Gilt is stripped from Saint Peter’s halo

Peter Tatchell has long been a hero of mine and doubtless millions of others around the globe, for the outstanding bravery, energy and lifelong dedication he has contributed to the international advancement of gay rights, lowering the age of consent, and much else. He has been dubbed a secular saint: Netflix has just brought out a documentary that celebrates his lifelong activism.

Unfortunately, what Heretic TOC must reveal today is a weaker and darker side of “Saint Peter”, one which sadly he shares with the original Christian saint – a tendency to deny, disown and disavow his past, thrice and many more times. In his case it has meant pushing old friends and radical fellow-travellers under the bus to save his own skin in what we would unhesitatingly call a cowardly fashion were it anyone else.

 

Peter Tatchell. Not so much loud and proud these days as in screechy panic and denial. Credit: Getty

But let’s start with the positive. Among my early memories of Peter’s work is his courage and resilience in the face of a vicious homophobic onslaught when he was the young Labour Party parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey, London, in 1983. The media were relentlessly hostile. He was assaulted in the street, subjected to death threats, his flat was attacked. There was a scurrilous graffiti campaign branding him a paedophile. He was ganged up on by the other candidates; and, with many in his own party also against him, he unsurprisingly went down to a heavy defeat.

Did he give up the activist life? No, this was barely the start. Undaunted, he dusted himself off like the apostles of old, and kept on fighting the good fight – sometimes literally so, mounting direct action campaigns that put his life and limb in real danger on numerous occasions, most notably perhaps in his face-to-face public confrontations with Robert Mugabe, the notorious strong-arm President of Zimbabwe, citing human rights violations including torture. In 2001, in Brussels, he attempted to make a citizen’s arrest of this Big Man of Africa. He was knocked unconscious by Mugabe’s bodyguards and left with permanent damage to his right eye. In 2009 Peter said that he had suffered brain damage as a result of this attack, plus another by neo-Nazis in Moscow while campaigning for gay rights.

So, when I first heard all those years ago that my friend Warren Middleton, former Vice-Chair of PIE, had made his acquaintance and seemed to be getting on well with him, I was pleased and impressed. Peter had been prominent in the Gay Liberation Front in the 1970s, but I think I first heard of him when he came to wider public attention as a result of his high-profile candidacy in Bermondsey. This would have been in the early 1980s.

That was when his path and Warren’s crossed. It was a meeting made in heaven. Or, rather, in Heaven, the legendary gay club in the arches underneath London’s Charing Cross station. Warren was a permanent fixture there, an angel one might say, who had a job on the hospitality side at the celestial venue. Perfectly placed to socialise with the clientele, he met Peter, an occasional visitor, and the two chatted several times. It was in these circumstances that Warren told him about a book he was working on that was to include a compilation of chapters contributed by a range of authors; these contributions would be, in the words of the eventual sub-title, “Radical perspectives on childhood sexuality, intergenerational sex, and the social oppression of children and young people”. Warren asked Peter if he would contribute a chapter; Peter agreed.

Was Peter aware of Warren’s connection with PIE? “Warren Middleton” is an assumed name and I am not at liberty to disclose his real identity. But my understanding is that, yes, he definitely knew that Warren, in one name or another, had served on PIE’s Executive Committee because Warren had told him so. This made sense at the time because letting it be known he had been in a leading activist role would have given him authority and credibility as the editor of a radical book on the themes in question. Without mentioning such credentials (bearing in mind that Warren had not previously been a published author or known as a writer or editor, except within PIE), how could Peter have been persuaded to contribute a chapter?

Last year, though, Peter was spinning a very different yarn. In an interview with the Irish online news platform GRIPT, he denied that he had ever had any association with Warren Middleton, and claims to have been deceived over the contents of the book, which was published in 1986 as The Betrayal of Youth. In an unedited Q & A with GRIPT interviewer Gary Kavanagh, he was asked, “When did you become aware that Mr Middleton was heavily involved with PIE?” He responded, “Several years later, when the book was published. I was enraged, appalled and felt conned.” How had he allowed this to happen? This is what he told Kavanagh:

The request to write for The Betrayal of Youth was in about 1981 or 1982. It was made by phone call and I was given an address to post it to. I do not remember who asked me to write the chapter or the address to which I sent it. No mention was made of PIE or paedophilia when I was asked to write my chapter. Paedophiles are devious. They knew I would not write for a PIE book, so I was told it was a book about child welfare and rights… I would not have agreed to write anything for that dreadful, nauseating book.

The central claim here – that he was deceived as to the nature of the book and found it “nauseating” when it was published, is untrue. I cannot be certain it is a deliberate fabrication: this was all a long time ago, and the brain damage inflicted on Peter may have affected his memory. But just ask yourself, how likely is it that in the midst of all the dirty tricks  against him in Bermondsey he would be so naïve and unguarded as to entrust his writing on a highly controversial topic to the tender mercies of someone he did not know, on the basis of a phone call? And that he would send it to a random address that meant nothing to him – not a known publishing house – without even keeping that address on file? No, it is Peter Tatchell who deceives us here, unwittingly or not, rather than Warren Middleton. You may judge for yourself shortly when I unveil the evidence below.

I too contributed a chapter to the book. Kavanagh asked Peter if he had ever met me. He replied, “I never met Tom O’Carroll and would never want to. I condemn all that he stands for. His views are disgusting.” But if my views are disgusting, so were his back in the day: we were saying much the same things! We had radical ideas in common. Again, you may soon judge for yourself.

Warren is not a well man these days, sadly. I imagine he would like to put the record straight but I know he would not be up to the hassle of dealing with the media. In any case, it would be all too easy for Peter to brush aside his recollection of events as false, along with mine and others.

What cannot be dismissed so easily, though, is a document of unimpeachable authenticity, archived in the British Library, which utterly contradicts Peter’s repeated denials that he was “appalled” by The Betrayal of Youth when it came out, or that he found it “nauseating”. As Heretic TOC can now exclusively reveal, he actually gave the book a favourable review! See photo below. This was published in the 13 June 1987 edition of 7 Days, the newsletter of the British Communist Party at that time. Under the heading “Radical thoughts on consent”, he wrote:

When Warren Middleton recently compiled his book on children’s sexual rights, to which I made a brief contribution, he found it impossible to get a publisher. They were all too nervous. So he had to publish it himself. Even now, only a few bookshops – notably Gay’s The Word in London – have had the courage to stock it. Indeed, I am only writing this review because it seems that no one else is willing to risk association with this taboo subject.

