Hard to believe I am writing this, but two of my friends have been tortured. In the UK when we talk about getting “hammered” it is just colourful way of saying “drunk”. But for Dutch nationals Marthijn Uittenbogaard and his partner Lesley it is no mere figure of speech. They are reliably reported to have been “tortured” (non-specific) and battered with hammers (all too horrifically specific) in an attack by thugs in a prison in Ecuador.
Those who have been around Heretic TOC for a while will be aware that Marthijn and Lesley have featured here a few times before. Anyone who needs a reminder of the backstory can get up to speed through a sequence of earlier blog pieces, which can be found here, here, and here.
Alternatively, you could go to Newgon, where there is an in-depth 9,000-word article by Dutch writer Anton Dautzenberg. He starts at the beginning of a long story, in which the Netherlands, once the world’s best hope for a more civilised approach towards MAP sexuality, began to take a more repressive turn. Consistently in the running for literary prizes over many years, Dautzenberg has been widely published in the Dutch national press. As might he expected, the Newgon piece is excellent, not least thanks to his sympathetic friendship with Marthijn (with an “h”) and Lesley. He even daringly joined the pro-MAP Martijn Association (without an “h”), shortly before it was banned, to protest against the “witch hunt against paedophiles”.
Rather than just linking to his lengthy essay, though, or referring you to my own back catalogue linked above, I will cut to the chase by coming straight to the nightmare situation in which these guys now find themselves in Ecuador. What follows will be largely extracts from the later parts of Dautzenberg’s account, interspersed with a little bit of “connective tissue” from me. My bits will be set in italics and, where appropriate, square brackets.
All I would add to this shocking account is to note the key themes I see as emerging. It is not just about the brutality meted out to the two Dutchmen, and the ghastly uncertainty of their present situation. The fate of the families they befriended also reveals much about the hypocrisy of a system that pretends to be concerned with the protection of children, but actually terrorises them.
Let’s begin at the point where the leading members of Martijn Association, prosecuted in the Netherlands for allegedly attempting to revive the banned group, decided the time had come to look for a new life in a new country. As they were to discover very quickly, this would be a leap “out of the frying pan and into the fire”. Dautzenberg takes up the story:
**
Because Marthijn and Lesley no longer have a (safe) future in the Netherlands, they decided to emigrate to a country where life is cheap. They eventually choose Ecuador because they could buy an old hotel there. The plan was to open a vegan restaurant on the ground floor, to make apartments in the rest of the building, and to rent them out.
They called in local construction workers for the renovation. Some (paid) villagers have also come to help. Meanwhile, their children played with Marthijn’s PlayStation, a luxury they cannot afford. Nelson [i.e. Nelson Maatman, one of those who had been prosecuted] visited and rented a room, but Lesley turned him away; his alcohol and drug use and fatalistic attitude could put them in danger. Nelson left for Mexico [I would just caution that we have not heard Nelson’s side of the story. Nelson was acquitted as he had never been a member of Martijn Association].
Norbert [i.e. Norbert de Jonge, another who had been prosecuted], a friend of Marthijn for more than twenty-five years, comes along a few months later, as does a (straight) friend. They soon leave. They think it is unwise that village and construction worker children freely walk in and out of the house. In addition, ominous reports are beginning to appear in the local media.
The hotel, its new owners and their visitors have been on the radar of paedo hunter Tim Ballard of Operation Underground Railroad (OUR )and the Dutch organisation Free a Girl. The latter decided to track down the men after their emigration and called OUR in.
Tim Ballard is a conservative Mormon, a fanatical Trump and QAnon supporter, who, with his organisation, hunts alleged paedophiles (supposed “networks”) and pro-abortion activists worldwide. He also fulminates against the LGBTIQ + community; according to him, only straight relationships are godly. His organisation raises many millions annually, without it being clear exactly where the money goes.
[Dutch national newspaper] Algemeen Dagblad wrote about Marthijn’s arrest on June 24, 2022: “The convicted and since-then fugitive paedosexual Marthijn U. from Hengelo was arrested in Ecuador on Thursday evening. The fugitive pedophile Lesley L. was also arrested.”
[Dautzenberg says that neither Marthijn nor Lesley were fugitives. It seems to me this could be a matter of interpretation. They had left their home country by the time of the trial and were definitely fugitives from the hostile conditions there. But this does not mean they were “on the run” and trying to evade a police manhunt, as the word fugitive may be taken to imply. They were simply trying to make a new life in a new country. As AD says, Lesley was working at the hotel at the time of the arrest. Neither he nor Marthijn were in hiding. I have not heard it suggested that either of them had left the Netherlands illegally. Prison sentences in the Netherlands do not necessarily begin immediately the court has passed sentence, so we should not assume they were “on the run” simply because they were absent from the trial and sentencing. Marthijn, as will be seen below, was preparing to appeal.]
The story in Algemeen Dagblad continues: “Lesley L. was sentenced [in his absence] in Rotterdam on April 26, 2022 to 10 weeks in prison for producing child pornography. L. was now under arrest in the seaside resort of Canoa, for suspected abuse of three young children in his home. The organisation Free a Girl had passed on incriminating information about the three men to its American partner Operation Underground Railroad and the authorities of Mexico and Ecuador.”
**
A few minutes before Marthijn was arrested, I contacted him through a mobile phone app. He was on his way to the Netherlands to reconsider his situation there and to prepare for the appeal. His last message: “We haven’t done anything, but there are lies everywhere on the internet. Norbert also had problems, I think I will, too, at customs here. Fascism. I’m listening to the song Wonderful World at the airport. It’s not the Louis Armstrong version, but a cover.”
A few days after the arrest, the first ominous messages began to reach me. Marthijn and Lesley had been tortured and beaten with hammers in prison by the mafia. The videos of this were sent to acquaintances, along with ransom demands. If no payment was made, the men would be killed. That money for the ransom was put together by some friends, and then transferred to the mafia through online pay sites.
I got some photos of the cell and of the courtyard. And of the men, too. The photos didn’t make me happy. Marthijn in particular looked terrible: he was skinny and sad. Lesley, despite his bruises, seemed to be doing better. He wrote me that he wants to donate the hotel and restaurant to a vegan movement and then, with the proceeds, his friends and the poor people from the village can be helped.
**
More is now becoming clear about the arrests. Several reports had appeared in the local media, each time with the name “Tim Ballard” appearing in them. The hotel had (according to him) housed an international network of pedophiles, of which Marthijn and Lesley were the leaders. Hundreds of children were (supposedly) drugged, abused and sold for sexual purposes. “Sex parties” with children were (supposedly) regularly held in the hotel’s swimming pool, something Free a Girl claimed as well. For now, it is enough to note that Marthijn and Lesley’s hotel does not have a swimming pool at all!
Ballard ramped up coverage [after the arrests]. He claimed in films that he had tracked down and liberated more than four hundred victims in the home of Marthijn and Lesley. He emphasized the conviction of Lesley (production of child pornography) and the case against Marthijn (continuation of a prohibited association). The snowball … keeps growing…
Due to the coverage in the Ecuadorian media*, the two men were transferred for security reasons to a secluded part of the prison, and they have a room they have to share with seven drug addicts. A lawyer is now in the picture, who keeps in touch with a family member of Marthijn.
[*Heretic TOC, using Advanced Google Search targeted on six national newspapers listed in the BBC’s Ecuador media guide, could find coverage in only one of them, El Comercio. Significantly, an opinion piece in this paper said the case raised “a political issue, since it questions us as a society, over the fact that the parents of the minors say in the case records that the Dutch are ‘good men’, who were doing nothing wrong by offering sweets, video games and money to children”. The writer implicitly criticises these parents, without evidence, for allowing themselves to be caught up in “normalising perversion”.]
After a while, Marthijn and Lesley managed to arrange a lawyer. She asked for thirty thousand euros to bribe the judge and the police. A day later this amount was increased to one hundred and sixty thousand euros. Maybe she too was threatened. The fact that communication took place via Google Translate did not make it any easier: the lawyer barely speaks English.
Together with the family member with whom the men were and are in contact, I decided not to take up the family member’s offer, perhaps it was a trap. Fortunately, the family member got in touch with Lesley via the prison telephone, and he and Marthijn also wanted no illegal “hanky-panky”, but they wanted a fair trial. The lawyer gave in, but she had to have money to do research and prepare the case.
Martijn and Lesley were now back in contact with their fellow villagers. They heard from them that Tim Ballard was paying the media to write the menacing reports. Reports also reached Martijn and Lesley that Ballard had paid witnesses to give false statements; if they refused – these friends had pointed out that Lesley and Marthijn were innocent – he threatened them with trial and imprisonment. They also heard that Americans in contact with Ballard were offering money to have them killed.
According to the lawyer, the first session, without Marthijn and Lesley, was halted by the judge; he wanted more money for him and his secretary. He also threatened to transfer the men to another prison if payment was not made.
**
The tone of reporting in the Ecuadorian media has become even grimmer. The newspapers and web sites claim that Ballard has exposed the largest international paedo ring ever known. Not much later, Lesley and Marthijn were suddenly transferred to the most notorious prison in the country, the Guayaquil Prison. According to the lawyer, there were plans to hang Marthijn and Lesley in their cell and call it suicide. That explains the move.
**
An “influential” fellow prisoner informed Lesley that he had brought them to Guayaquil because he wanted to use them for a prisoner exchange with the Netherlands. Whether that is true, we do not know, but Marthijn and Lesley were “safe” again.
**
Other messages [from Lesley and Marthijn], on the other hand, were pretty grim. “Two days ago 14 dead. Prisoners have machine guns, pistols, knives, etc. We hear the fighting, shots and loud explosions, but they are at a another location, not far away.”
And this one, about a fellow villager: “Then comes a statement from G. who says ‘the police keep harassing me, I want this to stop. The police insist that I make false statements about Lesley. They offered me money to do so, and also things like a TV and a refrigerator. I saw that they also tried to bribe my sister, too.’”
**
Meanwhile, Tim Ballard received a national award from the wife of the president of Mexico for dismantling “the network” of Marthijn, Lesley and Nelson. It’s unclear what happened to Nelson. However, it is suspected that Ballard set a trap for him and was present at Nelson’s arrest.
In any case, when Lesley was arrested, Ballard was conspicuously present, dressed in a police uniform and equipped with a machine gun. His team filmed the spectacular arrest; the footage will be featured in a documentary that Ballard plans to put online in March 2023, The Hidden War*. He claims online that he intends to visit the Netherlands, among other places, to promote it.
[*A trailer has been around for a while, and was featured at a recent promotional event in Utah. No sign yet of the actual launch, though.”]
The men have not yet seen a judge*; without their being involved in the process, their detention has been extended several times.
[*It looks as though this finally happened on 16 March, in a court process that looks set to continue until the end of the month.]
They still don’t know exactly what crime they are suspected of having committed. Marthijn emailed Amnesty International about their case, and also about the lawsuit that is still pending in the Netherlands. The Amnesty spokesperson replied: “We do not focus on individual cases, but on situations where criticism (from the media, political parties, activist groups, lawyers and investigative committees, etc. etc.) of the authorities are deliberately and systematically blocked (as in China for example).”
De Telegraaf [a Dutch newspaper] interviewed Tim Ballard at the time. In response to the text submitted to him via [Dutch lawyer] Sidney Smeets, Lesley wrote, as I mentioned, that he is in close contact with friendly villagers: “I heard that the children were detained by the police for 24 hours when I was arrested. And that they were repeatedly threatened with being beaten with batons. When they were hungry, they were not given food. Police were eating in front of the children, and laughing at them. Their parents sat outside crying. And it is understood that the police here are known to be violent. Tim Ballard was always there. And he threatened the parents several times. The problem is that if you report these things publicly, it is very risky. Tim Ballard can operate with impunity in these countries. With the money he has, he can wrap the police and the OM [the Dutch prosecution service, “Openbaar Ministerie”] around his finger. And people don’t dare stand up for themselves.’
De Telegraaf decided not to publish the interview with Ballard.
**
UPDATES
February 7th:
Lesley emailed me that OUR is back in Canoa and is offering parents big bucks to falsely testify. “Because the police have nothing, they try to bribe the parents. They are offering large amounts of money. One of the parents told me: ‘If I had said yes, I would never have to work again for the rest of my life.’”
“OUR has promised family F., among other things, to buy them a house if they testify against me. C., who has been bribed, is said to have received, among other things, a piece of land in Jama. G. was promised large sums of money and a house yesterday. Tomorrow they will declare under oath.”
February 16:
The men have found a new (reliable) lawyer. According to Lesley, the file has recently changed (afterwards). Tim Ballard and OUR have disappeared from the text as the reason for the arrest. Now that it is becoming increasingly clear that the arrest was based on lies, nonsense stories and prejudices of Ballard trying to keep his name out of the file.
February 20:
Marth & Lesley have told me that their lawyer has prevented parents from giving incriminating statements about OUR and the police.
“All lawyers here are liars who always claim something else.”
According to them, a false statement has been included from a woman who has received goods, a house and a piece of land from the police in exchange for fabrications about Lesley. There would be several witnesses that confirm this.
March 2:
A message from Lesley:
I’m going to talk about corruption in court. By name and by everyone. I want to inform you that I and Marthijn are not going to commit suicide. Regardless of what comes out. If we are found dead, I want to be very clear here that it was not suicide. Regardless of what it would look like according to the authorities… Police who gets money from someone to preach lies. A judge who asks me personal money to release me… Police who promised parents money, goods and houses in exchange for false statements… My strength lies in that foreign media is following it*. And I am sending it my file right now. So we wait.
[*On 11 February there was an article in the Dutch newspaper Het Parool by a previously sympathetic writer, Arnon Grunberg, who is said to have drawn attention to the bad practices of Tim Ballard and OUR. Online, it is behind a paywall.]
Marthijn’s new lawyer was refused entry to the prison despite obtaining written permission. She wants to prepare the case with her client. According to her, the defence is very bad so far, probably deliberately so. The necessary opportunities for entering and requesting evidence are wasted. The OM and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have still not answered the letter from Sidney Smeets (March 1). The session will take place definitively on March 14 and 15.
March 14:
Lesley and Marthijn now have the same lawyer. She has now been partly paid, but she demands more money to “pay” the police and the judge. Lesley and Marthijn refuse; they do not want to participate in corruption.
March 16:
The process was extended by a day. The men get the impression that the lawyers are taking their own course, without consultation. The interpreter that is present during the process hardly speaks English, let alone Dutch. Lesley says that the parents who have to testify today are threatened by the police. They do not feel safe and do not want to testify without the presence of a reliable lawyer. Lesley asks for this today at the judge.
March 17:
The Dutch OM has finally responded to the letter from Sidney Smeets. However, they do not give a clear answer and beat around the bush. Moreover, the Public Prosecutor sends his answer (consciously) exactly one day after the hearing in Ecuador would have been officially completed. That hearing has been postponed to March 22. Lesley did not want to participate in corruption and fired the lawyer. The court now appoints its own lawyer. In addition, a Dutch translator will be arranged.
March 22:
Lesley said that documents have emerged on which the previous lawyer forged the signatures of Marthijn and Lesley. He sent a clear example. These were documents that gave her “permission” to act on their behalf.
March 24:
The process will continue on March 31.
RESEARCH STUDY WILL CONSIDER MAP WELLBEING
Heretic TOC has agreed to publicise a notice to recruit participants in a research survey. The request to do so came from Allen Bishop, Science Director OF B4U-ACT. The team consists of three researchers at Nottingham Trent University, in the UK, and Allen himself.
I am happy to endorse this project to the extent that it will be looking into the wellbeing of MAPs in addition to its other stated objectives. I also have great confidence in B4U-ACT as an organisation with a sincere interest in enhancing MAP welfare and in how professionals can best engage with it.
Here, then, is the recruitment notice as worded by the research team, along with a link to the online survey:
Title: Understanding MAP Attitudes and Beliefs about Attractions to Children
This survey explores the beliefs held by MAPs about their attractions. Participants will be asked to complete a survey that will last for 15-20 minutes, and respond to a range of different questions about their identity, and beliefs about attractions to children. There are also questions about wellbeing, social relationships, and sexual behaviors. The research team is made up of Dr. Rebecca Lievesley (NTU), Dr. Craig Harper (NTU), Allen Bishop (B4U-ACT), and Alisha Awan (postgraduate researcher; NTU).
The survey is completely anonymous. It does not ask for any identifiable information, it does not collect IP addresses and it can be accessed using a Tor browser. The link to the survey is below – the first page provides full information about the study and you can then choose whether or not to take part. If you have any questions please email the study lead on Rebecca.Lievesley@ntu.ac.uk. Please feel free to share or post elsewhere to increase the reach of this research.
It’s that time of year. The ‘love is love’ message is even being paraded in television adverts. Would be nice if society took that message to its logical conclusion.
From boychat: An 11-year-old Maine boy stood up in front of the local school board and read from a “pornographic” book he found at his middle school’s library.
The book, called “Nick and Charlie,” opens with two young teen boys stealing alcohol from their parents and experimenting sexually with each other.’
Short twitter vid contained in article https://wflanews.iheart.com/featured/the-ryan-gorman-show/content/2023-03-01-video-11-year-old-reads-porn-library-book-at-school-board-meeting/
Right or wrong, good or bad, problematic or unproblematic, true or false, conservatives are playing the role of the boy who cried wolf. Eventually the epithets lose their sting from overuse, and people start asking questions they’re told they can’t ask. Especially those whose experience doesn’t line up with conventional paradigms.
Pre-Woke, P.C., or Victorian AOC what happened to centuries of critical, lateral thinking ‘outside the box’, to bring ignoramii, and all antis in from the stone age?
1: Centuries of elite-Brit high-fees brutal boardings schools for young boys, produce not life-scarred victims needing lifelong help and BIG Ca$h Compo, but sneering trauma free, high achievers. Then paying high fees for their own young boys sent to elite-Brit brutal boarding schools, to sustain their cycle of the amused-not-abused. (Stone Age antis please explain?)
2: 20th Century ongoing mass media adult stars chased, grabbed, groped, groomed, layed by swarms of (often underage) young fans. Many now grinning grannies proudly recall being sexually highly amused not foully abused. (Stone Age antis please explain?)
Yes and all the 16-17 year olds who were photographed in the 80s/90s for national newspapers now have major drug problems or have committed suicide… Oh, wait they all seem to be perfectly fine, how very strange…
That made me LOL. Some good MAP humour I could see that kind of point being incorporated into a comedy special. The future edgy comedians: the future Dave Chappelle “How old is 15?”‘s of this world…
<i>”Centuries of elite-Brit high-fees brutal boardings schools for young boys, produce not life-scarred victims needing lifelong help and BIG Ca$h Compo, but sneering trauma free, high achievers. Then paying high fees for their own young boys sent to elite-Brit brutal boarding schools, to sustain their cycle of the amused-not-abused.”</i>
HappyHumpingPup, I hope you are being ironic, not sincere, in claiming that the graduates of admittedly brutal boarding schools are “trauma free”. The unironic interpretation of that statement sounds preposterous, as if I had heard someone say, “Sure, there are lots of knife fights on this street, but nobody ever bleeds.”
Poe’s law suggests that a good many online misunderstandings can be avoided by verifying the sincerity or irony of the statements of others, and so I inquire about yours.
Can anyone offer an update on the progress of Freespeechtube.org? Will it ever return or is it no longer on the list of rebootable projects?
I wish to know too… But these silly people who keep trying to censor us dont realsie we will always find somewhere else…Alas, thats why im here! Twitter disposed of me too. And my views arent even extreme..
Ed,
I tried to contact you through twitter a few months ago, but it was like you could not see me, or you didn’t want to. Can you confirm you were giving me the cold shoulder so I can process your rejection? (I’ve just been kicked off twitter simply for defending myself. It’s worse with Elon Musk).
Dave Thompson
Someone who is/has fast become one of my academic heroes, Richard Green (Newgon page I made on him here), produced a dedicated chapter on ‘intergenerational sexuality’ in his 1992 book sexual science and the law. I’d seen a VERY based quoted cited by Rind et al. and quoted in the Newgon page, and I’ve now discovered that the chapter can be read on google books! How cool! Check it out here: https://books.google.ee/books?id=pPkRHairg3UC&printsec=frontcover&hl=et#v=onepage&q&f=false
Excellent Newgon page, Prue, and good Google Books discovery!
Yeah, but who are your contemporary scholars? You can’t sustain a movement on the past, it must have relevance in the present. The past is dead. The scholarship of the past is dead. It is about the scholarship of the present. Studies done decades ago, in a prior century, have no relevance to the conversation today. Not a criticism, just an observation and word of advice. Society will not change on account of outdated studies and research, which even if valid in its time, is still irrelevant to trends, circumstances, and experiences of the present, which take place in a different landscape and context.
Like, Harmful to Minors is probably the only thing you could bring up that could have any weight in discussions today, and even it is outdated and old now.
What I’m saying is it would be good to start honing in on a 21st century, 2020s/2030s relevant case, because society is rapidly throwing itself in trajectory towards this conversation, knowingly or not. Conservatives are forcing the issue through their groomer panic, and liberals and leftists are forcing the issue through their whitewashing (rainbowashing?) denialism of their history, origins, and ignorance of where queer theory and feminist theory eventually lead to (despite the very conservative, conventional politics of LGBTQ+ and womens issues).
The existence of queer (and even more speciifically trans and nonbinary kids) begs the question. The existence of new technology and the access kids have to it, with the attendant phenomena of sexting, catfishing, webcamming, porn access, and digital nativism, begs the question. The declining viability and relevancy of marriage begs the question. The increase of loneliness and mental health decline begs the question. Discourse about gender identity, and ideas of masculinity and femininity begs the question. The truth is that all of our culture wars share a subtle, but very uncomfortable undercurrent, a common root- child sexuality, child autonomy, and pedophilia.
Even the incease of child pornography, sexual crimes, consent, etc. all leads there. It cannot help but go there. People are trying very hard to not go there, avoid it at all costs, but all attempts to try and resolve social and cultural problems will fail, until the underly, existentially anxiety-inducing issue is addressed, and reevaluated.
For all you mystically minded people- we have to revisit the Garden of Eden. Revisit Neverland. Revisit childhood, growing up, and the fall from grace and condemnation that is growing up. The child being cast as innocent, the adult as sinful, shameful, and dangerous. It is the origin of the danger that men pose to women. That men pose to children. All born of real experience, but also of existential dread. And for those who believe in low-key magic, whether of a dark, conspiratorial kind, or an archetypal, enlightened kind, our stories and media are casting the spells moving us in that direction. Our society is aging- and both changing social norms and economic pressure have forced a reexamination of what childhood, adolescence, and adulthood mean. Simultaneous forces which are making kids grow up faster in some ways, and infantilizing adults in others.
We fumble our way on this issue, and it will surface, with a vengeance, sooner rather than later. The subliminal will not last much longer. Just as the Hayes Code days eventually gave way to an overt LGBT movement, so too will our subliminal dancing around childhood and sexuality, eventually give way to overt discussion about it. It’s already happening. And the current groomer panic will lead us there.
There’s a groomer panic among conservatives that faintly echoes the “paedophile killer” hysteria of the 90s that led to sex offender registries, but the big difference now is that the “groomers” are legitimate mega corporations and teaching unions.
I agree that this only goes one way and minor sexuality will culturally surface in a big way.
But already (for example) the days of social media parents blocking adult men are mostly gone – men are respectful, and parents don’t mind. That’s progress in and of itself.
Parent-run minor accounts on Instagram have tonnes of adult male followers and admirers. It’s just part of online life.
And you don’t find the idea of parent curated accounts with “tonnes” of adult male followers to be creepy at all? You know, prostitution? You find the idea of sex as play to be vulgar and base, but not that…
I think I need to clarify my position.
I don’t find sex as play to be vulgar and base – for one thing we all fantasise about it anyway. But sexual contact with children is illegal, with horrifically severe penalties, so I’m just being pragmatic when I take a sceptical view of real adult-minor sexual interplay.
