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May 28, 2021 - 12:04pm
There can be no doubt that human rights activist Peter Tatchell has done some fine work. A gay rights activist who has travelled the world to lend support to oppressed communities under siege, Tatchell has sustained injuries from being beaten by thugs during protests and is today seen as a cross between martyr and saint. A new Netflix documentary, Hating Peter Tatchell, is a 90-minute biography that tells the tale of his life.
Produced by Elton John and David Furnish, the film covers Tatchell’s upbringing in Australia. It looks at his attempt at entering mainstream politics as well as his prominence in the lesbian and gay liberation movement. And it describes his involvement in the key moments of that history, such as the fight to equalise the age of consent for gay men (it was 21 for gays, 16 for straights), the AIDS pandemic, and the campaign to end Section 28. Tatchell is interviewed by Ian McKellen, with further commentary by Stephen Fry, former MP Chris Smith, and various lesbian and gay activists.
One minor but significant problem with the film is that throughout it Tatchell uses the tongue-twisting and inaccurate acronym LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) when recounting battles and scenarios that a) were only relevant to lesbians and gay men, and b) to describe events during a time when the rainbow coalition was a mere sprinkling of fairy dust in the minds of Foucauldian scholars.
The major irritant for me, though, is that aside from one or two gently critical remarks from interviewees regarding his controversial tactics, the film ends up being a tedious hagiography of a flawed figure. Not one of the many feminists who have rigorously called St Peter to task over the years over his child-abuse apologism was asked to contribute.
In 1997, Tatchell wrote to the Guardian in support of a book, Dares to Speak, a favourable exploration of child sexual abuse, stressing the “positive nature” of some adult male/boy child sexual relationships. When the journalist Ros Coward reviewed Dares to Speak in the Guardian she was unequivocal: “The book refuses to take seriously sexual abuse and its consequences.”
https://twitter.com/roscoward/status/1062001808393072640?lang=en
Tatchell was not happy, and in a letter to the newspaper quoted from one of the chapters, written by an anthropologist:
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SubscribePeter Tatchell isn’t a perfect man?
This must be devastating news for the tiny group of people who thought he was.
Two bald men fight over comb.
Yes, but some public figures are so disliked by the majority of people that these squabbles tend to erupt in comments pages (try the Telegraph posts for real comb-related spats).
It’s only a question of time before the letter P is added to the lgbtqx+ alphabet brigade.
It was on the menu back in the seventies or so, PIE disbanded only in ’84. A few years ago quite a few senior Labour members (Harriet Harman etc.) were found out to have been pædo rights activists.
The illogical and misleading “LGBTQ(+)” initialism is not a registered trademark, nor is it protected by any copyright. It has been imposed on an uncritical public not by any legitimate authority, but simply through shrill, insistent repetition. Anyone is free to add to it any letters or symbols that they fancy – or to cook up any equally ridiculous initialism of their own.
Yes, it belongs to the same under-educated vocabulary which includes “going forward” for “in future” and “on a daily basis” for “every day” and “MSM”, whatever that is…
No, it will be “e”for “everybody”
Tatchell, like Bindel, is a highly flawed figure who is right about a few things.
I guess I think the ‘marketplace of ideas’ needs space for both of them and people like them to speak freely. I think both of them are often wrong, but it’s important to be able to hear them out and consider their arguments. The important thing is that these views be neither silenced (as eg ‘TERFs’ pretty much have been in the USA; efforts here seem to have mostly failed) or made unchallengeable through political, legal and social sanctions on dissidents. I should be free to agree or disagree with one, both, or neither.
Throw in Peter Hain, Tariq Ali and Shirley Williams, perhaps? Surprised Tatchel hasn’t been knighted yet…
So cultures can become homosexualised because they’re born that way – not. Plenty of other ways to toughen Sambia warriors I’d have thought without the perpetual cycle of homosexual abuse. Tatchell himself has said that one day ‘everybody will enjoy gay sex’ so he believes homosexual desire can spread via culture, not genes then. Like Sparta, the Minoans and others.