Under Middleton’s editorship, The Betrayal of Youth presents a diverse collection of essays by 16 different authors who offer a ‘radical perspective’ on the history, sociology, politics and ethics of ‘childhood sexuality, inter-generational sex, and the social oppression of children and young people’.

All the authors oppose coercive and exploitative child sexual abuse, and want both children, and adults, to be protected from forced, involuntary sexual acts by the laws covering rape and sexual assault. However, they also argue that consenting, victimless sexual relationships between younger and older people should not be penalised by the law, especially where the relationship is of a tender and caring nature….

In presenting these arguments, The Betrayal of Youth speaks coolly, clearly and radically about a subject which has far too long been shrouded in emotional hysteria and adult chauvinism.

Does he sound appalled by the book? Is he nauseated by this volume that clearly, in his own description, yokes “childhood sexuality” with “intergenerational sex”? We may think not. But when he spoke of “intergenerational sex”, could he have meant twenty-somethings with sixty-somethings? Again, such a reading is impossible in this context: the book was clearly about child-adult relationships, not adult-adult ones.

I trumpet this as a Heretic TOC “exclusive” because the news media have shown a lively interest in Peter’s changing stance in recent years but this blog is the first to come up with hard evidence about it. What prompted this present writing, indeed, was Julie Bindel ’s revival of the subject last month in UnHerd, when, in an article headed “Stop pretending Peter Tatchell is a perfect man”, she made a challenge to the Netflix doc, which she describes as a “tedious hagiography of a flawed figure”.

Lacking a Netflix subscription, I am unlikely to see the doc. Called Hating Peter Tatchell, the title seems to carry the suggestion that anyone who disagrees with Peter must loathe and detest him. No doubt many do, but please count me out. Mainly, I still admire the guy. His achievements are immense, his character deeply impressive in many ways.

But, for once, I found myself in agreement with Bindel and submitted a comment to UnHerd to say so, quoting a passage from Peter’s chapter in Warren’s book. Peter responded, accusing me of defamation and denying, in effect, that the passage meant what it said. I shot back, this time referring to his review of the book, but without giving details. He returned fire again, this time challenging me to come up with the evidence, saying the review was probably a fake put out by the Far Right. I said I would be keeping my powder dry for now, as a media deal for my story could be in the offing.

A key objective of this would be to see if I could get a prestigious news outlet to credit Heretic TOC with the story, giving a link to the site. I actually thought this was somewhat unlikely given the reluctance the MSM would have towards collaboration with “a convicted paedophile”, and I did not pursue it. I have a shrewd idea, though, that the mere thought of The Guardian, say, running the story as a prominent exclusive, will have rattled Peter, and that would be no bad thing. Whatever, you can catch up with these exchanges in the comments section of UnHerd, here. Note that Peter makes 10 separate comments; I have four: mine appear under the long, cumbersome name “tomocarrolleditorialservices” (Don’t ask! There was a glitch).

The Guardian, in particular, played a significant role early on in this saga, when Peter wrote a letter to the editor in response to a 1997 book review in stable-mate paper The Observer, by columnist Ros Coward. She had been reviewing Dares to Speak, a book published by Gay Men’s Press, and which some heretics here probably have on their shelves. As the title suggests, the book was about adult attraction to children, this being the new “love that dares not speak its name”. Coward could scarcely have been clearer in her response. She spells out this is a pro-paedophilia book and she then goes on to denounce it for this very reason.

What does Peter Tatchell do? Evidently still a radical at this time, he writes a letter saying it had been “courageous” to publish such a book. Children aged 9 to 13 who had sex with adults later told him they did not feel abused, he said; rather, it gave them “great joy”. He added, “it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.”

Perhaps taken aback to be then faced with a tsunami of letters from Guardian readers objecting to his increasingly unfashionable positivity towards paedophilia, his now decades-long exercise of denial began there and then with claims in a second letter that his first one had not been a defence of paedophilia at all. I doubt if anyone found this letter convincing. At that time, of course, it would have been very difficult for him to recant his radical position with dignity as his defence of Dares To Speak had appeared only days earlier. So instead of taking back what he had said he went into all manner of verbal contortions to pretend he hadn’t said it, thereby painting himself into a corner where he remains to this day, forced with each public revival of the subject to make ever more extreme denials, which he hopes to make credible by increasingly hysterical and intemperate denunciation of old allies such as Warren and me.

There is no need to go into further detail. Anyone wanting the full picture of Peter’s previous statements in apparent support of intergenerational sexual relationships starting as early as 12 or even younger, along with a challenge to his subsequent denials, should consult the thorough, fair, forensically sharp, 10,000-word analysis undertaken by Gary Kavanagh for GRIPT. It makes a powerful circumstantial case against Peter’s multiple protestations, but this was only ever claimed to present the probable falsity of Peter’s denials. What Heretic TOC is now presenting for the first time is hard, irrefutable, evidence of his damaging, unworthy, falsehoods.

Why, one has to wonder, has this man of outstanding physical courage been so shrill and panicky in running away from his own past? If his reputation matters to him more even than his life, that is no bad thing in itself. What makes it so is his frankly contemptible and cowardly resort to smearing radical former friends, along with his wider smear that “paedophiles are devious” – a hate-speech trope as odious and poisonous as “the grasping Jew”. Such libels against paedophiles are sadly all too familiar these days, but one hopes for better from a putatively principled, high-minded individual. His descent to the rhetoric of the gutter is hugely disappointing, and does far more damage to his reputation for integrity than any radical beliefs about childhood sexual expression.

It would be important to say all this, I believe, even if it were simply a matter of defending my friend Warren and myself against unjust attack. But the significance of Peter’s treachery goes much further. In order to get himself off the hook he has shamefully resorted to insulting, demeaning, and dehumanizing child-attracted adults in general. Allowing hate-speech to go unchallenged is what drives cultures towards the ever greater oppression of unpopular minorities, and ultimately even their extermination. There is no reason to suppose paedophiles are exempt. Accordingly, when facts are available with which to make a vigorous, rigorous challenge, as in this case, it is our duty to do so.