I said some queer practices are “unseemly and even degenerate”. I meant public displays of BDSM, of a gay man in bondage gear tied to a cross being whipped by another gay man on a LGBT float parade, at a “family friendly event”. Of bondage dressed men on all fours on leashes behaving like dogs, and being petted by young children. Of drag queens shaking their ass in a toddler’s face. Need I go on? All these things are technically legal. While innocent sex play between adults and minors is strictly prohibited with lengthy incarceration. Does this make sense? No. But it is the practical reality.
Adult males admiring parent curated child accounts is entirely innocent in my view, unless they leave an offensive or inappropriate comment, which is actually very rare, thanks to the block and report system. Men leave comments such as “beautiful” or “perfect”, heart emojis, rose emojis, etc. It’s innocent and sweet, not creepy, and certainly not “prostitution”. Lots of men admire beautiful children, it’s just a self-evident fact on social media, and a virtual space gives them the safe and appropriate context to demonstrate a loving gesture.
There may well be a tipping point where we reassess the legality, appropriateness and permissiveness of light sexual interplay, but as a society we’re not there yet, and it is dangerous to pre-empt society on things they still consider to be illegal.
Just to say, I don’t wanna give the impression that academia is everything.
You wrote: “a 21st century, 2020s/2030s relevant case”.
> I’m not sure what you mean by this? Should we all focus on trans kids, trans MAPs, and publicize cases of trans youth saying they had good sexy time w/ older ppl?
Admittedly, that would be pretty fun.
On the Pediverse I have seen a trend towards MAPs who identify as trans, and sometimes agefluid/transage.
I suppose I mean that current studies (to the extent they can be found) should be cited. That making arguments and approaching the issue from the context of the present and near future would be better than rehashing approaches that were put forth in the context of the 1970s.
An interesting piece by an anarchist who’s hostile but clearly read-up on intergen issues https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/narcissus-sex-power-and-violence
If anyone’s wanting a more educated than typical Anti to get them thinking, this could be interesting…
Skimmed some of this person’s work via a review of Judith Levine’s Harmful to Minors. Their work’s an exercise in narrative if nothing else. They’re so… weird. They’re such… an Anti! They just don’t want it to be true, can’t accept that mutually willing age-disparate sex could be an overall positive thing for the majority. At least, in a very different society.
The character assassination is so disappointing and a bit pathetic coming from someone who’s obviously not a complete idiot. I almost feel sorry for them, their creativity is being wasted. They attack Bruce Rind and others b/c of associations w/ Paidika. Repeatedly. But, despite saying they will, they don’t dare touch Paul Okami. They don’t even mention Allie Kilpatrick! Y’kow why? Because, unlike Bruce Rind, they can’t dismiss their research with petty slander.
It would be so, so much easier for me if the ‘Left’ were correct to have adopted what I take to have once been a largely Right-wing position: being a priori against the demonized group in vogue. I.e. unlawful age-gap sex. But, they’re not right, and their arguments are so, so bad that Stephen Kershnar, an economic libertarian of all things, could destroy them in a debate (see his brain in a vat YouTube vid). Thank god for the Lefty MAPs and allies of the past and present: they give me some hope that the Left isn’t just full of people who think Left=Good / Right=Bad therefore I’m ‘Left’…
In short, putting it nicely, this anarchist writer is more style than substance…
“They attack Bruce Rind and others b/c of associations w/ Paidika.”
And even that is of course ad hominem.
Some statistics from b4u-act about the effects of discrimination:
“The results showed striking differences between MAPs and the general population. Approximately 86% of participants in this study indicated that they thought about or attempted suicide at some point during their lives, compared to only 9% for the general population. These rates are similar to ones reported in similar studies of people attracted to children. Over 17% also reported having made an attempt in the past and one-third indicated they had thought about taking their own life five or more times in the past year. In contrast only 3% of people in the general population have made similar plans in their lives. […] The vast majority met criteria for lifetime major depressive disorder (88%) – over four times the number of American adults (21%) – and one-quarter self-reported severe hopelessness. […] In the discussion, the authors emphasize the high prevalence of suicidal ideation in the present sample compared to the general population (64% compared to 5% past-year prevalence).” https://www.b4uact.org/b4qr/vol3/spring2023/
Non-adult MAPs as well as MAPs who broke laws were excluded, so the percentages might have been higher had these groups been included. And of course the mental health of many MAPs might be too bad to participate in surveys, thereby excluding them from the results as well.
“[A]lthough the results paint a bleak reality (people attracted to children are more susceptible to suicidality), the authors point to a hopeful solution: the increased development of programs which aim to help people attracted to children live happy, healthy, fulfilling lives.”
ha ha
Very striking results. Thanks, Gliese, for drawing this study to our attention, and the review of it by B4U-ACT in their latest Quarterly Review (open access).
Interesting book for everyone here: https://library.lol/main/A48A095617F02C7CE11C4A589127C813
Inappropriate Relationships: the Unconventional, the Disapproved, and the Forbidden (2002)
A very non stigmatizing book which includes a chapter on Necrophilia of all things, and of course, a chapter on Pedophilia by the very sympathetic Dennis Howitt, called “Social Exclusion – Pedophile Style”. He cites Theo Sandfort et al. so he clearly knows of the ‘other side’ of pedophilic and, more generally, age gap relationships. Cool stuff and something worth saving methinks.
Note to others: this piece is NOT, actually, very sympathetic. I read a bit which seemed kinda Foucault inspired, and suggested to me he’d be more critical of ‘ideology’ underlying his own thinking. In fact, now I’ve listened to it all, he was not very insightful and isn’t nearly critical enough of academic hacks like Gene Abel. So yh, maybe other parts of the book’ll be more interesting, but this chapter has nothin on Robert Bauserman, Terry Leahy, and Paul Okami.
“MAP” is becoming more commonplace now, it’s even trending on Twitter as we speak, but what disturbs me is a) how far left the MAP community seems to want to position itself; b) how the MAP community seems happy to tack onto LGBTQIA+ even though many of the behaviours and practices of that broad umbrella are unseemly and even degenerate.
People argue “MAP” should be far left because it is “more extreme” even than child trans mutilation. How is that possible? My experience has been that the adult male “loving respect” for children is deeply seemly, honourable and grounded in reverence and veneration.
Children provoke wonder and admiration, not licentious lusts and sadistic impulses, at least in normal and grounded human beings who have a common decency. To admire a child is as much a conservative impulse as a liberal one: it is universal. I don’t identify with anything far left and I certainly wouldn’t entertain a far left MAP community.
I know this particular space (HTOC) is a broad church but let me appeal to our better natures and say we need to raise the discourse.
“MAP” is becoming more commonplace now, it’s even trending on Twitter as we speak, but what disturbs me is a) how far left the MAP community seems to want to position itself
> MAP has gone mainstream and Newgon are / have helped to make that happen. From what I see in the background, a younger generation of MAPs are fed up of the hatred. Pooling their extraordinary talents, making memes, infographics and, hopefully soon, new media outlets, MAPs are making their mark and vying to become the next fashionable struggle.
For point b: the problem is that many MAPs may themselves be LGBT, even without their MAP-ness they might be trans or at least same-sex attracted. Certainly, they’re queer (non normative), so for me it’s only logical and makes perfect sense that MAPs would disproportionally lean towards interest in LGBTQ spaces and rhetoric. Even if, rightly, many MAPs would and should be pissed off at how the mainstream LGBTers have treated them in the past. For shame! Maybe one day we’ll be hearing about MAPs as part of inclusivity and diversity training, and lobbying to get MAPs reparations payments for all the tyranny they’ve been subjected to, forced to hide in secrecy under a long, dark shadow as Allyn Walker called it. Anyway, whatever political “side” you’re on, if committed people keep at it, the future could be a very MAPpy one! It’s all to play / work for!
I’m pleased with Newgon and the efforts of all contributors to make it more mainstream. I also agree that MAP is in many ways non-normative, and even that it may be labelled as a queer sexuality. The dark cloud of illegality is of course the elephant in the room, whereas mainstream LGBT have a legal mandate (even if lingering public controversy).
But MAP is not just about sexuality; it underpins a broad range of cultural attitudes, behaviours and values, and in that sense many aspects of MAP are deeply legal and respectable. Such is the consideration and appreciation (with parental control / oversight) MAPs can subtly present to children in social and virtual spaces. The key requirement of course is to present non-sexually as a matter of decency and keeping within the law – but this is what I mean about the broad range of cultural attitudes in the MAP’s arsenal.
LGBT have treated MAPs disgracefully and I’m not a supporter of Pride, believing it has become an authoritarian imposition upon the public. But MAPs need legitimate recognition and understanding – long before any sexual license is considered.
Concerning point (a): being “far left” has nothing to do with “more extreme even than child trans mutilation” or “licentious lusts and sadistic impulses”. Simply: almost all fascists, conservatives, liberals and social-democrats are anti-MAP; on the other hand some “far left” tendencies (such as the “Spartacists”) are pro-MAP. So MAPs will reject political tendencies hostile to them, and become attracted to those supporting them.
Lol I don’t suddenly flip to the far left based on a single issue.
What have these social issues got to do with the political left?
The News Aggregator Blog idea is coming on slowly. It looks like I have a host for WordPress, and we are designing a logo, based on the historical magazine, Paedo Alert News. It will be named “MAP Alert News” (MAN).
The logo designs I saw were beautiful and would make anyone from PAN proud… “MAN” may not be the best acroynym though, considering that the public already thinks, innacurately, that all MAPs are men (tho I accept that most MAPs, or most people willing to live under a MAP identity, may be men). What about “MANA” – MAP Alert News Agency? Still keep the MAP Alert News logo in homage to PAN, but a different acronym may be helpful when spreading a message in future. Just my 2 cents…
Predictive Tom’s bete noir, hypocrite UK CSA Enquiry failed!
From 35m:00s: 28 May 2023 available for over a year
“The government has announced plans to deal with the problem of child sex abuse, but what are the implications for religious organisations? Almost every week, there are news stories about churches or religious groups facing allegations of the abuse of children or vulnerable adults. While the issue exists across society, its prevalence in religious settings has been striking. We explore why this is the case and what churches need to do if they are to tackle it effectively;” (And why failed former chair Baroness Alexis Jay is so frustrated).
Followed by failed Dame Esther Rancid’s 1980s scam ‘Childline’, closely followed by ex-rebel failed ‘Wolfy’ Smith/Bob Lindsay shamelessly beggng for even more failed Victorian NSPCC dough – DOH!
(Conveniently unseen, as ever, in plain sight are centuries of successful systematic abuse of young-boys in elite-Brit brutal boarding schools. Creating, not life-scarred victim-survivors needing lifelong help and BIG Cash compo, but trauma-free sneering high achievers like Churchill, Johnson, et al. Then paying high fees for their own young boys sent to elite Brit brutal boarding schools to sustain their sneering cycle of the amused-not-abused – all unseen by the failed CSA Enquiry.)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001mc01
From 34m:55s, failed Leveson enquiry Sir Brian, and failed CSA Enquiry Baroness Jay.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001mbyd
Holland then and now?
1978, sunny Amsterdam Crowded Redlight Zone Summer Weekend, a 30-something Brit Loli-fan asks a routinely armed young Dutch cop, “Excuse me officer, but with many young families and tourists passing by do you get any complaints about the SeX Shops with windows clearly showing some nude children, and inside even more explicit child-sex magazines; and children allowed inside the shops?”
Reply in perfect English, “You are English Sir? Well, post-Holocaust/Anne Frank etc, we teach our children that the human body and all mutual sex is natural, to be enjoyed not destroyed. So, we have no complaints unless there is evidence of tears or blood, then we act fast and strong! Tell me, do you not have such shops in England?”
“Yes we have so called ‘Sex Shops’ but the windows are painted over so that nothing is on street-view, and only 21+ can enter or buy so called ‘Sex Magazines’ with only adult images, but no homosexuals or lesbians, no male erections or ejaculations, and no female pubic hair allowed.”
“No street-views, no under-21s, no homosexuals or lesbians, no male erections or ejaculations, no female pubic hair – then why have ‘Sex Shops’? Good day to you sir, enjoy your stay in Holland.”
On the same trip with a couple of Brit-MAP pals strolling in an Amsterdam park, three cop cars suddenly appeared speeding across the grass to a paddling pool. The oldest Brit, ex-WW2 ‘Military Medal’ veteran rightly said, “That’s rare, most likely for some kid-snatcher, possibly a dim-Brit spoiling it for everyone.”
So, the 30-something bold Brit strolled over and asked a cop, “Excuse me officer, is there some emergency here?”
“Not now sir, the park ranger called us to report a ‘Poof’ trying to lure children away.”
(‘Poof’ not ‘Pedo’ not then the ‘Dominant Narrative’).
Next day searching for back-issues we were helpfully advised to visit a nearby huge wholeseale warehouse where relaxed middle-aged women doubtless including moms, showed us the many Kid-SeX shelves comfortably among the numerous 18+ mags and ‘rollers’/8mm or VHS movies.
2008, 30-years on, the same bold Brit disingenuously asks an Amsterdam Sex Shop manager, “Where are all the Golden Boy & Loli mags?”
“All gone in police raids across Europe since the 1990s due to you unnatural English meddling in our naturally relaxed Dutch and European affairs.”
The bold-Brit then spotted a smiling older gent on a racing bike leaning on a wall as crowds passed by in the central Damstraat, “Excuse me but are you an under cover policeman, you seem to be observing people quite closely?”
“And, you are quite observant for an Englishman. Yes, I’m a retired police detective who can’t stop watching people, though there’s not much crime here, unlike in smash-and-grab Britain eh? I was once seconded to Scotland Yard to study your police methods, but mostly we were ‘skiving’ in the pubs and pool-halls. Do they still ‘skive’ now on public funds?”
“Yeah, ‘skiving’ public servants, a common dirty breed in lazy Britain. And, what’s the truth of UK tabloid tales about the Amsterdam ‘Window Girls’ trafficked across Europe against their will?”
“Just that, UK tabloid trash tales, because all our Window Girls are willing professionals, properly licensed and regularly checked with no problems, while your UK distorters-not-reporters just come here to lie, make trouble and profit from your gullible UK morons.”
“And, what actually happend to 1970s Dutch ‘Lolita’ pioneer Joop Wilhelmus increasingly popular, but then drowned in Dordrecht?”
“Same thing, you backward Brits can’t face the fact that post-War civilised Europe including younger generations, rightly moved on from your repressed Victorian values.”
Later, resting on a residential doorstep, the bold-Brit was aked by a smiling mature woman in perfect English, “So you are British, and are you comfortable on my doorstep? Perhaps you’d like to come in for a coffee?”
Soon, more than ‘coffee’ was on offer, and the bold-Brit asked about the sweet widowed woman’s family photos on the wall, “Are those your children from the 1970s, and what did they think of all the Amsterdam SeX Shops on open view including kids their own age?”
“We all just giggled at those harmless, amusing magazines, many from naturist families with Dutch nudist clubs still poplar now. But no Under 18s now in sex-magazines due to your UK backward Victorian values brutally imposed upon us.”
Interesting scandal hailing from Brazil, and perhaps quite beautiful given their relationship appears to have survived backlash. I hope a happy marriage for them! https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Kauane_Rode_Camargo
Added to https://www.newgon.net/wiki/MAPocalypse#Realization_of_the_panic_from_2020-2023 alongside Noam Chomsky drama and Prince Andrew.
Do you have article on Rolf Harris? I dont hate him. Theres far, far worse people but of course he is considered by the masses as a monster.
I though you might be asking in general but i have just seen that Rolf Harris has died… Yes, I’m sure I can create something small about him, especially if it’s easy to see precisely what he was accused of in life.
A good starting point and piece of interest, our very own dear Tom wrote about Harris in 2014 https://heretictoc.com/2014/07/07/can-you-tell-who-he-is-yet/
A good place to start will be his lawyer’s book…
https://www.amazon.com/Rolf-Harris-Defence-Special-Investigator/dp/1915338182
Id like to buy that… but id have to hide it, sadly. Also Toms … but im not sure they available in physical form..
Wow published in 2022 how incredible!
Oh, cool i will enjoy reading that. I
m not completely clear what Harris did, it might just be a bit blown out of proportion.. it is sad to see myfriends` on facebook saying bad things… People ignore the good things he did..If you read Tom’s blog article on Harris linked above it gives a good summary.
[…]
Would simply like to THANK you Prue for pulling off this wonderfully detailed and superbly comprehensive history, which of course i’ve promptly added to my homescreen for regular reference. That “Police Scotland” affair bypassed me altogether, and i wondered if you might say something about where it ‘ended’, whether in fact the aforesaid men-in-uniform went to any lengths at all to defend their sympathetic take, or perhaps, as one suspects, just the opposite?
No guarantees, but this may well be my last post. I’ve got other projects to focus on, and I no longer feel comfortable being a public (albeit anonymous) advocate of MAP causes. Ultimately, I don’t believe in “adult-minor sexual contact” as a sensible future legal possibility. Sorry about that. However, I have great sympathy for the cause.
Tom, if you wish to remain in email contact, that’s a link that could be maintained.
I’ll be sorry to see you go, ZT, if that is your settled position. Apologies for the long delay in moderation. This is because I have been “off grid”, out of wi-fi or mobile phone contact, up in the Atlas mountains, in Morocco.
I totally respect your position, but I’ve thought about it, and as a man with MAP inclinations I never have the need, desire or wish for sexual contact with a child. Be that tactile or verbal. This is partly a result of my particular spiritual outlook where I put the things of the mind above the things of the body.
Best of luck on your own journey.
This kind of talk really and truly dismays me. Because his thoughts appear to be located up there in his head, ZT decides they must therefore be “above” those lowly sensations that he feels “in his body”. Decides that the former must belong to some impossibly vague realm he calls ‘spiritual”
As if he could have one without the other for one miserable second!
And now we learn that the “Zen Thinker” has no desire for ‘sexual contact” with a child whatsover. If i didn”t know better (bitter laugh) i would capitulate at this point to complete despond and despair
Warbling, why torture yourself with a longing for sexual contact when nothing like it may be on the legal horizon in our lifetimes?
On the other hand, private fantasy is incredibly powerful, especially for people with a strong creative imagination, and gives me all the sexual fulfilment I need.
>On the other hand, private fantasy is incredibly powerful, especially for people with a strong creative imagination
So Mr Turp lacks a “strong creative imagination”? This could easily be felt as a micro-aggression, and I would not blame Mr Turp for such an interpretation. You are entitled to your view ZT, but I would invite you to think about how you may come across e.g. smug, feeling yourself to be morally superior, pusillanimous.
It is pusillanimous but in the face of a) intense social opposition b) illegality c) widespread censorship d) a societally inflicted deep sense of shame e) deep introversion f) resignation, I have no choice.
There is always a choice, no matter how pervasive and insidious the repression
Yes, and if you have Instagram and a hand you’re pretty much set for life, in that regard.
Any tetchiness on my part was no doubt due that day to stuff seeping into my Twitter feed regarding the demise of one Rolf Harris. Not only The Spectator but Unherd as well could not resist the opportunity to play tabloid for a day, Unherd deploying “his (RH’s) heinous crimes” ( = being unfortunate enough to encounter a woman whose ‘command’ of victimary logic forged new dimensions in the pathological), The Spectator (in its piece’s wider Yewtree sweep) “he (Savile) abused on an industrial scale”.
Stunning to see that, in the years since the notorious pogrom, these otherwise reputable pundits have learned nothing, have gained nothing you could ever call a finer perspective of any kind.. Nope, it’s staight to the magic box of reader-sating hyperbole and be done with it. Multiple tweets expressing hope that the Ocker had perished “in pain and anguish” could be seen, and the honking great MailyDail of course featured as terrible a photograph of its subject as could be found, one of an obviously frail and infirm human-being shocked by paparazzi ambush..
Of ZT i would ask why he here associates longing with self-torture, when surely he as Christian must be familiar with that sphere’s celebrated notion of Sehnsucht? I would moreover say that the more one longs, the greater intensity with which one must inevitably imagine? After all, was it not only the deferral of spontaneous, instinctual action that gave us desiring imaginations in the very first place?
Very good points, Warbling, in your last paragraph. Yes, we can enjoy the acknowledged absence of physical consummation almost as a spiritual ideal, it raises the love object to a transcendental status and arguably gives more pleasure, satisfaction and fulfilment than a mere act of consummation would. The wonders of the human mind eh
Rolfs old news now.. philip schofield is a sadistic grooming predator now…. of course they wont even interview the young man in question he was involved with.. just come to conclusions
Interesting to see PS reap the whirlwind though, after disowning his pedophile brother not too long back….
No agency below so called ‘AOC’?
FOUR-year-old boy DEMANDS SeX with HOT Male teacher, er…his Photo Removed After School Used It On Banner Without His Permission.
https://allschool.com.ng/4-year-old-boy-demands-his-photo-is-taken-down-after-school-authorities-used-it-on-banner-without-permission/?fbclid=IwAR01OFHTlJG_AMEnR_cPTEUoHAmeFz9YSbG0th56CSoqWrSFCoT-p3x_Kxk
Tom, you were mentioned in the (as I predicted, inevitable) deletion discussions on Wikipedia. It looks like *all* of the researcher’s articles are up for the chop, including those written about CSA prevention, Allyn Walker and a discredited Vigilante “Predator Hunter” group run by a man who looks like a living, walking Chudjak meme.
The offending researcher was permanently banned for “pedophile advocacy” after, get this… a random, newly created account appeared on the deletion thread for his article, and accused him of personally knowing you, because he referred to you simply as “Tom” in one of his editing summaries. This seemingly sparked a wave of hysteria, and was successful in getting the researcher banned.
The controversy is covered here, for those interested in this kind of thing.
The now sanitized article is here, and may still survive its brush with death.
Hard to find any positives when one’s name is the kiss of death. I will be taking to the hills. Literally. Today, I am heading off into the mountains. Not in response to this latest news, though, but part of a long-planned, very high-altitude venture. Seems as good a place as any to escape the current madness.
This Bigots don’t realize all their censorship attempts will be noted in this article in the future.
The more united, educated, and culturally rich a MAP community will be, the harder it would be for them to ignore MAP people.
To update you, it was deleted, as I have documented in the Newgon article. This is not the last we will see of a MAP article, but I believe the plans to bring one back are going to involve strict controls on how the topic is addressed.
The 1885 UK AOC was raised in a now typical Parliamentary panic in 6-weeks, from a centuries long satisfactory 13 to an arbitrary 16.
To placate the press hysteria created by self-serving William Stead’s ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ (no surprise became The Daily Mail). Stead’s sellout sensationalist serial, ‘A Maiden Tribute in Modern Babylon’ pre-dated by a century the tabloid bullied Tory Home Sec Howard criminalising CP in 1994; coward Howard quote, “Prison works!”
Stead had proven he could buy and sedate for sex/rape a 13yo virgin, Liza Armstrong for £5 in a Covent Garden brothel (later source of G.B. Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’/Hollywood ‘My Fair Lady’). Stead served a short sentence to prove his point and that he had not ‘deflowered’ flower-seller Liza.
Another typical Anglo irony is that no ‘normal’ Victorian nonce could afford £5 but well paid duly elected decent Parliamentary ‘Family Men’ could, with a 10-minute fast ‘limp’ or even faster Hansom carriage from Westminster, “Don’t spare the nag, cabbie, speed down Whitehall farce, er fast? Then, lust sated, I must be fast home by rail to read my sweet young daughters a bedtime fairytale about mythical bogeymen.”
Anglo-Irish Victorian visionary victim genius Oscar Wilde was fast onto the now familiar stench of Anglo hypocrisy derailing so called ‘Democracy’. 1891 quote, “The fourth estate is now the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Spiritual say nothing, the Lords Temporal have nothing to say, and the Commons has nothing to say – and says it. We are dominated by journalism!”
UK ex-childsex offender genius victim Wilde died in Paris exile in 1900, and neatly karmic, less than thirteen years later Stead went down on the Titanic’s 1912 ‘Maiden Voyage’. (‘Went Down’ on the Titanic? “They can’t touch ya for it, can they Guv?!”)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maiden_Tribute_of_Modern_Babylon
And, in plain sight, behind the perverse Anglo hypocrisy exposed by boy-lover genius victim Wilde, is.
