Heretic TOC – Page 25 – Not the dominant narrative

Only one thing worse than being talked about…

10 Comments / By Tom O'Carroll / January 30, 2013 January 30, 2013

I think it was Oscar Wilde who said “There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”. On that basis, things could definitely be a lot worse, as heretics and heresy are constantly in the news these days. What’s different this month, though, is that the talk has not just been about the latest savage sentencing or celebrity exposé or busted paedo “ring”. No, the tone has been a fraction more elevated in the wake of Jon Henley’s story in the Guardian, which raised not just eyebrows but also quite a lot of …

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The spirit of free expression lives on

25 Comments / By Tom O'Carroll / January 27, 2013 January 27, 2013

Freedom of expression online, the great inspiring vision of so many early internet pioneers, is not entirely bereft of support even now, it seems. The good news is that WordPress, the outfit that hosts Heretic TOC, has a strong track record of opposing censorship and has positively rejected the recent attempt to have this blog closed down. It will be recalled that a certain “Scarlet Wilde” tweeted, ““Paedophile blogs at WordPress: Heretic TOC… am reporting to close.” (See Heretic TOC threatened with closure, 10 January). It has now emerged that this was not just an idle threat. “Scarlet Wilde” has her own …

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Glad to hear about Bad Thad

9 Comments / By Tom O'Carroll / January 24, 2013 January 24, 2013

Now here’s a guy whose work seems worth looking into: historian Thaddeus Russell. I hope American heretics here will excuse Heretic TOC for only now catching up with the daringly iconoclastic Russell, but such is the smothering ubiquity of the dominant narrative he may have passed largely unnoticed even in his own country. A couple of items made it under the radar and into the media though: in 2009 a Daily Beast piece on film director Roman Polanski’s “unlawful sexual intercourse” with a girl of 13, called How young is too young?, and in the following year a Huffington Post article, …

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On Sex and Love, Child Attraction, and Contemporary Word Politics

5 Comments / By Tom O'Carroll / January 21, 2013 January 21, 2013

Welcome to this, the first guest blog to be hosted by Heretic TOC. Others have been submitted and will appear in due course: many thanks to those who have taken the trouble to write. The standard has been excellent, giving me confidence that guest blogs will have a continuing role here as an occasional feature. This first blog is by Gil Hardwick. As a frequent contributor of comments on the regular blog, Gil needs little introduction, except to say that he is an anthropologist and writer whose work is better described on his website than I can manage. See also Sniffer …

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‘Work of genius’ lost in obscurity

14 Comments / By Tom O'Carroll / January 18, 2013 January 18, 2013

Heretic TOC yesterday meant to cover a further aspect of “Three reasons to be cheerful” but ran out of time and space. Well, I say ran out of space: I suppose a blog page can stretch to infinity but I doubt the same can be said for readers’ patience. I had wanted to elaborate on one of the sources used by Jon Henley in his Guardian article. He refers to J Michael Bailey of Northwestern University: “…writing last year in the peer-reviewed Archives of Sexual Behaviour, Bailey said…he was forced to recognise that ‘persuasive evidence for the harmfulness of paedophilic relationships …

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Three reasons to be cheerful

4 Comments / By Tom O'Carroll / January 17, 2013 January 17, 2013

A trio of weighty articles on paedophilia and related “sex offending” have made their appearance in leading journals in the last couple of weeks. What makes them stand out from the perpetual blizzard of bollocks thundering down on us with increasing intensity for the last decade or three is their positivity. OK, it’s all relative. I’m not saying the revolution is around the corner or even that the worst is past. But at least we have seen a bit of resistance in influential places against prejudice, virulent hatred and inhumane treatment. Leading the way was The Guardian, in the UK: Jon …

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Compared to Sinason, Savile was a saint

23 Comments / By Tom O'Carroll / January 14, 2013 January 14, 2013

Heretic TOC has now read the official Metropolitan Police Service report on Jimmy Savile in its entirety. As suspected, there is much sound and fury, signifying nothing very much except the virulence of moral panic in the UK right now. Far from being the worst “paedophile” offender in UK history, Savile may not have been a paedophile at all, and any offences could well have been relatively trivial. The report admits, in a coy footnote, that some respondents “don’t wish the matter to be reported as a crime”, inviting the suspicion that at least some of those involved as minors at the …

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Savile: sound and fury, but signifying what?

6 Comments / By Tom O'Carroll / January 11, 2013 January 11, 2013

Followers of Heretic TOC hardly need to be told “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers”. What is worth pointing out, though, is that there are good reasons not to believe everything – and perhaps hardly anything – in the joint police and NSPCC report into allegations of sexual abuse made against Jimmy Savile out with an almighty, nation-blasting, media-saturating, fanfare in Britain today. I have not yet read the report, Giving Victims A Voice, but the title alone gives grounds for scepticism: Savile, lest anyone forget, died without facing trial. He is no longer around to defend himself and …

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Heretic TOC threatened with closure

12 Comments / By Tom O'Carroll / January 10, 2013 January 10, 2013

This blog is under threat of closure. Scarlet Wilde@wilde has tweeted: “Paedophile blogs at WordPress: Heretic TOC, Boy Chat, Girl Chat, CLover, Every Farthing, Growing Up Sexually, (more) am reporting to close.” If the site goes down, I’ll aim to reopen elsewhere but it may take a while. Keep an eye out for new link announced at the start of the month on Boy Links or contact me here to be on list for info about new URL: tomocarr66@yahoo.co.uk . Also, advice appreciated on best way forward. Can we fight this?

No wonder women turn against 'teasing'

16 Comments / By Tom O'Carroll / January 9, 2013 January 9, 2013

We hear much these days about independent India’s soaring economic growth and advanced IT skills. But in the last couple of weeks a much grimmer story has emerged: the sickening gang rape and murder on a bus of a young unnamed woman. Apparently her death came about through evisceration when, after multiple rapes, an iron bar was shoved into her. It is a story which might at first seem of questionable relevance here, concerned as we are with minor attraction and with consensual sex not the atrocious rape and murder of an adult. Again bearing in mind John Donne’s words that …

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