Hanging in there, in Hengelo hotspot

Even radical activists are not usually called upon to be radical or active before 7AM, when all but the earliest risers are still fast asleep in these housebound times of ours.

But prominent Dutch paedophile activist Norbert de Jonge suddenly found himself forced to take drastic action when he was roused early from his slumbers recently by noises far more alarming than an alarm clock.

He was woken up by “really loud shouting, like a madman” coming closer and closer to his bedroom door. He grabbed a baseball bat kept by his bed for protection, with very good reason. He opened the door and saw a “random man” in the house with a big knife pointed at him. He swung the bat. He missed. Or so he thought. The guy dropped his knife, though, and fled outside, still shouting crazily, making death threats.

The property’s long-time owner, Marthijn Uittenbogaard, is also a leading activist. Terrifyingly, the intruder had gone first to Marthijn’s bedroom, but was distracted by the emergence of Norbert – an old friend who is staying over with him temporarily after attacks not long ago on his own home. The pair phoned the police, who soon spotted and arrested a man with a bloody hand outside their house, still ranting and raving. Norbert’s swing with the bat had apparently made contact after all.

The dramatic incident broke the peace of a seemingly tranquil, pleasant part of Hengelo, a small city in the eastern Overijssel province of the Netherlands. This was around three weeks ago, early on the morning of Monday 4 May, at around 6.45AM.

Under siege at home: Marthijn Uittenbogaard

Caught literally red handed, the knifeman gave no formal interview but the police let it be known to Norbert and Marthijn that in the police car on the way to the station he had admitted going into the house because he thought Marthijn and his partner Hans (not his real name) were a threat to children. He managed to get in through an unlocked door after scaling a high fence. Hans was not in the house at the time, having been arrested and held in custody for some months, where he remains, ostensibly under suspicion of preparing to offend against one or more children. The case is based on items found in Hans’ possession in a backpack; but Norbert and Marthijn are adamant the suspicions are utterly baseless, and the investigation is part of a political attack against their paedophile activism.

Having myself been on the wrong end of bogus investigations, deliberately distorted “evidence” and trumped up charges, I have no difficulty believing them. No lies and dirty tricks are too dishonourable to be pressed into service when there is an opportunity to smear and oppress Kind people like us: paedophilia and its advocacy are to be smashed at all costs. The ends, no matter how devious and dishonest, always justify the means.

Right now, of course, the police have a genuine case to deal with – the knifeman should obviously  be brought to justice. And part of the case should be a charge of criminal damage: Marthijn has told me by email that after leaving the house the intruder climbed onto a shed and jumped down onto the roof of a  neighbour’s car, “damaging it badly” – denting it, I imagine.

Speaking to Norbert in a Skype call, I said it seemed as though this guy was a lone attacker, and perhaps a bit crazy to hang around until the police arrived. Did he have mental health issues? Norbert said that they now knew his name from police documents and that he seems to be “a religious lunatic”, living in an area known for housing mentally unstable people.

It might be supposed that the police and the justice system would be very keen to make sure such an evidently dangerous person would be kept behind bars until trial, and then maybe detained in a secure mental hospital.

But no, not a bit of it! Within two days he was already at liberty, released on bail. This was on condition he should not come within 100 meters of Marthijn’s house for 90 days – restrictions so minimal they seem designed to express sympathy with the attacker. As Marthijn put it: “It is as if the judges and the state want to see us killed.”

This is no mere paranoia. The fabled Dutch reputation as a tolerant nation has long been well past its sell-by date where paedophilia is concerned. As seasoned activists, Norbert (42) and Marthijn (48) have both been prominent figures in the public eye and are no strangers to hostility.

We have a saying that an Englishman’s home is his castle, but in Marthijn’s case it needs to be literally that way: his house is a fortress now, with smash-proof polycarbonate windows installed after finding the ordinary glass ones repeatedly broken by rocks and even by powerful fireworks. Extra locks and security likewise followed regular death threats and actual assault.

In 2011, a 200-strong mob gathered to intimidate him outside his home – with the permission of the local mayor. A biker gang hurled a rock through his window that same year and poured paint and beer over the front of the house. Marthijn asked Prime Minister Mark Rutte several times for protection measures, including a security camera, but this was never granted.

The latest manifestation of officially-backed hostility came in January when the homes of four prominent activists, including Norbert and Marthijn, were raided by the police. This was based on the quartet’s alleged revival of the MARTIJN Association, an organisation comparable to PIE and NAMBLA. The group had been banned in a 2012 court ruling, backed two years later by the Supreme Court of the Netherlands after a legal battle. MARTIJN was deemed illegal and ordered to disband because it was held to be “in conflict with the accepted norms and values of Dutch society”. So much for freedom of expression in the “tolerant” Netherlands!

Starting life as Matheus Hendrick Uittenbogaard, Marthijn has long been known by a first name that closely reflects that of the organisation with which he has been so long publicly identified. Marthijn (with an “h”) tells me the police have made false assumptions that he and the others have tried to resurrect MARTIJN, based in his own case on his membership of an email forum. In a recent essay he protested:

Simply adhering to the law has become impossible unless I never express myself publicly. The current cabinet… now even wants to amend the constitution so that one cannot discriminate on [the basis of] sexual preference, with the exception of pedosexual preference. This is like having an anti-discrimination law with the text: does not apply to Jews.

The other two activists targeted in the raid were a veteran campaigner and a young rising star, both of whom are being held in custody.

Ad van den Berg, at 78 an old warrior of my own generation, was president of MARTIJN, and active in the group from its earliest days after it was founded in 1982. His formative years, like mine, were in the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s, when freedom was in the air and – definitely like me until recent years – he does not appear to have been very inhibited by the age of consent laws, having been convicted in 1987 for a relationship (which he said was platonic) with an 11-year-old boy, and also a child pornography offence in 2010. It is now alleged that illegal images were also found in this latest raid, and my understanding is that this will not be contested.

The fourth member of the group – which the media might well dub the Gang of Four – is Nelson Maatman, who came into the public eye in connection with Amsterdam’s annual Pride march last summer. He wanted to advocate for children’s and paedophiles’ rights at Pride events, but was barred. He has since protested to human rights organisations.

 

Nelson Maatman talks to host Danny Ghosen on Danny in the Street

Possession of illegal images has also been alleged in the case of Nelson, but in his case we should be very sceptical that there is any strong evidence against him. It is surely more than coincidental that  Nelson was arrested less than a week after making a daringly outspoken appearance in a TV documentary series called “Danny on the street”, from broadcasters NPO.

Nelson controversially asserted that children as young as two or three can decide for themselves whether they want sexual contact, just as they know whether they’d like an ice cream. He said he is sexually attracted to boys from about four to 14. The episode in question was broadcast on 13 February. It has also been posted on YouTube where it has currently been viewed over 875k times. Just days after the show aired, on 18 February, Nelson was arrested. The police view seems to have been “We must silence this man. We have no legally valid grounds to arrest him, but public outrage will be assuaged if he is put behind bars.”

The title of the episode was “Paedophiles in Politics”, which might seem strange until we hear a major element of the back story not yet mentioned. Nelson spoke on the programme about his ambition to re-launch not MARTIJN but a political party set up in 2006 in the Netherlands called The Party for Neighbourly Love, Freedom, and Diversity (Partij voor Naastenliefde, Vrijheid en Diversiteit, PNVD), which had been founded by none other than – wait for it – Ad van der Berg, Marthijn Uittenbogaard and Norbert de Jonge!

Keen to maximise diversity and liberty, as the name suggests, they had proposed allowing youngsters from 12 upwards to vote, have sex, choose where they lived and much more. They also wanted to end marriage as a legal institution, permit public nudity anywhere in the country, make rail travel free, and institute a comprehensive animal rights platform. It was quickly dubbed “the paedo party” in the media. PNVD was dissolved in 2010 after falling short of the support needed to get onto the ballot paper and contest elections.

After the raids in January, though, with freedom of expression under assault from the authorities, a new militancy was born. Although Marthijn will not be joining them, Ad and Norbert have proclaimed, along with Nelson, that PNVD is on its way back.

The founders of PNVD (from left): Marthijn Uittenbogaard, Ad van den Berg and Norbert de Jonge

Their fight for civil liberties has a legal dimension too. Marthijn and Hans, plus Ad and Nelson, have all engaged the services of one of the country’s top lawyers, Sidney Smeets. Norbert will also be involved in discussions with Smeets, but tells me he has no confidence in the justice system, and for that reason says he will not be entering a defence if he is ultimately taken to court. In any case, he adds, “I am guilty as accused: guilty of expressing my opinions.”

He fears the charge they will all face, except for Hans who has not been accused of any political offence, will go beyond “continuing the effect of an illegal association”, for which the penalty is a maximum of one year in prison. Those who are already in custody, he says, have seen documents suggesting they could also be accused of sedition, a much more serious offence for which the penalty could be up to five years.

Some heretics here may be asking themselves why are these guys pushing back so defiantly, reviving PNVD when the times are so unfavourable? In the heady days of sexual revolution and gay liberation, half a century ago, the atmosphere was utterly different in the Netherlands, a country that led the way in the field of sexual liberalism and law reform: in 1990 a law was ushered in that in effect reduced the age of consent to 12, thanks in great measure to the earlier pioneering campaigning of lawyer Edward Brongersma and psychologist Frits Bernard. But against a background of increasingly anti-sexual feminism the spirit of the law was never fully implemented and it was overturned in 2002. And we all know about the “power imbalance” narrative that has prevailed since those days, with the #MeToo movement worldwide now putting a damper even on adult-adult consent, never mind child-adult.

Transport of delight: Norbert, age 4, on his trike

I will not attempt today to answer the question in my previous paragraph, although I hope it will give food for discussion here. For one thing, I would need to go much more deeply into where Norbert and Marthijn are coming from. I know a fair bit about them, having worked with Norbert in online projects as long ago as 2005, while I had the pleasure of meeting Marthijn and Hans at their home somewhat more recently, in 2015. Suffice it to emphasise that neither of them is easily intimidated, as we have seen from Marthijn’s long resistance under siege and Norbert’s brave and decisive confrontation with the intruder. The best introduction to Norbert’s life and work is to be found in My First Twenty One Years (lots of childhood photos!) and My Second Twenty-One Years. There is a Wikipedia biography of Marthijn here; he has written about his early life here; he has a blog here; his latest news is here. Finally, Marthijn is understandably anxious that his websites could be taken down by a court order. These sites can be downloaded here and here.

AUSTRALIAN PODCAST INTERVIEW
Earlier this month it was my pleasure and privilege to be interviewed in a Zoom link-up from Australia with artist and human rights activist John Sydney McNair. I say “artist” rather than musician, which is John’s own self-description, because the ambivalently provocative videos for his “Shiny” trilogy of songs about minor-attraction very artistically complement the songs themselves, which have the feel of an insider’s view of the subject.
Ostensibly, it is a “virtuous” or NOMAP view, but talking with John – our encounter was an agreeable conversation not the usual grilling – gave me the impression that he has been grappling in a seriously conscientious way with the big questions that beset us, but without the sanctimonious moralising and finger-pointing that so disfigure the VP mindset.
The interview is on YouTube, in two parts, each just over half an hour long. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.
You can catch up with John’s music at his YouTube channel. His human rights reflections, with a strong element of interest in and respect for youth, are here. See also John’s website as an artist, especially his recent essay Accepting the Sexual Self.
Finally, I should mention briefly that John has introduced me to the work of a mysterious but clearly important writer with the penname “Angela Wallace”. I won’t say more now, as I expect to be focusing on her work in a future blog.

