Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[killer b]

Looks to me like he only 'reviewed' one side of the 'debate'.

quite. the opening paragraph makes no mention of the actual authors of the submission (except via the link which many people wouldn't bother to click) - which would completely change a reader's view of the statement...

 

[articul8]

I would've thought it is entirely appropriate to try to understand better the nature of what those instances might have in common, and how it relates (or doesn't) to normal adult sexuality

 

[weepiper]

I would've thought it is entirely appropriate to try to understand better the nature of what those instances might have in common, and how it relates (or doesn't) to normal adult sexuality

*shrug*

I see it the same way I see Laurie Penny taking EDL Tommy out for a steak. Publishing the results teaches us nothing useful

 

[butchersapron]

I would've thought it is entirely appropriate to try to understand better the nature of what those instances might have in common, and how it relates (or doesn't) to normal adult sexuality

Is that what you think the article does?

 

[articul8]

quite. the opening paragraph makes no mention of the actual authors of the submission (except via the link which many people wouldn't bother to click) - which would completely change a reader's view of the statement...

No, that's very true - I didn't know an organised group of pro-paedophiles was affiliated to Liberty's forerunner! (was Harriet Harman working for them at the time )

 

[8ball]

Looks to me like he only 'reviewed' one side of the 'debate'.

What's the other side of the 'debate'?

Should he have burned down a podiatrist's office for the sake of balance?

 

[articul8]

Is that what you think the article does?

Not as such, no. But I thought it raised some interesting if uncomfortable questions about the subject - eg. problematising the relation between desire and sexual abuse

 

[butchersapron]

No, that's very true - I didn't know an organised group of pro-paedophiles was affiliated to Liberty's forerunner! (was Harriet Harman working for them at the time )

Hewitt was gen sec at the time - Harman came after but i believe the same basic position was maintained.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

What's the other side of the 'debate'?

Should he have burned down a podiatrist's office for the sake of balance?

What an ignorant post.

Louis MacNeice

 

[killer b]

that wiki article on PIE is quite an eye opener. the 1970s were a different world.

 

[butchersapron]

What's the other side of the 'debate'?

Should he have burned down a podiatrist's office for the sake of balance?

Well, he said that debate rages, then gave one side of the debate - that paedophilia isn't necessarily harmful etc. If there was another side to what he called the 'debate' (that it is necessarily damaging etc) then i didn't get to see it in his review. Maybe i missed it? Did you see it?

You should be ashamed of that last line btw.

 

[8ball]

What an ignorant post.

Yes, trying to understand anything starts from a position of ignorance.

 

[articul8]

that wiki article on PIE is quite an eye opener. the 1970s were a different world.

Charles Napier, the former chairman of PIE is the half-brother of John Whittingdale, the Tory MP and chair of the media select committee

 

[8ball]

Well, he said that debate rages, then gave one side of the debate - that paedophilia isn't necessarily harmful etc. If there was another side to what he called the 'debate' (that it is necessarily damaging etc) then i didn't get to see it in his review. Maybe i missed it? Did you see it?

He does say there is no general consensus on this. I take it you mean there are important studies he has glossed over. Do you feel this is some kind of advocacy piece?

You should be ashamed of that last line btw.

That was more a reference to the Telegraph claptrap. Feeling the content is unbalanced is a valid concern, and something that should be brought up in response to this, but saying you have no argument against the content but that the tone is insifficiently florid sums up a lot about what I hate about that paper.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Yes, trying to understand anything starts from a position of ignorance.

Who is torching the podiatrist and why?

Louis MacNeice

 

[sihhi]

Ta!
I see the mob trope to the fore.



No there ain't.

If the complexity and divergence of professional opinion may have helped create today's panic around paedophilia, a media obsession with the subject has done more: a sustained hue and cry exemplified by the News of the World's notorious "name and shame" campaign in 2000, which brought mobs on to the streets to demonstrate against the presence of shadowy monsters in their midst.

Reminds me of the comment pieces at the time. Was this ever 'apologised' for?

