Michael: no saint, but no Tiberius either

Michael Jackson has long since joined the immortals, albeit some would spell that without the “t” following the revelations last month in the epic four-hour, two-part documentary Leaving Neverland, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. The film revives claims that the superstar had sexual friendships with young boys, scandal that first burst into the public arena way back in 1993-4 and surfaced again in 2003-5, culminating in Jackson’s acquittal at the end of a four-month trial.
The film has interviews with two of those boys, now long into their adult lives. One of them, Wade Robson, testified in Jackson’s defence at his trial, but now tells a very different story. In the course of researching my book Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liaisons (2010), I came to the view that Robson almost certainly had sexual contact with Jackson but decided to shield the star from a criminal conviction. I thought he had been willingly involved in the sexual contact at the time. What we are told we are going to see in this new film, though – when it goes to TV, which is scheduled for early March through Channel 4 and HBO – is harrowing testimony of manipulation and emotional exploitation that has left both men traumatised.

Jimmy Safechuck, with Michael

The parents of the other boy, James Safechuck, were said to have received “hush money” to keep the family sweet and head off their cooperation with any prosecution. James, known as Jimmy back in the day, was called to give evidence to a grand jury investigation into complaints against Jackson in 1994 but he gave nothing away at that time nor in 2005.
At the time of filming, Robson was 36 and Safechuck 40.  Robson is a dancer and choreographer, Safechuck a computer programmer. Both men are married with children.
These new stories of lasting hurt and trauma leave me deeply sceptical. The current climate all but guarantees that encounters which were welcome at the time, and even part of a loving relationship, are later re-imagined in memory to fit in with the prevailing abuse narrative of our times.
And what a narrative in this case! The horror hype was at work as soon as bums were on seats for the first showing. A Huffington Post report tells us the festival director gave a trigger warning, telling viewers that mental health counsellors were on hand to cope with all the anticipated fainting and freaking out, the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Nor did the audience fail to deliver. They were reportedly left “shellshocked” by the “harrowing” accounts of the two accusers, such that this “searing” documentary “cast a sombre shadow” at the festival.
This is the sort of coverage you will have seen all over the news. What you have probably missed, though, is “the small print” deliberately obscured or left out entirely by most the mainstream media, including important papers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian, as well as the big broadcasting networks. By far the most significant snippet of this down-page material that I have managed to uncover was to be found in a paper whose circulation area includes Hollywood: the Los Angeles Times. Understandably, they talked to Dan Reed, the British director of Leaving Neverland, who also made the Bafta-winning The Paedophile Hunter (2014), about vigilante Stinson Hunter. My guess is that interviewer Amy Kaufman got more than she bargained for when she asked a rather bland question: Why make this a four-hour docuseries?
Reed replied along the lines that it was an extremely complex story. It took time to unravel the psychology behind the kids saying they had not been abused and then changing their minds much later. Then he dropped a bombshell:

The central thing you have to understand is that these children fell in love with Michael Jackson. Jackson wasn’t a kind of grab-and-grope pedophile — he was a romance, relationship pedophile. Wade started telling me how he had fallen in love with Jackson and how that love lasted for years — decades — and how that love motivated his loyalty to Jackson. And how that loyalty ended up requiring him to lie about what happened.

[[[   ADDED FRIDAY 8 FEBRUARY: There is something else Dan Reed said that is arguably even more stunning, and which I meant to include but somehow omitted to do so. He made it plain he thought these very young boys had not just loved Jackson emotionally. They had been enthusiastic over every aspect of the relationship including the sexual side. Reed said:
“When Wade told me that he loved Michael, then everything suddenly crystallized and made sense. This is difficult to say, but he had a fulfilling sexual and emotional relationship at the age of 7 with a 30-year-old man who happened to be the King of Pop. And because he enjoyed it, he loved Michael, and the sex was pleasant. I’m sorry, that’s just the reality.”   ]]]
By Reed’s admission, it took a very long film to persuasively turn a love story into the standard abuse narrative. As a powerful antidote to this exercise in laboured revisionism, I recommend a 30-minute video, Michael Jackson And Wade Robson: The Real Story, which I understand is supported by the extended Jackson family. The family’s denial of Jackson’s emotional and sexual interest in young boys has never been credible to me, but many strong factual points are made against the accusers.
The information given about Wade Robson is particularly important because he had been a key defence witness at Jackson’s trial in 2005.
The picture that emerges very clearly in this YouTube video is that in 2011-12 Robson’s career in entertainment was not going as well as he had hoped. He was talented and successful, but also had extremely high and perhaps unrealistic expectations. He took on ambitious projects that were too much for him.
After failing in one such project in 2011 he went into therapy. Same thing in 2012: different project, different therapist. Significantly, neither this new therapist nor the first were consulted in relation to sexual abuse. His new therapist, a Dr Larry Shaw, is a specialist in dealing with high pressure jobs.
High-level success and perfectionism had been demanded of Robson ever since his early childhood by his mother. The pressure and expectations had become all too much for him after a couple of career stumbles.
It was in 2012, three weeks into therapy, that Robson first came up with his allegations of abuse. He was not claiming recovered memory. He said he knew all along known what had happened with Jackson but did not realise it was abusive.
I maintain, as does The Real Story, that this must be nonsense. As a sophisticated adult Robson cannot have failed to be aware that the conduct in question was illegal and would be widely regarded as abuse. The unavoidable conclusion, in my view, is that regardless of the law and public opinion, he did not feel Jackson had abused him. Yes, there was sexual activity; but, no, he was not abused.
However, now that Jackson was no longer alive, and Robson was struggling in his career, he decided he had been abused after all. Either the experience was genuinely re-imagined as abusive or it was a conscious ploy to re-invent and re-finance himself. The facts suggest the latter possibilities, as will be seen below.
Robson sued the Jackson Estate.
The Jackson estate managed to get hold of a note Robson had written to himself about a book proposal he was working on. The book was to be a memoir in which would talk about his “abuse”. This note was presented as part of the 2016 depositions for the civil case. He had written:
“My story of abuse and its effects will make me relatable/relevant” he wrote.
He would suddenly be transformed from a failure to a victim.
He began to claim he could not work because dancing and other entertainment were too strongly associated with sexual abuse. This was what he claimed in court documents. In fact, though, he continued dancing, etc.
But in Sept 2017, with his lawsuit heading for failure, he proclaimed himself “healed” from the bad association regarding entertainment activities and announced his return to show business.
So, he was traumatised when it looked as though there was money in it that would bail him out when his career nosedived. Then, straight after that prospect vanished with the failure of his lawsuit, hey presto, he was no longer traumatised.
Go figure!
We may suppose that as a relatively humble computer programmer, Safechuck, too, would not have been averse to the lure of potentially huge financial gain from a successful lawsuit. As noted above, the family had accepted what were apparently outright bribes in the past: a Rolls Royce was just one of the lavish presents Jackson gave them; and Jimmy’s father, a dustman, mysteriously became a millionaire following his association with Jackson.
So we need not be surprised that, like Robson, Safechuck also filed suit. Neither man’s case has been successful.
But sorting out the motives Michael’s old flames had for suing Jackson’s Estate, and companies, and making Leaving Neverland, does not explain the film’s emotional impact. A big part of it was what we might call the yuk factor. Plenty of gay guys experience revulsion to the point of nausea at the thought of having sex with a woman; and of course it is not so long ago that straight people’s utter disgust at the idea of men having sex with each other was used as an argument against normalising such behaviour.
That’s how it is now with child-adult sex. One reason for Leaving Neverland’s great length is that it dwells long and loathingly on the graphic intimate details of the love life disclosed by these two guys.
Robson met Jackson through a dance competition at age five, and said the sexual abuse began when he was seven. Safechuck was cast in a Pepsi commercial starring Jackson at age ten, and the alleged abuse began after months of close friendship.
Safechuck’s description of his experiences at Jackson’s fabled Neverland mansion is particularly atmospheric. Little Jimmy began to stay the night in Michael’s bed. The star told him he’d performed oral sex on him while he was asleep. Michael introduced him to masturbation. Things quickly escalated. They had sex all over the Neverland Ranch – including inside the castle, pool, attic and train station. “Neverland was a giant bed”, as one report put it. Virtually every structure on the grounds had hideaways with beds or privacy nooks for sex. Oral sex games were played in the pool and jacuzzi.
We learn from one report that as the photos of each location ticked by, “disgusted groans in the Sundance theatre grew louder”.
But what did little Jimmy, now big James, have to say about this? He said:
“It happened every day. It sounds sick, but when you’re first dating somebody, you do a lot of it,” he said.
Quite so. Lovers get carried away in a passionate relationship. There is no shying away here from Jimmy’s own active participation: there was mutual engagement. No amount of disgusted groaning in the cinema can negate that.
There is no evidence that Jackson ever coerced or forced boys into sex. He clearly wanted their willing participation. Does this mean he was entirely an ethical boy lover? No, it does not. As I was at pains to emphasise in Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liaisons, he was never the saintly figure his adoring fans believe him to be. His carefully wrought image as a figure of child-like innocence was always a mask, a persona. There is no doubt in my mind that some of his behaviour was quite manipulative, especially as regards his Machiavellian manoeuvrings to keep parents onside or neutralise their suspicions and hostility.

Wade Robson, with Michael

Perhaps the strongest charge against him, though, is that of giving some kids the impression they alone were the special one. For any boy destined to grow up gay, especially, any bad-faith declaration of undying love would always run the risk of ending in heartbreak and lasting trauma. Not that he is necessarily guilty of this charge: Robson and Safechuck have both had heterosexual adult lives, after all.
But there is also the question of personal loyalty at the friendship level. In my book I said there was little evidence that any of Jackson’s boys were cynically dumped once they grew beyond Jackson’s age-of-attraction, as has been alleged. However, it now looks as though I may have been too keen to give him the benefit of the doubt. While we do not yet know what Robson and Safechuck say about this in the film, their stories have been in the public domain from documentation filed in their lawsuits, and a number of writers have pored over the entrails.
One of them is long-time Jackson watcher Desiree Hill. In 2010 she blogged with high praise of my book, saying “it’s fantastic…a tome of astute analysis”. I can now return the praise. Her detailed chronicle The Jimmy Safechuck Story is a must-read for anyone who wants a well documented “case for the prosecution” regarding the alleged “dumping” of the particular boy in question. I am not saying her view is necessarily correct but it needs to be taken into account.
A boy lover well versed in the classics wrote to me recently comparing Jackson with the Roman emperor Tiberius, and it is undeniable that Neverland’s numerous custom-designed love-making locations clearly echo the emperor’s arrangements for his retirement fastness on the isle of Capri. As the historian Suetonius wrote in The Twelve Caesars:

On retiring to Capri he devised a pleasance for his secret orgies: teams of wantons of both sexes, selected as experts in deviant intercourse and dubbed analists, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions. Its bedrooms were furnished with the most salacious paintings and sculptures, as well as with an erotic library, in case a performer should need an illustration of what was required. Then in Capri’s woods and groves he arranged a number of nooks of venery where boys and girls got up as Pans and nymphs solicited outside bowers and grottoes: people openly called this “the old goat’s garden,” punning on the island’s name.
He acquired a reputation for still grosser depravities that one can hardly bear to tell or be told, let alone believe. For example, he trained little boys (whom he termed tiddlers) to crawl between his thighs when he went swimming and tease him with their licks and nibbles; and unweaned babies he would put to his organ as though to the breast, being by both nature and age rather fond of this form of satisfaction.

It is already beginning to look not too good for Tiberius at this point, wouldn’t you say? But there is more. And it is much worse. Suetonius continues:

The story is also told that once at a sacrifice, attracted by the acolyte’s beauty, he lost control of himself and, hardly waiting for the ceremony to end, rushed him off and debauched him and his brother, the flute-player, too; and subsequently, when they complained of the assault, he had their legs broken.

Now that was an unethical boy-lover. But it was not Michael Jackson!
 
 
 
 
 

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Hikari

Thanks for linking this again to me, Tom. It was nice to re-read after a few years.
I don’t think that Robson was cruelly dumped and ghosted as he claims in the movie. He was still on good terms with Michael into his adulthood and testified at the 2005 trials, asked permission to get married at Neverland, wrote glowing praise about him on his website (calling him his best friend, mentor and LOVER, I should mention!), and wanted to perform in his tribute show. However, I don’t know as much about Safechuck being friends with Michael as he got older so I couldn’t say that it never happened.

Cyril

“Dance movement therapy with children who have undergone sexual trauma”:

Science has proved that “victims” can dance!

Cyril

a couple hours ago some mothers discussed their child’s reaction on something reminding “trauma”

Cyril

in the dining room of my hotel

Andrew Meier

I’m a bit late to the party, and although I’ve read the article (another great one, Tom), I haven’t read any of the other comments. I watched this documentary last year and wanted to give my personal impression. What struck me about the documentary was that Robson and Safechuck did seem genuinely upset, but it was rather transparent (to anyone not mired in myth) that what they were most upset about was that Jackson eventually moved on and they were no longer his latest obsession. In that sense, the upset was caused by Jackson stopping the relationships, not by the relationships themselves.

Andrew Meier

Yes, I knew about your book. In fact, it was through reading Amazon reviews of that book (many of which seem to be reviews of the author) that led me to wonder whether you’d written a blog post on the documentary. On the subject of your books, I found myself in a second-hand bookshop about 15 years ago, where I came across a copy of Paedophilia: The Radical Case, and stood there reading it for about an hour. I was a creature of orthodoxy back then, so it was something of an eye-opener for me. I now regret being too concerned about what the staff would think to buy it.
I don’t know whether MJ wilfully deceived these boys or whether he was just completely overwhelmed by the access to had to boys who worshipped the ground he walked on. His life was highly unusual from a tender age. That’s not to excuse what (we assume) he did; whether or not his (alleged) actions were manipulative in intent, they were manipulative in effect.
I also wonder whether MJ might have moved on not because he lost interest in the boys but because their own attention started to stray. Once you’ve been best buddies with the most famous person on the planet for several years, it becomes less of a novelty and the new normal. You see beyond the persona. And then on top of that you start to notice girls, and your famous friend notices that you’re noticing girls. Maybe a ‘Mowgli moment’ came along and MJ distanced himself because he didn’t want to get hurt. Or maybe I’m giving him too much benefit of the doubt. Either way, my point is that ‘muggles’ (as we used to call them on VirPed) are blind to the depth and complexity of the emotions involved in paedophilic attraction.

Andrew Meier

Hi, Tom. Hope you’re doing well in your neck of the woods. Assuming your neck of the woods is where the papers say it is, it does at least seem a bit more isolated than most places in the UK.
Just in case you haven’t seen it in the TV listings, there’s a documentary on MJ (‘The Real Michael Jackson’) on BBC2 on Monday at 9 p.m.

sunchaser04

To expand on the “sex all the time early in the relationship” point. It is indeed true. Disclaimer: as I have said on my blog, I am and always have been law abiding. In weaker moments I feel my awareness of the reality we live in is a curse but logic dictates that this was for my safety and for the safety of the little girls I’ve known, but I digress… kids love genital games. As a child I engaged in them with other children. As a loving pedophile I have had to deny numerous advances from children. So it makes complete sense that an adult with knowledge of pleasure and who did not deny advances, maybe even initiated them, would truly activate a child’s sexual desires as had seemingly happened with Michael and his boys.