LEONARD SISYPHUS MANN
Fears that the brilliant writings of Leonard Sisyphus Mann would be lost forever following his recent repudiation of his own work have been greatly assuaged by an email I received recently from Heretic TOC commentator “Ethics of Paradise”.
EoP tells me that “the saved archival data from LSM’s blog on the Wayback Machine website is extremely easy to navigate through, and all of the Consenting Adults Humans essays can be found there, except for the most recent essay he had written on FGM. You can navigate through the essays pretty much the exact same way as before.”
The Wayback archive is here.
Sadly, saving LSM himself from a turn of mind that makes me fearful for his mental health is not so simple. Anyone is entitled to change their mind and should not be pathologised for that alone. In my judgement, though, there may be more going on in his case than a rational reappraisal of the facts.

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Sam

I am sure that Katy Morgan Davis would tell them to drop the victim mentality.

David Leibniz

This bubble “Would love your thoughts … ” obstructs part of the text, making it hard to read. Please put it somewhere else!

David Leibniz

Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Tom.
Scrolling is a pain on my laptop, mainly due to the lack of either a mouse or a touch screen, which is why I found the bubble so annoying.
Other users may be better organised, of course!
Rather than removing it altogether, a better alternative would be to provide a means of moving it.

Kenny (Lial)

I don’t have a whole lot of significant insight to really say on this, just that it brings me hope.

Yes, yes, there is hostility but despite this hostility they’re still doing their best. Some may call this foolish, I’d call it admirable. Thanks for the informative post.

Khad Wang-Bang

I usually agree with this guy, but not on this subject. We are hated by all sides regardless of what he said in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRRnZ_7X-5k

La Vilaine Hikari

If anyone wants to save Marth’s websites you can also use wget using the command line. This will give you a more up-to-date version, too. Here’s how I do it on Linux but I’m not a pro (don’t copy the $):
First install wget:
$ sudo apt-get install wget
Then install TOR:
$ sudo apt-get install tor
Then run:
$ wget http://ipinfo.io/ip -qO –
Then run this:
$ torify wget http://ipinfo.io/ip -qO –
This should return different IP addresses.
Then run this:
$ torify wget -c –wait=30 –limit-rate=60k -U -p -mirror –no-parent –convert-links –html-extension –restrict-file-names=windows –no-clobber https://marthijn.nl/n/
You can stop downloading it any time, and continue where you left off using that last command.
I noticed you said you use Skype and Zoom. For BLs or anyone concerned about privacy, I recommend using Jitsi, Signal or Tox for calling, as they’re end to end encrypted (Zoom claims they are as well but it isn’t really true).
Now, regarding the article…:)
>we all know about the “power imbalance” narrative that has prevailed since those days, with the #MeToo movement worldwide now putting a damper even on adult-adult consent, never mind child-adult.
Y’know I am starting to realize that the whole power imbalance argument is just extended identity politics/”check your privilege” politics. Which I think, has a point, to be fair, but people tend to extend it too far, and believe that someone is unwaveringly powerful over someone simply because of their ethnicity, wealth, gender, sexual orientation, or age. It’s the kind of head damage people warn you happens in the higher levels of academia, where you get so caught up with theory that you forget about what real life is like. Power is often nuanced & fluid. For example, is a working-class white man more privileged than Oprah because she is a black woman? Or is she necessarily always more advantaged than him because she is richer and famous?
I’m actually drafting up a video on this right now, hopefully it’ll be up at some point on Norbert’s FreeSpeechTube.org. I’ll share a little bit of what I’ve drafted here, though:
“[…] Finkelhor, who wrote that “adults control all kinds of resources that are essential to children – food, money, freedom, etc.” (Finkelhor 1979: 693).” With regard to Finkelhor’s argument, not every adult controls a child’s food, money or freedom. It is usually only a select few adults – the caregivers – who control essential resources. In fact, the child or their caregivers might at times control these resources for the pedophile. […] The National Sexual Violence Resource Center (2018) mentioned a few additional resources that people can control to give them power over a person, including a place to live, a job, or a reputation. If a child or other concerned person (even falsely) accuses an adult of abuse, it may be enough to permanently damage the adult’s reputation, and by extension, their job, money, and place to live. If they are placed on a sex offender registry or incarcerated, an accusing child or concerned adult are also given (sustained) control over the pedophile’s freedom. We live in the era of #MeToo, #ListenAndBelieve #TimesUp, and for better and worse, accusers (especially children) are usually trusted to be telling the truth.
[…]Knowledge does not necessarily equal actionable power. Look at Donald Trump and his administration. There are surely people who know better than him working under him, but they have less power because they feel the need to not get him upset. That’s because when it comes to power imbalances, the power one has is not inherent to one’s age or knowledge. Rather, it relates to how much they want or need to cater to the other person. This could be either the adult or the minor. But a power imbalance does not mean a relationship is destined to become abusive. This potential for abuse is not necessarily a problem unless it is exploited, and there are separate laws against this.”
TL;DR: #MeToo has absolutely created an ace up the sleeve of people who are believed to have less power. Perhaps this is for the better and for worse.

Nada

Good to see you again Hikiari.
The mirroring will NOT work, since WordPress seems to have converted long options with double minus into a longer dash!
The alternative below uses most of same options, only in their short form:
torify wget -k -E -nc -m -p -np -w 30 -c URL
Before mirroring, check that the proxy works and doesn’t leak DNS.
https://browserleaks.com/ip
https://browserleaks.com/dns
Also, installing software is NOT needed on Tails.

Khad Wang-Bang

“holocaust21.wordpress.com is no longer available.
This site has been archived or suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service.
For more information and to contact us please read this support document”
Shame this site is down, not all platforms believe in free speech it seems.

Khad Wang-Bang

Just started reading Lensmans blog on why he had a change of heart. I have been accused of inadvertently advocating the collapse of modern society; Suppose he was alluding to the same thing in not so many words.
I wonder if Boylovers are a less threat to society than girlovers in his eyes.

Andrew Meier

Mr Turp, I would recommend Julian Baggini’s A Short History of Truth: Consolations for a Post-Truth World (2018), particularly chapter 2, ‘Authoritative Truths’.

Andrew Meier

Given that one of the pro-choice camp’s central arguments is that society’s speech acts coax individuals into suffering the harm that the cultural narrative stipulates they ought to have sustained, it strikes me as odd that anyone in the pro-choice camp would take the view that speech acts aren’t or shouldn’t be harmful.
The point about shutting down free speech is a straw man. We are free to speak. It’s just that there are potential costs to our speech acts, be these legal sanctions or social costs. The trick is to ensure these costs are proportionate and reasonable. Arguing that the costs in this case are disproportionate and unreasonable would be the route to go here, rather than the straw man.

Andrew Meier

Oh, I thought I’d posted that in response to David Kennerly’s post (Jun 02, 2020 @ 01:40:24). Yes, my first point is a Meier original, and although the second is too, I suppose it could be found in any undergraduate-level philosophy textbook.
Your point about collective libel is what I was hinting at with my point about hate speech legislation covering the blind spots of defamation and incitement laws.
On the topic of criminalisation, as you say, it’s possible to legislate against something without criminalising it. Defamation is a good example in this regard, being a tort offence. There are, of course, disadvantages to making something a civil offence. It does place the onus on the victim to gather evidence (something the police may be in a far better position to do) and the cost may be prohibitive. Thrasymachus declared that ‘justice is the advantage of the stronger’. Transpose that maxim to a modern, capitalist context and we have ‘justice is the advantage of the rich’. You’d be hard-pressed to find a solicitor who will make an initial assessment of a defamation case for less than a few hundred pounds, for instance.
The straw man criticism was in response to David’s post, but I’m not particularly singling him out here. There’s a tendency rife among social conservatives to declare that their freedom of speech is being curtailed whenever their opinions meet with disapprobation from the socially liberal mainstream. But this is a straw man because people can’t be deprived of freedom of speech in the same way that they can be deprived of, say, their freedom to drive cars. In the case of the latter, the manufacture, distribution, sale, import/export and possession and use of cars can be banned and policed, such that one might eventually find it impossible to get hold of a car in the first place. Short of a universal programme of laryngectomies and whatever other surgical procedures would be required to make it impossible to formulate and communicate utterances in any way, shape or form, freedom of speech can’t realistically be curtailed. But as I said, there are costs to our speech acts, be these legal sanctions or social costs. You’re more familiar than most with the fact that speech acts can meet with disapprobation.
Yes, some speech acts can constitute threatening behaviour. In those situations, the speech acts themselves can’t readily be divorced from contextual factors, such as tone, attendant behaviour, etc.
On the paragraphs from your IICSA statement, I guess we should return to the ‘Meier original’, as you so graciously called it (I’m now glad I didn’t adopt the pseudonym Andrew Werther!). Do we think paedophiles deserve the same level of protection afforded to homosexuals, transgender people and ethnic minorities under hate speech legislation? Or would we prefer not to have legislation that covers the blind spots of laws proscribing defamation and incitement?

David Kennerly

Quick note: I’m not a “social conservative,” I’m a “libertarian” which is another way of saying “liberal,” the term having been hijacked by state worshippers. This makes me a “social liberal” and a liberal in the original and most authentic, and least fraudulent, possible way. This is something that the left is hopelessly confused about (because it works to their advantage). Also, I’ll have to hunt down my ostensible “straw men” when I give a shit.

Andrew Meier

As I said, the ‘straw man criticism was in response to [your] post, but I’m not particularly singling [you] out here’. Precisely because I’m not singling you out, the next sentence (about the ‘tendency rife among social conservatives’) is not geared towards labelling you a social conservative.
As regards your not giving a shit about fallacious reasoning, that’s your prerogative, but there’s no need to be impertinent.

Melorder Fallaburr

Dear Lensman, if you accidentally read this: do you agree with burning books? Especially without proper explanation?

Khad Wang-Bang

Hi Tom….Did you know about the outrage caused by the pornification of the most well known child…Greta Thunberg?

warblingjturpitude

This whole spreading tendency online to refer to grown persons as “child” points to something pretty awful, pathetic, and seemingly not even what one would nornally call “conscious”. Indeed, it is probably no more, or less than, mimetic, but once again of course, the mimetic model remains at large but perfectly elusive.
As one who belongs to no political party, anywhere (I mostly live in Japan), but who feels profoundly skeptical of claims made for “climate science” (clearly the heresies are coming out my ears) it’s my duty to put an appropriate spanner in the works by drawing the attention of those here to the activism.of one Naomi Seibt of Münster, North Rhine Westphalia, who has so far managed to draw the ire of everyone from the swiftly smearing Grauniad to the German State itself.
https://youtu.be/0e_jfMRcarY
In the fair mädchen-ly stakes she doesn’t quite match the ..elfin? appeal of Greta (Naomi has a weird penchant for most unbecoming eye make-up) but you all should be aware that she has now entered the marketplace as “the anti-Greta” and roots above all for the sobriety proper to science…
Thus spake Fräulein Seibt:
_”Science is based on intellectual humility and it is important that we keep questioning the narrative that is out there instead of promoting it. And these days ‘climate change science’ really isn’t science at all. We’ve heard it today. They draw their conclusions before testing their hypothesis and base their assumptions on incoherent models. It’s an insult to science itself.”_

Andrew Meier

Does she present a detailed critique of those ‘incoherent models’, or does she merely rubbish them? Rubbishing is not refutation, and in this post-truth era it’s all the more important that we remain alert to that fact.

warblingjturpitude

I have asked NS if she can provide me with something more than rhetoric, even if that is what others have written, and she depends on. Having now watched for the first time however Miss Greta’s own “how dare you” performance, which seemed to me no more than a piece of atrociously bad acting, I’d have to say Naomi is..well, more of a ‘class act’…

Andrew Meier

Thunberg’s performance is irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of Seibt’s claims, as is the extent to which Seibt’s act is polished. Only the evidence matters.

warblingjturpitude

We are surrounded by an incessant swirl of multiply-conflictual information in the midst of which real evidence, as such, becomes almost impossible to distinguish, decode or identify. I have a friend, trained in mathematical physics and living in NZ, who is presently taking a mile of personally collected evidence all the way to that country’s High Court, to show that the real cause of untoward climate events is the operation of tidal turbines! His conviction on this is total and unwavering. I tell you this to illustrate my feeling that “evidence” now comes to us pretty much willy-nilly, and, if we look hard enough, we can find things to back up and defend almost any position. Even one day spent poring over the massive resource that is WUWT, for example, will. cause any honest person to wonder what it is they really think they know and exactly how they came to believe it. I think all we can do is attempt to solemnly retrace the steps by which we were argued into our various positions, if indeed we were argued at all.
Frau Seibt, for her part, has shown on social media thus far a talent for spicy rhetoric, but no more. Once we get a taste for what we think we’re up against, we soon discover ourselves to be bottomless reservoirs of hyperbole!

