Please excuse this outburst, unless it's aimed at you

I just read someone’s comment on a blog, and now I can’t sleep. “David” commented on The Needle blog (which is excellent) that he didn’t want to read blogs by abuse survivors unless they were “intelligent” and “articulate”.

http://theneedleblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/do-ye-the-little-things-in-life/

I guess it’s his loss. I don’t know why I bother to get angry.

Well actually, I do. It’s the presumption that abuse survivors should act in a way that “the public” can understand, accept and feel comfortable with that irks me.

But, the world and the people in it being what it is and what they are, I have decided to help improve communication with people such as “David” by putting together a list of helpful advice for child sexual abuse survivors.

The list is brought to you by the sarcastic, bitter and twisted part of my brain. To the many wonderful people who are not “David” or a similar person, I appologise in advance and profusely.

HELPFUL QUESTIONS AND ADVICE FOR CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE SURVIVORS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF COMMUNICATION WITH NON-SURVIVORS

1) Be intelligent and articulate if you allow yourself to share your experiences with the general public

2) Don’t be angry. It’s upsetting.

3) Don’t cry. It’s disconcerting.

4) Don’t blame any of the following on the fact that you were forced to spend your childhood getting raped; eating disorders, mental instability, drug or substance abuse, criminal records, health problems, self harm, suicide or general fuckups. Grow up and take responsibility for your life!

5) Time’s a great healer. Heal. Now.

6) Be positive! There are starving children in Africa who are worse off than you.

7) Why didn’t you tell someone at the time?

8) If you did tell someone at the time and they ignored you, why didn’t you tell someone else?


9) Why didn’t you repeat 7) and 8) ad infinitum until satisfaction was achieved, even if you were ashamed, confused and scared shitless?

 10) In fact, why didn’t you, at the time of being an abused child, behave a bit more like an adult? Hmmm?

11) Tell the police.

12) If you already told the police, and they wouldn’t listen to you, remember that they are very busy people.

13) Tell you MP.

14) If you already told your MP etc. etc. refer to point 12)

15) Remember that people who rape children have beards and are generally unattractive (refer to mainstream media newspapers for evidence). Don’t accuse anyone who is charming, powerful or has connections with charity. Apart from Savile, who was a one off.

16) Don’t question the efficacy of the  legal justice system or the good intentions of those who govern, even if many of them side with or are proven to be paedophiles. What do you want, a revolution?

17) Remember that everything’s different now, and this shit doesn’t happen anymore.

Peter Tatchell. Paedophile apologist? You decide.

Peter Tatchell is a well known civil liberties and gay rights campaigner.

I have reproduced the text of a letter which Peter Tatchell wrote to the Guardian in 1997, defending the publication of a book called  "Dares To Speak", on the subject of paedophilia. I have done this because the full letter is now difficult to find on the Internet. I have come across several Tatchell supporters who were unaware of the letter and it's content and who were shocked by it.

In view of the fact that many Tatchell supporters claim he is against paedophilia and fights against abuse, I think it's important that the full text of the letter is available for interested parties to read.

Is Peter Tatchell against paedophilia, or is he, in fact, a paedophile apologist? I know what I think. I invite you to read and decide for yourself.

Peter Tatchell's letter to the Guardian, dated 26 June 1997, is reproduced in full below

ROS Coward (Why Dares to Speak says nothing useful, June 23) thinks it is “shocking” that Gay Men’s Press has published a book, Dares To Speak, which challenges the assumption that all sex involving children and adults is abusive. I think it is courageous.

The distinguished psychologists and anthropologists cited in this book deserve to be heard. Offering a rational, informed perspective on sexual relations between younger and older people, they document examples of societies where consenting inter-generational sex is considered normal, beneficial and enjoyable by old and young alike.

Prof Gilbert Herdt points to the Sambia tribe of Papua New Guinea, where all young boys have sex with older warriors as part of their initiation into manhood. Far from being harmed, Prof Herdt says the boys grow up to be happy, well-adjusted husbands and fathers.

The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends – gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy.

