As promised last time, what follows is the second part of a two-parter. The first focused on an oppressive new prosecution in the Netherlands. Today’s theme looks ahead. Can we expect to see freedom of expression and sexual radicalism come under greater pressure everywhere on the planet in the light of current trends? Are there any factors that could bring a change of direction? Meanwhile, I can report that yesterday I had news from Norbert de Jonge, one of the four under indictment. He has confirmed an earlier indication to me that he will not mount a defence against the allegations and has just released a statement to explain why. See more in a note at the end of this article.
PART 2: WHERE ARE WE HEADING?
As with Propria Cures in the Netherlands (see Part 1), a rally back towards support for freedom of speech is not too much to hope for, I believe. Signs of a substantial backlash against the censorious onslaught of language policing and “cancel culture” are being seen daily in the countries whose affairs I follow most closely, the UK and the US. Whether this will extend to enabling paedophiles to find and maintain a voice in public discourse is more debatable: as with PC, it is hard to see enthusiasm for “promoting paedophilia” to gain traction anytime soon.
All we see is what looks like a conspiracy of silence against our positive messages – the mainstream media have ignored PC – and continuous crackdowns on the few places where we have managed to generate our own community discourse. This is what happened to Martijn Association and to my blog Heretic TOC, which lost its place on the WordPress.com blogging platform after coming under attack in the UK’s Daily Mail last year. In my case I might add that thanks to brilliant community support the blog was soon up and running again, independently hosted at heretictoc.com. I see the prosecution in Marthijn’s case have cited against him his involvement in freespeechtube.org. I am pleased to see this site is still very much in business. This is where I found a useful English translation of all the articles originally in Dutch in the PC special issue (For Liberation, 2021). Two other websites mentioned by the prosecutors in the indictment, www.marthijn.nl and www.brongersma.info, are also still going strong.
Sources of resistance and alternative discourse such as these, and Alice Lovers Magazine itself, are presumably felt to be of some importance otherwise why would any of us bother with them? They are only tiny islands, though, set in a vast stormy ocean. Will they disappear altogether under a steadily rising sea-level of hostility? Will our sense of community and solidarity – always a fragile notion, bearing in mind that GLs and BLs do not always see eye to eye – be washed away entirely?
It was put to me, when this article was proposed, that conservative MAPs, such as the Virtuous Pedophiles in the US, are lining up against more radical spirits. The Right, it was suggested, works in a coordinated way around the world. How are we to deal with this?
As a veteran activist who has been trying to figure out the best way forward for nearly half a century with absolutely zero conspicuous success, I am probably the wrong person to ask! I can point out dozens of tactics that have been tried, only for things to get worse, not better. That said, curiosity alone impels some of us to keep rummaging around in history to figure out what has gone wrong, and to peer “through a glass darkly” into possible futures.
A number of Heretic TOC essays have explored key themes: one was a close exploration of the gay movement’s most successful political ideas, and how MAPs might usefully adopt them (O’Carroll, 2015). Notable among these was careful attention to language: we should stop identifying as “paedophiles” (hopelessly toxic) and call ourselves something less threatening. I favoured “kindly”, or “kind” people, analogous with “gay” as an improvement on “homosexual”. This had some merit, I believe, but proved somewhat confusing. The term MAP itself is relatively new and is making stronger headway. Another essay (O’Carroll, 2020) scrutinized what appeared to be a really interesting recent initiative by Judith Levine, author many years ago of the legendarily sex-positive Harmful To Minors: The Perils Of Protecting Children From Sex (Levine, 2002). In a book out last year, Levine and fellow feminist Erica Meiners proposed an intersectional progressive alliance on the Left against “the carceral state” (Levine & Meiners, 2020) – an alliance that would not demonise MAPs who had fallen foul of the law but would join forces with them against coercive and violent sexuality in ways that would support youth sexual expression. So far, though, I have to say it has been all promise and no delivery. When I wrote to these authors my involvement was not received with enthusiasm. Finally, a blog piece (O’Carroll, 2016) probed the mysteries and political potential inherent in MAPs adopting “queer” or “questioning”, etc., sexual identities. There is, of course, little present danger or hope of the letter P being added to the ever-growing alphabet soup.
My interlocutor, as I say, mentioned the unity of the Right against us, provoking thoughts of apparently hopeless division and disarray on the Left. But these terms are largely meaningless now. The “woke” so-called Left of the Millennials and Generation Z is all about competitive victimhood. They long ago lost sight of the ideals espoused by great socialist thinkers of the past, which aspired to freedom (including freedom of expression: no language police, no Orwellian thought police) and equality for all. Although it grieves me to say it, much of the intelligent thinking on social issues comes from the notional Right now, such as the always interesting gay writer Douglas Murray.
For me, the high point of the Left was its association in the 1960s and 70s with the Sexual Revolution, and its rightly celebrated call to “Make love not war”. The rot set in with socialism’s loss of confidence after the collapse of the corrupt, oppressive, Soviet Union and the triumph of buccaneering capitalism in the Regan-Thatcher era – a triumph extending more recently even into notionally Communist China. The biggest cultural impact coming out of this, as the developed countries shifted away from heavy industries that required muscular “manpower” towards the more gender neutral labour requirements of the growing “knowledge economies”, was the increasing independence and political clout of women.
Radical feminism grew fast and furious in the riotously fertile soil of this fundamental economic change. Advancing rapidly past their initial and entirely justified demands for equality in the workplace, they soon began to fill the ideological vacuum left by socialism when the old, largely male, industrial working class ceased to exist. Taking up socialism’s egalitarian agenda, giving it a gender-based twist, the zealots saw sexual victimhood everywhere, and nowhere more so than in the intrinsically asymmetric, or “unequal” power relationship between adults and children, such that male paedophiles were bound to be cast as the villains of their ideology. Gay men, by contrast, were seen as more feminine and less threatening than macho heterosexual males, so it is no accident that they – and more recently trans people – have been massive winners in the gender revolution. This was an advance that not even HIV/AIDS could halt for long, even though this pandemic of the 1980s was once dubbed “the gay plague” by the hostile Right of those times.
Looking forwards in the medium term, from now towards the middle of the century, I see little prospect of turning around the profound shift that has come about as a result of the deep underlying forces I have just outlined. Society will not suddenly begin to appreciate the merits of age-discrepant male bonding, such as made pederasty respectable in ancient Sparta and Athens. Nor will very young girls be seen as legitimately beddable, as they were when the Prophet Muhammed is said to have consummated his marriage to nine-year-old Aisha.
No, in the years immediately ahead the key aim should be the more modest but viable project of saving ourselves from being demonised, dehumanised, and Othered. Total surrender to the ideology of our oppressors, in the manner of the Virtuous Pedophiles, is obviously undesirable to all but conservative true believers. And it need not be our only possible fate.
The most promising practical alternative I have seen so far is B4U-ACT, an organisation with a mental health mission. Gradually, but in a very sound and sober way, B4U-ACT has built up its influence and credibility since its foundation in the US in 2003. I suspect the term MAP (for minor-attracted person) originated with B4U-ACT; certainly, they have given it wide currency. Whereas other organisations in the field have generally been crude brain-washing outfits, focusing either on variations of conversion therapy or oppressive, authoritarian, anti-abuse propaganda, B4U-ACT has always emphasised MAPs’ dignity and humanity.
This has paid visible dividends in recent years. B4U-ACT holds prestigious conferences with high-level mental health experts in attendance and has engaged with them in promoting research. This has notably seen the development of a whole field in which the focus has been on the negative impact on MAPs of social stigma: deprived of dignity and social support, we are more likely to succumb to anti-social behaviour: treated well, we behave better. Part of this approach has been to ensure that research designs are based on prior consultation with MAPs and input from them. As the mantra has it, “Nothing about us without us”.
This is modest, but it does not mean we must abandon radical thinking. There will always be scope for more outspoken pockets of resistance, for non-violent guerrilla warfare, as it were, against the dominant ideology. This could involve any of us, joining in when we can, backing off when it makes tactical sense. Think of temporary, local initiatives such as we saw with the Occupy movement against the worst ravages of global capitalism, or the transient but spectacular demos staged by Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg’s school strikes. We cannot be as personally visible as that, but there is endless scope for nimble, flexible, creative, online guerilla provocations. Yes, these will probably be small scale and temporary, but not insignificant. It is worth noting that the theory behind Occupy, especially, was hugely influenced by radical MAP advocate “Hakim Bey”, author of The Temporary Autonomous Zone (Bey, 1991). Check him out!
But nothing ambitious can be securely achieved until we MAPs are seen as real human beings with a normal desire to bring something positive to the world, not harm. This will be a necessary but not sufficient basis to build on when times become more propitious for children’s sexual expression and for child-love.
That “when” should perhaps be an “if”, but let’s not be too pessimistic. Things can change very quickly and unexpectedly, as we have seen in these Covid times, which have prompted an astonishing and unprecedented world response in fighting the pandemic, with governments, corporates, NGOs, health staffs and volunteers around the globe working together cooperatively to generate marvellous vaccines and then deliver them worldwide.
The intensifying climate crisis and resource pressure (e.g. water scarcity) will inevitably thrust another big challenge onto humanity. We may find that stabilising or even reducing population across much of the globe becomes a priority forced on us by nature and, as with the vaccine scenario, tackled quickly with nimble thinking and fast-changing attitudes. Non-reproductive forms of sexual expression including between children and adults could quite quickly flip from taboo to fashionable, just as gayness has flipped dramatically within a generation or so.
If you find this intriguing you might like to explore my crystal ball gazing further in the section “An Alternative Ideal” in my paper “Childhood ‘Innocence’ is Not Ideal: Virtue Ethics and Child–Adult Sex” (O’Carroll, 2018). This appeared in the academic journal Sexuality and Culture and is free to read at its Springer page.
Hope you will find this of interest, and let us all wish good luck to Marthijn and co! The trial has been scheduled for 2, 3 and 4 February 2022.
NOTE: STATEMENT BY NORBERT DE JONGE
Norbert has just published a statement titled “No Defense At 2022 Show Trial”. Intended primarily for the media once the trial starts next year, it explains why he will be saying nothing in his own defence and will not have a lawyer. This is because, as the title suggests, he believes the trial will be a sham, a show trial. The outcome has already been determined, he believes, because the Dutch courts are under heavy political influence and hence not independent.
It makes grim reading, as does further news from Norbert sent just this morning, telling me that one politician of the House of Representatives, Gidi Markuszower, had expressed the hope that one of the others facing trial, Nelson Maatman, would get life imprisonment and be chemically castrated. Life! Castration! For nothing more than writing about paedophilia without denouncing it! Ironically, this Markuszower represents a right wing populist outfit called the Party for Freedom.
Freedom! Was there ever a more Orwellian distortion of the word? War is peace. Freedom is slavery (or imprisonment!). Ignorance is strength…
REFERENCES (Parts 1 and 2 of main blog):
Bey, H. (1991). TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. New York, NY: Autonomedia.
Daly, N.R. (2021). Relationship, of child sexual abuse survivor self-perception of consent to current functioning. Florida: Nova Southeastern University. PhD dissertation. Retrieved from https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cps_stuetd/136
Propria Cures Issue on Pedophilia and Free Speech. FreeSpeechTube. Retrieved from: https://www.freespeechtube.org/v/15dt
Gieles, F. (2020). Hasty urgency does research no good. Retrieved from https://www.human-being.nl/Bibliotheek/commentaar.html
Helweg‐Larsen and Larsen (2006). The prevalence of unwanted and unlawful sexual experiences reported by Danish adolescents. Acta Paediatrica 95(10): 1270-1276.
Levine, J. (2002). Harmful to minors: The perils of protecting children from sex. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Levine, J. and Meiners, E.R. (2020). The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm, Ending State Violence. New York, NY: Verso.
O’Carroll, T. (2015). After the Ball and After the Fall. Heretic TOC. https://heretictoc.com/2015/09/15/after-the-ball-and-after-the-fall/
O’Carroll, T. (2016). LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM – WTF? Heretic TOC. https://heretictoc.com/2016/10/05/lgbttqqfagpbdsm-wtf/
O’Carroll, T. (2018). Childhood ‘Innocence’ is Not Ideal: Virtue Ethics and Child–Adult Sex. Sexuality & Culture 22: 1230–1262. Open access: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-018-9519-1
O’Carroll, T. (2020). The feminist and the sex offender. Heretic TOC. https://heretictoc.com/2020/11/09/the-feminist-and-the-sex-offender/
Public Prosecution Service (2021). Concept indictment concerning M.H. Uittenbogaard. Netherlands: Openbaar Ministerie. Retrieved from https://marthijn.nl/pdf/Concept_Tenlastelegging_MU.pdf. [In Dutch. The word “concept” in the original (“Concept tenlastelegging inzake M.H. Uittenbogaard”) may be intended to mean “provisional”.]
Rind, B. (2020). First sexual intercourse in the Irish study of sexual health and relationships: current functioning in relation to age at time of experience and partner age. Archives of Sexual Behavior 50:289–310.
Rind, B., Bauserman, R., & Tromovitch, P. (1998). A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse using college samples. Psychological Bulletin, 124(1), 22–53.
Sandfort, T. (1984). Sex in pedophilic relationships: An empirical investigation among a non-representative group of boys. Journal of Sex Research, 20(2), 123–142.
Supreme Court of the Netherlands (2014). Case number: 13/02498. Retrieved from https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:HR:2014:948
I think the framing of the entire issue is wholly wrong. I’m studying a lot of things, and while I can confidently say that we get practically everything wrong when it comes to children, adolescents, and sex, I cannot say that I have any solutions beyond comprehensive sex education. The rest is what I endeavor to study.
I personally couldn’t give two rats’ asses whether or not adults ever get to have sexual access to children, and, indeed, any framing from that angle rubs me the wrong way, and I know will never be accepted by society. I would not consider myself a pedophile, pederast, or MAP, or any other such thing, as I’m not sexually attracted to anybody, let alone children.
That being said, I am anxiously desirous to see children grow up happy and healthy and to no longer be subjected to the warping influences of our puritanical, misogynistic, pedophobic, ephebiphobic society, be it religion, patriarchy, or misguided notions of innocence and purity.
I am an asexual and I can tell you I was incredibly damaged and warped by all these things, despite not having sexual attraction towards anybody. Yet my body still had a high libido. It was very confusing to me as a child and an adolescent. I had to learn about sex and sexuality entirely on my own, and that led to a number of gross mistakes on my part growing up, that I still deal with to this day.
I’ve come to realize that the narratives we have about children and sexuality are completely bogus- both from my own personal experience as a child and also from realizing that Law & Order SVU is not correct in its portrayal either. Including of pedophiles, pederasts, and sexual abuse.
However, I believe (and even find myself still believing, if not reinforcing) the belief that it is not important whether pedophiles or pederasts get their way. What is going to be important is what is best for children and adolescents. I don’t know if that involves exploring sexuality with adults, but I sure as hell know it involves giving them the explicit space and right to explore themselves and each other.
Change on this front will come when teenagers begin demanding their rights and liberation, which is a great difference between today and the 60’s and 70’s. Back then there were active, large youth liberation groups. Today, no such groups meaningfully exist, let alone have a voice in public discourse. Until they start demanding things like the right to vote, the right to drink, the right to bodily autonomy, nothing will significantly alter.
