they went further, in at least one or two public discussions of their work. In a presentation at Rotterdam, I think it was, and perhaps another at the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality in the US, they mentioned a study by Coxell et al., in the British Medical Journal, which had asked about consent. The Coxell et al. study also included data relating to events a long time ago.
I wrote about this in my Michael Jackson book in 2010, so I can just quote it and leave it at that.
Here goes:
The Rind study did not examine the significance of consent, whether “informed consent” or otherwise, in its impact on long-term outcomes. A subsequent study by Coxell and his colleagues fills this gap, at least with regard to consenting boys. The Coxell team examined a non-clinical sample of nearly 2,500 men in Great Britain, recruited from general medical practices. They inquired about sexual activity prior to age sixteen with someone at least five years older in which they had willingly taken part, finding that 7.7% had had what the researchers termed consensual sex prior to age sixteen with persons significantly older; 5.3% of the men reported having had non-consensual sex. The men were asked whether they had reported a psychological problem of at least two weeks’ duration sometime in their life. The consenting group reported no more problems than the control group but the non-consenting group had significantly more problems than either of these groups.
This raises an interesting challenge to those who say children can never give valid consent to sexual activity. If children cannot give valid consent, how come it is only the ones who do not want the sex in their encounters with adults who end up having psychological problems? Why does consent discriminate so well between good and bad outcomes if it is not valid?
Unfortunately, we cannot assume that a study like Coxell’s undertaken in, say, the year 2020, would produce similar results. Anxiety over adult-child sexual contact has reached such a pitch in recent decades that children presently in such relationships, no matter how consenting they are, may later become screwed up unnecessarily over them just because of the extreme extent to which they have become ever more taboo. In other words, for society to insist ever more vehemently that children are harmed in such contacts may be a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Yes, that’s very plausible. In a way, it’s a bit odd that the older studies didn’t find more evidence of sociogenic harm. After all, the media isn’t the only source of it. As the child grows up, even the odd suggestion, perhaps gleaned from the casual remarks of others, that what they have been through is ‘not quite normal’, could, one would have thought, through its cumulative effect and by being dwelt on over a long period, build up to considerable distress. Also, the modern media ideology includes, as part of its message, the idea that ‘it wasn’t your fault’, which could help to reduce shame and guilt, though I suspect that some ‘victims’, especially if they were particularly pro-active in the sex, may simply not believe it, creating the potential for an even more devastating effect, as they come to think that the only excuse they could possibly have had is one that they cannot honestly apply to their own case.
>it’s a bit odd that the older studies didn’t find more evidence of sociogenic harm
Yes, I agree. One of the criticisms of RTB’s work is that their measurement of psychological harm/trauma was not sufficiently sensitive. I don’t think this is a valid criticism because they used standard tests, or rather those who conducted the 59 original studies would have used standard measures.
But if instead of testing for trauma they had tested for unease, or something similar, they might have picked up some signals.
Another important thing to consider is this, Stephen. While sociogenic harm is a serious matter, the fact remains that not all children or early teens who have consensual sexual contact with an adult, even in this day and age, invariably become traumatized as a result of the media etc., telling them that this is what “normally” or inevitably happens. Everyone reacts differently to such media-focused societal pressure. This is why trauma as a result of various forms of phenomena occurs to some people and not others, and it can happen in varying degrees to those who do experience it. As an example, I have been with younger women of legal age in the past, some of whom were mesophiles and some who were not, who had consensual sexual contact with adults as a child or young teen in recent decades and did not experience trauma as a result of sociogenic factors. I have no doubt many do (again, to varying degrees), but many are clearly resistant to these factors.
Also consider that some who report trauma due to sociogenic pressure may do so as a result of reasons that are not entirely psychological: there could be a number of financial and social motivations, including the simple seeking of attention or a lawyer informing them that they can make a killing this way. As a result, a person’s mental health status unrelated to anything that resulted from the sexual contact (note all the fantasists that Tom has discussed here before) and the simple degree of scruples they may possess ethically as a person can all come into play as precipitating factors.
All true, Dissident.
the intensity of kavanaugh’s anger in the face of his accusers suggests either he has no case to answer or that amazing grace has not penetrated his hide.
whichever way, he’s on the bench now so the US and possibly the world will be denied compassionate, evidence based and just law for the next half century.