Tatchell was once the warrior, forcing through change, a fighter against a conservative country when it came to homosexuality. I didn’t agree with him then, but, I have shifted my position, as I believe the country has too. I think he’s right about many things, although not all, and I disagree with him on some.
However, Tatchell is now ‘establishment’, and this I believe is his downfall, especially on transgenderism. His ‘Wiki’ entry would have us believe that he was arguing for transgenderism in the 1980s, I would respect him if he had the bravery to keep campaigning for what he always has done, that is, homosexuality, and leave transgenderism to the transgender community, despite pressure from some to merge the two concepts.
Maybe it’s time for him to gently retire, and reflect on an interesting and public life?
He always came across to me as a bit of (bit of?) an attention seeker, a professional gay if you like. A Hanna with the banner kinda’ bloke; if he we’re straight he’d be out of work.
I didn’t know you could make a profession out of it. If I had known I might have tried it. Too late now, of course – too old, too scruffy, too bald.
Can you do it if you are straight, with a bit of bi around the edges and a smattering of trans? I mean, is there any money in it? A government grant, perhaps? Where is the smart money these days? I feel like I’m losing touch.
He was always a brave man. To call him a “professional gay” does him a massive disservice.
I find him disgusting. He thinks sex with children is very acceptable.
I would have thought it obvious that forcing boys to have sex with older warriors, as the Sambia do, was deliberately designed to coarsen and harden them, to burn out any “softness” in their character. The Spartans did something similar in the ancient world.
Would you? Gosh. Well, I suppose you know best, but it does make you wonder how all those older men managed to get an erection if they were just trying to toughen the boys up.
I have just read about their practices. If any move here I don’t think even the ‘Its their culture innit’ brigade would go along with it-taking children away from their mothers by force & beating them etc.
OK, we’ll take this slow. 1) Forcing young boys to sexually service old degenerates coarsens them (among other things). 2) In the case of the Sambia and the Spartans, that’s obviously what it was designed to do. Therefore 3) when people use these examples as an indicator of the supposed “naturalness” of having sex with boys, they are wrong. If you need anything else clarified, sing out.
Oh I say Matron!
Isn’t that just institutionalised sexual abusism?
This “St Peter” has more than thrice denied his former approval of boy-man sex, to wriggle out being cancelled.
Understandable in the present climate but what pisses me off is Tatchell’s cowardly willingness to throw former fellow travellers under the bus in the process. That includes not just me but more significantly Warren Middleton, for whose 1986 pro-BL book The Betrayal of Youth he contributed a chapter. This is part of what he wrote:
“Shouldn’t we be preparing and educating children for greater rights and responsibilities at an earlier age; perhaps critically re-examing [sic] our concept of childhood and viewing children more as young citizens? Certainly, in the realm of sexual ages of consent, we need to ask whether the law has any legitimate role to play in criminalising consenting, victimless sexual activity. As for protecting the young: the main protection they need, as do adults, is legal protection against forced, involuntary sexual acts which is afforded by the laws covering rape and sexual assault; plus protection against self-destroying feelings of guilt and anxiety which are so often stirred up by sexual encounters outside the age of consent precisely because they are illicit and regarded as shameful.”
This is a view he and I shared completely at that time. Yet he now says about me, “I never met Tom O’Carroll and would never want to. I condemn all that he stands for. His views are disgusting.”
If my views are disgusting, so were his in the 1980s. Julie Bindel is right. Not something I often say!
My blog, heretictoc, could well be breaking exclusive information on the Tatchell front next month. But not if I am offered a media deal (serious possibility) before then!
Tom O’Carroll (I also had a chapter in Warren’s book).
some years ago I debated Mr Thatchell and the then leading psychiatrist advocate for homosexuals. At that time Mr Thatchell made some absolutely ridiculous suggestions about the origins of homosexuality, and my response was that Mr Thatchell is not a medical doctor nor is he a scientist.
But he was pontificating with his loud assertive voice as if he was an authority on the topic – which he wasn’t.
I think it is perfectly legitimate to challenge orthodoxies. I think sometimes people appear dogmatic and overly assertive when they are simply being challenging.
I used to have all sorts of problems with Richard Dawkins (for example), but then I realised his apparent dogmatism was not really
an expression of intolerance but more a demand for intellectual integrity.