Teenagers are the hope of resolving all these condundrums. They will be better guardians and speakers for the rights of children, even, than anyone else, in addition to their own rights. It will only be when teenagers organize and find their voices again- and do not shed them upon reaching adulthood and parenthood- that issues like children and sex will start to work themselves out to what it should be.
Also, queer people (of which I am one) are indeed going to have to reckon with the reality that pedophilia and pederasty were once integral parts of the movement before the satanic panic of the 80’s, and that there are issues and aspects to revisited and explored there. And that not only was it part of the movement, it wasn’t considered to be a separate category to the L, G, or B letters. Just an integral part of growing up queer.
And surely body positivity and desexualization of breasts, nipples, and the body in general will be key to resolving this issues. Indeed, I would even argue the desexualization of sex- by which I mean it is no longer placed on a pedestal as THE penultimate expression of love, and sacred, secret, and exclusive- but rather considered no more serious than any other form of affection, intimacy, and sensuality- is also key.
Additionally, trans people and trans youth in particular, hold the key to moving in a direction to granting children and adolescents bodily autonomy. It won’t go anywhere right now, but I reckon on all the things I have mentioned, there will be a great reckoning and upheaval in society over these things in the 2030’s. I anticipate, based off my observations, that that is the case. I hope that we can give better consideration to youth sexuality, and gain better understanding. If that means that pedophilia and pederasty in some form or fashion ought to be legalized and destigmatized, so be it. If it doesn’t, so be it. But regardless, it is important to have these conversations, and we’re doing nobody any favors by avoiding them and demonizing everyone who has anything to say against the established order- be it conservative or progressive features- that so terribly oppresses people- not the least being kids.
Thank you, Perplexed, for a thoughtful, detailed comment that makes many interesting points.
As your contribution is in response to a blog published last October, nearly nine months ago, unfortunately it will be read by far fewer people than comments on the current blog (which is also where I am more likely to chip in myself in response to readers’ points). I hope you will bring your very individual perspective to bear on future blogs here, and perhaps even the present one although it is less obviously relevant to the concerns you have raised.
I will make just one observation now. You wrote:
“Until they start demanding”. You speak of trans kids potentially playing a key role in this. This is something I would be interested to hear you develop, not in this thread but in response to a future blog. So I hope you will continue as a reader here. Until the next time, then, best wishes!
This is just a test comment, once again. It’s purpose is to check that everyone receives their proper emails.
You should quit while you are ahead. People might learn to be tolerant towards MAPs, but it will never be legal. You’re disrupting public morals. Not to mention you will never make any headway. I’m surprised you haven’t been arrested already for running this website. People will never advocate for children to have sexual experiences with adults. It is inherently harmful to them.
The Long-Term Effects of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Counseling Implications
Hi Miranda. The link you gave says this:
>Childhood sexual abuse has been correlated with higher levels of depression, guilt, shame, self-blame, eating disorders, somatic concerns, anxiety, dissociative patterns, repression, denial, sexual problems, and relationship problems.
This is absolutely true.
What it leaves out, though, is that the studies that have discovered these connections are invariably based on coerced contacts. The equivalent in adults would be studies into the effects of sexual assault and rape.
Most adult sex is not like that; nor is sex with children. Sex between teenagers, and with them by adults, is typically consensual; sex with willingly involved younger children characteristically tends to be limited to a “foreplay” kind they would do among themselves anyway, if not deterred by parental discouragement.
When the full range of childhood sexual experiences with adults are taken into account, not just coerced ones, the picture is hugely less negative than the one painted in your link. The locus classicus of the relevant findings is this one:
Rind, B., Tromovitch, P., & Bauserman, R. (1998). A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse using college samples. Psychological Bulletin, 124(1), 22–53. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.1.22
This meta-analysis looked at consensual and non-consensual encounters together. When they are studied separately, adults looking back on their experiences report far more favourably if they were willing participants when they were children. Why would this be the case unless children can, in reality consent?
See:
Daly, N. R. (2021). Relationship of Child Sexual Abuse Survivor Self-Perception of Consent to Current
Functioning.
Available at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cps_stuetd/136
All the science is fake news – pseudoscience. Produce a research paper that finds a lack of harm – or positive recollections, and you’ll be permanently blacklisted from everything.
What is happening is called a mass formation psychosis. There’s so much anxiety in the air that it condenses on certain topics. COVID, racial inequality, gender, child safety. That’s why Americans think 300,000 children are abducted each year when only 100 are. Just like people believe that 1000-10000+ unarmed black men are shot by police when it’s 10-15 per year.
>arrested for running this website
You do not understand free speech and its limits. There is absolutely no basis for shutting down this website. In any case, it would be a bad thing to shut it down because it aims to reduce harm to children. Children ought to be forming voluntary relationships with peers and adults, not physically isolated. The law harms children and their development into adults. Without positive childhood experiences, you get scared adults joining feminism and MGTOW/incelism.
Oh and something important that I had forgotten, Mass shooter Adam Lanza was highly influenced by The Radical Case. It among a long number of other heretical books and manifestos. Someone found a forgotten youtube channel of his where he speaks about a number of topics including pedophilia, anti-natalism and culture as a philosophical construct. He felt really deeply about his belief that civilisation and its harms are propagating itself using state belief indoctrination, particularly school.
In fact his deep distress about the plight of children combined with his terrible living conditions may have played a part in causing his act. To what extent I do not know. Those who provide information are not responsible for the actions of others. His videos may be important to you. They were deleted (why?) by youtube but are now archived (in condensed formats) on BitChute here:
https://www.bitchute.com/playlist/QB5ZQgDvl0ZV/
>his deep distress about the plight of children
I do not doubt his deep distress but mass murdering children, as he did, is a curious way of expressing concern over “the plight of children”.
Anyone unsure about Heretic TOC’s response at the time to the ghastly killings can check it out here:
https://heretictoc.com/2012/12/19/americas-kick-ass-kill-class-culture/
>Mass shooter Adam Lanza was highly influenced by The Radical Case.
I will not be beating myself up over it. My book never advocated harming children. Crazy people are influenced by all manner of texts, including the Bible.
The videos to which you link, Nick, must surely be important material for study by psychiatrists and others concerned with the psychology that drives mass killings by desperate people.
I have now seen just the first five minutes of one of them. I cannot of course draw conclusions from such a brief exposure, but my guess is that his disavowal of any sexual interest in children is false.
“Antinatalism” may be the immediate philosophical rationale of this disturbed young man, but one has to suspect a deeper desperation rooted in the societal taboo against child-adult socialisation and intimacy. Haven’t studied the case, but this could also apply to the Dunblane massacre in Scotland, in which 16 (if memory serves) children were shot dead.
It might boil down to “If they can’t be mine, you can’t have them either” i.e. a motive of revenge against parents, and society in general.
In my view this sort of terrible incident contributes powerfully to the case for tighter gun laws. Especially, but not only, in the US.
A propos of nothing really, I just think this is definitely the right response to someone who gives this sort of answer to the question ‘Do you believe in God?’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKTAPXtdua4
While waiting for your new blog, a brief thought piece:
I wonder at what has led the little girl to become so fashion conscious, so brazenly ‘in your face’ with her persona, so gloriously feminine and yet out of all sync with traditional standards and expectations for her age. It is as though, with the wide proliferation of ‘model culture’ and photo & video sharing social media, little girls have taken on the mantle of imitating the adults, with the tacit encouragement of their mums. This new brigade of young twenty something mums is totally media savvy and want a social media stardom future for their daughters. A way for their daughters to gain social acceptance and confidence is for them to have a successful social media account, even at a very young age. They learn to see themselves as somewhat passive peacocks strutting their feathertails for the benefit of their surrounding culture. At one time people said ‘let kids be kids’. Now it seems we are so far past that point that children are actively looking to glamourise and even covertly sexualise themselves under the guise of fashion and feminine values. I am indeed astounded, because this is all getting rather blatant and one would have thought provocative now, such that it cannot be ignored. And yet attraction to children is still seen as a deep and monstrous perversion. Something doesn’t hold; indeed this is like squaring the circle, it doesn’t compute. What then can we safely say? That little girls have matured massively in a short space of time, due to many burgeoning cultural influences and especially growing up with the internet and social media? That this is perhaps an irreversible, and also accelerating trend? On a year by year basis, the zeitgeist is transforming before our eyes. It seems that the average citizen, vociferously vilifying the adult who finds a child beautiful and desirous, is totally in the dark with regard to that child’s subjectivity. Children are partaking of adults’ paradigms like never before. They are partaking of the popular ‘subculture’ of beauty, glamour and outward presentation in a way which would have been unfathomable not long ago. Children are obviously being sexualised by the culture: this is rapid, inevitable and to conservatives, tragic. Perhaps conservatives’ daughters are kept far away from this trend, and represent their own staid and prudent microcosm. For everyone else, they are caught up in this to differing extents.
>While waiting for your new blog…
Bit of a hint here, I think! Like, Where is it? Why are you about a week late?
I was in the middle of writing a piece a week ago. It was coming along nicely. I had to scrap it when the Allyn Walker story broke. If you have no idea what I am talking about it could be because your online time is skewed towards TikTok rather than the news media! 🙂
More Walker news has been breaking all week. The story clearly demands its own blog. With a fair wind I should be able to pull all the relevant threads together into a reasonably analysis before too long.
>Perhaps conservatives’ daughters are kept far away from this trend
Could it be that starstruck mums and daughters come largely from an undereducated underclass who see no hope of changing their circumstances through steady careers in medicine, engineering, etc.? Is it perhaps only the least fortunate 10% or 5% who yearn to be “stars” (99% of whom will fail)? Seems a bit mean to burst the bubble but maybe we should keep it real?
Haha, actually Tom the kind of parent who sets up a successful social media account for their child tends to be middle / upper middle class, liberal, sophisticated and urbane. I’ve seen very little evidence of poor children establishing much of a presence. These upper middle class children can afford the fashion, the make-up, the glamorous locations, and probably see their online presence as a key extension of their “brand” and of a ruthless self-promotion. I think there’s very little question of exploitation. It’s totally passé for a young wealthy child to be an influencer garnering hundreds or even thousands of “likes”. What shocked me was the maturity and sophistication of girls as young as six years old. This supports my thesis that technology has utterly transformed the cultural milieu and hence formation of children.
On the blog: no worries, it will be ready in due course I’m sure.
>the kind of parent who sets up a successful social media account for their child tends to be middle / upper middle class, liberal, sophisticated and urbane
LOL! Just shows how ancient and out of touch I am! 🙂 Looks like it’s you keeping me real here, and that works very well for me! Cheers!
It’s actually a lot of wealthier Russians. They seem to view having a hot daughter as like having a Ferrari to show off to the neighbors. You’ve made it if you’ve got two hot daughters and a trip to Dubai.
They aren’t being sexualised. You can give a smartphone and social media to a Maasai woman and she’ll do the exact same stuff. It’s sort of lonely, a young girl dancing in a leotard while their parents are either still at work, or at home but still absent. Not an adequate childhood.
The experience I observe is much more positive. Girls, often dressed glamorously and with a keen fashion sense, being photographed or filmed in various locations generally by their parents and being posted on a parent-run account. It’s all very benign.
I agree they aren’t being sexualised per se, perhaps simply “glamorised” for want of a better word. What I noted was that young girls are displaying a surprising maturity in their social and cultural values.
I was referring to the Tik Tok stuff that is more intimate. Things like dancing and showing off the body. When I said Maasai women do it with smartphones too, I really meant it. These are displays meant to draw the interest of others. It’s pre-cultural.
Link to a documentary worth archiving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWBUnX0IjjA
Described by the uploader as: “This film is a re-edit (fix) of an atrocious documentary, in honor of a man who is no longer with us and cannot speak. Unsubstantiated claims, hyperbole, and creepy music over kind moments have been removed, to tell the story of Robert Berchtold’s loving relationship with Jan Broberg in a more accurate light.”
Interesting form of activism! Might see if I can have a go at this myself when I finally have more free time. Documentaries about R. Kelly or Keith Raniere might be interesting to go through.
Tried to upload the full video to Freespeechtube but it got removed on copyright grounds so posting for Heretics here 🙂
Don’t bother with sites not even supporting free speech and banning Tor users.
Mirrored here:
[MODERATOR: Link deleted. Clicking on the FAQ button provided by the site brought up a screen saying this:
Website blocked due to riskware
Website blocked: sslsearches.com
Malwarebytes Browser Guard blocked this website because it may contain malware activity.]
The mirror works (including the FAQ, not that it’s relevant).
However, the previous post is next to useless without the link.
Is it not in our interest to preserve relevant material, deemed at risk of censorship?
>Is it not in our interest to preserve relevant material, deemed at risk of censorship?
Yes, but HTOC cannot link to anything legally dubious as it would soon be preserving absolutely nothing of itself or anything else. I wanted to check the FAQ for clues (in the absence of an About page) as to the site’s purpose and scope.
>Yes, but HTOC cannot link to anything legally dubious
About as legally dubious as the Youtube link (being a copy of that documentary/parody) or at worst as your previous MEGA link (if you oppose mirroring in itself).
Anonfiles is an anonymous filesharing service, which is easy to use, stable and doesn’t require JavaScript – unlike MEGA or Freespeechtube. Hence my use of it.
>About as legally dubious as the Youtube link (being a copy of that documentary/parody) or at worst as your previous MEGA link
I had no means of assessing its legality, so it was dubious to me. It is not wise to leave things to chance, or trust to the wisdom of anonymous contributors who carry no legal responsibility.
Very interesting – and the bit at the end was hilarious!
https://history.northwestern.edu/about/newsletter/summer-2019/scott-de-orio-wins-dissertation-award.html#top
This may have been mentioned previously, but fair play to this guy. His department are also proud to have him on the staff!
This is a great find, Ed. Thanks! Must look into this further.
I have just downloaded the dissertation, which is a free PDF download here:
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/138757/sadeorio_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
I had my doubts about what “intergenerational” meant in this context. Searching for the word within De Orio’s text, it quickly becomes apparent that he certainly includes the “subculture” of boy love as presented by NAMBLA. So he does seem to be presenting the case that there has been a war (implicitly and perhaps explicitly an unjustified one) against NAMBLA and BL culture.
That’s fantastic to know. On the author’s website there’s a course syllabus he taught called Consent: Sexual Agency in Historical Context which people might be interested in: http://www.scottdeorio.com/teaching
I know I’ve recommended De Orio’s dissertation to Tom before, and I recommend chapter 4 “The Crackdown on the Queer Subculture of Intergenerational Sex“, it’s very concise and presents a lot of information so I think it’s a really good introduction / refresher. I think heretics will really appreciate the way the piece is written, its framing.
>I know I’ve recommended De Orio’s dissertation to Tom before
Which must be one reason why the name sounded familiar. Sure enough, checking my files, I discover the news of his award reached me over a year ago, in October 2020. At that point I checked out his personal website and pasted a copy of this:
“My second project is a transatlantic study of the governance of child sexuality from the Enlightenment to the present. My writing has or will appear in the Journal of the History of Sexuality and Law & Social Inquiry.”
Great Scott!
Anyway, thanks, Prue, as ever. Hard to follow up all your excellent recommendations, but I do my best.
Memo to self: Bring this guy’s work to top of reading list.
Someone else nearby usually finds these things Tom, and sends them to me. I’ll pass on the thanks. It looks like a nugget of pure gold among so much pyrite.
>So he does seem to be presenting the case that there has been a war (implicitly and perhaps explicitly an unjustified one) against NAMBLA and BL culture.