One clear consequence: the American gulag system known as civil commitment will not face a successful challenge in the Supreme Court for at least a generation. But this would have been the consequence no matter who Trump had nominated, because he would never have chosen anyone “soft on sex offenders” – despite being a pussy grabber himself.
Is there any evidence to suggest Kavanaugh is not soft on sex offenders? It’s not at all clear to me what his position on sex offending would be. One might hope that, having been accused himself, he will begin to understand the pro-rape position. Though I realise that if he is an anti-sex offender nutcase then it is unlikely his position will shift despite this (his narcissistic view possibly being that HE was falsely accused but other men are all guilty) but I haven’t seen any particular evidence to indicate his actual position on any of this.
>Is there any evidence to suggest Kavanaugh is not soft on sex offenders?
Good point. I had a look at his career background a few days ago. He has never been a judge in the criminal courts so he has never been directly in the business of giving sex offenders harsh sentences.
However, he was nominated in the expectation that his Supreme Court decisions would reflect conservative thinking, which in the U.S. has traditionally favoured a tough line on crime generally.
>…the pro-rape position
Frankly, I don’t understand “the pro-rape position” and neither does anyone else other than misogynist extremists, including, well, rapists.
> Frankly, I don’t understand “the pro-rape position”
The pro-rape position is a state of mind that absolutely rejects the narrative. Being pro-rape is a sign of strength, someone who doesn’t fear being reviled and hated by feminists, their allies or the whole of society. The pro-rapist cannot be accused of being manipulative because he does not seek to put a positive spin on his views! The pro-rapist gives rationality its speech because the pro-rapist has the most politically incorrect speech, making himself a target and others less so. The pro-rapist, thus, gives the whole spectrum of dissenting opinion a chance to shine. A new enlightenment, if you will. A chance for anyone, to say anything, that they truly believe, because they know that what they say cannot be considered worse than what the pro-rapist has said!
Is the pro-rape position trolling then? Yes and no. Yes, because the pro-rapist seeks for people to hate him for hates sake. No, because there is truth to what the pro-rapist says. He truly believes that when he has sex with a 15 year old girl without her consent (because she lacks the capacity to consent blah blah blah) then that is fine! And if he grabs a womans tits and honks them, without her consent, then that is also fine, because it is a childish prank, an act of Just Williamesque annoyance, not a heinous crime. But he realises that the feminist is either incapable or unwilling to distinguish between different actions and the feminist simply labels everything that annoys her as rape. And so, the pro-rapist, proudly wears that label. He is male. He has a penis. And worst of all, he has sexual feelings. Clearly, he is a rapist!
OK, I get your point and I pretty much got it already. It’s all tactical.
For it really to be a pro-rape position, though, you would have to favour truly violent and even sadistic rape. Many people, understandably, will take your stance at face value in this way. I worry about this. It strikes me as irresponsible and dangerous to the extent that it all but incites horrible acts of real rape that aim to express hostility to females.
It also may further incite misandrist “feminists” to try and pigeon-hole all men as behaving that way. Political satire is fine, but it needs to be done with caution and sensitivity towards more volatile issues. This is similar to the new but growing sub-group of pro-choicers on GC who are ironically referring to intergenerational sexual contact as “abuse” or “sexual abuse” as a way of “sticking it to” the antis. I have virulently opposed this new tendency, because it can very easily be used against us by not only antis, but also fence-sitters who are given the wrong idea.
dear sir, do forgive me if I seem the boweevil’s advocate or something, but doesn’t Holocaust21 make a very, very important point, one that we may not have pre-digested at all? ? That the so-called ‘pro-rapist’ is a sort of lightning-rod which DEFLECTS the otherwise maniacal strains of active prejudice onto som ething that apparently does not give a damn? Who can deny that such a man could perform a positively wonderful social function? Hopefully of course it would go beyond mere ‘function’, and even show people the way to transcend ferocious mimetic rivalry! Truthfully I am surprised Tom that you believe Mr Pro-Rapist will INCITE acts of awfulness. Doesn’t such a conviction run directly against all we have hopefully learned of late about language’s pre-eminent power to *defer* violence?