While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.

Peter Tatchell.

One Billion Rising. But not you please, Peter Tatchell.

I'm really looking forward to the taking part in the "One Billion Rising" event tomorrow, 14th February. It's going to be the biggest demonstration in history, where people across the world will be dancing in a show of solidarity with girls and women who have suffered violence and injustice. We're dancing to say "enough is enough". It's going to be ace! I have been practicing the dance steps, I'm bringing my friends, we're geared up. 

Searching for "One Billion Rising" on Twitter, I found some unexpected support from one Peter Tatchell, who tweeted "One Billion Rising! Oppose rape & violence against women ". It made my flesh crawl. Keep reading, you'll see why.

For those of you who are not familiar with Mr Tatchell, he introduces himself thus on Twitter: For human rights, democracy, global justice and LGBTI Freedom. He's a well known campaigner and activist. He's got more than 30,000 followers on Twitter. Some might remember him from when he tried to do make a citizens arrest of Robert Mugabe and got beaten up by security guards. To many people, he's a hero. So far, he sounds like a pretty good egg, wouldn't you say?

Thing is, Peter Tatchell has expressed opinions in the past that he's quite keen for us to forget. In his eagerness to protect "freedom of speech" and "civil liberties", he appears to have forgotten about the rights of children not to suffer sexual abuse. Perhaps those rights came into conflict with the rights of adults who enjoy having sex with children. Oops.

Below is an extract from the Daily Mail, 13 September 2010 written by Peter Hitchens. When you've read it, you might forgive me for, or even join me in, saying this: Peter Tatchell, tomorrow, when I dance to express my support for girls and women who have suffered violence and abuse, I don't want you there. I just don't.

Finally, just so that there's no confusion. Peter Tatchell is not condoning paedophilia. He just thinks it's OK for adults to have sex with children as young as 9 years old and that this can bring the children "great joy". Incidentally, Mr Tatchell is also campaigning to lower the age of consent to 14, so as to not "criminalize children". How thoughtful. 

EXTRACT:

For on June 26, 1997, Mr Tatchell wrote a start­ling letter to the Guardian newspaper. In it, he defended an academic book about ‘Boy-Love’ against what he saw as calls for it to be censored. 

When I contacted him on Friday, he emphasised that he is ‘against sex between adults and children’ and that his main purpose in writing the letter had been to defend free speech. 

He told me: ‘I was opposing calls for censorship generated by this book. I was not in any way condoning paedophilia.’

Personally, I think he went a bit further than that. He wrote that the book’s arguments were not shocking, but ‘courageous’. He said the book documented ‘examples of societies where consenting inter-generational sex is considered normal’.

He gave an example of a New Guinea tribe where ‘all young boys have sex with older warriors as part of their initiation into manhood’ and allegedly grow up to be ‘happy, well-adjusted husbands and fathers’.

And he concluded: ‘The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends – gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy.

‘While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.’

To read the Daily Mail article in full, please follow the link below
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1311193/PETER-HITCHENS-Question-Who-said-Not-sex-involving-children-unwanted-abusive-Answer-The-Popes-biggest-British-critic.html


The following article sets out Tatchell's argument in favour of lowering the age of consent to 14, and also includes his original 1997 letter to the Guardian in full (it's the only source of the original letter I've found remaining online):
http://www.christian.org.uk/news/tatchell-reiterates-call-for-lower-age-of-consent/

PS: Before you head over to Wikipedia to read the glowing profile of Peter Tatchell's life and works, note that the profile also states: 

A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view.

Still keen for more info? Here's a link to an article published by....
(you guessed it) The Guardian in honour of Peter Tatchell's 60th 
birthday last year. The article concludes 

"Happy birthday, comrade. If the British are slightly more tolerant than we once were, it is in part because we had the good fortune to have you live among us".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/22/nick-cohen-peter-tatchell-birthday

What are you looking at?

I went shopping with a friend the other day. It was cold. Tempted by the idea of some wooly jumper warmth, we walked into Bennetton. On a big table full of jumpers in different colours, two beautiful young ladies were having a bit of a cuddle. They were naked from the waist up. No jumpers.

