Heretic TOC

In a first for Heretic TOC, this blog brings you news before it has even happened: a story from New Zealand datelined 30 November, even while a good few hours of 29 November remain to be completed here in Britain. As usual, though, the news is not good. A defendant found guilty of “historic offences” a few months ago is now faced with losing his house to a forfeiture order, on the grounds that the house itself facilitated sexual offences. That’s what the prosecutor said about Michael Jackson’s Neverland (see book extract below), but Jackson was never threatened with losing ownership. […]

Heretic TOC loves writing and has dozens of tasty topics in mind just bursting to get onto the page. Unfortunately, it is time for a really boring post that cannot be further delayed. In my About page I say my aim here is to present a “discourse of resistance”. It is time to emphasise that the “resistance” I am looking for is precisely one of “discourse” rather than resistance to the law. In other words, it is fine for commentators here to argue that laws should be changed. It is not at all fine, though, to encourage, or appear to be

So Germany is to ban “bestiality” under animal welfare law, according to yesterday’s Guardian. Like young children, animals cannot give “informed consent”. Interesting, then, that Peter Singer, pioneering philosopher of animal rights, has not condemned sex with animals. Some years ago he reviewed a book on the subject. Among other interesting points, he said this: …sex with animals does not always involve cruelty. Who has not been at a social occasion disrupted by the household dog gripping the legs of a visitor and vigorously rubbing its penis against them? The host usually discourages such activities, but in private not everyone objects

Mary Beard kindly replied after Heretic TOC queried by email the accuracy of her radio statement that the age of consent in England was 12 for many centuries. The eminent classical scholar conceded that “what happened between 13th and 19th century is complicated”, adding “and how far driven by LAW is not clear”. Yep, no argument with that. Thanks to excellent work by reader Peter (see comment to Mary, Mary, wonderfully contrary) we can now refer to important information in Carolyn E. Cocca’s book, Jailbait : the politics of statutory rape laws in the United States, which goes back to the

Heretic TOC was going to write about the latest craziness in Britain: last week’s “sexual exploitation” report from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England – a portentous sounding outfit that ought to be helping the young but which in practice contributes to their oppression, or at least suppression. I must come back to that – prod me if I don’t – but it would be a shame to let the agenda here be dictated utterly by the latest mainstream news, much of which is so repetitious: more stats, more reports, more cases of “offending”. All this should not be

There has been no shortage of bloodcurdling oaths against “paedophiles” since the Savile scandal broke, but none I have heard none to beat the ravings of Harry Potter star Richard Griffiths some years ago. I’d feed all paedophiles into a tree shredder,” he vowed, “and anything left the police can have. Remember Griffiths? He was Harry’s bullying Uncle Vernon, the one who made the young magician sleep in a cupboard under the stairs. Seems he was a natural for the role. In fact this Dick Dastardly turns out to be a serial offender. On another occasion, he reportedly said: Now, me,

The admirably unshockable Mary Beard, Cambridge classics professor, must have raised a few eyebrows in her TV series earlier this year when she was talking about the scandalously early (by modern standards) age of marriage in Ancient Rome. As she also put it in the Guardian: Some girls were 12 or 13 when they married. We call it paedophilia; they called it marriage. That’s one of the exciting things about Roman culture. It’s different from ours. Only a woman these days, and one who is also an eminent historian, could express such a view without reputational damage. What male scholar, after

In its first 10 days Heretic TOC has passed 1000 hits. Whether this is a cause for celebration or commiseration is a mute point. According to today’s Guardian, Google people say half of all blogs have only one reader: the blogger. By that dismal standard, celebration is definitely in order. Online, I discovered that five million bloggers average only three hits per day compared to over 100 for Heretic TOC. So, much better than those losers then! It appears there are currently 80,000 “up-and-coming bloggers” at Heretic TOC’s level. Your A List bloggers, though, are way ahead, with 150,000 hits per

What’s in a name? The word “adultophilia” has its champion here on Heretic TOC (see willistina556’s response to The real silenced voices) to describe children’s sexual attraction to adults. Another commentator, Gil Hardwick, favours “teleiophilia”, this being “in uniformity with the original Greek”. The latter term is a bit of a bugger for those whose spelling isn’t great but is favoured (also part of the downside, some would say) by the psychological research wallahs. Actually, it was Ray Blanchard who coined the term, as recently as 2000, although Gil is right that the word is wholly Greek in origin. One of

What defines illegal child pornography? In many jurisdictions this is utterly unclear, because mere nakedness may in theory be permissible, but too close a focus on the genitals may constitute an illegal “lascivious display” or an “indecent” image. An allegedly suggestive pose can tip the balance from legal to illegal, even if the child is fully clothed. The recent high profile arrest of pediatrician, Dr. Richard Keller, who practised at Boston Children’s Hospital and taught at the Harvard Medical School, has foregrounded the conundrum. He and a string of others have been arrested in the past few months on suspicion of