The dissertation was a 0 byte download – but the papers on his homepage are little more than apologies for gay activist/feminist/liberal hostility towards pedophile men, children and family. I’m left to wonder if beating the crap out of one’s lover, or even infecting them with HIV – in sharp contrast to pedophilia – are merely benign sexual variations from the “queer theory” perspective.
> but the papers on his homepage are little more than apologies for gay activist/feminist/liberal hostility towards pedophile men, children and family.
Sorry, where are these exactly? I’ve had a good look on his website but can’t see any papers that fit this description.
http://www.scottdeorio.com/research
http://www.scottdeorio.com/press-1
Yes, I saw these, Christian. But, as I said, these pieces don’t look to me as if they are, in Nada’s words, ‘little more than apologies for gay activist/feminist/liberal hostility towards pedophile men, children and family’.
>Yes, I saw these, Christian.
Yet, your previous post is consistent with not even finding the papers, leading to Christian’s reply.
As I’m unsure my contributions are valued, I’ll be brief. I see no evidence liberal or feminist hostility is held to the same standard (it’s even propsed as a solution to the problem of registries) as the conservative hostility, on which De Orio blames gay activists support for harsher penalties for sex involving minors. I wonder why conservatives (in a weak position as far as hostility towards gays goes) are to blame for gay, feminist or liberal self-interest or willingness to exploit a system?
>As I’m unsure my contributions are valued
I, for one, welcome your input, Nada. I don’t know whether you are extremely busy, or just laconic by temperament, but it seems to me that some of your comments might be better understood and appreciated if made slighter fuller.
So here is the passage which you may have had in mind, from a review of a book to which De Orio had contributed a paper:
“Several senior scholars build on their already influential work, but some of the breakout voices come from junior scholars such as Scott De Orio, whose work this journal first published in 2017 and whose piece on the creation of the modern sex offender shows how gay and liberal activists in the 1970s, in their push to decriminalize gay sex, often played into the hands of law-and-order conservatives. De Orio makes a nuanced critique that holds back from overcriticizing gay activists, the least powerful of the bunch, and challenges queer theorists who recoil from liberalism to “take a more vigorous role in conceptualizing and promoting constructive ways for the state to respond to sexual violence” (249).”
So according to the reviewer, De Orio believes that gay and liberal activists in the 1970s, in order to further their aim of decriminalising gay sex, often played into the hands of law-and-order activists. Presumably this is referring at least partly to the way these activists sacrificed the interests of BLs and their young boyfriends to further their own aim of legitimising ‘standard’ gay relationships. So this is apparently acknowledged by De Orio. But then the reviewer tells us that De Orio ‘holds back from overcriticizing gay activists’ because of their relative lack of power. Now, one may or may not agree with this stance of his. But is it really reasonable to represent the fact that his criticism of these activists’ hostility to BLs is not the severest possible as mere ‘apologies’ for this hostility? And when you say ‘I wonder why conservatives … are to blame for gay, feminist or liberal self-interest or willingness to exploit a system?’ the answer is because they created that system – though I wouldn’t suggest that this entirely absolves the actions of those other groups and nor, it seems, would De Orio.
Actually, I had De Orio’s two papers in mind.
I suppose, if one’s goal is to prevent the risk of disproportionate criticism of the gay movement, the trivial solution is to prevent virtually all criticism of it, and its allies, in the first place. The alleged non-trivial solution, following De Orio, requires ordering the relative power of groups, including gays, (asserted, and only partially) and knowing the relation (not given) between it and criticism. Hence, a skeptical reader could deny the ordering, or chose a relation, eg criticism proportional to gain, invalidating the conclusion. Unreasonable? Alternatively, continue with De Orio’s reasoning:
After noting some gay activists supported the sex offender registry, he quickly add they weren’t the first or most vigorous to do so, and conservatives probably made them do it! Is it plausible gays were so dumb they could not consider the utility of activism, of supporting (or not) certain ideas or how others might respond? Hardly.
My mention of self-interest and exploitation is due to game theory, as De Orio’s implicit assumption is exploitation is the only possible strategy – not the meta level of the game (which you seem to consider). Regarding the latter: 20th century conservatives hardly created 19th century feminist legal reforms, justifying imprisoning BLs and GLs – no matter what rights De Orio’s “queers” had or will ever have!
This is of some importance and follows from the definition of “queer” as:
“the set of non-harmful modes of non-normative sexual and gender expression that sexual liberation and gay activists tried to legalize but got left behind and re-criminalized by the new war on sex offenders.”
[Punishing Queer Sexuality in the Age of LGBT Rights, p 18]
“The issue of adult-youth sex was one of the most contentious issues dividing the gay movement in the 1970s and ’80s, and it is by no means uncontroversial to say now that sex between adults and teenagers is in some cases a form of queer conduct that has been unfairly stigmatized and criminalized. Therefore, it seems important to justify including non-coercive kinds of cross-generational sex involving teenagers in my definition of “queer,” and thus within the category of non-normative practices of sex and gender that I describe as “non-harmful” (or at least undeserving of severe punishment).” [p 27]
HIV only exists due to the conduct of gay men and intravenous drug users. It doesn’t matter who is doing the bulk of the infection; it’s a terrible disease to be associated with. HIV would have long ceased to exist if it weren’t for the proclivities of these two groups. In fact if we had used the powers of border closure and compulsion like for COVID against STDs, we could eradicate bacterial and fungal species within a few months and eliminate viruses within a generation. It just takes mandating every single person to go to a clinic once every few weeks.
>HIV only exists due to the conduct of gay men and intravenous drug users.
In Africa it is predominantly a heterosexual phenomenon and not significantly associated with drug use as far as I am aware.
Do you know where and how HIV was introduced into human populations?
According to Wikipedia:
I suppose they could have been gay chimps but I don’t think there is any evidence for that! 🙂
Also:
Challenging comments are welcome here, Nick, but preferably when factually well grounded.
I’m aware of its origins as a crossover virus. I agree that it is possible for it to remain endemic in black Africa within the general population due to high levels of infectious disease and partner count. My argument is that its reproductive number is close to nil in the general Western population. For it to not quickly die out it needs a highly vulnerable population engaging in IV drug use and sex with body tissues already damaged by other STDs.
>sex with body tissues already damaged by other STDs
Sounds ghastly. Do we have any idea what proportion of gay sex is “safe sex” these days? I guess such info would have to come mainly from self-report surveys of questionable reliability but they might give some idea. And I suppose “safe sex” is not necessarily all that safe. I really have no idea about all this stuff as I have never been into anal sex or anything physically dangerous.
I do have any elderly gay friend, though, who still has an active sex life in his mid-eighties and has been living with HIV for decades. I presume his partners know. They almost certainly have the virus themselves. Luckily for them, though, anti-retroviral medication seems to be very good at keeping them going strong.
>The Right, it was suggested, works in a coordinated way around the world. How are we to deal with this?
If hostile, a coordinated Right doesn’t present a fundamentally new problem.Since at least the 19th century, MAPs have a coordinated enemy in feminism[1]. The historical record seems to be mostly collaboration, presumably written by the few winners able to fit in sufficiently well, not the losers denied either their freedom or the very promise of it.
Escaping this situation is difficult, as it requires trusting other MAPs. Winners need not even want to escape it (as evidenced by the highly conditional freedom proposed by some “radical” MAPs), while losers can be easily beaten back, should they try individual revolts.
[1] https://heretictoc.com/2021/01/13/should-a-child-ever-get-married/
I see a sharp demarcation between using Xvideos 18-19 for sexual needs (I’m Catholic so I shouldn’t, but I do), and Instagram for a purer aesthetic appreciation. The kids on Instagram are to some extent put on a pedestal, held up as an ideal of beauty, and enjoyed aesthetically for their unique charm. My hoes on Xvideos meanwhile are a baser sexual fulfillment, as porn is mostly aesthetically ugly. I think it’s important to maintain this distinction, not that I disrespect the young adults on Xvideos, but in terms of my inner realm of the ideal, this is populated by the high aesthetics of Instagram kids. Similarly films like “Leon” and “The Florida Project” are an important part of my inner concept of the ideal girl. I idealise the young girl while I tend to be grounded about the young adult. This is just a product of the times we live in – I am happy to romanticise an ideal of the young girl as this contributes to a rich inner life in terms of the purely beautiful, unmarred by earthly admixture. It works for me anyway.
>porn is mostly aesthetically ugly.
I don’t agree. I think a lot of it is very beautiful. But of course, as the old cliche has it, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
What I mean is that traditionally pornography has been held to be a much lower form than art. While “kitsch” is cheap and superficial art, eliciting a shallow response, porn is even lower, appealing to the sexual appetite and animal passions. The point of art is that it elevates the soul, offers something spiritually nourishing, and gives us a deeper awareness of life. I don’t think porn does any of this. There’s also obviously a clear division between for example a nude Venus of classical art, and a Playboy nude. While there can be beauty in the nude form, the pornographic lens almost disqualifies any higher value, so that even the famous nude Marilyn Monroe of Playboy can be called at best extremely kitsch. I’d be interested in why you think pornography has any higher or enduring value. At least “professional bloggers” on social media aspire to a high creativity, are dedicated to sophisticated fashion which lends an artistic beauty to their representation, and show forth the human form in a way which appeals to our soul and sense of wonder, not wholly to animal passions.
>I’d be interested in why you think pornography has any higher or enduring value.
I don’t know about ‘higher’ value, but it can certainly have enduring value as when one returns to a favourite photo or video time and time again.
True, you could never call porn subtle. It arouses sexual feelings in the most straightforward ways possible. But your original comment was that porn was ‘mostly aesthetically ugly’ and I was countering that with my belief that a great deal of it is very beautiful. If you had said ‘porn is not artistic’ I might not have been so quick to disagree.
For me, there are few more beautiful sights than that the sight of a young person having an orgasm, though I would also concede that that is a subjective judgement like any other.
Yes, I can understand that. Though certainly for me, I would never look at prohibited porn (not after my legal trouble) because the punitive consequences are so severe – not because I necessarily think a nude child would be a grave evil.
As for 18 year olds, they retain enough youth to make them attractive.
MILF, or even GILF (good God), no thanks.
Just to be clear, I wouldn’t look at prohibited porn either, which is why I said ‘young person’, not child.
WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
I recently sat down to watch the award-winning Swedish film Let the Right One In on BBC I-player. It stars Kåre Hedebrant as 12-year-old Oskar and Lina Leandersson as 12-year-old Eli. They are strongly attracted to one another and decide to go steady as boyfriend and girlfriend. They are seen scantily clad sharing intimate moments. Oskar has a problem with bullies and Lina helps him get back at his tormentors. The actors are both very appealing: Hedebrant has long blond hair and is like a smaller version of Björn Andrésen in Death in Venice; Leandersson too has a slightly swarthy charm (she is half-Iranian). All-in-all very sweet and I was looking forward to a warm cuddly movie.
But there are a few complications I’ve left out of this account. Eli is actually a vampire. She lives with an older man who kills innocent people to harvest blood for her. Eli herself kills and feeds on a number of victims in the course of the film, one of whom herself becomes a vampire (in the age-old tradition of course). When Oskar is forced by his bullies to immerse himself for three minutes at the local swimming pool, he emerges to find that Ellie has killed and dismembered the bullies. In the final scene, Oskar is seen travelling on a train with Eli in a box at his side.
All a bit stomach-churning for me I’m afraid, but I guess we hebephiles have to take our cinematic pleasure where we can. Still, I can think of some less morally problematic films involving pubescent love, such as Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, for example. Come to think of it, Romeo and Juliet is not very far off the mark, since I believe Juliet is supposed to be about thirteen and Romeo not much older.
The film was reviewed in Pigtails in Paint: “Bonds of Blood: Two Adaptations of a Vampire Story” https://pigtailsinpaint.org/2017/01/bonds-of-blood-two-adaptations-of-a-vampire-story/
I didn’t notice when I wrote this comment that I ‘d provided a link for the male actors but not for Lina Leanderssson. So let me remedy that before someone accuses me of BL-favouritism!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Leandersson
She became very swarthy.
Maybe. I haven’t seen a recent photo.
Beautiful and wise, Greta Thunberg being interviewed on the BBC by Andrew Marr:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00116q5/the-andrew-marr-show-31102021
(Starts at about 44:35.)
When she sang “you can shove your climate emergency up your”….Out of context some people may be confused. But I agree with the sentiment. maybe one day she will sing that for other reasons, after civilisation has been reduced to third World standards. Not for people like Johanna Lumley of course, giving up all that burdensome wealth may be a step too far.
Telling the real life of non-offending MAPs reduces the hatred and stigmatisation, and it is more efficient for this purpose than telling scientific facts:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02057-x?s=09
Humanizing Pedophilia as Stigma Reduction: A Large-Scale Intervention Study
Yes. This is a point I have long accepted and noted at HTOC. However, it is interesting that you have used a scientific paper to give your opinion a firm foundation. Methodical investigation, leading to clear, replicable, findings, does not stop being important because of public perception. That is why HTOC will continue to pay attention to both scientific findings and narrative presentation.
I believe this particular study was reviewed in B4U-ACT’s 3rd journal issue https://www.b4uact.org/b4qr/vol1/ Incidentally, issue 4 has just come out! Check it out here: https://www.b4uact.org/b4qr/vol1/autumn2021/
This looks very promising. I have just, belatedly, signed up to be on the list for email notifications of B4U-ACT activities and publications.
Out of the mouths of babes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dHtNRRIzdo
I would like to give you an idea of my approach to children and society – why I am not interested per se in sexual liberation or even societal acceptance, but more in an intellectual and emotive consideration of the ontological openness of the child. This can be found through an analysis of social media:
Of course, it is clear to me that the wealthy middle class, for the most part, promote their children as much as they can. This is so obvious from even a superficial analysis of social media. Parents love to show off the prettiness of their daughters, and it seems they are quite rich besides, as they are always dressed in the finest designer gear. Buying designer clothes for a child seems like the ultimate act of frivolousness, as they are continually growing and the clothes will therefore have a very short life. These parents nevertheless seem to think that it is a worthwhile, perhaps even necessary expense, to have their offspring dressed up in expensive Chanel.
It puzzles me why parents so desperately want to promote their daughters on social media. What happened to the privacy of the family? Maybe it has its origins in celebrity culture, especially programmes like “Keeping up with the Kardashians” where a young Kylie Jenner was showcased and subsequently became a self-made billionaire. Maybe they see this trajectory for their own offspring, and that a presence on social media establishes their “brand” and gives them instant cache, credibility and perhaps even commercial potential. It is all very strange, but of course one only needs a casual acquaintance with social media to be aware of some beautiful young daughters dressed very prettily in expensive clothes, often with expensive and refined make-up even at the age of five.
These girls are utterly remote, they are something of a social elite, as they strut their stuff on the pages of Instagram. But of course, in their very act of self-revelation in the form of pictures and videos, they give themselves to the viewer in the most direct and some would say open fashion. Taking their cue from celebrity culture where the ontological openness and almost ‘sexual gift’ of the model displays itself on the page of the glossy magazine, these girls quite naturally and unselfconsciously reveal themselves, although perhaps “reveal” is too strong a word, as there is always a deliberately chosen persona, a “mask” that the child wears like the celebrities she imitates. This is in some sense highly artificial and so much fakery, but O how beautiful the result!