Christian

A belated denunciation of Leaving Neverland by Jackson’s faithful Spartacist defenders: https://icl-fi.org/english/wv/1153/michael_jackson.html

gantier99

Leaving Neverland has now been shown in my part of the world, and I watched it with great interest, twice over in fact.
I felt an enormous amount of sympathy with Robson and Safechuck. They conveyed honesty and sincerity in their new-found awareness of what they now consider to have been abuse.
It is a narrative that we hear all too often, a seemingly cast-iron case against man-boy love. But as usual it misses the point. It is the lack of human infrastructure, an understanding and supporting environment, that makes these relationships fail in the end. Jackson did his best to create his own world with his own rules, and with his enormous resouces he almost succeeded. But in the end Robson and Safechuck were just overwhelmed by the bog-standard infrastructure of the outside world.
Sorry to hear you are mired in other business just now Tom, hope all is well.

prodigaljohn

“It is the lack of human infrastructure, an understanding and supporting environment, that makes these relationships fail in the end.”
Pretty sure it’s been pointed out before, and probably is now taken for granted by other relationship formats, but that’s an excellent point. It’s acceptance and support that makes, or breaks relationships.
That’s another pointer to the self-fulfillment that happens in accordance to societal prophesy on pedophilic relationships: The relationship is stressful because of everybody else’s disapproval. The secrecy of it is because of that same societal disapproval. And when it’s all found out it’s nothing less than traumatic, and heartbreaking for all. That’s all of the reasons why such relationship is so strongly disapproved. It’s secretive, it’s stressful, and very much traumatic. And it’s all the pedophile’s fault.

gantier99

Thanks prodigaljohn, my thoughts exactly. A collective blind spot, so effective that Reed was not able to go there, despite 4 hours at his disposal. Perhaps it never even occured to him. Or maybe he was constrained by his remit!

Debauch

I hear on the News that ‘Comic Relief’ has raised millions this year; more cash to fund another year of anti-male, pseudo-science and paedo-hysteria… yay!

daniel

TO ALL READERS THIS IS MY MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS
THE MONEY U REJECTED COULD HAVE POTENTIALLY SAVED A LOAD OF CHILDREN FROM SOME KIND OF MAJOR SEX TRAFFICKING RING AND U REJECTED IT
SHAME ON YOU
SHAME ON YOU
YOUR’E ABHORRENT
YOUR’E ABHORRENT

daniel

WHAT I THINK IS WORTH HIGHLIGHTING IS THE EFFORTS OF ALL THE HERETICS HERE WHO DONATED, THEY AT LEAST DESERVE A BIG THANK YOU FOR THEIR EFFORTS AT LEAST THEY CAN LIVE WITH THE FACT THAT THEY KNOW IN THEIR HEARTS THAT THEY ALL DID THE RIGHT THING IN ORDER TO HELP GOD ONLY KNOWS HOW MANY DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN OUT THERE AND THE HATERS STOPPED THEM FROM DOING THAT AND SADLY A LOT OF CHILDREN WILL BE LOST IN THE SYSTEM AS A RESULT OF THIS THROUGH NO FAULT OF OUR OWN.

Edward

Did you hear about this? Omnipolitics16 was arrested for online solicitation of a sherrif’s deputy posing as a minor in Polk County Florida, he is now serving 7 to 12 years with lifetime sex offender registry

michaelkennedylozano

Doesn’t surprise me. That kid is a right idiot, from my past interaction with him. Good riddance, I say.

daniel

Tom
do you think that mj was being deliberately manipulative or is there a chance that the manipulation was something he did without knowing? i think this could be a very easy trap to fall into and i agree that no one should be manipulated in any kind of relationship but sadly manipulation is a learned process that come with age and i would recommend to any adult to try and make a conscious choice not to manipulate a child.
>There is no doubt in my mind that some of his behaviour was quite manipulative, especially as regards his Machiavellian manoeuvrings to keep parents onside or neutralise their suspicions and hostility.

Michael Teare-Williams

“Is all this to be set at zero value because Michael was not entirely a saint? Judged by that standard, no one would ever have any sexual relationship ever, including all of our own parents. If perfection were required, none of us would ever have been born!
The truly poisonous element in this is society’s rush to condemn. That is what needs to change”.
My dear Tom,
In all the years that I have been reading your stuff — and they are many — I have never read more golden truths!
Yes, but how do you get that “poisonous element” to admit that kids are not merely “innocent nothings”? That they are real, vital people, with curiosity, sensuality and a capacity for love?
Surely, it is the lack of that basic KNOWLEDGE which needs to change?
With love and respect, M T-W.

Michael Teare-Williams

You are right about the film’s message, but will the bone-heads get it?
How I wish they could!
M T-W.

daniel

Michael Teare-williams
I don’t know about any 1 else’s parents but in my experience the parent is always right and the child is always wrong and doesn’t deserve a voice I am sure u and others here have heard the expression children should be seen and not heard an attitude that so-called loving parents have been taking for centuries and they still take the same attitude today they have the knowledge but because they have that much control over their kids they never want to let that child go and sadly some parents never do and unfortunately others in the community are too thick and ignorant to do anything when the child REALLY needs help but are more than happy to moan and groan about it afterwards when the damage has already been done.
>Surely, it is the lack of that basic KNOWLEDGE which needs to change?

Michael Teare-Williams

Daniel,
Granted, all of the above! I just hope for a few people with enough intelligence and flexibility to understand that kids are not just ‘innocent’ little zeroes, with nothing in their heads but dolls or puffer-trains…
We can only hope that there will be a few people bright enough to see how Safechuck and Robson genuinely loved MJ from a very early age and it was only later that harm was done.
Sadly, Leaving Neverland is a signifier for the brutal reality of growing up?
Unlike the fabled Peter Pan, those boys had to grow up and therein is their tragedy, and all our tragedies?
M T-W.

daniel

just finished watching the michel jackson documentary “neverland” and i agree with Maulky Culkin that is was the biggest pile of wank i have seen in my entire life.

Sugarboy

By the way, does anybody know why the have called the documentary “Leaving Neverland”?

Debauch

One interesting part of the documentary is when Jordan mentioned how interested in Britney Spears MJ was. Maybe he did like some females after all.
Reminds me of a friend who ‘came out’. At first, me and others were offended after going out to clubs etc, he has had many gay relationships fro years, but never had much luck with females during our clubbing days, and more lately he mentions women and men….a bisexual it seems?

stephen6000

Does that mean you don’t believe Safechuck and Robson?

stephen6000

That question was to Daniel, by the way.

Dissident

I think, Tom, the less savory aspects of both Tiberius and Michael may be explained by a simple but important factor that makes both of them poor examples to compare the average BLer (or MAPs in general) to. Both of them were not typical citizens of their respective societies and era but fabulously wealthy and powerful individuals. Power has never been good for people’s moral framework, and a tendency towards excess is common among such individuals.
As a powerful head of state in a much different era than the present, it should be no surprise that Tiberius behaved the way he did towards anyone he was attracted to. When regular laws of conduct do not apply to you, I think it’s to be expected.
Michael was not a head of state, but he was a ruthless and powerful businessman who very likely had a strong sense of entitlement. He wasn’t, as you noted, anywhere near the monster Tiberius allegedly was, and he didn’t live in the same era. However, it should be no surprise that he would sometimes engage in morally questionable actions to get what he wanted and use his power to circumvent those who attempted to get in his way (e.g., the parents of some of his young boyfriends who competed with him for their overall affection and loyalty). Whether or not it’s true that he callously left behind some of the boys he had relationships with once they aged out of his main AoA, would that any different than the way many teleiophile celebrities of similar fame and power run from one partner to another without complete concern (if any) for the feelings of the partner they had evidently tired of for whatever reason? Again, that may be part of the entitlement package that so many famous celebrities develop whatever their attraction base. Hence, I would argue it’s unfair to expect better standards from a wealthy celebrity MAP than a wealthy celebrity non-MAP.

Dissident

… better standards of behavior, that is.

stephen6000

>”If he really believed what he was saying (“my friend Michael didn’t do these terrible things”) wouldn’t he be very angry? Wouldn’t he want to call these guys out as liars in the most passionate terms?”
Some people are less prone to anger than you might think. In general, arguments based on the thought ‘Normal people would react in such-and-such a way’, though not without some force, are treacherous because, simply put, not everyone is ‘normal’.
>”My guess is that if he doesn’t want to be brutal he probably doesn’t believe they are liars i.e. he actually thinks the allegations are true but feels unable to admit it. A major part of that unwillingness may be that he genuinely thinks (still, although he knows the sex stuff actually happened) that Michael was a nice guy.”
That’s also quite possible.

stephen6000

Apologies, everyone. That last comment of mine has probably appeared in the wrong place. It is meant as a reply to a comment by Tom a little further down (Mar 11, 2019 @ 11:27:58).

stephen6000

In this video Mark Lester, who was a friend of MJ’s, in interviewed about his reactions to the latest revelations. (For those who don’t know, Lester was a child actor who is best remembered for playing the title role in the film of ‘Oliver!’). It is a very awkward series of exchanges. Lester’s basic argument is: he can’t have been a paedophile, as he was too nice!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1i1fqyqK4Y

stephen6000

Lester’s statements effectively entail that Safechuck and Robson are lying. He just didn’t want to use that word as it seems too brutal.

Sugarboy

In his book “House of Cards – Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth”, Robin M. Dawes writes:
A California licensed psychologist, Edith Fiore, has developed a unique specialty that she shares with at least fourteen other licensed mental health practitioners around the country.
She helps people overcome the ill effects of being abducted by extraterrestrials (ETs) who hypnotized the abductees so that they would forget the experience. The symptoms of these abductions, as well as the names of fourteen other experts in this field, are listed in her recent book Encounters: A Psychologist Reveals Case Studies of Abduction by Extraterrestrials. Many of the people who were abducted were, of course, sexually molested by the ETs; on other occasions, the ETs used remarkable techniques to cure their abductees of chronic and sometimes seemingly fatal diseases. Some of the symptoms of such abduction, like sleep disturbances, are similar to those of people who have been sexually abused or who were raised in satanic cults and have subsequently “forgotten” the experience. Like other symptom lists, Fiore’s includes symptoms that could be indicative of a wide variety of (sometimes rather serious) disturbances, like “inability to account for periods of time,” “feeling monitored, watched, and/or communicated with.” Among the symptoms is listed an obsession with ETs and UFOs.
The therapy Fiore provided is remarkably simple. The ETs’ attempts to make the abductees forget their experience cannot fully succeed. Using their own hypnotic techniques, Fiore and her fourteen colleagues can help the clients recall the experience. The reason that the ETs’ hypnotic attempt fails and the subsequent one succeeds is that: The subconscious mind has a memory bank of everything we ever experienced, exactly as we perceived it. Every thought, emotion, sound of music, word, taste and sight. Everything is faithfully recorded somehow in your mind. Your subconscious mind’s memory is perfect, infallible.
So basically yes, it could be hallucinations due to the air at Neverland or even hypnosis (maybe performed by Dan Reed himself, who knows)…

Michael Teare-Williams

What a crock of you know what! Sounds like your typical trick-cyclist, to me!
M T-W.

Dissident

Or, possibly, Tom, the answer is this: Like so many people, whatever Lester may actually think, he does not want to come out publicly and accuse anyone of claiming to be a Victim a liar. He is too afraid of the usual emotionally fueled cyber-mob attacking him and possibly costing him his job and reputation. Hence, his contradictory statement that wasn’t intended to make any kind of logical sense, but simply to be emotionally appealing to both Michael’s legion of fans and the Victimology crowd.

Dissident

Interestingly, Stephen, many years ago I “came out” as a MAP to someone I had been close friends with for a few years. She didn’t stop being my friend, but she immediately went into denial, insisting that there was no possible way I could be one of “them.” Why? Because, she told me, “you’re too good of a person.”
So, that is what it often boils down to: A common fallacy among the general public is the presumption that MAPs are sociopathic monsters who hurt people in every way imaginable. As if a romantic/sexual attraction or preference for kids is somehow an indication of low moral character. Is that surprising, considering how it’s considered an automatic virtue signal for an adult to say they aren’t a MAP or to speak derisively of MAPs?

warbling j turpitude

Don’t recall at this moment which of our players it was who first brought this up, but do you not agree Dissy that MAP can never be the best of handles so long as it plays wholly complicitous ball with the state/lawhead designation that is “minors”? Implying as it does a virtual living subtraction of humanity? You’re happily using the term here, though, so should we assume you’re completely down with the idea that we should all step out advertising ourselves as “Minor Attracted Persons”? Ick! say I! Ick!! Even eeeek! I feel like an iron filing already! Drawn helplessly to that which is not yet the full human quid, because it must neeed ME to make it so!
oh well, I’m sure you get the picture already. Misgivings are all I have – most of the time!

Ivanovich

“Minor” is state idolatry, the state has no legitimacy in designating things that belong to the ambit of nature and creation.
“Minor” are not simple social constructs or simple colloquial designations of a reality, whether right or wrong, such as “teen”, “adolescent”, “children” etc.
It is not a social construct, but an anti-naturality, the state playing god or gods, believing that they can manipulate sacred nature with their perverse creations.
To separate the sexual attraction between “adult” (the legal adult and not the biological one) and “minor” is simply to have a reality disorder, which then becomes a sexual disorder since the affected one by creating an artificial reality in his mind (or in the mind of others) where something that is neither separate nor true is separated and believed to be true.
So there are people who believe that there really is “a minor-attraction” and that there are really people who don’t like those who are within that category of “minors”.
It is as if tomorrow I come to power and decree that those under 25 are “kiflon” and those over 25 are “kalash” then as people take state morality as their religion more and more people would appear stating that “being attracted to a kiflon is an aberration” and that “sex is between consenting kalash” and creating a supposed sexual deviation called “kiflonphilia”, so that eventually a few others will declare that they are “kiflon-attracted persons” and that they truly believe that most people are only attracted to kalah and only a minority to kiflons. That while not a year ago there was no difference between older and younger than 25. See how crazy it is?
With Antis we are not talking to “rational people but with prejudices”, we are talking about authentic schizophrenic, mentally and sexually disturbed people who are also harmful and dangerous like any religious maniac who believes in a parallel reality.
I mean that Dissident and the thousand others proclaimed “MAPs” have a reality delirium? Yes, totally, I’m sorry, I can’t lie, you’re not disturbed religious maniacs like the militant Antis, but you have a delirium of reality as much as the one that looks at you with a disgusted face after telling you that you like “minors”.
If you have a delirium, you need to go back to reality by realizing in the false reality where you live, like any member of a sect or someone with a religious obsession, it’s hard, but that’s how you get rid of the chains that bind you and can regain control of your life.

warbling j turpitude

Tovarisch Korrespondent Ivanovich! This is pretty cool for sure but I feeeeel it could have used some editing! Bits of it are veering towards incoherence! But only bits! But I would seriously reject that part where you go “….mentally and sexually disturbed people who are also harmful and dangerous like any religious maniac who believes in a parallel reality.”
Every last one of us not only ‘believes’ in a parallel reality, we are bound by a parallel reality and participate in the generation of said parallel reality every day, That parallel, or virtual reality is called language. Without heem, no “sacred nature”. Nope, none at all.
If we were still wholly immersed in the life-world we wouldn’t know “nature” from a bar of soap. Neither would we care. Please can we get real about this, if only from time to time?
Yours truly.
Turpitudovich

stephen6000

For practical reasons, we need a way to refer to ‘our people’. No term is perfect. ‘Minor attracted person’ has several advantages, though. Unlike ‘paedophile/pedophile’, it clearly includes attraction to adolescents as well as to pre-pubertal children. (In my view, it would be wrong to separate those into two distinct groups, especially as many of us are in both.) It also produces an easy acronym (‘MAP’). In no way does use of the term imply approval of any current social or legal arrangements. The term ‘minor’ is simply being used in a factual way to refer to someone who is TREATED as ‘less important’ by conventional society, especially with regard to sexual self-determination.