Too sophisticated for me, I’m afraid! So contorted it seems you are in danger of disappearing up your own exhaust pipe.
>>…the pro-rape position
>Frankly, I don’t understand “the pro-rape position” and neither does anyone else other than >misogynist extremists, including, well, rapists.
Does understanding a position entail supporting it? Do you support the position that sex is rape, in particular the existence of an age of consent?
Does understanding a position entail supporting it? Perhaps not, although that is philosophically not a simple question. Do I support the position that sex is rape? No. Why would I? How would you define rape?
>Do I support the position that sex is rape? No.
Is the probability of rape greater or equal to 50%? If not, the pro-rape position is a better approximation of the truth than the other extreme, which is supported by law.
Given the legal definition stands, how I would define rape is immaterial, lest I am accused of inciting others to rape by legal criticism.
It’s over with this guy, Tom.
Holocaust21 stop talking about bang a 15-year-old willing girl and ass touching!
This evil man support real rape, which is what he is, a evil man, form him rape it’s just “a private matter” or “just take money from the public treasury”, something that doesn’t matter to investigate. Their friend Tom Grauer supports the systematic rape of 7-year-old girls who are not forced into marriage. Their friend Nathan Larson says that children are private property and that they can be brutally raped, he said in a live video, apart from the fact that he admires Josef Fritzl and his greatest desire is to rape his own daughter, put her in a bunker and rape and impregnate her.
For people like holocaust21 people believe that pedophiles are subhumans who enjoy raping and destroying children, how are they going to think otherwise with “pedophilia advocates” like him?
If pedophiles were worthwhile people, they would join together to throw away their blogs and send all of them to the toilet of internet history (and pull the chain, because it smells).
Get out of here the degenerates who support, cover up, minimize or deny rape, child abuse and slavery!
Holocaust and co you are all monsters and you will always be monsters. You will deceive others but not me.
What the hell? ProPedoFront’s / Donald Zuccerino’s Twitter account is suspended as well as Ed Chamber’s one:
https://twitter.com/account/suspended
Is it another Twitter purge, like the one that previously targeted several prominent VirPed accounts? Only now it is pro-contact accounts that are suspended…
ProPedoFront is going to come back to Twitter with another account, some time later (see comment section):
https://propedofront.wordpress.com/2017/09/08/moved-from-domain/
or this …
https://archive.org/details/Alicelovers-Magazine-Issue3-Feb-2015
Visions of Alice forum has moved AliceLovers magazine to another archive, so the issues are, happily, not lost:
https://alicelovers.net/ezine.htm
The archive where AliceLovers are now is Russian, BTW, and Russia is harshly censorious in its Internet segment. So, to lower the risk of losing the magazine irreversibly, it would be better for someone who can to save them in some other archive as well (as well as the older True Innocence magazine).
Is anyone able to do this?
cheers!
When I wrote about Kavanaugh, I understood that this was an issue of much greater concern to Americans than to the British and other non-Americans reading this blog. I had not intended it to be a discussion on the excesses of alcohol consumption but one of warning about narrow upbringing of young people. (Explorer apparently did touch on this issue.)
The point of having brought up an American concern is that the US wields a disproportionate influence on the rest of the world. This may wane as Trump’s policies make the US look more ridiculous. But for now, and in the past, and in what specifically concerns us, the US has exerted its leverage in coercing other countries to its Puritanical views on sexuality. For many US citizens, the effects are much more Draconian than in European countries. This should not make non-US residents feel complacent as “what goes around” indeed “comes around.” Britain, you may not yet have seen the end of increased incarcerations and its cousin, civil commitment. Be afraid… very afraid!
The purpose of my having written on the Kavanaugh hearings was not alcohol consumption but the ironic turn of events he faced. His having been raised in a very judgmental culture with quite probably very judgmental parents did not leave much room for compassion and understanding in dealing with human frailties and, possibly in Kavanaugh’s case, unbridled lust.
Great comments are often made here at Heretic TOC, but I share your frustration, Peter, when my best points — or what I think are the ones needing some discussion — are ignored in favour of chasing a different hare entirely. It happens all the time.