Yes, these prize fakers and mask wearing fashionistas are a picture of glamour and young beauty, almost an impossible ideal, but packaged to present themselves as a kind of archetypal fantasy. They are something of a fantasy figure, floating effortlessly above the everyday to inhabit their own perfect ontological space. What is the science of their being? I would have to say they are deliberately open and deeply aesthetically minded, almost a science of the surface, although that openness is somewhat qualified by the fact that this is a performance art where a mask is worn. The particular persona of the child mostly seeks to imitate, and in this they are perfect Aristotelians, honing their art in this manner. They imitate the glamorous female celebrities; indeed it could only have been a matter of time before the adult female glamour trickled through to childhood.
What motivates these children is difficult to say – it is unlikely they are unduly pushed by their parents. Instead it is a spontaneous and natural result of their familial and cultural milieu. They seem happy to promote themselves – indeed almost in a manner that perfectly befits the wealthy middle class. They are of course elites – social elites, maybe financial elites too – and as I say, these girls are absolutely distant. But in their gift to the casual viewer they give, not of course the essence of themselves, but a pretty and charming persona which nevertheless fulfils the viewer’s need for both art and human beauty. For life is short, but art is long. Therefore this is certainly of the manner of a gift, while at the same time being a tireless self-promotion, and this is the tacit contract with the viewer.
The girls are so beautiful, sometimes in a somewhat artificial sort of way, as their glamorous pictures and videos are deeply performative. But this performative aspect simply speaks to, I would say, a fine-tuned craft, such as the art of photography itself. The girls give themselves, while remaining entirely aloof, and this is the magic of art. Social media has indeed transformed society and the social contract in so many ways, as well as the manner of self-presentation and self-creation – perhaps we need to look as far back as the Renaissance to see a comparable humanistic focus. The child is of course so perfect, so endearingly beautiful and so well suited to this kind of performance art, and it gives great aesthetic pleasure to the viewer to see her artistic and performative expression. As long as we realise this, we will not be misled. For it is not of course the authentic child, although “a man in his time plays many parts”.
So could we describe visual social media as a new form of art? Certainly I do not think this exaggerates, although it may seem questionable at present because the medium is so startingly new and not properly embedded in the substratum of established culture. But even in the days of Velazquez’ “Las Meninas”, children could be displayed performatively, and with artistic zeal a certain facet of their being could be realised. We cannot say, we have discovered the essence of the child, because in that case we would probably have to have a real human relationship to that child, and know her in her unguarded and spontaneous self. Perhaps it would be a disappointment. Perhaps the glamorous persona of the model, of the celebrity, is precisely what we need. Perhaps this alone stirs our creativity.
Yes, the performative child on social media is certainly a sight to behold. It is beautiful, and aesthetically pleasant, such that it puts me on a high. The performative child is of course most often deeply beautiful, for the most successful get there because of their looks, and charisma. It is a most satisfying experience to peruse their beauty, like being in the Louvre or Uffizi. The quality of their cuteness is impossible to describe, but it leaves me with a warm glow and on the best occasions, it even makes my fingertips tingle. These girls are so beautiful. And their utter remoteness and unattainability disguises the fact that in their ontological ground they are surprisingly open. As is everyone in the social media age, they are willing to share their life with strangers, but of course performatively, not authentically.
However it is perhaps precisely this performative aspect that makes it truly brilliant, enchantingly artistic, and so wonderful an experience to behold. I feel deeply privileged. And I know that, as distant as these girls may be, they are ontologically close to me – we are in a sense metaphysically linked even though we never concretely interact. And that can be the magic of technology, if used aright. Technology can be a force for good, and bring so much wholesome beauty onto our doorstep.
So there you have it – I am completely enchanted by these artificial girls. Is it just a foolish mirage, or a bewildering hall of mirrors, or else, perhaps even, a platitude? No; there is too much authentic beauty for me to be wasting my time. These girls give the gift of art, and their faces and bodies are the perfect medium of Neoplatonic expression. Yes, they are linked to the beautiful, and the good, and the true – all these qualities bear expression in their form. It is not therefore a wasted endeavour, to peruse their pages, and indeed the very success of social media speaks to the evident attraction of refined popular art. So much popular expression is sub-art, of course, but a fair amount, such as this, easily passes the standard.
Eloquent, heartfelt, and interesting, ZT; but I am not going to comment on the substance, or not yet. I do hope others will though. There is plenty to discuss here.
Not that I’m a conspiracy theorist, or you have enemies reading your blog Tom, but some Spawn of Satan over at Instagram has literally wrecked the content feed since I posted this. What perverse incentive could possibly allow them to destroy an innocent and heartfelt joy is utterly beyond me.
Sorry to hear your bad news ZT, and hope you can do something about it.
Obviously, this blog has its enemies but I fail to understand what connection this could have with Instagram. Or is this just dark humour on your part?
Sorry Tom, I’m just feeling paranoid. Could be a massive coincidence, but my post went live this morning, and when I logged into Insta this evening, my content feed was completely ruined. Accounts of the Brazilian girls I perused (without following of course) were replaced with a flurry of generic posts such as buildings and plants. Highly suspicious. Sigh. Someone at Instagram got out the knife for me it seems.
OK, thanks for explanation.
I’ve found the probable cause of yesterday. I was paranoid about my own post but that alas is due to my mental illness. The real reason was the Senate child safety hearing with Big Tech.
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/26/1049267501/snapchat-tiktok-youtube-congress-child-safety-hearing?t=1635363274958
No doubt as a reaction to the considerable “child safety” fracas that is going on at the moment, Facebook decided to disrupt Instagram’s related content searches on accounts involving children. This is despite the fact that the accounts on Insta are run and managed by parents, and only feature children.
So I was a victim of the deliberately disrupted algorithm I suspect. It goes without saying that I have absolutely zero nefarious intent and view these accounts respectfully and aesthetically…but hey ho that is obviously brushed aside by the objections of d***head Republicans in the Ted Cruz mould.
Instagram belongs to Facebook, whose censorship exceeds all caricatures: they banned the “Venus of Willendorf” archaeological figurine, or photos of starving Yemeni children undressed for the doctors.
On VK, the algorithms show you profiles of friends of friends, or posts and images recommended by friends, hence in my case many many young girls.
I don’t know anything about VK, or its legal integrity / safety. At least I know the big American corps are legally safe for me to use.
YouTube famously disrupted its suggested videos algorithm on clips featuring children several years ago. TikTok doesn’t even allow children into its algorithm on the “for you page”. Only Instagram allowed accounts featuring children fully into its algorithm. Well, up until yesterday…
This is purportedly “child safety” but I think the real intention is social conditioning, seeking to punish minor attracted people and their legitimate interests. What is next, censoring the content of the Disney Channel?
There is also youtube trying to “nudge” kids onto another platform, (their own of course). ‘try youtube kids”…..just move along now from those terrible dangerous adults. I have learned a lot lately on “nudge” theory during the ‘pandemic’. Behavioral Insights Team at SAGE admitted in an article that their tactics were totalitarian in nature. you’d have thought us MAPs would be more sensitive to this creeping authoritarianism, a bit like those in East Germany.
Maajid Nawas was a prisoner of conscience in Egypt, while there he was held down and forcibly injected, that is why he is sensitive to mandated injections. Tom just try to see it from these perspectives he is on LBC radio 1pm on Sundays.
>Maajid Nawas was a prisoner of conscience in Egypt, while there he was held down and forcibly injected
Is this relevant? Are you trying to make a point about Covid injections around the world? Here in the UK vaccination is mainly voluntary although parents have long consented on behalf of their children, including infants, for vaccines including polio, smallpox etc. I wouldn’t want to go back to a world where those diseases were allowed free rein again for want of vaccinations that are in effect compulsory for children.
If you have points to make that could be of some interest here I will post. However, I am not going to allow Heretic TOC to be turned into the Daily Anti-Vaxxer. If you want, you can start that journal elsewhere. I won’t charge a fee for giving you an idea for your title!
“I won’t charge a fee for giving you an idea for your title!”…..I think I will pass on that, I get the vibe that it wouldn’t be complementary!
Whether “the nudge” on social media is a social conditioning policy is another matter. I think there is some attempted top-down social conditioning to discourage minor attraction, although (in my experience) Instagram is the best for beautiful and aesthetic pictures and short videos of children. What I absolutely don’t want is to encounter real children online, as that way lies legal hell. I’m quite happy keeping tabs on a few parent-run accounts for photos and “reels” of truly beautiful children, which isn’t even primarily sexual with me, it’s just an artistic delight.
My primary motivations in life have always been the creative, the aesthetic, and the beautiful, and children are objectively the most beautiful human beings. It puzzles me that the great painters, for the most part, did not see childhood beauty. Renoir is a key exception, his depictions of children are wonderful, and perhaps Zurbaran for his childhood depictions of the Virgin Mary. There have been so many countless Venuses and it seems startlingly few beautiful girls.
But photography, and more recently, the short video form popularised by TikTok, are good mediums of contemporary amateur art, and the beauty of the little girl, in our fractious age, is more fully being realised through these outlets.
One wonders what “virtual reality” will bring to the table re: representations of childhood beauty.
Don’t forget Graham Ovenden who had his art removed from the Tate back in 2013 if I remember correctly. Balthus has some rather erotic depictions of teens; Speaking of teens, on a rather large media outlet where they read emails from people, they were discussing a woman who got sacked from her job as a teacher for making money online by engaging in sexual acts. The subject of her teaching teenagers came up and people were, as you would expect, unforgiving on the whole.
They read my email out to my surprise; I just mentioned how Victorian we have become when it comes to teenagers and porn, then went on to defend the woman in making a living how she wishes. I didn’t want to say anymore than that with the risk of plod at the door.
What you might find strange is that most of the discussion (arguments over whose favorite is the most beautiful) occurs on sites which are generally far-right leaning.
Hi, Tom.
I can certainly help you with the origin of the term “MAP”.
It is thought to have come from the late 00s activists BLueRibbon and Daniel Lievre on the blog ANU. Pretty important, as that excludes any possibility it was coined by a shrink:
https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Minor_Attracted_Person
Great link, Strat, thanks!
Daniel Lievre looks like a real name. Is anything known about him? I take it this is not the same person as the author of “The volcanoes of Japan” as this was published in 1899!
Would be nice to know more about BLueRibbon as well, but I guess the names makes it unlikely we will discover much.
The founder of Newgon.com who was known for using pseudonyms during the Wikipedia campaign/various other efforts, and an associate who blogged with and provided content for him. From the Internet Archive sources, BLueRibbon was the first to mention and regularly use it. One was a pedo, the other was an ephebophile.
Those names were active but not so much any more. It seemed to creep into the language used on that blog (having been absent in earlier posts). Apparently, they knew (the late) Michael Melsheimer who was in B4U-Act – the organization that played a leading part in popularizing the term. I’m sure as they uncover further details, they will be published.
One angle of research would be if BoyChat searched their archive for variations of the term, although it would probably just confirm that it emerged some time early in 2007 and took a while to become as popular as it is now (adoption by academics, used on social media, etc).
I like to think that the conservative positions now held by organizations like B4U-Act and Virped will evolve into more pro-contact as society changes.
Also the trans movement for child freedom bodes well for the future.
A start has been made.
[I realize I’ve basically written my own breakdown and judgement of a scandal, so be prepared for a long one folks!]
It seems every week there’s a new sex-related scandal (perhaps fortnightly sometimes; we’re blessed with a week’s respite!) A recent one is the singer R. Kelly, famously defended years ago in the incredible comedy series “boondocks” – a whole episode “the trial of R. Kelly” – dedicated to the affair [clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpnIbpR8Gtc ], allegations which have now caught up with Kelly after a whole documentary series prejudiced the case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surviving_R._Kelly
Now, another scandal is underway, involving porn production company “Girls Do Porn.” Don’t worry, no “underage” teen porn scandals, but rather, legal “adults” – “as young as 18” Vice news writes – claiming that they were coerced because one of the company’s key individuals would advertise non-nude modelling and then, once a girl got in touch, offer much larger amounts of money to do porn shoots. In itself, I’m not sure this ought to be illegal for porn production companies, and I’m not even sure being “persistent” in emails should be illegal, dependent perhaps on the content and extent of “persistence” (when it becomes harassment).
Even then I would be hesitant to support anything approximating a custodial sentence… The leftist in me emerges, thinking we should be criticizing systems, not individuals whose behavior is indelibly shaped by the social order in which they reside (here, a capitalist economic system). In this case, the standard lefty line would go something like: “we should be addressing the economic inequality that placed these women in a vulnerable position, where their poverty / need for income combined with a higher financial incentive to do porn over non-nude modelling, led these women to fell compelled – perhaps literally forced if the situation were either do porn or starve / lose their home – to engage in behavior they had previously and consistently expressed their unwillingness / opposition to engaging in (if, as the claim is, that women were “persistently” propositioned via email). [Notice I did not say either a) behavior they “did not want to do”, b/c self-perception as far as I’m aware isn’t provable, and not falsifiable after-the-fact; you can always later claim you “did not want to do X” thing in the past; we can never prove if that internal state was true.] If we only address individuals and ignore the systemic aspect, we’re not stopping the problem – more women may find themselves beguiled by money. So, I don’t really think the bait-and-switch ought to be in itself illegal; it’s perfectly legitimate to advertise one thing and then offer another.
According to media articles, there’s a large amount of money being sought after. One article states: “In total, the lawsuit is demanding more than $40 million in damages—at least $1 million per plaintiff—as well as the money Mindgeek earned from hosting and promoting their videos and legal fees.” https://www.vice.com/en/article/3anvw8/40-girls-do-porn-victims-suing-pornhub-mindgeek Further: “Earlier this year, following a civil trial, a California state judge ordered the company’s operators to pay 22 women $12.7 million for force, fraud and coercion.”
Perhaps, then, the focus on individuals, not systems, is the point for some people? – They’re okay with women being coerced into work they explicitly opposed doing? If you’re benefiting financially, why wouldn’t you want these scandals to continue?
What is more of an issue, I think, is the claim that workers at the company lied that porn produced would not be shared online, and then proceeded to do just that! If that’s true, I think the issue would boil down to the terms of any agreements / contracts that were signed; did the company have the right to do so? Were the women in question simply unable to deal (understandably) with the horrible consequences claimed to result from their videos being shared online? Going by the above article, we read that:
“Once published, Girls Do Porn’s victims [read: performers] were brutally harassed by peers and strangers, effectively turning them into pariahs in their own communities. The victims [“They” would be sufficient] were ostracized by friends and family, many lost their jobs, and some were expelled from college. The relentless harassment caused all victims to become suicidal and some even attempted such.”
As much as that doesn’t sound pleasant, I’m personally very skeptical about how or why these women would be “harassed” in their personal lives. I can very much believe “objectifying” online comments which could be found offensive but not so-much interpersonal harassment. Perhaps I’m simply too “sex-positive” too understand why someone would even care that another person had done porn… I can imagine parents being hysterical, for instance, but I don’t believe it’s fair to blame the porn company for that; the parents are to blame! Not to mention the “sex-negative” or “anti-sex” culture which socialized / conditioned them! Again, blaming individuals, not the systems that gave rise to them.
The phrase “sex trafficking,” which has no agreed-upon definition and unsurprisingly, therefore, is used constantly in articles about the case. This term is fast becoming the new language-barrier; thought-terminating rhetoric used to roll-back the rights of sex-workers. From what I can gather, the term is being used in the meme sense – literally to mean someone crossing a border!