What were they doing there? And why were they doing that? Were they lesbians, or just cold? Perhaps a bit of both? You might have sussed by now that I’m talking about a poster. But it was really big and lifelike. It felt like the ladies in question were jumping out of the poster and right into my face in all their jumperless glory. It was kind of embarrasing.

I asked my friend what she thought about the poster, and the young ladies, and the fact that between them, they had very little clothing. My friend gave me a quizzical look. She hadn’t noticed the poster. And having been made aware of it, she wasn’t particularly interested.

We went on shopping.

A nudge and a wink to Wordpress

Dear Sir/Madam

It has come to my attention that you are hosting blogs with pedophile content, and have refused requests from a concerned public to close these blogs down when they have been reported to you.

I am outraged by this, and I hope you will reconsider, and soon. The blogging and Twitter communities are discussing your lax attitude to this on a daily basis. We will make sure that it builds up to a perfect storm if you don't take action. 

I was thinking about migrating from Blogger to Wordpress, but this has made me think twice. 

Kind regards
Concerned Blogger

Celebrating Spring (and the fine traditions of the Guardian)

I know we’re in the thick of winter at the moment, but some of us have already started looking forward to spring. Summer solstice falls on 25 April. It is the day when the sun turns and the days get longer.  In certain quarters it is also known as “Alice Day”.

“Alice Day”, 25 April, is the day which paedophiles have dedicated to an annual celebration of their desire to molest little girls. Many wear a pink bow or special jewellery on that day, or light pink candles to put on their window sills, as well as making a special effort celebrate by abusing a little girl. But fear not if your liking is for little boys. There is also “International Boy Love Day” on the day of the winter solstice, 22 December. Similar rituals rituals apply, only this time with blue bows, blue candles and little boys as paraphenalia. In this way, paedophiles show eachother, and the world, that they are proud, defiant and unafraid.

And they have good reason to be, because paedophiles have friends in high places. They ARE in high places. You know those ridiculously short sentences handed to child sexual abusers? The fact that only around 10% (NCPCC figures 2010/11) of reported cases end up in a conviction? The suble and not so suble talk of lowering the age of concent to 14 years old? The change in the sentencing guidelines, looming this year, sold as a tightening of the laws on CSA, but which will in fact make sexual abuse of 13 year olds more likely to result only in a community sentence? “Less serious” cases of pornography involving children which will now only carry a community sentence? I could go on. We could be looking at an extremely long series of related coincidences. More likely, it’s the result of a long term, carefully planned and very successful infiltration of paedophiles into positions of power.

The name “Alice Day”, previously know as “Paedophile Pride Day” , was inspired by the book “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carrol. The “Alice” figure was again inspired by a little girl called Alice Liddell who was, according to our friends at the Guardian, Carrol’s “muse and great passion”. I mention the Guardian, because it was during a search for information about “Alice Day” that I stumbled across this article.

It’s a few years old, but in light of recent paedophile appologist behaviour by Guardian journalist Jon Henley,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/03/paedophilia-bringing-dark-desires-light?INTCMP=SRCH

I though the older article deserved to be dusted off. Highlight the fine tradition and “dog with a bone” dedication of the Guardian to the cause, so to speak;

Just good friends?

Was there something sinister about Lewis Carroll's fixation with seven-year-old Alice Liddell? Not necessarily, says Katie Roiphe

The Guardian, Monday 29 October 2001

It is true that the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, otherwise known as Lewis Carroll, author of the inimitable classics Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, liked little girls. Or, as he once wrote: "I am fond of children (except boys)." He took exquisite, melancholy photographs of little girls. He befriended little girls on trains, and beaches, and in the houses of friends. And one particular little girl, Alice Liddell, came to be his muse and great passion.

