Cuties is a brilliantly provocative work of art. It’s great. Y’all should see this controversial new movie if you haven’t already. Just thought I’d get that out of the way quickly because many here have already seen the film and read lots of reviews and comments, including at Heretic TOC. So, instead of focusing on the film itself, I feel it will be more useful to attend to a key aspect of the debate it has provoked. What have I in mind, do you imagine? The “sexualisation” of kids? The dangers of creeping censorship whenever we see political pressure mounted against

Wow! It’s all happening! Jon Henley’s Guardian article on paedophilia yesterday has provoked an immediate and massive reaction. The piece itself drew over 900 comments on the paper’s website before the no doubt exhausted moderators closed the thread: they had been kept very busy reading and deleting abusive posts. In general, though, the exchanges, though passionate, included a lot of thoughtful if not always very well informed material. There were inevitably those who said they had been abused as children, and there were others who said they had enjoyed being sexually engaged with an adult, without later ill effects. I was

Will America follow Obama’s bid to tackle the country’s insane gun laws? The signs are slightly more encouraging than in the wake of previous school massacres. Even the stone-hearts of the “right to bear arms” cannot face-down the butchery of so many little kids, right there in the face of the nation. We’d do well not to hold our breath though: any change is likely to be minimal, and long haggled over in ways that need not detain Heretic TOC. Here the focus will instead be on how we look upon such events, whether as individual pathology or cultural malaise. It