I saw this post from Richard Hanania the other week on Twitter/X in response to an article about a woman who had sex with several 15-year-old boys and was impregnated by one of them. Hanania also linked to a post he wrote on his Substack last year: Comments – Hitler, Demi Moore, and Other “Pedophiles” (richardhanania.com)

Hanania argues that women who have sex with teenage boys should not be imprisoned due to differences in male and female sexuality. From his Substack post:

“The idea that teenage boys can be victimized by older women, like the demand that men only be attracted to women of their own age, can only exist in a culture in which many aspects of heterosexuality are repressed, if not demonized. Blank slatism is the common thread here, and it’s warped the culture in ways that I suspect are tied to the sex recession, the decline of marriage, falling birthrates, and general misery among young people.”

 Hanania also writes:

“This isn’t worth worrying about simply because it’s a great injustice that women who have sex with underage boys go to jail, even though of course it is. If you think teen boys can be victimized by adult women, it’s a sign that your views about human sexuality are so disordered that it’s bound to affect other areas of life.”

Another individual I follow on Twitter/X made a similar argument about a different case of a young woman having sex with a teenage boy a few months ago but deleted the post after getting backlash in the comments. Predictably, a similar controversy has erupted in the comments over Richard Hanania’s post.

Hanania’s argument here highlights to me an issue I have people who constantly talk about the ‘blank slate’: sex differences are used to justify certain individual’s (usually women’s) actions and any objection to the justification is met with accusations that you believe in the blank slate yourself. It’s like a black and white “you’re either with us or against us” type of mentality.

To be clear, the blank slate is wrong and should be challenged, but that doesn’t mean you can’t debate apparent differences between the sexes (within reason obviously, it would be a waste of time debating whether or not men can get pregnant for example).

Underneath Hanania’s black and white thinking and attempts to be edgy however is a point that I think men’s rights activists/manosphere guys need to accept: because of differences between men and women, most people will not respond to women having sex with teenage boys the same way they would about men having sex with teenage girls. The same problem arises when trying to argue that men can be victims in general.

It is true, for instance, that men have a higher sex drive than women and are usually physically stronger than women. You can’t talk about to what extent men can be victims of sexual abuse by women without taking these two facts into account.

Also, it is undeniably true that a sexual fantasy of a lot of teenage boys is to have sex with an attractive ‘experienced’ older woman as evident by the term ‘MILF’ – which stands for ‘Mother I’d Like to..’ well you can guess the rest. Possibly the most well-known example in popular culture is ‘Stifler’s Mom’ in the American Pie films who has sex with one of the main characters in the first film and then in the subsequent films. In this case, the character is probably 17/18 (and the actor likely older).

On the other hand, what I think Hanania, and others who make the same kind of arguments as him, overlook is that many societies in the past would not have approved of older women having sex with teenage boys either. I mentioned in a post about Louise Perry last year that previous civilisations have portrayed female sexuality in threatening ways, such as the sirens in Greek mythology. However, such civilisations would not have labelled female sexual predators with words like paedophile. They would have likely used a different word.

I’ll use a word that is now considered not only politically incorrect but also very misogynistic: whore. You could sound like a fanatical preacher if you said the word in conversation but I can’t think of another word that can explain the type of female sexual behaviour that could be viewed as the equivalent of male sexual abuse. ‘Whore’ is what I believe people in the past would have labelled women like Rebecca Joynes and it is a useful word to describe the type of older women who typically have sex with teenage boys. Note that whores can be very sexually attractive just as male sexual predators can be very handsome and appealing to women.

An even more taboo notion is to suggest that some young women and teenage girls who have had sex with older men could also be called whores and would have been labelled as such in the past.  To be absolutely clear, I am talking about women/teenage girls who willingly have sex with older men rather than women/girls who have been sexually abused by men.

As I was writing this I realised that there is a sexual double standard that complements the well-known double standard of promiscuous men being seen as ‘studs’ whereas promiscuous women are seen as ‘sluts’. While the promiscuity double standard benefits men, there is a sexual double standard that benefits women: predatory men are often seen, understandably, as dangerous, creepy and abhorrent, whereas predatory women can be viewed more positively as seductive, powerful or even admirable. I realise that neither double standard is a cast iron rule, as promiscuous men can and have been condemned by societies just as predatory women can be.