Dissident

Objection of any term that incorporates the word “minor”, or any usage of the term in and of itself, for the reason that it implies that younger people are “lesser” than older folks has been a common trope in the Kind community ever since I first became involved in it close to 20 years ago. What Stephen said in response to this was on target: you need to take the way the term is used in its proper context, and not read anything into it beyond that. Using the term “minor” in the “MAP” acronym is in no way implying that we think people under the legal age of adulthood are somehow less worthy of acknowledgement as full people than those who have reached the AoM. It is simply recognized as a legal term that describes someone’s legal status, i.e., that the state government does not recognize their full citizenship due to their young age, and thus denies them most of the civil rights that those of legal age of majority tend to enjoy within that nation’s territorial boundaries.
If you take umbrage to any use of that term by seeing connotations to it that the user was not attempting to ascribe, it becomes one of those things that needlessly causes more arguments and discord within our community (as if we do not have enough of those already, aye?). As Stephen noted, there is no term we can ascribe to our community that will please everyone. I have known Kind people who objected to “MAP” (and it’s antecedent “MAA” — Minor Attracted Adult) for any number of reasons: e.g., “it’s too PC for my tastes,” “it’s pandering,” “we shouldn’t be afraid to just call ourselves ‘pedophiles’,” etc. Yes, it doesn’t please everyone, and I am certain the usage of “Kind” will hackle the feathers of some for certain reasons too. I simply use “MAP” because it is becoming more identifiable in legitimate academic circles, and for all the reasons Stephen favored it.

stephen6000

>she immediately went into denial
Did she ever come out?

Dissident

More or less, yes. She basically accepted it, but her feelings for MAPs in general remained unchanged. She would also try to pull me further into her comfort zone by always pointing out young girls walking down the street and asking me, “That one would be too young for you, right?” She also said that if such relationships were legally allowed, she honestly didn’t know if she would accept a young girlfriend if I had one and may have declined going to things like parties or outdoor barbecues we may have thrown together etc. She also didn’t like the fact that I dated younger women of legal age, but she did her best to tolerate it.

michaelkennedylozano

And the fact she reacted the way she did makes sense, if you think about it. To her and many people in her position, men like you and I are an anomaly; a hard working, tax paying, down-to-earth individual—who’s a pedophile, too? Now, that’s virtually unheard of! Generally, we’re only ever depicted in compromising, vilifying scenarios, and that alone is absolutely not conduce to an image change. Only when more men like you emerge from the murky depths of secrecy, shall we began to witness a paradigm shift in how people perceive and treat us, I feel.

Dissident

Indeed, Michael. She was indoctrinated her entire life to see kids in only one way, and to see MAPs in only one way too. And let’s face it, she and others in the mainstream benefits in many ways from the manner in which the age-based power hierarchy works, and would obviously display heavy resistance to those who may disrupt the hegemony she is used to. Seeing someone she liked, respected, and trusted as an exception to a rule she believed to be otherwise universal was a difficult mental growth spurt on her part.

warbling j turpitude

Hello everybody, Turps the Syntactic Entanglement coming aboard again! I’ve only just been able to continue dog-paddling in the wilderness of utter futility out there, but had this notion to check wit y’all in tonight (I might also return to that thread where Tom asked me to elaborate on my overall contempt for the “Evolution is a Fact” brigades).. but what I’d like to ask right here is, if anyone else has ever entertained the notion of conducting an AMA on Reddit, and how one might go about that? Recently that lot was banging on about Michael Jackson, and, having indeed entertained this very notion myself for some time, but knowing not quite how to go about it, saw myself prematurely blurting forth in the phrasing to which Redditors are accustomed.. “genuine paedophile here – ask me anything!” Of course, what then ensued was absolutely nothing, as it seems these chaps & chapettes have learned to simply ignore that which obviously doesn’t….doesn’t ‘go with the flow’…
Wouldn’t such an AMA have the potential to destroy precongealed conceptions by the score? I realize a lot of the people therabouts are kind of , how shall I say ‘prissy’ when it comes to such matters…but if approached with all manner of formal decorum, etc etc?
Anyone have any thoughts?

I just need to say I’m perplexed now. Is the idea of conducting an AMA before what must be the staggeringly large audience of Reddit at any moment an idea so obviously aberrant as to be not even worth considering? Not for one second?
Or what?

stephen6000

Warbling, I plead ignorance. I’m not embarrassed to say I don’t know what an ‘AMA’ is or what ‘REDDIT’ is. I suppose I could have asked. But I’m busy. So I plead ignorance and being busy.

warbling j turpitude

Goodness gracious, as I have heard so many semi-scandalized ladies on BBC transmissions say – you mean to say – you are …you are wholly innocent of Reddit, the Front Page of the Internet? Where every man, woman and literal dog of whichever and whatever parish comes to know of others’ – and wherever possible exercise her own – experience and/or expertise? Truly this is fabulous news, Stephen! And where on earth might I start to ..to set you on the road to acquaintance with this..this multiply-endowed resource and foremost feeding-trough for the starving classes of the first world? P-p-p-perhaps,,,here?https://www.distractify.com/entertainment/2018/10/22/Zt6UJ4/worst-celebrity-reddit-amas

more soberly, here is the beast itself. Am I to assume that this,what one might call the stream of streams, never even runs through the bayous of Kind County? https://www.reddit.com/

warbling j turpitude

May I remind you dear Tom, that this very thread whereupon we speak is oriented to and by the great social – even post-sacrificial – reality of celebrity? Ha! So now you know.
And now to the beef. By which I must assume you mean the meat and not the grudge (as in ‘what’s your beef with…?) There is beef aplenty on Reddit (and its numerous specialised subreddits), as even a short (closer) acquaintance with the workings of the site will reveal. Yes, it is festooned with lovely doggos and delirious felines, which I happen to think is a blessing. Most of my friends in Ole Yurrp learned their very English from participating in this website, and I do not exaggerate when I say it plays an enormous part in connecting American life both internally and with the extra-continental kind!
Again, if you pay some attention for more than a glimpse’s worth, you will see that the commentariat includes at all times a quite countless array of very knowledgeable, and oft-times highly specialized people on hand, who can be counted on to break down phenomena (predominantly the objects of ‘hard science’) in astonishing detail at a moment’s notice. They can hardly be said to be short on their more widely philosophical reserves, either, even as the ‘surface’ of things is regularly bespattered by the battle of sheer wits.
To go where the most dense connectivity is, would seem to be of the activist essence? The AMAs have featured not only celebrated actors, but persons in very high-ranking positions from various sectors of the scientific/medicinal/sociological/military etc etc fields…
Again, I am staggered to learn all over again, just how diversely or randomly distributed is the Global Economy of Attention

stephen6000

I’ve just finished watching ‘Leaving Neverland’. It broadly confirms that the problem in these situations is usually not the sex itself, but the taboo. It was this that seemed to compel secrecy, which appears to have been the main cause of the men’s later psychological problems.

prodigaljohn

Maybe out of proportion, but I sense that this is one of the reasons why they say that paedophiles are typically manipulative (in popular media). Of course, they make this uniquely bad for paedophilic relationships when it seems comparable to having multiple partners behind everyone’s back in more normative contexts. Of course there’s going to be mutual upset when they find out they’re not really THE special one.
And that’s outside of how secretive the involved parties have to be, however imposed, rather than intrinsic it is to paedophilic relationships.
How long do we have to wait before we get a prominent story of a committed boy-love relationship, where the either hasn’t gone and made multiple “special” friendships behind each other’s backs? That might go a long way to illustrate how functionally similar intergenerational relationships are to every other accepted relationships.

stephen6000

Paedophile relationships are by their nature shorter in duration than the conventional type, at least in their sexual aspect, so ‘replacement’ is bound to happen more quickly and more often!

prodigaljohn

Right, that’s going to be problematic for a lot of people. That our attraction doesn’t grow that much, and this is just as perplexing to others as it is to ourselves, suppose there are bound to be pedophiles who will be looking for a sexual “replacement” once their prior friend grows too old.
However, I am mindful of Dr. Rudiger Lautmann’s interviews in “Attraction to Children” where one’s age of attraction does give way to the person of attraction. Meaning that the pedophiles interviewed have had sex with their partners well past their own preferred age range. On top of statements on how they’d very much desire to be with them for a very long time, guess there’s potential for real long-term commitment, should either be so inclined.
But otherwise the revolving door sex-life of pedophiles is going to be a hurdle for people to get over, should the debate on pedophilic acceptance be revived.

prodigaljohn

On the replacement bit, again, it seems it’s something shared with with heterosexuals, and homosexuals on their relationships. So on the other hand the revolving door sex-replacement phenomena is hardly unique to pedophiles. Everybody cheats, or at least are tempted to.
More pointers on how rather ordinary the phenomenon of pedophila really is, if nothing else.

djvinno

I’m with the prodigal here. There are countless studies showing mean duration of the honeymoon period to be less than three years. Between adults.
I bet you’d have a hard time finding many paedos who would go frigid that quickly in relation to their partner.
…So I exaggerate, in using ‘honeymoon’ and ‘frigid’. But my point stands. We’re as if not more capable of maintaining long term sexual relationships. Or long-ish.

daniel

Tom
I do also think Michael was wrong to give individual boys the impression they were the only “special” one. This was manipulative and bound to produce a grievous sense of let-down when they were eventually superseded by another “special” one.
I don’t know about you or any 1 else here but i don’t remember any 1 telling me i was special not in the sense that mj has said it anyway.

djvinno

Interesting point, daniel.
I have a lot of siblings older than me. And younger. I’m pretty sure nobody has convincingly told me I was that special to them since the process of weaning me began.
A few girls have tried, but I haven’t been able to hear it the way I surely would have at age 7.

Debauch

Daniel….Were you overweight as a kid, cos that could be a factor. I’m remained of a Jimmy Car joke….If your kid is overweight, look on the bright side, there is less chance of (s)he being kidnapped cos nobody likes a fatty!

Debauch

Just my dark humour talking, that is why I’m a fan of Jimmy Car, Frankie Boyle. It was nothing personal, Daniel is just another name who we share what society throws at us. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be able to meet him and others in the flesh and go for a pint, or a more healthier cup of tea!

daniel

Debauch
Daniel….Were you overweight as a kid, cos that could be a factor. I’m remained of a Jimmy Car joke….If your kid is overweight, look on the bright side, there is less chance of (s)he being kidnapped cos nobody likes a fatty!
As a matter of fact Tom at some stages of my teen years i was overweight for a short period and over the years i had eating phases wer i would become overweight i am one of these ppl who can put it on and soon after able to take the weight off wen i realise that i am getting fat i have for some reason over the years stopped eating certain foods not out of choice as such but cos my brain tells me for some reason not to eat it, btw debunch going for a pint sounds great, the more maps run together just like the birds, the better.

Explorer

For Ed Chambers, if he is reading this:
Ed, I don’t know how to contact you directly, so I would ask you a question here, hoping that you pay visits to Tom’s blog and would be able to answer.
As far as I know, once you had an active Twitter account that was soon banned.
Now, another Twitter account pretending to be yours appeared. And it contains a claim that the previous, banned account was not your one, but an impersonation:
https://twitter.com/Ed_Chambers_/status/1100717151982374913
Is it true, Ed? Or is it the new account that is not really yours?
Please respond and explain!

eqfoundation

Maybe I should actually comment on the original post, now? 😉
It’s been a strangely Michael Jackson day for me, as I’ve run across a few other links about MJ, today…It appears the BBC has banned his music.
I’d hate to think he ever forced himself…and I agree, the lavish gifts never seemed all that upstanding, to my mind…not if they were “hush” gifts…
At the same time…I’m floored at some of the revelations that come out, at times like these…
…They actually admit, there was mutual love?!…and mutual desire?!
I’m not convinced, even amidst the inconvenient [to all sides] details…that these kinds of documentaries are entirely bad.

eqfoundation

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8548584/paedophile-tom-ocarroll-invited-to-house-of-lords-bash/
Matt Wilkinson
Published yesterday…updated, today…
I must say, it takes some uncommonly foul creatures to derail a generous act, and steal a £500 donation from children…and to revel in it all in the aftermath…
…Those are not decent human beings.

eqfoundation
eqfoundation

Here in the U.S. [just as, likely where you live]…they hide behind corrupt “forfeiture” laws, which allow them to swoop in, steal a persons property, auction it off [or “donate” it to an organization]…plus impose steep financial fines…and take “that” money/property, to give it to “the victims”…or “the public”…or some government social program…
…And people haven’t the first qualms, about accepting scads of that sort of cash from “pedophiles”…just so long as they can violently extract it, with the maximum devastation…
…But a “pedophile” willingly giving money to a good social cause, out of the goodness of their heart?…It’s somehow “an offense to all things decent, and the integrity of a culture”.
…Obscene hypocrisy.

daniel

eqfoundation
mj seems to be popping up on the news a few times over the last few days and i believe his relationships where consensual so its sad the money won’t go to the right causes and i know what u r saying they would rather rob the paedosexual than allow the paedosexual to give the money out of the goodness of his/her heart i remember read that Lindsey Ashford and Todd Nickerson wanted to donate some time ago and their donations and didnt think to realise that Nickerson is also a survivor.
>…But a “pedophile” willingly giving money to a good social cause, out of the goodness of their heart?…It’s somehow “an offense to all things decent, and the integrity of a culture”.
…Obscene hypocrisy.

Sugarboy

“…that Nickerson is also a survivor”.
Survivor? How many boys did MJ kill? Perhaps they should have called the doc “Leaving Auschwitz”?!

daniel

In the past nickerson has mentioned suffering sexual abuse as a child in the past but since than according to dan whittaker he has mentioned that paedophiles have a beneficial role to play in a child’s life and that if the law was different he would want to have a relationship with a child as long as it was consensual.
“…that Nickerson is also a survivor”.
Survivor? How many boys did MJ kill? Perhaps they should have called the doc “Leaving Auschwitz”?!

daniel

Ashford and Todd Nickerson wanted to donate some time ago and their donation was rejected

prodigaljohn

I already made this comment on OurLoveFrontier’s post, but I’ll do it here, too.
Suppose you could try “not letting the right hand know what the left is doing”, and be anonymous with any further donations, Tom? Sounds like it’s going to be practical, rather than just theological.

prodigaljohn

You couldn’t make the donation out in cash? Or for a certain amount you have to write a check, which of course is what would have left a trail for examiners to follow?

prodigaljohn

I’m sorry, its just exacerbating for me to have read that article, and I’m trying to wrap my head around this situation. But for all that, I can’t imagine the frustration you’re feeling right now.
Like, damn. How was anyone suppose to see any of this coming? It really is absurd!

prodigaljohn

I’m sorry, it’s just boggles my mind that this fuss was raised to begin with. And on top of how you were trying to be anonymous about this, too. It’s just… Damn. Indeed, who would have thought that this is how your donation would have turned out like this?
It’s like eqfoundation says, the “Obscene hypocrisy” of how they reacted to your charity.

Sugarboy

Incredible… This is on topic!
As with most of you, I too have a fair believe that MJ was a BL. However, when it comes to the allegations in this documentary, I’m not completely convinced.
An explanation for the allegations could be that Wade actually had sex with MJ and had no problem with that, until he was brainwashed by the therapist into believing that his depression and nervous breakdown were the result of that (therapists have been able to make people believe that they had “repressed memories” when nothing at all had happened, so why should they not be able to brainwash people when something did happen?).
However, the main point is something else. Last year, I read some statements from “Spongebob” about the sex he had with the man (that subsequently was arrested). He told that he actually liked some of the things they did, but he hated him because he posted a lot of videos on internet that were supposed to be private (and that was the reason why he got caught). In this context, Spongebob told that he had a “fuzzy recollection” of what exactly happened (I’m not sure whether this was the actual wording, but the meaning is 100% ok).
So I ask myself, how can Wade remember so many details of what he allegedly did with MJ 25 years before, when Spongebob could hardly remember things that were merely 10-12 years old? Tom, you have written a whole book, what do you think?

Sugarboy

Also, Wade told that he got concerned that his son, that looked so innocent etc., could become the victim of “abuse”. But until then, he had considered that what he did with MJ was normal (so much that he allegedly lied in court to protect him), so why should he be concerned about the fact that his son could experience something normal?