It is often observed that we live in a “post-truth” age. Fake news reigns supreme! Everyone is at it, from presidential tweets downwards, right across society. A rotten, corrupt culture full of nasty, vicious liars. There is widespread despair over what we can do about it; and anyway, say the cynical sophisticates, What is truth?

We may agree that truth is elusive, and hard to define. But that does not mean we should surrender in the face of obvious and harmful falsehood. Heretic TOC has absolutely no intention of doing so.

The glowing review by Peter Tatchell of The Betrayal of Youth, which he recently described as “that dreadful, nauseating book”. We see here a printed page of the June 1987 newsletter showing the paper’s name and date at the top, complete with Peter’s by-line at the bottom. This was photographed in the British Library, in a binder holding multiple issues of the journal. Credit: Photo, Leo Adamson, who also kindly undertook associated library and online research.
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Bilbo Baggins

I have a VHS tape of a 90’s tv debate on the age of consent that Tatchell took part in. I keep meaning to upload it to YouTube, or to some other video hosting platform that wont delete it. Certainly is interesting viewing!

Bilbo Baggins

Yes, it’s certainly a jaw dropping classic. It must have been screened not long before paedohysteria really took hold in the UK. I don’t think it’s been uploaded anywhere else online yet. Scary thought that I might have one of the only copies in existance! A debate hosted by ‘thinking man’s crumpet’ Joan Bakewell, featuring Tatchell, Germaine Greer, and the journalist Anna Blundy on one side, and Michelle Elliott of the NSPCC (or some other children’s charity that was successfully fanning the flames at the time) and another femiinist on the other. I have only digitized (pointing my phone at the TV set) a few segments so far – Tatchell celebrating the Dutch (then) age of consent of 12, and arguing why it should be the same in the UK, and Anna Blundy recounting how when she was a young teen she and all her friends were desperate to have sex with older men (and did). Also Germaine Greer talking about how the age of consent should be lowered and discussing the ‘imbalance of power’ defence. I will try to upload the segments I have recorded on to FreeSpeechTube today or tomorrow.

Damion

“Also suicidal. Tom is the rare exception, he came out. Most people are forced to deny their sexuality and never discuss it in the open, for fear of total ostracisation.”

If you are not an outed pedo ie you are not known to any1 either cos you havn’t been caught or have not acted on your desires then chances are you are not in the know when it comes to how bad the persecution and how the mistreatment works but long story short what we have to deal with is a faceless system meaning that multiple ppl who you dont know will be hired by other to follow you around and give you a hard time and do what they can to harass you and there is no way of getting even with the public for this other than to engage in more coercive behaviour in order to get back at that system, like I say its not the ideal revenge but its the only revenge we have got.

Damion

That’s why Paedophiles need to be around other Pedos for moral support as opposed to us being kept isolated from one another cos human beings are social creatures regardless of sexual orientation and if for example I could join a pedo protest and show the world that I will not allow them to isolate me (and others to be fair) then I think it would make M.A.Ps less resentful and that would create a better world for all, look socially included these whining anti mask protesters are.

>No such thing as “ideal revenge” Damion. Revenge of any kind as a response to any perceived injustice is a backwards way of thinking that tends towards never ending cycles of counter-revenge. It just poisons everyone and everything.

Damion

“as well as anyone who is not hostile to the consensual intergenerational sexuality (CIS) – finds himself nowadays.”

The only way Paedophillia will be accepted is when every Pedo to walk the face of the earth is publicly outed and named and shamed by their local community, don’t get me wrong in an ideal society coercive relationships will never take place with children but the sad fact is the M.A.P community is too divided for example a M.A.P might want to advocate and would genuinely put the work in for the cause but if other advocates are not willing to cooperate properly with other M.A.Ps and even refuse to work with other M.A.Ps then well is it any wonder we have so many Paedophiles turning to the dark web and engaging in the more coercive behaviour that non of us want?

Zen Thinker

>turning to the dark web

Literally suicidal. The Law is so punitive and vicious that any degree of common sense will force people to be law abiding citizens.

>publicly outed

Also suicidal. Tom is the rare exception, he came out. Most people are forced to deny their sexuality and never discuss it in the open, for fear of total ostracisation.

>coercive relationships

Not sure what you mean by this, but many MAPs actually shrink away from any chance meeting with children and studiously avoid them. Any illegal behaviour will ultimately be savagely crushed. None of it is worth the psychological pain and suffering inflicted by the State, and furthermore no child should be made unhappy.

>refuse to work with other MAPs

Work on what? This is a safe forum for discussion and intellectual ideas. That’s about it. Although it seems everything nowadays is monitored by the ubiquitous surveillance state. But Heretic TOC is 100% legal and protected by free speech, and the best MAPs can do to ‘work’ with one another is in the realm of ideas; the pen is mightier than the sword.

Stephen James

I agree with this assessment, Zen. Though there are things we can do relatively safely, they are unlikely to have a big effect. In many ways these things are beyond our control one way or the other.

I think it’s possible that if and when the ice does thaw it will happen very fast, much as it started to do in the Netherlands in the 1970s. That was reversed a few years later of course, but such reversals are not inevitable. We want to be ready when the transformation comes, especially to ensure that it is moderated by a strong ethical sense of the rights of young people to self-determination.

Explorer

Too late as always, probably the next blogpost is almost ready to be published… Nevertheless, I would like to add a small thought of mine here.

 

No matter how tempting would it be to criticise Peter Tatchell for his cowardice and duplicity, I won’t do this, since I understand the sheer hopelessness of the situation in that Peter – as well as anyone who is not hostile to the consensual intergenerational sexuality (CIS) – finds himself nowadays.

 

To be concise and clear: here and now, to express a position to the CIS that is not totally inimical and demonstratively condemnatory, is to commit an act of social suicide: no matter how prominent and influential character you were before you expressed such position, afterwards you will be reduced to nil in the eyes of the public. Or even less to a nil – to a “paedo apologist” to be universally cancelled and persecuted.

