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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Times article about Age of Consent, Stonewall, Alba

230 replies

Wandawomble · 12/04/2021 09:23

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/48c9ae6e-9adf-11eb-8da6-6f8eecc82ac3?shareToken=1d6c72638a41d774b21c06787d90f6d3

I know there are other threads about this but a bit of sunlight and all that...

OP posts:
StandUpStraight · 15/04/2021 07:28

Sorry, I should have added, the use of the term “adolescent” in the context of 14g, strongly suggests to me that at least some of the adolescents dealt with by this document must be at children. How else is their “sexuality” criminal?

Ereshkigalangcleg · 15/04/2021 08:44

Even if you accept the tortured interpretation of 14a put forward by McLaughlin on behalf of Stonewall, what do you do with 14g?

Yes exactly. He posted this text in the comments, but just repeated the same line about it meeting the Luxembourg guidelines (so what?)

Ereshkigalangcleg · 15/04/2021 08:45

Sorry, I should have added, the use of the term “adolescent” in the context of 14g, strongly suggests to me that at least some of the adolescents dealt with by this document must be at children. How else is their “sexuality” criminal?

I completely agree and was what I meant to flag with my post of 20.40 yesterday.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 15/04/2021 10:10

Has there been a fourth piece published today yet?

StandUpStraight · 15/04/2021 11:21

I did have a look but didn’t see anything. I hope he’s taking some time to consider his position.

StandUpStraight · 15/04/2021 11:27

not sure how he would have had time to write anything yesterday anyway, what with all the vigorous obfuscation he had to do in the comments section.

CharlieParley · 15/04/2021 16:02

Gay people deserve much better than being constantly being the target of misinformation campaigns related to pedophilia.

I agree they deserve much better than that. And if the gay rights movement, and a number of organisations engaged in that campaign, had always been as diligent in ensuring that paedophiles cannot co-opt their campaigns for their own purposes of child sexual abuse and exploitation you might have a point. Unfortunately they were not always careful to do so.

Children also deserve much better than having their safeguarding needs ignored and those concerned with safeguarding children vilified for raising concerns about risks to children and attempts to dismantle the safeguarding frameworks we have adopted to keep them safe from exploitation and abuse.

*If we lived in a remotely tolerant society:

  1. People would have interpreted the document as intended (it's quite clearly referring to access to sex/sexual/reproductive health services)*

No. The reader is under no obligation to interpret a text in the manner intended by the author. If an author intends the reader to take away a particular meaning, then the author writes with clarity, defines all terms precisely and so leaves nothing to interpretation.

Given the type of document we are concerned with here (a refutation and correction of an official UN declaration), the author would also be expected to analyse the target document critically (highlighting its shortcomings and errors in detail and with explanation, which can be done in footnotes and references accompanying the main document). They are tasked with providing evidence for any claims made and demands for substantial (let alone fundamental) changes in international and national law and policy must come with detailed examples of the type of solutions sought. Again, this can be done in an annex or supplemental documents.

None of this happened with this declaration. It's badly written, superficially argued, ambiguous to the extreme. It does not sufficiently consider the vast differences in the lives and struggles of its global audience, which means that a measure they call for (for instance regarding HIV-disclosure) may have a negative effect in the UK but a positive one in sub-Saharan Africa.

That's why declarations like this one, intended to speak to all peoples all over the world, are normally drafted much more carefully. As NiceGerbil points out in several comments, the official summit declaration is much better written than this alternative.

2. People would have targeted concerns to the Women's Caucus rather than at gay organisations.

Original concerns were raised at both. Few organisations have been as vocal about the declaration as ILGA. Indeed, if you Google it, you'll find that only a handful of organisations have celebrated and promoted it as much as ILGA.

And this particular instance of targeting happened during a party-political event concerned with women and girls and their rights, highlighting that the government party was funding organisations with a thoroughly questionable track record on women's rights under the Equality Act who were members of an organisation signed up to changing consent laws for adolescents. (A group that encompasses children as young as ten and young adults aged nineteen.)