Andrew Meier

Your friend will be able to subject his evidence to peer review, testing, verification, etc. Any flaws can be ironed out in a process akin to the Hegelian dialectic. What I or you or any layperson or non-specialist finds plausible or implausible is irrelevant to that process. The reason we have the ‘incessant swirl’ of conflicting information is because laypeople have elevated credence to a status it doesn’t deserve. ‘Real evidence’, I would argue, is only ‘almost impossible to distinguish, decode or identify’ for those laypeople and non-specialists engaged in formulating and peddling partisan or obfuscatory narratives.

warblingjturpitude

To which i would reply that, by this point in cultural time, there exists no evidence to show that those speaking in the name of ‘raw’ science are any less partisan in their motivations than anyone else, or rather that the very appearance of their data in approved channels will be wholly dependent on them having had the appropriate findings to receive funding (a poignant alliteration in itself!)

warblingjturpitude

Perhaps I should have posed that previous more humbly as a question. – what evidence do we possess to show that those speaking in the name of ‘raw’ science are any less partisanly motivated than anyone else, or that their findings have not achieved the representative status they have due to largely ideological approvals for funding?

warblingjturpitude

Agreeable visual portrait of the two combatants for eveyone’s files
Naomi vs Greta https://imgur.com/a/9N3oGqF
Btw, can one make an image actually appear here?

Sure, just paste the direct link of the .jpg or whatever image file to a new row (at least it worked some time ago):comment image

warblingjturpitude

Dissident – i am failing entirely to see how these intimations of an ‘alternative’ “system” does anything but wilfully avoid the utterly restless, ceaselessly dynamic and scenically-dependent nature of very desire itself.
The object of appetite and its always freshly mediated appearance on the scene-of-representation, attempting to stay one step ahead of resentment – aka human desire – seems not to even figure into your vaguest gestures here in the direction of something called ‘equality’. Nor does the possibility that it is the figure of the modern child, forever oscillating between a state of innocence and one of consumption, which lies closer to the active heart and centre of the marketplace than anything, seem to worry your shallow allusions to an ‘economy (wrongly) driven by force’, at all!
Surely, Dissident it is the very reality of a “material inequality”, of one appetitive object appearing to be more present or centrally orienting of our imaginations than the next, that makes desire possible? What greater force can there ever be than that of atrraction, and the social order’s perpetual attempt to catch up with that?
I ask you!

Dissident

Hey, Warbling!! 😀
Dissident – i am failing entirely to see how these intimations of an ‘alternative’ “system” does anything but wilfully avoid the utterly restless, ceaselessly dynamic and scenically-dependent nature of very desire itself.
Desire is not, IMO, eternally destined to be greater than any possible system or measure to fulfill it. If one has access to all they need in a material sense, the ability to fulfill one’s desires becomes substantially greater than it is in a system where the vast majority is perpetually denied the material means to have a more versatile life. Moreover, a system of cooperation and material equality would not imbue people with the constant feeling to need “more, more, more” than the other person in order to feel “better” or “fulfilled.” A system of rampant consumerism, with its disreputable advertising industry and constant cultural impetus to overconsume–something endemic to production for profit–is a system that by its very nature is designed to create and escalate desire, and a perpetual feeling of non-satisfaction in what you already have.
The object of appetite and its always freshly mediated appearance on the scene-of-representation, attempting to stay one step ahead of resentment – aka human desire – seems not to even figure into your vaguest gestures here in the direction of something called ‘equality’.
It most certainly does. If you have the material means to move about as needed, the right to a vocation that is suited to your individual talents and temperament, the right to choose any lifestyle that works for you as an individual, freedom from material insecurity (e.g., worry of losing your home, health care, food, etc, due to inability to pay for these things), this will go a long way towards helping one to find the fulfillment they need on a social and emotional level.
Nor does the possibility that it is the figure of the modern child, forever oscillating between a state of innocence and one of consumption, which lies closer to the active heart and centre of the marketplace than anything, seem to worry your shallow allusions to an ‘economy (wrongly) driven by force’, at all!
I described support for a non-market system which is not driven by the profit motive and acquisition of financial wealth or concerns. Hence, the support system for rampant consumerism and a state apparatus with the power to oppress kids (or any other minority or even majority on “behalf of the kids”) into economic dependence on adults or being compelled to live up to the Innocence paradigm is cut off at the source.
Surely, Dissident it is the very reality of a “material inequality”, of one appetitive object appearing to be more present or centrally orienting of our imaginations than the next, that makes desire possible?
Something I addressed, and always have as a Marxian socialist.
What greater force can there ever be than that of atrraction, and the social order’s perpetual attempt to catch up with that?.
My point being, a system without a centralized state or other oligarchy that can force people not to act on attractions that cause no demonstrable harm to others on the basis that it offends the sensibilities of those in power, or threatens the power structure of an entrenched hierarchy. It would be a system that could not and would have no motivation to establish or respect any type of hierarchy.
I ask you!
And I responded!!

Nada

I would not ask about the revival of PNVD, but the lax security. Is it due to personal choice, perhaps a fatalistic belief the state, or vigilanties, would get you no matter what you do?
Regarding mirroring – it hinges on being able to get the material first, which is made difficult by chosing sites requiring the use of Javascript.

bjmuirhead

As much as I can say nothing about LSM’s change of mind—he stopped writing to me quite a while ago, without explanation—it none the less is an important to leave significant room for a change of mind. However, that a paedophile of such apparently strong conviction should change his mind is unusual, to say the least. Such a change would more likely be associated with someone not unlike myself, someone without vested sexual interest, and there have been changes in my thinking which may be of interest in casting a light on LSM’s change.
Without going back and reading through LSM’s work again. my admittedly vague memories remind me the LSM had difficulties with the structure of contemporary societies, especially family structure: the “nuclear family” which ensures that much of the adult-child sexuality and sex which does occur, does so within the family. Children, after all, are sexual creatures, and if their available sex-mates are family…
Just possibly, the difficulty is the certainty with which most people hold their beliefs: If what children are doing is sexual, it cannot be of their own accord because children are not sexual.
Needless to say, any cognitive dissonance which may arise when observed behaviour contradicts belief is pushed aside with great conviction, so much so that it may be said, without irony, that the basis of much human life may be the fear that our beliefs are too easily proven erroneous. In any event, what seems to be the case is that, irrespective of how loving and mutual an adult-child sexual relationship may be, many children are harmed by these relationships, either when the relationship is discovered, or the child ages and re-contextualises the relationship. In saying this, I am not advocating any particular moral position; I am noting that in our contemporary world, child and adult-child sexuality, have no cultural context withing which it can (safely) flourish. Furthermore, the idea that this can change (in the short terms at least) is Utopian rather than radical.
Whilst any attempt to change society’s view on childhood sexuality is admirable, to change society’s view on paedophilia (adult-child sexual relations) is an entirely different matter: paedophiles are the ultimate monsters de jour, which, in turn, ensures that childhood sexuality is almost as monstrous in public belief. (Just so: if a child is sexual, this is because of “molestation” and “abuse” and not because the child is, in fact, enjoying bodily pleasures.)
What does this mean for “active” paedophiles?
I cannot answer this question, beyond my view, firstly, that childhood sexuality is normative and, secondly, that adult-child sexuality appears normative also. Behind this view is the realisation that I am talking about what might be called a “biological normativity’” videsexual bodies react sexually in a manner (logically) prior to specific cultural mores.
It is at this point that my view falls apart, because it is at this point that what was once called “moral harm” intrudes. An adult-child relationship may be mutual, it may be fun and joyous, but moral harm may, but only may, become active in the child’s life as s/he ages and becomes more deeply affected by the prevailing cultural mores.
I do not like this idea, but it has to be given credence, and perhaps LSM has given the idea its due?
Unfortunately, this idea of succumbing to the prevailing mores (re-contextualisation) points toward the ease with which worry and fear are translated from one person to another, and suggests that any re-contextualisation which does take place does so within the context of fear, from which few of us are immune.

Dissident

Hi, Bjmuirhead. I have a few things to say about LSM’s recent (sadly, totally expected by me) repudiation of his former principled stance on intergen relations, some of which correlates with what you said. I will do my best to be as succinct as possible, and be blunt but in no way insulting or antagonistic to LSM, as I too worry about his emotional health, and have for a while now. And I mean this sincerely, not as some type of snarky dig. He was an idol of mine and also a valued friend whose well-being I continue to value despite our falling out.
One thing I need to make clear: it has long been established in the pro-choice camp that iatrogenic and sociogenic harm in today’s society can later cause harmless and even mutually joyous sexual relations between the age groups to eventually turn bad for the younger person in retrospect. This has been discussed throughout my over 20 years with the online MAP community, and would in no way be a recent revelation or consideration to LSM. This consideration is, in fact, one of the major reasons pro-choice MAPs agree that such relationships need to be avoided in today’s world. And this has always been considered, since long before I became active in the community.
That said, I noted a few years ago both here and on Lensman’s own blog in the comments that I saw signs of his impending change of view, and it was clear that it had to do with an emotional struggle related to the idea that sexuality is far too often exploitative and negative, at least for kids. This began when he started making arguments that he would rather see kids forced into a sate of asexuality than forced into sexual relationships rather than seeing the two to be a comparable injustice. I told him right then and there that this was indicative of the beginning of a drastic change towards sex-negativity, which would lead towards increasing rationalizations of authoritarian anti-sex laws being placed upon kids “for their own good” (as always) and such autocratic measures to be seen as a sign of love and concern for the well-being of kids–along with statements that MAPs who feel liberation is the better way to go clearly cannot love or care about kids as much as those taking an autocratic stance. And sure enough, after some time passed…
Individuals, I have noted, follow a similar inexorable downward slide as do cultures when this process starts. The next sign of things to come manifested as his increasing obsession with the “evils” of Islam, and the belief that the genital mutilation of girls and forced child marriages were still widespread and common to participants of this religion all over the world. Whenever evidence was asked for, none was provided, with the arguments always leading to, “it says this in the Koran!” No consideration that the majority of modern followers of Islam do not adhere to these bad ancient tenets any longer would be considered. Okay, I am simplifying this here, but if I went into great detail of what these extended arguments entailed, this would be an extremely long post, so I am trying to provide just the basic gist of that whole lengthy series of arguments, and to mention that they began consuming LSM and his blog.
This, to me, was indicative of what has often been called a ‘savior complex,’ the same thing you see with many anti-choice moralizers, another contemporary example being those moral crusaders who insist that sex trafficking is extremely widespread all over the world and that stringent, authoritarian anti-prostitution laws need to be implemented. Such individuals have a powerful psychological need to identify victims and “rescue” them as part of a personal or group crusade, demeaning anyone who points out the facts as not caring about the welfare of said group of alleged victims, and making all sorts of vile accusations against those who continue to support a liberationist stance. These moral crusades very often target sexuality of some sort, which has long been a ‘hot button’ aspect of human moral culture. (Anti-vaxxers are another, albeit non-sexual example of such moral crusaders.)
These individuals also see themselves as victims, bravely fighting for a cause that most of the rest of the world is incapable or unwilling to provide justice for. It’s powerfully intoxicating and it consumes people on an emotional level, making them feel both heroic and victimized at the same time. Many of them become self-righteous and extremely judgmental against others, and insist that authoritarian measures are the cornerstone of virtue from a pragmatic point of view. The #MeToo movement is another manifestation of this, and a sizable chunk of people involved are clearly suffering from mental health issues while sincerely believing they are serving the cause of justice.
I have no idea what may have been the catalyst of this in Lensman’s personal life, and can only speculate. That speculation is that he was subject to a heavy amount of pressure from many different corners, both within and outside of the MAP community, and eventually the walls just came tumbling down. Once this particular emotional catalyst is triggered, I have noticed that it very rarely ever subsides or reverses itself, but only gradually worsens, much like biological neuro-conditions such as dementia.
I give Tom and some others here a lot of credit for remaining Lensman’s friend throughout his inexorable slide. I tried to do the same, as I tried with others before him who went through something similar, but I just couldn’t do it. The disappointment, the feeling of betrayal, the anger at the types of accusations thrown at me and others of my ideological ilk (all very cruel and unfounded), was too much for me after a while. I admit this, and I am sorry if this constitutes a failing of my character. However, that does not mean that I lost all concern for Lensman and others like him, or wish anything remotely like ill will on them. I just do not know what I can do for them. I confess, however, that I cannot pretend that it didn’t happen, or that they are still the friend I once knew. But if there is a way I can help, I sincerely hope I can 🙁