 

But what is most horrible here: even if one would still dare to endure such sacrifice, to throw away one’s reputation and status just for the sake of telling the objective truth, one would achieve nothing; the words will fall on deaf – willingly deaf – ears. No matter how much veridical evidence could you present in defence of your case, no matter how skillfully and logically you might have argued in its defence, it won’t change anything, since you won’t be heard, you evidence won’t be examined. You will be not just dismissed, but denigrated, defamed and destroyed.

 

This is quite understandable if one takes into account the exact approach to knowledge is being used by the overwhelming majority of Western (and Westernised) people nowadays when they deal with the CIS. I can classify four such approaches.

 

1) EVIDENCE-BASED, which is centered on the individually performed assessment of the actual empirical evidence, without a slightest regard – oftentimes, in blatant disregard to the currently prevalent authorities and institutions, and without any compliance – sometimes, in open defiance – to the recently dominant conceptions and postulates.

 

2) EMINENCE-BASED, which is inspired by an unquestioning trust in the certain authorities and institutions (including academy and expertise, and especially, putative “scientific consensus”), and a demand that their public pronouncements must be automatically believed simply on the basis of their supposed “authoritativeness” – while any criticisms and alternatives must be equally automatically dismissed just due to their supposed “unauthoritativeness”.

 

3) ELOQUENCE-BASED, which holds certain philosophical conceptions and postulates (for example, absolute inviolability and immutability of the laws of physics) as aprioristically and axiomatically true, and demand that any actual empirical evidence (as well as any arguments in its defence) may only be accepted if it conforms to these conceptions and postulates.

 

4) VEHEMENCE-BASED, which requires neither assessment of evidence, nor reliance on authorities, nor dedication to postulates, but is rather being based on pure and unadulterated emotional overdose – a mixture of negative emotions so intense and pervasive, and so psychologically painful and unbearable, that it effectively disables any reaction to the opposing views (and persons presenting them) except sheer enmity.

 

As one may see, of the four approaches to knowledge, only the first one makes one preferring it open to changing one’s views in accordance with the newly discovered evidence.

 

Other three are much more resistant to modification. It is very hard to argue with someone whose views are eminence-based, since it would require reshaping one’s basic network of social attitudes of trust and mistrust to change them. It is ever harder to debate with someone whose positions are eloquence-based, because changing them will demand rethinking one’s very fundamental worldview assumptions.

 

And with someone who espouse vehemence-based views, any dialogue of any kind is not just entirely and hopelessly useless, but is outright dangerous for the unluckly one trying to engage in it, since a person with a vehemence-based worldview perceives the opponent not just as wrong and misguided (as the people preferring eminence- and eloquence-based approaches would do), but as sick and evil, worthy of being destroyed to protect all good and wonderful in the world.

 

I think anyone here understands quite clearly what kind of approach is preferred by the modern Western(ised) people when they deal with the CIS… Yes, the latter one, sadly.

 

So, does it mean that there is no hope for the CIS proponents? Let’s be honest: in the near future, there is none.

 

Yet in the distant future, there is always hope, at least because of the simple change of generations: (grand)children may become able to handle information that would be unbearable and unthinkable for their (grand)parents. And, in our increasingly unstable times, there is a growing possibility of a societal catastrophe of some kind, that will shake the very foundation not just of a general society, but of many individual psyches, making unimaginable imaginable and unendurable endurable for the large masses of people (it is no coincidence that both sexual and cultural revolutions of the 20th century – the first one of 1920s and the second one of 1960s -70s – followed the nightmares of the two World Wars).

 

So, what is left for us nowadays is to keep the objective knowledge alive, waiting for the societal turbulence and change strong enough to deeply shake the minds of many – and, as long as such change has not yet arrived, not to demand the public truth-telling heroism from anyone, since in the actual moment such heroism would be both futile and socially suicidal.

Zen Thinker

Very true Explorer, almost no-one wants to put their head above the parapet. MAP issues are not a hill I am willing to die on, not when I have so many other cultural and academic interests to fall back on. And this is the tragedy of the situation, that the overall social environment is just too hostile, and it hurts to be ostracised. Time is a great healer and in time the legitimacy of MAP sexuality will be recognised. Until then, I’m ducking below that parapet.

Prue

Tom, [and other Heretics], have you seen the furor over San Francisco’s Gay Male Choir song? You’ve gotta check it out it’s incredible and’ll be a good laugh if nothing else!

Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArOQF4kadHA

Prue

Exactly! I think they’re brilliant. Not only have they done an amazing job w/ the vocals, but it’s even easy to watch. I can’t help but laugh at how obviously bad PR it became as soon as the [anti-gay-pedo] Right saw it. Just a brief glimpse at the comments section will show you what I mean. The paranoia, conspiracy baiting is pernicious. Also the first singer’s facial expressions, his very intense smile and eyes [personally, I love intense eyes!] made him an easy target to accuse of being “creepy”. I suspect even having him as the first singer was also part of playing into the discourse.

Apparently, although I haven’t verified it, some of the men singing in the background are SO Registrants. If so, that’s great. It’s awful how much pressure there is to bar registrants from basically any activity, including dating apps and, in this case, choirs. I know I’m saying the obvious, but the stigma alone is huge.

Overall, I like the positive underlying message. There’s an image that comes to my mind, from the pamphlet defending PIE by CAMP [Campaign Against Public Morals]. They have a photo of a boy with a protest sign and the caption reads “Never too young to be proud”.

What a wonderful sentiment.

Prue

Well, I can’t find a source for the SO Registrant thing, so it probably is “fake news emanating from the Right.”

“It really should be CAMP, shouldn’t it?”
Indeed it should! Far easier to remember that way! Another thing I got wrong; I’ve been saying CAMP even though I say the full phrase in the right order; just didn’t connect the two together XD

Oh well, the underlying sentiment, be proud of your gayness, or in this case pro-kindness, I’m sure we can agree on. You might like this post on FST which speaks to attraction to youth being a force for good https://www.freespeechtube.org/v/15kd

Nada

Here’s the take of Sick Rose, intellectual and music buff:

https://secure.boychat.org/messages/1574446.htm
https://secure.boychat.org/messages/1574447.htm

Onyx

What a sad, strange un-canceling. I am elated to see Heretic TOC so solidly behind the truth, infuriated to hear of Tatchell’s betrayal. This feels somewhat like the Michael Jackson debate after Leaving Neverland: I find myself in the odd position of defending the obvious (the figure in question was undoubtedly pedo-adjacent) but nevertheless decrying the whole process as fraught (Safechuck and Tatchell are obviously lying through their teeth for the cash of it).