Furthermore, the declaration was published by the Women's Rights Caucus as written by its members and published in the name of its members.

The Women's Rights Caucus is not an actual organisation however, but a meeting (to be precise, a fringe event at the annual global UN Women summit) of a loose "coalition" of now over 200 different organisations working in equalities. They seem to be critical of the mainstream UN Commission on the State of Women, certainly they opposed with their "alternative" feminist declaration the declaration adopted by the majority of delegates at the 65th session of the CSW in 2020. So it's not an organisation that exists and acts outside of the annual UN Women summit, of which it is not an official part (not one mention of the Women's Rights Caucus on the UN Women website. Even though the caucus published statements at least twice before this one.)

In conclusion I think that in the absence of an actual organisation to take to task over the declaration, it is therefore legitimate to single out local members of a co-signing and co-authoring organisation to highlight concerns.

3. People would have listened to the clarifications and moved on.

Only if those clarifications a) clarified and b) satisfied. It's not any kind of intolerant to remain doubtful after hearing a clarification that doesn't answer one's questions or concerns, especially when it regards the safeguarding of vulnerable groups

NiceGerbil · 15/04/2021 18:50

Sorry Charley I think this is unfair

'I agree they deserve much better than that. And if the gay rights movement, and a number of organisations engaged in that campaign, had always been as diligent in ensuring that paedophiles cannot co-opt their campaigns for their own purposes of child sexual abuse and exploitation you might have a point. Unfortunately they were not always careful to do so.'

Paedophiles are renowned for being highly manipulative.

The gay rights movement in the 70s involved loads of groups. EG national council for civil liberties (now liberty).

Also obviously not all gay people were actively involved in it!

Article

www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26352378

'It's an ideology that seems chilling now. But PIE managed to gain support from some professional bodies and progressive groups. It received invitations from student unions, won sympathetic media coverage and found academics willing to push its message.'

'Most gay people were horrified by any conflation of homosexuality and a sexual interest in children, says Parris. But PIE used the idea of sexual liberation to win over more radical elements. "If there was anything with the word 'liberation' in the name you were automatically in favour of it if you were young and cool in the 1970s. It seemed like PIE had slipped through the net."'

Manteiga · 15/04/2021 23:54

Margaret Lynch has responded to demands that she should apologize:

www.scotsman.com/news/politics/what-i-really-said-at-the-alba-party-conference-margaret-lynch-3202489

SmokedDuck · 16/04/2021 01:16

I think it's pretty naive to say that PIE just slipped through the net. Lots of people thought it was abhorrent or just didn't know it was around, but there was a reason it gained traction in that time and place.

Just as today, the idea of things like lowering the age of consent comes out of a particular philosophy about sex, basically the underpinning ideas of the sexual revolution or what now is often referred to as the sex positive movement. Sex is natural, sex is no big deal, people who feel sexual desire should be free to find sexual fulfilment, we shouldn't give children sexual hang-ups as it will impact them negatively long term. etc

The most basic problem idea may be, sex is no big deal. Because if you really think that, it means it's not something to worry about too much, it's not all that dangerous or potentially harmful.

Sometimes I think, since we've backed away from that somewhat as a society, that people forget that many people who saw themselves as progressive really believed those things, in a much more complete way than people tend to now. And those ideas were why some factions supported sexual activities, including homosexual activity, that had been considered questionable previously.

You only have to look at the Peter Thatchells to see that there are a group of people for whom these ideas are not separate, they are the same thing.

So if the kinds of reasons people talk about as why we should support gay rights come out of those same old underlying ideas, those ideas can always be spun out to include all kinds of other things. Love who you want, love is love, and similar slogans, the general pushing down of sexual identity to kids of younger ages - these are all ideas that can be used by predators because logically, they lead there.