Debauch

Maybe because parents see their kids as property. also, maybe some sexual jealousy there too.
I was chatting with an old street drunk, and asked him “what were you doing in Russia”….Recalling overhearing a conversation a couple of months back; He said he was in the Russian Navy and also went to boarding school there…Something we had in common. He went on to mention that, in the showers you had to watch your ass, he always showered in his underwear, he said you don’t want to go naked with all these homosexual teachers around, but he was vert flippant about it saying how nobody made a fuss in those days etc.
(boarding school in common, not in Russia though)!

leonard sisyphus mann

[reply to Stephen6000’s comment – https://tomocarroll.wordpress.com/2019/02/07/michael-no-saint-but-no-tiberius-either/comment-page-1/?replytocom=23429#comment-23429 ]
>”If true, this would of course be relevant. I could not so easily defend letting her back into the country in that case.”
I’ve been trying to remember and find where I read/heard this information – I think it is part of the interview I link to at the bottom of this comment. Apologies if it’s not – the old ‘sieve-like and dim’ letting me down again.
Much of what you say is right – but the key points of disagreement are:
1/ I don’t base my notions of what should happen to her on my emotions – I think being specially lenient with her is a RATIONALLY bad option.
2/ you wrote “But if you do adopt this incompatibilist position, it implies at least that you will use punishment very sparingly.”
I really don’t see why this follows – the opposite conclusion could be more readily reached from the same premises: given that our acts are ultimately determined by things we have no control over, then those external factors should be more rigorously applied for the good of both ourselves and Society.
I don’t necessarily advocate this, but it seems like a MORE logical conclusion than the one you suggest.
But the question is what do we change, given that free-will is ultimately an illusion?
I tend towards: ‘very little’ – I have the same kind of faith in Evolution as a man falling out of a plane must have in his parachute – it’s all we’ve got – and I think that our minds have evolved those illusions which allow us to cope with the reality into which we are thrust.
I would be surprised to learn that ‘punishment’ has not been universal to mankind, and indeed, social animals.
Moreover, I don’t quite see the benefits of NOT punishing Begum and other Islamists like her – other than a sense of one’s own virtue (I’m not accusing you of that Stephen6000, but I think the ‘hug-a-jihadi’ attitude propagated by the MSM IS playing on this).
So I would be interested if you could tell me what Britain and its real citizens would gain by allowing Begum, and those like her, back. There are specious advantages – one of which is not angering moslems living in the UK – but this is a frightening thought – that ‘our’ moslems are sufficiently on the side of the jihjadis to punish us for any actions taken against them (remember that this fear of angering the moslems was the reason given for not offering Asia Bibi asylum – an act of moral cowardice that left me more ashamed and fearful for my country than anything I remember).
And whilst I think forgiveness is a great virtue, forgiveness is only for the repentant. Begum clearly isn’t. Nor would I trust the repentance of any Islamist – Islamic State have been coaching their members in what to say to appear contrite, be received as heros by the countries they betrayed, and continue as a fifth column in those countries.
In great interview with Macer Gifford – a banker who joined the Kurds in their fight against Islamic State – he mentions how de-radicalisation programs can work with ‘moderate’ Islamists – such as members of al-Qaeda – but have so far been unsuccessful with Islamic State members – if this is correct it throws in doubt the repentance of all those now begging to return to the countries they rejected, fought against, and whose constitution and culture they hate.
We should be alert to the fact that core Islamic doctrine allows, even encourages, lying to and deception of the infidel (and the ‘hypocrites’ – wrong kinds of moslems) if it furthers the spread of Islam.
Here’s a link to the interview in question (I’ve been looking for the article where Begum’s ‘job’ under Islamic State is outlined – I think Macer Gifford touches on it in this interview:
https://youtu.be/owuf2KC0iww

stephen6000

>”So I would be interested if you could tell me what Britain and its real citizens would gain by allowing Begum, and those like her, back.”
The trouble is I don’t feel that I know enough about Begum to be able to argue this case any longer. (I hope British security knows more and I hope Javid is able to make a wise decision – I don’t have as much general confidence as you do in ‘democratically elected home secretaries’. (One of them was responsible for the Windrush Scandal – I wonder what happened to her!)) So I would rather not answer this point or any of your others in terms of Begum specifically, but instead discuss them in general terms from now on.
“>I don’t base my notions of what should happen to her on my emotions – I think being specially lenient with her is a RATIONALLY bad option.”
Obviously this is affected by my previous point. But I would say this in general terms. You have declined to curb your overt hatred of ISIS members in the context of these discussions. Isn’t there a danger, then, that your judgements might be based to an extent on emotion without your realising it?
But moving away from such ad hominem matters and onto something more substantive, I would like to explain why I think that if you are an incompatibilist, you should want to use punishment sparingly.
I take it that there is a moral presumption against causing suffering to any sentient being. But being a presumption only, it can be defeated under certain circumstances. One defeating reason might be that one wants to secure some overriding advantage either for the sufferer or (more controversially) for others. But most ethicists would agree, I think, that one has to be very conservative about such defeats of the fundamental anti-suffering presumption, as they could easily be made to justify all kinds of callousness towards people (and other animals), especially when the beneficiaries and the sufferers are not the same individuals. But here is where desert comes in. If the beings whose suffering one is thinking of causing for the sake of a greater benefit ‘deserve’ that suffering, then most people would agree that this should make it easier to justify going ahead. If, on the other hand, (as I contend) nobody ever deserves to suffer, one won’t be able to appeal to this idea and justifying punishment will be that much harder.

leonard sisyphus mann

Has anyone else heard of, or tried, Gab’s new App called ‘Dissenter’?
Its by-line is “The Comment Section of the Internet”
It seems to create a free-speech comment section for all and any URLs on the web, thus meaning that sites can’t ‘hide’ by not allowing comments, or by censorship, banning or blacklisting.
If successful this could be a useful free-speech tool, and whilst free speech can be a minefield for paedophiles, it’s better than being shut out of the dialogue, unable to speak of things we know infinitely more about than the knee-jerk mob.
Moreover it is run by Gab, which is proving one to be very robust on free speech (excessively so for some people I don’t doubt, but I have found the discussions and debates there much better and more civilised than at Twitter – and there is enough variety of points of view that the inevitable extremists there have their opinions well-tested and criticised).
I’m giving it a go, though I’m so far only registered under a normie identity so can’t see how the system responds to the presence of a paedophile – but I’ll set up a ‘campaigning’ identity soon, and throw a bone into the cage and see what comes out to take a bite at it.
Here’s the URL – https://dissenter.com/

prodigaljohn

Godspeed, good sir!

leonard sisyphus mann

Thanks! It’s very new and still a bit ‘buggy’, but a great concept which I hope will catch on.

eqfoundation

This Dissenter Extension is honestly exciting!
I’ve had a gab.ai account for over a year, and I’ve got Chrome installed…so, I snapped up the extension pretty quick…signed in…and, as far as I can tell, it’s working…Left a comment on my own blog URL…
…Does anybody else using this extension see it?
https://ourlovefrontier.wordpress.com/
I am wondering about security issues…somebody wanting to post a bunch of sensitive information associated with your URL…you just don’t have any control to stop it…only to hide it from yourself, from what I see…
…Not that you can much stop people from posting things about you online, anyway…but, still.

leonard sisyphus mann

Yes, your Dissenter comment is coming through loud and clear (“I am the owner of Our Love Frontier… let me know what you think! :-)”)
I’d have left my own comment but I’m still operating under a normie identity.
I think Dissenter could be a real game-changer – making the internet a truly free-speech platform – it just needs a greater variety of voices using it now – there is a lot of really extreme far-right stuff, anti-semitism etc – and it’s very centred on American politics – but it’s early days yet.

eqfoundation

This is awesome…I like it a lot…
It’s like having a “micro blog” merged into your web browser…which associates comments with website URLs.
It’s beautiful, because the comments are stored on their own server…this does nothing to alter any website [it’s all “contained” in the browser]…so, it should be resistant to law suits.
I might leave a post about this on my blog…I really like this.
…Just so long as the people behind it, don’t go insane.
Even Freenet and TOR have had their issues, with people bending to pressure, and compromising their own commitment to the principle of free speech…and the free exchange of information…which had a negative impact on the projects, themselves.

eqfoundation

Is dissenter still working for you?
This is possibly a glitch on their side…but, I have little faith in the integrity of common people who claim to champion free speech…
My gab.ai account is just fine, intact and working…but the dissent app/website gives the following message.
“This account has been suspended for violating the Gab.com Terms of Service or Community Guidelines.”
…Which is really staggering, given that I would not expect a company claiming to revere the U.S. first amendment, with an app that is supposed to guarantee legal open speech [and combat literally what I seem to be running into, with them, right now], to consider half a dozen [or less] short posts to test the app out, to be “violating their TOS or community guidelines”.
The posts were incredibly tame.
But then…I don’t know…maybe the service is giving everybody this message…I don’t care to go through opening up a new account, right now.

leonard sisyphus mann

Yes, my Dissenter account is still up. As is my Gab account. But, till now, I’ve been using both accounts more for campaigning on FGM and related issues, rather than for paedo stuff. I guess someone considers anything pro-paedo as ‘violating terms of service…’.
But looking at your Gab followers and recent postings it seems like things are working fine on Gab for paedophiles.
I’m surprised that you were banned from Dissenter but not from Gab. Were you running Dissenter and Gab from the same ID/account? Or did you set up a new ID for Dissenter?
Dissenter is such a great idea. I hope they don’t start censoring unacceptable or unpopular opinions. I consider, for example, antisemitism, which there is a lot of on Gab (to a lesser extent on Dissenter), profoundly unacceptable – but the great thing is that myself, and many others, can and do counter and rebut these opinions with facts and reason. That is why Gab is exciting – it is Twitter for people who are not scared of encountering differing opinions, people who prefer to debate and argue out differences of opinion, rather than taking the coward’s route to censorship.
So it would be disappointing, very disappointing, to find that Dissenter draws the line at anything that is short of critical of paedophilia. However, it seems that it’s OK to be pro-paedo on Gab… so it’s a bit puzzling. You do say in your last Gab post that what you posted was “objectively legal”, but maybe:
1/ as paedos we have a different idea of what is and isn’t ‘legal’
2/ listening to Tim Pool’s discussion with Twitter Boss Jack Dorsey on the Joe Rogan podcast (https://youtu.be/DZCBRHOg3PQ – it’s very long but worth listening to by anyone concerned with the interface between Big Techno and Free Speech) it’s clear that moderation for sites like Twitter, Facebook, and presumably Gab/Dissenter is contracted-out, often to countries that are non-Western, and that moderation is based on hugely complex rules and can be quite arbitrary and subjective.
Have you been offered any means of appealing the decision?

eqfoundation

“Were you running Dissenter and Gab from the same ID/account? Or did you set up a new ID for Dissenter?”
I signed in with the exact same EQFoundation account.
Although I have less than 20 posts at the moment, yes…Gab has actually been very smooth for us…It’s just not nearly as active as Twitter, from what I can see.
It’s hard to make the transition, even though I’ve had this account for about a year and a half…I cant integrate Gab into my blog, like I can Twitter…and you just don’t remember to make the Gab posts manually.
I was thinking Dissenter might be the most convenient bridge, for that gap.
As to pro-pedophile…I only had a few things posted…one acknowledged my ownership of Our Love Frontier…The others were sharing some of my posts, about Michael Jackson stuff going on…and the Desmond is Amazing fiasco, too.
Nothing explicitly “pro pedophile” ended up in the mix…What I commented on, was social issues…and that was in the blog posts…What ended up on dissenter, was nothing more than titles and links…Some [all?] of them making it to my Gab account.
If this isn’t a glitch [and you are the first person to verify to me, that the service is still functioning], then it seems they suspended my account based on who I am, and nothing more.
…I don’t know if I can even put into words, how severe a betrayal this behavior is, to Gab’s own stated principles and charter…let alone, to it’s very user base.
I hold them to a much higher standard, given their history.
“1/ as paedos we have a different idea of what is and isn’t ‘legal’”
In their TOS or Community Standards, they explicitly state that they are using U.S. jurisdiction as their base, in making such decisions.
My Dissenter posts were no more than half a dozen…possibly less…You saw the one…The others simply me making Dissenter posts on the pages of a few of my blog posts [the Desmond post, and a few other MJ related posts Possibly Tom’s Book, also]…There is zero question about the legality.
Everything that ended up on those few Dissenter posts [the friendly “tell me what you think” post, aside], you can find in the post titles on my main blog, and on my Gab account.
One would have to be insane, to call that illegal…If that is illegal, then what is left on Dissenter/Gab, that isn’t?
I’ll watch that video…I don’t believe I have, yet…Thanks!
“Have you been offered any means of appealing the decision?”
There is only the typical, lame and unspecific accusation of “violating TOS or CG” [the likes of which I’m sure all of us have seen, plenty of times before…and recognize what total, utter B.S. they are].
I went through TOS and CG…finding at least one weasel term/guideline…typical “it’s our site, so we can do anything we want to your account”, kind of stuff…Words that don’t specify any certain type of behavior, but they could be subjectively applied to anything…[Again, we all know these types of TOS and CGs].
I found a link to Gab Support, so I started by making a Gab post to them, with a few screen shots, asking what’s going on with this…Hopefully, this can be resolved through that rout.
I also found a legal@gab.ai address.
There is no automated process, nor guidance, on addressing wrongful suspensions, from what I’ve found.
At this point, I just want to get to the bottom of whether Gab is going to reverse the suspension, or stand by it, and if the latter…extract a reason out of them, as to why they claim this is justified.
I want them to actually take a position, and clarify it in public.
As to the app, itself…I presume I can merely log out of my Gab account, create a different one [or an account with one of the other services it works with], and just pick up under a new identity…I just don’t feel like doing that, right now…
This incident has flicked my “on” switch…and Gab has my teeth sunk deep into it’s hide, at the moment.
I’m way more interested in how this plays out, and how they handle this, than I am in actually using the app.
Not that I want to make any kind of scene, but if a service like Gab is going to allow something like this to stand…it’s user base and the public, deserves to know.
It’s total hypocrisy…and as someone who has been supportive of Gab, including through all the political nonsense…I don’t take kindly to being mistreated, like this.

eqfoundation

…Of course…I’ll remain the nice, smooth sweetheart I always […nearly always…] am, while pursuing this issue.

leonard sisyphus mann

I’m seeing three posts on your Gab page that got there via Dissenter. Are those all the ones you posted from Dissenter? Or are there any Gab removed?
It would be curious if they banned you from Dissenter for a particular post, but kept that post on your Gab account – after all it is the Gab rules they claim you violated, not the Dissenter rules.
Of the three posts the only one I can imagine triggering a review is:
‘Leaving Neverland: Echoes of a Pedophilia Apologist’
Now, I’m pretty sure that the phrase ‘pedophilia apologist’ won’t itself be a problem as the phrase is commonly used on Gab/Dissenter, but in a pejorative sense – fine when attacking paedophiles.
But I notice that the video contained on the page linked to on your blog (Leaving Neverland: Echoes of a Pedophilia Apologist) right at the start displays in big letters “Graphic Sexual Content” over a photo of MJ with Wade Robson.
I can imagine that this could be enough to get you banned by some over-worked moderator in Mumbai who hasn’t time or inclination to watch through the 22 minute video and realise that the ‘sexual content’ is not visual, not is it ‘pornographic’, but words reporting what happened.
I guess they must have your account tagged as a paedophile apologist, but allow that. But they saw the words ‘sexual content’, were unwilling to watch the whole video in case there were a few seconds of naked boy flesh tucked away somewhere, and took the fast, safe and easy option of just banning you.
But it’s odd that your post has stayed up on Gab.

eqfoundation

Those were probably the only three…
…I attempted to post a few more links to my blog posts, a day or two later [via Dissenter], but it wasn’t successfully sending them to my Gab account.
I’ve since, shared a few links manually, on the Gab website [at my account].
It’s just crazy that three measly posts “somehow” managed to get enough attention…but, then…I do have at least 50 eyes on my blog, every single day…sometimes upwards of 100…The last week and a half have been all over the place…hitting almost 400, twice…I think around 700, once.
There’s probably a tattler out there, who saw our original exchange on this blog.
The only other thing…something glitchy happened, which landed me on some message bawling me out over alleged “rapid posting”, or something half accusing me of spamming, it seemed…The app kept freezing…I was just trying to get back to something like my profile.
That happened once…but it was literally the fault of the app.
If they took a look at the logs, no sane person is going to conclude I was spamming, or abusing the system in any way. I didn’t post anything during that incident, and I shut it down shortly thereafter.