warblingjturpitude

To state that “no evidence was ever given” for LSM’s case against FGM is no more than a flat-out lie, and a desperate one at that. There was pretty much nothing BUT evidence given in his exhaustive, and above all, unique study.

Dissident

No, you’re wrong there, Warbling, just as you were in all your knee-jerk defenses of Lensman’s emotionalistic attacks on Islam. Those lengthy series of exchanges pointed out a lot of information contained in the Islamic holy texts that there is no good evidence is still carried out on a widespread basis by contemporary followers of the religion, even in hyper-patriarchal Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia. I honestly think you state these misstatements of your own because you have an emotionalistic, irrational sympathy with the emotional but non-factual statements made by Lensman about contemporary Islam in general. Pointing out the multitude of bad things in the Koran that were written eons ago does not “prove” these practices are carried out today on a widespread basis or that many, many contemporary Muslims are not becoming increasingly liberalized and distant from such practices. Your irrational attacks are becoming very tiresome, especially since you do not maintain even a modicum of civility when you do this, nor do you make much sense with your over-use of flowery language. [MODERATOR: Careful, Dissy, this last sentence is too personal. You can be monstrously tiresome yourself: ever heard the saying that people in glass houses should not throw stones?]

Dissident

[MODERATOR: Careful, Dissy, this last sentence is too personal. You can be monstrously tiresome yourself: ever heard the saying that people in glass houses should not throw stones?]
Talk about getting too personal. Though you have the right to go against this as the mod, since you never seem to give any type of warning to Warbling when he repeatedly acts this way, including to me, but jump on me with a personal and frankly insulting attack/warning combo on of the rare occasions that I lose my civility, I am guessing you are angry at me for “calling it as I see it” regarding Lensman’s downslide. Otherwise, your repeated bias for taking me to task for even justifiable matters that never seems to bother you when others do it more often than me leads me to believe there is some resentment factor going on with you towards me, and few things are more tiresome than repeated instances of such a bias. Considering the one-sided basis of this, if I am not welcome here, let me know, and I will graciously not darken your cyber doorstep with my presence again.

warblingjturpitude

Dissident: you simply bewilder me. It’s taken me two days to overcome the distress that you incur, and decide what to say. And i will say it succinctly, in the form of two questions:
1) where may I find an incontrovertible example of a “personal attack” made on you, or on anybody else here? I will not accept anything less than the text itself, verbatim. [MODERATOR TO DISSIDENT: You are welcome to come up with an example, if you can, as requested. But please maintain a non-emotive tone and say no more than strictly necessary to answer the question.]
2) HOW is repeatedly referring to me as “irrational” and “emotionalistic” (sic) not the very definition of personal attacking? How, for that matter, does repeatedly denouncing my language as “flowery”, not constitute an unsolicited attack on my personal style? You yourself may possess a facility for your native tongue that appears to be truly effortless, but some of us have to think, quite painstakingly, about every sentence we attempt to compose. [MODERATOR: To criticise someone’s prose style does not in itself count as personally abusive for the purpose of this blog. Repeated sneers, Trump-style, directed against the writer rather than against a particular text that might be “flowery” to the point of being excessively opaque, ambiguous, or whatever, would be another matter.]
Without the text of LSM’s most recent investigations before us I do not think we can do anything more than ever more loudly broadcast our largely ‘a priori’ assumptions…

Dissident

Your entire tone is often very combative and argumentative, Warbling. Maybe that is just your style, but that is how you come off. I have said numerous times that I disagree with Lensman’s anti-Islamic diatribes, and that his “evidence” is limited to bad practices mentioned in their holy book, and not that it is in any way still carried out today in modern Islamic practice re: child genital mutilation or forced child marriage. That is where I stand and will continue to stand. I will say no more, because our esteemed moderator has left me at an extreme disadvantage when it comes to responding to others, one that you will not be held to yourself. In the future if I get another very long response from you that begs a detailed one from me, I will make that response on GirlChat and simply leave a link here. That should be palatable to Tom since he will not have to moderate anything left on GC and can even choose not to read it if he hasn’t the time or patience that day.

galileo1439

LSM is a traitor, a turncoat. Simple as that. He used to be on our pro legalization of contact side, now he’s on the enemy (anti) side.
As for iatrogenic harm, against the backdrop of society the perception and context can shift both ways. What was seen as harmful at one time can later be reframed as a positive experience. Let’s build iatrogenic benefit. Ultimately we need to change society.

Dissident

If you permit me, Tom, as I strove to be fair but critical as warranted with Lensman (and, by proxy, yourself), I am going to try to do the same here on both counts with Gaileo, doing my utmost to be objective while holding in the anger.
Where should our loyalties lie? To our friends? To our faction? Or to the truth?
I have little doubt LSM is being loyal to the truth as he sees it;

I agree. But loyalty to a false truth due to an emotional downslide can cause a lot of damage to others, not only to a just cause they are fighting for but also on a personal level vis a vis the inevitable insults and accusations that one throws at people they strongly disagree with and the feeling of betrayal. This can easily cause as much pain to these friends who once looked up to that person as the person in question may now be suffering. And sympathy for pain and emotional suffering need not be a zero sum game where only one side is considered. This is exactly what the victims–sometimes real, sometimes manufactured or imagined–in the sex abuse community and #MeToo movement demand and insist upon. Look at the damage that is caused on multiple levels, both personal and political, as a result of that lot. And you know I am not saying this to dismiss the pain of those who genuinely suffered abuse.
Please note I am also not saying we should just abandon or denounce our friends in a knee-jerk reaction when they suffer such an emotional downslide. But the damage, pain, and hurt they inflict on us is every bit as real and consequential as what they may be experiencing, and if they refuse to accept support and continued with the insults, attacks, and misstatement of facts (whether they believe it to be true or not), there needs to come a time when at least some of us tell them “enough is enough here” and they too learn there are consequences for such behavior; that it can be self-destructive as well as destructive to others. Otherwise, we are arguably acting as enablers for such people and that type of behavior in the long run, and it encourages others to misuse their genuine pain and for attention-seekers to falsely claim they are in pain to justify similar types of behavior.
For instance, would the fantasists you have written about on this blog have had the political clout to carry out their depredations as far as they did if not for people in genuine pain who took things too far, and the well-intentioned supporters who shielded them from any type of consequences? Please know I am saying this with a heavy heart and with the utmost respect for everyone concerned in this conversation.
that is a virtue, not a vice. Should we blame him, or anyone, for honesty?
Believing you are honest when what you are thinking is not the truth and hence both self-destructive and destructive to others, potentially on a massive scale, is not something that should be commended regardless of that person’s deep-seated intentions as a result of their state of mind. Truth is not relative to one’s feelings or state of mind, and we need to be willing to tell that to our friends when need be just as we routinely do to people whom we do not consider friends, such as Ethan and some of the main architects of the misandrist #MeToo movement. To the contrary, such people are already choking on an inflated sense of virtue, which is why such behavior is often referred to as ‘virtue signalling.’
What seems to have happened – and here I agree with Mr Turpitude – is not that he has failed to give evidence in support of his changed views. On the contrary, he has researched in tremendous depth, uncovering masses of evidence to bolster his changed position. The problem is that he has largely ignored contrary evidence and exaggerated the importance and relevance of his findings.
I honestly believe, Tom, that when one puts aside the tremendous affection and respect so many of us grew to have for Lensman, what you said basically boils down to what I said–his “evidence” supports a lot of painstakingly researched and correct info about what the Koran says, and bad practices it has allowed and encouraged when written so many centuries ago. What he has not proven is that this is still widespread among contemporary Muslims, including those living in Western nations, or that most contemporary Muslims would actually still support things like the genital mutilation of girls or forced child marriages. So, the statement that he is “both right and wrong” is just a nice way of saying the above–what he says about the book is accurate, but what he says about the vast majority of the Muslim people in the modern world still adhering to those texts in the book are not.
The result is to leave him with a grievously unbalanced position. This, I am forced to conclude, is the product of a now unbalanced mind, not a treacherous heart. We should understand this in sorrow not in anger.
For the record, I do not believe Lensman deliberately planned or carried out an act of treachery. I believe that he caved into a form of emotional weakness and pressure. I say this to be honest, not as an attempt to hurl a knock at him. However, the end result is pretty much the same as if he carried this out as part of the dubious political agenda that some of the anti-choicers do (the ones who are perfectly sane, and I do not use that term as a compliment for them).
I do feel tremendous sorrow for what has happened to Lensman, along with a strong sense of helplessness over the whole matter. However, though I would not use the harsh words utilized by Gaileo, I cannot help but feel anger and betrayal as well, as I always hoped that Lensman would resist the possibility of this happening. What happened was not only a painful blow to him, but to us as well.

warblingjturpitude

To this Tom I will of course have to ask, where might I find the “contrary evidence” against LSM’s findings regarding neverending prosecutions for CSA, but the staggering sum of ONE prosecution for FGM in the UK?
I also have to probe you on this ongoing allusion to that ideal which is said to be “balanced”. Can I ask you what is the point of that, if not to be indistinguishable from well, equivacocentric (my own coinage even if It ain’t currency)?
If evidence in any matter points one way rather than another, why must we dutifully invoke this homage to “balance” if not from a sort of insecurity, and concomitantly, the vainest hope of appeasing everybody at once?

Dissident

Having spent far too long reading Dissy’s marathon,
Ah, that is what got you flustered. Sorry if I failed to be succinct again, Tom. In all fairness, I would likely be less flustered at your getting flustered over it if you showed the same degree of exasperation to others when they do the same thing, or lose their civility and make personal attacks (which Warbling is infamous for), something I think I am relatively rarely guilty of. Otherwise, you give me the impression that there are personal issues you have beyond simply the brevity thing. For whatever it may be worth, I likely put at least as much time trying to respond to what I considered to be important topics as it took you to plough through it, and I am also a very busy person. That said, I do apologize for jumping to the wrong conclusion up above and getting you flustered at me yet again.