WHY I AM SO SCARED OF PAULSGROVE WOMAN: THERE ON TV WERE THE MUMS (NO DADS), SHOULDERS TATTOOED, FACES STUDDED. NEVER HAS THE SOCIAL DIVIDE SEEMED SO WIDE
That's Britain for you. Across the channel they got the French Revolution, liberte, egalite, fraternite (and a bit of head-chopping), and all we got were the Gordon Riots and mobs stoning Catholics. So when working-class women and their children take to Portsmouth's streets, it isn't in support of the NHS, or to demand better nurseries, but out of a desire to hang, burn or castrate some of their neighbours. This depressing failure of the proletariat to perform their historical task is slightly reminiscent of those days in 1968, when dockers and meat-porters marched - not for socialism or against the Vietnam war - but in support of Enoch Powell.
Watching Paulsgrove Woman at work over the last few days has re-emphasised for me how scared I am of a certain part of our society - as terrified, certainly, as ever the Victorian bourgeoisie were of the poor of Seven Dials. There on TV were the mums (no dads), faces studded, shoulders tattooed, too-small pink singlets worn over shell-suit bottoms, pallid faces under peroxided hair telling tales of a diet of hamburgers, cigarettes and pesticides.
And they'd taught their three-year-old kids (on whose behalf all this was supposedly being done) to chant slogans about hanging and killing. Paulsgrove Woman, I felt, was of an alien race to me. No wonder the BBC employed anthropologists with cut-glass accents to interpret these people for the sake of bemused viewers. Never has the social divide seemed so wide. And they were having fun. The glee with which two young women hurled telephonic abuse at a supposed offender put me in mind of the smiling faces you see in lynching photographs from the Old South. It's an evil pleasure, this - especially when there's very little interest in guaranteeing that the next victim is actually guilty of the (very general) offence with which they are charged. The sentiment exposed by one mother of three (where was her husband?) said it all. "I'd like to see 'em all castrated," she told the camera, "And I don't mean chemically." In other words, the enjoyment to be had from the offender's suffering was every bit as important as the objective of preventing reoffending. If not more. I was reminded of the scene in Zola's Germinal when the capitalist's genitals were ripped off by the mob.
Nevertheless the Paulsgrove phenomenon is interesting, if only because it involves one of the least listened to and inarticulate sections of society. I hear the atavistic hatred in the shrill voices, but I hear other things as well. Many of these women have cause to feel dumped on. Almost all paedophiles are men; a significant number of the women are single mothers, some of whom have been mistreated or abandoned by men. They're used to feeling like the bottom of the social heap. Yet here are blokes living among them whom even they can despise, and on behalf of the one thing that does belong to them: their children. A telling comment from one interview was that drug-dealing had now become part of the scenery in Paulsgrove, but that paedophilia never would be; they may have failed in every other way to protect their families, but not in this.
If the women of Paulsgrove have lumped together the guilty with the innocent, they have only behaved in the same way as, and using similar language to, that of the popular chat-shows and newspaper columnists. This is not a discriminating age, interested in the tedious adumbration of fact. And for one brief moment - emphasised by their involvement yesterday in "negotiations" - they have been empowered, even if only to smash windows, terrify neighbours and alarm the police. They have also, whether they know it or not, been shown an unusual degree of leniency by the law. Those leading the campaign, which has involved car-burnings, assaults and threats to the local MP, should, if possible, be prosecuted and punished. Pour decourager les autres, as they don't say in Paulsgrove.

 

[weepiper]

Reminds me of the comment pieces at the time. Was this ever 'apologised' for?