However, this realisation led me to think of labels to differentiate negative male and female sexuality: male predators and female whores. Promiscuous (i.e. whorish) behaviour from men is usually deemed less problematic just as sexually predatory behaviour from women is. This likely has its roots in biology which I won’t bother going into here.

Both predatory and whorish behaviour nevertheless have similarities. For example, here’s a list of behaviours that I believe a female whore (or, if you like, a slut/harlot/jezebel/skank/tramp) would engage in:

• Sexually aggressive

• Has lots of promiscuous sex

• Has sex with underage boys as an older (20s-40s) woman or with older men as a younger (15-20) woman

• Forces herself on men who don’t want to have sex with them using alcohol/drugs/etc

• Has unsavoury kinks and fetishes

The above examples could describe the actions of a woman who would otherwise be labelled a ‘rapist’, ‘paedophile’ or sexual abuser’. However, those words are so closely related to predatory (i.e. male) behaviour that it is hard for most people to relate to them the same way when they are used to describe female sexual predators.

There may be a better (and less loaded) word to describe negative female sexual behaviour rather than ‘whore’ but I think that using a specific word as a female equivalent to ‘male sexual predator’ would be an effective way in getting people to take sexually abusive actions by women against men more seriously. Trying to use the same terms we use to describe male sexual abuse against women for the opposite is like swimming against the tide.

In other words, instead of trying to work against double standards – e.g women can be sexual predators just like men! – it’s better to work with the double standard that benefits men – e.g. promiscuous women are sluts/whores, whores force themselves onto men, teenage boys etc.

Let’s consider a case where an attractive woman forces a man to have sex with her by incapacitating him in some way. If the man is labelled a victim, a lot of men would say “I wish it was me” or some other silly comment. Instead, if you labelled the woman a whore, and ask men who joked about it why they are defending a whore, then you put the spotlight back on the woman’s behaviour and can call it out from a position of strength instead of weakness.

To what extent whorish behaviour from women should lead to prison sentence is worthy of debate but it should be at least condemned by society if it isn’t by the law. Since women typically fear social stigma and shunning more than men, using the ‘whore’ label would be a useful way to condemn female sexual abuse.

I replied to Richard Hanania’s Twitter/X post suggesting that Rebecca Joynes was probably a narcissist or someone with borderline personality disorder (as many female whores and male sexual predators likely are) and that he shouldn’t white knight for her.

My advice to anyone who wants to respond to people defending women having sex with teenage boys is simply to say: “she’s a narcissist/borderline” or, if you’re feeling bold, “she’s a whore.”

This post is published on the 25^th Anniversary of the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize (9^th February). What better way to celebrate this milestone than to read the final part of my exploration of Emma Humphreys’ life and legacy?

As she was only 18 at the time of the trial, Emma was sentenced “at Her Majesty’s pleasure” meaning that she was given an indefinite sentence. An appeal in 1986 proved unsuccessful. Later, according to VennerRoad, Humphreys wrote to Justice for Women after hearing about their campaigning for the release of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, a woman who had burned her husband alive in 1989 after apparently suffering years of abuse at his hands. Ahluwalia’s appeal to have her conviction changed from murder to manslaughter was successful and she was released in 1992. Justice for Women, founded by lesbian feminist couple Julie Bindel and Harriet Wistrich, have campaigned for the release of women like Kiranjit Ahluwalia and Emma Humphreys (VennerRoad acknowledges, nevertheless, that Humphreys and Ahluwalia’s cases were very different) since 1990 and succeeded in securing Emma’s release in 1995.