I just console myself with the thought that it is great to have readers who are interested enough to give feedback: lots of blogs don’t get any, including some quite well written ones. Also, if readers “get it” — i.e. if they understand the main point you are trying to make — they may feel little need to discuss it.
Our current talk about the individual experiences of alcohol consumption has reminded me about the topic that always presented some considerable moral challenges and intellectual difficulties to me – the one about children and psychoactive drugs. I think, it would be useful to highlight a specific example that is known to me.
During the era of the de-facto anarcho-capitalism in the 1990s Russia, children has enjoyed a very remarkable level of freedom, due to relaxed and permissive attitudes of their parents, who preferred to act as friendly mentors rather than anxious and fearful – and thus oppressive – controllers. Such attitudes were present in the area of alcohol consumption as well: many parents thought that the best way to avert the danger of alcoholism from their children is not a demand of total abstinence before adulthood, which will only provide kids with a temptation of drinking, both to explore something totally unknown and to prove themselves “grown up” enough in their own eyes. Instead, they preferred the “teaching of the drinking culture”. Such teaching often started in the age of 10 – 11 years. On big holidays, children were allowed by parents to drink small amounts of high-quality alcohol, usually wine; and their parents told them how to enjoy the taste and smell, to perform some drinking-related party acts, to combine the drinking with the other aspects of the feast, etc. The pinnacle of such informal “learning course” – a kind of the final exam, so to say – were the school-leaving parties, where parents were present as observers yet allowed the 17-year-olds entering adulthood the freedom to enjoy themselves the way they wanted, with alcohol and everything else.
Yet nowadays everything has changed. After the extreme child protectionism – and the recurrent moral panics produced by it – came to Russia in the 2000s, the government became aggressive and punitive towards the parents who allowed their kids to drink even a microscopic amount and even on a holiday: for the puritanically-minded bureaucratic “child protectors”, only the absolute abstinence before the 18th (or, ideally, 21st) birthday would suffice. The special repressiveness was reserved for the school-leaving parties: it was publicly announced that it is horrible, terrible, evil and totally unacceptable if the parents allow their innocent endangered 17-year-old children to drink some wine during this modern version of the adulthood initiation. As far as I know, there were even inspections of cafes and restaurants where school-leaving parties were taking place, to ensure that no alcohol is served there.
I felt nothing but compassion for children and parents: school-leaving is a unique life event of the highest significance, and yet the celebration of it, with all the alcohol-related informal ritual and enjoyment that always were its integral part, is now irredeemably spoiled by the puritan fanatics in charge…
havn’t read your new page yet tom but will do, anyway here’s something that might interest all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpTqOMW6lVA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpTqOMW6lVA
This is a brilliant 6 min. vid in which a presentable young woman talks about sex with kids being OK. She comes across very naturally, managing to present a simple case in a pleasant, relaxed manner, so that her view seems like obvious common sense.
Amazing! I recommend everyone do their best to spread this link far and wide.
Thanks, Daniel, for alerting us to this.
Anyone know more about this fantastic lady?
Apparently this vid has been around since last year and there is info to suggest it has been re-uploaded, perhaps more than once; otherwise I would expect far more views to be showing on the counter.
I’ve known about her videos for a while. She is indeed very presentable and relaxed. One of the problems though is that her content is very subjective, with little reference to the research that’s been done. This has made it easy for antis to lay into her, which of course many have done. But definitely a helpful and supportive presence out there.
> One of the problems though is that her content is very subjective, with little reference to the research that’s been done.
Yes, that’s very true. I’m pretty sure she does not mention any research at all. But there are many out there who are not impressed by research because they would rather trust a line of reasoning that accords with their own experience. This presenter strikes me as rather good at drawing on what most people already know about children.
Yes she was a breath of fresh air. And as you write, Tom, her subjectiveness is common sense over boring scientific data.
If I find out her name I will update this post. Meantine I shall share it with those I know it can help….
>her subjectiveness is common sense over boring scientific data.
To those of us who are a bit nerdy the science can be very interesting, but it definitely isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
Tom
To those of us who are a bit nerdy the science can be very interesting,
The Science also helps u kick the ass of ppl like danny whitaker even if he doesn’t want to admit it.