The worst allegation, I think, is that Pornhub and the porn company themselves, didn’t remove the videos when requested by the women themselves. This seems like it would be complicated to me – if pornhub removed every video which had a complaint, they’d be indiscriminately removing videos en masse. Surely they’d have to verify the claims-makers identity if the claim is a personal one – I want my video removed? [I’m aware PH now only allows videos from “verified” accounts, meaning PH is dead and I’m never going back…] PH could provisionally remove vids w/ complaints to investigate them, but this still leave potential for trolls to abuse the system and mass-report. Then there’s the issue of contracts / agreements; presumably, PH and other vid hosting sites can bypass these concerns by updating their terms and reserving the right to remove content on their platform. The company, depending on the contract / agreement made, doesn’t really have an excuse, so this is where I’d find them potentially liable.
I will stop and see what Heretics think!
Here’s an insane article I struggle to believe wasn’t written as parody:
https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2009/04/24/oral_sex_no_longer_a_big_deal_teen_girls_say.html
>The leftist in me emerges, thinking we should be criticizing systems, not individuals whose behavior is indelibly shaped by the social order in which they reside (here, a capitalist economic system).
I totally agree. In our society the problem with porn is not its sexual nature but the consequences of its being embedded within the capitalist system.
Wouldn’t it be more parsimonious and to the point to not say “capitalist system”, but simply *the market model*? I mean, are we talking about sonething that really exists here, or that which is only as good or as existent as the latest transaction made according to its terms?
I also completely disagree that “the problem” is not pornography’s “sexual nature”. From the moment the sacrally-centered human community began, from the moment its fragile scenic parameters were established, the enactment of any *intimate* or sexual scene was thenceforth understood as a *rival* to the communal one.
To underestimate at any point the omnipresent and ceaselessly chameleonic rôle of interdiction in creating & sustaining our humanity throughout its history is to fall far short of our anthropological duty!
I use the word ‘capitalist’ to mean the system of production in which the owners of capital call all the shots and are able to impose any level of remuneration and any set of working conditions they can get away with. Yes, this really exists.
In the rest of your comment, you seem to be saying, if I understand you correctly, that societies tend to interfere with private sexual behaviour and that this is objectionable. I agree, but how does that refute the point I made about pornography?
Thanks as always for treating such a broad scope of terrain with depth and clarity. I’m sorry to hear the state of things in the Netherlands; I hope Norbert and company will not face the very worst come February.
If we were to extrapolate current trends, I’d have to agree with you. However I also appreciate that you outline some possible black swan moments, as well as recognize that change happens radically and unexpectedly: there are decades where nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen. The trick is to be perennially prepared for when the opportunities do arise.
I am of course on board with this defensive front against encroaching state surveillance/censorship, and its attendant culture war. I’ve been largely skeptical of B4U-ACT because I’ve been largely unfamiliar with it, and it’s encouraging to hear people like yourself speak highly of it. All the medical professionals tend to blur together in my mind, and it’s good to maintain real distinctions where they exist.
However I’m also generally skeptical of engagement with the medical/scientific world simply because I see them as the primary organ of control in today’s society. Scientific authority has generally replaced religious authority as the harbinger of truth, for better and worse, and I wish more folks were able and willing to view the whole operation with a little distance. As Janssen makes clear in his valuable work on “erotic age preference development,” the past 150 years of medical/legal discourse on sexuality has largely been the context in which pathologization and demonization of sexual deviance was made possible in the first place, once religious moral codes began to lose their grip.
Because this is the world we live in, of course we must address it directly. So I’m not advocating that we ignore the medical world. But what could active divestment from those systems of control look like? How can we build a communal power of dissent against state control articulated in medical as well as judicial fingers?
This paragraph got me very excited, because it’s exactly the kind of thing I’ve been thinking about for these past several months. I appreciate the shoutout to Hakim Bey and Occupy, and I fully agree that in the middling meanwhile, before space opens up, this kind of internal organizing and guerilla-tactic engagement with a hostile public can keep us alive and possibly more free.
I absolutely agree. We have to engage with the discourse of “harm” because that’s now the fulcrum around which these discussions turn. Necessary but insufficient is a great way to frame these first (shall there always be endless firsts?) steps towards greater organization and efficacy.
This is actually where I would push back on your summary of radical feminist movement. Yes the identity movements built on radical social theory, particularly the labor movements that were later crushed, but I think there are feminist currents that never lost the ideals of freedom, even as they lost the sex wars. It seems to me that decades of feminist articulation of the violence of oppressive hierarchies, manifesting in interpersonal as well as institutional relations, contributes to rather than takes from a theory of counter-power that we desperately need if we are to escape from (or dismantle) the systems under which we suffer today.
Feminists by and large misapply their own theory and practice when it comes to adult/child relations, but the theory itself, identifying abuse of power as a primary mover of violence, I think actually exonerates youthlove more than perhaps anything else. What could possibly help someone avoid abusing their power more than love for the person over whom they supposedly wield it? And what could lead more directly to the abuse of power than renouncing love for those in your care as pathological?
Thanks, Onyx, for your close and intelligent engagement with my piece. You write:
>What could possibly help someone avoid abusing their power more than love for the person over whom they supposedly wield it?
Few, including feminists, appear to have a problem with this when considering the love of parents for their children, especially mothers and their babies, although the power difference in that dyad could hardly be greater.
However, it is in the nature of power that it can be used for good or ill. Electricity can kill us as well as boil our kettles. Mostly, though, the kettles and the lightbulbs, the cookers and the fridges, the laptops and the smartphones, behave themselves pretty well.
Humans are much more liable to go haywire. I suppose the trick is to mimimise the circumstances in which this happens. Minimising power differences is one model for this but not necessarily the best: assuming that power will be abused merely ensures that power will not be used in a good way along with preventing its use in a bad way. This is like preventing electrocution by reducing the voltage to a pathetically feeble, practically useless level, instead of insulating the wires properly.
>There are decades where nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen.
A voice of wisdom. I’m intensely relaxed about the state of the world. Maybe if one thinks change requires heavy handed intervention, one should read Lao Tzu for perspective.
>Scientific authority has generally replaced religious authority as the harbinger of truth.
True. And the remaining religious Twitterati clusters can be shockingly socially backward, but then they also tend to condemn the mainstream of their religion in favour of an ultra traditionalism.
Science has become the new article of faith but behind the persona of science is the same kowtowing to the social mores of the day. And what determines those social mores? I’m tempted to say the drift of civilisation in secular time, something that is beyond the power of any one individual but affects a mass psychology, as if serendipitously, but in reality due to inescapable objective conditions driving the cogs of progress toward a seemingly arbitrary, but in fact ontologically preconditioned destiny – Zen’s take 😉
>guerrilla-tactic engagement with a hostile public
Interesting notion. I think this would be a catalyst rather than a primary determinant of change. But as soon as you sound slightly non-conformist or controversial in these matters you lose your social media space. Hence self-censorship, anonymisation and timidity to exercise free speech. There is, of course, no such thing as free speech when the very ground you stand on can be swept away by a collectivist tyranny. The individual has to conform to survive, and that is a sad fact.
In case you haven’t seen it, some links to rare audio featuring Brongersma, Sandfort, and others, was posted on BoyChat recently.
Here’s the links
https://web.archive.org/web/20130820120245/http://members.chello.nl/o.van.buuren/The%20Age%20of%20Consent,%20Radio%20Netherlands%201993.mp3
[This one has Brongersma and all sorts of other people]
https://purl.stanford.edu/fp053bx1299
[Haven’t listened to this one yet!]
Great finds by the poster! https://www.boychat.org/messages/1580361.htm
For an indication of just how much childhood has changed, here’s what Ernest Borneman writes at the start of his chapter “Eighth Year: End of Childhood”:
Childhood ends at age eight; adolescence begins at age nine. […] The agility and self-confidence of the children, but also their curiosity and learning ability, increase in the course of the year. The children wander around in town and city; they often ride their bicycles so far that they need all their energy for their return home. They inspect forests, fields, and ponds, examine neighboring homes, building sites, [NEXT PAGE] garbage dumps, and unoccupied houses. They get into relationships with tramps, the homeless, and other street people. They become acquainted with young prostitutes, who are only a few years older than they are. They climb over fences to find out what is behind them and get into the intimate sphere of strangers. They surprise adolescents and adults who are having sexual intercourse in the forests, gardens, basements, building huts, and on park benches. They commandeer unoccupied summer houses and then turn them into “club houses” for the local clique. There, for the immature ones at this age occurs the first experience of sexual intercourse, usually with a friend’s sister or brother.” (Borneman, Childhood Phases of Maturity: Sexual Developmental Psychology, translated by Michael A. Lombardi-Nash, New York: Prometheus, 1994, pp. 269-270).
Adolescents having sexual intercourse?! Are you crazy Borneman?! Everyone knows adolescent “children” don’t have sexual feelings; they don’t have sexual capacity until the exact day of their 18th birthday! And what’s this about 8 year-olds chatting with strangers, adults no less?! We all know anyone under 18 can only ever be terrified to the point of developing PTSD the moment any adult who’s not their parent(s) talks to them!
Seriously though, I struggle to imagine that children of today’s world, at least regards WEIRD countries, are generally let out – “free range” enough from their parent’s panoptic gaze – to even have the opportunity to chat to strangers. I suppose this actually feeds in to Borneman’s point immediately following the quoted passage:
“These things must remain hidden from parents. So, in the eighth year, children learn to keep their thoughts and experiences to themselves. […] Of all the phases of childhood, parents know the least about this one” (p. 270).
This is interesting to me because it fits my life trajectory perfectly; I was friends with a clique of adults when I was around 8; the difference is that it wasn’t a secret from my immediate family. However, to complicate that, although it was known where I was, I can’t be certain that I ever said much about what happened [nothing particularly noteworthy apart from my very hands-off fancying a much older lady], and unfortunately I can’t remember enough to be sure! I guess that’s all the more reason to investigate youngsters in their everyday lives, even if, because we have trouble remembering our younger years, we can always deny our young sex life later on, particularly if our fantasies or behavior are things we later find embarrassing or disturbing.
Although the deck seems stacked against intergen rights, the sex life of young people still resides in fantasy as much as ever, and finds increasing expression in online mediums, fanfiction / written erotic, manga / anime and yaoi and hentai, and of course tiktock and webchat sites like Omegle https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56085499.amp
I should note that the above description can be rendered negatively as signalling a loss of children’s freedom – they’re less able to roam the streets and interact with “strangers.” Or rather, that similar impulses exist and are simply displaced and find expression elsewhere; in online spaces, video game chats, forums, tiktok, and so on. Unsurprising, then, that such spaces are heavily contested and sometimes – as with youtube kids – explicitly created to keep generations separate.
This just fills me with marvel that kids can lead such lives, and with sadness that I (and so many others) have been precluded from it. Thanks for this. It’s remarkable to me that we use the language of “emancipated minor” to describe children freed from legal custody yet seemingly no one flinches at how baldly this parallels the language of emancipation from slavery. The comparison isn’t a perfect parallel of course, but insofar as a slave is a human being who is legally the property of another person, without any freedoms of movement or association or other staples of autonomy, that’s where young people are. And of course it’s justified as being “for your good,” but that was also what folks said to justify slavery. You know what else they said? That slaves were biologically distinct from other humans by virtue of their brains and skull sizes and body composition and so on. And now we have “developmental psychology” telling us precisely when a young person has enough of a brain to be considered human… and it’s technically somewhere between 21-26 years old! So isn’t it generous that the state allows 18yos the vote and other concessions! I’m not sure what we have to do to break this hold, but we’ve gotta do something.
Let’s not mix issues. Races (you may use whatever categorization you wish) sometimes have massive average differences in intelligence. That is the most well confirmed finding in the domain of social science. Every single schoolwide SAT backs this up. I wish to make this point again in greater scope later. I hope Mr O’Carroll does not object.
>I hope Mr O’Carroll does not object.
Not a problem for me, Tom O’Carroll. Not sure about the “Mr” bit though. Usually it’s a sneering put-down by Dr Snob types. Not that I am saying that about you Mr (or possibly Dr) Dipples! 🙂
I want to give some thoughts about the future. The challenge is that the most complete solution to the problems we face require a synthesis of ideas that are incompatible with politics as social identity.
The list of websites that tolerate discussion of child sexuality is very small. This leads to a lot of strange bedfellows on smaller imageboards. People share tiktoks and instagram photos of children in one thread next to another thread about national socialism or identitarian politics.
I am very concerned about the level of general intelligence in the West. It’s falling rapidly on its own due to the present negative relationship between intelligence and fertility. I think it’s possible that the most intellectually exceptional people have for some decades now ceased to reproduce. There are grim results in the testing of young children for creativity.
Both America and Western Europe are going to be minoritised within this century. The influx of people from MENA and Latin America consists of people with depressed intelligence, probably in the 80s. Most of our destination nations are already minority European below age of 30. The show’s over for us unless we forcefully reimmigrate these migrants, and address the growth of the low intelligence class native population using positive and negative eugenic controls.
So now that I’ve alienated the left, I’ll alienate the right. Children obviously must have the right to volitional sexual relationships. Celibacy is correctly seen as a predictor of mental illness in adults. If isolation causes misery from 18 onwards then surely from ages 6-18 as well. A majority of teen girls now report mental illness. To date I have not found any valid reason to punish sexual behaviour in children. Yes there are a lot of dangerous people in society. Many of them are known to the system and are out on parole for some awful violent crime. Well, low IQ people can’t morally reason, so the above cacogenic forces are going to make the lives of children less safe.
Tom, society is suicidal and I can’t stand it.
>I am very concerned about the level of general intelligence in the West. It’s falling rapidly on its own due to the present negative relationship between intelligence and fertility.
I think you can relax. Last I heard, kids’ IQ test performances have actually been gradually increasing since such testing was invented over a century ago.
>There are grim results in the testing of young children for creativity.
More info, please. Do you have a source for this?
>The influx of people from MENA and Latin America consists of people with depressed intelligence, probably in the 80s.
Again, what is the evidence?
My understanding (which may be faulty: can’t check everything immediately) is that migrants in general tend to be the more enterprising and imaginative people in their populations. They literally have the “get up and go” factor that business financers love. I am talking mainly about economic migrants here (but there is no shortage of them) rather than mass migrations of desperate refugees.
As for racial differences in IQ tests, I gather Asian populations score somewhat better than European ones. Historically, though, in recent centuries, European populations have led the way in scientific, etc., progress.
It has not always been so. At one time MENA populations were in the lead: think of the Golden Age of Islam (strong in astronomy, maths, and much more), and before that the great civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia – the latter with a history that includes inventing the wheel, mathematics, sailboats, maps and writing.
Arguably, they even invented the concept of time. That might be pushing it a bit, but I am pretty sure they made great advances in the measurement of time. I think they gave us the minute and the hour, along with the duodecimal mathematical system (based on 12, unlike the decimal system’s 10), which was in some ways better than 10: you could divide more easily: 10 will only divide evenly between the factors 5 and 2, whereas 12 can be split by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6! Far superior, put like that! Damn clever, those guys. Anyway, it works for a 12-hour morning, 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour.
Jeez, I’m going on a bit here, aren’t I?
But I hope you get my point? It may not be a good idea to write people off based on their ethnicity.
Performance in IQ tests is significantly influenced by cultural factors, incidentally. We can all be made a lot smarter given a fair wind.