Humphreys’ instability and impulsivity, evident before her conviction, revealed itself again following her release from prison. According to Bindel’s and Wistrich’s recollection, Emma “ran wild” following her release – indulging in drugs and picking up men like she had done prior to her stabbing Trevor Armitage. VennerRoad provides a quote from Wistrich where she recalls an incident where herself and Bindel had to turn Humphreys away “from our house at 5am with nowhere to go” showing that even they couldn’t tolerate some of her behaviour. However, Julie Bindel and Harriet Wistrich perceive Emma Humphreys’ actions to be the result of trauma from her time in prison and everything that had happened to her before, effectively robbing Humphreys of any agency.

Just like before her imprisonment, Humphreys was in and out of several accommodations due to being disruptive and challenging. Imagine what she was like with Trevor Armitage! I have read some accounts about Humphreys which describe an appearance on a radio show (Woman’s Hour perhaps?) at some point after her release where she talks about being in another abusive relationship with a man and stating that “if he doesn’t hit you, he doesn’t love you” which resulted in the interview abruptly ending! However, I can’t confirm if this really happened because I haven’t found evidence showing if/when this interview took place.

Nevertheless, there is footage of Humphreys on the day she was released from prison in this video with the rather dubious title ‘Emma Humphreys – An Inspiring Legacy’. Humphreys can be seen being cheered by a crowd of women while balloons with the Suffragette colours of green and purple drift up in the air; I find this detail rather appropriate as, like Emma Humphreys, many of the Suffragettes engaged in acts of violence and so were not as heroic and ‘inspiring’ as feminists have presented them as been.

Judging from the video, Humphreys comes across as a little childlike and not particularly intelligent. However, this may have been the result of drug taking as VennerRoad notes she looks ‘spaced out’ during the interviews. This child-like and/or drug-addled feature of Emma Humphreys’ psychology makes interpreting her actions something of a Rorschach test; whoever observes her may draw their own unique interpretations about what she did and why she did it. Moreover, like many mentally unstable people, Humphreys would have likely being easily swayed by others. In truth, Emma may not have completely understood why she stabbed Trevor Armitage but feminists were available to interpret for her.

From the small amount of footage I’ve seen of her, I get the impression that, in spite of what she did, Emma Humphreys may not have been an entirely bad person but she was definitely a very troubled and dangerous individual. If she wasn’t going to be in prison, she should have certainly been in an institution, for her sake as much as anybody else’s.

The video also shows Emma Humphreys’ struggle with anorexia which likely contributed to her early demise. It’s shocking to see how Humphreys’ appearance changed from how she looked shortly after she left prison (see 1:19 on the above linked video) compared to how she looked a while later (see 8:33). She wasn’t a bad looking woman but towards her death she looked much older than her thirty years. Freedom, it seems, had aged her far more than 10 years in prison had.

Emma Humphreys died of a choral hydrate overdose on 11^th July 1998. Interestingly, the video gives her birth date as 1968 rather than 1967 possibly showing how little her feminist supporters actually researched her background – or maybe they just don’t understand how someone who was born in October 1967 could be 30 in July 1998.

Following Humphreys’ death, Julie Bindel apparently told the inquest that Emma was “thrown out of prison and left to her own devices” seemingly forgetting that Bindel had partly contributed to this cause of events by lobbying for her release. In this memorial to Humphreys, Harriet Wistrich writes that she “sometimes …wondered whether we were doing the best thing for Emma” during their campaign for her release and Bindel recalls here Wistrich noting that “cruelly, Emma had been safer in prison than on the outside.” – you think so, Harriet?

Although Bindel, Wistrich and others did attempt to look out for Humphreys following their successful campaigning – they frequently visited her and tried to give her food to gain weight – they seem have been, and likely still are, blinded by their own ideologies and have a very naive perception of Humphreys.  In their eyes, Emma Humphreys was merely a tragic victim of the Patriarchy and her own actions were simply a reflection of that. That Humphreys bore some responsibility for what happened to her has likely never occurred to them. After all, how would they then turn her into a martyr and create a prize dedicated to her?