I think perhaps that someone like Dawkins would be quite prepared to be convinced of the truth of something he has long appeared to rail against – he just isn’t prepared to lower the burden of proof.
Peter Tatchell doesn’t need to be right to speak or write in a direct and challenging manner. He has been known to change his mind completely on a subject about which he was formerly fairly emphatic in his argument.
I heard him speak on the wireless the other day about trans rights.
I don’t think I have ever heard an argument with which I disagreed so completely. Did his assertive manner cow me into submission? Not in the least. So where’s the harm in it?
He also claimed to be bi sexual at some point.
I did not claim to be a bisexual expert
I did not claim to be a bisexual expert
I think it is perfectly legitimate to challenge orthodoxies. I think sometimes people appear dogmatic and overly assertive when they are simply being challenging.
I used to have all sorts of problems with Richard Dawkins (for example), but then I realised his apparent dogmatism was not really
an expression of intolerance but more a demand for intellectual integrity.
I think perhaps that someone like Dawkins would be quite prepared to be convinced of the truth of something he has long appeared to rail against – he just isn’t prepared to lower the burden of proof.
Peter Tatchell doesn’t need to be right to speak or write in a direct and challenging manner. He has been known to change his mind completely on a subject about which he was formerly fairly emphatic in his argument.
I heard him speak on the wireless the other day about trans rights.
I don’t think I have ever heard an argument with which I disagreed so completely. Did his assertive manner cow me into submission? Not in the least. So where’s the harm in it?
He also claimed to be bi sexual at some point.
some years ago I debated Mr Thatchell and the then leading psychiatrist advocate for homosexuals. At that time Mr Thatchell made some absolutely ridiculous suggestions about the origins of homosexuality, and my response was that Mr Thatchell is not a medical doctor nor is he a scientist.
But he was pontificating with his loud assertive voice as if he was an authority on the topic – which he wasn’t.
Wait until Julie critiques paedophiles Simone de Beauvoir and Germaine Greer.
Greer? I knew about Beauvoir but hadn’t heard anything like that about GG.
Greer did that photography book featuring very young boys and made comments about lusting over them.
What did they do?
I have a copy of Greer’s book. It celebrates the beauty of the boy in Western art. Why does that have to be confused with lust?
Indeed! Everything seems to get confused with lust – What times we live in.
Just a small point though: Even if she did lust inappropriately, as long as she didn’t act upon her lust then I can see no fault in her.
Because ‘beauty’ has nothing to do with art. It’s part of e.g. sexual attraction and other forms of admiration, nothing to do with artistic endeavour or ‘aesthetic values’ in the least.
No great artist ever cared about whether his ‘work’ was ‘beautiful’. It’s alright for nubile young women, vases and cabinets, but out of place in say ‘Don Giovanni’ or ‘Macbeth’.
Real art is the attempt at the transference between artist and the individual member of the audience (which may include individual viewers of painted works) of a moral and emotional reality, where the spine tingle (not a merely visual faculty but a key moment of the entire body being involved ) is the most important, indeed the most desired, highest reaction (which escapes characterization – that’s why e.g. music lovers are reduced to babbling superlatives or wordless exclamations, which stand for the unsayable). The ability to produce acknowledgement of an emotional and moral reality cannot be taught (unlike the making of a vase or a cabinet) nor is it a matter of good fortune like the passing beauty of a young lady. That’s why great artists are in very short supply, unlike clay throwers, cabinet makers, or lusty swains.
My Guardian letter was edited but it still says sex with children is “IMPOSSIBLE to condone”. This means I OPPOSE & CONDEMN it.
I have supported child sex abuse victims and campaigners for decades, helping their fight to win justice. They work with me, knowing that I am on their side against their abusers.
Read my proposals to help STOP child sex abuse
http://www.petertatchell.net/sex_education/why-arent-schools-educating-kids-against-sex-abuse/
AND what I REALLY said on age of consent http://www.petertatchell.net/lgbt_rights/age_of_consent/an-age-of-consent-of-14/
THANK YOU – Peter Tatchell
Well, I followed the link to your article on the age of consent, and found it coherently argued.