The grotesque (Gothic) backdrop to UK Parliaments setting standards for so called ‘Child Protection’ while composed of elite men (no wimmin or workers pre-WW1) who from age-8 were proudly, systematically, mentally, physically, emotionally, sexually abused, in high-fees brutal boarding schools.
Somehow creating not life-scarred ‘victim survivors’ needing lifelong help and BIG Cash Compo, but trauma-free, sneering high achievers like Churchill, Mountbatten, and Johnson.
Then paying high-fees for their own young boys from age-8 sent to brutal elite Anglo boarding schools, to sustain their exclusive Anglo-elite cycle of the amused-not-abused?
Quote, elite-Anglo hypocrite, “Traditional character forming, no harm done – spare the ROD spoil the child!”
Quote, common MAP sense-defender worthy of a Whitehall farce, “No sense please we’re Brits?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Sex_Please,_We%27re_British
“The Worm In The Bud”.
Swingin’ 1960s ‘classic’ on repressed Victorian sexuality and hypocrisy. In which author Pearsall nails profiteering Stead’s excessively salacious expose of young virgins-a-la-carte, as ‘pornography posing as journalism’.
Role model for 20th Century-ongoing tabloid trash ‘Dominant Narrative’.
Quote, Swingin ’62 classic Brit-flick, “Only Two Can Play”, local novelist made-bigtime, paperback writer patronises hometown librarian, “Still peddling trash to the masses are you?” Librarian, “Still writing it are you?!”
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/647633
Further proving, genius victim Wilde’s dark Victorian vision.
The only relaxation, or reduction in UK AOC law since 1885 were both via late 20th Century media-sceptic Labour governments.
In 1967 against huge media mock outrage P.M. Wilson finally made UK Gay Sex OK in private 21+ (no cottaging). Paraphrased at a rare press-media amnesty, “You stop lying about us, and we’ll stop telling the truth about you.”
And, in year 2000 against even more mock outrage, New Labour’s tabloid puppet Blair (later BLiar) became a worm-who-turned by invoking the rarely used Parliament Act, 1911, to ram through the equalising of all UK consentual sex to 16+. Quote, rightly angry former lefty P.M Blair in Parliament, “We have a fundamentally dishonest press-media.”
And in 2006 on Parkinson’s TV Show asked by Parky, “How are you getting on now with the media?” Blair rapped back, “They’re deranged!” The interesting exchange was about to expand when the puppet director cut to the ads and returned with a new guest, while rebel Tony was blocked.
So, no change there.
https://www.openlynews.com/i/?id=ecbed8d5-1038-4c6d-91ec-a54251c96a20
.
Blairs no good guy…. He pushed through the sex crimes act 2003 which allowed room to punish under 18s for sexting.
Even before ’97 Blair was just another populist P.C. tabloid pawn, with RARE exception plus ‘Mandy’ Mandelson against neo Victorian mock-outrage they FORCED through the UK ‘Equal AOC’ 16+ Gay OK. .
Since the 1970s when the sex-soaked ‘Family’ rag The SUN became the UK top sales ‘Dominant Narrative’, the Murdochs not the ministers make or break most laws.
Quote fearless peerless Pilger: The hypocrisy is almost magical. In July 1995, Murdoch flew Tony and Cherie Blair first-class to Hayman Island, Australia, where the aspiring war criminal spoke about “the need for a new moral purpose in politics”, which included the lifting of government regulations on the media. Murdoch shook his hand warmly. The next day the SUN commented: “Mr Blair has vision, he has purpose and he speaks our language on morality and family life.”
The two are devout Christians, after all.
Not forgetting Victorian visionary genius victim-Wilde, 1891, “We are dominated by journalism.”
https://johnpilger.com/articles/murdoch-a-cultural-chernobyl
Currently and very randomly skimming Sarah Goode’s attack on Sandfort and she is just… hysterical. I am so unimpressed. She blatantly appeals to popular ideas and doesn’t bother to question her own assumptions about ‘power’, for example, despite what she’s reading and despite writers like Angelides who criticize one-sided notions of power. The implication that Sandfort may have himself been a minor’s sexual partner is an awful snide remark and I can’t quite believe she went there and yet surely expected to be percieved as a respectable scholar… I know you know Sandfort’s work well, and discuss it in fair depth in your Michael Jackson book, so i suspect you had many a thought reading Goode’s chapter…
She’s right to say that it’s a sad comment on ‘our’ culture that many young ppl don’t have an adult friend that could benefit their lives in lieu of their potentially terrible parents, and she’s right to suggest the context of Sandfort’s study is relevant to its production (obviously). But at points she comes across as hysterical and far too eager to dismiss.
https://immerautonom.noblogs.org/files/2023/04/Goode-2011_review_of_sandfort.pdf
She asked me in correspondence a few years ago for comments on StopItNow’s rhetoric on their website. I offered constructive criticism on the glut of pathologising turns of phrase that littered their website and their campaigns, which I said could put people off seeking help and make some people more likely to offend. A lot of the language echoed society’s negative judgements and there was a risk that individuals visiting the website in the hope of finding help for depression due to stigma (with that depression perhaps making them more likely to offend) would be put off or made to feel worse (thereby making them even more likely to offend). She said there wasn’t much that they could do about the rhetoric because at the end of the day they had to secure funding, which would be difficult without echoing society’s judgements. However, to be fair, I’ve just taken a look at their website now, several years later, and the language is much, much better.
It is very important that MAPs don’t offend, as to do so smashes away the foundations of any moral claim and societal credibility. As Julius Caesar said, only those seizing political power have a justifiable claim in breaking the law; in all other cases the law should be observed. And the law is only changed through weight of moral example. When society is shamed by its persecution, then there is hope: then pathologising turns in on itself, and they fall into their own pit. That day will certainly come, because a deeply contingent and historically circumstantial law cannot maintain itself forever; it will be finally dislodged by societal and even civilisational change. Many of the true believers are probably blind to this historical inevitability, because they have built up the case so elaborately in their minds, and dug their trenches deep.
It’s been a long time coming, but I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will. Like Sam Cooke, I see the seeds of change apparent already, strongly even, in various elements of society.
This is essentially assimilationist versus non-assimilationist. I don’t advocate breaking the law, but I do waver between the two positions. One way to challenge society’s perception is, as you say, to toe the line, in so doing showing that MAPs are indeed decent law-abiding citizens. Another, however, is to have salubrious relationships with minors, thereby demonstrating that salubrious relationships between adults and minors are indeed possible. Again, I’m not advocating anything.
Perhaps a very loose analogy can be drawn with a topical issue. Now that peaceful protest seems to be under threat from ‘Braverman’s law’, should would-be protesters demonstrate that they are peaceful and non-disruptive by abstaining from all protest or by continuing to protest peacefully and non-disruptively to show that peaceful, non-disruptive protest is indeed possible? And which approach is more likely to lead to change?
It’s very difficult, or rather impossible, to be a public advocate for anything MAP related. I don’t think there’s a comparable situation in Western society; it’s rather absurd. There’s a blanket ban on mentioning anything MAP related on public platforms. One wonders why this top down orchestrated suppression is so necessary if they have nothing to fear in the way of social change.
I would never advocate for breaking the law. You may as well give them the W and give yourself the L. One has to be subtle, because complete suppression is of course impossible. But I don’t think the technological age suits direct and overt protests.
Everyday access to technology is gonna be one of those changes. The amount of kids that are gonna be arrested, cautioned, investigated for “self-generated abuse material”. The amount of kids who must be making tik toks and sending snapchats of a suggestive nature; if space can be made to discuss this it’ll be a great topic to shatter the obvious lies and misconceptions popularized since the late 70’s (children as sexually incapable etc).
Just like news articles about kids being tried as both producers and distributors of their own child pornography boggles the mind and forces one too think, so too can these increasingly ordinary facets of young people’s lives. It wouldn’t even need to be explicitly sexual discussion: imagine reems of “child tik tok producer discusses their career” type articles.
Certainly there’s contestation going on, even while i do agree with a comment I read recently that the trend is towards infantilization of youth and young people. Indeed, extended adolescence is increasingly a thing with people living with their parents etc in relations of dependency for longer and longer. Arguably, the material gap between adults and children is less pronounced at present; many “adults” still live like “children.”
I think liberation is fragile, but not impossible…
>The amount of kids that are gonna be arrested, cautioned, investigated for “self-generated abuse material”
Yes you’ve just reminded me to read the IWF’s latest annual report, as I would like to get a factual idea of the scale of the problem. I think there is a lot of governmental consternation and anxiety about these developing issues which is mostly hidden from the public. It is certainly beginning to reach crisis proportions.
From Newgon:
https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Research:_Child_Pornography
Most “child pornography” in circulation is self-produced (in 2020, it even made up around half of the images processed by the IWF, rising to almost 3/4 in 2021)[7]. By that year, even half of the prepubescent material was self generated. Prohibitions (if they are to be applied universally) are therefore unworkable, as it is extremely hard to define who is “exploiting” who using a conventional victimological model. While activists have been pointing towards the trend of self-produced images for some time, it has taken much longer for “Child-Protection” officials to admit that minors are capable of producing child pornography, and more recently that a significant majority of said material is voluntarily produced.
“Of the 252,194 webpages actioned during 2021, almost three quarters (182,281 or 72%) were assessed as containing self-generated imagery. This is a 28 percentage point increase on 2020 when 44% of actioned reports (or 68,000) were self-generated.”
Interestingly, the report says that 65% of the self-generated content involves no sexual activity whatsoever. Probably just guys with foot fetishes asking girls to take their socks off while they’re doing a TikTok live or suchlike. Not cool, of course, but it’s hardly the end of the world. Do we really need to lump such cases in with the genuine CSAM in order to triple the headline figure (and then wheel out the obligatory tip of the iceberg line to make the problem sound even worse)?
The reason why there is so much self generated imagery is… *drum roll* because they arent children. Adolescents, at the least.
Major media platforms such as YouTube have been silent since their launch about the fact that they remove prohibited content created by children themselves every day. They disable comments to hide existence of minor attraction. Mr. “FreeSpeech” removes accounts for mentioning MAP and their flag on Twitter.
The liberation is unavoidable
Everything the antis do just delays it.
This part is simply mendacious:
“Sandfort also remains silent on how exactly the boys were chosen to participate in the sample, and how many boys may have been selected out as ‘unsuitable’, although he does tell us that:
[the] possibility cannot be excluded that only the ‘better’ relationships were here investigated. Although we made absolutely no effort to ‘select’ a favorable sample, it is undoubtedly true that men and boys will be more willing to participate in a project like this if what is being studied does not cause problems in their relationship and so create a bad impression of it. (Sandfort, 1987: 35)
This rather convoluted sentence seems to mean that, although ‘we’ (that is, Sandfort) may not have deliberately selected only a ‘favorable’ sample, it is more than likely that the men (who actually recruited the sample) did.”
The sentence is not particularly convoluted and it does not in any way mean what she says it means!
Very interesting to see that Goode went on to be a vaccine/lockdown-sceptic on Twitter (which I don’t necessarily have anything against, just interesting to see).
Maybe we can document this in a Newgon page?
Yes, as a preventionist figure, she deserves a fair and balanced article.
Hey Tom, I know Bailey review your Michael Jackson book but i just discovered another review I’d not seen before or seen discussed, by UK academics Eric Anderson and Matt Ripley. You might’ve seen it already but in case not, thought I’d share for yourself and of course for others.
Archive links at: https://annas-archive.org/md5/c3b3f37cc23e73e1b54eeb6e5fbf8f20
Sci hub link from that archive: https://sci-hub.ru/10.1177/1363460711422322a
Thanks. Yes, I was aware of it. Eric Anderson was on Sexnet some years ago. Although I am grateful for a positive review, it needs to be said that this particular review was far more about the reviewers’ ideas and views than about the book itself. In fact some of what they say significantly misrepresents my position.
I’d like to bring the readers’ attention to three relatively new Wikipedia articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor-attracted_person
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigma_of_pedophilia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allyn_Walker
One hopes the quality of these articles is good enough to deflect the inevitable “deletion votes”.
>One hopes the quality of these articles is good enough to deflect the inevitable “deletion votes”.
A lot of work has clearly gone creating these pages. I see there have already been attempts on the Talk pages to call into question their value, but this input seems rather half-hearted compared to the ferocious backlash that is typically encountered in the case of alleged paedo propaganda.
Perfectly.
Here another incorect article. Antis forgot about any impartiality and dared to wishful thinking. They distort any inconvenient facts and try to present them as untenable.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rind_et_al._controversy
I hope this nonsense will also be corrected in the future.
I’m not aware of any studies that have borne out that children cannot consent to sexual activity. I’ve always assumed that consent is a legal term rather than a scientific one and that the ipse dixit itself is based solely on ‘reverse engineering’ the legal position to produce an item of folk knowledge dressed up as scientific knowledge. Ironically, children aged 16 and 17 can consent to sexual activity in the country in which I live. Does the law in my jurisdiction go against the science? Was the law ever based on science? (Rhetorical questions. I’ve read the Priscilla Alderson studies and I’ve read Matthew Waites’ 2005 book on consent.)
The law was strengthened in the nineteenth century to curb child prostitution. It has absolutely no bearing on the physical or psychological constitution of the child, merely on the facticity of a historical moral problem.
We overestimate the sagacity and justice of laws if we think they are planned with an absolute rationality and maintained according to the nature of a timeless wisdom. Instead, laws arise to fix a specific historical problem, in this case endemic child prostitution, and they stay on the statute books long after, even for centuries, due to an inertia of critical thought and the authority of an ever deepening foothold in tradition.
In plain fact, there is not sufficient critical mass to upset the inertia, even though a high age of consent has almost no basis in scientific fact. Because of course it was never about scientific fact, it was about a historical problem and an extreme safety culture flourishing around a now inert piece of legislation.
The legislation is by now encrusted with all manner of self-justifying safety subcultures, and to preserve their hegemony they adopt extremely harsh, impactful and negative language to hedge in their interests, because if it was presented with neutral and fact-based language, there might be the danger of an (entirely justified) rationalistic challenge.
So yes, in short, the current “consent” legislation is entirely resulting from legal paralysis, around which interest groups have been digging deep defensive trenches for many decades.
Yes, Waites goes into great detail on such matters. He also explores how consent was not an ingredient until the second half of the twentieth century. What we call the age of consent was originally about protecting the prized commodity of female virginity and later about preventing acts deemed unholy. Waites highlights the fact that as late as the 1950s judges were routinely throwing out rape cases where the victim hadn’t put up stiff physical resistance.
According to Waites, the age of consent was very nearly raised to 15 rather than 16 in the UK in 1885. MPs raised it by an extra year as some kind of knee-jerk reaction after returning from their summer recess.
It’s also worth noting that the vast majority of jurisdictions have copied ages of consent from precedents like the UK’s. People then ‘reverse engineer’ that too, claiming that the worldwide prevalence of, say, 16 or 18 as a legal threshold serves as evidence that these ages are biologically appropriate rather than simply copied. The consensus is right because it’s the consensus.
All good points. There is of course nothing biologically appropriate or fitting about the 16-18 age of consent, it is entirely a historical happenstance.
However it has contributed to creating a mass illusion that these ages were specially selected from a carefully handed down, timeless wisdom – and that they are an infallible measure of our civilisation – all of which is laughably false.
I’ve heard it argued (always by women – coincidence?) that brain maturation doesn’t complete until around 25 years of age ergo the age of consent ought to be 25. What?!
I’ve never heard them follow up that argument for severe curtailment of youth and young adult rights with cogent points about why complete brain maturation is necessary for capacity for informed consent to sexual activity.
And it’s always come as news to them that 1) capacity for informed consent in every other arena (medical treatment, social care decisions, etc.) is deemed by professionals (including scientists such as Priscilla Alderson, who is the leading researcher on children’s capacity to consent) to be much lower, making arguments on sexual consent look like instances of special pleading, and 2) close-in-age exemptions undermine the can/can’t consent binary opposition by suggesting that children’s capacity to consent to sexual activity is contingent not on their psychological development but instead on the chronological age of their chosen partner. Or to put it another way, close-in-age exemptions prove what we already knew from the history of AOC legislation, i.e. that the rationale behind it has nothing to do with capacity to consent.
>I’ve heard it argued (always by women – coincidence?)
>that brain maturation doesn’t complete until around 25
>years of age ergo the age of consent ought to be 25.
You should recommend this book to them:
https://www.amazon.com/Empirical-Introduction-Youth-Joseph-Bronski/dp/B095TDQ5FC
Bronski states, among other things, that in ancient Rome “legal and medical training in particular took only 2 to 4 years to complete, and in consequence there are myriad examples of young, well-regarded physicians and lawyers from the ages of 17 to 21. These individuals evidently started training around 14, continuing for a few years before assuming full responsibilities in their late teens. And indeed did they have full responsibilities: many inscriptions mourning dead youths include lines such as, “he was a talented doctor who was not greedy to the detriment of the poor””
Their contemporaries should have said to those teens: “Who do you think you are? You can’t be so brazen as to be well-regarded and responsible, for 2000 years from now a couple of women, after looking at some colored spots on a screen, will reveal that you are nothing but a small child with no brain!”
“The law was strengthened in the nineteenth century to curb child prostitution. It has absolutely no bearing on the physical or psychological constitution of the child, merely on the facticity of a historical moral problem.”
> beautiful comment and beautifully written overall. Absolutely spot on Zen.
Thank you Prue for your gracious praise, I’m grateful
And just like that, it is up for deletion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Minor-attracted_person_(2nd_nomination)
However, they don’t want to delete such nonsense as Non-binary person. Where is the following written:
What is the “third gender” ? Male, Female and … Bigender ? As I know “more than one gender” means that the person is Bigender. Even if the gender is floating, such a person is a Bigender anyway. Or have they already forgotten about this term ? If a person has no gender(which is strange in itself), it should be called Agender at least by analogy with Asexual.
In this case, I come to the conclusion that term “Non-binary person” is contrived, redundant and unnecessary, because all the relevant terms already exist (Cisgender, Bigender, Transgender and suppose Agender)
And now for a totally unrelated comment, which is actually a request for information, condoned by Tom himself…
If anyone knows of ‘on-topic’ writing (books, articles, etc) by pedophiles themselves. I mean stories, musings, ponderings from the perspective of people like you and me, not from a distances, scientific viewpoint. For informational and entertaining purposes.
Frances, or Francis
> condoned by Tom himself…
Positively encouraged by me, actually. There are various MAP and MAP-friendly resources out there, such as Ipce and Newgon, but is there an up-to-date bibliography, or critical review of works by paedophiles, or MAPs more loosely? Do by all means suggest individual titles as well.
I’ll have to be a bit of a wet blanket though. What I cannot allow here is an assemblage of MAP erotica, thanks to UK legislation of 2009. Biography and other serious reflections are OK, as are published works by MAPs, provided that they are currently available in the UK through libraries (including old, out-of-print, works), bookshops, or “reputable” online suppliers such as Amazon.
> MAP erotica
I should imagine the breadth of this definition is huge, particularly bearing in mind the nature of Lesley Uittenbogaard’s conviction for CP (although this was in Holland).
If you like poems or song expressing love for young girls, even if the authors do not claim to be MAPs, then visit my site (click on my name).
Incredibly beautiful artwork as well, Christian!
These countries are highly religious, yet very violent. I dont think God approves? Grass doesnt appear to be greener. Although I feel moving to European mainland i wouldnt get harassed so much (Im in the UK). This country has become increasingly hostile to MAPSs or whatever you want to call us.Even Philip Schofield is being called a N&*%$ and a predator, groomer. and he was with a 18 year old…
Another one from The SUN, my son: “Sex pests aged 4 kicked out of school: 14,754 expelled or suspended Sep ’06 – Jul ’11 for sexual misconduct. 1,123 children were of primary age, some in reception!”
Plus, Transgender Minnesota State Rep moves for MAPS protection (a protected species?).
https://reduxx.info/transgender-state-representative-moves-to-allow-sexual-attachment-to-children-to-be-classified-as-protected-sexual-orientation/
The first item reported by HHP is important but not exactly news. The second really is news but may not be quite what it seems: the source, Reduxx, is very unreliable. So is Fox News, but at least the Fox version (do not see others yet on Google News) gives the politician’s response to the claim that this is a pro-paedophile move:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/transgender-minnesota-lawmaker-introduces-bill-removing-anti-pedophile-language-states-human-rights-act
One thing to emerge from both stories is that those responsible for drafting Minnesota’s Human Rights Act made a terrible hash of the clause on sexual orientation. It is as clear as mud and makes little sense in either the present version or the proposed amendment.
https://yewtu.be/eDErXY3GlE0
https://metro.co.uk/2023/04/25/webpages-containing-most-extreme-child-abuse-have-doubled-since-2020-18668218/
Moral crusaders, bent on ending peoples right to privacy, hype up by using ‘child abuse imagery’ excuse as the finalisation on the Online Safety Bill nears?
No-one wants to see a child undergo ANY harm or suffering. And CSAM is toxic because, even if there weren’t cases of egregious harm, its high enforcement priority means the police will inevitably knock down your door.
Having said that, the IWF admits that four in every five instances are solitary children self-filming in their bedroom. This is the reality of the situation, and far removed from the thunderous rhetoric of the enforcers. I would question the high enforcement priority of children self-filming – it is clearly only de facto and not de jure that a moral, sensible man never seek out this “illegally branded” stuff: for the sake of his own well-being, safety and security, and that of his family. There is a crazy disproportion to enforcement but so be it – I won’t argue.
However, the moral crusade has reached such proportions now that interested parties want to universally spy on the public’s communications. I don’t particularly care about privacy and I’m not a privacy advocate, but I know that for swathes of ordinary people this is an intolerable red line. And the worst of these “interested parties”, the wretched wankers at the NSPCC, unsurprisingly want the most Stalinist extreme of proposal.
I am very moral and very cautious, and even for me the draconian enforcement factor is the main reason for never seeking out this material, rather than an argument from morality, or righteousness, or the magic “harm” of a passive act. But when I think of the hundreds of thousands of Joe Public less moral and cautious than me, I foresee CSAM becoming an uncontrollable problem, leading to desperate attempts to curtail the inevitable: these absurd propositions of spying on everybody are an attempt to prevent going further down the road of eventual legalisation.
When you ban visual material under the pretext that it is “abuse” and “obscenity”, you end up censoring art. I know that well, with the repeated attempts to block and censor Pigtails in Paint. Strong forces are always pushing to make the window of what is allowed ever narrower. Therefore I am against the censorship of Internet and the monitoring of its private use.
I wonder how much of the rise in serious CSAM is down to law enforcement resources being directed towards ‘low-hanging fruit’ in order to bolster conviction rates. By ‘low-hanging fruit’ I mean easy-to-crack cases of guys viewing non-sexual j***bait images on the clearnet, for example. One way of redirecting law enforcement resources towards serious CSA and serious CSAM cases would be to acknowledge that when girls hit a certain stage of development (mid-teens), the belly tops and short skirts come out and they want to display themselves and men want to look. Even some police chief in charge of the team that deal with this (can’t remember his name) said they should be focusing on the genuinely harmful stuff but can’t because when they discover the minor stuff they still have to act, and the minor stuff is so much easier to discover.
There is a legal risk in all such images. Enforcement rules are very harsh.
Maybe this could be changed, but the public will just isn’t there. Today Elon banned a prominent MAP account on Twitter and said “this isn’t tolerated on this platform”. It seemed to me like tossing red meat to the conservative wolves. They all lavished praise on Elon in the replies.
What I’m saying is that if even the free speech to discuss MAP issues is banned, how can we possibly expect any easing in image laws? Free speech on major platforms will come first.
What is this prominent MAP account may i ask? I am present on Twitter and my views are very extreme. Ie i even say 17 year olds arent childen…
Can’t remember the Twitter handle now but he had about 2,500 followers, a lot for a MAP account. He designed a paedophilia flag and this was apparently the cardinal sin. But conservatives really got on his case and by then it was inevitable he would be suspended. Elon is a strong believer in the weight of public opinion in decisions to suspend.