Dissident

As I said before, I do understand your point, Tom. Not everyone agrees with the brevity issue, but I understand I have to cater to the requirements and needs of the moderator on any given blog, which I will try hard to do.

Andrew Meier

With the utmost respect, galileo, I really don’t think using terms such as ‘traitor’ and ‘enemy’ helps. There is plenty of common ground between the pro-choice and anti-choice camps. Almost everybody in both camps wants what’s best for children. They just happen to disagree on what that is. The freedom to disagree or change one’s mind on a matter is a good thing, is it not? Indeed, the pro camp’s cause will be futile if people aren’t allowed to change their minds. I think it’s important to avoid stepping into the realm of dogmatism and fighting talk. A case argued cogently doesn’t require ad hominems.

Dissident

I agree with what you said about the futility of ad hominems and resorting to “fight talk,” Andrew. No arguments there. Which is why I did not use the harsh words that Gaileleo did.
However, having engaged in debate with numerous anti-choicers over the past 2 decades along with their counterparts in other movements, I must respectfully disagree that many of them are sincerely looking out for the best interest of kids. Those who call for authoritarian solutions to any perceived problems are rarely doing that. What they are actually doing, it becomes quite clear when they are shoved into a corner, is standing up for the status quo as it exists, and the societal institutions that now exist–along with its entrenched power structures. It’s based on an utter lack of respect for kids and their potential despite the sincere degree of love that may be there.
A few good examples, so as not to make this too long: 1. Such anti-choicers would make a much better case if they did not so strongly support a system that routinely causes numerous forms of demonstrable harm to kids outside the realm of the sexual, such as supporting the continued use of personal automobiles as the main form of long-range transportation–which is responsible for the largest number of accidental deaths of kids per year; 2. The support of a status quo responsible for massive amounts of child neglect and abuse of every sort (including sexual) inside the home due to the authoritarian and insular nature of the nuclear family unit and how it treats kids like property of the parents; 3. The massive amount of child poverty across the globe that the current system tolerates and abets; 4. The massive suffering of children in foreign nations due to war violence/profiteering that supporters of the status quo routinely cheer on because it’s a Western government that is dropping the cluster bombs; 5. The lack of concern over the authoritarian nature of the schooling system where many kids are bullied, unhappy, unsuited for, and subject to enforced indoctrination–against their will.
Hence, I do not buy the statements of such anti-choicers for a second that their main concern is the well-being of kids, a desire to spare them from suffering trauma, etc. Not when they stay obsessively focused on preventing them from engaging in any form of sexual activity and expression, and focusing concerns about sexual abuse almost entirely on external sources outside of the insular nuclear family home.
Others, including Lensmen, I believe, change their minds or pick their stance based on emotional issues that distort their objective thinking. They want to be saviors, to virtue signal, to gain societal acceptance from the prevailing status quo, and to feel better about themselves. In other words, moral crusaders. They may actually believe that the nuclear family home is the safest place for kids to be and that kids are naturally asexual and want nothing to do with sex play etc., but the fact that it isn’t true ultimately means their actions do not contribute to the well-being of kids despite their overall intentions.
Do we have a right to change our minds? Yes, but I do not believe that those who suffer an emotional break-down change their minds for good, rational, objectively researched reasons, and we need to be honest about this. We are not helping them, nor the community at large, if we over-sympathize with them to the point that we simply become enablers for this type of behavior.
Pro-choicers and anti-choicers can find some means of common ground, but we need to be honest about the above.

Andrew Meier

My phrasing was as follows: ‘Almost everybody in both camps wants what’s best for children’. To refute this, one would have to argue a case for a significant proportion of anti-choicers not wanting what’s best for children. What you’ve done instead is argue that their choices aren’t particularly conducive to what’s best for children.

Dissident

I have indeed made that argument, Andrew. I have, more specifically, argued that the great majority of anti-choicers want the preservation of the status quo above all else, irregardless of what that means for children. I pointed out many, many examples of the negative effects on children that the status quo has, yet they tolerate these things with no problem and instead focus obsessively and near-exclusively on sexual matters. I come to this conclusion after many years and countless arguments with them.

bjmuirhead

I never imagined for a moment tht I was saying anything about re-conceptualisation and moral harm that wasn’t already known here. I was trying to put something in context for myself, and I think I achieved that limited aim.
Nor do I think that cultural values, and the harm they may cause particular people who do not hold those values, or who act against them, remain constant throughout time and place. Or, perhaps I should say, some cultural (human) values seem to remain constant, but their expression changes from place to place.
Beyond saying this, I don’t really want to get involved in a debate about LSM’s beliefs. He argued for them clearly and cogently, with evidence to support his position. I disagree with much of what he said, but I also agreed with much else that he said. Enough to say that I don’t really have a view on his final position, but nor do I have the interest to pursue a view at this point.

Dissident

Beyond saying this, I don’t really want to get involved in a debate about LSM’s beliefs. He argued for them clearly and cogently, with evidence to support his position. I disagree with much of what he said, but I also agreed with much else that he said.
He argued forcefully, with a lot of good research into the many bad things in the Koran. That was clear and cogent, but it provided no evidence for the main point of those arguments: that contemporary Muslims are still practicing these awful things on a widespread basis–including forced child marriage!–and that Muslims en masse are failing to liberalize or move past these things. Making a forceful argument and saying that the presence of these things in the holy book and that a lot of nasty things were written in it centuries ago automatically translates into continued complicit behavior by most of its modern adherents does not translate into actual evidence of the latter. Nor that, ergo, this means that a lot of the nasty things said about MAPs and intergenerational relationships in general must also be bad by proxy, and that kids need authoritarian protection etc., etc. That was precisely where Lensman’s line of thinking ultimately led, which is jumping to a huge amount of conclusions based on feelings, not evidence.
Hence, I agree that Lensman proved that the Muslim religion had a lot of nasty tenets written into its holy book eons ago, which is not anything I or anyone else ever argued against.
In fact, if you put those feelings aside, it actually serves to prove the stellar opposite of what Lensman was arguing: that youth liberation and full integration into the entire community so kids would not continue to be at the legal mercy of adult agencies of any sort would greatly undermine kids being forced, legally or otherwise, into doing anything they didn’t want to do by adults. Yet, note how Lensman continued to argue for parental control over kids (“if MAPs actually expected parents to trust them with their kids…”) to prevent them from engaging in sexual activity. When, if genital mutilation and forced child marriage was really still going on in massive numbers by Muslims, wouldn’t it be the parents forcing their kids to comply with such religion-based tenets? And wouldn’t full civil rights enable kids to resist such things?
This shows the types of contradictions that are implicit in the arguments of moral crusaders, that ultimately add up to one thing in their mind: sexuality is highly negative, and kids need to be forced not to engage in it by any means possible, even if that means giving adults full power over them–which may result in forcing them into sexual activity behind the scenes, since many such adults would obviously go on power trips. Integrating them into the community as a whole would undermine the insular nature of the nuclear family unit, and Lensman did argue at one point for full community integration–but that would put intergeneational relationships into full public scrutiny and allow kids an unprecedented voice in society, which could easily provide solid proof of the evidence, that such relationships are not inherently damaging if iatrogenic and sociogenic harm could be openly challenged. Hence, the arguments as presented by Lensman against Islam and the broader extrapolations that caused him to ultimately repudiate his pro-choice stance altogether all point in one basic direction: sex negativity in general, and a negative attitudes towards anyone or any ideology that champions a stance of liberation towards sexual and other civil liberties regarding youths. As expected, it is rife with logical contradictions, and it doesn’t make sense because it isn’t supposed to make sense; it’s supposed to appeal to a sense of one’s feelings.
Enough to say that I don’t really have a view on his final position, but nor do I have the interest to pursue a view at this point.
Understood, as you would then have to deconstruct his arguments in full, and if a smart man like you did that, it may force you into a non-netural stance. Hence, I understand why you may conclude it’s best to simply not think about it overly much and conclude that Lensman was “both right and wrong,” and leave it at that.
My point? Let’s indeed support Lensman as a person, but let’s not try to force that support to the views he now espouses.

bjmuirhead

Well, no…
This argument was held long ago between a group of us. I have read papers, long ago, which argued for the existence of a large number of FGM operations being conducted in the UK. Perhaps it is not as widespread as various researchers would have us believe, but, as I said on LSM’s blog as it then existed, I know someone who had her genitals mutilated. Not for religion, just for nastiness, hence I find it difficult to be sanguine about even one instance of FGM. Did LSM take it too far? Yeah, probably, but I won’t fault him for that, if only because many I know in real life, as it is called, believe that I have taken my research and conclusions into paedophilia too far.
No matter how short our trip, many believe we have gone too far. And so be it.

Dissident

I concur, as Tom said, that opposition to FGM (or with either gender) should be part of the youth rights agenda. However, the fact that it happens in some instances today does not make it a widespread epidemic worthy of assaulting civil liberties or declaring “war” on an entire religion. As the saying goes, “the solution of a fanatic is often far worse than the problem itself.”
Not for religion, just for nastiness, hence I find it difficult to be sanguine about even one instance of FGM.
Not going off the deep end about it is not the equivalent of being sanguine or dismissive of the problem. In fact, it puts us in a better position to think rationally and come up with a solution that is in harmony with civil libertarians and does not overstep by a serious magnitude.
Did LSM take it too far? Yeah, probably, but I won’t fault him for that, if only because many I know in real life, as it is called, believe that I have taken my research and conclusions into paedophilia too far.
Taking things “too far”, and the problems that entails, is not “okay” IMO, as witch hunts and police states are the ultimate progeny of this. I am curious, though…in what way do you think you have taken your research and conclusions about intergen relations too far that is in any way comparable to Lensman’s reactions?

warblingjturpitude

Well goodness me, now that is sad, BJ! I mean, really? When what LSM is saying – that pretty much always revolving around permutations of the oldest taboo of all and thus the foundation of social order/the very possibility of biology – may well constitute the biggest obstacle of all to the (dare I say it) ‘realisation of our dreams'” Ooh but sorry I forgot – you yourself have “no vested sexual interest”. I always wanted to probe you a bit on that – just how does it feel to be he who roots for the most despised team on all the known playing-fields, without the slightest idea or rather felt sense of what drives them toward their goal?

bjmuirhead

How interesting, my dear Turpitude, that you have asked a question I expected long ago.
With your permission, Tom, as this may become long. Or it may not. It also may not answer the question, or it may. We shall see. In any event, feel free to say Nah, fuck it! Too many long comments! (Yeah, I rambled a bit Tom; sorry about that.)
[MODERATOR: Sigh! This is beginning to look like a mod’s day from hell! LATER: Have now read your whole post, BJ, and find I have no complaint about you giving us important personal information that few here will have heard before, and which directly answers Mr Turp’s question.]

I always wanted to probe you a bit on that – just how does it feel to be he who roots for the most despised team on all the known playing-fields, without the slightest idea or rather felt sense of what drives them toward their goal?