>Kids IQ test performances
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289617302787
On creativity:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-learn/201209/children-s-freedom-has-declined-so-has-their-creativity
“children have become less emotionally expressive, less energetic, less talkative and verbally expressive, less humorous, less imaginative, less unconventional, less lively and passionate, less perceptive, less apt to connect seemingly irrelevant things, less synthesizing, and less likely to see things from a different angle.”
>Again, what is the evidence
PISA scoring. Raven’s progressive matrices. In fact the whole world is an obvious empirical validation of the testing results.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-new-2018-pisa-school-test-scores-usa-usa/
>migrants, East Asians
You’re right if they come in as skilled migration. Indian Americans for example are the wealthiest immigrant group. East Asians consistently score higher and this is reflected in their patterns of health and rates of crime.
It doesn’t matter though, as the borders are open and the excess population of the third world are zerg rushing into Europe and the U.S.
>At one time MENA populations were in the lead
Possibly, but that would go to show that civilisational decline is possible and is associated with loss of high intelligence groups. The loss of poets and scholars.
No form of testing is perfectly both culturally independent and highly accurate. There are many correlates such as reaction time and stimulus discrimination (colour sorting) which are good but not perfect. What is unarguable though is the scoring of the refugee/economic migrant children. Hispanics rarely graduate with English above grade 9. Their level of violent crime is much higher than expected.
Thanks, Nick. I am busy this evening but hope to respond at some point.
Finally, I get a moment to respond! It’s been a busy few days.
On children’s IQ test performances you give this reference:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289617302787 (Flynn & Shayer).
With 51 Google Scholar citations, this has clearly been an influential paper. It is not clear to me from the Abstract, though, that the findings give much support to your claim. They seem to be rather a mixed bag.
I see that the lead author is James R. Flynn, originator of the famous Flynn Effect. This effect refers to the discovery that IQ test score increases have been continuous and steady from the earliest years of testing to the present. It is this effect that I was referring to in my earlier post, albeit without mentioning Flynn. I see that Raven’s Progressive Matrices (which you mention) are among the tests that demonstrate this effect. If IQ is rising in this way, as I said, how does this not work against your theory that western intelligence is in decline?
So, the very man you cite as saying IQ is falling (along with co-author Shayer) is the one who discovered it has been rising!
From WP:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Origin_of_term
>For example, a study published in the year 2009 found that British children’s average scores on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices test rose by 14 IQ points from 1942 to 2008. Similar gains have been observed in many other countries in which IQ testing has long been widely used, including other Western European countries, Japan, and South Korea.
In fairness, WP does also give us this:
>Some research suggests that there may be an ongoing reversed Flynn effect, i.e. a decline in IQ scores, in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, and German-speaking countries, a development which appears to have started in the 1990s. In certain cases this apparent reversal may be due to cultural changes which render parts of intelligence tests obsolete. Meta-analyses indicate that, overall, the Flynn effect continues, either at the same rate or at a slower rate in developed countries.
I note that one of the source papers for this paragraph refers to environmental factors rather than racial demographics:
Bratsberg, et al.. “Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused”. (2018).
With Flynn coming into the picture, I had a brief look at this link at The Unz Review:
https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-flynn-effect-across-time-and-space/
It looks as though the author ends up undermining his own racial IQ analysis. He notices that the Flynn effect arises from each generation getting more used to IT, and the kind of testing used for IQ tests. In other words, the improvement is culturally (educationally/experiencially) determined. It does not come out of either rising or falling innate mental ability.
On creativity:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-learn/201209/children-s-freedom-has-declined-so-has-their-creativity
The findings could well be valid but they say more about failings of current educational practice than intrinsic ability, which is what IQ tries to capture.
You also offer PISA scoring and Raven’s progressive matrices.
Again, the PISA scores (and some of your own comments) reflect the abilities of the educational system rather than the child’s intellectual capacity.
I note the following from the linked article:
>U.S. Hispanics at 470 outscored all Latin American countries, with Chile scoring highest at 438. Mexico scored 416 and Dominican Republic came in last among Third World countries who bravely volunteered to take the test at 334.
What does the fact that the scores vary so markedly for a single ethic group suggest? If IQ depends on race, shouldn’t they all be much the same? Education in the US may not be great, but I wouldn’t mind betting it is better funded and more effective than in Latin America generally, and the Dominican Republic particularly.
As for Raven’s progressive matrices, it is entirely reasonable to offer these as a source of evidence on intelligence, but you just give the name of the test without any data!
On migrants, you say:
>… the borders are open and the excess population of the third world are zerg rushing into Europe and the U.S.
Zerg rushing! As an old-timer I had to google that one. I like it though. Put me in mind of the orcs storming the battlements at Helm’s Deep in Lord of the Rings, which I am currently in the middle of at the behest of a young Tolkien enthusiast.
One thing that struck me, reading LOTR, is that we never hear anything from the orcs’ POV. They are just presented as vile and horrible. We do not – or not by the middle of the saga, at least (I am up to about p. 775) – hear anything sympathetic or humanising in their backstory. Instead, they are just relentlessly Othered by being presented as evil and sub-human.
Same with zergs, I would think, except even more so: they are totally alien, and couldn’t be less human.
It worries me somewhat when real humans are spoken of in this way. The rhetoric of dehumanising propaganda is all too familiar as a precursor to genocide.
Moving on, when I said at one time MENA populations were in the lead, you said:
>Possibly, but that would go to show that civilisational decline is possible and is associated with loss of high intelligence groups. The loss of poets and scholars.
Now here you introduce a slippery concept: “is associated with”. Even if it were truly the case that advanced MENA countries lost their most intelligent people through migration, or low birth rates, or whatever – and I do not think this has been plausibly proposed, much less demonstrated – it would still be an unjustified leap to go from “is associated with” to “is caused by”. Correlation is not causation.
In order to show causation you need more information, of a kind that would enable you to rule out any number of other factors that are also present and might be the real cause, or one of several causes.
In this case, such causes include climate change. Jared Diamond, in his famous book Guns, Germs and Steel, actually did an analysis of geographical factors contributing to a slow westward movement of conditions favourable to agriculture-based civilisations from the Middle East to eastern, then central, then western Europe. So, nothing to do with intelligence.
All in all, I’d say you have presented some interesting evidence, as I asked, so thanks for that.
However, your claims are grievously lacking in precision. If you want to be persuasive you really need to make your argument more precisely. Rather than just giving links, you need to point to exact claims, and the evidence for them, within the links. They also need good argument, at least, as to causation not merely correlation.
Not saying your claims are wrong, only that they need to be much more strongly presented. Otherwise, you will convince only those who already want to take a racist, anti-immigrant stance, and may for this reason be easily satisfied. However, there are plenty of people like that!
Hi Tom,
The Flynn effect has ended in developed countries. The article says “decimation” but what is shown is a general disappearance of highly capable children.
On the variance of scores within an ethnic group, this can related to both social class and racial admixture. Hispanics are not purely Mesoamerican, African, or colonial European. Latin Americans are typically very disadvantaged. Across the general population of the U.S, less than 15% of Americans can correctly determine the cost of carpeting a house using a floor plan. This shows the intellectual mean correlates to poor mental functioning. Any nation substantially below America has close to no chance of completing an equally challenging task. Like <2%.
On Tolkien, my understanding is that Orcs are constructed as a race without redeeming qualities. This is very racist. I suppose this is the occasion where I have to make a clear point: The third world population has no purpose but to destroy the global ecosystem. The annual surplus population tries to invade developed nations which offer welfare. Often, and I have seen this in videos which you have not, they are clearly thinking, speaking, and acting like an invading army. They have no respect for native French or Germans.
The concept of racism grew after the race based atrocities of World War 2. Lewontinian anthropology took over. Lewontin specifically stated in one of his books that his anthropology was constructed to serve Marxist values. This is not a criticism of Marx, but an indication of a the beginning of the trend of displacing science based anthropologists in favor of ideologues.
I feel like what I’ve written so far has been a digression. there are massive racial differences in cognition, and intelligence is required for moral reasoning and cognitive empathy. Because of this we need to shut the borders and reimmigrate those who have invaded. It is suicide over the long term to do otherwise.
Regards,
Dick Nipples
P.S. You’re right about guns being dangerous. However, the need to possess them as recourse to the actions of the state outweighs the harm of mass shootings. Public possession of AR-15 equivalent rifles has little correlation with mass shootings. In the 50s you could order an M1 carbine by mail. It was only when productivity decoupled from wages that mass shootings took off. That was also about the time when stranger danger and satanic panic took off as well. It’s pretty hard to argue against that Nik Cruz, on a primatological level, was totally deprived of skin-skin contact, of orgasms and secure relationships. Instead he only had daily forced contact with frightening strangers. This is what I call anti-pedophile culture and it is the dominant source of widespread psychological immiseration. Narvaez wrote about this and I totally agree, but her article seems to have been taken down.
By Narvaez I am referring to the psychological state of Nik Cruz.
I well remember having huge freedom as a kid in the 1950s, with lots of experiences including sexual ones with my peers. Can’t say I became “acquainted with young prostitutes” though. Guess I was a deprived child! 🙂
Just found out that David Thorstad, socialist activist and likely best known here for being a driving force of NAMBLA, writing many of the organizations thoughtful, provocative, and erudite articles, has died at 79 years of age, after complications during heart surgery. https://www.brongersma.info/Former_Gay_Activists_Alliance_president_David_Thorstad_dies_at_79
Rather than being sad about it, I think we can look on the positive side and remember, keep the memory alive, of all the good Thorstad did; both his activism for gay rights, and for intergen rights (even if for him they were one and the same).
Thorstad co-authored an early and pioneering book about the “Early Homosexual Rights Movement” in 1974.
The research conducted for that book, looking into the German psychiatrists of the 19th and early 20th century, helped a lot when Thorstad started writing for NAMBLA, as he brought unique historical knowledge from very rare sources into the fold.
See, for instance, “Man/Boy Love: Then and Now” https://archive.org/details/mblthennow
He also wrote: “Man/Boy Love and the American Gay Movement” in 1991 https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v20n01_15
and “Homosexuality and the American Left: The Impact of Stonewall” in 1995 https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v29n04_03
He also wrote the introduction for the criminally under-recognized “Boys Speak Out” collection https://www.brongersma.info/NAMBLA_Topics_4:_Boys_speak_out_on_man/boy_love
And spoke movingly at conferences with speeches like this https://nambla.org/pederasty.html
Thanks for this important news, Prue, and for the links to Thorstad’s work.
David Thorstad was a significant pioneer of gay liberation in the 1970s before becoming a co-founder of NAMBLA. That was a brave move, which I see the obituary in Gay City News describes as his “fall from politics”, although from our POV it is where he started to become really interesting.
I see NAMBLA ran a piece last month:
https://www.nambla.org/Thorstad.html
Reading his 1998 speech, “Pederasty and Homosexuality”, it is clear he was a man of strong opinions and not afraid to express them very bluntly. We see this again in a more recent quote, from 2019, in NAMBLA’s article. Explaining why he wasn’t going to the Stonewall 50 march that year, he said:
“Sex is not even part of the alphabet-soup vocabulary. Highlighting victimhood is in. Instead of fighting social injustice, the LGBT goal is to assimilate into a heterodominant capitalist system, aping its failed institution of marriage, promoting monogamy (a bit player in the mammalian heritage), and espousing patriotism, militarism, and conventionality.”
Quite! Well, not everyone here will agree with him, and that’s fine, but count me in.
I remember him calmly and articulately defending NAMBLA in an interview on American TV in the eighties.
What model, I wonder, did Thorstad have in mind for pedophiles denied even monogamy, thanks to feminist reforms?
The likes of Larry Kramer ran on uncontrolled experiment in “political” homosexuality – with predictable results (HIV) (See: Gross and Levitt, Higher Superstition). Hence, I’m less inclined to hold up the rejection of monogomy, much less biology, as a model.
I can’t give chapter-and-verse, but my impression is that Thorstad would not have thought there had to be a specific ‘model’, at least not a prescriptive one. He would have said that boy/man sexual relationships could be just casual or recreational or they could involve a longer-term commitment, depending on the wishes of both parties.
>homosexuality – with predictable results (HIV)
If no one has sex, including heterosexuals, then no one will have STDs. Ergo, no one should have sex. Q.E.D.
Is that an argument that appeals, Nada? I would point out, BTW, that HIV/Aids is not just a gay male problem. In sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls accounted for 63% of all new HIV infections in 2020: https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet
>Hence, I’m less inclined to hold up the rejection of monogomy, much less biology, as a model.
Having been brought up in a stable mum & dad family by loving parents I am not going to downplay the benefits of long-term monogamy for the children involved.
My support for Thorstad’s quote is based on agreeing there should be freedom for others to follow a different course. Children need stability, but they are not part of every relationship or sexual contact. Stephen’s response is in line with my own recollection of Thorstad’s thinking.
>>homosexuality – with predictable results (HIV)
>If no one has sex, including heterosexuals, then no one will have STDs.
>Ergo, no one should have sex. Q.E.D.
>Is that an argument that appeals, Nada?
What matter its appeal? Disease models doesn’t care about feelings.
If you grant we and children are oppressed by society, would you suggest each one of us have sex with up to 100 children? That’s close to the behavior, described by Gross, which decimated the gay community. Is it any wonder the gay community – relevant to the conference, and Thorstad’s quote – might considered switching mating strategy?
>Children need stability, but they are not part of every relationship or sexual contact.
Divorced and/or uncaring parents don’t escape them, no matter their wishes. I have provided what stability I could to children in some such circumstances.
>might considered switching mating strategy?
Sure. Ever heard of “safe sex”?
>What matter its appeal? Disease models doesn’t care about feelings.
Did I say they do? Your question merely sidesteps my point i.e. that your logic would tend towards zero penetrative sex for anyone, of any kind. Or perhaps, unlike the rest of humanity, you know how to have unprotected penetrative sex with no risk of infection?
You also overlook the fact that most paedophilic sex, whether hetero or homo, is actually safer than any other kind, as it is nearly always non-penetrative.
>>might considered switching mating strategy?
>Sure. Ever heard of “safe sex”?
Yes, it’s hardly a mating strategy, and serves to add some difficulty to the model, without changing the logic.
Under fixed conditions, do you dispute it’s safer to have sex with one person (diseased with probability p) n times than it would be to have sex one time each with n such persons?
>Under fixed conditions, do you dispute it’s safer to have sex with one person (diseased with probability p) n times than it would be to have sex one time each with n such persons?
No.
Nada: In order to appreciate Thorstad, you should read his own articles, see for instance:
http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/index.php?title=David_Thorstad
He attacks the “LGBTQ” movement for turning away from sexual liberation towards bourgeois respectability, reclaiming marriage and joining the Army, and for adding multiple separate identities.
Tom: The welfare of children does not require the monogamy of parents. There are many dysfunctional nuclear families, and anyway the nuclear family could be replaced by other models, extended family, or communal rearing of children.
What I said is that children need stability. I did not say they need monogamy!
Communal child-rearing models are an alternative to the monogamous nuclear family, Christian, as you say. I am far from alone in thinking such arrangements could be a great improvement on the nuclear family, which happily worked well for me as a child but which is, as again you say, often dysfunctional – sometimes very seriously and harmfully so.
Oops! Sorry, Christian, I overlooked that I did say somewhat misleadingly say this: “I am not going to downplay the benefits of long-term monogamy for the children involved.”
I meant I did not wish to downplay the benefits in the context of a loving relationship (parents for children and each other) i.e. a happy household. Even a household like this can be somewhat socially limiting for kids, though, compared with more communal arrangements.