Oh dear ive just found him.. i have interacted with him before. I dont think hes even pro pedo, i think he likes teens, as to why he is using the term
YAPyouth attracted person.Update- ive just been suspended by twitter!! For perfectly valid views. I am a bit annoyed to say the least, but alas i have been here before. Thanks Musk,
freespeech absolutist. Absolute LIAR more like.Do download Element and join our workgroup if you are not already a member. Twitter is within our purview and we have live support, resources and funding to help you keep up the fight.
https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Help:Joining_PCMA_chat
What is this Element may i ask? True i am running out of options. FST seems to have gone, and Twitter i may return again somehow but will probably get banned again.. Kayne West has bought Parler i believe but im pretty sure he wont allow MAP views. As all these pro free speechers are real hypocrites
The media can lie about this topic without ever being fact-checked, because it’s illegal to independently view the images.
The rise in the most severe images being found was branded ‘deeply disturbing’ by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), which warned of the ‘life-long harm it causes these children’.
The way they describe it makes it seem like the material involves rape, penetration by an adult, bestiality, and all sorts of terrible acts which can cause life-long harm to children.
Luckily, the IWF lets us know that the overwhelming majority of what they define as category A, “the most extreme material”, is just footage of girls younger than 18 inserting fingers and household objects into their vaginas. Anything which involves penetration, by any object, including one’s own fingers, according to the IWF’s system of categorization, is included as the “most extreme” category, alongside bestiality and rape.
Meanwhile, hapless UK Keystone/keypad cops (‘truncheons’ drawn?) now chase unstoppable guilt-free five and six year olds mocking so called ‘Sex Laws’ with self made CP and Sexting.
Thousands of children including a boy aged five, have been investigated for sexting, the BBC has learned.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40566026
“Children as young as six are sexting suspects, Met Police reveal”
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-51507352
Sexting among under-16s skyrocketing, says Labour.
And, not just porn. Check, hypocrite U.K SeX-Filled top sales ‘FAMILY’ rag the SUN, Chief London Reporter Tom Wells, “Kids Aged 6 are Teacher Sex Abusers! Among a sharp rise in similar shocking cases, a six year old girl stood in front of a male teacher, lifted her skirt and boldly massaged herself through her underwear.”
The Anglosphere governments are completely out of control. Once the hysterical moralists were allowed dominion over people’s personal lives, government was only too happy to oblige.
>The Anglosphere governments are completely out of control
What I find most offensive is the corrupt and deviant use made of language by governmental organisations. I analyse language closely, particular diction, related semantic field, emotive manipulation…Language creates reality, and governmental organisations are Orwellian abusers of language.
Consider this:
Victims and survivors of child sexual abuse are traumatised long after the physical suffering has ended. We exist to stop child sexual abuse online, because no child should ever face this horror.
The nexus “victim trauma suffering horror” is designed to activate the amygdala in the brain that deals with a fear response to threats, and conditions emotional behaviour. The heavily laden formulae are mental conditioning scripts to excite extreme negative emotional responses.
If we restricted ourselves to a balanced assessment of the facts, we would say the descriptor “trauma suffering horror” only applies to a small minority of child sexual activity, namely where an adult forcibly assaults a child. The statisticians say a large proportion of child sexual activity is “self-abuse” or, more colloquially, self-exploration by the solitary child.
This Orwellian dishonesty in language, when applied to MAPs, is responsible for much of the public hatred and psychological violence directed at minor attracted sexuality, even simply in the abstract.
If governmental organisations didn’t continue to exert this criminal linguistic grip on reality (for language creates reality) then maybe some of the demonic hatred in society would lessen.
Excellent post, ZT, which got me thinking, especially when you used the word “abstract” near the end. Earlier on, you wrote:
>The nexus “victim trauma suffering horror” is designed to activate the amygdala in the brain that deals with a fear response to threats, and conditions emotional behaviour.
Whether those who use such words do so in ways consciously “designed” for emotive effect or not, emotive words are indeed processed in the amygdala. In addition to eliciting emotional responses such as fear, this part of the brain also processes memory. This enables previously conditioned associations to be brought into play very swiftly via the use of familiar abstract words. Even though such words lack any interestingly original or graphically compelling content, they are still powerful because they are instantly triggering.
The reason for my challenge over what the words are “designed” to do arises from the fact that the people who write the government reports, etc, that you have in mind are not necessarily being cynical or dishonestly manipulative in their use of language. They include true believers. They are people with an amygdala like anyone else, and all too susceptible to self-reinforcing their own propaganda through repetition.
They include the author of a book I have just finished reading, which I will be reviewing for an academic journal. This is a very learned, scholarly guy whose style is superficially objective and detached. You wouldn’t mistake his writing for that of a tabloid wind-up merchant. Nevertheless, his endless strings of seemingly innocuous (but actually triggering) abstractions are likely to have an emotive effect on his intended readers, such that baseless assumptions in his writing (e.g. whether allegedly “traumatic” events really are traumatic) are likely to go unchallenged.
Thank you, ZT, for drawing this point about abstraction to my attention.
Seriously – is that really what we believe is responsible for creating reality? The activity in goodness knows how many individual “amygdalas”, prompted by language? That somehow then all miraculously coincide to produce the effects we live under? Wouldn’t it be more sensible to say that it is the *sign* of the freshly however blooded victim that now commands/demands our collective-attention? That this was all set in motion by the crucifixion of one Christ Jesus of Nazareth but since we arrived at the ultimate power asymmetries of Hiroshima and Auschwitz has gone radically pear-shaped? That language everywhere now seeks to propagate & consecrate this sign quite heedless of the potential social consequences? Would the blurted signs “victim trauma suffering horror” have “instantly triggered” any citizen before, let’s say, the year 1965? Let us rise from the rather silly fact of our individual amygdalas, gentlemen, and realize that that is NOT where any *significance* resides …
>Seriously – is that really what we believe is responsible for creating reality?
No.
The amygdala is no more or less than a bodily organ. Like other such organs – heart, liver, lungs – it is of vital importance and has specialist functions that can be described in simple mechanistic terms.
But the fact that the amygdala is indispensible for our efective functioning as humans, thanks (in part) to its role as a mechanism for converting memories into emotions when triggered by certain words (words that might be compared with enzymes: small chemical substances with huge power to catalyse immense chemical changes) should not be taken to imply more than is stated in the description of its functions.
So, just because the amygdala has a mediating role in the generation of emotion does not mean it is all-important as the seat and source of all meaning, or that it “creates reality”.
Science tends to be quite specific in its claims. From early science, we learnt that the heart is a muscle that pumps blood. It took mystics and poets, not scientists, to misidentity this organ as the seat of the emotions.
What’s instantly wrong there Tom is the idea that the brainpart MEDIATES. What mediates is what manner of representation goes inbetween, and alters as it goes the perspective of whatever parties are present on whichever particular scene.
I think we should admit that what body parts do is rather *sponsor* emotion. With this term we hope to reduce metaphorical dependence to a minimum
>What mediates is what manner of representation goes in between
Yes, that’s true. For greater accuracy I could have said the amygdala is a site at which mediation takes place, or something of the sort. However, it is not clear to me from what you say that this has any bearing on the validity of my point. I was simply using shorthand in a way that kept things relatively clear and simple. Wordy alternatives might have risked losing this clarity.
Hmmm. For my money – and might i recklessly assume that of countless others – the phrase “struck fear into her heart” is as specific/accurate as it gets. That’s where we *feel* the fear – and corresponding ‘counterforce’ of any courage – quite regardless of whatever physico-chemical transactiions might serve as accompaniment. Therefore, in the name of science, not of poetry, i’m rooting for the emotional-body being indeed “seated”right there…in the center of one’s chest.
.
.what do you think so far?
Anyone else care to join in? I don’t feel I have anything to add.
It seems that according to Mr. Turps, a mental state is located wherever we feel it is located. But what about an amputee who feels a pain in a leg that isn’t there?
What about the amputee?
The amputee feels pain in a leg that no longer exists, which seems to show that a pain is not always located in the place where it seems to be.
One would expect that the neural network of a body is thrown into considerable confusion following such a major alteration of the ‘territory’ and that signals as perceived by that body’s owner would do many a strange thing for quite some time. I do not see how this refutes my insistence that fear/courage felt in the heart cannot be any kind of ‘illusion’. It is felt there because it is there! Is it your wish to refute such, and if so, how would you go about doing that? NB ..i am not talking about pain, i am talking about the “seat” of emotion – where it instantly situates itself.
All feelings are in fact activity of neurons in the brain. When you feel pain in the heart, it happens in the brain.
Right. So your “heart” feels nothing. Now i’ve heard it all..Maybe that’s the whole problem with our so-called “MAP” movement? It has no real heart? None that does not automatically assign any potential motivation to an abstraction in the crow’s nest? Strictly reserved for safe spaces like this one, in which we may freewheel away merrily in what amounts to a social vacuum?
All the devoted Japanese doll accounts on Twitter got wiped last week by Mr Musk, simply because a pack of profoundly ignorant hysterics from Oz called “CollectiveShout” reported them.
And then he tweets: “censor not, lest ye be censored”
Until we publically fight back, we are toast. That’s really all there is to it
We can talk about the location of the fear in terms of the location of those events most directly correlated with the fear’s occurrence (in the brain) or we can talk about its location in terms of where it is felt to be. But to insist that, over and above those two things, there is somewhere which is the pain’s real location, is, I suggest, a piece of idle metaphysics.
So in effect, SJ, given this rather measly choice between “most correlated with” and “most felt to be” we are saying that in order to appease the demand for “accuracy”, we should say the feeling has NO location? I think you are misapplying the term ‘metaphysics’ altogether, which as i understand it, means the triunph of the propositional idea over everything else that might have ever led up to, fed into, its. final/ideational ‘coronation’?
What would you say it is that we really have against the prospect of a real location? An event is something quite other than a simple occurrence, surely! To be an event an occurrence must be collectively witnessed and able to be recalled, amirite? By more than one experiencing agent?.
I find your notion of metaphysics a bit puzzling. For me, metaphysical statements are statements which look as if they say something, but actually assert nothing.
I think the terms ‘event’ and ‘occurrence’ are pretty much interchangeable. I think we can call a pain or a feeling of fear an event, but if so, we must say that it is an event that can only be witnessed by one person – the person who experiences it.
The police have no business investigating kids for sexting, you really think they want the police looking at their private pics? This is abuse to me.
Exactly, because the kids do it to show their secret beauties, while the police look at it with inquisitorial eyes, which is quite the opposite.
This guy Ballard is a real piece of shi*t
He set up the Dutch guys and paid off the Ecuador government so he could make a promo film for his corrupt company O.U.R. The government of Ecuador should be ashamed to be Ballard’s bitch, used by a corrupt American scumbag to make himself rich. Don’t the Ecuadorians and Mexicans have any self-respect? Disgusting and outrageous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLUqDmbiIvE
>Disgusting and outrageous.
Absolutely. And all the more dangerous for being well resourced, so he can make slick vids like the linked promo.
I would like to see the footage featuring Nelson. There is the possibility he could’ve tried to do something crazy and stupid. That to one side, there is so much hyperbole and virtue signalling rhetoric in the promos, it just goes to show how far these organisations will push the truth, or at least their version of it. Difficulty believing what I’ve just seen. But not in the least bit surprising.
The whole operation is a fake and degenerate hysteria. Now we see directly how these “child-trafficking” organizations fabricate moral panic to collect funding and gain power. They are truly evil, as are their retarded supporters, because they will stop at no end for their agenda, which in this example alone includes destroying free speech, funding corrupt politicians, and torturing political activists.
Well said. However, pedophile activists in general need to be more aware of what they are up against, and they sadly tend to underestimate the lengths to which these moral crusader types will go.
Anyone got any lowdown on this? ..
https://www.dailywire.com/news/un-backed-report-suggests-normalizing-pedophilia-decriminalizing-all-sexual-activity
Where might one expect such a “report” to have any impact?
>Where might one expect such a “report” to have any impact?
Among the usual readers of the Daily Wire, presumably i.e. people who are more interested in the message than its accuracy.
The link to the UN report was given in the Washington Examiner article:
https://icj2.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/8-MARCH-Principles-FINAL-printer-version-1-MARCH-2023.pdf
Read page 22.
Wow! Nice work – Thankyou, Christian!
A number of more than reasonable suggestions for rational people, but I’m guessing this article is designed to invite people to virtue signal.
“Mature minor doctrine” in liberal states such as Washington radically sets the age of medical consent at twelve. Those twelve or older can take medical decisions independent of their parents on for example gender dysphoria. In practice the school doctor, nurse or counsellor can hide information from the parents and the question has been raised: “if children can consent to independent medical choices at twelve, what will this extend to?”
>“Mature minor doctrine” in liberal states such as Washington radically sets the age of medical consent at twelve.
12? Chapter and verse needed here ZT. My understanding is that the mature minor doctrine in the US, like “Gillick competence” in the UK, allows for exceptions based on an individual minor demonstrating what is taken to be exceptional maturity for their years. The way you have put it appears to suggest that maturity is automatically deemed to be an attribute, starting at 12, in the liberal states in question.
A quick Google check discloses the following statement by Seattle and King County in the state of Washington:
https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/locations/mature-minor-rule.aspx#
The Mature Minor Rule
About the Mature Minor Rule
The Mature Minor Rule was created as a result of a court case, Smith v. Seibly, 72 Wn.2d 16 (1967), and is part of Public Health – Seattle & King County’s policy which allows health care providers to treat youth under the age of eighteen as adults based upon an assessment and documentation of the youth’s maturity.
The Mature Minor Rule requires that providers consider the Mature Minor Factors below to determine whether a youth has the capacity to understand the proposed health care service and/or treatment and is sufficiently mature to make their own health care decisions.
Mature Minor Factors (must meet one or more)
Freedom from parents or guardian: lives apart, manages their own affairs?
The youth is living apart from their parents or guardians and is managing their own affairs.
Age and maturity?
The youth is able to provide reliable information and make important decisions with good insight and judgment.
Self-supporting?
The youth is financially independent from parents or guardians or is involved in a work-training program.
Training and experience?
The youth has sufficient training and experience to make knowing and intelligent healthcare decisions.
General conduct as an adult?
The youth demonstrates the general conduct of an adult.
Ok, this is my source, you can judge for yourself:
https://twitter.com/landonstarbuck/status/1649062539265753089
A Steve Bannon TV show? Call that a source? LOL!
@Zen: It’s not mature minor doctrine. It’s the medical age of consent. And yes, it will eventually lead exactly where you think. Which is why you should stop bagging on trans kids and queer people in general. Your religious friends are nothing but a bunch of fascists who would kill you if they had the chance.
Perplexed:
1) I’ve never attacked LGBT+, in fact I respect their right to their own sexuality and views (how could I not without being a hypocrite?) While I think castrations and mastectomies on children are morally problematic, and more psychotherapeutic solutions should be implemented for gender dysphoria, I don’t “deny” the rights of trans kids either. My own view is that I don’t identify with the rainbow flag nor would I want my sexuality to be represented by the rainbow flag, with all its attendant cultural baggage.
2) Religion is a rich cultural heritage and a vital source of meaning for many. Just because some (excessively vocal) religious people have “fascist” views as you put it, this doesn’t tar all religious people with the same brush. Politics is entirely separate from religion and we don’t all have to act like Matt Walsh just because we have a spiritual nature (which is as innate a part of character as sexuality). To deny someone’s spirituality is commensurate with denying someone’s sexuality.
3) I’m glad you think lower medical ages of consent (and Tucker Carlson quoted seven in some contexts) will ultimately impact on views surrounding the sexual prohibitions and taboos of children; I would be inclined to agree. Also, while traditional working class views are solidly and virulently anti-paedophilic, never underestimate the ability of intelligent liberal elites to manipulate and soothe public opinion: the common man can be brought round to our position – that is not the issue. The issue is in more liberal elites agreeing that minor sexuality – and the minor attracted sexuality of adults – are legitimate areas of concern for social acceptance and normalisation.
Mutilation of children (e.g. breast removal on 12-year-old girls, puberty blockers, typically followed by cross-sex hormones, to younger children) leads to great suffering and is a direct attack on the future!
Is it any wonder people (such as parents, obviously, or pedophiles) with actual skin in the game might push back against gender ideology, triggering the queer persecution complex?
Possibly for the first time, I find myself in agreement with Nada. I recommend this excellent recent article:
https://unherd.com/2023/04/the-media-is-spreading-bad-trans-science/
The media is spreading bad trans science
Misleading studies are being taken as gospel
Jesse Singal, UnHerd, 18 April 2023
In the light of emerging information, my views have changed a lot on this subject from when I first blogged on it in the articles linked below, six years ago.
https://heretictoc.com/2017/02/09/trans-kids-1-insistent-consistent-persistent/
https://heretictoc.com/2017/02/16/trans-kids-2-the-intersex-brain/
Quote, ye visionary Hibbing Bard, Swingin’ 64, “Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command, for the times (if not The Examiner) they are a-changin'”
The Washington Examiner, Thursday, April 20, 2023 BELTWAY CONFIDENTIAL
The United Nations now promotes adults having sex with minorsby Zachary Faria, Commentary Writer
“In case you need yet another reason to support defunding the United Nations, the organization is promoting the idea that minors can consent to sex with adults.
The International Commission of Jurists published a report claiming that “sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law.”
According to the ICJ, “criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-united-nations-now-promotes-adults-having-sex-with-minors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90WD_ats6eE
Unsurprisingly, this is a cynical attempt to get readers foaming at the mouth, to partisan political ends.
https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-united-nations-report-consent-772818741019
The ICJ argues for the application of criminal law in a non-discriminatory way. Yet it fails to recognise the discrimination that inheres in its conformity with the consensus position on close-in-age exemptions, which render minors’ capacity to consent contingent not on their own chronological age or physical or psychological development but instead on the chronological age of their chosen partner.
To be fully non-discriminatory, we should not have a situation in which a 15-year-old girl who is primaily attracted to men aged 25-45 (for example) cannot express herself sexually with a partner of her choosing for fear of that partner facing life-changing consequences whilst her peers are happily getting it on with close-in-age partners without such fear. That is discrimination plain and simple, and it’s predicated on the baseless assumption that all sexual expression between adults and minors is necessarily exploitative.
So, finally trashing the ancient myth of the ‘asexual child’ Worldwide, or recently suggested ‘Schrodinger’s child’ in the next room. Today’s dominant narrative via mainstream Wiki is now assertively all-age pro-Wanking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masturbation
And, with no way to ever enforce an AOCM/’Age Of Consent To Masturbate’ there can be no way to prove that emancipated healthy minors wanking to fantasies or images of attractive adults, distant, nearby, or in the next room; are in any way self harmed or abused.
Indeed, when such healthy fantasies become normal realities equalised to a 6+ Age Of Criminal Responsibility/AOCR, a self-asserting minor mutually masturbating an attractive adult, might amusingly say, “My Mind, My body, My Choice – Mind yer own!”.
Quote, assertive Tuesday Weld, 13, already HOT dating Hollywood stars like Frank Sinatra and John Ireland, when asked by her Mom to test for Kubrick’s planned ‘Lolita’ movie, “No thanks, and I don’t need to test – I AM Lolita!” (Though, sadly current unfunny fake-Puritan ‘Wokesters’ have mentally abused gently ageing Tuesday to recently exclaim, paraphrased, “I was a very naughty girl.”)
https://jenikirbyhistory.getarchive.net/amp/media/confidential-magazine-cover-september-1960-tuesday-weld-8de502
Could Vladimir Nabokov have been a repressed hebephile? He certainly understood that most of his audience would not have a favorable opinion of “child molesters” and used that to his benefit and to great effect in Lolita, The Enchanter and some of his other less well-known novellas. In public, he never said or did anything that could suggest he approved of hebephilia. And no doubt most modern readers of Lolita would like to believe that Nabokov was just as much opposed to it as they are.
So I was quite surprised when I read the following passage that appeared in article about Lolita by Nabokov scholar J.E Rivers:
Clearly, Nabokov’s private views on hebephilia were far more nuanced than those of most people alive today.
This blog post discusses a number of facts about Nabokov that, when considered holistically, seem to suggest that he was, in fact, hebephilic. For example, he wrote a poem so graphic that it would likely be considered child erotica if it had been written today, and he was an admirer of the now highly controversial Balthus, known for his erotic paintings of pubescent girls.
Fantastic post, Leo!
There was a quote in the linked blog that I found particularly persuasive:
Martin Amis, who prefers the word nympholepsy to ephebophilia, wrote in a Guardian article “The Problem with Nabokov” that “One commonsensical caveat persists, for all our literary-critical impartiality: writers like to write about the things they like to think about.”
With my blog-host hat on, I should add that unfortunately this post went initially to Spam for some reason. Hence the rather long time in moderation, or should I say pre-moderation, before it was even noticed.
Adding to my previous comment: books and articles about Lolita abound with victimologist claims that Vladimir Nabokov was abused as a child by his uncle Vasily Ivanovich Rukavishnikov, and that this “traumatizing” experience is what inspired him to write stories with unhappy endings for the antihero minor-attracted protagonists.
In the early 2000s, Vladimir Nabokov’s son was so frustrated by these baseless claims that he almost burned the unpublished manuscript of The Original of Laura because of them:
One single sentence from Nabokov’s autobiography, Speak, Memory, is often taken out of context and cited as evidence of childhood abuse:
That Nabokov must have found this to be traumatizing and uncomfortable is usually just assumed to be the case. Because apparently, there is no way a child could not be traumatized or hurt by an adult’s touch.
A perusal of the entire passage paints a very different picture:
Nabokov makes no mention of being disturbed by his uncle’s touch; he merely felt embarrassed for him due to the presence of servants in the same room. Nowhere in the book is uncle Ruka portrayed as a bad person. And yet, some writers have let their fantasies run wild on this particular passage and claimed that trauma from this experience is what motivated Nabokov to write Lolita and similarly themed books.
Fascinating!
Integrated this info into a new page: https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov
Any suggestions for additions, do let me know…
I didn’t find the blog post particularly convincing, more conspiratorial / leading, but I do agree with the obviously indisputable: he was willing to write about nymphets and topics like incest (with Ada), and was clearly an intellectual very aware of literary and art figures who relate to such topics. The subject was of great interest to him, as it is to many people today for a variety of reasons (sometimes, hostile reasons). Any more than that, however, just isn’t there. No one seems to know if he ever engaged in real-life sexual activity with young people, for whatever reason.
I must admit I’ve never read Lolita, only about it. If it’s anything like the Stanley Kubrick film (which I watched), I’m not sure I want to read it. A gross, ridiculous portrayal of the most unsexy and one-sided relationship I’ve ever seen. It was utterly depressing and sad…
>I must admit I’ve never read Lolita, only about it. If it’s anything like the Stanley Kubrick film (which I watched), I’m not sure I want to read it.
I have always felt the book is overrated in that Nabokov takes a moralistic line that basically offers readers nothing new: he merely endorses popular prejudice. This is a great shame as he comes close, with Humbert, to presenting a sympathetic character, but then loads the dice of the narrative against him, in order, it seems, to conform with public expectations and (as I think highly likely) to combat his own illicit desires.
I avoided the Kubrick film as Sue Lyon looked far too old to be convincing as Lolita, but Adrian Lyne’s later version is better in this regard, with Dominique Swain as Lolita. Jeremy Irons is also a very credible Humbert. Even Quilty, although he is plainly supposed to be the true monster of the piece, is nevertheless rightly portrayed with a certain louche charm: Lolita, after all, was in love with him, not with Humbert, and he has to be a credible figure for this.
Nabokov seems to represent a great candidate for the “self-hating” pedophile/hebephile label…
Thanks Tom, will check out the hopefully much better film version sometime. I recently watched Leon: The Professional (1994), a film recommended to me by an MAP over a forum a long time ago. I can see why they recommended it: it’s action packed, humorous, a bit cringy at points, and there’s even erotic tension between the main cast… So, a good film: I also recommend!