Firstly, I do not see myself as “rooting” for the team; rather, I see myself as striving to understand. This is something I always have done, beginning with all the hatred of gay people that was expressed, in my home town, at east, back in the 1970s
To put it a different way: if someone tells me that there is a monster there, I will go and have a look and make my own mind up. This I have been doing.
The journey began in the mid 1990s when I was a participant-observer (dreadful term!) in a sexual assault group and met a paedophile who was in the group as a means of avoiding jail. How he managed to swing that, I do not know. But out of that came a paper, Once raped, always raped (available on my academia.edu site) which was reasonably well received here and there, but which never found a publisher (apart from an in-house collection of readings for a course in human sexuality at QUT Kelvin Grove. I never did manage to get a copy of that, although I saw one, because Ron Frey, the lecturer who included it, feared copyright problems if he gave me a copy, without considering my copyright. Bit of a twat, he was).
I pretty much put the issue of paedophilia away at that point, until Bill Henson, an Australian artist who produces photographs of young people on the cusp of puberty’s secondary sex characteristics, was in trouble and the vultures were screaming Paedophile monster! at him. I then ventured into academe again, as a PhD candidate in an art faculty, with the stated intention of looking at the status of the nude, in the hope of understanding the paedophile claims and the nude itself.
To cut an even longer story short, my view is nutshelled, rather poorly, as follows: When we look at another person, especially a nude in some art form, we mind read about the person. A photograph thus enable us to come i nto some form of affectively intentional contact with the model via the mediation of the artist’s “vision”. (I rather like Jan Slaby’s work on affective intentionality, and on affective societies. (Affective intentionality and the feeling body, DOI 10.1007/s11097-007-9083-x, is a good place to start.) But, for affective intentionality to have any force in respect of the nude, what is required is a sense of (visual) touch, and then we are getting somewhere.
So, if I look at a good photograph of a naked child, I enter into an affectively intentional relationship with the child as represented (let us, please, forget Scruton’s quibbles about representation in photography at this point!) This is possible because affective intentionality is essentially bodily (see Slaby’s paper), but in respect of nudes it is bodily in an interpersonal manner because we know what it is to touch another.
The affective intentionality “experienced” (present? Embodied, is what most say…) in someone with a sexual interest is essentially the same as that experienced by someone with no sexual interest. Yah, Freud, back off bitch!
I think or at least strongly suspect that something like this is going on when anyone looks at a nude, but it male or female, be it child or adult.
As much as I love women, I have no problems looking at a man and saying My God he is beautiful! Similarly, I have no problems saying that of a child. But the thought of sexual contact with a man or a child (now that I am growned up, you understand? I had no such quibbles when I was a child with another child!) is something that I just reject, deep within me.
Am I going to reject and loathe all the men who love men? The women who love women? —Just because the thought repulses me personally? Nope. That is not my way. But I don’t see myself as rooting for LGBT_XYZ people, nor do I see myself as rooting for paedophiles, although I suppose it seems, often enough, that I am.
Rather, it is a matter of Monsters? Show me the monsters and I will show you a human being. Moreover, it is clear from my inadequate account of embodiment and affective intentionality that I do have some small understanding; I just don’t share the desire, and cannot discuss it from that point of view. But, being here and reading a lot helps understanding.
I would go on and make it all a bit clearer, possibly even argue for a point here and there, but let’s just blame it on Bill Henson and his photographs. They turned me gay! No, wait: they turned me to the subject!
Lastly, do excuse my humour, and any bad bits of writing, as I have just typed this off the cuff, and I all too often leave out the most important bits, or become confused a little, when I do that without revision.
I suppose I should say that I never did get the PhD. Supervisor Akinson couldn’t understand a word I said, or so he said, and he farmed me off to someone who just insisted that I take a Nietzchean genealogical approach when I was clearly taking a neuroscience approach. Funny really, I have written two honours theses for people who got firsts on my work; an entire graduate diploma in fine art, and most of a PhD, and didn’t get a piece of paper to wipe my arse with, except for my own honours and Masters theses, of course. I suppose it comes from choosing difficult subjects and obscure approaches to those subjects. One such difficult subject is paedophilia and paedophiles, and I just will not talk about the number of attempts I have made to get a candidacy researching y’all in a sensible non-hating fashion.

bjmuirhead

Apologies for my typing errors! I especially regret leaving out the double parenthesis when referring to Slaby. I would fail a propositional logic exam if I left out too many parentheses!

bjmuirhead

Apologies for yet another self-reply, but here is a quote from the Slab paper I mentioned above, which may assist understanding where I was trying to go:
” for healthy adult humans at least, a central way of being in touch with the world and with oneself is affective. Intentionality – the mind’s capacity to be directed at something beyond itself – is in the most central cases not a cold, detached, purely cognitive affair, but rather constitutively feelings-involving. It is affective intentionality.”

Nada

I’m very happy to see you! I feared you lost, as other friends.
I hope you, and other members of the old guard, are well and continue to take care.

David Kennerly

To deal with Leonard’s transformation first (which doesn’t surprise me as fanatics’ beliefs are always to be regarded as volatile and subject to extreme oscillations and even self-repudiation) and to comment on the reemergence of Dutch fascism a bit later, I would like to say that, while I thought his writings were generally quite intelligent and perceptive they were never, to my mind, “brilliant” simply because his commitment to a political ideology that is antithetical to freedom and individual liberty was always going to be his central animating principle, not freedom for kids which was certainly imagined as contingent upon, if not entirely subordinate to, those political instantiations.
So no, I’m not surprised at his volte-face because I knew that the reordering of the world’s economic system around the use of force was always going to be far more important to him than justice for kids and those who love them.
When someone believes in state violence, his subordinated beliefs said to be in furtherance of freedom must be viewed skeptically.
This is a pattern that I’ve seen too often not to recognize, or to find surprising, when someone matches it.

Dissident

If you are referring to Lensman’s past support for a ‘Green’ society, you know I cannot agree with you, David. Nothing about such a system calls for the use of “government force,” but an equalizing of access to the distribution of wealth that would be brought about by the choice and will of the vast majority, not some state oligarchy forcing it upon the world. A system of such equality that requires no force to maintain peace and order is hardly at odds with freedom and personal liberty, which is certainly not the type of system we have now; the system of class rule is most definitely held together by force, specifically the military and professional police forces run by governments controlled by a corporate oligarchy. Bottom line: if you have or desire a system of material inequality, you will have to use force to hold it together, because the few having power over the many is a most unfree system by its very nature.
That said, I disagreed with Leonard that a Green society as we mutually envisioned could be established with the current anti-pedo hysteria and lack of freedom for youths intact. Such a system does indeed require the repression of a powerful state apparatus and forced ignorance of youth that would not be likely, if at all possible, in a system where the entire community, not a reclusive nuclear family unit, raised and provided guidance for kids. Also, a system that maintains strict forms of bigotry and control over the sexuality of its citizens will naturally breed witch hunts and surveillance, and this is absolutely inimical to freedom. You cannot have just a few tidbits of draconian policies existing harmoniously with an otherwise democratic framework without the former spreading like cancer cells.

Christian

LSM’s turn to conservatism, which manifests itself in his opinions on childhood sexuality, on the supposed “dangers” of the religions prevailing among non-European populations, or on the use of state of emergency against terrorist menace, has probably killed his “green” perspective.

Dissident

That is possible, Christian. Though he did make comments a while back expressing a continued support for a Green global system which suggested that a Green society with full community guidance of kids could be established with the current biases and prohibitions against intergenerational romance and childhood sexuality left fully intact. This, I believe, is based on the hope of some that draconian and prohibition mandates can exist within an ostensibly libertarian socio-political framework without tainting and gradually rotting the latter like gangrene in a limb.
History has always proven this to be one of the most naive notions out there, but the mindset of the above are not fact-based or history-based, but feelings-based and belief-based. Much like trickle-down economics is a continued cherished belief among conservatives and other supporters of capitalism despite history proving this unfounded numerous times.
Some adherents to authoritarian precepts while giving lip service to “freedom” and “liberty” are perfectly sane and clearly know better. They are utilizing common political stealth techniques to frame the debate. Others are emotionally troubled and likely fully or partly believe they will cheat the golden rule of history, because their feelings will not let them acknowledge or accept the facts. To them, there is no difference between feelings and facts. Hence, such people could literally envision a future society where kids hold tremendous political and community power, yet adults still manage to force them not to express themselves sexually without being challenged (e.g., the kids in that society almost universally recognize and agree it’s for their own good!).

David Kennerly

Hello Dissident, I’m going to let my (incomplete) criticism of Lensman’s politics stand on its own simply because I have no confidence in my ability to persuade Marxists of the inherent violence in their favored ideology despite being manifestly clear to me and others and historically well-enumerated.
Or, maybe I’ll just go on a bit… 🙂
You invoked majoritarian sentiment as an appeal to forcefully securing power. Right there, we have a fundamental conflict, one that I don’t see being resolved through these posts. Suffice it to say that I see Communism as inextricably committed to the use of state violence to reengineer society along lines that are incompatible with human flourishing. It’s a system of pathologically bad social analysis and worse economic insights that rewards brutality and enslaves the individual. The individual is entirely expendable in that system and countless millions have been so-expended. This is a matter of fact, not opinion.
As child-lovers, which is to say as members of a distinct minority, we, of all people, should be acutely aware of the dangers of a society in which the individual is entirely subordinated to the will of “the majority.”
Subjectively, I can’t help but notice that, of those child-lovers I have known who were zealously Marxist, their commitment to man/boy love was very tenuous, indeed and often thrown overboard as soon as they perceived it to be somehow at odds with the interests of their politics, which is to say, with the interests of the majority. They’re not entirely alone in my experience; religious fundamentalists are also prone to the abandonment of previously-held intergen principles, too. I think it obvious that the reason for this is a lack of commitment to individual liberty as a precondition to any other beliefs. In other words, if you don’t really believe in individual liberty, to begin with then any expression of it is up for grabs and your former comrades are left to twist in the wind.
None of this is to suggest that I am somehow in love and awe with the system that enslaves me now, said to be “capitalism,” No, it’s far from being either a free market or an entirely free marketplace of ideas but one thing that it does have that Europe does not is the Bill of Rights and, especially, the First Amendment.
While longtime darling of the socially “progressive” American left, The Netherlands, has decided that Marthijn, Norbert and Ad can no longer express their opinions, we in the States can be reasonably well-assured that this right will not disappear altogether, although it is under continuous attack.
Cheers!

Andrew Meier

Ifs and buts are inevitable, as freedom of expression never exists in a vacuum and so cannot be absolute. As I’m sure you know, it’s curtailed wherever freedom of expression can reasonably be taken to be secondary to the rights of other parties not to be harmed by what is being expressed (e.g. hate speech in the criminal arena, or restrictions on defamation in the civil arena). The other party can also be entirely abstract rather than an individual human being (or group thereof), i.e. can be the public morals, which is a nebulous, euphemistic term for cultural consensus on what people feel to be right and wrong. I’d be interested in details on the Marthijn case, appeal and grounds for the appeal’s inadmissibility.

Andrew Meier

That’s a moot point, of course, but I’d offer two hasty comments (I’m short on time). 1) Defamation pertains to specific individuals. You can’t defame, say, all homosexuals as a category. Incitement requires encouragement to commit a criminal act. Hate speech covers the blind spots of these two offences, such that an individual making hateful utterances (against, say, paedophiles) that are devoid of incitement and defamation can still be prosecuted. 2) The police and CPS not only assess whether there is sufficient evidence for a prosecution but also whether an offence is sufficiently serious as to merit pursuing prosecution, i.e. whether it’s in the public interest to do so. This does give a certain degree of latitude to the police and CPS, of course, but it also means that discretion can be exercised and not every peccadillo needs to be dissected in court.