The media accuses people of pedophilic actions or sympathies; those people or their supporters vigorously deny everything; but nowhere does someone challenge the dominant narrative by saying that being sympathetic towards pedophiles (or, god forbid, being one yourself) is fine actually.

Thank you for calling out hypocrisy when you see it. It must be a relief to have such a stark and easy victory to trout out to the press, despite the pain of losing admiration for someone you looked up to. Would that more of us in the public eye choose your backboned approach over Tatchell’s weasely evasions.

Onyx

Stephen James

> Tatchell’s libellous falsehoods

I guess libellous in the sense that he is effectively calling you and Warren liars.

Stephen James

>Perhaps, Stephen, you were wondering whether Warren and I could sue for libel?

Yes, that thought was at the back of my mind. I get what you mean about reputation – as a group, MAPs are somewhere near the bottom of the pile. On the other hand you do have a good reputation in the albeit limited sphere of sexology researchers and writers, the plaudits for Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liaisons being evidence of this.

Warbling J Turpitude

I just thought i should mention that, before the OP blocked me virtually the moment i piped up, dozens of Twitter denizens were crowing and spitting themselves silly over a found video of Tatchell being interviewed, where he was speaking quite directly and positively of relationships between ‘big person’ and a ..7 year old was it? (I despise these abstracted, Gnostic lumped-conceptions of “something-yr-olds” anyway). Only had seconds to view before my comment elicited, first of all, this ‘stock’ clip they grab wherein a big sign flashing the word ‘NONCE’ appears in some sorta gameshow, then a block. Has no-one else here seen that particular interview video? Sorry i did not have a chance to determine any details of its provenance ..This was approx three weeks ago now…

Stephen James

It seems to me that Peter Tatchell has dug himself quite a big hole here. He has made statements, which, given Tom’s documentary evidence, are provably false. What recourse does he now have if he is to retain any self-respect?

Tom, have there been any new developments since you wrote this piece?

Thanks to Leo Adamson for his research in the library.
I added it to my wiki: https://www.brongersma.info/Category:Peter_Tatchell

About my guest editorship. I was not entirely free in editing this magazine. One editor gave me the green light to fill 16 pages as I pleased. But later the other editors decided that some articles I wanted to publish did not make it. One article by Frans Gieles about a research they used to forbid the Martijn association was cancelled. Gieles shortened his text, which I liked very much, into 1.000 words. Here is the original longer version (Dutch): https://www.human-being.nl/Bibliotheek/commentaar.html
The 16 pages promised turned out to be 12. Some texts were not approved because they were ‘not good enough’. But the real reason is that they were afraid to be ‘propagating pedophilia’ or that they are afraid to be against the Muslim religion. Because such texts did not make it.
But I can not look a given horse in the mouth.

Prue

> “I have been asked to write an article (not for HTOC) that will take the recent awful developments in the Netherlands as the starting point for a wider discussion of what the future might hold, and whether we can see any positive potential in the midst of all the gloom.”

Exciting! Will H-TOCers get notified when this comes out?

I get a sense that the pro-kind movement, if it can be said to be one [and I think it can in a fairly modern, 21st century, not placards-on-the-street sense], takes the form of what Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt have described as the “multitude”. By this, they mean something akin to a global citizens movement: a plurality of resistance. “Instead of leadership and organizational structures, Hardt and Negri put faith in the emergence of spontaneous coherence due to self-organized networks among various autonomous resistance movements” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_citizens_movement [please god don’t read too seriously the Wiki pages on them they’re absolute dogs**t].The term describes constellations of creatively productive individuals; flexible and mobile / nomadic.

Very concerned w/ the transformation of labour, he sees great significance in the move away from physical labour to technologically mediated labour. Casually, we might refer to it as the “knowledge economy”, but Negri calls it “communicative labour”: communication itself has become a form of wage-labour. Think of how much modern labour just revolves around filling in online forms, sending emails, having Zoom calls, etc

Expanding this to pro-kinders, it makes sense to me that if communication is increasingly how people make their money; that people are dependent on communication and communication technologies for their means of subsistence: that, as a consequence, relations of communication would thereby become more intensive, invested with great importance, regulated, and used as a means of social control.

We see this most glaringly in the “culture wars” where people’s livelihoods are put at stake by their engagements with communication technologies (twitter etc), sometimes even w/ conversations intended to be private (leaked or hacked messages). Both Left and Right try to doxx each other; harass each other, and compete for dominance on the landscape of what communication is (un)acceptable, and usually up the stakes by trying to get X person fired from their job at the minimum.

Pro-kinders are implicated in this not just by the status as wage-labourers, but also because their speech (“communication”) is clamped down upon to an almost total extent. In a social order where the dominant discourse is rendered negatively (“abuse” et al victimological language), attempting neutral discussion appears as positive: endorsement, advocacy.

I think, however, that Negri sees opportunity in this de-centralized, networked form of resistance because left-movements aren’t so stigmatized so as to be afraid to meet in person, even when carrying out autonomous action. Pro-kinders, on the other hand, are so subjugated that this “multitude” situation has effectively been forced on them. I want to see the positive, the silver-lining, but it’s hard because of that forced reality. I think of how much anonymous trolls posting memes on 4chan; the co-opting of twitter threads, again all anonymous, has shaped current politics w/ the rise of open racism and conspiracy theories (Anti-Vax, Qanon), the popularity of Donald Trump; and that pro-kinders could come to see the de-centralized, online network as opportunity. Though clearly some people have done this, it’s difficult when many pro-kinders [especially people who aren’t teiliophiles like me] are probably quite isolated IRL. Unlike the Lefties Negri is thinking of, it’s more likely to be life [and liberty] threatening to “come out” IRL or speak openly about activism.