I agree that Nabokov unfortunately appears to endorse popular prejudice to at least some degree, but the degree to which he does so is often exaggerated by modern readers.
Lolita was rejected by all respectable publishers in America. Nabokov eventually had it published by a Paris-based company that mostly published erotica.
If Nabokov had been courageous enough to portray Humbert in a positive light, he would have had an even harder time getting the book published and bringing it to the public’s attention, not to mention he would have risked being labelled as a pervert.
Lolita begins with a faux-warning by “Dr. John Ray” that is filled with moralizing platitudes and that flatters the prejudices of his audience. It’s only at the very end of the book that Nabokov reveals that it was meant as a guide on how not to read the book.
In the afterword of the novel, Nabokov disavows “Dr. John Ray’s” fictional foreword, which waxes lyrical about Humbert’s “moral leprosy”, stating unambiguously that “Lolita has no moral in tow”. As Craig Raine convincingly argues in the Penguin Modern Classics edition, the foreword of Lolita reads like it was meant to parody conventional sexual morality and the outrage of moral crusaders:
What I find interesting about the book is not Humbert’s disturbed personality, but rather the passionate way in which he expresses his love for Dolores. To quote the words of the legendary American literary critic Lionel Trilling:
Could Nabokov have written so elegantly about the love of a disturbed man for a 12-year-old girl without being attracted to her himself? It’s possible, of course, but I don’t think it’s very likely.
It must be 50 years since I read Lolita, so I really shouldn’t be opining publicly as to its shortcomings without revisiting the text. While I remember the foreword by “Dr John Ray”, I confess I had entirely forgotten the afterword “stating unambiguously that ‘Lolita has no moral in tow’”.
As an exercise in cultural studies rather than literary criticism, though, what matters is not the text Nabokov wrote but the text its readers have read, and notions of the text that commentators, film-makers, etc, have purveyed to a wider audience. On this basis, time has shown Dr Ray to be the “real author” of the book.
The world has not been deaf, though, to the illicit rapture that is the Humbert’s most indelible legacy. Trilling puts it well, in the quote you give. It is there, delivered with truly unforgettable intensity in one of the most famous openings in all literature: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.”
So, arguably is the moral message, whatever disclaimer we have at the end. It is there, is it not, in that one word, “sin”? Not Dr Ray’s word, but Humbert’s own.
That said, you rightly point out, Leo, that the barriers to publication of such a book were formidable. As such, its contents must have been “challenging” in the minds of many publishers, whatever we might think as MAPs.
I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction
Lolita has no moral in tow
These statements should be considered within the context of Nabokov’s own brand of aestheticism, which outwardly championed art for art’s sake credos yet ultimately centred on the idea that good art is deceptive. Didacticism involves overt moralising. Lolita does have a covert moral or two in tow, the main one being to ‘caress the divine detail’ in order to transcend solipsism and treat others not as a means to an end but as an end in themselves. Nabokov adopts a strategy of reader seduction and demands that we read closely so as to avoid becoming HH’s dupe.
Lionel Trilling
In a televised interview with Trilling and Nabokov, Trilling declared Lolita to be a love story and Nabokov was polite enough not to dismiss this outright, instead saying that if it is a love story, it’s the story of his (Nabokov’s) love of the English language. Trilling was way off the mark.
In Strong Opinions, Nabokov described HH as ‘a vain and cruel wretch who manages to appear touching’. Close reading reveals the extent of HH’s solipsism and abuse (of Annabel, of Dolores). Scenes that seem innocent enough on the surface prove on closer inspection to be abusive. There are plenty of hints in the description of the ‘tryst’ with Annabel in the mimosa grove that he has gotten her drunk, is forcing himself on her and that she isn’t enjoying it. (There are some interesting scholarly analyses of dates in Lolita that suggest he was much older than Annabel — 17 or 18 to her 8 or 9, if I recall correctly.) The davenport scene also gives hints that he’s forcing himself upon Dolores. As for what JRJ terms the ‘moral apotheosis’ at the end of the novel, Michael Wood (2003) has argued convincingly that HH’s tone is too mawkish and self-regarding to be taken seriously as genuinely contrite, and Kevin Ohi’s analysis (2005) of the passage is masterful. The lines of the ‘old poet’ have also been revealed as a self-serving lament (Gerard de Vries, 1994). HH’s part of the novel ends, as it began, with ‘Lolita’, Dolores once again ‘safely solipsised’ in the (for HH) inescapable circularity of an impenetrable, amoral ‘refuge of art’.
Trilling and his view of Lolita as a love story belong to a past era of Nabokov scholarship. There have been much more sophisticated and convincing analyses since what is referred to as the ‘ethical turn’ in Nabokovian studies, which began with Ellen Pifer in 1980 and continued more notably with Richard Rorty’s brilliant but imperfect analysis in 1989.
>Trilling and his view of Lolita as a love story belong to a past era of Nabokov scholarship.
Happy to take your word for it, FM, although I find myself beginning to wish I were better versed in this area. It’s a long time since I paid much attention to fiction.
>It’s a long time since I paid much attention to fiction.<
Er, daily mainstream Dominant Narrative “Fiction”?
And, flip the script, in plain sight for decades a lusty “Lolita’s” own tale told by the former 14yr old, among millions more ‘Lolitas’ Worldwide largely unheard, who lust after and lay adults.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/955725
Recalls a lusty 13yr old ‘Lolita’ deviously on an 18+ pre-Web Chatline (free for femmes), paraphrased, “Hi, Man I like your voice.”
“You’re not eighteen, more like 13!”
“So, I ain’t bovvered. Have ya got a BIG Bulge?” “Well, I’m not gonna say I’ve got a small one am I? So, who’s your fave pinup?”
“BECKHAM!”
“And, shy little thing, what would you do if he was there with you right now?”
“I’d pull his shorts DOWN!”
Considering that Nabokov himself used the term “love” to describe what Lolita is about, writers who claim that wasn’t his intent seem to be on rather flimsy grounds. I guess it’s not a coincidence that the alleged “ethical turn” in scholars’ opinions only began after Nabokov himself had died.
The part of the interview where Trilling and Nabokov discuss whether Lolita is about love is available on Youtube. Having watched that and also having read the transcript of the full interview, which is available on page 30 of this book, I can say with full confidence that you’re mistaken and that Nabokov never made that remark to Trilling.
Nabokov did appear to challenge Trilling’s view that “love shouldn’t be scandalous”, but in the end he clearly agreed with him that Lolita is about love:
In her 2018 paper, the victimologist writer Lucia C. A. Williams ignored all of the above context, paraphrased Trilling incorrectly, and had to resort to body language analysis in a highly unconvincing attempt to convince her readers that Nabokov disagreed with Trilling:
Of course, it’s completely unsurprising that writers whose minds are completely closed off to the possibility of an adult being in love with a child, would be anxious to prove that Lolita is not an exception.
To say that Humbert loved Lolita is neither a defence of him as a person, nor an excuse for his behavior, for the same reason that to say that Henry VIII loved Anne Boleyn is not a defence of that King’s mistreatment of his ill-fated queen: flawed people can also love. Of course, one can disagree and argue that such people are incapable of love; fair enough. I just don’t think there is any evidence that is what Nabokov believed.
Jealousy is the guard dog of love—any kind of love—and it’s evident that in both the case of Humbert and that of Henry VIII, it was a thoroughly vicious dog that should have been put down. But that need not always be the case.
One should be careful not to fall into the trap of assuming that because an author (particularly one as inveterately deceptive as Nabokov) is willing to agree that his/her novel is ‘about love’ that he/she is confirming that Character X’s feelings for Character Y amount to love. And not only because the cast of characters extends beyond Character X and Character Y, but also because an author can produce a novel that is ‘about love’ whilst showing only what love isn’t, or showing only a vain and cruel wretch’s narcissistic self-love and entrapment in a solipsistic aestheticism (the bars of HH’s cage) in which preoccupation with beauty is an end in itself rather than a stepping stone to moral edification, as it is in Friedrich Schiller’s ‘aesthetic education’. Ohi’s analysis (2005) shows how HH’s outpourings of contrition in the clifftop scene at the end of the novel amount to a subtle parody of Schiller’s conviction that preoccupation with beauty can be morally elevating. De Vries’ analysis (1994) shows how the lines of the ‘old poet’, which superficially express contrition, are in fact a concise summary of a passage from Poe’s Poetic Principle. When viewed in the light of what Poe is asserting in that passage, the lines of the old poet are revealed as a self-serving lament on the inextricability of morality from preoccupation with beauty.
Just to reinforce the point, Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground could be said to be ‘about freedom’ (as an antidote to Chernyshevskian rational egoism), but are we to conclude that Underground Man is truly free?
I watched that interview, just once, shortly after it was first put on YouTube and a few years after I stopped working in the field. Watching it back now, I see that I have misremembered its content. The interview is only of passing interest to scholars, of course. Nabokov’s statement that the novel is about his love of the English language is quoted instead in Thomas Frosch’s ‘Parody and Authenticity’ (2003). Note that in the interview with Trilling, Nabokov is quick to correct the interviewer’s characterisation of HH’s feelings as love to ‘passion’, and although he agrees with Trilling that ‘passionate love’ exists in novels, as in life, when Trilling tries to pin down HH’s passion as ‘love’, Nabokov responds characteristically cryptically from his pre-prepared notes: ‘If sex is the sermon made of art, love is the lady of that tower’.
Yes, it is unsurprising that writers whose minds are completely closed off to the possibility of an adult being in love with a child are keen to prove that this novel (the name of which I’m deliberately not mentioning in case it’s what’s triggering the spam filter) isn’t an exception. Confirmation bias is a natural human tendency. And for that reason, we should expect to find some who know, perhaps from first-hand experience, that an adult can love a child in a romantic sense being no less keen to prove that the novel is an exception (or else to resort to downvoting — that indolent surrogate for ad lapidems). With that in mind, if you’d like to continue the discussion (I’m happy to do so, with Tom’s permission), let’s deal in specifics. If you’d like to make a case for HH loving Dolores, I invite you to produce some textual evidence from the novel and perhaps I can show how HH’s text undercuts itself.
>if you’d like to continue the discussion (I’m happy to do so, with Tom’s permission), let’s deal in specifics.
No problem for me. I am finding this fascinating. Incidentally, this post did NOT have to be rescued from spam.
Thanks, Tom. In that case, it seems fair to assume that the title of the novel is triggering the spam filter. It does have certain connotations, after all.
In case I didn’t make this clear in my previous post: My issue is less with people who argue that the novel is not about love or that Humbert did not love Lolita, as with those who claim that Nabokov himself said that the novel it is not about love and that he wrote it to further a moralistic message.
Nabokov’s choice to use an internal narrative point of view, as well as his statement that the book doesn’t have a moral in tow, leave it up to the reader to make a subjective moral judgment. Whether or not the book is about love is not something that readers or even scholars can make objective claims about; it depends on their interpretation of the novel and their personal definition of the word “love”. My personal opinion is that Humbert being, in Nabokov’s own words, a vain and cruel wretch, doesn’t preclude him from being passionately in love with Lolita.
In the novel, the term “pedophilia” is never used, while occurrences of the term “rape” are rare and limited to contexts that have nothing to do with the legal fiction known as “statutory rape”. Humbert describes their first sexual relationship as a game initiated by Lolita. Granted, he is an unreliable narrator, so there is no way to know for certain if he was being honest, but it’s certainly not something that can be ruled out, no matter how many people may wish they could rule it out.
What is much more certain is that Lolita did like older men. That’s why she ended up fleeing with, and loving, Quilty. She said she loved Quilty and that he was the only man she ever loved, and that she would run away to him after Humbert had asked her to return. I don’t think Humbert had any reason to lie about things that did not reflect positively on him.
Nabokov did indeed say that Lolita is about his love of the English language: the quote is from the afterword of the novel. However, it’s obvious from the context that it tells us nothing about whether the novel is about love:
There are, unfortunately, several sources on the internet that take this quote out of context.
Nabokov knew about the existence of hebephilia, defined as a preferential attraction to pubescent minors, at a time when no one, except actual hebephiles, knew that it existed. 50-years before Blanchard coined the term and identified hebephilia as a distinct sexual preference, Nabokov termed it “Nympholepsy” and gave a remarkably accurate description of it in Lolita:
As Mo Ibrahim has documented in this small book, much of Nabokov’s oevre—even many of his earliest works—contain references to hebephilia. So it’s clearly not the case that he learned about the attraction from the few case studies of people convicted for statutory rape that he read when he was writing Lolita.
With the greatest of respect, Leo, I’m a former scholar in the field and your latest comment (as with your previous comments on the topic) shows that you’re nowhere near ready for a scholarly debate on the topic. Or to put it a little more charitably, when engaging in a debate, one hopes for a certain level of return on the investment of one’s time into the debate. Please take this in the spirit in which it’s intended. We’re all at different stages on our learning journeys, after all.
Pulling rank in a discussion is never impressive FM.
I totally get that, Tom, and it’s not my usual style. I read Leo’s latest response whilst in a mood for honesty.
>I totally get that, Tom, and it’s not my usual style.
Well, that is a gracious response, which is appreciated.
Is too much weight placed on furtive introvert Humbert, a weak role-model for aspiring MAPS? When cheeky Lo had earlier willing sex with at least two other men, like Sturdy Charlie at the nicely named ‘Camp Climax For Girls’, plus bold extrovert Hollywood director Clare Quilty. And, as Humbert admits after giggling Lo’s ‘whispered sweet thunder in my ear’ in bed at The Enchanted Hunters, “It was she who seduced me, dear reader.”
A few years ago, I read again Nabokov’s L novel (translated in French), and I did not like it, to me it was not a good example of a love story. The character of HH is that of a lazy and selfish man, he does not work and thinks only about his own interest. He is infatuated with Dolores, but is it real love?
Also, Nabokov’s conception of “nympholepsy” is anti-democratic, because only a tiny minority of girls aged 9 to 14 are real nymphets, the others are just uninteresting kids. To me, almost all LGs are charming and attractive.
With my Host hat on, I should inform FM that this post, like an earlier one of his, had to be rescued from the Spam folder. I have no idea why the system would designate it as such. The numerous actual spam posts in the folder are of a very different character.
Great work! I’m glad to see that Newgon finally has an article about Nabokov.
For whatever it’s worth, here’s a quote from Nicholas Fox Weber’s biography of Balthus that confirms Nabokov’s appreciation of Balthus:
I don’t know how many of Balthus’ frontal nude paintings of teenage girls Wilder had in his collection, but there’s evidence he had at least one:
So this painting, which depicts a minor, seems like it could be the one Nabokov saw during that visit and liked so much. [MODERATOR: LINK TO THIS PAINTING DELETED, IN CONFORMITY WITH UK LAW. THE ARTIST’S STATUS IS IRRELEVANT FOR THIS PURPOSE.]
Update April 12:
The men informed me that the process is well under way. Agents who lied earlier now tell the truth: children were not drugged and abused. The psychologist who spoke to the children reported that they were never touched. The neighborhood researcher indicated that the villagers are angry about the behavior of the police and that Lesley and Marthijn are good friendly people.
From : https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Essay:The_Gruesome_Consequences_of_a_Hysterical_Witch_Hunt
I’ve been critical of L & M in the past, perhaps wrongly, although my criticism of Neslon remains. If this turn of events is true, I’d be v happy. Good to see a prick like Ballard being shown to be the Nazi he is.
Thanks for pointing this out, Ed. It’s great to have some better news.
An extended quote from an essay called “Bring Back Stigma” (2000) by Roger Scruton. It may be of interest to study the intellectual roots of sexual and paedophilic stigma.
There is, however, one great exception to this attitude, and it goes to the heart of our moral nature. This exception is pedophilia. Britons have been up in arms for months…
…But people are afraid to judge their neighbors and hope that somehow the future of society will be taken care of, even though everyone is busy retreating from the arduous business of moral judgment.
I’ll leave any analysis to others on here, although I have my own thoughts.
[MODERATOR: ZT HAS GIVEN US A VERY LONG QUOTE FROM SCRUTON. IT IS LYING, ODIOUS SHIT FROM START TO FINISH FOR WHICH I SEE NO USEFUL ROLE ON THIS FORUM. I HAVE READ AND STUDIED SCRUTON’S PHILOSOPHY IN GREAT DETAIL. HIS BOOK “SEXUAL DESIRE: A PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATION” SETS OUT HIS POSITION IN A FORMAL, SCHOLARLY WAY. THIS IS THE BEST EXPOSITION OF HIS SEXUAL THINKING, AND I RECOMMEND IT FOR ANYONE WHO REALLY WANTS TO UNDERSTAND HIS ARGUMENTS. I ALSO RECOMMEND MY OWN FORMAL CRITIQUE OF HIS POSITION, WHICH I HAVE SET OUT HERE:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-018-9519-1 ]
>His book
Bought 🙂
I’m a strong believer in studying, as you say in great detail, the intellectual roots of the opposing position, as full exposure of the flaws in establishment thinking is the only way to make inroads and gain deeper understanding.
To that end, I’m a bit surprised you censored my quote, but of course it’s your blog, so I don’t object. I would refer interested readers to a google search of the essay – it appears in City Journal.
My objection was to the deliberately inflammatory, propagandist nature of the piece. Absolutely dreadful stuff on a par with the 1920s-30s hate-fest whipped up against the Jews. The title, “Bring Back Stigma” says it all really, except for his mendacious nonsense claiming people had forgotten how to hate paedos and needed to hate them more.
Fair enough
These regressive Conservative types strike me as being deeply unhappy, and like to manifest this in ways that make others just as unhappy as they are.
Also there were plenty like that during the Lockdowns too!
Something you may find interesting regarding the Dalai Lama:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-65229327
Hey Tom you might have a comment of mine go to spam. About a book by Nancy Friday…
Nothing come through yet, either via Inbox or Spam.
Okay well I’ll re type something.
If anyone’s in need of bit of positivity, check out Nacncy Friday’s book: https://www.newgon.net/wiki/My_Secret_Garden
Published in 1973, it’s a collection of women’s fantasies. Includes overt discussion of sadomasochism, bestiality, and sexual fantasy in childhood and involving children. It’s a very positive work and a beautiful read. I’ve selected some quotes you’ll see on the Newgon page.
One of the most unashamedly positive things I’ve read to do with sex, about as positive as Gayle Rubin.
I am not sure the same book could be published today without a lot of caveats…
>I am not sure the same book could be published today without a lot of caveats…
Indeed. Hot stuff! 🙂
I’ve contributed a lot to this blog, but if you think I’m too right wing, I’m happy to accept criticism. I often find contributions on here are almost universally “intellectually progressive”. I’m very much an “intellectual traditionalist”. But if nothing else, I show visitors of Tom’s blog that there is not a universal radical leftist LGBTQIA+ cut-out for people with minor attraction, and we all have different intellectual and cultural assumptions. So I feel that is something useful to demonstrate at least.
Above all, don’t be offended if I display different values or assumptions.
I enjoy hearing opinions different to my own and playing devil’s advocate to opinions that are similar or different to my own in an effort to better understand people, human nature, etc. I’m politically a centrist and socially liberal, and by that I mean genuinely liberal rather than the alternative social conservatism of today that labels itself liberalism whilst demanding unquestioning conformity. What I don’t get, however, is the conflation of social liberalism with the political left.
I like your comments 🙂 A very different perspective to my own, but always interesting.
Even mainstream Wiki is all-age, pro-Wanking.
“Masturbation is frequent in both sexes and at any age. Various medical and psychological benefits have been attributed to a healthy attitude toward sexual activity in general and to masturbation in particular. No causal relationship is known between masturbation and any form of mental or physical disorder.[6][7] In the Western world, masturbation in private or with a partner is generally considered a normal and healthy part of sexual enjoyment. Alongside many other factors—such as medical evidence, age-inappropriate sexual knowledge, sexualized play and precocious or seductive behavior—excessive masturbation may be an indicator of sexual abuse.[110][111]
Masturbation is considered normal when performed by children,[47][7][48] even in early infancy.[39][49][50] In 2009, the Sheffield NHS Health Trust issued a pamphlet called “Pleasure” which discussed the health benefits of masturbation. This was done in response to data and experience from the other EU member states to reduce teen pregnancy and STIs (STDs), and to promote healthy habits.[51]
According to the New Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry (1st ed.), “Masturbation and sexual play are common well before puberty… ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masturbation
Is it time to take another small step for humankind, and ‘cancel’ the inhuman AOC. To be humanely equalised to the sensible AOCR/Age of Criminal Responsibilty?
The minimum age of criminal responsibility set by different countries ranges from as low as six up to 18, the median age is 12.
The masturbation shouldn’t be regulated by AoC laws, in the same way these laws do not regulate family nudism now.
The current state of affairs is rather absurd. On the one hand, they claim that masturbation is harmless to both adults and children, but on the other hand, only as long as they do it in separate rooms. If, as part of a thought experiment, we imagine that the wall between an adult and a minor can move, and if we slowly move the wall away, we get a funny situation in which the minor slowly becomes a “survivor”, and the adult slowly becomes a “criminal” without leaving their seats. It’s sort of “Schrödinger’s child” who simultaneously enjoys and suffers.
Fascinating thought!
To play devil’s advocate, imagine you’re defecating in a public toilet. In the cubicle next to you another member of the pubic is defecating. Now the wall is removed. Is the experience the same? Or do you now feel awkward, embarrassed and annoyed? Basically, context matters.
I mean, for most of human existence, going to the bathroom hasn’t been a “private” thing either. Only really since the invention of the water closet. The embarrassment around it is pretty much social conditioning. Just as all shame is. Shame is neither inherent nor necessary. Shame is only arbitrary, and there is nothing innate nor natural about it.
Socially conditioned or otherwise, context is still very much relevant.
For ethical reasons, most people don’t want to openly observe outsiders or be observed by them while using a public restroom (due to instilled embarrass and physiological odors). Although the creators of male urinals apparently thought otherwise.
My example illustrated the absurdity of the fact that in order to become a “victim” and a “criminal” people don’t even need to interact with each other. On the one hand, the law prohibits minors from watching adult nudity and genitals, for demonstrating which an adult automatically becomes a “molester”, and a minor automatically becomes a “victim”. On the other hand, we have nudist camps and public locker rooms where minors see it and it certainly doesn’t molest or traumatize them.
Well, in my example both parties are potentially rendered perpetrator and/or victim of an act of voyeurism by the removal of the wall. But the fact that either set of acts starts out with a wall makes it completely different. No mens rea to accompany the actus reus, in legal terms. And don’t forget that there’s another potential ‘victim’, namely the public morals.
Existing archaic Anglo ‘actus reus’ includes a voluntary failure to act causing a PROSCRIBED CRIME. E.G. an innocent adult waking up to find a naturally inquisitive child manipulating the adult’s genitals, and then NOT stopping, i.e. encouraging, the naturally attracted child!
Indeed. Once the wall is removed, failure to change one’s actions could leave one in breach of the law.
Speaking of Schrodinger, have you seen the fact-checker style page I made on him? https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Erwin_Schrodinger
A very detailed page, I checked over the 2 biographies used by Wikipedia and a nasty piece by the Irish Times, finding, to my genuine shock, that the own sources they’d relied on either didn’t state what they claimed or disproved their claims.
I’d bet that a journalist could use the info there as a good starting point to write about Schrodinger… Jon Henley perhaps?
I am truly amazed at how many people think you can’t cum before puberty. That you can’t climax. That you can’t orgasm. Oh, sure, you can’t ejaculate, you don’t have sperm. But you can orgasm. Babies masturbate in the womb to orgasm. It’s not just a low level pleasure trip (though it is that too), and it’s not just a comfort mechanism. It just plain feels good, and then feels great for a short while. It’s not the exclusive experience of adults or adolescents.
Most Churches today do not proscribe masturbation, although the RCC still relies on an eleventh century text by Peter Damian for its condemnatory teaching:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Gomorrhianus
This is an amazing work, “The Book of Gomorrah”
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gomorrah-Damians-Struggle-Ecclesiastical-Corruption-ebook/dp/B016NMQCJQ/
It is worth noting however that even here, “solitary masturbation” is considered one of the least sexual sins.