>The Science also helps u kick the ass of ppl like danny whitaker
A very rare experience, but highly satisfying when it happens!
Her name is Jenn. She’s been around a while now. Made a number of good vids for YouTube.
Cheers, Ed. Thanks!
Looks like someone has taken jenn down ps thanx 4 letting us know ed
Jenn has doubtless had her videos and entire channel taken down on more than one occasion before, and is likely used to it by now. All an anti has to do is click the “Report” button on YouTube and complain they were offended by her content, and more likely than not she is taken down right away.
>Jenn has doubtless had her videos and entire channel taken down on more than one occasion before, and is likely used to it by now.
Will will never go away the allies fought for our freedom during the war against the Nazis and we shall carry on the good fight.
I once I talk with a teenage girl who had sex at 10 with a man and spoke well of that experience, and she made it clear that it was not abuse. And in fact I felt a lot of sadness and anger to think about her parents would have done to her and to the guy if they found them. But thats is not good, what has happened is happened, it was just a sign of affection, it’s like pass time together, or hugging, as she the video girl says, so you don’t have to destroy a man’s life and leave a negative imprint on a girl.
However, I feel disgusted with anything minimally sexual in my childhood, I don’t know how disturbed I would be if someone had done something openly sexual with me. I just wanted to have sex since my puberty, there I just wanted it, having sex with an adult woman would only have been positive for me, even better to marry an adult woman, and not lose a part of my life in that prison for teens named high school.
There is no hatred. I don’t hate pedophilia or pedophiles but you can’t ignore what your heart and conscience dictates to you. So yes, she’s right, but I can’t say it’s ok to have sex with children, let’s legalize it and do it, it’s not so good, it’s not so bad, sometimes it happens, it’s better to do that nothing happened, and everyone goes home. No more jails, I hate that shit.
Although it could also do a lot of harm to the child if you take out the adult, so they continue the relation and if all goes well that they get married when the child hits puberty, so it’s not a big deal either.
But as I say, there are people like me who are sex-negative and therefore sex is a big deal, not a free time, and that you must take into account if you support or want to intimate with a child, which is someone who is developing in its primary phase. I think “what happens if she repudiates the act?” yes, it can be a positive act, but it’s like a lottery.
The important thing is that in a militarist traditionalist regime relationships need and should be based to be positive for the good of society (this society can burn!) not personal selfishness. Thats the main diference between a liberal and a illiberal.
Don’t look for a loooong argumented reason, a liberal cannot understand that illiberal position, though I’m smart enough to realize that the prohibition of sex with under -inset age- is retarded, because for me the MAP movenment should become a militaristic traditionalist regime led by ideological and religious fanatics in military uniform wanting to push thousands of missiles and tanks like me and I think this is the culmination of human happiness (as long as Im “His Holiness the Chief of the Imperial General Staff”, of course).
So feel free to say all of this is authoritarian right-wing outdated batshit, but please if I have to advocate pedophilia openly, then you need to make me Knight Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the MAP Empire, for now I don’t need patreon, thank you.
Her name is Jen, and two of her videos are on the Mega archives you link to. Her YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnHdTKgj0SZt3GeAoug1jLQ
OK, thanks for that, Christian!
Tremendous amount of courage on her part.
We got to see what one of the 1%’s White Jock Boys looks like when he grows up and becomes a man. Not Pretty.
My sister once told me that drunk people go through three stages of drunkness: the monkey (fun-loving, joker, laugh-matter), the lion (courageous, but also imprudent, willing to fight) and the pig (nearly-unconscious, covered with vomit and probably wet with their own urine). She says that it depends on how much you drink. Being educated with strict upbringing, I think it’s understandable that he would backlash against it eventually. And he developed a problem he couldn’t publicly admit without breaking his secrecy, that he was subject to the same temptations other humans are and that he was also flawed. Very, very sad.
Ha…Explorer, it’s interesting you reflect on this aspect of Peter’s blog. When I was younger I was a nightmare when I was drunk, quite often that too. I was a hardcore Rugby player, until I got lost in drugs and my sexuality. To say I used to let my hair down was an understatement, and a number of times I woke up in a bush or a stranger’s house not knowing where I was. Happy days.