I think that one ray of hope is B4U-ACT. It’s easy to be negative about the mental health focus, but they’re very clear about not pathologizing. Not only does the organization resist oppression through its publications, it has also, via its annual conference, provided a limited but important space for people to meet. It is still risky, of course, but it is something and presumably far better than meeting up with some faceless randomer you’ve messaged online. Apparently, for instance, the hosts of the MAPs IRL podcast met there.

B4U-ACT is a good example of appropriating and reversing the discourse; taking one aspect (mental health – “seek therapy”) and mobilizing it. Through its institutionalization, a foothold is established. Now, for instance, they have a quarterly journal where they discuss and criticize CSA research. It’s great because it showcases research whilst giving the opportunity to criticize anonymously. The mental health line, appealing typically to liberals, is one important discourse of many. Another one which could be mobilized is artistic freedom, freedom of speech and the fight against censorship. I am thinking of how lolicon / shotacon, anime and manga can be used to emphasize distinctions between real and fictional, action vs fantasy, along the lines of scholars such as Mark McLelland and Patrick Galbraith. You’d start an innocuous charitable (tax exempt) organization to defend artistic freedom and move from there. The Protasia Foundation is the closest thing to this I’m aware of.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying you, Tom O’Carroll, should do any or all of these things, only that there’s many discourses that resistance can (and prob should) mobilize; just flood the internet; the [check for cameras] streets and libraries, with pro-kind content of various kinds. Everyone has a role to play, and you should play to your strengths. If you’re into writing, give writing a go. Always had a desire to make movies? Get practicing! If you like trolling people ans “shitposting”memes, have fun with that! Sometimes people will need to drop out; things will be too much, maybe even too dangerous. It’s all about “survival”.

There’s prob more to say but I’m running out of steam. Those are some thoughts anyways XD The point is, there is hope…

Prue

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51595379_Social_consensus_through_the_influence_of_committed_minorities

“We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value p(c) ≈ 10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time T(c) taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion.”

Prue

I was re-reading it and just realized Harris Mirkin’s article “The Pattern of Sexual Politics: Feminism, Homosexuality and Pedophilia” (1999) https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v37n02_01 seems very relevant to this discussion. At least to me, it seems that many of what Mirkin identifies as stage 1 of sexual struggles – the struggle of dominant social orders to maintain a conspiracy of silence – are evidenced by what’s been happening in the Netherlands…

diogenes

Christian’s quote from Wuthering Heights is wonderfully apposite. Today I was reading Steven Freeman’s commentary on the Dean Stockwell film “The Boy With Green Hair”, in the new Film section of Edmund Marlowe’s Greek Love site. Peter Tatchell would do well to reflect very carefully on Freeman’s words:

[I]f there is one profoundly depressing observation to be made on our own twenty-first century culture, it is the alacrity with which any minority, no sooner it has escaped overt and direct social discrimination, begins at once to persecute, and join in persecuting, the next minority on the ladder. We have seen it and heard it from women, from black people, from gays, from immigrant groups, and more flagrantly than ever, from the state of Israel itself. If people learn nothing from the direct experience of being oppressed, what hope is there for any of us? Tolerance and freedom of speech are empty and meaningless if we do not extend them to the people we personally would prefer to ostracise.

Warbling J Turpitude

Doubtless what i have to say here nudges close to that good old can of squirmiest worms, but I seriously think the wild assumption of universality, of an inexorable causal concatenation in that Freeman quote above, is a deeply flawed one. Does it mean, for example, that even before our social emancipation we paedofellows can already be looking forward to stomping righteously on them godforsaken lowdown dirty dog-lovers?

And since when did MAPs enter the euphemism business? As in “black people, gays, immigrant groups, AND MORE FLAGRANTLY THAN EVER, the “State of Israel”. The state of Israel was not that which was pursued, hunted down and exterminated here, there, and everywhere, it was those people we call the *Jews*. Can we please, please just say what we mean?

(Who, exactly, are “the Palestinians” when they are not 100% *spoken for* by those that dwell and terrorize in their midst? And is it not more true to say that the Palestinian narrative is that which has swiftly learned to adopt, even take over to some degree, the essential features of the ‘Zionist’ one, and engage the world accordingly? )

Anyhoo. I think it is our duty every one of us to furiously resist such “begins at once” notions, along with the idea that, had we our druthers, “we personally would prefer to ostracize” such-and-such a group. The very expression of the thing thusly put forward strongly suggests a humanity in the grip of what it cannot control.

Well, if nothing else this might bring Dissy back into play, coming down on me like a ton-of-bricks

Stephen James

Warbling, I think you’re misreading Freeman’s words. I don’t think he’s necessarily saying that the this sort of punching down is inevitable, only that it is depressingly common. The phenomenon can be resisted if we want to resist it. So MAPs can oppress other minorities below them in the pecking order but they don’t have to. It is in fact difficult to read the last statement quoted from Freeman in any other way. Why make a plea for tolerance if intolerance is inevitable?

Dissident

Well, if nothing else this might bring Dissy back into play, coming down on me like a ton-of-bricks

SMASH!! CRASH!! BA-DWAM!!!!

(Sorry, Tom, but I couldn’t resist! LMAO! :P)

Last edited 2 years ago by Dissident
Stephen James

Welcome back, Mr Dissident!

Christian

As wrote Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights:
The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him; they crush those beneath them.
It seems that gay and lesbian personalities and organisations strive towards acceptance and respectability by championing prejudice against more “deviant” sexualities. No sympathy should be expected from them. MAPs will probably get more support from ordinary heterosexuals. Every fifth heterosexual man is attracted to both women and girls, and probably fantasizes having an affair with an underage girl.

Zen Thinker

Love your opening quotation Christian! High class. Viktor Orban has equated homosexuality with paedophilia, it’s a trope of the Right. Minor attraction is so universally despised that every gay person seems to scrape and scramble to avoid the comparison lol.

I struggle to understand the weight of the public’s venomous condemnation, but it is something of a comfort to know that it was this bad for gays at one time, too.