I hope the RCC updates its teaching though as I once went several months without masturbation and this is painful and unnatural. There is of course zero harm from solitary masturbation, it is the safest form of sex imaginable.
Everything in moderation, but masturbation can be fulfilling and promote emotional happiness, especially for people who can’t have a sexual partner.
A nicer outcome compared to the manga writer I mentioned below (though it is too early to tell how his life will pan out), comes from an earlier case I and I’m confident virtually zero people know about, the artist of the extremely popular manga Toriko:
https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Mitsutoshi_Shimabukuro
Another page I made before finally deciding it was best to sleep https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Hidekazu_Tanaka
Readers will probably feel less sympathy with this particular case as, to be frank, he comes across as a classic molester. Needless to say, I don’t find it impossible to empathize with someone who’s deeply stressed and uses (arguably) non normative sexual behavior as a way to have *some* enjoyment in life. It doesn’t make it all A-OK, but I understand: it’s a very harsh world out there. In Japan especially, loneliness, suicide and intense work schedules are commonplace.
It’s a real pity that, at least from everything I’ve read, he didn’t have a girlfriend or wife: that way, perhaps, he could’ve had an outlet and channeled his sexual energies towards a socially acceptable and willing outlet. Admittedly, that doesn’t guarantee he’d curtail some of his (potentially ‘victimless’) bad habits, but it could, could have helped. I hope he can live well later on in life…
Made page for arrested Manga writer https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Tatsuya_Matsuki
And a page for the creator of the first anthology of homo literature in America, titled “Men and Boys” (1924): https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Edward_Mark_Slocum
Of general interest.
http://www.culturepub.fr/videos/free-a-girl-sex-is-not-a-child-s-play/
How is it organisations are allowed to promote material like this and claim they are protecting children? Were these girls volunteers? Did they understand they would be playing with sex toys on camera?
I can’t see how it harms them if they don’t know what the toys are for. A vibrator can also be used as a massager for sore muscles (as many reviewers seem desperate to point out after a purchase on Amazon). And yes, perhaps a double dildo could double up as a rolling pin, if suitably washed.
I wonder how long the advert will last, though. I recall a similar (picture) advert with a similar message, years ago, which featured a young girl holding a condom still in its packet in between her lips. It didn’t last long. Vertbaudet’s slogan, ‘where children come first’, disappeared at some point, no doubt after someone pointed out the unintended possible connotation of them being paedophiles, albeit considerate lovers. And anyone studying the history of the Werther’s adverts will notice that the decreasing touch and proximity between adult and child over successive editions are inversely proportional to the increasing beauty of the child over successive editions, which itself is proportional to the increasing geriatric chastity (one might say ‘Santafication’) of the adult. Which I take to aptly express the (very much twinned?) cultural obsessions with viewing the figure of the child through an adult aesthetic whilst simultaneously crying ‘sexualisation’.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/11/how-calling-kevin-spacey-a-pedophile-hurts-the-gay-community.html
By Joseph J. Fischel
There was nothing serious that couldn’t be justified. It was just plain gay flirting that the boy ignored. An alternative positive way of scenario is shown in the film “For a lost soldier”
I had heard of Thomas Waugh before, though my knowledge of him and his work is very limited, but I’ve just discovered he co-authored an entire book about a film featuring an intergen relationship. It’s called “Montreal Main” and can be found as PDF here https://library.lol/main/4ABB82413E34E0FCD436CF017CCC3581
Interestingly, the foreword is by Shannon Bell, a very based lady who was one of the contributors to Bad Attitude/s on Trial: Pornography, Feminism, and the Butler Decision (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997). A rather unique book showing women in a far more reasonable light than many MAPs have come to think of ‘feminists’, the book is described in the following way:
Bad Attitude(s) on Trial is a critical analysis of pornography in the context of contemporary Canada. The notion that pornography both reflects sexual domination and ‘victimizes’ women has recently found expression in law in the landmark Canadian Supreme Court decision of R. v. Butler (1992). Many feminists embrace this new law as progressive, but in the post-Butler years, straight, mainstream pornography is still flourishing, while sexual representations that challenge conventional notions of sexuality, such as those centering on gay and lesbian sex and s/m sex, are the focus of censorship. It is the censorship of sexual others that the authors critique from a legal, cultural, gay, and philosophical standpoint.
Interesting stuff, and something I’ll look into. Of course, I hope you’re feeling better soon Tom. Scoff blueberries is my advice! 🙂
[Note: just discovered a potential work of interest from one of the contributors to Bad Attitudes on Trial: Brenda Cossman, The New Sex Wars: Sexual Harm in the Age of #MeToo was published by NYU Press in 2021. https://library.lol/main/2BF380592DC6C9137F338ED3268711D3%5D
Well things have certainly changed on the porn front. Sure, straight porn is still king, but there has been an ever increasing interest (how organic and actual this interest is is another matter) in transgender porn, gay and lesbian, S&M, etc…
However, this is based off analytics self-released by Pornhub. The same company that, after years of it reigning as #1, removed “Teen” from their included ‘most searched keywords’ of the year. What with their CP scandal I guess it makes *some* sense to appear exclusionary of youth, but it doesn’t change the fact that the attraction is one of the strongest that exists in our species. This is the same Hub that pushes MILF content and promotes it as one of its top categories, while all often “Teens” are in their mid 20’s or older. Also of note is that “Twink” was still on the Gay list, just no hetero equivalent.
In 2023 Canada, ‘sexual others’ (minus a few notable exceptions) are treated like special, more evolved and progressive individuals, whereas typical normal (male) heterosexual attraction to fertile females is deemed as inherently creepy, predatory, etc…
The position of ‘teen’ in Pornhub’s worldwide search term rankings each year is as follows:
2012 Teen #1
2013 Teen #1
2014 Teen #1
2015 Teen #2 (after Lesbian)
2016 Teen #4 (after Lesbian, Step Mom, Milf)
2017 Teen #7 (after Lesbian, Hentai, Milf, Step Mom, Step Sister, Mom)
2018 Teen #7 (after Lesbian, Hentai, Milf, Step Mom, Japanese, Mom)
2019 Teen #12 (after Japanese, Hentai, Lesbian, Milf, Korean, Asian, Step Mom, Massage, Anal, Ebony, Big Ass)
2020 No ranking produced
2021 Not in top 30
2022 Not in top 30
Clearly ‘teen’ was waning in popularity as a search term between 2016 and 2019. Is it possible that it simply dropped out of the top 30 in 2021 and 2022 rather than being removed? Certainly, if ‘twink’ remains in gay porn search term rankings, it would appear that Pornhub isn’t squeamish about such age-related search terms.
I wonder whether this trend is down to the fact that teen used to be so popular a search term that the category became diluted to the point of being meaningless. Every porn actress aged 18-30 came to be labelled as a teen in an attempt to boost viewing figures, such that it ended up being an unreliable term to use to find a certain body type (or fantasy scenario or whatever). Indeed, searches for ‘Milf with teen’ have tended over the years to produce results where it was usually not immediately obvious from the thumbnail which woman was meant to be the milf and which the teen, and you might find yourself watching a 30-year-old woman with a 25-year-old woman.
Perhaps the rise in popularity of the search terms ‘Japanese’ and ‘Korean’ (see above) has become the more reliable way of finding a certain body type. Or perhaps the rise in popularity of the term ‘stepsister’ has become the more reliable way of finding a certain fantasy scenario, as stepbrothers and stepsisters tend to live together in the parental home when they’re under 18.
Let’s not forget the crucial point that these are rankings of search terms rather than of videos watched. If a man is into petite bodies or youthful faces, then these will be served up to him by Pornhub’s algorithms with a far greater degree of reliability as he clicks and clicks and clicks. Yet that won’t crop up in the search term rankings.
Pornhub makes a great self-report study, but we need to think critically about the way its user behaviour patterns are reported.
“If a man is into petite bodies or youthful faces, then these will be served up to him by Pornhub’s algorithms with a far greater degree of reliability as he clicks and clicks and clicks. Yet that won’t crop up in the search term rankings.”
> Good point. In my general experience I rarely see granny porn on the homepage of porn sites and if i looked under most popular i almost certainly wouldn’t. It’s always women with *young* faces (whatever their age may be) and big tits n ass. Even what i was most interested in as a teen, BDSM porn, is not very popular in comparison. Now im mostly into hentai and non western porn, which is similarly about big tits, ass, and neoteny, but with more interesting (in my view) stories and more effort (again in my view) put into the acting and creation.
Some part of me feels like saying that most men (and possibly most humans), have a preference for youth or, to put it differently, for neoteny and other features associated with “youth.” I find it disgusting when people act disgusted with the elderly having or wanting a sex life – we will all be old one day – but I’m also disgusted at the obvious hypocrisy around “barely legal teens” who people obviously find attractive. Teen porn is popular and American society is mired in obvious hypocrisy…
Also, Fata, on the previous blog you commented about lolicon: have you discovered any new info? I grew up reading Ken Akamatsu, who is a popular defender of such artwork and frequently has age disparate love in his works…
Genetically, we’re largely the same as our prehistoric ancestors, who would have been lucky to live past 30, so there was no possibility of waiting until one’s late 20s to start conceiving. Also, bear in mind that menarche was likely later than it is now. In 1900, the average age of menarche was 14.0. In 2000, it was 12.8, the fall being presumed to be down to the sizeable increase in consumption of processed carbohydrates. (I could well believe that the average age has continued to fall over the past quarter of a century, perhaps down to around 12.5 now, given how 12-year-olds these days are behaving like 14 and 15-year-olds did when I was that age.) Prehistoric diets are unlikely to have been conducive to earlier onset of puberty. All that considered, men are probably programmed to be optimally attracted to and start mating with individuals at around the onset of puberty and the couple of years thereafter.
I recall a study of heterosexual men’s attraction to female faces of different ages. The study concluded that heterosexual men were most attracted to 17-year-old female faces. However, the youngest age of female used in the images was 17, which raises an obvious question.
After my comment above, another idea occurred to me, which relates to my thought about the term ‘teen’ having been watered down and become meaningless in mainstream porn leading to its waning in popularity as a search term from 2016/2017 onwards. Over that same period, Instagram and TikTok have become reliable sources for legal images and videos of teenagers (and younger) displaying themselves for mass consumption. The quality has grown too — whereas Instagram was grainy and uninteresting in 2015/2016, it now plays host to millions of HD images of beautiful young people marketing themselves in the only way humans have figured out how to market themselves. Now, I’m not advocating anything here. I’m simply making the observation that there are other, legal outlets for men who want real teens instead of 25-year-olds and who are happy to sacrifice explicit sexual content for authentic teen looks and behaviour.
As for the science on Japan, I didn’t get anywhere. The Diamond studies that Tom kindly mentioned predated the change in the law.
If you look at the historic and archaeological record, the 19th and 20th centuries are anomalous, on account of the conditions of industrialization, in delaying puberty. And as for the idea that people “were lucky to make it to 30”, no that is not the picture it represents. The low average life expectancy is due to infant mortality and early childhood diseases. If you live past 5, the chances of you making it to adulthood were good, and living to an old age like 70 was also reasonably probable. If you measure life expectancy from late childhood on, the average life expectancy is something more in the realm of 50+.
What we do deal with presently is early onset puberty- with secondary sex traits and reproductive capacity developing as early as 7-10. That is a more present day-related phenomenon. But the late onset puberty during the industrial revolution, where puberty usually didn’t kick in until 13-16, that is an anomaly in human existence.
There are a variety of things at play, of course. People living during the Roman Empire at its height were much shorter than we are now. But people during the early Middle Ages were quite tall, and about as tall as we are now.
But you are correct in that we are still basically the same as our prehistoric ancestors. Arguably we’re still just monkeys. The differences between us and our other primate relatives are really so nonexistent, despite our pretended sophistication, as to be comical.
>The differences between us and our other primate relatives are really so nonexistent
Compared to any other primate we do have a very much greater period of non-reproductive juvenility. And we have much bigger brains. Emotionally, though, I think we probably do have a great deal in common.
As for the exceptional conditions during industrialisation, this is a good point, I think, but I would extend it. Ever since the advent of agriculture, diet has become relatively less ideal compared to hunter-gather fare. Aristotle, if I remember rightly, believed the average age of puberty for boys was 14, though I am not quite sure how much first-hand empirical research he did (or would admit to!). I think he cited doctors’ opinions.
I understand the distinction between potential lifespan and life expectancy, and I understand how infant mortality and early childhood diseases reduce the latter, but it’s simply not the case that in prehistoric times ‘[i]f you live[d] past 5 […] living to an old age like 70 was […] reasonably probable’. Even in comparatively advanced, post-prehistoric societies like Ancient Rome most of the skeletons they dig up didn’t make it past 40.
In any case, perceived life expectancy is more relevant than potential lifespan when it comes to making important life decisions such as having children. If you expect to die somewhere between 25 and 40 (rather than between 65 and 85 in developed countries today), you’re not going to put off making babies until your late 20s, even if a few members of your tribe/society buck the trend and live into their 40s or 50s.
We’ve never been monkeys, by the way.
>Even in comparatively advanced, post-prehistoric societies like Ancient Rome most of the skeletons they dig up didn’t make it past 40.
In life-expectancy terms, there is is reason to believe Rome was seriously retarded, not advanced. Cramped city conditions meant the place was a super-incubator of disease. Also, there was extensive lead poisoning from the water pipes and multi-storey jerry-built dwellings were prone to collapse, to say nothing of early death in extensive wars and civil conflicts.
Very ancient hunter-gather life, by contrast, in which people moved in small nomadic bands with plenty of separation, offered a far more healthy environment, with less potential for both disease and warfare. The biggest hazard may well have been large predators.
Most of what we know about people during the Roman Empire, biologically, comes from Egyptian mummies from the period, and from the Pompeii and Herculaneum digs. Romans, during Antiquity, did not bury their dead, but cremated them. And Pompeii and Herculaneum were, in effect, tourist destinations for Italians. The body sample of those digs would naturally skew towards younger people. And battle sites would have shown a plethora of young mem, but not many old men, as Romans retired from the military about age 40. Rome would have, instead, likely had a comparable range of ages, as to other civilizations, as opposed to the skewed sample they bequeathed us.
Getting an age read on Romans is incredibly difficult compared to other ages and civilizations. Namely because there are limited skeletons to dig up in the first place, as compared to what there is in civilizations that don’t cremate their dead.
Tom also is correct in his pointing out of Rome, particularly the city itself- being somewhat retardant on people’s health. Judging by the remains sample of the Roman Empire against the Middle Ages- people in the Middle Ages were healthier.
OK, points noted. Is there any positive evidence that a majority of prehistoric humans were living beyond 40?
Not sure about “positive evidence”, but below is the conclusion of a fairly recent paper by Brea McCauley, presumably based on reasoned inferences grounded in a range of evidential sources. Work in this field has been going on for quite a long time. The major conclusions do not appear to have altered drastically since the famous “Original Affluent Society” by Marshall Sahlins in 1968 (also see below).
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2352-1#
Life Expectancy in Hunter-Gatherers
Brea McCauley
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science
First Online: 30 November 2018
There is an interesting discussion of averages and how they can be misleading in this context:
https://theconversation.com/hunter-gatherers-live-nearly-as-long-as-we-do-but-with-limited-access-to-healthcare-104157
Quote:
If you were a hunter-gatherer and you made it to adolescence, there was a strong likelihood that you would live a long and healthy life – not so different from modern humans.
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer
Quotes:
At the same conference, Marshall Sahlins presented a paper entitled, “Notes on the Original Affluent Society”, in which he challenged the popular view of hunter-gatherers lives as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, as Thomas Hobbes had put it in 1651. According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well. Their “affluence” came from the idea that they were satisfied with very little in the material sense. [Sahlins, M. (1968). “Notes on the Original Affluent Society”, Man the Hunter. R.B. Lee and I. DeVore (New York: Aldine Publishing Company) pp. 85–89. ISBN 020233032X.]
**
Researchers Gurven and Kaplan have estimated that around 57% of hunter-gatherers reach the age of 15. Of those that reach 15 years of age, 64% continue to live to or past the age of 45. This places the life expectancy between 21 and 37 years.[50] They further estimate that 70% of deaths are due to diseases of some kind, 20% of deaths come from violence or accidents and 10% are due to degenerative diseases.
I mean, positive evidence of prehistoric humans is incredibly rare. Sometimes we forget just how little remains of the past for us to study. The further back in time we go, the less evidence is left for us to collect. We’re lucky to have found what we have, and lucky to have been bequeathed what we have. History is as much an art as it is a science. It quite literally is glorified storytelling, in many respects. And I say this as a lifelong amateur historical scholar. It has far and away always been my greatest passion, from when I was a little child.
So, no, there isn’t really much positive evidence for it, but, to be fair- there isn’t much positive evidence of much of anything prehistoric. Certainly not enough to say that they *didn’t* live longer than 40. And we’re still learning. Genetic analysis demonstrates that the Beringia Theory is false, and that Native Americans, at least some of them, were here thousands of years before the Bering land bridge episode currently touted. I look forward to whatever we discover next.
I’m not saying your wrong, at least not outright. Only that there’s a lot more going on, and that our lay ideas of the past are more often than not, incorrect.
(This is a reply to both Tom and perplexed.)
There’s some very interesting information in your posts and I’m happy to concede that my picture was misguided. That said, I’m not sure what to make of ‘Researchers […] have estimated’. That doesn’t inspire confidence in the stats. Still, let’s say those stats are true and 64% of 43% (just over a quarter) are going to make it to or beyond 45. With over a third of those lucky enough to make it past 15 perishing before 45, at what age do you reckon they’d start reproducing? When pondering that, let’s not forget that the very infant/childhood mortality rate that skews the life expectancy stats will be on the minds of the prospective parents, who will be aware that they’re going to have to pop out a few to have a realistic prospect of one making it to adulthood. I can’t see them waiting until their late teens or early twenties.
Basically, I think you are right, FM, based on research in the growing research field of evolutionary life course strategies. For speed, I have just used this phrase, “evolutionary life course strategies” in a Google search. Using a slightly different set of words would doubtless bring up a Wikipedia article among the returns. But this exact term threw up a paper that introduces the general idea and then follows up with info as to how very ancient pre-historic longevity can be inferred from studies on modern hunter-gatherers. Such studies can be very misleading, depending on the type of hunter-gatherers studied, but can be meaningful if studied with care. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/books/NBK100413/
The following is from the intro, as a taster. Note the passage I have set in bold, which tends to confirm FM’s point:
I’m going to have to digest that information. Lots of interesting points and secondary implications.
I know this ‘extended’ means relative to other non-foraging species, but I wonder whether this might explain why society is so hell-bent on policing pubescent children’s sexual self-expression. If we’re wired to prolong the unproductive, nurtured stage for as long as reasonably possible, then there’ll be tension between that instinct and the perceived reproductive needs of the group (which will partly be determined by perceived life expectancy). Eventually, parents/caregivers will have to yield to the latter. In modern Western societies, where we can fairly expect to live to a ripe old age and there’s no shortage of food, there’s limited need to yield and so we might expect to see upward pressure on the age at which we let go and accept that our young ought to be sexually active. (Paradoxically, such upward pressure comes at a time when the age of onset of puberty is declining.)
I’m also interested in the implications of evolutionary life course strategies for normative attraction. If for millennia it made sense for humans to start attempting reproduction from around the onset of puberty or shortly thereafter, then surely primary attraction should have evolved to facilitate that.
I see nothing wrong with your logic, FM, and your interesting thoughts, although I would just point out a potential conflation of evolved psychology with evolved non-psychological physiology. You wrote:
>If we’re wired to prolong the unproductive, nurtured stage for as long as reasonably possible, then there’ll be tension between that instinct and the perceived reproductive needs of the group
This particular wiring is not an instinct. It is not a psychological or behavioural disposition. It is about children’s bodies taking a very long time (relative to other primates) to reach the stage of being reproductively capable. This extended period of physiological infertility was nobody’s choice, either consciously or unconsciously. It simply arose through genetic variation: natural selection favoured a higher rate of survival among proto-humans who matured slowly. These slow maturers were capable, thanks to the skills acquired during their long juvenility, to take advantage of more sophisticated and fruitful (literally) gathering techniques and hunting strategies than would otherwise have been available.
Ah, we might be talking at cross purposes here. I was careful to include the word ‘pubescent’, so I’m talking here about parents/caregivers stifling reproductively capable, sexually agentive children’s sexual activity and sexual self-expression to artificially prolong that period of sexual inactivity well beyond the stage of physiological infertility. Which, of course, several scholars have picked up on as a self-serving tendency.
>Ah, we might be talking at cross purposes here.
Yes. Thanks for the clarification. I’ll have another go. You wrote:
>If we’re wired to prolong the unproductive, nurtured stage for as long as reasonably possible
I do not know of any evidence that we are wired this way, and nor do I see why the conditions of our pre-history would favour this. Evolution made childhood long enough. If longer still were advantageous, that too would have evolved, assuming sufficient evolutionary time was available.
Only in relatively recent times, I would think, since the beginnings of agriculture, settled communities, and the possibility of accumulating wealth (hard to do for nomads, who had to carry all their stuff when on the move), has their been much parental interest in delaying the start of their off-springs’ reproduction. Only relatively wealthy parents, indeed, would have the power to do so. Only when there are farms, etc, to be inherited, school fees to be paid, etc, do parents gain control of youngsters who have grown up physically.
Systems of strong parental (mainly patriarchal) control of offspring have only been with us for a few thousand years, possibly up to 10-15k years, whereas our hard-wiring for patterns of reproduction have been with us for vastly longer than that. This suggests to me that the prevailing determinant of sexual activity and reproduction has mainly been the presence of sexual desire and the availability of partners.
With the desire side likely undiminished by the cultural changes since the advent of agriculture, indeed exacerbated by earlier puberty, as you say, FM, the tension between the desires of the young and the restraining force of older generations, seems probably attributable to the power of modern culture (itself driven by economics, as earning a living becomes more technical, requiring longer years of education, etc) rather than evolved instincts.
All fair points, Tom, and persuasive. I can’t come up with any objections. Just a couple of comments:
I was taking Kaplan’s point that ‘effective adult foraging requires an extended developmental period during which production at young ages is sacrificed for increased productivity later in life’ as a springboard for the assumption that humans might have evolved to extend the developmental period where possible and within sensible limits.
Sexual desire and its chronophilic limits (and pliability in that regard) must be no less a product of evolution. Where do you think evolution will have set optimal, statistically ‘normal’ attraction?
>Where do you think evolution will have set optimal, statistically ‘normal’ attraction?
At age 17.
You may be inclined to chuckle at the perhaps unexpected precision of this answer but if memory serves (a caveat I often resort to these days!) there have been a number of studies of contemporary human males that come up with this figure, or close, whether based on self-reported age of those females they deem most attractive, or penile plethysmography showing degree of erectile response to images of females at a range of ages.
One might think self-report would be biased towards giving a socially acceptable response, which these days would push the reported age upwards, but under conditions of anonymous reporting the bias might be slight. Penile plethysmography, however, is more like the gold standard.
The fact that these studies are based on modern men need be no impediment to their validity in the absence of any reason to believe our genetic make-up and hard-wired instincts have changed in recent times. Men’s desires now may on average be much the same in terms of average age preference as they were a million years ago.
Also, these findings are underpinned by evolutionary logic. The best way of maximally getting your genes into the next generation is to secure a mate, or mates, at the very start of their reproductive capability (on the cusp of adolescence), with maximum desire (and most intense coitus) coinciding with maximum fertility (probably 17 to early 20s, although this would vary according to environmental conditions).
I mentioned one above:
Now, I can’t for the life of me find that study. I believe men were shown photos of faces but not told ages. If the youngest faces were of 17-year-olds then they won’t really have stood out from 18-year-old or 21-year-old faces, whereas a study including, say, 14-year-old faces may well have prompted the subjects to steer clear of socially unacceptable responses.
I’m not aware of any study that includes younger faces for the purposes of gauging attraction and there may well be issues with finding funding for such a study.