Peter

Thanks as always for your interesting analysis. You may have seen today the news in Australia of Cardinal Pell’s conviction as well. Whilst he may well have abused these boys, I worry that this, as with the Jackson Film, contributes to the hysteria about adults who love boys. In effect we all become tarred with the same brush. Tom, you have much experience in these matters. I wonder what you think of the idea of developing a ‘boy-lover manifesto’ that begins to socialise a different narrative about this kind of love. Something that can be send proactively to media outlets, politicians, decision makers and people who influence cultural norms. Has it all been done before? Is it just too difficult for a sexual minority to be heard in this day and age, particularly one that is so very much vilified? Would love to hear your thoughts…Peter

Nada

Hikari’s blog is no more. Good backups is a requirement in these dark times, when even research is subject to extreme censorship.

bjmuirhead

Apparently, their commitment to freedom of speech is just as unbelievable as one would have suspected.
Below, for those who have not read it, Hikari’s last post, which I hope copies and paste’s properly, and I have to say that I am not going to put all the links in. As we all can see, it was not offensive in any way at all.
[TOC ADDS: Thanks for posting this BJ, but the good news, as you may know by now, is that anyone wanting to read Hikari’s blog can still do so at her own WordPress site, linked from the blogroll here at HTOC. So I have deleted the re-posting. As you say, BJ, there was nothing to which objection could reasonably be taken, and nothing that could conceivably be against the WordPress T&Cs. ]

Christian

Tom, before panicking, just click on “Hikari’s Blog” in your blogroll, and you will see that it is still there!

prodigaljohn

This is very odd. I just checked again, hours after first hearing this, and I’m still seeing Hikari’s Blog just fine. Why are Christian and I the only ones, so far, who can get on that site?

Explorer

Have just visited Hikari’s blog – for me, it is still working.

Sugarboy

I too can access the blog from my location.

Explorer

I asked Hikari herself, in the comment section of her blog, whether she had problems with WordPress admins / moderators. If something happened to her blog, she must have learned about it already!

Explorer

Anyway, Tom, it would be a good idea to check other Paedo-sphere WordPress blogs and see whether you can reach them,

Explorer

Well, no need to do it now – the situation is resolved, as I see (thanks, Christian!).

Christian

“This blog has been archived or suspended in accordance with our Terms of Service.”
The exact WP wording for a removed site (e.g., https://pigtailsinpaint.wordpress.com/) is:
“This site has been archived or suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service.”
with “Terms of Service” underlined as anchor to a link.
If you have a wording different from this official one, maybe you arrived on a malicious page set up by hijackers. Go again to Hikari’s blog and click the “reload” button to clear the cache.

bjmuirhead

This was exactly what I saw last night. To all intents and purposes it was official.

bjmuirhead

Christian, Last night (my time) when I checked, Hikari’s blog was gone, with the usual notice about terms and conditions. Much gladness to see that it is back.

Hikari

I’m not sure what happened. WordPress gave me no notification or email about this.

Explorer

It was a hackers’ trick designed to turn people away from your blog – and, I think, first and foremost from your UN-related letter-writing campaign, giving visitors a false impression that your blog was suspended by WordPress (while you were not). No surprise WordPress told you nothing – this is not their deed.
Some people really want the drawings and cartoons featuring fictional child erotica to be banned totally and globally. I think, for them it is effectively a sacrilege of a kind – an unforgivable blasphemy against the holy myth and symbol of the Innocent Child, a symbolic transgression of a sacred boundary separating the celestial purity of (asexual) Innocence from the earthly dirt of (sexual) Sinfulness.
Religiosity is forever; it is inevitable and indestructible in human beings. It may change its forms, but it will never disappear, being at the very core of human’s fundamental existential urge. So, in sociocultural circumstances where classic supernaturalist religion is no longer a dominant force, people will quickly find or create a lot of apparently secular ersatz-religions to fill the existential vacuum left by the failed churches. Some, like Richard Dawkins, will passionately worship deified natural science, imbuing it with providential qualities. And some will angrily and hatefully persecute the ones who test the durability of the Last Taboo – the intergenerational sexuality, with child sexuality and paedosexuality being two sides of it, meeting in convergence in consensual sexual play between generations – the play which may be seen as expression of freedom of bliss by some, yet perceived as a sacrilegious boundary violation by the others. For these latter, there is no difference between the symbolic and the real transgression – both are affront to the sacred boundary.
Sadly, these boundary-keepers are the dominant majority nowadays…

prodigaljohn

Nada, are you sure? I’m still getting on there just fine. (Although their servers may have yet to be updated, and this closure just happened within the previous 24 hours. Eventually I won’t see be able to it myself).
I am aware that BoyDaze was closed down not long ago, though… Indeed, let’s keep backups just in case.

Hikari

Hey, Explorer let me know what was going on with my blog. I was away for a few days and I didn’t even notice anything had happened to my account. I do keep backups though, so if my blog is ever hacked I will be able to repost the entries and comments.

Hikari

I use wget in a Linux terminal – I don’t want to link directly to the blog I got the tutorial from, but if you Duckduckgo “how to download your entire WordPress blog using wget archive’, it’s the first link. I also back up to https://archive.fo/

bjmuirhead

Brilliant, fantastic, thank you Hikari. Done, dusted, and saved.

eqfoundation

I would also like to know this…The supposed “blog backup” on this service, only gives you a tiny fraction of a fraction of the content of your blog…
I’m closing in on 5000 posts, and I probably have something like 150 pages [where my “websites” and special essays live].
I’d greatly like to know how to properly back up all of my blog [posts, pages and comments], so I don’t have to manually repost everything, should I ever have to move…but I’ve never figured out how to do it.
The actual content is saved on my hard drive, before it’s published to the internet…So, I’m not afraid of losing anything, in that regard.

leonard sisyphus mann

Your outline of an internationalist vision in an earlier comment strikes me as reasonable as an aspiration, not least because it pays respect to the value of the nation state.
I certainly have qualms with regard to the practicalities of achieving such a body and making it function, and the vulnerability of such a body to infiltration and corruption by ideologies and special interests. It’s the political equivalent of the kind of monoculture that guarantees that ‘crop failure’ becomes ‘famine’ – if the only existing system fails then everything fails. At least with nation states, individual states can fail or become dysfunctional or disruptive, and other nations are, to some extent, quarantined from the effects and can aid or support the failing nation and mitigate the consequences of failure.
As in Nature, variety and variability in politics, is a good guarantor of stability and resilience.
>”if to continue in the same manner looks likely to be disastrous (climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation) radical action may be the responsible course”
I agree that radical action is necessary in the face of pressing problems – not least the environmental ones you mention.
But, aspirations for a borderless world do not address a pressing problem but are ideologically driven – nor would a borderless world be a ‘relatively risk-free change for the better’.
A borderless world would (and I think an analysis of recent History – which is tending towards borderless – backs this up) merely transfer the lieu of conflict from inter-national conflicts to intra-national wars – civil wars.
Demographic shifts spread hostile ideologies and the autochthonous populations resist. A borderless world (which advancing transport technologies and networks is making the world) is a world riven with civil war – a browse through Wikipedia’s page for ‘ongoing armed conflicts’ seems to confirm this – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts – most conflicts are ‘civil wars’ and most conflicts are driven by expansionist internationalist ideologies – Islam in particular.
In a borderless world I do not see that Islamism and, say, Hinduism, or secularism, or Judaism, would be able to co-exist for long (think what would happen to Israel’s 6 million Jews if Israel’s borders went undefended for even a few hours… think of the 80 million Hindus killed by Islam’s expansion into the Hindu Kush and India…)
I’m currently reading Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’. In Eden, before the Fall, all animals lived together in harmony: the doe with the tiger, the worm with the bird. This is the a kind of ‘borderless world’ – a zoo without cages.
But in our un-ideal, post-lapsarian world we know that removing the bars on the zoo cages would result in bloodshed and slaughter at the claws and teeth of the biggest, most violent species.
>” It is not a million miles from Burkean conservatism to the “blood and soil” nostalgia of the Nazis themselves.”
Not a ‘million miles’, but maybe 999,999 miles?
To associate patriotism with its most extreme expressions is maybe to make the same kind of error as I might be accused of when associating ‘internationalism’ with its worst expressions – Fascism, Communism and Islam.
I think we can both agree that the ideal is found in a happy medium. I would argue that Capitalism gets it pretty much right – nations that trade with one another are generally at peace with one another – maybe a world in which every nation trades equitably with all the others might be the best form of internationalism?

stephen6000

This article looked promising, but its ‘jumping up and down, tearing your hair out moment’ came, for me, in the fourth paragraph. You’ll easily spot which sentence I mean:
https://iai.tv/articles/why-sexual-morality-does-not-exist-auid-1212
Otherwise, the article raised some interesting points, though I wasn’t entirely convinced by its defence of sexual exclusivity.

prodigaljohn

Yeah, the “Sex with minors is coercive, forceful, and hurtful because they lack rationality, and power. Therefore it’s wrong” bit. So those children need to be coerced, and forced into doing everything else their rational authority figures tell them, because it is right. Even if that hurts them. Regardless if the relationship was actually harmful or whatever, they’re going to shoe-horn it into the usual victim-narrative. And that’s why children cannot consent, most especially.
The definition of consent has been corrupted, where it’s entirely contextual, much in the same way of “sexism”, and “racism”. Only whites can be racist, because they supposedly have power and privilege over other ethnicities. Only males can be sexist, because they have power and privilege over females. And likewise it’s only adults can consent, because of their supposed power and privilege. Although, implicitly, women may not be in much of that position to consent anyway, so men are going to run foul against this.
I feel that, eventually, social arbiters are going to grow weary of this bogus appeal to higher notions, and just use arbitrary authority to decide whether a relationship, let alone sex, is allowed. Nevermind what’s actually going on between the partners, it’s no longer going to be “it’s because of x, y, and z that you can’t do this”, but “it’s wrong, because I said so. OBEY!”. I mean #metoo seems like a pretty clear sign we’re not faring well in our current dogma of consent. It’s like what Tom said once, something like, “Nobody can consent, not even adults!”.

stephen6000

>Yeah, the “Sex with minors is coercive, forceful, and hurtful because they lack rationality, and power. Therefore it’s wrong” bit
That’s the one. He really should have considered the views of some other philosophers, such as Kershnar, Primoratz and Benatar, which are a lot more nuanced. But maybe he didn’t know about them.

Debauch

When the subject of ‘minors’ came up he just reels off fallacies.
But I will agree on this point
” And we not only consent to being sexual objects, the trillions spent on perfume, cosmetics, deodorants, attractive clothes, and plastic surgery indicate that we want to be viewed as such”.

Debauch

For all those mostly women crying over the hostile treatment of the ISIS bride; Calling her a ‘child’, ‘groomed’ by what she may have seen online (maybe they should look a little closer to home, like her dad) Then they will have to apply the same logic to this hideous individual. In a perverse way the timing is perfect.
this judge didn’t think ‘he’ was “vulnerable”.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/judge-lifts-ban-on-naming-killer-of-sixyearold-alesha-macphail-a4074116.html

galileo1439

Anyone hear of the big youtube scandal over “soft core pedophile rings”?

Debauch

Well they have been banging on about ‘paedos’ on YT since its arrival over a decade ago. It has rendered many video players redundant.
But you have to ask yourself, all those warriors out there flagging videos, do they flag them first or after they’ve shot their load over themselves. After the climax the guilt kicks in so they must purify themselves by going after those that do the same. A common comment on YT threads is “so why are YOU here then”.

stephen6000

REPLY TO LSM ON THE SHAMIMA BEGUM CASE, STARTING HERE FOR EASIER READING:
I think there may be a general philosophical difference between us. I see countries as essentially no more than administrative regions that may encompass people with many cultures and ways of living. When people talk about ‘British values’, the things they cite, such as decency, freedom, tolerance and fair play, don’t sound to me distinctively British. They sound like universal values. We should be working to promote an internationalist outlook, not a narrowly nationalist one. The concepts of ‘giving allegiance to your country’ and of ‘treason’ belong to the latter, not the former.
Of course, I realise, that this is not the mind-set of most people, who think of our nation as representing ‘us’ in some deep sense and as a source of protection in a hostile world. The trouble is, this mentality is not doing us much good because others adopt the same competitive approach (our gang against your gang), which makes the world more dangerous for everyone. Of course, if we were suddenly to abolish our armed forces and stop engaging in espionage and so on, the threats wouldn’t suddenly disappear. But we need to convince others we are not trying to destroy them and sometimes this requires thinking outside the box. (Remember the Egyptian President Sadat’s peace initiatives towards Israel in the seventies.)
I suspect offences like treason are going to continue to be recognised for a long time to come. But as I think we should be trying to move away from the nationalist mind-set that it seems to be associated with, we should give people the benefit of the doubt where we can. It might be different if Begum were accused of committing other sorts of crimes of unequivocal badness (such as taking part in actual killings), but I don’t think this has been suggested (and I would still argue that in that case, she should face the normal sanctions for such crimes, not deprivation of citizenship).
If Begum returns to this country, she can be monitored. In fact, our government may be in a better position to do this than others. If we continue to insist that she should not come back, despite the fact that she is British and appears to have no other nationality, wouldn’t this be in effect ‘nimbyism’ in relation to people?

leonard sisyphus mann

Yes, I think we differ radically here.
In my opinion, nation-states are imperfect but they are preferable to internationalism; and nation-states have played no small role in bringing the world to its present prosperity and peace.
It seems that most major wars have been prosecuted by those with internationalist ambitions – think of WWII, of the wars and invasions motivated by Communism, think of the Ottoman empire, the Umayyad and Abassid caliphates, the Safavid Empire and the Mughal invasions of India…. these (fascism, communism, Islam) are internationalist ideologies which seek to impose themselves through war and tyranny and that history has revealed over and over again, as guaranteed to fail catastrophically and genocidally.
And only the most totalitarian polity could impose unified identity and goals and administration on such a huge and diverse entity as ‘Mankind’. How would this super-state function as a democracy? how could the aspirations of, say, Islamists live alongside those of Secularists? or Hindus? or Jews?
It strikes me that it will take a phenomenal amount of coercion/re-education/’population cleansing’ to eliminate such irreconcilable differences.
And wouldn’t such a super-state, to be democratic, also need to be monolingual?
It is no coincidence successful nations tend to organise themselves round one or two languages. Democracy requires a free and accessible media – and the media has to be available to all within the polity – and citizens need to be able to hold accountable the media of their political opponents. Given that few people can be extremely poly-lingual won’t most languages have to be eliminated? Won’t those who speak languages other than the official language(s) be effectively excluded from the democratic process (how would Tamils or Hungarians participate in such a ‘democracy’?).
It seems that the internationalist utopia is just ‘totalitarianism’ presented in a speciously flattering light. And like all internationalist utopias, its (inevitable) failure will be attributed to populations who are not sufficiently ‘islamic/communist/fascistic’ – populations that (regretfully) must be eliminated or repressed for the sake of achieving utopia.
And Utopia becomes forever one good genocide away from realisation.
As to the ‘value’ question – we can eliminate much dead wood by stating what are definitely NOT our values: totalitarianism is not a British value (English political history can be credibly analysed as one of the people seizing accountability from their rulers); the execution of people for drinking alcohol, smoking, listening to music, for homosexuality are clearly not modern British values; nor the enslavement or execution of those who adhere to different (or no) faiths; nor cruel and unusual punishments; nor the treatment of women and girls as chattels; nor FGM; nor slave-ownership; nor arbitrary and pointless animal cruelty.
I wish we had the luxury to define British values in terms of Sense of Humour, playing by the rules etc – but the challenges British values face today are such that we need to defend the essentials – Monty Python and Cricket are luxuries when there are those (BBC, Sky News, the Times, C4) who are elevating returning jihadis to the status of heroes and heroines, victims of anti-jihadi oppression and prejudice.
As to Begum – she should be tried by the true victims of her alleged crimes (or the victims of those she aided and abetted) – the Iraqis, the Syrians, the Kurds, the Yazidis, the homosexuals, the insufficiently Islamic (whom mohammed condemns as ‘hypocrites’ in his koran) etc etc that her ideology has murdered, raped, enslaved, tortured and rendered homeless.
If she is found ‘not guilty’, she should (as a ‘citizen’ of the Caliphate) seek out other expressions of the Caliphate, such as Boko Haram, al-Shabab, al-Qaeda and offer her womb to them for the pumping out the future generation of jihadis.