I don’t doubt there was a lot of sympathy and empathy from the likes of Bindel and Wistrich towards Humphreys and they couldn’t have predicted that she would die so soon after her release, but their involvement in the last years of her life have enabled them to control her legacy and spin a very particular version of events. This account of Humphreys’ life by Harriet Wistrich from earlier last month shows how sentimentalised and distorted her story has become. It also appears neither Wistrich nor Bindel have reconsidered how their actions may have contributed to Emma Humphreys’ early death.

Dea Birkett, writing in The Times back in 2002, notes in this article several cases, including that of Emma Humphreys, of women convicted of killing their male partners being set free on the grounds of abuse.

Birkett notes:

“A gaggle of feminist and legal groups have welcomed these women walking free. The judiciary are finally accepting the argument that domestic violence and abuse are sufficient grounds for provocation, declares Justice for Women. Put in plain language, this statement is terrifying: if your boyfriend gives you bruises, it’s understandable if you knife him in the heart. Soon, women will be able to get away with murder. It cannot be right that our legal system is being used as a weapon in the war between the sexes.”

Dea Birkett – ‘Women should not get away with murder’

She also makes this compelling point:

“But the courts are not the place to redress centuries of women’s oppression. These murdered men, however unsavoury, should not be scapegoats for society’s inequalities. If this were the purpose of our legal system, any Muslim killing any Christian would be committing mere manslaughter because of the atrocities of the Crusades. A black burglar could be defended on the basis that he was redressing the sins of slavery. Such arguments would be, rightly, laughed out of court. Each of these individuals is committing a crime against a person.”

Dea Birkett

Although we could debate whether women have endured “centuries of oppression” – at least compared to any other group of human beings – her overall point was very well made.

Emma Humphreys’ life was in many ways tragic, but this doesn’t mean we can’t judge her actions or her as an individual. She was not some poor helpless soul who could be rescued by heroic feminists and go on to have a normal life following her release. What happened to Humphreys after she came out of prison indicates to me that Bindel, Wistrich and their fellow campaigners didn’t really know who or what they were dealing with. Emma Humphreys’ unfortunate fate should be seen as a warning to what can happen when the simplistic and black-and-white viewpoint that an ideology provides encounters the cold and complicated real world.

Often omitted from most presentations of this case is Emma Humphreys’ own incidents of violence and difficult behaviour, at least before her killing of Armitage and subsequent conviction.

The Guardian released some of Humphreys’ diary entries in this article and argued that, if they were published at the time of Humphreys’ initial conviction, they could have lessened her sentence. Ironically, in my opinion, the diaries could have equally SUPPORTED her conviction.

One entry comes from her time in Canada. Both Emma’s mother and stepfather seemed to have been heavy drinkers which clearly made her home life unstable. According to her own account, Emma had ran away from home on at least one occasion and ended up spending time in a children’s home called Westfield in Edmonton where she records that she cut herself and, in one incident, “went rank” (whatever that means) on her social worker which resulted in her being restrained by security guards.

She also describes her relationship with her mother. Humphreys records her mother “drinking 24 hours a day” and writes that “she upsets me” (this is admittedly open to interpretation: is Emma being sympathetic towards her mother or saying that her mother says/does things to her which she doesn’t like?) Later she writes that she “never had a mother-to-daughter relationship” with her mother.

When she was living with her ‘Nana’ (grandmother) back in the UK in Nottingham she writes that she and her Nana “aren’t talking again” because her Nana was “being so judgmental towards me”. This suggests that Humphreys’ behaviour was concerning enough to warrant criticism from her grandmother and probably the reason for Humphrey not staying with her.

Other entries after she moved in with Armitage describe him hitting Humphreys, her getting involved with another man called Anthony, and the two of them smashing up Armitage’s house which led to them ending up “at Radford Road cells.”

The (biased) Wikipedia article on Humphreys mentions that she had convictions before her murder case:

“In January 1985, Humphreys was arrested and kept on remand at HM Prison Risley for two incidents, one of which involved assaulting a hotel manager.”

In her diary, Emma writes that she had assaulted a police officer as well as the hotel manager! The Court of Appeal judgement simply refers to Emma appearing before the criminal court “as a result of two incidents” conveniently not mentioning any assault on her part. There is however an interesting detail here that Humphreys was conditionally discharged on 21^st February 1985 – only a few days before she killed Trevor Armitage – who had “took in another girl” while “she was away”.