“Things can change very quickly and unexpectedly, as we have seen in these Covid times, which have prompted an astonishing and unprecedented world response in fighting the pandemic, with governments, corporates, NGOs, health staffs and volunteers around the globe working together cooperatively to generate marvellous vaccines and then deliver them worldwide.”
I had to read that twice to convince myself you were not being ironic Tom. I do find it ironic that someone who has bravely spoken out against the dominant narrative for many years has succumbed so easily to another dominant narrative apparently without questioning it … a narrative that among many other things, recommends inoculating children with a highly dangerous ineffective untested ‘vaccine’ even though kids have high natural immunity.
All I can say is please take a look at the following links to introduce a little perspective on the topic of the so-called “pandemic”. If you do take the trouble to view the content fully, I will not say you will be shocked, rather that you should be shocked.
https://odysee.com/@FTC-NL-CORONA-ACTIVISME:c/Reiner-Fuellmich—Deadly-Covid-Vaccines-Reported–20-09-2021:2
https://americasfrontlinedoctors.org/2/frontlinenews/poison-death-shot-dr-zelenko-testifies-before-israeli-rabbinical-court/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221475002100161X … Why are we vaccinating children against COVID-19?
> a narrative that among many other things, recommends inoculating children
Without, yet, having checked out your links, Peter, I totally acknowledge that the case for vaccinating children is much weaker than that with respect to adults, especially old folks such as me. Incidentally, I have now been triple jabbed, not double. No ill-effects noticed so far from this “highly dangerous” vaccine. My only complaint is that the UK government decided to offer booster jabs to the elderly instead of sharing supplies with the less well-off parts of the world. I wrote to my MP about this months ago. It made no difference. But I saw no point in turning down the booster once the policy was clearly set in stone.
Glad you have suffered no ill effects yet Tom. I look forward to any further comments you may have once you have a chance to view the links. The first is lengthy and translated in real time, but please bear with it until it concludes. Thanks.
Again, reactionary obscurantists anti-vax propaganda. I will expand on what I said after the previous article.
As a vaccine gives the body a small piece of the virus, all its side effects are miniature versions of those of the infection by the real virus. In particular, myocarditis, pericarditis and thrombosis, which happened in rare cases of vaccination, occur more frequently in the real Covid disease. In particular, the risk of thrombosis is ten times higher with the Covid disease than with the vaccine. In the history of vaccination, all side effects happened quickly and were diagnosed within two months of the injection. A long-term effect of vaccination, that would stay hidden for months or years before manifesting itself, is a chimera.
There are three reasons for getting vaccinated: (1) to greatly reduce the risk of the disease for yourself; (2) to greatly reduce the risk of transmitting the virus to others; (3) to greatly reduce the circulation of the virus, hence to delay the emergence of new variants. Reasons (2) and (3) are obvious for everyone. Reason (1) is more important for elderly people, but nevertheless children can, without going to hospital, suffer from long Covid or PIMS.
Where children are not vaccinated, Covid clusters develop in schools, and children contaminate their families and friends.
If we want to stop the pandemic and to prevent the occurrence of new variants, the whole world population must be vaccinated, in all countries and in all age categories.
The anti-vax movement is led by conspiracy fanatics and the nationalist extreme right, including outright fascists, and they gather around them ignorant people having irrational fears encouraged by anti-science propaganda on social networks. It is an attack on the “establishment” or the “dominant narrative” from the side of obscurantism and barbarity, opposite to the side of progress and liberation. Most types of anti-vaxers will espouse hateful anti-MAP discourses, such as paedophile conspiracies, satanic or pizza-gate or whatever.
Had Steven Freeman been vaccinated, his life would have been saved.
All MAPs should espouse progress, thus call for more vaccines, and a more extensive vaccination of the whole population.
Well informed rationality at its best. Fabulous post, Christian!
Christian with his agressive cancelling-rhetoric reminds me so much of those hysterics determined to undermine MAPS whenever MAPS attempt to challenge the dominant narrative. And yet Christian believes he knows better than the likes of Dr Zelenko and Dr Kostoff. Quite the wunderkind and doubtless receives an automatic invite to the WEF each year.
Germane to the responses above, an interesting discussion entitled “Why do so many buy into the narrative?”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrndU8uoC0E The concept of mass formation is discussed in terms of the general public’s response to the “pandemic crisis”.
A couple more links for all to read and digest.
An open letter from Dr Stefan Lanka to the Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn in Germany requesting the withdrawal of the Corona/Covid measures in that country:
https://truthseeker.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/5_10_2021_Stefan_Lanka_letter_to_German_Minister_of_health_english.pdf
Also, for those who have taken the Pfizer jab: https://everydayconcerned.net/2021/10/11/more-sickening-covid-vaccine-findings-dr-franc-zalewski-finds-aluminium-lifeform-tentacled-parasite-in-pfizer-vaccine-vaccine-parasites-found-in-vaccinated-blood-causing-blood-clots-heart-iss/
I hear also that Moderna vaccines have been withdrawn in Scandinavian countries and in Japan due to safety issues. Hopefully Pfizer will be next.
It would be nice to think that all debate is welcomed here on Heretic TOC and that the forum does not descend into a self-congratulatory clique. If we are at all concerned for the safety of children we should pay very close attention to a little more than just the domiant Covid narrative.
Peter wrote:
>Christian with his agressive cancelling-rhetoric
Cancelling? I must have missed that bit. If there is any cancelling to be done, it will be by me as the moderator here. That might be needed if posts on this or any other subject become too personally abusive, off topic, etc., but these are rarities here.
Earlier Peter wrote (about me):
>I do find it ironic that someone who has bravely spoken out against the dominant narrative for many years has succumbed so easily to another dominant narrative apparently without questioning it
Perhaps it is about time to point out that early last year I did a couple of extensively researched blogs that did indeed take a sceptical view of what was then the dominant narrative on Covid in the UK, suggesting that the less heavy-handed Swedish approach might be better. It now looks as though I was wrong!
The Swedish approach was very rational at the time, in my opinion. But what no one knew at that stage was that successful vaccines would be developed so swiftly. With the benefit of hindsight the swift lockdown policy now looks sounder. My research at that time, BTW, included many hundreds of articles, podcasts, etc., from a range of sources, including non-MSM alternatives such as Off-Guardian, Medium and Swiss Propaganda Research.
Since my response to your first post, Peter, I have checked out your links there. Sorry, but I am not impressed with any of them. If you had anything important to convey you should have done so with a brief summary of your main claims along with precise references to sources in which they are supported. By precise I mean page numbers (or time elapsed in case of podcasts) for specific quotes, figures, charts, etc.
Seeking to bolster your position with further links in a subsequent post doesn’t really cut it, unfortunately. With your credibility already shot, why would a rational person waste their time on further wild goose chases?
So I will ignore these further links and focus on a claim you made directly. You wrote:
>I hear also that Moderna vaccines have been withdrawn in Scandinavian countries
What you misleadingly fail to add is that this withdrawal (actually a pause pending further research) applies only to the use of the vaccine in younger individuals.
Even more misleadingly, bearing in mind that your attack is a broadly based one against the Covid vaccines generally, you fail to mention that Sweden and Denmark have said they now recommend the Comirnaty vaccine, from Pfizer/BioNTech as an alternative. Norway, too, recommends the Pfizer vaccine to minors. These points are all made in this short Reuters report:
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/sweden-pauses-use-moderna-covid-vaccine-cites-rare-side-effects-2021-10-06/
All in all, Peter, I feel your posts on this matter should come with a health warning.
The level of time I can give to moderating is limited, so I cannot promise to devote as much patience to any future posts as I have to this one.
I continue to believe it is important to take all sorts of minority opinion seriously; but that does not mean poorly supported nonsense – once it has been properly considered and judged as such – should be indulged beyond what is necessary to be fair, and to be seen to be fair.
I completely agree with you Tom. I am all for freedom of speech but I do think we need to draw a line at irrational outpourings which are firmly contradicted by real evidence (not ‘evidence’ which is often doctored, out-of-context nonsense from individuals or groups with a clear agenda). I have had to block a few such people from my Facebook page too. At a time of a pandemic where many already vulnerable people are at serious risk (myself being one of them) I think it is frankly irresponsible for people to be choosing this as a hill to die on.
The following is a reply to Kit’s comment of 10 Oct 2021 at 12:32 pm on Part 1 of this two parter. I am putting it here because the content is relevant to Part 2, especially as regards the future of freedom of expression, for MAPs and everyone. Kit wrote:
>I do not really think that I should have to say that I am not proposing authoritarianism
Of course I do not think you are proposing such terrible things as I was describing, Kit, or anything authoritarian; but I do feel a vigorous wake-up call is in order, not just for you but for any other free speech sceptics. My worry is more of a slippery slope kind. A society that starts to muzzle those with unpopular opinions, even for benign reasons, will soon find that downright nasty, malignant characters begin to take advantage. Before you know it, you find you have let petty tyranny rip, paving a way for the major kind.
I might have resorted to citing old wisdom along these lines, such as “The price is liberty is eternal vigilance” or “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”; but this is the sort of familiar, “threadbare”, language that might all too easily be dismissed as tired cliché. So, I concluded that recent examples and emotive details are justified as a sharp reminder of the horrible potential we are dealing with here. Younger generations, especially, for whom Hitler and Stalin might feel as long ago as Henry VIII, have less reason to be alert to dangers in the here and now.
>I do not think that there is an air-tight barrier between discourse and violence.
I agree.
>Moreover, policing the boundary between speech and action is impossible because no such boundary exists.
Pragmatic boundaries can be set. As indeed they have been in the land of the Free Speech Amendment since the doctrine of “clear and present danger”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_and_present_danger
>Indeed, I would suggest that our attachment to the idea of sovereign, incontestable truth is the very thing we need to relinquish, even as an ideal.
Of course we should reject claims to incontestable truth. Science makes no such claims. However, the idea of objectivity, and the quest for truth, make huge practical sense in the social as well as the physical sciences. It does not matter that perfect objectivity and perfect truth are elusive/illusory any more than it matters that no one is ever going to make a perfectly frictionless perpetual motion machine. What matters is that engines get better over time, with gradual improvement. Practice may not make perfect, but it can make exceedingly good. Applied to the social sciences, it is possible (indeed already happening) to design better means of investigation, such that sources of bias are systematically minimised, studies more widely replicated, measures more rigorously subjected to tests of their validity and reliability.
>I think that paradigms like ‘critical realism’ – which cling to the language of objectivity, even as they apologise for their shortcomings – are not nearly ‘critical’ enough.
Easy to be sweepingly dismissive, Kit, but have you really explored the strengths and limitations of critical realism? If you can be precise about the latter, please tell! I have only just been introduced to the subject myself, but my initial probing suggests that Roy Bhaskar has explored pretty deep into the epistemological rabbit-hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Bhaskar. I do not say the rest of us should follow him down it, but I feel we should respect the efforts of those with the courage and tenacity to go there. Those mind-bending efforts may even have cost Bhaskar his sanity. His school lives on, but the man himself appears to have become disillusioned. He turned in the end to transcendental meditation – which to my prosaic mind is much the same as giving up, or going bonkers! -)
This could of course prove your point: there is no objectivity. The long-term effectiveness of science, though, can hardly happen by chance. Those who have worked honestly to discover how nature works have enjoyed immense success through trying very hard to make accurate observations and measurements, setting aside as far as possible any personal bias in terms of conclusions they might wish to see. This success suggests to me that the concept of objectivity, and its conscientious pursuit, cannot be entirely baseless and is far too useful to be discarded.
Can we, perhaps, without going down the rabbit hole, demonstrate in a simple, pragmatic way, that it is possible to have greater or lesser amounts of objectivity? For instance, in most circumstances (unless one player has cheated, say) we can say that the rules of chess are such that it is easy for observers to agree which of the two players has won a game. When the winner calls checkmate, no one, not even the loser, feels the declared outcome lacks objectivity. This consensus will hold good even if all the observers are highly biased in one direction (if they are all American, say, and want the US grandmaster to beat the Russian one). Judging the outcome of a boxing match, by contrast, is a far more subjective business. In the event that there is no knockout, the contestants are unlikely to agree on who won. That is why notionally neutral referees (preferably more than one) are appointed, to bring some objectivity to bear.
Such arrangements seem to work quite well, or very well, for all sorts of things, such as juries and examination scoring. Yes, some jury decisions are wrong (as I know from hard personal experience!) and exams may be unfair, but on the whole there is reason to believe such systems as applied in well ordered, open, societies are relatively objective, with far better than random outcomes.
>You say that MAPs need to… “unite, organise and fight the political battle.” What is that if not the language of identity politics?
Not if the struggle is for justice for ALL as opposed to one minority pressing its victimhood claims at the expense of another. We should not seek special privileges for MAPs based on our identity; rather, the principle is to seek just outcomes for everyone, regardless of identity. This is universalist, not particular and sectarian.
>Further, your appeals for unity and unanimity sound to me a little redolent of the language of authoritarianism. Why should we be agreed?
Any political party or lobby group in a democracy needs to unite around a programme, otherwise no project of improvement can be set in train. It’s not a matter of forcing anyone. Persuasion is the key. If that is sinister, what isn’t?
>To borrow the language of ancient rhetoric, my view of public discourse shifts away from logos towards ethos and pathos: the aim is not so much to make the listener imitate the speaker (by conforming to the speaker’s opinions), as it is to invite the listener imaginatively to identify with him.
Really? Sounds a bit of a linguistic stretch to me, in a way that mistakenly projects present sensibilities back into history. It would be nice to think ethos was all about speech acts aimed at promoting ethical behaviour and that pathos meant encouraging empathy; but these would be misconceptions. Yes, the listener identifying with the speaker may have come into it, but absolutely with the aim of being persuasive (an aim which you reject).
Persuasion was the whole point of rhetoric in the rough and tumble of political discourse in ancient Athens. This was no polite, genteel, vicarage tea party. They were in it to win. They may have been democratic but it was hardly a tolerant liberal democracy. Get something wrong as a public official and it could cost you your life: the assembly could and often did vote to have them executed. On average, a couple of the elected military commanders were put to death each year just for falling out of favour with the voters! Small wonder then, that Socrates was put to death for his unpopular opinions.
>…you are in fact very tolerant of dissenting voices here.
That is indeed my policy. I see it as being for MY benefit as much as a courtesy to others. The most interesting views are often those at odds with my own, the ones that really make me think. Yours lately have been very much in that category, Kit!
I have been reading this pre-print article by the philosopher Brian Leiter, which seems highly relevant to these concerns: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3939948
Leiter’s argument is that free speech needs to be significantly restricted on the Internet. This is because there are no ‘epistemological authorities’ which people can rely on to tell them which things they read or hear on the Web should or should not be believed. As a result, false claims can easily be propagated, sometimes with extremely bad results. Leiter therefore wants government to regulate speech on the Internet. He proposes, for example, that ‘fighting words’, that is words which, “by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace”, should be forbidden. He also wants those who post false information to be held liable for any bad consequences of doing so.