leonard sisyphus mann

There is much I would like to address in your robust defence of a single world order but I’ll limit myself to a couple of points…
– do you accept that Communism, Fascism and Islam are all internationalist political philosophies? And could you point me towards a truly internationalist political philosophy (i.e. one that rejects the nation-state) that hasn’t proven disastrous every time it is has been attempted?
– how does internationalism cope with the existence of irreconcilable ideologies (e.g. Hinduism and Islamism)? Is there any solution to this problem that doesn’t amount to some form of totalitarian ‘elimination of the problem’ by genocide or indoctrination? or by accepting that some local wars and genocides must result (for example think what would happen to the Palestinian Jews if the state of Israel were eliminated).
I suspect that this problem, and similar problems connected to geographically-defined peoples adhering and maintaining traditions, practices and beliefs would oblige the existence of de facto ‘nation states’.
At least with nation-states one can have, say, ‘Sweden’ and ‘Iran’ existing with their own polity.
A final question – what is to be gained by this single world order? I suspect that ‘peace’ could only be achieved after a protracted period of genocide and tribal war, that would occur in the free-for-all consequent on the dissolution of borders .
Convince me that this would not be the case.

bjmuirhead

And could you point me towards a truly internationalist political philosophy (i.e. one that rejects the nation-state) that hasn’t proven disastrous every time it is has been attempted?

Babism—Baha’i. Hasn’t been attempted yet, because they are determined to do it slowly and peacefully, irrespective of how pathetic and narrow and ultra-conservative their morality happens to be. (Don’t masturbate! It is horrendously dangerous and bad for you! Dang, if I didn’t wank, I’d have no fun at all! That’s one good reason for leaving Baha’i. It was a good enough reason for the beloved first wife, so it sure was good enough for me. —Apologies for the inappropriate humor.)

leonard sisyphus mann

It is probably because it is peaceful that it can never happen.
I can’t see any way that a world order can emerge that is not tyrannical or that does not require coercion or the elimination of cultural or local differences.

bjmuirhead

Many of our beliefs are mere prejudices, however well backed by history which is, in turn, merely the weight of everything we have done and believe must always be done—one could say it is a misuse of history.
It’s a bit like O! We can’t feed our families unless we destroy the environment by (choose your pet destructive behaviour)!
I don’t know that Baha’i will ever achieve its goal, but it grows. … No steam left. Comment ends.

leonard sisyphus mann

It depends on how you view History.
History, I would argue, can be viewed as a series of experiments in how to live and how to run a society. As such it has everything to teach us, if we are ready to be its students.
The study of History tends to make us cautious and conservative – there are more ways of cocking things up than there are of getting things right and if something’s working then, yes, it’s best not to mess about with the settings too much.
And History also teaches us reasonable criteria for ‘working’ – I accuse ahistorical utopians of using free-floating (because ahistorical) dreams and fantasies as their criterion for ‘working’ . And anything that falls short as needing to be not just tinkered with, but subject to revolution. And, of course, when you base your political ideals on free-floating dreams, that guarantees that Reality will always be radically unsatisfactory.
This is why ‘muddling through’ is generally the best way of running a political system: advancing empirically, trying small changes and advances and seeing how they work out.
And where revolutions are justified, they are justified on empirical basis – the ‘Arab’ Spring – though doomed to failure – were based on peoples aspiring to conditions that they witnessed elsewhere (not in their imaginations) – modernity, democracy, freedom of thought and belief. They were not utopian revolutions – just an aspiration to swim with the stream of Progress rather than against it (unfortunately they failed because they assumed that could advance whilst still shackled to an ideology guaranteed to hobble any society that practices it).
Utopian and universalistic politics are inherently dangerous – they reject the wisdom of History. Small ‘c’ conservative philosophy has the disadvantage of being politically boring – it offers no big utopian prospects to the human mind, which is restless, always seeking for a bigger project – but I suspect that countries that have developed empirically rather than ideologically are the ones that are most prosperous and stable and that last longest.

leonard sisyphus mann

No, but I guess I should. I’ve come across him a lot second hand, though.
But, yes, I’m realising, in my old age, that conservativism has a lot of sense in it (though I’d describe myself as a Social Democrat) – it’s only when that (and those) which one formerly took for granted (and even despised) is existentially threatened that you start to realise its true value, and start wanting to defend the huge achievements and gifts which our ancestors have left us.
This is what makes life exciting, and tragic – that one’s ideas and understanding of the world can be constantly renewed and revised, as new evidence and facts and ideas become available.
I take it you are not Burke’s greatest fan, Tom.

prodigaljohn

>I can’t see any way that a world order can emerge that is not tyrannical or that does not require coercion or the elimination of cultural or local differences.
You mean like in Deus Ex?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxWlJ_muK0I?start=49&w=560&h=315%5D

Eren

Hey Leonard… what do you mean by “arbitrary and pointless animal cruelty”? Pointless animal cruelty is just slaughtering a goat in the middle of the street?
Imagine that someone takes a dog and pays to be beaten to death, only for their personal satisfaction or that of others, we all agree that killing a dog by beatings for pleasure is “arbitrary and pointless animal cruelty”.
Now imagine that someone pays someone else to take an animal and separate it from its family, subject it to overcrowding, castrate and pull out its nails, and finally slit its throat (you need to stunning him before, if not is cruelty!) or electrocute him and cut it to eat its corpse, because eating it gives it pleasure or simply because of social inertia (it is not a vital need because we do not need to consume animals to live and be healthy).
Ah it’s true that you are vegetarian, what a coincidence…. well… “I don’t pay to kill them” And that about of slavery and sexual abuse? maybe to have animals retained in a work camp (well, a farm?), make pregnant against their will (and raping them with a metal tube to put the semen into them), controlling their pregnancies and taking away their children (the flesh of a being in their infancy is very precious for flesh pleasures, real child rapists would agree with that), taking the product of their sexuality (milk and eggs) and finally sending them to the slaughterhouse as a final reward for their life of slavery for human masters to enjoy a glass of milk and fried eggs because that drinking a glass of rice milk and tofu sausages is only for those “elitist” vegans “who believe they have moral superiority” and “hate humanity. You not say that things ok… but… slavery remains incorrect without murder.
So there are no “humane” and “cruelty-free” ways of killing (or exploiting) animals, of killing wants to go on living, of exploiting wants not to be subdued, that is not humane and cruelty-free. It is just as cruel and unnecessary to slit the throat of a goat as it is to electrocute a chicken or a pig in order to serve them on a plate.
How curious, we don’t say “to shoot political dissidents in the head is humanitarian and cruelty-free death,” “it’s okay to rape less,” or “black slavery with humanity is acceptable. We do not do ecological rape or a “monday without rape”.
Maybe it bothers us that black people were forced to picked up cotton and women were sexually enslaved by mafias or in other countries, because of course racism and sexism are morally repugnant, specism is not, of course…. or maybe it’s because we don’t need blacks picking up cotton or a harem of women, but if we “need” to eat a good plate of veal or some fried eggs or an ice-cream for when we enter the summer while we go to the zoo. What by the way the zoos are not concentration camps, those are lies of the vegans who don’t even have money to go to the zoo. Is true that in the past there was zoos with black people? what an aberration…
Some say that the specism is correct, that “it is observed that the animals discriminate by group and species”, that is to say that as the animals discriminate between them we can do it with them, idem with eating meat, as the lions eat meat… But we are not lions. I would also like them to justify sex with corpses, rape, cannibalism and infanticide, because these behaviors are observed daily with animals.
So what is the conclusion? “Animal mistreatment” is when we do something to animals that we would not want done to us BUT we have no interest in doing it (e.g., kicking a cat, raping a dog), whereas when we have interest (eating fried fish or a plate of veal) it is not “animal mistreatment” is “law of nature”, it is “the food chain”, it is “we were born to dominate”, it is “the animals are inferior to us”, it is “we are omnivores”, wee need to eat everything but human beings, of course, in that case it is better to starve.
But in the end it is that behind these excuses there will always be those who believe that their species and their rights are above those of others, what a pity that they don’t come from the space another superior species and enslave all of us humans… and when they are going to kill him or rape him or put him in a cage for life to the one who says that the animals are to serve us and to make food of them that doesn’t say “respect me, don’t discriminate against me for being of another species”…. “If it is the food chain, dude,” would says the master.
Well, in the end you’re actually right, if we’re better than them, we do it in “slaughterhouses”, the name says it all, we’re civilized, we don’t kill goats in the middle of the street. Sarcasm end.

leonard sisyphus mann

I agree that we should not eat meat. But we should not let our ideals blind us to the need to make ethical evaluations germane to the world we find ourselves in. Likewise, we should live in societies where there is not crime, but this fact does not relieve us of the need to work out what the best way of coping with crime is. We live in imperfect worlds and our reasoning needs to be applied to the imperfect world, not to the utopias and dreams in our heads, where everything is simple.
SO, given that we live in societies that eat animals, and that are going to continue doing so for the future, we must must distinguish what are good, better, worse, bad ways of slaughtering those animals. I suggest that minimising suffering is the most important criterion (though I would also suggest that minimising the number of animals slaughtered is a good criterion – but no one germane to the ‘humane vs halal’ debate).
I find in your comment no grounds by which Islamic slaughter is preferable to scientifically-determined methods of slaughter (when evaluated in terms of minimising suffering).
Or maybe you are arguing that animal suffering should not be taken into account when evaluating slaughter methods?
It is LESS barbaric to stun animals first before killing them, and then kill them whilst unconscious as quickly as possible. It is MORE barbaric to leave them unecessarily conscious and give them unecessarily lingering deaths (and I’ll remind you that one halal method of slaughter is skinning alive – a very slow death indeed). The ideal would be not to kill animals at all for our pleasure, but saying that does not answer the practical issue in front of us.
So on the variable of how much suffering we allow when slaughtering scientific methods are simply superior to Islamic methods.

stephen6000

>”If she is found ‘not guilty’, she should (as a ‘citizen’ of the Caliphate) seek out other expressions of the Caliphate, such as Boko Haram, al-Shabab, al-Qaeda and offer her womb to them for the pumping out the future generation of jihadis.”
But, as I pointed out earlier, if she is let back into this country, she can be monitored and controlled. She’s less likely to produce future jihadis. Wouldn’t that be better for everyone?

leonard sisyphus mann

How would we stop her producing future jihadis on UK soil? Have her sterilized? De-Islamify her (so-called de-radicalisation programmes have, apparently, proven ineffective with ISIS adherents)? Take her children away from her?
A nation’s first duty (I would argue) is to protect its citizens.
Countries with no moslems, and certainly with no fundamentalist moslems suffer no islamic terrorism – on that basis I think it is safest, and therefore best for the real citizens, to have as few people with this ideology amongst us.
If you don’t wish to contract smallpox, then it strikes me as a no-brainer that you should not encourage those infected with smallpox into your home.

stephen6000

>”How would we stop her producing future jihadis on UK soil? Have her sterilized? De-Islamify her (so-called de-radicalisation programmes have, apparently, proven ineffective with ISIS adherents)? Take her children away from her?”
It’s certainly difficult when you start to consider the details. I’ll grant you that.
But there is another aspect of this that should be considered. I’ve noticed that you have adopted a very hostile, almost a crude, tone when talking about this young woman (‘offer her womb to them for the pumping out the future generation of jihadis’). But one could take a different stance. Perhaps she just made a mistake. Any of us could have ‘fallen in with the wrong crowd’ at some time in our lives. You might appeal to the idea of moral responsibility. But if so, you would be on dangerous ground. Even one of your heroes, Sam Harris, doesn’t believe in free will.
Maybe you’re right that the first duty of a nation is to protect its own citizens. But this does not remove the need to assess risk, otherwise we would not let anyone into the country. I suggested she should be given the benefit of the doubt. I get the impression that you think she doesn’t DESERVE this. But can you justify that contention given (as I would see it) legitimate doubts about free will?

leonard sisyphus mann

Yes, I accept your point about free will. But would you apply the same ‘benefit of the doubt’ to ALL malicious actors? Murderers, rapists, terrorists etc?
Harris’s position is not: ‘free will is an illusion, therefore people should not be held accountable for their actions’. He acknowledges that incentives and sanctions are effective in encouraging discouraging behaviour. Therefore, whilst granting that free will is an illusion, sanctions and rewards are nevertheless necessary for encouraging desirable behaviour and discouraging undesirable behaviour.
People who engage in terrorism, or who aid and abet terrorism need to be punished and be seen to be punished in order to simply discourage such acts.
As to the ‘risk’ question – the home secretary will have access to information concerning Begum which neither we, nor the media, have access to. I understand that she was a leader of a brigade of women whose job was to patrol the streets punishing any violations of Sharia amongst women. She was not just a passive ‘housewife’.
Ultimately I place more trust in a democratically elected home secretary on this question than I do in those whose wishes for Begum seem to be significantly motivated by fear or by ideology.
I also suspect that Sajid Javid may be quite similar to Maajid Nawaz – someone who, as a believer, has encountered Islamism close-up, and who is MORE alert to its true dangers and evils and insidiousness than are ignorant Panglossian ‘Kufars’.
>”I’ve noticed that you have adopted a very hostile, almost a crude, tone when talking about this young woman ”
Yes, and I make no apology for that. I have little problem with hate when it is a response to something that deserves hate.
That does not preclude ‘understanding’ – given that one’s enemies seek to diminish or destroy one, it makes sense to understand one’s enemies even better than one understands one’s friends.

stephen6000

>” I understand that she was a leader of a brigade of women whose job was to patrol the streets punishing any violations of Sharia amongst women. She was not just a passive ‘housewife’.”
If true, this would of course be relevant. I could not so easily defend letting her back into the country in that case.
Even if you doubt free will, you can still in some cases justify incentives and punishments to control people’s behaviour All three of us – you, Harris and I – would agree about that. But free will scepticism – which you seem to share – is nevertheless a problem for you, precisely because it is directly relevant to the concern about your tone when discussing Begum and her associates. You say you make no apologies for that tone, as you hate her. Maybe you can’t HELP hating her to some extent. (No free will!) But you also say “I have little problem with hate when it is a response to something that deserves hate.” But how do you justify appealing to desert if there is no free will? In the absence of free will, basing your decisions on how Begum should be treated on what she ‘deserves’ and on your hatred of her is wrong. On the position I would defend (technically described as incompatibilist determinism), every time we punish someone, they are undeserving. We might therefore conclude that we should never punish anyone, as it is always unjust. As I said above, that is not my view. I think that sometimes we do have to make people suffer even though it is, in a way, unjust. But if you do adopt this incompatibilist position, it implies at least that you will use punishment very sparingly. This does not necessarily entail that Begum should not be punished. But a more dispassionate approach is advisable.

leonard sisyphus mann

Stephen6000 – I’ll post my reply at the top of the page – to avoid the spaghetti-effect.