In my later life, I’ve chilled considerably, having accepted my sexuality and a larger part of who I am as a person. Now, thankfully, it takes a hell of a lot for me to lose my considerable temper, and I am grateful that I am now relatively calm and chilled. To use Peter’s analogy, when I was younger I was certainly the mean drunk, perhaps also an understatement, whereas now I’m certainly the mellow chap after a few, no more than four or so nowadays.
I’m very partial to a bottle of Chianti, Primitivo, Rioja, or Malbec, normally accompanied with some decent nosh…
>a number of times I woke up in a bush or a stranger’s house not knowing where I was
LOL! At this point, I really can say Me Too!
Thanks for your blog Peter. In a nutshell, this is further evidence of society going so far down the wrong path with regards to sexual conduct and labeling for life, I wonder when this nonsense will ever stop.
Whilst I sympathise with any and everyone who has ever been abused, or coerced / forced into sexual activity with someone, society is now left with no room for nuance regarding consensual relationships between those above and below the age of consent. It is indeed a result of those people who have sadly been abused at some time in their past, more often than not women, and light their torches and engage in a puritanical crusade against all but the most missionary sex within marriage etc.
In my experience with therapists, particularly in the UK, these (predominantly women) people often find themselves working in the ‘therapy’ industry as a result of their experiences in earlier life, namely Juliet Greyson of StopSO, and Fay Brown of Autonomy Counsel, both people without possession of a viewpoint beyond their own experiences or the current social narrative.
It makes me sad that we as a demographic of child lovers will never be recognised in any respect by society other than as rapists and abusers of ‘innocent children’.
For all the guy’s faults and sins, I sympathise with the Judge to some degree, however, it appears our feathered friends are coming home to roost, and quite rightly so.
Slaughtered by one’s own blade springs to mind.
You may note the sad irony of one of the main celebrity architects of the #MeToo movement, Asia Argento, is now being called a “predator” by pundits on both the Left and the Right with the revelation that she had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old actor Jimmy Bennett in the past, when she was in her 30s (I believe). Though I think much evidence suggests it was a consensual relationship, he has since been encouraged to accuse her of sexually abusing him for what was likely a financial motivation on his part. Based on what I have read of the incident, I do not personally consider Ms. Argento to be a predator, but I most certainly do consider her a hypocrite of the highest order. And this partner of hers was a minor by only one year! And at an age that is legal for age of consent in not only several countries (including the U.K.), but also several states in the USA! This also provides an abject lesson of how even the main proponents of a witch hunt can get caught up in it themselves.
https://www.thecut.com/2018/09/asia-argento-sexual-assault-what-to-know.html
Great comment, Dissident, but I’d like to play the pedant (not for the first time). When you said ‘abject lesson of’ did you by any chance mean ‘object lesson in’?
“People who drink know that there are “mean” drunks and “mellow” drunks. Under the influence of brain-altering chemicals, there is no way of choosing the type of behaviour you will succumb to. Such people most often have no or little memory of their actions while drunk. It is a real life Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde situation.”
I was strongly drunk several times in my life, in my 20s. Interestingly, I lost neither my self-control nor my ability for critical reflection – despite clearly being in the altered state of consciousness. In fact, I was observing the changes in my own experience with a kind of experimenter’s curiosity, making careful inner “experimenter’s notes” about what I perceive and how I feel differently being under the influence of the psychoactive substance. And, all this time, I remained in full willful self-control of my acts, being as polite and pleasant to others as I always am.
One interesting effect I noted is the further intensification of my inborn tendency towards introversion – during the drunk state, I became even more thoughtful and detached than usual. So, to participate socially in the party, it would be better for me to drink less, thus maintaining my already relatively low tendency for extrovert behaviour.
And, given that physiological after-effects of alcohol consumption was quite unpleasant to me – after party, I often felt myself badly sick – I decided that it is not worth it. Today, during the parties, I either drink a small symbolic amount or simply remain sober.
I remember on my 21st birthday; I had people coming round but they were late.
But after consuming Vodka and other spirits, I got lost in my thoughts and soon forgot about what time people were going to turn up at the party.
A party that ended up with drunk girls passing out locking themselves in a room, and the rest of us not knowing if they’re still alive.
At least some of the Gatecrashers were teens!