However, it is not without problems that would need addressing if what you propose were to move forward.
If I may be permitted a copy and paste, you wrote this:
‘Young people should be able to enjoy sexual relationships without being penalised by the law, providing sex is consensual and both partners are mature enough to understand the implications of their actions.’
You see the problem, no doubt. Who is to determine the degree of maturity of the partners? How will anyone be able to determine, prior to the event, that either or both 14 year olds understand the implications of their actions?
There is the further problem of peer pressure and also pressure to consent within an unequal partnership. It may be no more than a whisper in the ear, and may not be acknowledged as coercion at all by the person whose ear was being whispered into, but coercion it will still be.
Fourteen and fifteen year olds differ tremendously in their degree of maturity. Many may indeed be ready, but many may not, and some will no doubt feel they ought to be ready when they are not, and consent when they should not.
I realise you are only proposing decriminalisation, but perhaps the reason for the criminalisation is to offer a deterrent. It will be there to try to prevent coercive behaviour, not to make criminals out of children.
Thank you. I have mentioned in many articles & speeches the importance of informed consent and the issue of peer pressure. That is why I also advocate better quality sex education and assertiveness training in schools to help teens resist and report pressure for them to have sex
Fine, but only as far as it goes. The real problem is the
fragility of confidence. Assertiveness is no problem for you but all the assertiveness training in the world will not be sufficient for someone who cannot bring it to his or her aid at the critical moment.
People freeze with fear, and they acquiesce out of anxiety. Sometimes they make a premature leap in order to keep the peace and maintain a relationship.
Then there will be the whole minefield of regret. One party may genuinely believe he has informed consent only to find himself later accused of coercion. Or he may not understand he is being coercive, particularly if he is blinded by hormonal surge.
Concise, clear and well informed. I remember a cute female friend of mine who has many regrets about all the episodes of “free love’ she indulged in during the late 60’s and 70’s because she felt it was somehow wrong to say ‘no I dont really want that ” – and she was a bright late teens thru mid twenties……She now sees the period as greatly coercive .
“Perhaps the ideal solution would be that the age of consent remains at 16 but that sexual behaviour involving young people under 16 should not be criminalised, providing there is informed consent, no one is harmed and there is no more than two or three years difference in their ages”
This actually seems fairly reasonable to me, and several countries do have similar laws. You could probably have been more careful with how you presented it. From what I remember when the age of male homosexual consent was lowered to 16, the media were reporting you as saying that it should be 14, because supposedly male homosexual relationships could not be exploitative the way heterosexual ones could be – ie you thought 16 was ok for girls, but it should be 14 for boys. This always seemed wrong to me since if anything male brains mature slower and teenage boys tend to be even less mature than teenage girls.
I did not say that. I made no differentiation in the age of consent for male and female and always said it should be backed up with better sexual and emotional education to ensure wise responsible choices. I also said it was best for for young people to not have sex at an early age.
Thanks for your response.
Of course Tatchell said and did some bloody stupid things, and probably still does, but without him and Outrage, it would have taken many more years to achieve gay rights.
Thank you. I try my best, as did everyone in OutRage!
You had a lot to put up with, especially from Simon Hughes’ disgraceful bye-election campaign in Bermondsey, and you did call out black bigots like Mugabe.
You could argue that because of Tatchell and his left wing activist friends, standing outside of school gates handing out gay literature we would never have had clause 28 inflicted on us in the first place. I was a young adult then and remember it well.
We were already progressing quite well towards equality. Albeit slowly, but this one unnecessary action moved acceptance backwards for years.
Peter Tatchell might be a hero to champagne socialist luvvies like Elton, Furnish, Fry etc but to many gay people he has been a pain in the arse. (Forgive the pun) and never has represented most of our views. Neither do today’s Stonewall group or the ever expanding LGBTQZXYV brigade. Many of us are now reverting back to LGB let the other groups form their own titles and let Peter fight for them.
We stood outside of school gates handing out good quality relationship and sex education advice AFTER Section 28 was enacted – to counter its censorship. The literature we handed out was what many schools now teach officially. Our actions prompted some schools to make this move to better support LGBT+ pupils. Blaming us for Section 28 is mistaken.