NiceGerbil · 16/04/2021 01:55

Tatchell.

Back in the day he was. Dunno. He got the shit beaten out of him for gay rights and it gave him brain damage.

To read what he said about children in that open letter. Wtf.

Anyway it wasn't me saying they slipped through the net. It's in the article I linked.

For example I honestly believe that Harriet Harman has never been in favour of sex with children.

We see it now though. A rights movement. Some of those who support it seem to have lost their judgement. People who are not bad people. Are seeing things through such a narrow lens. The refusal to even spend half a sec thinking if others have a point. The us and them. It's just really weird. I don't struggle to imagine that similar happened back then.

SmokedDuck · 16/04/2021 02:26

Yes, I think people like Harman really didn't see it. It just seemed obvious to them that the idea of sex with kids was crazy.

But the sexual revolution included all kinds of crazy stuff with regard to young people, that now looks fairly awful but at the time, was seen as really progressive. Parents worried about their daughters being groupies in the 13 to 16 age range, for example, were seen as squares by those people. Because the girls were into it - and so far as it goes that's true, girls that age are interested in boys and rock stars and so on. Some kids are interested pretty early on when they start puberty.

Some o the stuff that went on at free schools, on communes, etc - if you conceptualise sex as something completely natural and good, and then take away all the "natural" consequences like pregnancy and STIs and such that we might create caution, and you think that mental consequences are caused by repression, you basically have a kind of free for all.

And men have always been more inclined toward that kind of attitude to sex than women which is why the male gay community has an element that really embraces that, unfettered by women's feelings which are often much more cautious and mixed.

But historically there have been a few periods where that attitude has been more socially prevalent, and the 60s and 70s were among the most extreme because of birth control and antibiotics. It was probably mainly the AIDS crises that began to dial it back in a real way.

What's interesting now is that we have that idea being pushed n certain quarters while in others there is more social condemnation of, for example, relationships with an age gap even among people of legal age, or paedophilic impulses, than ever. It's a weird mix.

NiceGerbil · 16/04/2021 03:01

'Parents worried about their daughters being groupies in the 13 to 16 age range, for example, were seen as squares by those people. Because the girls were into it - and so far as it goes that's true, girls that age are interested in boys and rock stars and so on. Some kids are interested pretty early on when they start puberty.'

Society back then was much more conservative.

Back then the likes of Jimmy saville, Gary glitter and Jonathan king were operating plus many more.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I can't tell if you're saying free for all is good, bad, or something else tbh.

And however much a child fancies a grown up, rock star or not. It's not ok for the adult to fuck them.

StandUpStraight · 16/04/2021 07:51

Thanks for sharing, manteiga. That’s a very good response from Margaret Lynch - effectively, it’s great that you don’t condone paedophilia, but I never said you did - the point is that you signed up to a declaration that calls for the elimination of laws that limit the legal capacity of adolescents to consent to sex, and you’re in receipt of public funds and should have been much more careful. And you’re still effectively a signatory to it - why might that be?

I can’t imagine what it feels like to be on the receiving end of so much hate for raising child safeguarding concerns, including concerted attacks by a national newspaper of record. I am so impressed (and grateful) that she hasn’t let this drop.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 16/04/2021 08:04

That’s a very good response from Margaret Lynch

It's an excellent response. So refreshing to see someone not back down, and that there party leader is fully behind them.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 16/04/2021 08:05

Their Blush

nauticant · 16/04/2021 08:29

For example I honestly believe that Harriet Harman has never been in favour of sex with children.

It's not this, it's that for a period of time she didn't see safeguarding of children as paramount and other issues needed to take priority, some of them being horrible. She has always been very intelligent and she would have understood that an organisation called Paedophile Information Exchange needs the greatest of scrutiny. It's just for a particular period of time she averted her gaze because it suited her purposes. It's how good people allow bad things to happen.