David Kennerly

Thank you, Tom. Excellent statement. No, we don’t need laws prohibiting “hate speech.” We continue to need laws against “hate action” which is to say, actual violence. As a child very many years ago, “sticks-and-stones” was an axiom so often recited as to be annoying but today we never hear it (and I miss it) society having decided that speech, after all, represents a threat to the fragility of humans which they imagine them having. This movement towards shutting down speech is part of the much larger one that has taken hold which imagines magical, life-destroying forces unleashed by affectionate touch of children. Both unquantifiable, non-falsifiable and thoroughly unscientific phenomenon are now, themselves, axiomatic throughout our society. An argument could easily be made that these speech (and affection) limitations carry with them the potential for self-fulfilling outcomes in which the proscribed speech or affection feels like “violence” to those so neurally programmed and entrained.
I want to add to my earlier championing of the U.S. Bill of Rights and its First Amendment that Americans, today, would no doubt find the language of that Amendment to be unacceptably broad and would prefer the “ifs-and-buts” which have been peppered throughout its European equivalent. Nevertheless, the First Amendment does not include very many of those “ifs-and-buts” (at least one of which is, indeed, unwarranted) and so those of us who live in the U.S. find ourselves able to say the same things which Marthijn and Norbert are no longer able to say without the threat of state violence against themselves. That we are still able to say those things is down to the document, itself, and not to the fashions and prejudices of the American people. There is a piece of paper – the Bill of Rights, standing between us and the mob. That is both a source of worry and assurance to me but I’ll take it any day over the Europeans’ more dynamic and majority-pandering instrument that they think protects speech. The one piece of paper is bold, strong, unambiguous and fearless while the other is weak, fragile, deceptive and craven.

Dissident

Hello Dissident, I’m going to let my (incomplete) criticism of Lensman’s politics stand on its own simply because I have no confidence in my ability to persuade Marxists of the inherent violence in their favored ideology despite being manifestly clear to me and others and historically well-enumerated.
Since no actual classless, stateless, or moneyless system was ever established (certainly not in underdeveloped Russia circa 1917), let alone any where in the underdeveloped ‘Third World’ nations that claim to have “socialism” or “Marxism”, you would be comparing a garden of tomatoes to a melon garden that was never actually grown, so nothing of the such would be historically “proven.” I do not support Leninist-Stalinist state control, and never have.
You invoked majoritarian sentiment as an appeal to forcefully securing power. Right there, we have a fundamental conflict, one that I don’t see being resolved through these posts. Suffice it to say that I see Communism as inextricably committed to the use of state violence to reengineer society along lines that are incompatible with human flourishing.
The will of the vast majority, as opposed to a small oligarchy established and controlled by a wealthy plutocracy, via a combination of civil disobedience, non-violent nation-wide lockouts from the industries, and invoking Article 5 of the Constitution that gives the majority of the people a right to non-violently change the system… is an act of “violence”? As opposed to class rule being enforced the way it is now, by a handful over the many? And this few controlling and exploiting the many, with the massive amounts of poverty, war, and consumerist destruction of the planet is somehow conducive to human flourishing, let alone that of the biosphere itself? I must disagree, my friend.
[MODERATOR: At this point, Dissy, I find myself wilting, losing the will if not to live then at least to stay awake. It is good to see you back here, after an absence, but this is too many posts — too many LONG posts — all in one go. This would be obvious to anyone exercising their common sense. What have you been on, FFK?]
And when the goal It’s a system of pathologically bad social analysis and worse economic insights that rewards brutality and enslaves the individual.
A system of production for profits that rewards greed, pays little compensation to the majority of the labor class for their hard work, throws people onto the streets if they cannot afford housing, fights numerous perpetual wars for profit, and encourages massive greed and ruthless competition does not reward brutality, enslave the individual, or enable pathological behavior? Because… the individual not being allowed to profit at the expense of literally billions is somehow inimical to freedom? As opposed to all cooperating for the material abundance of all?
The individual is entirely expendable in that system and countless millions have been so-expended. This is a matter of fact, not opinion.
I think you have the matter in reverse, my Libertarian comrade.
As child-lovers, which is to say as members of a distinct minority, we, of all people, should be acutely aware of the dangers of a society in which the individual is entirely subordinated to the will of “the majority.”
I am not talking about the will of a majority on the basis of civil liberties; i am talking on the basis of equal distribution of power for everyone on a strict material basis. This will disallow anyone, including a majority, from gaining the power to enforce their will on anyone. It will also prevent an oligarchy of statists or plutocrats from controlling the media and government system and indocrinating the majority into accepting their power base by using propaganda to make them think this is the will of majority. As long as a few have massive financial wealth, and the majority are kept in varying states of material deprivation and intra-class competition with each other, the easier it is to manipulate and control emotions of the masses.
Subjectively, I can’t help but notice that, of those child-lovers I have known who were zealously Marxist, their commitment to man/boy love was very tenuous, indeed and often thrown overboard as soon as they perceived it to be somehow at odds with the interests of their politics, which is to say, with the interests of the majority.
Not this civil libertarian Marxist, David. I do indeed know better. And I have known other Marxist GLer’s who never discussed throwing BLer’s under the bus, and readily recognized the fact that if you can justify restricting the rights of one group, then the rights of all groups can be justified in the future. Nor have I ever attempted to argue that perhaps girls should have some rights that boys should not, or are better able to handle them, etc., for the exact same reasons (one of which is respect for both boys and civil liberties in general).
If you permit me to be frank, David, I have actually known my share of BLer’s over the years (though admittedly, much less over the past decade than previously) who were supportive of the rights of man/boy love but either hostile or indifferent to the rights of man/girl love. To be further frank, I have seen you fall into the latter category, expressing indifference to man/girl love, using the following justification: “I do not repudiate it, but I think it prudent to only outright support what I know from experience.” That may be taken to imply that it’s possible that man/girl love might not be morally justified if one took as close a look at it as they did with man/boy love. Why not take a close look at it, then, for the benefit of a civil liberties perspective? As I told you in the past, I never held man/boy love in lower moral esteem than man/girl love despite it being outside my personal perspective, because I always made an effort to get to know BLer’s on a personal level, become friends with them, get the matter of their perspective from them, do as much objective research as I could, and possibly most importantly, speak to young boy mesophiles and get their perspectives. So, please do not throw those types of stones in my direction, nor that of Marxist GLer’s as a whole, as it would be unfair IMO.
They’re not entirely alone in my experience; religious fundamentalists are also prone to the abandonment of previously-held intergen principles, too.
Do I sound like a fundie to you, my friend? :p
I think it obvious that the reason for this is a lack of commitment to individual liberty as a precondition to any other beliefs. In other words, if you don’t really believe in individual liberty, to begin with then any expression of it is up for grabs and your former comrades are left to twist in the wind.
I would never support you twisting in any wind that I was also not caught up in right beside you, pal. I am not against individual liberty, and I think cooperation over competition that affords full material benefits to all, and the right to a vocation and lifestyle that is best suited for each individual, benefits both the individual and society as a whole together. I believe that individual should have the right to do anything that is not demonstrably and empirically harmful to the health and well-being of others. Accordingly, I do not think granting the individual the “right” to achieve vast amounts of financial/material/economic power and privilege over others is in any way conducive to “freedom.” The right to be a tyrant and to gain at the expense of others is no better than the right to be a serial killer, and the former actually causes harm on a much wider scale–to the planet as well as millions of individuals. The rights of the individual need not be conflict with the rights of civilization as a whole, and insisting otherwise is one of the greatest failings of rugged individualism (which is distinct from individuality). Humans do not empirically thrive well in a “law of the jungle” environment.
None of this is to suggest that I am somehow in love and awe with the system that enslaves me now, said to be “capitalism,” No, it’s far from being either a free market or an entirely free marketplace of ideas but one thing that it does have that Europe does not is the Bill of Rights and, especially, the First Amendment.
Because I revere freedom of speech and expression of ideas, I oppose a system of production for profit, which constantly undermines that in numerous ways. A few notable examples: having a few people own the major presses, and having big corporations and even the Armed Forces (!) as sponsors that control content; allow individuals to sue those for infringing on “intellectual property” by insisting that in a market system, people should have the power to own ideas and even imagery so they can profit monetarily off of it; employers taking jobs away from people who express unpopular ideas; administrations of privately owned media forums censoring and banning people for expressing unpopular ideas; and for allowing big pharma to own drugs and charge people money for access to needed types of treatments while keeping other forms of treatment off the market if they are effective but not profitable. I’m not sure how a “pure” unregulated marketplace would prevent these capitalist-based infringements on freedom of speech and expression!
While longtime darling of the socially “progressive” American left, The Netherlands, has decided that Marthijn, Norbert and Ad can no longer express their opinions, we in the States can be reasonably well-assured that this right will not disappear altogether, although it is under continuous attack.
“…under continuous attack.” Bingo. That means it is far from assured as a continued right, especially when we can lose our jobs over expressing it, have tenure denied or have funding denied if we are a struggling college professor, etc. And especially so in a system where the President of the U.S. has recently declared, openly on Twitter, that legislation should be introduced that “regulates” the content of social media. Is it any surprise that this president, like just about every single one in recent history, is a privileged member of the plutocracy? Is it also any surprise that the Democrats do anything they can to undermine the chances of even moderately left-of-center candidates from winning a primary?
And I am sure you know that I am every bit as disappointed in the “progressive” Left in the U.S. as many others who support civil liberties, particularly the authoritarian stances they have recently taken. For this, I sincerely commend Libertarians like yourself in being more resolute on this than the mainstream Left, and you can continue to expect support from genuine libertarian progressives and Marixists on that (the latter of whom are very critical on SJWs and the #MeToo movement).
[MODERATOR: You make a lot of good points, Dissy, and I don’t want to diss that or seem unappreciative of your passionate engagement. It’s just TOO many points, especially in one go!]

Dissident

I again apologize, Tom, and sorry for getting steamed at you earlier (but you did hit me with a nasty jab, in boxing parlance!). I do take what I said back. The reason I did so many lengthy posts in a single go is because I was trying to play catch-up after such a sizable time away, and this morning I happened to find sufficient time to do that. As for what I was on, this is the first time in a while I have not been suffering from lack of sleep due to my schedule, so I suppose I overcompensated. I am sorry again for the inconvenience and for a few overly harsh words. I am also likely a bit crabby this early with no coffee.

David Kennerly

For the record, I do think that girls should have exactly the same rights as do boys, this includes the right to enter into relationships with anyone they choose.
If I’ve ever said anything less supportive of man/girl love before then I retract it and offer this as my true belief.
I make a distinction between boy lovers and girl lovers only in so far as their challenges are not always the same and they both have some different advantages and disadvantages but also because I’m convinced that boys and girls are different and in ways that make it very difficult to represent their relationships simultaneously. I think that combining these efforts in the same organization tends to leave one in the worst of both possible worlds. Maybe this is a “North American” thing:) Further, I think that some contemporary views which see males and females as indistinguishable are incorrect and based upon bad science and worse politics.
For myself, I can’t represent the interests of girl lovers only because I am not a girl lover. I can only speak to the already difficult subject of man/boy love and, even then, not to the perspective of all boy lovers.
None of this should be construed to mean that I think that boys should have rights that girls do not. As a libertarian, I believe in rights to an extent many find shocking. The rights of girls are no exception.
Since you’ve decided to dredge the archives looking for more that you believe would present me unfavorably (and out-of-context) than is currently under discussion, I did need to respond to this point while letting other of your arguments go unchallenged since, as I have already stated, I’m not hopeful about changing dearly-held beliefs. Life is too short as it is. Besides, our host gets sick of it 🙂

warblingjturpitude

I am bewildered by what appears to be the nature of the spirit behind these wild assertions. I would ask Mr Kennerly if he might show what violence is NOT effectively committed by branding somebody a “fanatic”, by profiling them as no more than the carrier of a “political ideology” (unspecified) , by wielding entirely vague and cumbersome terms such as “justice for kids” as if they referred to anything, and indeed “freedom” as if it were but another consumer item, not something highly elusive and painstakingly acquired by degrees only…