WHY I AM SO SCARED OF PAULSGROVE WOMAN: THERE ON TV WERE THE MUMS (NO DADS), SHOULDERS TATTOOED, FACES STUDDED. NEVER HAS THE SOCIAL DIVIDE SEEMED SO WIDE
That's Britain for you. Across the channel they got the French Revolution, liberte, egalite, fraternite (and a bit of head-chopping), and all we got were the Gordon Riots and mobs stoning Catholics. So when working-class women and their children take to Portsmouth's streets, it isn't in support of the NHS, or to demand better nurseries, but out of a desire to hang, burn or castrate some of their neighbours. This depressing failure of the proletariat to perform their historical task is slightly reminiscent of those days in 1968, when dockers and meat-porters marched - not for socialism or against the Vietnam war - but in support of Enoch Powell.
Watching Paulsgrove Woman at work over the last few days has re-emphasised for me how scared I am of a certain part of our society - as terrified, certainly, as ever the Victorian bourgeoisie were of the poor of Seven Dials. There on TV were the mums (no dads), faces studded, shoulders tattooed, too-small pink singlets worn over shell-suit bottoms, pallid faces under peroxided hair telling tales of a diet of hamburgers, cigarettes and pesticides.
And they'd taught their three-year-old kids (on whose behalf all this was supposedly being done) to chant slogans about hanging and killing. Paulsgrove Woman, I felt, was of an alien race to me. No wonder the BBC employed anthropologists with cut-glass accents to interpret these people for the sake of bemused viewers. Never has the social divide seemed so wide. And they were having fun. The glee with which two young women hurled telephonic abuse at a supposed offender put me in mind of the smiling faces you see in lynching photographs from the Old South. It's an evil pleasure, this - especially when there's very little interest in guaranteeing that the next victim is actually guilty of the (very general) offence with which they are charged. The sentiment exposed by one mother of three (where was her husband?) said it all. "I'd like to see 'em all castrated," she told the camera, "And I don't mean chemically." In other words, the enjoyment to be had from the offender's suffering was every bit as important as the objective of preventing reoffending. If not more. I was reminded of the scene in Zola's Germinal when the capitalist's genitals were ripped off by the mob.
Nevertheless the Paulsgrove phenomenon is interesting, if only because it involves one of the least listened to and inarticulate sections of society. I hear the atavistic hatred in the shrill voices, but I hear other things as well. Many of these women have cause to feel dumped on. Almost all paedophiles are men; a significant number of the women are single mothers, some of whom have been mistreated or abandoned by men. They're used to feeling like the bottom of the social heap. Yet here are blokes living among them whom even they can despise, and on behalf of the one thing that does belong to them: their children. A telling comment from one interview was that drug-dealing had now become part of the scenery in Paulsgrove, but that paedophilia never would be; they may have failed in every other way to protect their families, but not in this.
If the women of Paulsgrove have lumped together the guilty with the innocent, they have only behaved in the same way as, and using similar language to, that of the popular chat-shows and newspaper columnists. This is not a discriminating age, interested in the tedious adumbration of fact. And for one brief moment - emphasised by their involvement yesterday in "negotiations" - they have been empowered, even if only to smash windows, terrify neighbours and alarm the police. They have also, whether they know it or not, been shown an unusual degree of leniency by the law. Those leading the campaign, which has involved car-burnings, assaults and threats to the local MP, should, if possible, be prosecuted and punished. Pour decourager les autres, as they don't say in Paulsgrove.

Jesus, who wrote that?

 

[frogwoman]

That's an appalling article.

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Aaronovitch.

 

[killer b]

Jesus, who wrote that?

aaronovich.

 

[butchersapron]

He does say there is no general consensus on this. I take it you mean there are important studies he has glossed over. Do you feel this is some kind of advocacy piece?

Look this is quite simple - ymu said that the author had defended himself from criticisms (presumably criticisms that it was an advocacy piece) by pointing out that it was simply a review piece, a review of the debates and positions from those professionally and academically concerned with the issue. Fine, i have no problem with that whatsoever, i merely pointed out that he appeared to only review one side of what he termed the debate, that his review is partial at best. You cannot do an adequate review of what you yourself term a debate by only reviewing the work of one side of that debate. I now have no idea - after reading his review piece if there is body of opinion that argues the opposite to those he talked to.

A different point: any discussion in the article that moves away from the specialists, any discussion of the people this effects and what they think and feel is framed in terms of mobs, in terms of ignorance and an attitude of leave it to us - which is precisely what lead to what happened in portsmouth and somerset a few years back.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Jesus, who wrote that?

David Aaronovitch in the Indie.

 

[the button]

Jesus, who wrote that?

David Aaronovich, in The Independent.

Edit: FM got in there first, because he simply couldn't be arsed to type the word "Independent."

 

[TruXta]

Has anyone said Aaronovich yet?

 

[weepiper]

I HEARD YOU

 

[the button]

Hmmm. Sounds like David Aaronovich to me.

 

[Captain Hurrah]

David Aaronovich, in The Independent.

Edit: FM got in there first, because he simply couldn't be arsed to type the word "Independent."

I got there first, I think you'll find. I couldn't be arsed even typing Indie.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I got there first, I think you'll find. I couldn't be arsed even typing Indie.

Or quoting

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Lusty was using that piece to wind up 'Davey' on twatter a few weeks back.

 

[the button]

Or quoting

Broken Britain.