Did Armitage taking in another woman while Humphreys was on remand contribute to Humphreys’ actions days later? It may have certainly infuriated her and made her jealous – although this is simply a conjecture on my part. Killing someone only days after being conditionally released isn’t exactly going to help you avoid going to prison though.

What is evident here is that, even before her association with Armitage, Emma Humphreys was capable of impulsive and destructive actions like the one that led to her imprisonment.

True, Emma Humphrey’s erratic behaviour would have likely made her vulnerable to dangerous and predatory men but she was obviously just as capable of being violent and unpredictable.

According to her Wikipedia article, a psychiatrist at the original 1985 trial described Humphreys as:

“of abnormal mentality, with immature, explosive and attention-seeking traits, the last trait referring to her tendency to slash her wrists”

A medical examination after her killing of Armitage also revealed cuts all over her arms including recent ones. According to Emma herself, Armitage had taunted her about her wrist-slashing which was what led to her stabbing him. Was this evidence of persistent mental abuse by Armitage towards Humphreys which caused her to finally snap and retaliate? Or evidence of the couple’s destructive characters and relationship? Feminists would have us believe that the former was the case. This interpretation of the events is a classic example of so-called ‘battered women’s syndrome’ which argues that pre-meditated or seemingly unprovoked acts of violence by women against their male partners is the result of the men’s previous abuse of the women. Obviously, acts of violence from one person to another will, in many cases, result with a response in kind but if that response leads to murder, then the murder victim is still a victim.

Had Trevor Armitage forced himself on Emma Humphreys and tried to rape, injure or murder her, then her stabbing of him could be justified as an act of manslaughter – which makes the idea of battered women syndrome futile.

For a while I’ve been interested in the sad, dramatic life of Emma Humphreys, a woman who was convicted of killing her boyfriend/pimp Trevor Armitage in 1985 and was then released in 1995 after the feminist campaign group Justice for Women got her conviction changed from murder to manslaughter. Humphreys later died aged just 30 in 1998 from an overdose.

The Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize (EHMP) was established following Humphrey’s death, as described on the website emmahumphreys.org:

“Every year since her death in 1998, the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize has given two awards to feminist campaigners in honour of Emma. The awards carry a prize of £1,000 and are given to women campaigners and to campaign groups who have, through writing or campaigning, raised awareness of violence against women and children.”

Only feminists could establish a prize for “recognising women who work against male violence” and dedicate it to a woman who murdered a man. Humphreys was able to get her conviction changed because it was argued that she had been physically and sexually abused by Trevor Armitage and so her murder of him was an act of self defence. February of this year (2024) marks the 25^th anniversary of the prize so this post was unintentionally well timed.

What makes this case interesting to me is the way it shows how narratives can diverge from the facts, or as close as we can get to the facts from the information at hand, as well as how ideologies can have a big impact on our perceptions. I’ll attempt to illustrate here in three parts why this case is a good example of the truth being distorted to fit a particular ideology, in this instance feminism.

The standard narrative presented about Emma Humphreys is that she grew up with a violent stepfather and was forced to run away from home and become a prostitute. She was later the victim of abuse by Trevor Armitage which led to her killing him. In response, the apparently brutal and patriarchal justice system condemned poor Emma Humphreys to life in prison until feminists came to her rescue in the 1990s. After being released from prison, the psychologically damaged Emma was left to fend for herself which led to her untimely death.

The basic, uncontroversial facts about Humphrey’s background prior to her crime are that she was born in the UK in 1967 and then went with her mother, stepfather and siblings to Canada after her parents’ marriage broke down. She later came back to England to live with her father, then her grandmother and, at some point, began living with her victim Trevor Armitage after she had turned to prostitution.

A more in-depth description of her background can be found in this post by ‘VennerRoad’ which also gives a detailed overview of her murder case.