Penile plethysmography will presumably only be useful for measuring arousal rather than attraction. One can be strongly attracted to a face without a significant increase in penile turgidity and aroused to an image of a child without significant attraction (e.g. arousal to taboo, arousal to vulnerability, etc.).
That is indeed the assumption I’ve been operating on but failing to demonstrate. 😉
I’m tempted to suggest that if a male is to secure a mate early on in her journey towards peak fertility, then he will need to experience very significant attraction to and desire for barely pubescent females. Otherwise they’re going to be at the back of the queue. Also, as per the above discussion, if prehistoric societies (and, indeed, pretty much any society before the second half of the 20th century) were blighted by high infant and childhood mortality and therefore needed to produce more babies in order to ensure that at least some made it to adulthood, then waiting for females to reach peak fecundity at 17-20 would not confer the highest survival advantage for the species as a whole.
What about this?
Fantastic! Absolutely killer graphic, SB! I was aware of the study but must have somehow missed this chart.
I was also aware of the study and it doesn’t contain that chart. Perhaps someone visualised the findings accurately, but over the years I’ve seen misrepresentation of scientific findings from both anti-choice members of the public and pro-choice paedophiles, so I’d want to cross-reference the chart with the study before ruling out misrepresentation to partisan ends.
Nevertheless, even though the chart seemingly supports what I’m getting at, I have to restate that a distinction needs to be made between attraction and arousal. Even if there’s plenty of potential for overlap between the two, the relationship between them is surely complex. Hall et al. focused on arousal and I don’t think we should leap to conclusions about attraction. Whoever produced the chart has misleadingly entitled it ‘female attractiveness‘ and incorrectly stated underneath that Hall’s findings pertained to ‘% attractive females’ (as though nearly 100% of 14-year-old girls are attractive, even the less appealing ones), rather than number of men exhibiting significant arousal to the females in the images.
As the flipside to that, I don’t think we should conclude that attraction is absent where arousal is absent. I, as a heterosexual male, am not aroused by four-year-old girls, but I find them cute in a way that I don’t find four-year-old boys cute. If I were to try and put my finger on why that is, I’d be tempted to suggest that it has something to do with romantic attraction to females in general, even if that romantic attraction isn’t consciously or even significantly focused on four-year-old girls.
Thinking about it as I type, I can find girls that young aesthetically pretty, so perhaps a better example would be in old age. I have no arousal to old women and don’t find them aesthetically pretty or cute or anything else along those lines. And yet I can find them endearing in a way that I don’t find elderly men endearing. Again, I suspect that female-oriented affinity has something to do with my heterosexuality more broadly.
For the sake of completion, I can be mildly aroused by videos of two cocks ‘frotting’ (I believe is the term), but I find men’s bodies and faces at best entirely unappealing.
>I was also aware of the study and it doesn’t contain that chart.
Ah, the plot (or the chart plotting) thickens! Well spotted!
I too have the article by Hall and don’t see the graphic chart in it.
Note also that the modal age of rape victims is 14-15.
I can’t see the graphic, sorry….
This one:
?s=387b583df60460ce88d1e6b698fdadebe3ca8f08
>I mentioned one above
Ah, yes. I said “if memory serves”. On this occasion it clearly did not serve quite well enough! But see the Hall et al., graphic from SugarBoy today which finds a significantly earlier age of max attraction, and this has clearly not been distorted by the absence of under-18 images. I am reminded that I have previously posted on Sexnet and elsewhere about this study, which found that “89% of community males exhibited some sexual arousal while viewing slides of female children”.
>Penile plethysmography will presumably only be useful for measuring arousal rather than attraction.
Nevertheless, it has proved to be a powerful tool.
I am not quite sure what significance we should attach to “attraction”. Investing in an IT startup might be an attractive proposition but that does not make it an erotic experience. We need to be sure we are measuring sexual attraction not some other sort. One might be drawn towards stroking an attractive dog, but my guess is that most dog fanciers do not fancy them in “that” way. Or not much.
>One can be… aroused to an image of a child without significant attraction (e.g. arousal to taboo, arousal to vulnerability, etc.).
Can one really be sexually aroused by “taboo” per se or “vulnerability” as such? If so, wouldn’t we expect to be aroused by everything that is socially unacceptable? So if an unprepossessing person farts loudly in a crowded lift, instead of disgusting us, it should give us a hard-on? Or if we spot a spider on the floor, should we expect to get an erection because it is vulnerable to being crushed underfoot? My point here is that without “significant attraction” there will be no arousal, although the taboo, vulnerability, etc. may add a certain frisson.
>I’m tempted to suggest that if a male is to secure a mate early on in her journey towards peak fertility, then he will need to experience very significant attraction to and desire for barely pubescent females.
The Hall et al. data strongly support your point.
“Should we get an erection when we spot a spider on the floor”….Well if it’s a Brazilian Wandering spider, I hear their bite can give long and painful erections!
As for the study on teens, I remember that study and using it as evidence on twitter when I had an account there. Maybe with Elon at the helm there could be more tolerance for us pro-contact boys!
I wonder what that study would show between homosexual — pederast crossover attraction to young males?
>if it’s a Brazilian Wandering spider, I hear their bite can give long and painful erections
Just looked it up. Wow! The wonders of nature, eh?
I used to have a copy of the Hall study, but no longer, so am going on memory. Another thing I’d want to check is whether the subjects’ arousal response to images of pubescent girls was actually studied as the chart suggests. I don’t recall that being the case so I wonder whether the producer of the chart has taken a huge liberty and filled in the blanks.
I’m of the understanding that generally there’s a big gap in the science, precisely because most studies of men’s arousal to prepubescent children are done in forensic settings and, as Ray Blanchard once said, this means the focus is specifically on paedophilic arousal. By contrast, in the case of offences against pubescent minors, arousal is considered non-pathological and therefore an unnecessary area of study. Academics in non-forensic settings are most likely to get funding if they focus on socially acceptable attraction and/or arousal. The upshot is, as far as I’m aware, a dearth of research on attraction and/or arousal to teens in precisely that age span that the chart above suggests is statistically primary.
By attraction, I mean romantic and physical attraction. The kind that will allow one to fall in love with someone.
I think so. The Lanning study (1987) suggested that a clear majority of CSA perpetrators were situational offenders. I think these can be broadly subdivided into two subtypes: adult-attracted opportunists using children as surrogates and adult-attracted sadists finding in children a more vulnerable victim. In the case of the latter, the perpetrator may be primarily motivated by the child’s reaction to the offence and largely uninterested, or at least not put off, by the child’s appearance. Similar motives may be in play when a heterosexual male rapes a male victim in prison.
I myself am sexually submissive and can be aroused by women whom I don’t particularly find attractive if they impose themselves on me and make me do things that I genuinely don’t want to do. Sometimes the less appealing I find them physically, the more of an imposition it is and the greater the arousal. I suppose that’s the opposite of being aroused by vulnerability. Being aroused by sexual assertiveness and power. But perhaps one can argue that in such cases I am attracted to them, just not physically. After all, I couldn’t be aroused by a dominant guy doing the same, because it would be a male mind rather than a female one.
First things first. I find this answer very illuminating and persuasive given that it is significantly grounded in personal experience.
>I myself am sexually submissive and can be aroused by women whom I don’t particularly find attractive if they impose themselves on me
OK, I get it. Such accounts, I am reminded, are not uncommon but for those of us who have no comparable experience, or certainly for me, it is hard to maintain focus on the reality of such a highly nonintuitive scenario. Accordingly, it is good to have these reminders from time to time. In fact it is good to hear on this forum about people’s very diverse experiences and feelings more generally. We have some good theoretical discussions but (especially as an online experience) they can be somewhat impersonal and disembodied at times. We need to know where people are coming from – and cumming from – so far as discretion allows.
Now, back to theory.
>I’m of the understanding that generally there’s a big gap in the science, precisely because most studies of men’s arousal to prepubescent children are done in forensic settings and, as Ray Blanchard once said, this means the focus is specifically on paedophilic arousal.
I’d say this is a lot less true than it used to be. Blanchard, indeed, is among those who have helped to fit in the gap. His wonderful alloeroticism study reported separate plethysmography data for paedophiles, hebephiles and teleiophiles.
Arguably the most important taxonomic, category he did not include was ephebophilia (leaving aside nepiophilia, mesophilia, gerontophilia among other chronophilias encountered in the literature). I asked Blanchard about this in an exchange on Sexnet. He admitted this was an important omission and with admirable candour he replied that this was for reasons of comparability with earlier data and (I think he said this) to maintain focus on areas of greatest public concern. Working in collaboration with his mentor Kurt Freund, he had found it expedient to follow Freund’s already-established categories.
You can find his executive summary of the alloerotic study here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gyon1t2gwtqe2ht/Alloeroticism%20summary%20-%20Blanchard%20et%20al..pdf?dl=0
>The Lanning study (1987) suggested that a clear majority of CSA perpetrators were situational offenders. I think these can be broadly subdivided into two subtypes: adult-attracted opportunists using children as surrogates and adult-attracted sadists finding in children a more vulnerable victim.
Sadism, as a concept, at least has the virtue of motivational clarity. It may be horrible but we can see what we are dealing with. Other forms of opportunism are murkier. Again I find myself puzzled in relation to something that may be perfectly obvious to you, FM. Why would anyone put themselves in legal jeopardy by having sex with a minor they do not even fancy? In order to become aroused, these “surrogate” users must find something in the child’s body to excite their desire? Indeed, the data from Hall et al. and a number of others studies suggest there is no shortage of adults with a significant level of sexual responsiveness to minors. Exclusive paedophilia many be rare, but non-preferential interest is very common.
Oddly, my scepticism over the established “situational offenders” narrative appears to be shared by the current younger generation of forensic researchers, including Ian McPhail. He has been getting very excited recently over a deeply technical paper in which he and a colleague feel they have all but proven that paedophilia and hebephilia are distinct taxa. In the belief (which I share) that sexual attraction rather than situational factors constitute the main risk factor for sexual offending against children and early adolescents they see big policy implications in their would-be “holy grail” discovery. They appear to think it will enable potential offenders to be more accurately targeted. Whoopee! How wonderful!
The “virtuous” MAPs should be alarmed by this. Such research would appear to call into doubt the idea that non-offending paedo/hebephiles can be trusted. McPhail’s work has indeed been anxiously probed by VP representatives on Sexnet but the maths/stats are complicated, so it is hard to sort out. They cannot trash this work unless until they have fully understood it and found genuine shortcomings in it. There has been some expert scepticism on the forum, though. We’ll have to see how it pans out.
Bly Rede, who now heads VP, wrote on Sexnet:
A pre-print of the paper by McPhail and Alexander F. Schmidt can be found here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369420459_Latent_structure_of_sexual_maturity_interests_Pedophilic_pedohebephilic_and_teleiophilic_preferences_in_community_adult_males
Phew! Much to digest!
‘They appear to think it will enable potential offenders to be more accurately targeted. Whoopee! How wonderful!’
I believe this is largely what VP is all about. How many have already found out the hard way we’ll never know. I guess quite a fair proportion.
However, as much as I dislike Bly Rede and VP, I can’t argue with his speculation that the ‘situational offender’ narrative is largely a red herring, and is imo largely a ruse to prevent the truth from being released about paedophilia, ie it’s a natural attraction twisted only by zeitgeist.
I have always in effect applied the principle of charity to the claim that most sexual offenders against children are situational offenders rather than paedophiles by taking it to mean that they are not exclusively or predominantly paedophilic. Like you, I find the idea that they are not paedophilic at all to be deeply implausible.
Very interesting to hear about the more recent science. Lanning’s study was nearly 40 years ago, after all. I’m going to have to digest Blanchard’s alloeroticism study and McPhail’s work.
I agree that it’s murkier. I can only assume that it’s for reasons similar to straight men having sex with other straight men in a prison setting, i.e. lack of other options. And I don’t think taboo can be written off. How many ‘normophilic’ men have strayed into illegal image territory when browsing the Internet for new forms of titillation and experienced a rush from masturbating to stuff they shouldn’t be masturbating to, which has enhanced the overall pleasure to an extent that perhaps compensates for the reduced arousal to the juvenile body? I recall stripping off and having a wank in the woods when I was a young teenager. I’m not an exhibitionist, but the thrill of going against the grain made it an enjoyable experience. Adrenalin is involved in reaching orgasm, as far as I know.
But there is an obvious tension between the Lanning study and the Hall study. If a clear majority of child molestors are not paedophiles, and yet 89% of adult heterosexual males exhibit significant arousal to images of prepubescent girls and 32.5% of them exhibit a level of arousal to prepubescent girls that exceeds their level of arousal to fully adult women, then to what extent can the situational offenders be deemed properly non-paedophilic? Perhaps only in a technical sense, in that they are not preferentially or exclusively attracted to prepubescent children (which doesn’t mean a complete absence of attraction).
That said, if the Hall chart above is accurate, then one has to wonder where the cut-off point is. It looks like very few men (or, at least, very few of the men studied) are significantly aroused by children aged 10 and under. If Hall et al. were labelling 13-year-old girls as prepubescent, then suddenly all men turn out to be paedophilic as that’s where the greatest arousal is.
That’s entirely plausible, even if they’re excited by fragmentary aspects of the child rather than the overall package. In fact, that’s another thing I can relate to sexually: as a foot fetishist, I have managed to be aroused by the feet of girls and women who are well below or above my AoA, without being attracted to them as a whole. Also, I reckon I could do it with a sex doll without being attracted to any aspect of sex dolls, other than their capacity to give me genital stimulation.
At the risk of being accused of being exhibitionistic after all, I will make that the last of my arguments from personal experience. 😉
If by minors we mean anyone 17 and under, then the chart suggests that attraction to minors is primary. Remember that the average age of menarche fell from 14 to 12.8 between 1900 and 2000. If continuing to fall at a similar rate, there might be about a third of a year difference between the Hall study and now.
That does sound fascinating. However, even if sexual attraction were found among all offenders, surely other traits are at least as important: low empathy, emotional coldness, poor impulse control, etc. If, as the Hall chart suggests, pretty much all men are MAPs, then it’s clear that the vast majority of MAPs are perfectly decent human beings, or else rates of CSA would be closer to 100%, whereas in reality they’re far, far lower. Even then, those who do offend may have more than one victim and many of the CSA cases included in the percentages may have involved sexually agentive 14 or 15-year-olds initiating sexual activity with adults. Which would make genuinely predatory CSA look like far more of an epidemic. For that reason, I’m more optimistic about the implications for MAPs.
>However, even if sexual attraction were found among all offenders, surely other traits are at least as important: low empathy, emotional coldness, poor impulse control, etc.
Yes, quite so.
. If longer still were advantageous, that too would have evolved, assuming sufficient evolutionary time was available.
I for one am wondering what on earth the above could possibly hope to mean?
>I for one am wondering what on earth the above could possibly hope to mean?
It does mean something, Mr Turp. It’s just that you do not know what it is. 🙂
The bell tolls for Rachel Hope Cleves. (Thanks to other Newgon editors for finding this one). While her book on Norman Douglas has, rightly, received an award, it appears that a certain Zoom interview she gave with one Alexis Coe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy_pDQbdosk, must have been recorded and posted online, and has now been clipped on twitter by the Antis. I know we are both familiar with this interview already, and it’s a very professional if cringy event bc the interviewer can’t seem to handle the topic at hand.
Newgon links to the following politically right-wing article: https://dailycaller.com/2023/03/21/rachel-hope-cleves-pedophilia-historian-intergenerational-sex-rape-10-year-old-boy-abuse/
There, you’ll find a twitter thread with replies which are hostile to Cleves and her university. This includes such classic comments including this one https://twitter.com/knowingly_ghost/status/1639015485026226181/photo/1 where someone highlights Cleves pointing out her Jewish heritage and comments “Every Time.” Anti-semitism is so common on the online right that people have no qualms about expressing it and when it concerns MAP issues, face zero pushback it seems.
To be clear, I think Cleves will be perfectly, absolutely fine. She’s about as safe in her career as any modern academic can hope to be. Unless a big youtuber like Shoe0nhead gets involved and there’s a massive media circus, nothing major should come of this spat of pushback. If Cleves were to get Allyn Walker’d, hauled off campus by armed guards and fired by “agreeing” to resign, then truly no academic is safe…
Some good news(?) in the ever-delayed case:
Update April 3:
https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Essay:The_Gruesome_Consequences_of_a_Hysterical_Witch_Hunt
Both Nelson and Marthijn/Lesley need to play on perceptions of O.U.R. as gung-ho, hubristic gringos who can not be trusted to hide their own corruption. If no media are willing to run with that, the judges and public defenders need to be constantly reminded that O.U.R. is itself an evolving train-wreck.
Sounds promising. Fingers crossed.
‘notha tax-dodge charridy?
Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.) has made a significant impact in the fight to end sex trafficking and sexual exploitation by assisting in rescuing and supporting thousands of survivors in almost 40 countries and 50 U.S. states. Our approach is adapted to geographical location, the needs of survivors, and best practices in the field.
https://www.ourrescue.org/
‘Blind Lesbo Bindel’ sets the MAP cause back about 20 years today in one particularly foul swoop. Can any of us continue to rest easy with the idea that we have “separate lives” from what is said about us by the likes of BLB? I realize fullwell that the blessings of sanctity, eroticism & solitude are ultimately all of a piece, but how content can we possibly be when what miniscule social inroads we have made in demonstrating an honourable “sexuality” in its own right can be written off in an instant, as here, as so many hideous child abusers on the make? A poortrayal that almost all of the ostensible intelligentsia in Britain and beyond is still happy to lap up wholesale and then some? https://unherd.com/2023/04/keep-child-abusers-off-the-rainbow-flag/
This is what i tweeted to BLB’s page and to Unherd’s.
“WHAT child abusers, WHERE? Blind Lesbo Bindel is lost in such mental paroxysms of her own utterly abstracted, frustrated fantasy-life that she cannot point to a single individual who is verifiably both genuinely paedophilic and who abuses someone.
NOT A SINGLE ONE, BLB!”
I can only hope and freaking pray that any number of you will now not hesitate to follow my lead…
Julie Bindel “sets the MAP cause back about 20 years today”, says Mr Turp.
Nah, no way. It’s just the usual formulaic Bindel huffing and puffing, for the delectation of her usual fans. She has been far more effective, in my view, in helping blow the wheels off trans extremism. I support trans people’s struggle for dignity and fair treatment, just as I have always striven for MAP claims, but Bindel and other “Terfs” have done a rather good job in resisting the dangerous methods to which some have resorted.
You say “just the usual formulaic”, Tom! May i enquire in what way all that stands between the present state of discussion and the general public beginning to actually *acknowledge* the difference between paedophilia and child abuse has ever departed for one sustained moment from the usual formulaic??
Well, yes, but I think this supports what I was saying: when everything is pretty much the same old shit I see little point in being unduly agitated by yet another example. As she mentions me, though, I might put in a brief word of response: comments probably carry a bit more weight if they come from someone the author has quoted. But I agree it would be best to hear protest from as many quarters as possible.
Just to let you know, I have now posted a response to Bindel on the UnHerd comment space.
Have scrolled down to the bottom this morning twice and do not see a TO’C comment anywhere. This is why you do not see my own, either. It really does seem to me that the Unherd system somehow evaporates comments that go too far against the grain. As i’ve mentiomed before, complaining to them elicits only a silly systemic reply, that after weeks ov waiting. Nothing is more depressing, when the many windbags whose comments DO all appear, feature the same old same old going-nowhere blather. One decent, quite possibly MAPfavourable comment is at the very bottom. Naturellement.
Oh look, ZT’s here preaching to the choir again!
>Have scrolled down to the bottom this morning twice and do not see a TO’C comment anywhere.
Are you looking in the right place? Have you refreshed the page? After two hours, my post is still appearing as the Newest:
https://unherd.com/2023/04/keep-child-abusers-off-the-rainbow-flag/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=ba50d68ced&mc_eid=a33c491626
Can’t see yours, though.
No amount of page refreshing will make your comment appear, Tom. I just tried again, twice. As i say the whole Unherd comment business seems skewed to hell, and i have NO confident idea of exactly why that might he
Sorry to hear that, Mr Turp. OK, in case you are curious, this is what I wrote:
Contrary to Julie Bindel’s twisted telling, no one is describing child sexual abuse “as a sexual identity worthy of empathy”. Nor could anyone meaningfully do so, because an “identity” is not that sort of thing. Identities do not commit abuse, or do anything at all.
If Bindel’s lazy (or overworked: take a break Julie!) category errors and other crimes against grammar were the only counts on the indictment against her, there might be some scope for leniency. But sadly she is a recidivist perpetrator of convenient untruths. In the above case, for example, the effect of her distortion is serious, leaving the false and defamatory impression that MAP activists and their academic allies support child abuse.
Then there is this:
So queer theorists are genetic determinists already? Sorry, Julie, you’ve got your “hardwires” crossed. There is, to be sure, plenty of scientific research substantiating the claim that paedophilia is indeed a sexual orientation, one of a number of sexual “chronophilias”, but the evidence comes from conventional (and rather conservative) psychology, not from queer theory. See, notably, Michael C. Seto, “Is Pedophilia a Sexual Orientation?”, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2012.
And here’s yet another example of misrepresentation:
But no one is saying innate means uncontrollable. This double conditional is pure invention. Bindel bollocks!
There is much more one could easily have fun nailing as nonsense but time is getting on, and as I have Covid at the moment I’d frankly rather just be chilling with my feet up in front of the telly.
Just one further observation is irresistible, though. Bindel says that back in the 1970s activists including me “somehow” managed to be welcomed “into the upper echelons of polite, liberal society”. For scaremongering purposes, she overstates this welcome. However, to the extent that we did indeed make some inroads maybe it was because we were “polite, liberal people” ourselves, which is apparently unforgivable in today’s angry, irrational, times.
Beautiful!
I loved everything you wrote aside that is from the reference to C*vid (why not just say, for example, rhinovirus? ‘Twas always the frantic branding/brandaganda? that made genuine medical diagnosis of any kind ultimately beside the point – but let us not linger in that topical hornet’s nest any longer than we have to!)
Seems i’m alone then in Frustrationland with my Unheard contributions to Unherd. Can only wonder if i’ll be able to see any responses to you thereupon!
>I loved everything you wrote aside that is from the reference to C*vid
I’ll gratefully take the first part of your response. Thank you. As for your dislike of the Covid part, I am content to take that with an uncomprehending shrug. Anyway, I can assure you this “rhinovirus” has been quite unpleasant but at least I am still around to tell the tale. So I feel no reason to regret getting jabbed, quite the opposite.
Please be sure to tell me/us if you get any engagenent at all with your Blind Lezzo Bindel comment Infuriatingly/mysteriously, i can still see zero sign of it. Neither from phone nor from my PC! Hope the hell is one meant to know how/why that could be?
This has been published in the comments section. Perhaps we can have a deluge of up votes from HTOC subscribers, as petty as it may sound, like some of the kooky anti posts have received. Afterall, fight fire with fire.
Yo, Ed! 🙂 Good idea.
Very good rebuttal!
Cheers, Pat!
I’m afraid they’re hiding, but not deleting, pro-MAP comments on Unherd. Your free speech is not important to them.
>Your free speech is not important to them.
It’s not my free speech that’s important, it’s their (the forum’s) free access to a wide range of perspectives. At its broadest, censorship is an impediment to informed democracy.
Just looking now via Tor browser, I can’t see any comment by yourself in the comments section. You will likely have been able to see your own comment because you posted it from your IP address, but it doesn’t seem to have been published or made public :p Who knows, it might get through in a day or so…
I saw it there. It was a spirited reply, Tom!
Yeh! It has been visible then. Thanks for letting us know, Stephen. Does it make a difference if you are a paying subscriber? Can’t think why else the site would discriminate between readers.
My post went for hours last night as the latest one posted, which I thought was strange. OK, it might have been a reasonably good post, but I didn’t think it was a gobsmacking conversation-stopper!
Checking again a minute ago, I now see a number of posts have been added since mine, with the total now standing at 81. In the “most voted” list, my post stands higher in the rankings than another post that has 18 positive votes. Yet my post has a net total of only one positive vote. So it seems my post must have received at least 10 positive votes but these were nearly all cancelled out by nine negative votes.
