Hi Mike good to see you here.
Cheers Rob -- just snipping for the sake of screen space.
To explain Chris' point on NAMBLA:
He uses the word 'abolition' in the Marxist sense. In the Adorno essay he was discussing, Adorno is insistent that under no circumstances should children be put in danger from an adult, and that current laws are designed to protect children.
What Chris is questioning is why we even have to have these laws in the first place, that is, what social pathology creates paedophiles in the first place?
The ones which protect children from grooming charlatans espousing sub-Freudian claptrap I'm guessing?
I'm not claiming the age of consent laws are perfect, they're not, but they are a framework to work within.
His concern is that these laws (i) naturalise paedophilia rather than seeing it as a pathology that can be overcome, thus reifiying sexuality as it currently stands and taking it out of the sphere of critical appraisal; and (ii) that they infantilise us by suggesting that our sexuality will always be dangerous and must be administered.
The question to be asked is, how do such laws actively perpetuate this current situation? How do they allow society to avoid actively dealing with the issue of paedophilia?
Personally, I can't see how criminalizing behaviour is "naturalising" it?
Yes, I would love a society which doesn't "infantile" us with laws, we all would, but the law is supposedly there to protect.
It sounds dangerously like the statement is suggesting an exterior protection afforded to vulnerably aged persons from sexual grooming or abuse by predators is "infantile"?
If so, then that is a reprehensible position.
With adulthood comes responsibility and one of those responsibilities is not to groom children for sexual gratification.
It's not an endorsement of NAMBLA. It's not a call to just remove age-of-consent laws. In capitalism that would result in barbarism.
It certainly looks like both of those things to me and I would suggest to most other reasonably minded people it does too.
If you honestly think it doesn't, or I've context twisted this, then I dare you to write that statement of Cutrones on a tshirt and display it in public on a saturday night when the pubs all turn out.
Instead, it is trying to bring to consciousness why we are so scared of our own sexuality; why we think every adult is liable to hurt a child; why paedophilia is even a thing.
With respect Mike, this is nonsense. It's exactly the same sub-Freudian claptrap PIE used 40 years ago. I've been into leftwing politics for long time now and after a while you smell this bullshit from a mile off.
These people are highly manipulative and successfully managed to fool large portions of the libertarian left in the 70's and early 80's with this drivel as indeed I guess people like Ludders and Seal will probably remember and testify.
The idea of child sex being okay if it's "consensual" and not forced is a false one. I'm pretty sure I could whip my cock out into a baby or toddlers face and it would quite happily suckle upon it without any complaint or duress, however you know as damn well as I do that is not consensual sex. It is an abuse of power and privilege dressed up in pseudo-libertarian rhetoric in order to elicit a warped justification of sexual gratification.
This kind of pseudo-libertarian bollocks has HUGELY hurt the left in the past and given the Right and the Centrists a weapon to beat the Left down with for decades, so why do you want to give those c*nts ammunition? Particularly when those in establishment power and most powerful people are some of the biggest nonces going?
If you ask me, it's arrested development. In Adorno's analysis, this arrested development is itself a product of capitalism.
If that were true then why did a whole paedophilia advocacy group like PIE affiliate themselves with the left in the 70's and 80's? Why is a paedophile advocacy group like NAMBLA doing the same within Academia circles with an endorsement by Cutrone who associates with their main founder Thorstad?
Don't you understand, Mike?
Thorstad IS a self-confessed paedophile. He runs a paedophile advocacy group.
He is also an associate of Cutrone. They've platformed together at events.
I would happily kick in the teeth of any paedophile or anyone who hurt a child. I know Chris Cutrone. He's not defending paedophilia. He's not like a member of PIE. I do of course see how you've read it this way but you really have to understand what the Adorno essay is on about.
Paedophilia is not merely about hurting children. You have the definition wrong.
It's about grooming children into sexual relations by the dominant predator, by making their victim feel like they are being empowered and emancipated by the experience usually via a high persuasion and reward system. It is an imbalance of power irresponsibly exploited for sexual deviancy.
You are confusing paedophilia and rape and conflating them into the same thing. They're not.
It's a dangerous argument to make and one which PIE fooled large portions of the left with during the 70's and 80's.
The question is, why do we even have such laws in the first place? Why does sexual violence towards children even happen? How can it be overcome? How do such laws elide the necessity of overcoming it?
Their abolition would therefore go hand in hand with the abolition of a world in which such violence is possible.
That's the point being made.
Again, you conflate paedophilia with violence. This is a false premise. Most paedophilia is committed via confidence building in the victim and coercion, not with threats or the fear of violence.
If you ever had a young child exploited and abused by a grooming paedophile you would not even be contemplating some of these questions.
Most paedophilia is committed by by close family or friend contacts to the child, or by those in an abusive position of power and influence, not by frenzied child-hurt rapists hiding in dark alleyways. It is mostly a confidence trick exercise of abuse and manipulation by those in positions of trust, rather than a violently forced act.
Re: Polanski and that Netflix show, that podcast is a great discussion on our predilection to
hide these things away, when we shouldn't. We should be tackling them head on. We should be actively trying to overcome sexual violence to children.
Censorship harms the possibility of doing this, does it not?
I rather think it's Polanski who is hiding away myself, it's why he f*cked off to France.
De-platforming paedophiles is NOT censorship.
And the 'Pope of Marxism' thing is just an old moniker for Karl Kautsky and is a different discussion not connected to the one about Polanski.
but do you not appreciate the concern raised when you use such a moniker bandied alongside a rapist and sex criminal like Polanski's name?
It connects together as an aggrandizement.
I'm not sure if it's just irresponsible negligence or given the themic nature of the event, an attempt to deliberately stir controversy, but such manipulative behaviour to aggrandize sex criminals on campus is not acceptable.
NONE of us think paedophiles are an oppressed minority. NONE of us think paedophilia ought to be normalised.
We simply question how the legislated repression of sexual pathologies harms the possibility of dealing with them.
You've just written two completely contradictory statements there Mike.
If paedophiles weren't "repressed" by legislation then that WOULD be through normalization.