Trevor Armitage is always referred to as being Emma Humphreys’ pimp but it is unclear how much he was involved in Humphreys’ sex work. Was he forcing her to prostitute herself or was he simply taking money she had earned from prostitution in exchange for letting her stay at his residence? My own thinking is that the latter was more likely. Perhaps it’s more accurate to call Armitage Emma Humphreys’ “pimp” in quotation marks since he may have been indirectly gaining money from her prostitution. What is clear is that Humphreys and Armitage had a very tumultuous relationship.

Trevor Armitage was certainly a deeply flawed man – he had previous violent convictions and was in a relationship with a much younger woman barely older than his son (Armitage was 33 and Humphreys was 17). He could have definitely been violent towards Humphreys but she had opportunities to leave him if the abuse was so bad. Some might argue that Emma may have been too afraid to leave but she was not exactly harmless herself.

However, you can believe that Trevor Armitage was a scumbag and at the same time think that Emma Humphreys should have remained in prison for killing him. Feminists like to say that there is ‘no such thing as a perfect victim’ but does this also apply to men? Feminists seem to think however that any blame placed on a woman is equivalent to saying all the blame is on women. In fact, assuming women have responsibility over how they behave is surely less patronising than presenting them as powerless victims?

As already noted, Trevor Armitage was not exactly a saint and his decision to have a relationship with Humphreys cost him his life. However, would it be politically incorrect to suggest that birds of a feather flock together? In other words, perhaps Emma Humphreys and Trevor Armitage’s volatile personalities drew them towards each other.

Since Trevor Armitage is not alive to put forward his own version of events, we are only left with the information presented about the case. The same cannot be said for Emma Humphreys, who later presented as a heroine fighting a sexist, patriarchal justice system.

Emma Humphreys killed Trevor Armitage with a knife to the chest while he was lying on his back at their residence sometime between 25^th-26^th February 1985. He was only wearing a shirt which Humphreys claimed was an indication that he wanted to have sex with her. The Court of Appeal judgement (which is linked on VennerRoad’s post) argued that a comment made by Armitage to Humphreys while they were in a pub with some friends earlier that night about them being “all right for a gang bang” was evidence of provocation.

Notice that these are assumptions rather than definitive evidence of threatening behaviour by Armitage that would justify Humphreys stabbing him. It is one thing to talk about a gang bang than to engage in one. Armitage’s “undressed state” as it was described in the Appeal may have indicated he wanted sex from Humphreys but he didn’t force himself on her before she stabbed him. Maybe he would have. Then again, maybe he would have spontaneously combusted had he not being stabbed. This is further complicated by the fact that we only have Emma Humphreys’ account of what happened. To say that she may have been an unreliable narrator might be an understatement.

Just a quick one to let any readers know that this blog is still active despite the fact I haven’t posted anything for a while. I haven’t done much with the blog this year despite expressing my desire last year to be more active on it. 2023 hasn’t been the best year for me so, while I haven’t had any serious problems to deal with, I haven’t felt up to writing or posting content on here a lot of times although hopefully that should be different in 2024.

I’ve had more of a problem with having too many things I wanted to write about rather than having too little. Events I wanted to write about this year include the Barbie/Oppenheimer phenomenon (although I haven’t seen either film), the Laurence Fox/GB News incident, the Russell Brand controversy, the Israel/Palestine conflict, Joey Barton, Nigel Farage and the upcoming UK/US elections among others. In most cases, events had moved on before I had thought of anything to write about them.

I also have about four book reviews that I want to write but haven’t even started. As well as that, I have a lot of content that I’ve started writing but not finished.

All of that is to say that next year should be more active that this one.

The final extract from Louise Perry’s book explores how changes in attitudes towards sex since the sexual revolution may have contributed to the sexualisation of children.

Perry starts by looking at the well known campaigner Mary Whitehouse who unsuccessfully campaigned against the depiction of sex and violence on TV. Perry notes that some of Whitehouse’s campaigning seems quaint to us now such as the use of sexual innuendo in TV shows in addition to her opposition to homosexuality which resulted in her becoming a figure of ridicule. A porn star for example changed her name to Mary Whitehouse as a way to mock her and the BBC Director-General Hugh Greene is said to have had a grotesque picture of her which he would throw darts at!