Prue

“In order to get himself off the hook he has shamefully resorted to insulting, demeaning, and dehumanizing child-attracted adults in general. Allowing hate-speech to go unchallenged is what drives cultures towards the ever greater oppression of unpopular minorities, and ultimately even their extermination. There is no reason to suppose paedophiles are exempt. Accordingly, when facts are available with which to make a vigorous, rigorous challenge, as in this case, it is our duty to do so.”

Tatchell really should know better. At his age, bearing in mind what he’s lived through, in the back of his mind he must surely recognize that those attracted to youth (and also young people themselves, whether attracted to older, younger, or peer-aged persons), have their voices and sexual expression cracked down on with similar ferocity to the 1980’s and before, when same-sex desire / expression were considered perverse degeneracy!? He is also clearly aware that there’s voluntary vs non-voluntary relations, loving, tender, understanding vs violent or forced, and that these distinctions are ignored, even suppressed, under the “abuse” label, just like anal was once dubbed “sodomy” among other nasty things.

Ironically, I imagine he has more to be scared of nowadays, given how quickly information (false or otherwise) can be spread online and hate mobs from accross the globe can assemble to wreck someone’s life beyond repair. Even looking him up on youtube I saw the odd comment saying he’s a NAMBLA supporter or something like that.

If gayness in the UK were as controversial today as it was in the 1980’s and before, except the mass majority had internet etc like now, scholarly journals and news and activist media no longer confined just to paper copies for those “in-the-know” scholars, activists, or dedicated haters with way too much free time, I have a strong suspicion, would consider betting on it, that we’d still have “gay hunter” / “To catch a predator” groups clambering to “out” the gays or anyone seeming to be remotely sympathetic. Except now, progressive forces would be even more on the backfoot.

Imagine if, back then: Every comment you make, every piece you write, every phone call you make, there’s someone somewhere trying to find your IP address, searching for any tiny detail to track you down and expose you as a “pervert” or “gay sympathizer”; an “abuse apologist” for what else but “teaching children it’s okay to be gay”?

Want to start a youtube channel or film a “speak out” event or even just speak at an event, to hold a simple meeting? Good luck! Either you or someone else will record or photo you; now, you’re face is out there; and it’ll be photoshopped, used in articles denouncing you as disgusting scum of the earth, in hate videos played with ominous music in the background. Holding down a job, supporting or even having a partner / family That is, assuming your channel, your blog, your any way to get the message out there isn’t yeeted off the face of the internet after, say, a couple hundred views at best.

I’ll share a quote that really shocked me. People, including me at one time, seem to assume that gays in places like the UK got legal change by winning majority support. Wrong!

According to historian Lucy Robinson’s “Gay Men and the Left in Post-War Britain” (2007), Labour’s progressive laws of the 1960’s (partial decriminalizing of homosexuality, etc) were typically passed through Private Member’s Bills. That is, NOT through majority agreement among the party. They “were not necessarily representative of changes in attitude, either in public or within the houses of parliament” (p. 36). Discussing the enactment of Clause 28 which banned discussion of homosexuality in schools in the 1980’s, not long after Warren’s book and Tachell’s review were written, Robinson writes of MPs arguing they had to “protect both children and the concept of the family” from homosexuality and homosexuals. So attitudes were still fervently negative.

As she explains: “These opinions were not isolated aberrations. The British Social Attitudes Survey of 1986 had shown that seven out of ten Britons believed that homosexual relationships to be mostly or always wrong” (p. 171).

Youth Lovers and their allies are, arguably, in the same situation as what we think of as gays today [“consenting adults in private”] were in the 1980’s. Say you disagree or have now changed your view on X or Y, sure, but try punching up instead of down, and don’t lie when it’s provably false.

Great blog. Very disappointing w/ gays continually cutting off their own history…

Zen Thinker

>Labour’s progressive laws of the 1960’s (partial decriminalizing of homosexuality, etc) were typically passed through Private Member’s Bills. That is, NOT through majority agreement among the party. They “were not necessarily representative of changes in attitude, either in public or within the Houses of Parliament”

Any change in MAP issues will come from the top, from elites in our society. A small minority holds sway over broad swathes of the mainstream population. The current attitude of the public towards MAP issues is diabolical. No change will come there.

I feel that those elites sense it is not yet propitious to swing into action. But one day the process will begin.

Warbling J Turpitude

I’m far from sure how Private Members Bills are supposed to work, but without meaning to be frivolous or anything, I can’t help but wonder how such elite, top-down chains of change-bringing causality, if indeed that’s what they are, will comport with the presumably rather widespread assumption among the public that these upper echelons are in fact the ranks and cloister of, you guessed it, ‘evil paedophile rings’….? Or is this in fact exactly where paranoia and suspicion regarding the rich and powerful is turned on its head and bexcomes the ..source of fresh enlightenment? It’s true, these things are confusing me..

Zen Thinker

Conspiracy theories are mostly baseless and unintelligent. The belief in ‘elite paedophiles’ is restricted to a particularly credulous group lacking critical thinking, in my view. What I’m saying is simply that a minority steer and direct the ship of state, and the majority are often led like sheep. But the purpose of that elite, while partly that of an ever socially liberalising agenda, is also political stability, and several trends point to an emerging need to recognise minor attraction as a legitimate sexuality. On the one hand, children are becoming increasingly liberalised and sexualised, by an inevitable interaction with a very open and permissive culture. On the other hand, large numbers of people (750,000 British men, for example [ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3132896/Horror-senior-detective-discovering-1-35-men-sexually-attracted-children.html ]) are found to be attracted to children, and these kind of overwhelming numbers cannot be ignored without risking social instability. At the same time, the tyranny of the majority absolutely loathes and despises MAP issues. So, like with gay liberalisation, it is up to an elite to recognise the trend and take action to create a political space for something that requires it.

But we haven’t reached ‘critical mass’ yet. As these trends continue to exacerbate, something will inevitably have to be done. I have no idea how long it will take.

Warbling J Turpitude

Thankyou for this response, ZT. But truthfully, i have to say I do remain somewhat puzzled. If this belief, as you say, is “restricted to a particularly credulous group”, then how do you explain something like the wall-to-wall acceptance on the part of almost everyone on the WEIRD planet of the belief that Jimmy Savile is or was tbe embodiment of evil?