Christian

I will start another thread. I have not seen any BL-ers mention Eric Stenbock (1860–1895), a “decadent” writer. Beautiful young boys feature regularly in his short stories, and his three collections of poetry contain many love poems; in the majority of them, the gender of the beloved is hidden (it was “the love that dare not speak its name”), but in some of them it is clearly said in the title or in the verses that it is love for a boy. On the other hand I have not seen any love poem by him addressed to a girl or a woman.
I cite excerpts from two poems in Love, Sleep and Dreams, his first collection of verses, reprinted by Snuggly Books. In a poem titled “Paidika” (in Greek letters) he writes:
Thou art fairer than woman, and warmer,
As the sun is more warm than the moon;
Thou art fairer than woman, and softer,
As the dawn is more soft than the noon.

In another poem titled “Zizania” (also in Greek letters) he writes:
And if some maiden beautiful
Become thy love and joy,
Think on that passionate male heart
That loved thee as a boy.

His two other collections of poems, Myrtle, Rue and Cypress and The Shadow of Death, are available in PDF on Internet Archive.

Linca

Thank you Christian for this introduction to Eric Stenbock and his beautiful poetry. We need to remember boys before they are turned into monster men.
Linca

bjmuirhead

In response to Leonard, and avoiding a long string of words trailing down the page…

But I’d also ask whether Japan is, or was, really quite as paedo-permissive as it is often made out.

I suspect that the notion that Japanese culture accepts paedophilic relationships arises from a very small aspect of Japanese manga and anime, specifically lolicon. One of the many papers which discuss this can be found here:
https://web.uri.edu/iaics/files/Perry-R.-Hinton.pdf
The age of consent in Japan also contributes to this, being 13; an epehbephile’s paradise, perhaps?
But I have never read anything which suggests that sexual relations with prepubescent children is acceptable in Japan, nor that non-sexual adult-child relationships are acceptable.
Another paper, available at https://www.academia.edu/3665383/Lolicon_The_Reality_of_Virtual_Child_Pornography_in_Japan, notes that the urge to view lolicon does not “necessarily reflect the desires of viewers or influence them to physically abuse girls”, before noting that there doesn’t appear to be the same rate of “sexual abuse” of girls as in the USA.
The implication, reflected in both papers, is that Japan does not have a particularly accepting attitude to paedophilic relationships, but that such relationships do not occur on a widespread basis in Japan. Or, more likely, there are fewer legal cases (arrests, and so on) in Japan, which may well be due to the low ago of consent, rather than there being no paedophiles there!

bjmuirhead

My suspicion is that you are correct. A basic google scholar search turned up nothing, but there must be some information on this out there. Clearly a more refined search is required.

Debauch

I will start back up the top. Regarding Japan….Do you remember the Stacy Dooley video I shared here where she visited Japan — It was an emotive documentary about how young girls are admired there, and how it is widely accepted in Japanese culture. You mentioned her lack of knowledge in this area. don”t forget the Milton Diamond study conducted there in the 1980s.
They also have no problem with young Sumo boys almost in the nude, I’m sure if they did that here, they’d be dressed as some sort of child stig!

Debauch

Quite the reverse Tom.

Yure

The United Nations are moving to ban cartoon/fictional child pornography. More details below.
https://www.boychat.org/messages/1524230.htm

prodigaljohn

Is it me, or does the UN just have it in for Japan?
Actually they just have it in for independent, free, creative expression from where ever; what with that whole Article 13 debacle, from two years ago.

Yure

It is not just you. They are trying to get Japan. The fact that they aren’t accepting suggestions written in Japanese only makes it more unfair.

David

If we were in the nineteenth century, the UN would want to ban homosexuality, anal sex, oral sex, masturbation, etc.
The UN must be stopped. The UN is becoming a machine of oppression.

Yure

It’s a tool of cultural imperialism at the hands of United States and United Kingdom.

prodigaljohn

Hey Tom,
I just remembered in an interview you mentioned how churches in the Netherlands were supportive of paedophiles around the 70’s/80’s. You know of any specific examples of those who were in favor that I can look up? Names, article, publications, etc.?

prodigaljohn

oh, duh. You mentioned them in the Radical Case.
Thanks!

stephen6000

Given that attitudes are so different now, not only in the UK, but in the Netherlands as well, I believe, I wonder if these church leaders have subsequently been criticised for the stance they took then, in something like the way Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt have been attacked for their involvement with the NCCL during the time that PIE was an affiliate member of that body.

prodigaljohn

Hey Tom,
I have a message for you. You have an email address that I can send it to?

Debauch

Interesting debate about Shamima Begum the ISIS bride who wants to return to the UK. Whatever your views on that, It has brought up interesting debates on TV and Radio about what is considered a “child”, the law, consent, “grooming” and free will.

stephen6000

I think she should be allowed back, but, along with all the others, there should be an assessment by the security services to determine to what extent she should be monitored. As they are UK citizens, they are our responsibility. The emphasis, though, should be on public protection rather than retributive justice. I’m not sure whether her age is such an important factor in itself. Anyone can be vulnerable to propaganda. Most of those loudly proclaiming that she should ‘rot in Hell’ are victims of propaganda, albeit of a different sort from that of IS.

leonard sisyphus mann

This raises the question of whether ‘citizenship’ is merely a question of having the right documents, or whether it is something more fundamental.
I would argue that citizenship is about aspiring to be part of a Nation’s ‘project’, following a trajectory set by its history, laws (especially common law), values, mores, traditions, and culture.
This does not preclude change, enrichment and adaptation – but I suggest that Sharia runs diametrically counter to anything that could be described as the UK’s project and trajectory.
(I’m leafing through my copy of ‘Umdat as-Salik wa ‘Uddat an-Nasik’ – the Shafi’i handbook of Sharia – …since when has it been desirable or legal in the UK to stone adulterous women? or to slaughter animals by the cruellest methods available? or own multiple sex-slaves?).
By this criteria I don’t think an unrepentant jihadi can be a citizen of the UK in any other than a purely technical sense.
In the same way that a driving licence stops being a ‘licence to drive’ if you are blind drunk, so citizenship documentation should not be valid regardless of the actions, condition, beliefs and intentions of its owner – sedition, treachery or intent to harm fellow citizens BECAUSE they are citizens disqualify, I would suggest, a bearer of any such documentations from all but the most shallow concept of ‘citizenship’.

Nada

>I would argue that citizenship is about aspiring to be part of a Nation’s ‘project’, following a trajectory set by its history, laws (especially common law), values, mores, traditions, and culture.
Should those striving to impose Western anti-pedophilia in their non-Western nations be stripped of their citizenship?
Should Western pedophiles, rejecting anti-pedophilia, be stripped of their citizenship?

leonard sisyphus mann

>”Should those striving to impose Western anti-pedophilia in their non-Western nations be stripped of their citizenship?”
No. Of course not.
I think you’ll find non-Western nations adopting anti-paedophilic laws is more to do with the effects of industrialisation and economic restructuring than to do with attitudes being overtly imposed. Structural factors determine broad social attitudes, since people adopt those attitudes that will most allow them to prosper, attitudes congruent to their society’s structure.
As non-Western countries industrialise families shrink and become highly mobile. The child becomes almost entirely defined by its place within the nuclear family, in which the incest taboo ensures there is no conceptual space for child sexuality. This means that the child becomes increasingly defined as ‘sexless’, leading to the rejection of both child-child sexuality and, more markedly, child-adult sexuality.
If industrialising nations reject paedophilia, it is much less because of the ‘West’ imposing attitudes, as nations aspiring to the same quality of life that Western nations generate.
>”Should Western pedophiles, rejecting anti-pedophilia, be stripped of their citizenship?”
No. Of course not.
But if we are to propose a future that is friendly to child sexuality and children’s sexual rights, we need to propose something that is recognisably an ‘advance’ – something desirable to both paedos and non-paedos, something ethical, based on human rights, human flourishing, on consent, on progress, on reason, on concepts of equality.
Sharia child-marriage – the kind of child marriage employed by jihadis under the latest incarnation of the Islalic Caliphate – is a return to practices that were backwards barbaric and dysfunctional even 1400 years ago around Yathrib and Mecca (Arabian Jew, Christians and Polytheists had much less dysfunctional marriage practices).
We have to formulate a vision for a child- and paedo-friendly society that is a lot better than a return to the ‘marriage’ practices of the worst barbarians of the deep dark dark ages.

leonard sisyphus mann

I agree, Tom, that as with any social theory a lot of tweaking is necessary. I’m certainly not proposing a single factor explanation. Culture, geography, climate, history, ideology/religion and much else have influences, sometimes very important ones. But I think economy – is the ‘tectonic plates’ of society – the fundamental forcer which determines the geography on which the other factors act.
Anyway, I’d love to one day sit down and do a case study of marginal cases such as Japan.
But I’d also ask whether Japan is, or was, really quite as paedo-permissive as it is often made out.
I know little of Japanese culture other than a vague awareness of animé, of there being a thing for ‘school girls’, and that, if youtube from five years ago is any guide, they are quite at ease with young children being filmed in the nude… and that their age of consent encroached on ‘hebe’ territory.
But is there, or has there been in recent times, any evidence of japanese culture being tolerant of REAL paedophilia? As I said, I don’t know much about Japanese law and culture so it’s a genuinely open question.
Japan’s late industrialisation may also be a factor – it has leapt many of the stages the European industrial societies went through. I seem to remember reading that Japan’s industrialisation on really got started properly after the second world war.

Nada

Japan and Russia are obvious counter-examples to the “structure” hypothesis.
Japan long resisted pressure to conform to Western anti-pedophilia, even after the virtual elimination of free speech (CP production/distribution) in 1999.
Does an AoC of 13, a large market for models, cartoons and sex toys, such as the tubomi virgin, indicate intolerance of pedophilia, as in the gender equality obsessed Sweden, where even such cartoons can land a person in prison?
I find the use of buzzwords, such as “equality” or “rights”, tiring, as it’s obvious they don’t apply to pedophiles or children. Human flourishing is interesting, though. Does pedophiles necessarily flourish when they are denied even free speech, to say nothing of sex and long-term relationships? Or does LSM imagine pedophiles generally have the level of wealth of an emperor or celebrity, which puts them above the law?

leonard sisyphus mann

What I am proposing is a mechanism by which large-scale social attitudes are generated – there are other interacting factors such as history, geography, ideology etc but I would argue that ‘survival’ is the prime generator of attitudes, and in advanced societies ‘survival’ generally reduces to ‘resource distribution’ – which is another word for ‘economics’. People, on a large scale, will adopt those attitudes that will serve to improve their condition.
Which means that my kind of analysis is not going to be as simple as ‘nuclear family in: paedophobia out’ – countries are not identical, each has a different history and context.
But the idea that people are paedophobic because they don’t like us, or because paedophobic attitudes are promoted in the media or law, is just a circular argument – the explanation being effectively identical to the thing being explained.
I’m far from convinced that Japan is, or has recently been, a ‘paedophilic’ society. I think this idea emerges because almost any society will appear to some extent ‘paedo-friendly’ in comparison to ours. And what is taken as ‘paedo-friendly’ is really marginal ephebophilia and I’m increasingly suspicious of ‘ephebophilia’ as a preferential category: it rather describes an attraction to ‘adults’ whose ages, are classed as ‘child’ in other social categorisations. Rising ages of majority and consent have inaccurately expanded the concept of ‘paedophilia’ into a range of ages which are wholly teleophilic.
As to Russia – its tolerance of child pornography is probably more related to post-communist lawlessness, chaos and corruption, than to tolerance of paedophilia in the general population. I don’t get any sense that ordinary Russians are particularly more tolerant of paedophilia than Western parents, though I don’t know enough Russian parents to be able to state that with any confidence.
But if Japan and Russia are the best counter-examples to my hypothesis I really feel that proves, rather than undermines, my hypothesis. These are weakly hebephilic at best. Show me an established industrial or consumer capitalist society that resembles the Marquesans as Cook found them and, yes, then you’ll have something which seriously tests and undermines my hypothesis.
The fact that Japan and Russia are more comfortable with child nudity than the West may not be what we maybe too readily assume – societies at ease with child nudity may be so because they don’t see child nudity as intrinsically ‘sexual’ – but as ‘innocent’.
On the other hand – the consumer-capitalist West IS hyper-anxious about child nudity (and paedophilia) because we are have two powerful irreconcilable archetypes of the child – the one set up by the nuclear family – which defines the child as sexless – and the one set up by consumerism, which defines the child as sexual. Anxiety happens when we sense instability and ambiguity in matters and situations that are of great import – such as one’s children. Parents are assailed by these two contradictory archetypes – and the best reconciliation of these is that their ‘innocent’ children are being co-opted by ‘sexuality’ against their (the parents’) will. Such unresolvable anxiety leads to moral panics – and we, the paedophiles, perfectly incarnate this anxiety and thus become the scapegoats.
(if you doubt this then watch on youtube, roughly chronologically, how children are depicted in adverts between the 1950s to the current day – children ahve been increasingly depicted as embodying a kind of ‘cool’ consumer sexuality)
>”I find the use of buzzwords, such as “equality” or “rights”, tiring, as it’s obvious they don’t apply to pedophiles or children”
The very fact you identify them as denied to paedophiles and children shows that you implicitly accept their conceptual validity.
Likewise, if I say that it is unfair that I am not wealthy then that statement implicitly confirms the value and validity of the concept of ‘Wealth’.