A lot of people who disagreed with Whitehouse, however, have conceded that she had a point about the type of content that was produced by television which has, if nothing else, perhaps made popular culture more dumbed down than it used to be. Whitehouse was also I think a bit of an easy target for certain people who could have at least accepted that she had a point of view that was shared by a significant percentage of the population even if they didn’t share it themselves.

I’ve noticed that some feminists have tried to reclaim Whitehouse as a kind of ‘proto-girlboss’ due to her opposition to pornography and other areas of sex as Louise Perry elaborates in this article. Perry argues that Mary Whitehouse was “one of the few public figures of her day who gave a damn about child sexual abuse” which made her “remarkably prescient”.

For all the BBC’s animosity towards Mary Whitehouse and her moral campaigning, they can’t really claim any high-ground having employed figures such as Jimmy Savile, who was revealed to have been a serial sexual predator only after his death. Louise Perry notes that Savile’s celebrity status allowed him to exploit his victims without any repercussions. However, Savile was apparently open about his behaviour, even in his autobiography, and it appears this wasn’t taken seriously.

Perry argues that relaxed attitudes towards child sexualisation in the 1970s and 80s allowed groups such as the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIB) in Britain and the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) in the USA to flourish whilst European countries had freely available child pornography. Left-leaning intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida also apparently campaigned in France to decriminalise the age of consent.

Returning to Mary Whitehouse, Louise Perry notes that Whitehouse’s lobbying helped pass the Protection of Children Act in 1978 which Perry argues has been forgotten by liberals in addition to their own “tolerance for paedophilia”.

While paedophilia is now condemned by liberal thinkers, Louise Perry believes their argument is based on the idea of consent – i.e. since children can’t consent to sexual acts, sex with children is wrong. Perry nevertheless asks such thinkers to consider adult performers dressing or acting like children, or graphic depictions of sex with children – are these also wrong?

Perry here writes:

“The problem has always been where you draw the line, and this puts liberals in an awkward position. When you set out to break down sexual taboos, you shouldn’t be surprised when all taboos are considered fair game for breaking.”

Such taboos that could be broken include incest, beastiality or necrophilia although the latter two could be ruled out due to the issue of consent. Louise Perry believes that we are “starting to see some slippage back towards the paedophilia advocacy of the 1970s” using the infamous Netflix film Cuties as an example.

This particular film caused outrage for depicting prepubescent girls wearing revealing outfits and twerking, grinding and other sexualised poses. Like with any controversy nowadays, there was a distinct political divide with commentators on the Left arguing that the film was a satire on child sexualisation whereas the right saw it as promoting child sexualisation. Perry writes:

“There is something about paedophilia anxiety that is currently considered rather low-status among the liberal elites. Snobbish progressives present it as an obsession of the ignorant and credulous working classes, fired up by tabloid newspaper stories.”

Louise Perry acknowledges the hysteria that can surround accusations of child sex abuse but also notes that sexual exploitation of children does take place, such as with Jimmy Savile and also Jeffrey Epstein.

Perry concludes:

“Yet these things really happened. They are an indication of the murky places to which a no-holds-barred attitude to sexual liberation can lead — just as Mrs. Whitehouse was warning all those years ago, and got no thanks for.”

There isn’t much in this article that I disagree with Louise Perry on since any right-minded person would object to the sexual abuse of children and it is reasonable to suggest that the sexual revolution allowed figures like the aforementioned Savile to be exploitative.

However, Louise Perry does not point out that feminism, which she still identifies with, has taken advantage of society’s fears of child sexual abuse for their ends. For example, Erin Pizzey has said that mothers in child custody cases in Western countries such as Canada can prevent fathers from seeing their children by using the ‘silver bullet’ of claiming that fathers had physically and/or sexually abused their children. There will be some genuine claims of paternal sexual abuse, but it’s still a powerful weapon to use by mothers, or their lawyers, to stop fathers from having any contact. Stephen Baskerville, whom I mentioned in Part 2, has made similar points about the family court system routinely presenting fathers as abusers.