Dieter Gieseking

In my opinion, the above article has worked well. That is why I have published another news on my website:
https://krumme13.org/news.php?s=read&id=4146
With solidary greetings from Germany Dieter-K13

sugarboy

That the prohibition of the Martijn association is a case of political persecution is evidenced by the fact that the association had been active and known for more than 25 years without the police intervening, and sometimes even with a certain degree of collaboration between the authorities and Martijn. Only subsequently, when the social perceptions of pedophilia changed, changed also the authorities’ attitude towards it, as if people’s fundamental rights were to be depending on society’s approval, and not on the law.
Also the fact that Marthijn’s house were ransacked for 9 hours is at odds with the fact that the re-establishing of the association carries a maximum penalty of 1 year, and this also smacks of political persecution: The guys must to be stopped at any cost – if we have no legal basis for that, we’ll invent something later…

Marthijn Uittenbogaard

“the fact that Marthijn’s house were ransacked for 9 hours”
It was 11,5 hours: 21 January 13.28 till 22 January 01.05 in the night.

eqfoundation

a) I really like John Sydney McNair…Very decent person.
b) I can vouch for the fact that “Gay Man’s Worst Friend” is a very good read…It’s a book I’ve actually read, and own a copy of.
c) I’ve not spent much time writing fiction, but I have written a fictional story or two…some of it I likely could not legally share [depending on where someone lives]…This one dances around the line a tad bit, but I greatly enjoyed writing it…and it’s the last really long thing I’ve spontaneously written [back in 2017]…I wrote it for the Halloween season, but posted it in 2019.
[LINK DELETED. SORRY!]
d) I don’t know where the next “stronghold” of free speech and activism is going to spring up, but I am encouraged that [at least a few] major internet platforms are defending our right to openly be on them. It counts for something, that mainstream companies are allowing us to be out here…and this may be an indispensable part of where the “stronghold” exists.

Andrew Meier

Hello, Tom. I hope you’re well. This is another very interesting piece from you, albeit disturbing to those of us who value freedom of expression.
I’d like to start by picking up on a point that’s unlikely to be evident to those unfamiliar with the Dutch language and Dutch legislation. The term for ‘sedition’ in Dutch (‘opruiing’) also means, more broadly, incitement. With that in mind, it may not surprise people to learn that acts of sedition are proscribed by a law that also proscribes acts of incitement in general, specifically incitement of ‘enig strafbaar feit of […] gewelddadig optreden tegen het openbaar gezag’ (‘any criminal offence or […] the use of violence against the authorities’). In terms of acts that we would label sedition, then, a criterion of incitement to violence very clearly applies. Hence it strikes me as plausible that the gentlemen mentioned in your piece will be up on a charge of incitement to commit ‘any criminal offence’ rather than anything resembling sedition. The sentencing guidelines state that first-time offenders should be given a €500 fine if acting alone or 60 hours’ community service if part of a group. Which sounds much less daunting than a lengthy custodial sentence. That said, the list of aggravating factors includes where the incitement pertains to ‘politiek en maatschappelijk beladen kwesties’ (‘politically and socially charged matters’).
When the APA recanted in the face of the public backlash against its initial decision to refer to paedophilia as a sexuality in the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it had the unfortunate effect of preventing progress in the arena of hate crime and equality. At present, at least in the jurisdiction of England and Wales, the protected characteristic of sexuality is defined for legal purposes on the basis of gender only. Consequently, an assault on an individual motivated solely by that individual’s (perceived or actual) paedophilic attraction would not be declared a hate crime.
Unfortunately, the notion of sympathy for attackers on the part of law enforcement and the judiciary is entirely plausible. Many cases spring to mind, though perhaps the unduly lenient sentence initially meted out to Sarah Sands after she took a knife to a neighbouring tower block and stabbed to death Michael Pleastead (a convicted child molestor) is telling. Although I can’t condone Pleastead’s crimes, the fact that the charge was reduced from murder to manslaughter and she was then given close to the minimum sentence sent out the message that vigilante killings of paedophiles are almost to be countenanced. Fortunately, some right-thinking members of the public complained to the Attorney General’s office and her sentence was more than doubled at the Court of Appeal.
As a former member of VP, I’d like to respectfully contest the use of the word ‘sanctimonious’ in your piece, Tom. Admittedly, the hyperbolic ‘virtuous’ in their name doesn’t help dispel that criticism, but I can assure you that there is a range of opinions on the forum. Although I haven’t visited the forum in over a year, I was close with Ethan (even to the point of knowing his real-life identity). I’m led to believe that you acknowledged that your cause probably wouldn’t make significant headway in your lifetime unless VP first paved the way to destigmatisation and a more rational environment conducive to good science. On that matter, Karl Andersson’s Gay Man’s Worst Friend: The Story of Destroyer Magazine (2011) springs to mind. Andersson notes how the gay movement achieved acceptance through a series of concessions to the heterosexual mainstream. I wonder whether there is a way to gain acceptance and effect meaningful change without assimilationist concessions.

Marthijn Uittenbogaard

During the house search all Karl Anderson’s magazines were also taken by the police. The whole series of Destroyer and The Lover. Together with the whole Martijn-archive. More than 60 folders they took. And much more like NVSH news letters and so on.
These kind of folders:
https://www.ebay.ie/itm/1-5-10-A4-Large-Matt-75mm-Lever-Arch-Files-Folders-Stationery-Metal-Document/122607879549

Andrew Meier

Obviously I’m not aware of the details of your case, Marthijn, but if the prosecution team will be trying to level a charge resembling sedition, then such a charge should fail on the grounds that the criterion of incitement to violence is not met. Furthermore, it’s not enough for what you’ve said, written or disseminated to pertain to ‘politiek en maatschappelijk beladen kwesties’, as that is merely an aggravating factor when it comes to sentencing, not the offence in itself. In other words, it’s incumbent on the prosecution team in the first instance to prove beyond reasonable doubt that an offence of incitement has been committed at all before taking into consideration whether your communications pertain to politically and socially charged matters.
Because a charge of sedition would fail, the prosecution team’s only viable angle (at least in relation to incitement) will be a charge of incitement to commit a particular criminal offence. I can’t see any obvious route to success for them. If, for example, an individual had been arguing a case for the lowering of the age of consent to 12, and the prosecutor attempted to claim that this was tantamount to inciting statutory rape, then that claim should fall flat on its face in court for two obvious reasons: 1) if the age of consent were to be lowered to 12, consensual sexual activity with individuals aged 12, 13, 14 and 15 would no longer be statutory rape; and 2) a lowering of the age of consent would allow consensual sex with individuals aged 12, 13, 14 or 15, but not mandate or encourage it.

Andrew Meier

>I am not against compromise in principle, in fact those who regard themselves as moderate and reasonable (I aspire to be both) strongly favour meeting opposition halfway where possible. But I do not see much point […] [O]ur opponents aim to utterly obliterate our beliefs and culture.
Ironically, my pessimism about people in general leads me to cautious optimism. At least, it has done since I read a book by James O’Brien last year. He wasn’t talking about paedophilia specifically, but he described how people’s spite and hatred tend to be malleable, because they pre-exist the causes on which they’re focused. People will hate whomever their culture tells them to hate. O’Brien’s message was not far off ‘forgive them, for they know not what they do’, they’ll move on once the culture moves on. And the culture does seem to be moving slowly in the right direction. Whether it’s in part down to VP or simply to the hysteria having become so shrill in tenor that it’s become more readily noticeable as hysteria, the scientific community seems to getting its act together. They no longer want to subject us to phrenological analysis. Good science will shape the discourse and eventually some other scapegoat will be the target.
>https://tomocarroll.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/after-the-ball-and-after-the-fall
That’s another very interesting piece. (I was particularly tickled by the description ‘mad, man-hating lesbian feminist extremist’, which is unfortunately a little too long for the lady in question’s CV.) Given the election result at the end of last year, is it not possible with the benefit of hindsight to say that the Overton window didn’t shift sufficiently for Corbyn to actually become PM? Or were Labour’s election woes instead all down to the party’s equivocation on Brexit? After all, the ERG… sorry, the Conservatives… gained their thumping majority through mass defections in the north-east of England.
>an element of militancy from some of us (plus the authorities losing the war against encrypted illicit imagery and to some extent “grooming”) shifts the Overton Window, creating opportunities for the acceptance of “virtuous” types committed to conformity
That’s an intriguing take on it, though my knee-jerk reaction is to assume that the militant approach risks creating greater resistance, shifting the Overton window in the other direction. Certainly I’d rather leave that balancing act to more nuanced thinkers than I.
At VP, I was always openly a fence-sitter on the contact question and was tolerated. Opinions expressed to me by private message ranged from ones that dovetailed with society’s prevailing orthodoxies (mainly from the religious contingent) to ones that were far more critical of those orthodoxies. One issue I had with VP’s official line is as follows. VP’s position is that the prevailing orthodoxies should not be challenged because they’re right. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find a second(ary) reason for that position, namely that reduction of hysteria and stigma and provision of proper support, etc., won’t come about through anything other than an assimilationist approach. However, my opinion is that if society does have a role in the harm machine, then this needs to be explored (through proper peer-reviewed science) and addressed. Not doing so will do children (and the adults they go on to become) a disservice. As I see it, we find ourselves in a tricky position where we either go down the assimilationist route and postpone exploration of society’s role in the harm machine, thereby allowing others to suffer in the meantime, or adopt a more radical stance in the (perhaps futile) hope that the scientific community will listen and explore society’s role in the harm machine earlier. Both approaches are fraught with their own difficulties. Both might fall flat on their face for different reasons. But the bottom line for me was that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with pandering to orthodoxies that I find implausible in a manner that seemed calculated to privilege paedophiles’ well-being over children’s well-being. That’s just a personal take on the matter and I know it doesn’t necessarily stand up to scrutiny.
On the issue of imagery, one thing that I find intriguing is that images that once might have drawn the attention of law enforcement (in the early years of this century) are now the staple of Instagram, which is absolutely awash with preteens in limited clothing. It’s the new normal. And perhaps that’s why both the IWF and the police (or, at least, Simon Bailey and a few others) have adopted a tone of resignation when it comes to children wanting to be models and people wanting to appreciate their beauty. That said, the IWF has now coined the term ‘self-generated child sexual abuse imagery’ for anything faintly erotic in nature produced by the child himself/herself. I get the feeling they won’t be content with anything short of a return to the days when masturbation was referred to as self-abuse, which is the most obvious shorthand for their prolix coinage.

Nada

>Our position as paedophiles arguably has a lot more in common with the Spanish situation than the German one: our opponents aim to utterly obliterate our beliefs and culture.
As well as taking children from us, preventing reproduction and researching how to prevent the birth of pedophiles – to mention but a few acts.
With regard to free speech, we lost at the end of the last millenium, so spreading our culture (BTW, what is it?) and beliefs is difficult. Add to this the alleged pedophiles, complaining about fascism, yet only permitting the “free speech” they like (even within the law).
I haven’t read Karl Andersson’s book, but recall reading some minor opposition against his publication – not comparable to the outrage about Russian free speech a few years earlier.

Yurinho

I wish I had the courage to defend my views are strongly at those guys of PNVD. Also, pretty glad to see MAPs, “virtuous” or otherwise, getting involved with art. I have been thinking about getting back to writing fiction, I just have zero confidence in my skill. I mean, I used to write stories as a child and adolescent, but I have stopped so long ago. I figured LSM’s writing would be saved. A few years ago, he was so happily reviewing your Radical Case in his Essential Paedo Reads and now this happens. I didn’t expect him to take everything he said back. I figured it would be a gradual process, if he was really changing his mind. Then again, he spent months without writing before he took his content down. Perhaps he has indeed just reflected during that time, but we would not know, as we didn’t have contact with him.

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