Nada

Had you bothered to inform yourself about either Russia or Japan, your hypothesis would have been rejected.
It’s not lawlessness when other nations allows for child pornography or other tolerance of pedophiles, it’s a fact they have different laws.
As pedophiles, rather than the homosexuals or women you moralize about, face genocide, this is sufficient motivation to seek out any better society, rather than a specific analogue of the past or green tyranny of the future.
I mentioned “rights” or “equality” since they are cornerstones in your ethics, and shows the inconsistency of such ethics. By your reasoning, I could not be an atheist for taking a Christian to task regarding his belief in the Bible.

leonard sisyphus mann

>”As pedophiles, rather than the homosexuals or women you moralize about, face genocide, ”
If condemning the genocide of homosexuals, women or paedophiles makes me a moralizer then I am happy to carry that label.
BTW – could you quote me expressing any sympathy with the genocide of paedophiles?
>”this is sufficient motivation to seek out any better society, rather than a specific analogue of the past or green tyranny of the future. ”
What ‘better society’ do have you in mind?
>”I mentioned “rights” or “equality” since they are cornerstones in your ethic…”
I’m not sure that I would make them cornerstones of my ethics – both are quite problematic – I prefer ‘duties’ to ‘rights’ (though rights can often be expressed as duties), and whilst I am in favour of ‘equality of opportunity’ I view aspirations to ‘equality of outcome’ as totalitarianism.

stephen6000

>”I would argue that citizenship is about aspiring to be part of a Nation’s ‘project’, following a trajectory set by its history, laws (especially common law), values, mores, traditions, and culture.”
Can’t people be just left alone to lead their own lives? Do they HAVE to be part of such a project to be a citizen of the country?
Now, you may argue that Shamima Begum wasn’t just leading her own life. She was involved in an organisation that was actively destroying the lives of innocent people. True. But you may want to refine what you really expect of citizens of a country in general, or else there is a danger you may be asking for too much.

leonard sisyphus mann

” But you may want to refine what you really expect of citizens of a country in general, or else there is a danger you may be asking for too much.”
It’s not about over-refining – it’s about having a minimum standard for citizenship. If anything and anyone goes then UK citizenship becomes meaningless, just a lottery.
‘Citizenship’ is not just a right or privilege, it’s also entails responsibilities.
It is not ‘asking for too much’ to expect citizens to refrain from supporting and aiding (and continue to support – she has shown no sign of repentance or rethinking her islamist ideology) a country’s enemies.
We don’t execute traitors. Depriving them of their nationality, where that is an option, does not seem excessive.
Begum will be happier living in Bangladesh, or in some more extremely islamic country, such as Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan – a countries closer to the dream that Islamic State sought to incarnate.

stephen6000

>”It’s not about over-refining – it’s about having a minimum standard for citizenship.”
But you said that citizens should ‘aspire to be part of a Nation’s project’. It was in relation to this that I was suggesting you were going too far. This is because it appears to go beyond a reasonable minimum standard, which would just be about obeying the law.
I agree that British citizens should obey British laws. It does not follow that the penalty for not doing so should be deprivation of citizenship. Indeed, that is hardly the norm!
Also: two points on the details of Begum’s case. It is worth noting that, contrary to your suggestion that she is showing no change of heart about her actions, she now describes her decision to join ISIS as a ‘mistake’. And it seems she would not be happy living in Bangladesh – she says she hardly knows the place.
I think the government is confident in taking what seems to me an unnecessarily harsh line because it will prove to be quite popular.

leonard sisyphus mann

>”I agree that British citizens should obey British laws. It does not follow that the penalty for not doing so should be deprivation of citizenship. Indeed, that is hardly the norm!”
It depends on what offenses we are talking about – if you break the speed limit, or rob a bank, or commit a murder in, say, hot blood – you should not be deprived of British citizenship because those acts don’t call your allegiance to your country into question.
But if you act treacherously and treasonously – that DOES call your allegiance to your country into question and, if a serious enough act of treachery, merits losing one’s nationality.
If you demonstrate that you are an enemy of your country it seems fitting and proportional to be deprived of that country’s citizenship. You can’t hate your country and its people, attack it and its citizens or its soldiers or its allies, and then expect to enjoy all the benefits of citizenship.
Likewise – if you are employed to play as part of a footbal team and during matches you concentrate all your efforts on scoring own-goals, you shouldn’t be shocked and indignant if that football club terminates your contract prematurely.
As to her ‘regrets’… all her expressions of regret suggest that what she regrets is that things turned out badly for her and her beloved Islamic caliphate.
There is no indication that she regrets, rejects or repudiates the ideology and ideals that motivated her actions.
If Islamic State had not been defeated do you think she’d now be trying to emigrate to Britain? a country she rejected and has supported terrorism against?
No, what she ‘regrets’ are the consequences of her actions, not the actions themselves.

Debauch

I will not apologise for this piece of filth. Her baby should be taken into care for a start. But I suppose as far as the law is concerned it mist not discriminate, Or we’d all be lynched by now. But it is funny how if you criticise Trans people you are the lowest of the low, But somehow this barbaric thing should have a second chance!
They mentioned this on Woman’s Hour (or bunch of moaning feminists hour) One lady mentioned, “we even rehabilitate paedophiles in this country”, well there it is, sucking some underage kids dick is on a par with cutting someones head of with a knife!

Explorer

The problem is, for the majority the former does seem much worse than the latter – in fact, as THE worst act someone may ever commit.
Try to imagine how many people would argue for Shamima’s return if she was a “sex offender” (say, had a voluntary sex with another “underage” person some years ago).
There are no openly-available, life-long, stigmatising registry for “terrorists”. Only for “sex offenders”.

Explorer

There are two Spiked articles about her, the first one concentrating on her being a wayward and thus misstepped child who should be “rehabilitated” and is still “redeemable”. The second one treats her as a free-willed person fully responsible for her choices and actions – and their consequences:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/02/15/shamima-begum-should-be-allowed-to-come-home/
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/02/14/this-isnt-your-home-anymore-shamia/
Happily, neither of the articles insisted that she was “groomed” and “brainwashed”. But this is Spiked, essentially a fringe publication. In the mainstream sources, the “grooming” / “brainwashing” notions are bound to be central.

David

She went after adventure. Men who display power and status attract women’s attention.
It’s like in the cases of dangerous thugs arrested. Women go to jail to have sex with them.
Biologically, child is before age 9, before puberty. Puberty begins around age 9.
12 years is the average age of menarche. Potentially fertile women go after the men they admire.

stephen6000

As things have gone a bit quiet here, perhaps Tom will be indulgent enough to let me post something a little frivolous as well as off-topic. BLs, I think, will love this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eDwbEu0O0E
It has a sad post-script, though. According to Wikipedia, Brandon died at age 30 in a car accident.

Debauch

Something I heard on BBC Moral Maze the other day is something us MAPs have been pointing out for a while……”The notion of childhood only exists because we live in a post-industrial world”……Exactly!
As for MJ, he seems to have had a lot of fun with many boys, the lucky bastard!

daniel
daniel

i think the genuine hunters should look at each individual case based on its merits but will fail to do so.

daniel

also if they look at each case individually rather than just looking at graphic images all the time (alternate) it could help prevent symptoms of ptsd and other mental health issues.

Eer

Hunters are dangerous criminals who have no obligation to follow any rules of behaviour or morality or human rights and who take justice into their own hands to gratify themselves.
If you see a genuine child abuse report it to the police, which is their supposed job.

daniel

Eer
im not a big fan of the hunters myself and some of them probably don’t care about children but i would like to think that some of them who r parents do care about kids and believe that they are doing the right thing but i believe they could just be unintentionally putting more traffickers on the streets and that’s what worries me the most about it.

stephen6000

Here the Daily Mail weighs in with their contribution, which mainly concerns the testimony of MJ’s maid:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6673973/Michael-Jacksons-former-maid-says-pedophile-boys-underwear-Jacuzzi.html
Tom, how credible do you think this woman is?

stephen6000

I’m glad I asked!

Linca

I think the outcome of all this might be that we begin discovering that Michael’s relationship with all these boys is completely normal like we have discovered that gay relationships are completely normal. This film might just have the opposite effect than the one the filmmakers have intended.
These kids and Michael had it made until the “Normative Psychologists” got involved. Damn them, i.e., the normative psychologists. We need to figure out that “Evolutionary Psychologists”/Evolutionary Psychology is the true Science of Psychology.
Linca

Sugarboy

Actually, MJ has still so many fanatical admirers that they would prefer to convert to pedophilia rather than betray him…

stephen6000

Unfortunately, not the most vocal ones! Still, it’s hard to be surprised at that.

prodigaljohn

Hmmm… Why do I have a feeling this could be made into a Daily Struggle meme?

daniel

i watched a musical about with mj in wen i was a kid wish i could ave met him

prodigaljohn

If tabloids, and news articles are anything to go by celebrities aren’t all that well regarded in their relational ethics. Michael Jackson had two different boys? I guess that’s a lot like that Kevin Clash guy (Who’s best known as the voice of Elmo, of Sesame Street). He too was a boylover to a multiple minors.
If I recall correctly, after Kevin Clash’s first accusation was dropped a second accuser came forward with his own charges. The second accuser,Cecil Singleton, was actually quite open about how upset he was on finding out about Kevin’s second boy relationship, besides his own. However loving their relationship was regarded by him, Cecil spoke of how that was ruined by the revelation that this wasn’t unique to him and Kevin Clash. So, it was like Cecil wanted to punish Kevin for cheating on him, via sex offense charges. Might as well.

prodigaljohn

>He certainly had well over a dozen very special friendships and I think it likely there was sexual contact of a more casually playful nature with dozens more, indeed probably scores more.
>From memory, I think I wrote about around 30 individually named boys in my book.
I haven’t read Dangerous Liaisons, but you were able to confirm and write about 30 boys involved with Michael? And that there could be more? Man, with guys like him, no wonder people think that peds are sex maniacal tramps!
Would it be fair to say that this leaves us languishing in their shadows, which makes people think each of us want +9000 children to our own? I’m under the impression that a great deal in our group would be happy with one committed relationship with a special child, going on for years down the road. You know, like a lot of normal people would like for themselves, with their age-peer partners.

Yure

Is there any way to release a second edition of Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liasions with a preface that includes what you say in this blog post?

Yure

Alright. I’m sure you have a good idea.

Explorer

“But sorting out the motives Michael’s old flames had for suing Jackson’s Estate, and companies, and making Leaving Neverland, does not explain the film’s emotional impact. A big part of it was what we might call the yuk factor. Plenty of gay guys experience revulsion to the point of nausea at the thought of having sex with a women; and of course it is not so long ago that straight people’s utter disgust at the idea of men having sex with each other was used as an argument against normalising such behaviour.”
I have always wondered how tightly are our ethical and aesthetic sensibilities are connected – it is very hard for one to approve ethically what one finds repulsive aesthetically (and vice versa: negative ethical judgement of something that is beautiful aesthetically is quite counter-intuitive – or, more precisely, counter-affective).
And our aesthetical affectivity is, in turn, connected with what we found to be sensually (and sexually) appealing and attractive, there is no surprise what it takes more than a common level of critical intellectual self-reflection and willful deliberation to rise above one’s own sensibilities (and thus also sensualities) and defend the freedom and dignity of the people whom one, on affective and sensual level, find disgusting, out of conscious principle and goodwill.
Happily, it was never a problem for me personally: I do not find repulsive something (or someone) what (or whom) I find non-attractive. For example, once I was reading / watching a graphic novel that included a love line between two adult men (with a lot of artistic illustrations demonstrating the intimate side of their homosexual love). Being a heterosexual, I was not aroused by watching these drawings – but neither I was repelled. I was just neutral.
Maybe it is connected to my unusually high level of intellectual reflection and willfulness to act on principle rather than on impulse (not some kind of a great achievement on my side, I need to clarify; apparently I was born this way), and a remarkably high level of patience and tolerance that result from such psychological traits? Most other people seems to me much more driven by passion rather than intellection and volition, unfortunately…
That’s why, I dare to confess, occasionally many (and sometimes, even most…) other human beings frighten me a bit: in my eyes, they are stubbornly unthinking – and easily, intensely aggressive. Trying to communicate with them is like waking a minefield: one has to plan and measure any small word being said (or printed) in advance, not to activate a wave of hostility and enmity directed at one. It is frustrating to the point of being literally painful: one has to remain silent most of the time, if one is not willing to lie to become attractive to others and to defend oneself from aggression. And, since I do not will to lie to anyone, I has to choose very carefully with whom to speak, and about what topics, and keep my mouth shut (and my fingers on a keyboard still) in all other cases.

Christian

About the “yuk factor”, Tom’s next paragraph said:
“That’s how it is now with child-adult sex. One reason for Leaving Neverland’s great length is that it dwells long and loathingly on the graphic intimate details of the love life disclosed by these two guys.”
As explained by Kincaid, such a lengthy and detailed description of paedophilic sexual acts, even under the cloak of disgust and loathing, shows a strong interest in them. I once read a research article (I don’t find the reference) about an experiment showing that men expressing homophobic feelings had significant unconscious homosexual tendencies. I also heard recently that for a second time a former representative of Geert Wilder’s Islamophobic party PVV in the Netherlands had converted to Islam.
I quote Ian Dishart Suttie from The Origins of Love and Hate:
“It is what we have renounced through fear, repressed, but still long for and envy in others, that arouses our greatest reprobation of indulgence and even evokes genuine loathing and indignation.”

Michael Teare-Williams

Dear Christian,
You may have hit the nail on the head. What Tom had elsewhere called the ‘peepshow factor’?
I see a monstrous schism between the reality of adult-child sexual contacts and the public perceptions of the same. An except from a letter to a friend, explains:
Will we ever get a truly honest answer?
One other thing that did emerge from even the first episode was that neither ‘victim’ described their time with MJ in the standard ‘terrified child with the ravening monster’ terms. Both admitted their own full participation in the sex-play, in fact Safechuck particularly, became quite tearfully nostalgic when describing the marriage-ceremony that he and Michael performed. Robson, too was in tears as he described the effect MJ had on him. Then, of course, he took refuge in his present feelings of guilt because he had enjoyed ‘all that’ so much!
Which, of course, highlights the way that so many people — as adults — feel shame and disgust for the way they wriggled and giggled with a man ‘back in the day’? Their own enjoyment — their whole-hearted participation — may now be blamed on that monstrous man? It is as though they now find it impossible to accept what seemed natural and good, back then?
I think this has directly to do with the feminazi-mantra: that children don’t have the mental capacity to even know what it is that they are either feeling or thinking? They so denigrate young people that the young people themselves doubt what it is that they feel and what it is they think? They are children, therefore ciphers — therefore nothings…
“I was only a kid. I knew nothing!” As a child, I passionately loved this man, but now I see how wrong I was! (Um, there’s something arse-about-face, here!)
Um, yes. This schism exists between the tender-reality of that love and how conventional morality sees it? In a world where words like attack, assault, abuse, molest and victim are used in connection with Michael Jackson — of all people — whom both men described as the gentlest person? The thing is that all those above, pejorative words, have violent connotations and they are used dishonestly to increase the impact, the severity of perceived crimes against children.
All paedosexuals are — by inference — violent and dangerous people?
Yes!
Um, NO!

bjmuirhead

I have always wondered how tightly are our ethical and aesthetic sensibilities are connected – it is very hard for one to approve ethically what one finds repulsive aesthetically[.]

The question is: How do we come to find something aesthetically repulsive?
I think the answer is cultural, and is based in the stories we tell within the culture. The fairy tale our culture presents about paedophilic relationships is a dark tale in which the predator assaults the child victim who is brought back into society only by therapy, the imprisonment of the predator, and so on. Because it is not a true fairy tale, it assumes mythic proportions without becoming a myth either, not least because it is a tale we are told in news reports, and which is retold in discussion between people, as something about which we should be repulsed.
What I am suggesting is that the story of the paedophile predator becomes a cultural schema based around the repulsive nature of paedosex and paedosexuality.
As a cultural schema, it contains already our feelings of repulsion. But these feelings are easily avoided simply by seeing it as a tall tale—we can step outside of the schema by questioning it, which enables us to become aware that as a schema based on a story, it does not necessarily recount “reality”.
These are thoughts which I am just now beginning to investigate, thoughts which I hope will explain how people come to make attributions of paedophilia without evidence.
In this respect, I have to say that nearly every man I know, including myself, has been accused of being a paedophile without there being any evidence of paedophilia, that is, no evidence of sexual attraction to children, nor of sexual activity with children. What there has been is evidence of people making accusations on the basis of a schematized tale of “abuse” where the tale proposed and encouraged revulsion.
I’ve been working on this for some time, (LSM has seen a very early draft of my paper on this, and has yet to respond to a much later, nearly complete draft. Anyway, putting that aside, it seems that aesthetics and ethical stances are related in this way, namely, as cultural schemas containing the emotions/ethics approved by the culture.
Does this provide any type of insight to your issue?

bjmuirhead

Forgot to tick notify me of new comments. This is just do I can tick it. Apologies for this.

Linca

I am curious about Macaulay Culkin, the words he uses. I think I have heard him say he was never abused and that he and Michael had a normal relationship. I do not think he says he and Michael never had sex. To me this means he does not consider what happened between he and Michael as abuse and that what happened was completely normal. What is the consensus here?

Linca

Then Mac is the last true friend of Michael. No wonder he is Godfather to Paris Jackson. They seem to be genuine pals. They are lucky to have each other. There are great pictures of them together online.
In the end we are going to know Michael’s relations with boys were normal and good; good for all mankind.
Linca

Linca

Maybe Macaulay Culkin is going to end the end be Michael’s Last Friend Standing. Maybe Culkin is going to be like the boy who remained Jesus’ Last Friend Standing after everyone including Peter had abandoned him: St. Mark Chapter 14 Verses 51 & 52 King James
Note: Pier Palo Pasolini showed this in his film “The Gospel According To St. Matthew”. Lcomment image?dl=0

Galileo

There is a typo here:
What we are told were are going to see in this new film, though – when it goes to TV, which is scheduled for early March through Channel 4 and HBO – is harrowing testimony of manipulation and emotional exploitation that has left both men traumatised.
“were” should be “we”

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