IvyTwines2 · 16/04/2021 09:00

@SmokedDuck 'But the sexual revolution included all kinds of crazy stuff with regard to young people, that now looks fairly awful but at the time, was seen as really progressive. Parents worried about their daughters being groupies in the 13 to 16 age range, for example, were seen as squares by those people. Because the girls were into it - and so far as it goes that's true, girls that age are interested in boys and rock stars and so on. Some kids are interested pretty early on when they start puberty.'

Magazines aimed at really quite young girls back then were full of pin ups of pop, rock and film stars - and these were clearly adults, not teen-looking boy bands, which weren't really around at the time. I've just found a stack from my childhood and the pin ups are in amongst comic strips - kids stuff, not the 'photo love' stories in the comics for teenagers. Children, then, didn't control what they were fed - adults did.

SmokedDuck · 16/04/2021 12:16

IvyTwines

I can't say I was ever interested in boy band types myself, I always thought they looked like kids, once I was interested in the opposite sex at all. I'm not convinced adolescent girls being interested in men and other teens is anything weird, I think it's just nature really. But the expectation that that they can actually navigate the risks and complications of sexual relationships is a different thing entirely.

SmokedDuck · 16/04/2021 12:21

@nauticant

For example I honestly believe that Harriet Harman has never been in favour of sex with children.

It's not this, it's that for a period of time she didn't see safeguarding of children as paramount and other issues needed to take priority, some of them being horrible. She has always been very intelligent and she would have understood that an organisation called Paedophile Information Exchange needs the greatest of scrutiny. It's just for a particular period of time she averted her gaze because it suited her purposes. It's how good people allow bad things to happen.

You may be right about her. But I do think some people, who can be very intelligent, can assume groups like this are so on the fringe that they would never be allowed to get anywhere. So, they just don't see them as a real threat in the bigger picture.

It happens with a lot of issues where people think, "the culture could never change to believe that." But if we look at history, it's not difficult to find cultures that believed a lot of things that seem not only bad to us, but just completely alien. People clearly can believe such things, see them as logical and part of a consistent worldview.

nauticant · 16/04/2021 12:32

That's the wilful blindness I'm talking about. Being aware that there's something risky going on but choosing to focus on the bigger picture and in some way turning the risk into a hypothetical which won't have an impact in the areas they're focused on.

SmokedDuck · 16/04/2021 12:37

@NiceGerbil

'Parents worried about their daughters being groupies in the 13 to 16 age range, for example, were seen as squares by those people. Because the girls were into it - and so far as it goes that's true, girls that age are interested in boys and rock stars and so on. Some kids are interested pretty early on when they start puberty.'

Society back then was much more conservative.

Back then the likes of Jimmy saville, Gary glitter and Jonathan king were operating plus many more.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I can't tell if you're saying free for all is good, bad, or something else tbh.

And however much a child fancies a grown up, rock star or not. It's not ok for the adult to fuck them.

Yeah, no shit it's not ok.

My point was that these are not unconnected sets of beliefs. There is a reason the ideas that underpinned the sexual revoution created an environment where it seemed reasonable to some people, who you'd think would have known better, to extend sexual freedoms to anyone who was interested in them, which can include adolescents. You can see the same logic at work today.

For some reason many people feel they can keep those ideas (sex is natural, sex is harmless) without the consequent ideas which follow on from them. That is naive and dangerous.

Tibtom · 16/04/2021 13:31

This reminds of an exam question I had at uni: "Sex is dangerous. Discuss"

Tibtom · 16/04/2021 13:32

I was studying biology so sexual reproduction.

persistentwoman · 19/04/2021 12:13

Margaret Lynch has a very good response published in today's Times. Fortunately in her own words rather than reported by that shambles of a 'journalist' from last week.
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/252aac38-a089-11eb-949b-ab1b919d4f89?shareToken=e380a75db9dd7acb7b078c697740d968

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