Joseph Shieber has written a response to Leiter’s paper: https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2021/10/epistemology-of-the-internet-and-of-traditional-media.html
In his reply, Shieber questions the wisdom of entrusting the task of regulating speech on the Internet to the government. He feels it is more than likely that they will abuse this power. I must say, I am inclined to agree. I only concur with Leiter’s view to the extent of thinking it could be justifiable to ban certain sites in an emergency (Leiter gives the example of Sri Lanka where ‘after horrific bombings … by Islamic terrorists in 2018, the government shut down social media for fear that it would incite anti-Muslim violence’) and to prohibit direct incitement to injury or death by bloggers and other website owners. (Leiter convincingly justifies this by pointing out that it would be simply extending to the Web a provision generally accepted in ‘real life’ anyway.)
Accepting Leiter’s full recommendations would, in contrast, leave the Internet exposed to all sorts of harmful government control, including, of course, suppressing objective discussion of children’s sexuality and minor attraction. (On the other hand, we should acknowledge that Leiter himself has shown a refreshingly supportive attitude to at least one person who has suffered as a result of challenging to some extent the prevailing orthodoxy on such matters, namely Professor Thomas Hubbard.)
I have only given the briefest of summaries here of some aspects of Leiter’s paper and of Shieber’s response to it and would encourage you all to read the full pieces, if you are interested.
Thanks, Stephen, for alerting us to this important debate between Leiter and Shieber. I aim to study it. Immediately, though, before looking at these links, I am ready to agree that the state of online discourse is unsatisfactory and in need of reform.
We can usefully distinguish two aspects of the problem, I believe:
1) The rules of debate – the problem of online threats and intimidation
2) The content of debate – the problem of dangerous fake news
As regards the first of these, the situation could be greatly improved through legislation without giving arbitrary or excessive powers to the state. The most crying need, perhaps, is for rules concerning anonymous social media posting. Anonymity should be allowed (how else could most MAPs ever say anything?) but this privilege should not extend to personal abuse, threats or unsupported allegations.
The fake news problem is much more serious. I have just started reading a new book on this subject, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, by Jonathan Rauch. I was influenced in this choice by many quotes from approving reviews, including this customer comment at Amazon:
This might sound like a recipe for building a “hegemonic discourse” that we would not like. I am encouraged, though, by the fact that Rauch supported Rind et al. against the great denunciation of their work by the US Congress.
> Anonymity should be allowed (how else could most MAPs ever say anything?) but this privilege should not extend to personal abuse, threats or unsupported allegations.
How would that be enforced, though? If anonymous posting is allowed, how are the authorities going to know who made the abusive or threatening post?
>If anonymous posting is allowed, how are the authorities going to know who made the abusive or threatening post?
Anonymity need not be total in order to give effective security to posters in many forums.
Many people post anonymously at Heretic TOC, for instance, but posters are potentially traceable through email and IP address unless they use a proxy server.
Many moderators, me included, would of course be reluctant to bring in the authorities for anything less than death threats. Lesser abuses are more easily disposed of just by sending the post to Trash.
Also, anyone familiar with Wikipedia editing will know that editors are often anonymous but can be contacted through Wikipedia if someone wants to make a legal claim against them for defamation. So partial anonymity can be brought to bear for civil as well as criminal complaints.
As for people who use proxy servers, I am not sure much would be lost by banning their use on most sites. It would matter in some circumstances where total anonymity is absolutely vital, such as postings by organisers of public demonstrations in authoritarian regimes. Not sure that example alone defeats my idea though. I guess webhosts (website, or social media platform) could be given a degree of discretion over whether to allow VPN postings. A host in the UK might be happy, for instance, to allow VPN postings by dissident political organisers in Russia. But that same host could reserve the right (or be required by legislation) to withdraw VPN permission from senders who make threatening or abusive posts. Does this make sense? Any individual could be abusive from multiple throw-away accounts, but that would be a major hassle, I’d have thought.
TBH, this is a techie matter and I am not a techie person, so I haven’t given the details much thought. Do techies here have any suggestions?
That seems pretty reasonable, as far as I can tell.
I would add, though, that your proposal seems to me much more justifiable in relation to clear incitements to criminal behaviour than to verbal abuse, however upsetting. The latter, in my view, should not be a criminal matter, as the latter makes the stakes too high and puts everyone too much on the defensive from the very start. Instead, I think it should be part of a system of community reconciliation and/or restorative justice. I believe the same approach could be adopted in relation to cases of sexual abuse / harassment which fall short (or should be viewed as falling short) of criminality, including sexual harassment of minors. One day I hope to write about these proposals in more detail.
I agree with your cautious optimism, Tom. What the antis (which of course includes almost everyone at the moment) desperately want to avoid is any discussion of the issue except in terms of the alleged wickedness of all MAPs and child protection conceived in their blinkered way. If and when the debate becomes possible, it is quite likely we will win it.
It may well be better for me to say nothing at all if I have I have nothing good to say. However, I feel obligated to offer my t’pence re B4uAct. I’ve seen this push by numerous people to endorse this organisation as the liberal minded MAP’s alternative to the right wing associated Virtuous Pedophiles. I can’t see this, having associated with them myself for a while. Working with any mental health professional requires absolute confidentiality, and there is only one place in the world, Germany, where this is relatively so. Having the likes of Gary Gibson push ATSA / ASAP forward as reliable organisations for therapy contacts, and using B4uAct as part of this, is dangerous. They are by no means absolved from Mandatory Reporting, quite the opposite. B4uAct are also, albeit understandably, afraid of being labelled as an organisation remotely in favour of MAP / child liberation, for fear of losing their funding and being closed down. Sitting on the fence in this respect serves no purpose at all if this is the true nature of the organisation. To cap it all off, they have a clearnet forum, open to trolls and malefactors with v little signs of moderation. As with all of these websites, there will are signs of LEA surveillance and ‘hunter’ involvment. No place to feel safe. Avoid.
If you want a safe place to hang out, PSC (Pedophile Support Community) is the only one that should be recommended.
When there exists a credible MAP organisation, and B4uAct is not, I should like to be a part of it. And if I’m not welcome, so be it. I’ll continue as I am.
I will offer further comment on the Dutch activists horrible predicament when I have time. For now, I can only say I’m v sorry things are so bad for them.
>If you want a safe place to hang out, PSC (Pedophile Support Community) is the only one that should be recommended.
Ed, you have investigated the therapy side far more thoroughly than I have. Bearing in mind your extensive and perhaps even uniquely varied experience in this regard, I am more than content to defer to your judgement on this.
Where B4U-ACT can make a stronger contribution, I believe, is on the research side, with its philosophy of always having a MAP input to research designs: “Nothing about us without us.” There is reason to believe that, as with LGBT and other minorities, that this will lead to the production of non-demonising, more realistic, narratives about us.
In other words, we will in effect be telling better stories about ourselves. Others here have rightly identified this as a crying need. Better still, unlike stories we tell directly, which tend to be dismissed as self-serving propaganda, B4U-ACT’s professionally supported respectability gives it a highly credible voice compared to our own.
With Universities and research establishments either having their hands tied re what research and it’s angle, the depth to which it may go, I still little point unless there is a free rein. These organisations have proven to be more grounds for education in what to think, not how to think. Whilst you identify the need for our demographic to be represented in some way, preferably by an institution, there is still little point in being researched within v narrow parameters. While B4uAct are doing ‘What they can’ in this association, it is run by questionable characters with funding from undisclosed sources. That will probably remain so, it’s arguably non of my business, but they are not much better than Virped in my view, if at all.
Eeyore v Tigger 🙂
I disagree Tom, Idt it’s fair to mistake realism for pessamism.
Is it fair to assume your view is more realistic then mine? Is there any evidence to suggest that pessimists are more often right than optimists?
I disagree Tom, I think it’s a mistake to disregard realism for optimism. The only thing MHPs are interested in doing, by default, is pathologising and pigeon holing us further. It’s another cul-de-sac and best avoided. Making our own autonomous space with our own professionals is a far better option than relying on the inconsistencies and prejudices of people who are told how to research and for what purpose.
[TOM O’C. ADDS: At 14:25 today, a post arrived at HTOC from Ed that was entirely blank except for a single letter “I”. I sent it to Trash. The above text, also sent to HTOC, arrived later but via HTOC’s email service to me not via the comments box at the website, which is the usual thing. Technical hitch, apparently.]
Sorry, I tried to edit the first post (mistake realism for pessamism) but couldn’t for some reason. I wanted to modify / add the above, all in one post but it didn’t seem possible.
Been v busy today. Haven’t had the time I would’ve liked to respond a little more carefully.
I don’t want any needle with you Tom. I suspect many will see benefit to interacting with MHPs however it will prove to be a pointless exercise, but only time will tell.
These folk are employed to find ways to understand us so we may be further undermined.
As Admiral Ackbar once said, ‘It’s a trap!!’
But whatever.
Ed, out of interest, what kind of research would you like to see conducted?
There’s been a boom in ‘non-offender’ and ‘stigma’ research lately, so I’m wondering what else you think would be of importance, or perhaps of priority, to research and write about?
>when times become more propitious for children’s sexual expression
This will change on a dime. Social progress is not evenly temporally distributed, but “kairotic”, ie. it happens in knots of time. It takes a single “kairotic moment” to establish a sudden paradigm shift – but nothing can happen for many years leading up to it.
The Right uniformly uses violent rhetoric against any vaguely MAP agenda. The only thing I can compare it to is the historic lynching of African Americans in the South. And now look how disputed and universally protected “race” has become.
The public despise MAPs not of course because there is something objectively morally crooked in being a MAP, but because every Age has its hate figures – whether Jews, or witches, or blacks, or homosexuals, or migrants. Today’s bogeymen are the paedophile and the terrorist – and this is so obviously historically conditioned, and simply of its time.
To be honest ZT your words arouse anger in me – they really, really do. For are they not entirely *passive* in their overall disposition? Waiting around until that “someday* when *someone* (rhetorically) manages to strike where the iron looks hot, and dressing that passivity up in terms like *kairotic* in the meantime? The words of you especially, who by yr own admission is afraid to even look at a snall child, let alone speak to one?
You say you do not come here to argue, and Christian says he prefers to talk only with “other open-minded people”. Again, this makes me angry. For it is not an argument (on how to attack, yes attack the problem(s) before us) that we ought to be having amongst ourselves above all, and a necessarily ferocious argument at that?
All this utterly lame talk about “how society progresses” honestly makes me want to puke. Your equation, ZT, of paedo abhorrence with the wokeist race-card bewilders me. Have you not noticed that their “race” obsession is a thing completely *symbolic*, with no interest in or dedication to changing anyone’s actual material conditions whatsoever?
Symbolic because skin-colour is just exactly that – skin-deep?
The wall-to-wall hatred of *pedo* by contrast is the real and rabid anticipation of monsters in the flesh, the more fleshly monstrous the better; it is the anticipation that there be incarnated before us a living reason that all we think of as human innocence has now been despoiled, and despoiled right where it hurts the utmost, in that place where psychosexual happiness & fulfilment might once have lived and loved..
Socialism – at least in the iteration of it cited by Tom as something entirely favourable at the time, suffers inevitably from the same passivity. The idea that ‘processes’ are at work, that, could we only understand them correctly, would bring enlightenment & return to the very moral model of equality itself, is devoid of the very thing that must concern us as presumed “activists”, the most: a sense of the actual scene in which events both occur and are represented.
I got WaybackMachine to work for me. The first LSM essaying i found myself re-reading was:
Who are the REAL virtuous paedophiles?
For once, Mr Turp, I agree with much of what you say. I share your frustration with the passive “let events unfold” line, even though this took up the lion’s share of my own essay.
It would be great if we could develop a stronger sense of our own agency, our ability to change things.
But how does ranting and raving at fellow heretics help? If there is a way forward in which we can be more active, one which neither ZT nor I have identified, what is it? If you or anyone else can point the way, then tell us! Start the ball rolling! Show some leadership! Get stuck in!
Remember, Mr T, that there was a time when some of us, in NAMBLA, PIE, and a number of other organisations in continental Europe and Australia/NZ, were very active, vocal, and even militant in seeking change. It didn’t go too well. If we are not simply to repeat the exercise with similar results a different approach is required.
You wrote:
>Socialism – at least in the iteration of it cited by Tom as something entirely favourable at the time, suffers inevitably from the same passivity.
What do you mean, Mr T? In practical terms socialism has never been passive. Democratic socialist parties around the world have a long and mainly honorable record of devising programmes of progressive action and implementing them, so far as possible, when they get the chance. You may not like the programmes, but that is another matter.
Sorry to cause you consternation Warbling. As Tom says, if you have any great ideas, feel free to offer them. I’m not an “activist”, I’m an observer of social trends, and this accords with my passive disposition. I realise personal agency is important, but with the pathological hostility around it’s obviously difficult to find a constructive way forward. I would simply suggest forming legitimate groups/organisations so that at least there is some advocacy and representation. It calls for intelligence and subtlety, but also knowing when to avoid the public eye and bide one’s time. “The vanity of toil” is a famous phrase for a reason – active efforts may in fact prove counterproductive if they are not carefully thought through. I don’t mean to sound resigned or passive but I simply don’t have an activist temperament. And I will never risk getting in trouble with the law. But as an observer of social trends, I feel I can offer some relevant insights in the comments of this blog.
As I see it, Zen’s comment strikes a note of realism rather than resignation. I don’t see anything in the comment that suggests we should either passively await change or actively agitate for it. It’s more about setting expectations.
Yes already by offering comments and sharing ideas here, I’m participating. My role is to try and explain the broader situation, as I’m an acute social observer.
Hi Warbling,
I may have asked you this before, but can you give a link to a Twitter page where you have been fighting antis?
Stephen
>The Right uniformly uses violent rhetoric against any vaguely MAP agenda. The only thing I can compare it to is the historic lynching of African Americans in the South.
You’re right. Even as it is, MAPs are sometimes killed because of their sexuality. Imagine if MAPs could be identified by their appearance as readily as black people. Such killings would be a regular occurrence, as they were in the Southern U.S..
“Imagine if MAPs could be identified by their appearance as readily as black people. Such killings would be a regular occurrence”
> So awfully true!
I’ve often thought you could make a great movie (framed to garner sympathy) where the technology necessary to access people’s private thoughts became available and commonplace, and anyone who has a thought w/ a hint of erotic significance – “she’s pretty cute” – towards a minor gets “hunted” by terrorist ped hunters. Imagine how tense a movie it would be. People trying to hide their thoughts. Literally afraid to think! Such a movie would have the benefit of mobilizing the non-offending line, as well as being able to present in a more sympathetic light, the thoughts of those who’ve offended. Thoughts I’m quite sure aren’t anywhere near as “rapey” as the wider public might assume.
The oppression is so intense that culture is ripe for backlash; we will just have to focus on activism in our own personal ways, and building institutional support (best of which so far is B4U-ACT IMO). Certainly those sympathetic to MAPs produce media, but a feature film overtly sympathetic might be off the table until the cultural climate becomes more hospitable.
What’s the purpose of getting life imprisonment and being chemically castrated? Perhaps they wish to prevent him having sex in prison?
Reminds me of something a prison officer said to me when I was inside: “You paedos won’t be happy until you can have kids in your cells!” He was pissed off because I had put up some magazine photos of nice kids on the cell walls.
It apparently hadn’t occurred to him that I’d rather not have been in a cell at all! There were certainly no kids around on the prison wings where I found myself, hence no danger that an exclusive paedophile like me would have been getting up to any hanky panky!
A great anecdote to go alongside your other one about the screw who. looking at your pictures on the wall said: ‘You really like kids, don’t you?’ (or something to that effect).
Ha, ha! I absolutely do not recommend being locked up, Stephen, but prison life does at least tend to generate lots of stories! 🙂