Oh my god, tbe Daily Mail. I swear, I had to shower after reading. Instant Inflammation. I am far from sure what store one could ever set by any of their figures, when they blithely vomit forth the likes of “100 million” CP images online, when anyone with any experience at all knows there are – when considered in the context of mainstream pornographic abundance – an extremely small and limited number of such images available at any time..

Is the Daily Inflammail our sole source of indicators when contemplating this idea of a critical mass?

sugarboy

Did the Inflammation explain that a significant part of the CP is made by the “C” themselves? Take a look at this:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56085499.amp

and this:

https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/meriden-police-say-more-children-are-sharing-child-pornography/2348383/

Media love talking about “rights of the children”… until the children start to enjoy them!

Warbling J Turpitude

Touché, Sugarboy! Until they start to actually *enjoy* them!

My goodness, if that “9.4 BILLION visits” to TikTok vids marked Omegle, is anything like the simple computational record of things…… Can it possibly be?

Last edited 2 years ago by Warbling J Turpitude
Zen Thinker

Warbling, I think anyone on here would condemn Jimmy Savile for forcing himself on children. He committed systematic unwanted acts and although many crimes are worse, this is clearly an affront to children’s rights. It gets more complicated ethically when children reciprocate or desire the behaviour, but legally of course it is still out of bounds.

As for the Daily Mail, yes I agree, it is a terrible paper with a horrendous bias and right wing perspective. It is perhaps the ugliest paper in the UK. But I thought the article may be of statistical interest.

Warbling J Turpitude

I cannot say otherwise, ZT. I am astounded to see you repeat here, seemingly with no compunction whatsoever, what is tantamount to the media-delirious line. Most especially when there exists the DeathOfTheLifeOFJimmySavile blog, itself extraordinarily detailed, comprehensive and continually added to, courtesy one Moor Larkin, who has clearly put more man-hours and single-minded devotion into the work than most of us can even imagine. Not only that but he maintains a consistently diverse and highly stimulating Twitter feed.

I cannot help but feel from your expressed attitude here that the unprecedented scale and reach of the scapegoating operation against Savile, has at some point claimed even you,  serving in your case – may I ever so gently suggest –  as a vivid figure so very convenient to distinguish yourself and your personal aesthetic from..?

You are also failing to say why, when it brandishes reckless figures about like they were firesticks made from yew tree, you think anything the Daily Inflammail offers could be of genuine “statistical interest”?

Zen Thinker

Warbling, I’m here because this is one of the very few places of free speech on the topic of minor attraction, not because I buy into subcultures or conspiracy theories. I actually know very little about the Savile case, and have no desire to be reading conspiracies about how Savile was a Saint instead, I think that would be strange to say the least. I mean no offence when I say that I think conspiracy theories detract from the important critical and rational insights into the nature of minor attraction and its scope in society.

I also offered the Daily Mail piece because it is one of the few that even mentions the topic of statistical levels of minor attraction, and that ‘1 in 35’ supported my argument that we were perhaps reaching some kind of critical mass.

Again, no offence intended, and I’m certainly not here for disagreements or fights. I simply don’t have an interest in some aspects of the subculture, such as defending Savile, whatever its merits may be.

Warbling J Turpitude

Okay. Duly noted. None shall disagree with Zen Thinker because that is not what he’s here for.

In parting though, allow me to say one more very important thing: the ernormous organizational powers and global capacity of media forces to combine, synchronize, promulgate and propagate at the global level what they do goes far beyond your garden-variety “conspiracy”.

It requires no theory whatsoever to acknowledge that they have long had this power, and that they employ it in one way or another 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

None of this has anything to do with making the figure of Savile a “saint”. It has to do with the oft-times vain, oft-times futile, but always dogged, brave and determined pursuit of some truth

Not at all sure what you have in mind with the reference to “subculture”.

Last edited 2 years ago by Warbling J Turpitude
Stephen James

>He committed systematic unwanted acts …

But this was never ‘proven in a court of law’ (and even if it had been, there is still no certainty, given how frequent miscarriages of justice are). This is the key point, quite apart from any ‘conspiracy theories’.

sugarboy

Even though I’m not from the UK, I am also more than a little sceptical about post-mortem demonization of people.

Warbling J Turpitude

I mean, you really have to wonder, don’t you? Why they don’t just go ahead and exhume those demonized peoples’ remains, and hope and.pray that from them a true zombie to end all zombies will arise, one to remind them once and for all that irredeemable sin is ALL that they can ever know?

Nada

I see no reason whatsoever to assume earlier internet access for the majority, including pedophiles, held in contempt by “progressive forces”, would have resulted in overall negative consequences, as the early internet had a very different culture – one of free speech. (It wasn’t dominated by a few large for profit companies, doing the bidding of SJWs.)

Under such conditions, pedophiles would have been able to organize, and likely form very different alliances. The hatred of the likes of Tatchell could have been met on a more level playing field.

>Youth Lovers and their allies are, arguably, in the same situation as what we think of as gays today [“consenting adults in private”] were in the 1980’s.

If we already have free speech, are able to have sex with and marry our younger partners (of any age), what are we doing here?

Prue

“Society would remove a lot of sexual fear, anxiety and guilt if, instead of repressing children’s sexuality, it acknowledged the fact that many children have sexual desires at an early age and accordingly educated children so they are able to make free, informed and responsible decisions about when and with whom they have sex”

// Contd.

“Paradoxically, by keeping young people in a state of sexual ignorance and unpreparedness, our society makes them more, not less, vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation”

//

“Surely, since socialism is supposed to be about freedom and equality for all, we ought to support greater rights for children and start treating them as young adults, and young citizens, who should be encouraged and trained to take on increased responsibilities and given opportunities to exercise power and choice in every facet of their lives, including their sexual and emotional feelings”

Peter Tatchell, Review of The Betrayal of Youth, ed. by Warren Middleton, “Radical thoughts on consent”, in 7 Days, 13th June 1987

[Thought people might appreciate being able to copy-paste this part, not quoted in the main blog itself]

Stephen James

Splendid work, Tom. It should give Peter Tatchell a lot to think about.

Stephen James

Yes, it is very balanced in that way.

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