The fear of paedophilia may have also resulted in the decline of male teachers in schools and other roles where men interact with children, such as in the Boy Scouts; This particular organisation is often the source of lazy and overdone jokes about scoutmasters being actual or borderline child molesters. No doubt, paedophiles will go to occupations where they are authority figures over children, but these cases should not devalue other men who may want to work in such professions.

There’s an episode of the Channel 4 show TV Heaven, Telly Hell where the comedian David Mitchell notes the decline of older ‘children’s TV’ presenters from when he was growing up and their replacement with younger ‘cool elder sibling’ presenters. Mitchell says he prefers the ‘fun middle-aged man’ which predictably gets some laughs from the audience. David Mitchell then argues that it’s not a bad thing for a middle aged man to be fond of children and children to also like middle-aged men. The presenter Sean Lock (RIP) responds that Mitchell has a good point but that they can edit it very badly for him! The whole episode can be watched here although the relevant bit starts around 09:05.

In short, the fear of child abuse by some men has been used to demonise men as a whole. I remember watching a discussion programme about masculinity on TV – I think it was The Big Questions – in which a men’s rights type-man was arguing that men should have more time with children. A white knight – I mean another man – questioned whether this was a good idea since men tend to be more violent and sexually abuse more children than women. While it’s possible that most child abusers are men, this is only a fraction of a percentage of men as a whole, to say nothing of female child abusers. Feminists nevertheless have taken advantage of society’s fears of male predators to cast doubt on any man who works, or who may be interested in working, with children.

This is one reason why I don’t believe some commentators on the right who claim that the Left, or at least the Left as a whole, want to normalise paedophilia – there are certainly extremists who may wish to do so, but the public would not tolerate such leniency if it meant that children were put in harm’s way. The backlash that has followed legislation over transgenderism is one example of this.

Like with transgenderism, I’m willing to admit I’m wrong if things get too far, but, for understandable reasons, paedophilia is a useful stick to beat your opponents over the head with. It’s not a surprise that the Catholic Church, not exactly a traditionally Left-leaning organisation, has been attacked because there has been cases of a small number of Catholic priests molesting children. While I’ve heard that most of the victims of abuse at the hands of priests were older boys and adolescents – suggesting the issue was more about homosexuality than paedophilia – even if this is true, it will not wash with critics who might claim that this is an attempt to dismiss the scandal. Of course, the Catholic Church is by no means the only organisation to have been tainted with sexual abuse accusations, which, in the age of #MeToo, have been levelled at many organisations and institutions.

On the other hand, we shouldn’t be naïve in thinking that child abuse doesn’t happen in powerful circles where certain people have the influence and resources to get away with their behaviour. The individuals described in Perry’s article are one example of that. Similarly, there is definitely questionable subject matter being taught to children by certain ideological teachers which does need to be investigated.

All that being said, I would be more sympathetic to Louise Perry here if she had pointed out that fear of paedophilia can be an effective political tool used by many different movements (e.g. feminism) even if genuine concerns of abuse are sometimes dismissed as hysteria.

Conclusion

Compared to most feminists, Louise Perry at least has some sensible things to say and I don’t think overall she’s a bad person. Nevertheless, judging from these extracts from her book, I wouldn’t recommend reading it as Perry does not want to let go of the feminist victim narrative. This is why I haven’t jumped on the reactionary feminist bandwagon like a few people I follow appear to have done. As Janice Fiamengo notes in this Substack article about Perry’s fellow reactionary feminist Mary Harrington (whom, in fairness, I regard as a more interesting thinker than Perry):

“Nothing says “Women are wonderful” quite like the applause in conservative and non-feminist circles that greets a feminist who makes even the mildest criticisms of feminism…”

Janice Fiamengo – ‘A Reformed Feminism Still Sees Men as Accessories to Women’

Such feminists at least make the conversation about the relations between men and women more interesting, and the likes of Perry and Harrington may well develop their views in the future, but at present I’m going to remain more sceptical about their insights.