Heretic TOC

Not the dominant narrative

Techno-tethering globalises oppression

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David Kennerly, who debuted last year for Heretic TOC  writing about his childhood in the American Midwest, now makes a welcome return. This time his theme journeys to far horizons – places that may soon be closed to us for actual travel if restrictions envisaged by governments worldwide have their way. Yes, it’s a very alarming thought and one that has accordingly prompted David to document in considerable detail what the securocrats and fear-peddling politicians are up to and why we need to wake up to it. In his guest blog today he outlines two essays specially written for Heretic TOC […]

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Perversion, the erotic form of hatred

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Psychoanalyst Robert Stoller once wrote a book called Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred. For him, perversion was an unconscious revenge-taking for traumas going way back into childhood, in which the Oedipal conflict was a focal concern. Few these days would see this Freudian theme as the single key to unlocking the psyche’s secrets, profoundly important as a child’s early relationships with its parents surely are; but Stoller’s attention to sexual hatred was well placed and should engage us too. Discussion here recently has rightly taken misogyny very seriously. Several commentators have pointed out that women constantly face sexual provocations of

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Even creepier than the creepiest creep

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It is a good bet that anyone described as “creepy” these days has earned the unenviable epithet through suspicions he is a paedo: for lazy reviewers of novels and films it has become the go-to cliché for hinting that the scenario includes a sinister and scary perv. Far more sinister and scary, though, is a rather different kind of creepiness: Mission Creep. In a sexual context, it is everywhere. Feminist analysis that began quite reasonably some decades ago with a long-overdue assault on entrenched “patriarchal” power structures, may have been hostile to adult-child sexual contacts but care was generally taken to

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Silence does not betoken consent

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Well over a year ago, in January 2013, Heretic TOC ran a blog called No wonder women turn against ‘teasing’. A few days ago a carefully argued, information-rich, 1,300-word comment in response, complete with links to numerous scholarly and other references, was sent in for moderation. It seemed a shame to let such a magnificent contribution languish in a place where – because the blog was so long ago – not that many people would notice it. So here it is, below, presented as a guest blog. It is from “A”, which is not the most user-friendly of pennames, being about

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Should we publish and be damned?

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We’ve seen it before, haven’t we? Those who start wars on terror end up behaving like terrorists themselves. The virtual ink dry was barely dry on Heretic TOC’s warning last week that British paedophiles are to be treated as terrorists when news came through that in Germany the police have begun their own reign of terror. For what else can it be called, really, when 150 police officers – that’s right, one hundred and fifty – are deployed in an operation to arrest a handful of people peacefully enjoying a Spring day out, including a trip to a zoo with a

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Paedophiles to be treated like terrorists

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Guantanamo Bay here we come! Brace yourselves, oh heretics of Britain; pack away your remembrance of freedom to the size of a crushed dream; it’s the only personal property we’ll be left with when they take us away: a war against paedophilia has now been officially declared, along the lines of the war against terror in the wake of 9/11. Paedophiles are to be treated like terrorists. In his forthcoming legislative programme, prime minister David Cameron “wants to close a loophole that allows sexual predators to produce and possess ‘manuals’ giving tips on how to identify victims, groom them, and evade

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Blame the goats, pigs, caterpillars, slugs…

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In the wake of the great Jimmy Savile so-called child sexual abuse scandal of 2012, there has been a whole series of prosecutions of similarly high-profile figures in the UK for alleged sex offences. Interestingly, these are now producing a crop of acquittals as juries refuse to take the word of those claiming to be victims. Most recent of them was that of Nigel Evans, a former deputy speaker of the House of Commons, hence quite a lynchpin of the country’s democratic governance. He was cleared of all charges this month, having been accused by seven men of offences ranging from

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An open letter to Frank Furedi

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Many heretics, including myself, have been impressed by the online magazine Spiked on account of its vociferous support for free speech, distaste for state oppression, and its robust backing of civil rights, including for paedophiles. So when one of its leading contributors, sociologist Frank Furedi, recently joined the media chorus of those attacking paedophilia, the virulent hostility of his diatribe came as a shocking disappointment. The context was an article, “What PIE and the NSPCC have in common”, which was fine up to a point. Its central theme was actually a rather interesting argument in defence of parents against the concept

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Should Cinderella Law go to the ball?

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The heart sinks at news this week of a government initiative to expand yet further the already vast empire of victimhood. In Britain we have been told to expect a new law that will combat child abuse from a different angle, raising the spectre of yet another bunch of compo-seeking losers leaping at the chance to escape any degree of personal responsibility for their adult descent into drug addiction, gambling, dog-shagging, morris dancing, baking off, and suchlike depravities – who will inevitably be lauded for their “courage” by legions of counsellors, whose job it will be to keep these weaklings wallowing

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Creating victims, real and imaginary

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How do you turn a so-called child victim into a real one? One sure-fire way is to have her locked up for 20 hours in a police cell after she has refused to give evidence against her lover. That is what Judge Robert Bartfield did earlier this month when a 15-year-old girl would not testify against her 32-year-old boyfriend at Bradford Crown Court in northern England. After the girl eventually testified under duress, the man was found guilty of sexual activity with a child. A spokesperson for Victim Support rightly said the girl had been treated in a “grotesque and, frankly,

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