At one time, if I remember rightly, they would show all the votes, but then changed the system, probably so as to discourage extremist posts of a divisive love it or hate it nature.
It is perhaps of some interest that no one has attempted to rebut any of the points I made.
I have a non-paying membership, but I didn’t have to log on to see your comment. Strange discrepancies here.
Are you subsctibed, Stephen? I know i am, and that is exactly why this whole business of Unherd’s seeming to ‘play fast and loose’ with its commentariat sucks so very big time.
Ah well, at least Mr Musk’s team does not interfere, and until such time as they decide to block me at least, i can freely pepper Unherd’s and BLB’s Twitter account with somewhat less than 100% decorous remonstrations..
Laskitude? Not Turpitude? Oh dear, I am mortified! Is it possible that all this time, in which I have been addressing you with what I thought was affectionate dignity as Mr Turp, you have been chafing under a diminutive you have regarded with displeasure for some reason? If so, I am very sorry for any offence.
I must confess, it is only with great self-restraint that I have forborne to refer to our esteemed friend Fatana Morgana as Fatty. In that case, though, the casual resort to a body-shaming label would be hard to justify for a big, fat wodge of reasons.
HA! First class response to what was in fact but an erroneous flick of finger when both WJT and WJL prompts presented themselves. I have sometimes resorted you see to the latter option – which incorporates the handle Laski by which i’m known by most everyone in meatspace – when the t-word proves to be beyond the ken of online interlocutors, even tho appearing to this day on arrival cards issued to those about to visit the USA! Rest assured, I shall change it back now. A fellow in love with diminutive beings shouldn’t have any prob when addressed by a similarly diminutive handle, amirite? NO displeasure here!
Fatty Morgana is lovely. I only dread to think what it might anagram to!
Mr Turp, I am relieved! 🙂
Anatomy Graft?
This is the one and only result for two-worded anagrams. Otherwise there are thousands. A few quick highlights I skimmed:
A Tangy Format
Gnat Fart Mayo
Fat Gay Matron
However, considering the nature of this blog, I’m lead to believe “Ram Any Tot Fag” must be what you had in mind!
I then realized that Fatty Morgana contains within it the letters for “anagram”, but could find no combos…
I hate to disappoint, but my body is pretty athletic. But you’d be welcome to call me Fatty ironically, even if that helps those keen to stereotype us. 🙂
No disappointment at all, Fatty! (just this once!). Mens sana in corpore sano, and all that. It’s fine to know your physique is in good shape along with your mental acuity. No disappointment, either, in fact reassuring, to see your good humour given a chance to take a bow! 🙂
Well, I’ve been called worse. 😉
I do have a subscription, but wasn’t logged on when I saw Tom’s comment.
Couldn’t agree more. That’s why the Online Harms Bill is a threat to democracy, (along with many other things these last few years). It is a Trojan Horse used time and time again. That’s why I’m sceptical about TPTB being more lenient with MAPs because it’s a great boogyman for control that hardly anyone questions. Nadine Doris when Home Secretary did a Tic Tok dance video promoting the “Online Harms”….Silly bitch!
You have got a reply with two specific questions: “So, perhaps you can state your position in simpler and clearer terms: do you favour the legalisation of sex with minors? And are you intrinsically sexually attracted to minors?” Whatever you answer, I think that a link to heretictoc would be enlightening for anyone on unherd.com.
As someone definitely to the right of Bindel, I found it amusing about MAPs wishing to appropriate the Rainbow Flag. For me, a man having affection for a little girl (or boy, I suppose) is entirely natural and normal, it is undoubtedly a primeval trait to wish to protect and care for the young, and that is from where the affection first arises. Dare I say it, far more normal than wishing to have a sex change.
Then minor attraction is exclusively presented as “wishing to have sex with children”. No. Minor attraction is a very broad spectrum of attitudes and behaviours, including just feeling affection and love for children. Is coitus with young children even possible – I very much doubt it anatomically. So she’s presenting a false case. A man can give pleasure to a child through many ways – a kind word, a smile, a loving attitude. This is what being a MAP is about, to me anyway. Feeling and expressing genuine love for children. Her arguments are preposterous and just polemical in a dumb way.
Interesting idea. My (half-baked) hypothesis is rather different. I tend look at the variety of sexual preference, including preferences that can’t be explained in terms of social utility, and regard that variety as a natural product of a flexibility that itself confers a survival advantage on the species. In other words, a degree of flexibility that allows for such ‘anomalies’ as homosexuality, paedophilia, necrophilia, zoophilia and all manner of kinks and fetishes is more conducive to the survival of the species than a lesser degree of flexibility that doesn’t allow for such anomalies. To that way of thinking, the anomalies are secondary to the flexibility itself, as is any utility that they confer.
I would argue that minor attraction is a cleaner and more moral attachment than some other stigmatised attractions: a) dead bodies are inanimate objects, and it is disrespectful to the deceased and therefore an act of spiritual degradation; b) animals lack the spark of reason, and although affection between animals and humans is very important, the sexual stimulation of an animal is odd but not sacrilegious in the same way as defiling a dead body. Nevertheless philosophically there is a far greater gulf in understanding between an animal and a human than between a young child and an adult.
So to what extent is “sexual stimulation of a child” acceptable? Obviously human beings are incredibly complex mental and spiritual beings and there is a spectrum of emotions and feelings in the psyche that interact with and overlap with the sexual impulse. So while touching a child sexually is currently classified as criminal behaviour, human beings can technically of course be sexually stimulated in purely psychological and non-tactile ways, and also there is no such thing as a purely sexual response – it overlaps with love, excitement, happiness, joy as well as negative things we want to avoid like guilt and shame. But kind words to a child can technically activate the nexus of sexual-emotional-happy feelings within the child, especially if there is a bond of attraction between the child and the adult. The world and human interaction are infinitely complex and subtle, and sexuality is of course acted out in ostensibly “innocent” and subtle ways, through verbal cues, body language and the nexus of human interactions.
Perhaps so, but within the compass of my ‘(half-baked) hypothesis’, morality wouldn’t be a consideration at all. If the social utility is effectively an accidental consequence of the flexibility, labels like ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ are no more causative.
On the other hand, one could say that necrophilia is the only sexuality which with 100% certainty is not harmful to one’s partner!
Ok. I can only look at this subjectively and the idea of normalising necrophilia disturbs me greatly. Zoophilia is less disturbing but also compromises the dignity of man. Paedophilia has received an appalling press in the last forty years yet admittedly, perhaps the only reason I even support a pro-MAP position is that I have a very powerful attraction to little girls in around the four to ten age range. I cannot explain it and it is at odds with a lot of my other social and political positions. I’m being honest here. As Tom has pointed out in an academic paper, minor attracted sexuality would focus on the body and pleasure of the child and the gratification would come from pleasing the child. I don’t believe in a selfish minor attracted sexuality. But this feeds through to my general attitudes towards children. I want them to be happy and I want to please them. I’m not interested in my own physical gratification apart from through private fantasy and auto-eroticism. There you go, now for a flood of down votes lol
Haha! Evo dogma is nothing if not flexible! Soooo flexible in fact as to have successfully replaced the need for evidence in its adherents’ minds with the satisfactions of some jolly old vaguest plausibility!
Well, I did refer to it as a ‘(half-baked) hypothesis’. I’m not an evolutionary biologist or psychologist. However, it is highly ironic that your response, which highlights the importance of substantiation, amounts to an ad lapidem.
Haha, oh yes, i cheerfully admit the ad lapidem. But i think HTO’C is hardly the place to embark on such a ‘substantiating’ project, which after all would entail having to confront vast screeds of detail, depending on just exactly where within the entire conceptual edifice and legacy one wished to start, and how one would prevent such a conversation from fairly promptly going BOOM!
I don’t, as a reasonable human being, care what some hate-mongering conflater of ‘MAP’ and ‘child abuser’ has to contribute. Is it even appropriate for Julie to be engaging with such topics? Clearly she is mentally underdeveloped and should not participate in grown-up matters.
This is unequivocally false. I sincerely doubt there is any professional clinician on the planet who would describe “child sexual abuse” as an identity worthy of empathy. See how she flips from (presumably) *acts* of pedophilia, to pedophilic *attraction* in the same breath. How does anyone take her seriously?
I know we’re mostly dudes, but give the lady MAPs some recognition too! And what’s the argument against CP here? If indeed it helps “maintain abstinence” wouldn’t that be the best outcome? As always it’s taken for granted that any and all illegal material is “abuse”, and we’re expected to loudly and incredulously express our disgust at such things without further contemplation. But, okay, let’s say the images are hurtcore and the people involved clearly don’t want their images viewed, etc… I still don’t think this is an ironclad argument for prohibition, but for the sake of argument let’s say that this material best stay banned. If lower ‘offense’ rates could be achieved by allowing access to AI porn, then would the Anti’s be satisfied? Of course not. That’s still too “pro-paedophilia” and it’s about hurting pedos, not helping kids. Regardless of public distaste, however, there’s no way the tech being evolved right now won’t be used to generate digital loli. Can’t stop, won’t stop.
Also, “Old”, “Dom”, “Virgin”. I feel like there’s a joke in there somewhere…
COMICS. Comics, people. Comics. *sigh*…
The University had NO CHOICE but to crack down on such victimless degeneracy. The matter was entirely outside of their control, you see.
Mwuahaha! Feed The Beast! Who needs 666 when you can have SexSexSex? Hail Satan! Corrupt the youth! Obliterate all that is good and pure!!!
Not seeing any issues here.
For the love of God, will this author ever even attempt to explain why these happenings are supposedly alarming and/or incorrect? No. Just “Pedo Bad”.
Boo the fuck hoo. It’s the 2020’s, quit living in the past. Well aware of history and yet you’re repeating the same damn oppression against MAPs. Gross.
Abuser. Predator. Pedophile.
One of these things is not like the others. Maybe if you actually *did* care to understand you’d know this already.
TL;DR: Ugly old feminist unquestioningly despises paedophiles (and not-paedo paedo’s [MAPs]) and you should too… cuz reasons. Also, we ought to uplift and support the rest of the alphabet community though otherwise we’re bigoted and backwards!
Acceptance for me, revulsion and institutionalized persecution for thee.
The technology to generate AI lolis already exists and is already in use by the AI art community. I would know; I am such an ai-rtist. And the censors are already coming for us for exactly the reasons you outlined above.
A little bit of amusing and validating news: I’ve been given the symbolic position as the “Editorial Lead” for Social History and Critical Theory. Quite apt considering I’m supposed to be an expert in one of those :p
https://www.newgon.net/wiki/User:Prue
>symbolic position as the “Editorial Lead” for Social History and Critical Theory
Quite right too! You have established your credentials very thoroughly indeed.
Somewhat off topic but curious for me, I wondered if you’d read or heard of the book Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships, by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha?
The claims are pretty large ones and I wondered what you think of it, as you’re much more well-versed on evo-psych and anthro literature than me?
As one reviewer put it:
Our true sexual instincts, they claim, were honed over hundreds of thousands of years during human prehistory when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers and our social arrangements were very different. Contrary to popular conception, often characterized by Thomas Hobbes’ assertion that prehistoric human existence was “solitary, nasty, brutish, and short,” the authors argue that our hunter-gatherer ancestors led an almost idyllic life. “A dispassionate review of the relevant science clearly demonstrates that the tens of thousands of years before the advent of agriculture,” they write, “while certainly not a time of uninterrupted utopian bliss, was for the most part characterized by robust health, peace between individuals and groups, low levels of chronic stress and high levels of overall satisfaction for most of our ancestors.” […] In all likelihood, they lived in close-knit communities of 100-150 individuals. And they propagated by having indiscriminate sexual relations and raising their offspring cooperatively and communally. Wait….what?!
Yes, that is the big “gotcha” in “Sex at Dawn.”
Any thoughts? I wanted to look into David Ley’s research into cuckoldry, which has exploded as a category of pornography in recent years. [It’s literally everywhere for me I can hardly avoid seeing it.] It seems to me that these 2 books would complement each other, and that cuckoldry could be understood as a modern response to monogamy which Sex at Dawn sees as ‘unnatural’ – a rigidly enforced product of culture – and would on some level vindicate the emphasis on co-operative, less / not possessive sex that is propagated by Sex at Dawn.
Yes, I have read Sex at Dawn. I have also read Sex at Dusk, a book written specifically to debunk the claims made in Dawn.
Neither Ryan nor Jetha have any great expertise and they make mistakes along with overclaiming.
Lynn Saxon is scornful in Sex at Dusk: Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn. She plainly has considerable biological knowledge and she makes a strong critical case. But, if memory serves, her self-published volume does not give her CV. Again, from memory, I think she sounded like someone with maybe a Masters in biology and a theoretical grounding in ev psych but no great command of paleoanthropology.
All in all, both books need to be read with caution. Sex at Dawn is not completely rubbish, as Saxon claims. It is very entertainingly written, but sorting the wheat from the chaff is not easy for the uninitiated.
I might try to write a bit more on another day, after looking at my notes, but right now I am under the cosh of Covid, which I probably picked up at the Oxford Lit Fest a few days ago. With people rapidly passing from one crowded event venue to another, I can easily see this being a “super spreader” event.
I’m OK so far. No problem with breathing, which is the most dangerous thing, but after 4/5 days I am getting thoroughly fed up with a persistent and remarkably painful sore throat. Got paracetamol, which helps, but it’s still nasty.
Oxford was good, though. Don’t regret going.
Get well soon, Tom. By the way, are you vaccinated?
Thanks, SB.
>By the way, are you vaccinated?
Yup, kept up with the full recommended programme, which is about five times so far. They never said jabs would stop you getting Covid, only that you’d have better chances of it not being too serious. At 77 I would have been at high risk of hospitalisation or death. No sign of that yet.
I stopped after the first two jabs after reading several reports like this one:
https://www.opastpublishers.com/open-access-articles/covid19-vaccinesan-australian-review.pdf
Can’t say I’ll be rushing to evaluate this study for a while. It’s not the sort of text one seizes on with eager enthusiasm while actually under the cosh of Covid. I am due to have a further booster later this month, though, and will give matters some thought before doing so.
A brief glance shows this paper, published a little over six months ago, takes issue with Pfizer’s reporting methods and gives a scary list of side effects, none of which have side-affected me so far. But this criticism does not appear to have had much impact on medical opinion. Why not, I wonder?
Being warned of scary effects that don’t actually (so far) affect you? The media employing fear tactics and hyping up potential ill consequence should you make certain medical decisions?
Now where have I seen that before…
Given that today’s “medical opinion” is decided by deep-pocketed interests with ties to lawmakers and stakes in pushing product (e.g. the record-profit-making Pfizer, Gates & co) it’s no ‘wonder’ the criticism hasn’t had impact. I mean, it *has* had impact, just not among The Gatekeepers of Health & Happiness. It’s like saying “The State newspaper says The State is to be trusted, thus trusting The State is the correct course of action. Oh, and if anyone suggests otherwise, ostracize, deplatform, fire, attack, and ridicule them.”
Were government officials infallible and benevolent beings this would make sense, but politicians, in addition to being flawed humans themselves, are especially selfish and not to be trusted. There are no reluctant philosophers leading the way, only control freaks who think they are entitled to decide for the rest of us how to live. Unquestioningly deferring to such Establishment lead to overbearing mandates and a lockdown deadlier than any slightly-worse-than-the-flu pandemic ever could.
Psychological damage to children, mass psychosis, a disturbing rise in authoritarianism, climbing rates of suicide, untold numbers dying alone with not a loved one in sight…
Thanks, Covid cultists!
>Being warned of scary effects that don’t actually (so far) affect you?
Yes, by the antivax conspiracists, not by the MSM. Live by the facts, not by theories people are pushing just because it suits their ant-corporatist, anti-big pharma, anti-MSM mindset. By all means understand and sympathise with their scepticism (as I do) and their justifiable suspicion of self-serving elites, but do not cave in just so you can be onside with your “smart”, we-know-how-it’s-going down friends. Do not be tribal.
Go by the facts as you find them after researching what you personally, after due thought based on your lived experience of the way the world works, and your knowledge of sources that you have good reason to believe are more reliable than others.
If people say you are being “naive”, fuck ’em. Your opinion is your own, not theirs. Think what YOU think you should think, not what they tell you to think.
That goes both ways. Do not put blind faith in Dr Fauci, or the corporates, or the apparently benevolent billionaires, or The New York Times. But do not assume that those who reflexively trash such sources have some unerring instinct for knowing what’s what. There’s no shortage of loud-mouthed, empty-headed BS from “alternative” sources, and even authoritative-sounding, soberly presented BS too, the latter being the more dangerous as it is harder to detect.
After writing the above, I chanced upon an interestingly relevant book review in today’s issue of Science. It is behind a paywall, so I have pasted the entire item below. Good luck America, you’ll need it!
https://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/library/item/07_april_2023/4093226/?Cust_No=60041552
America’s snake oil problem
An irreverent dive into “medical freedom” highlights the comedy and tragedy of medicine in the United States
Christopher Kemp
Science
April 7, 2023
If It Sounds Like a Quack… A Journey to the Fringes of American Medicine. Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, Public Affairs, 2023. 336 pp.
**
Something strange has happened to Project America. Slowly, we have become a population that includes a substantial number of people who drink bleach to cure bronchitis. Some of us aim lasers at our arthritic joints. A few of us speak in tongues, beseeching a higher power to fix our acid reflux.
With our latest technological advances, we can achieve what was once impossible. Astonishingly, for example, we designed, tested, and distributed a vaccine for COVID-19 within a year of its arrival in the United States. But as surely as the Sun will rise tomorrow, some people will reject both the vaccine and the best available treatments and opt to drink aquarium cleaner instead. With his book If It Sounds Like a Quack…, Vermont-based journalist Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling charts the reasons why.
Hongoltz-Hetling has smartly chosen to center his book on the narratives of six purveyors of quack medicine, each an archetype. There is Larry Lytle, a South Dakota dentist who, for several years, sold $12,000 laser pointers to gullible people, telling them that light could cure anything from hearing problems to HIV/AIDS. There are Pentecostal preachers fleecing their flocks through prayer. There is Toby McAdam, who made millions marketing his own homemade—and completely untested—supplements.
A Polish immigrant, Alicja Kolyszko, treats patients with leeches. She attaches them to a patient’s skin—regardless, really, of medical complaint—and waits until they finally detach and fall off the patient’s body, blood-fattened and exhausted. Because leeches are animals and not molecules or roots or chemical mixtures, they are surprisingly unregulated.
Jim Humble claims that he is an alien from the distant Andromeda Galaxy. For the entirety of this excellent book, Hongoltz-Hetling refers to Humble as “the alien in Humble’s skin.” Authorial choices like that are not for everyone, but I cannot get enough of them. The book is a genuine scream: irreverent, very often snarky, sometimes bawdy, but always insightful and well reported.
Hongoltz-Hetling tells readers that as recently as 2001, vaccines had a higher approval rating in the United States than did Dolly Parton, Tom Hanks, or Dr. Seuss. Back then, 93% of Republicans and 97% of Democrats believed in vaccine effectiveness.
Not anymore. In 2020, in the deadliest months of a global pandemic, around 66 million Americans refused to wear face masks, which had been shown to slow the spread of COVID-19. In fact, they hated the face masks. The masks, in their minds, had become the problem. It is important to understand why this happened, because it almost certainly will happen again.
Hongoltz-Hetling is an able guide. With his red umbrella held high, he takes us through the recent history of American quackery. He deftly retells the ways in which each of his protagonists first became radicalized and how poorly our regulatory institutions responded to the threat they represented.
At times, it is staggering. We have a broken health care system that leaves millions underserved and often untreated; we have a political system awash with influence from Big Pharma, which spent around $6 billion on lobbying and contributing to political campaigns between 1998 and 2018 alone. On top of this, millions of religious Americans are already primed, perhaps without knowing it, for superstition and magical thinking. By 2017, according to a Pew Research poll, 20% of Americans had rejected conventional medicine and instead relied exclusively on alternative medicine—on lasers, and prayer, and leeches, and crystals, and reiki, and drinking bleach, and herbal tinctures, and poultices.
By then, years before the arrival of COVID-19, the liberal left-wing yoga-and-crystal crowd had made an unexpected alliance with the right-wing, gun rights, “Don’t Tread on Me” faction of American life. Emboldened by former US president Donald Trump—a man Hongoltz-Hetling witheringly refers to throughout the book as “the game show host”—they began to advocate for “medical freedom,” or the right to reject mainstream health practices and to access nontraditional therapies.
The movement’s alignment with broader anti-government groups is noteworthy. At the 6 January 2021 US Capitol insurrection, for example, one of the stages from which protesters addressed the crowd was dedicated to health freedom.
It is all here in Hongoltz-Hetling’s book: the nonsense cures, the half-hearted and toothless US Food and Drug Administration injunctions, the inevitable jail time for pseudoscience purveyors, the unnecessary and painful deaths of the vulnerable and desperate. We see the religious praying over a treatable girl as she dies. We meet people who are convinced, even several days after her death, that she will rise again. It is tragic. It is comic. It is tragic. Like me, you may find yourself laughing through tears as you read.
The reviewer is at the Department of Translational Neuroscience, Michigan State University, Grand Rapids, MI 49503, USA, and is the author of Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation (Norton, 2022).
Email: cjkemp@gmail.com
10.1126/science.adh1865
Gonna have to say this guy is full of bullshit. It’s not masks people hated, and picking the most extreme cases of natural medicine is dishonest. People hated mandates. People hated the government and corporations telling them what to do. That is what people hated. People hated lockdowns and arrests. It was politicized because the establishment made it political.
Maybe you can use this song, but above all the singer, as a complementary therapy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14ad-mHBuU8
Love the singer, and his singing, so thanks. But the song? As therapy? It’s not exactly a barrel of laughs, is it?:
Man, those lyrics! Heart-breaking, and the second verse rubs it in even more! If this is what you send to cheer a fellow up, I shudder to think what you might have in mind to make them miserable! 🙂
On Oct. 25, 2018, the European Convention on Human Rights ruled that Sabaditsch-Wolff was not allowed to say that the prophet Muhammad was a pedophile, even if he married Aisha when she was 6 and consummated the marriage when she was 9 years old and he was 53. Saying so, violated the “peace” in Europe. What all these European dissidents have in common is that they’ve dared to express their (positive) views about Israel, and their (less than positive) views about Islam, Islamism, Muslim immigration, Islamic gender and religious apartheid and jihad. Although Islam is not a race, such ideas are considered racist even if they are true, perhaps especially if they are true.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/the-new-censorship
What ‘The Tablet’ conveniently missed, is that Jew ‘Holy’ Mary was 12 when wed to middle-aged beardy Jew ‘Holy’ Joe, Pedo – DOH!
The Good Book predicted the Instagram age! Lol I’m being partly ironic.
”Their life will be like a watered garden.
They will never be weary again.
Then the young girls will rejoice and will dance,
The men, young and old, will be glad.
I will turn their mourning into joy,
I will console them, give gladness for grief.”
A wonderful prophecy from the Prophet Jeremiah!
He was way ahead of his time. That’s a perfect description of TikTok. But it raises the question often raised by Christopher Hitchens. Why did Jesus not come to the Chinese — a relatively advanced society — rather than the Middle East? Clearly Jeremiah’s prophecy is being fulfilled by a Chinese tech company, not an Israeli one.
It’s a beautiful passage selected as part of today’s Lauds (morning Hour of prayer). Using Christian symbolism – well it is multilayered, but on one level Jeremiah is referring to the New Jerusalem (ie. Heaven). Interesting that his idea of Heaven has young girls happily dancing and men, both young and old, being filled with gladness by it. Shows that old traditional cultures didn’t have our warped sensibilities around children.
As for your question, Jesus deliberately came to a backwater to demonstrate his humility, as it was all about a heavenly kingdom rather than an earthly kingdom.
But enough with the theology lesson! I just found the passage charming and the Bible is actually full of beautiful quotes like this.