Unfortunately for Dodgson, the 21st century does not look kindly on a single man who is beguiled by seven-year-olds. Feminist critics have darkly suggested that Dodgson was a paedophile. They have condemned the beautiful photographs he took and objected to his objectification of the immature female body, and read all sorts of rapacious nonsense into the Alice books. At the other extreme, many of Dodgson's defenders have protested too much. They have attempted to argue that he was utterly without feelings for little girls. One of his early biographers wrote, "There is no evidence that he felt or inspired any pangs of tender passion", when of course there was an abundance of evidence that he did. His defenders tend to portray him as a shy, stuttering bachelor with a fondness for children that may as well have been a fondness for stamps or porcelain puppies.

Is it possible that neither view of him is correct - that he was neither the child molester nor the pure, white-haired reverend? It is possible that our crude categories, our black and white views of romantic feeling, cannot contain someone like Dodgson. It is almost impossible for us to contemplate a man who falls in love with little girls without wanting to put him in prison. The subtleties, for those of us still mired in the paranoias of the 20th century, are hard to grasp. When one thinks of a paedophile, one thinks of a lustful, over-the-top, drooling Nabokovian love, but that is not Lewis Carroll. His love was more delicate and tortured and elusive; his warmth, his strange, terrified passion, more intricate and complicated than anything encompassed by a single word.

Dodgson's affection for what he called his "child friends" was always mingled with a vague yearning. He wrote to one 10-year-old girl, "Extra thanks and kisses for the lock of hair. I have kissed it several times - for want of having you to kiss, you know, even hair is better than nothing." This is typical of his correspondence. He converted whatever his feelings were into the whimsical, quasi-romantic banter that eventually made its way into the Alice books. He wrote to one mother of a potential visit with her daughter, "And would it be de rigueur that there should be a third to dinner? Tête à tête is so much the nicest." There was a romantic intensity to the friendships that Dodgson struck up with children, a hint of hunger, of never quite getting enough. This was especially true of his relationship with Alice. There was always a sense that he wanted more of her. And yet, can we really blame him for that - as long as he didn't act on his feelings? If he turned himself inside out, turned the world inside out with his powerful imagination, in order to avoid them?

For the rest of the article, follow this link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/29/gender.uk

Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy,

victim, survivor, warrior, fighter. 

So many names to choose from. Usually I don't like any of them, but I haven't been able to think of any better ones. Except for maybe "person", but that's such a common name.

I share so much with other people who have experienced child sexual abuse. I also feel a bond with people who have experienced rape as adults. Anyone who's been violated, trodden on, taken advantage of and ignored are welcome on my team. I am quite desperate, in fact, to feel a sense of common purpose (not capitalized!), because I believe it's the only way to effect change. 

I feel limited, ill at ease and tongue-tied though, when searching through the ant heap of humanity for fellowship, by the vocabulary available. Likewise when describing my past experiences of abuse or my life today. I feel (but this could be due to paranoia) that I am judged, or could be judged, for describing myself in one way or another. Or perhaps it's me who's doing the judging? Of other people? Of myself? There are words, feelings and states of mind that I am tempted to censor in myself, and in others. I'm not proud of that and I think I should stop it. I think everyone should stop it.

I could say that nobody likes to be pigeonholed, but that might not be true. I think some people feel comfortable with the label victim. Others see themselves as survivors. Others again are warriors first, or fighters. Some like to talk about "the road to healing" whilst others just want to get mad and even. Many are a mixture of some or all of those, or change between them depending on the time of day and the day of the week. Many resist all labels and want to be defined by who they are and what they've done, not by what has been done to them.

What I want to say to myself (because this is a talking to) and others (who are perfectly entitled to ignore what I say) is that it's OK. We've all earned the right to feel, say and think what we please, and to call ourselves what we like.

I'll use those words; victim, survivor, warrior, fighter, to find and connect with the people I want to be connected with. 

For myself, there are days when I'm 100% victim. And other days when I'm 200% fighter. But mostly I'm a person who is fucked up, pissed off but fairly optimistic about the chances that the rest of my life is going to be better, and that one day, I'm going to experience something that feels like real peace. 

Whatever you call yourself, if you want to make a change, I want to know you.