I wasn’t?
Tom O’Carroll is wrong and defamatory in saying that I had an “enthusiasm for boy-man sex.” I never have and never will. What I wrote in that book did not in any way endorse sex between adults and children. It did not propose reducing, let alone abolishing, the age of consent of 16. I merely questioned whether 16 was the appropriate age for lawful sexual consent (15 European countries have an age of consent lower than 16). I was writing about young people of similar ages and apologise if this was not clear. I would have never written for the Betrayal of Youth book if I had known about its other contributors and what they were saying (I was never told about them at the time when I was asked to contribute). In fact, I was informed that it was a book about child rights and welfare. I was told that child psychologists and even the then leader of the GLC, Ken Livingstone, would be writing chapters. It seemed above board, reasonable and legitimate. I was mistaken. I apologise for writing for that book. It was never my intention to endorse or collude in any way with adult-child sexual abuse.
Peter Tatchell writes about his chapter in The Betrayal of Youth:
> It did not propose reducing, let alone abolishing, the age of consent of 16.
No, but this is just more wriggling. What about your association with Outrage!, which campaigned for an AOC of 14? It’s no big deal to admit it. Even the NCCL was calling for 14 back in the day. As you yourself wrote in the Guardian in 2001 (1 August), “even the former Bishop of Glasgow, Derek Rawcliffe has backed 14”. What people dislike is dishonest attempts to pull the wool over their eyes. If you just fess up you’ll be forgiven. Where is your fabled bravery, for Peter’s sake? Sadly, it doesn’t seem to extend to moral courage.
>I would have never written for the Betrayal of Youth book if I had known about its other contributors and what they were saying
Really? Then why did a glowing review of this book appear in your name? Fake news? A forgery? Think carefully before you deny it, Peter. None of this is mentioned online anywhere as it is pre-internet. But it is in a major archive and I have a copy of the text. I will hold back on the location and full wording. As I say, I am looking for an exclusive.
But here is a taster:
At your website you denounce “that dreadful, nauseating book”. Yet in a review under your name we find this: “The Betrayal of Youth speaks coolly, clearly and radically about a subject which has, for far, far too long been shrouded in emotional hysteria and adult chauvinism.” This comes after mentioning Warren Middleton and the 16 essay contributors, so you could hardly not have known about them. Or are you going to wriggle and squirm again, claiming you somehow wrote the review without actually reading the book? Sorry, Peter, there’s not a lot of wriggle room for you this time!
Peter?
I have never reviewed or praised The Betrayal of Youth – and would not do so. Where did this review appear and what date? Please produce a copy. Some paedophiles are very angry with me for condemning their sexual abuse of children and have been threatening to “get me” for some time. So I am not surprised that they want revenge. Back in 2010, the far right BNP originated the public campaign that I support sex with kids (which I emphatically do not), in revenge for me embarrassing their leader Nick Griffin. They resorted to faking placards, quotes, leaflets etc that they claimed were mine. They were not. This seems like more of the same. My public record of opposing adult-child sex is long-standing and clear to anyone with an open mind. See my first post in this thread
>They resorted to faking placards, quotes, leaflets etc that they claimed were mine. They were not. This seems like more of the same.
Yes, there have been fake placards etc. But this is not the same thing. As I say, I have chapter and verse that can be checked at a major archive. The far right were not doing online fakes in the 1980s. We are talking about a printed journal here. All will be revealed in due course, possibly in MSM, possibly on my blog, heretictoc.com
I am open to media approaches on this.
Tom O’Carroll
Try GBnews Peter Thatchell has appeared there much to my dismay that thy allowed him a platform.
PS: The 1990s OutRage! age of consent at 14 campaign was NEVER about adults having sex with teens. It was about ending the criminalisation of young people of similar ages, backed up with better sex sex education to reduce unwanted pregnancies, abortions, sexual infections and sex abuse.
AIUI at least one of these countries that has an AOC under 16, the Netherlands, in fact has a tiered arrangement whereby there is a 12-16 range and an above 16 range. It means that 12 to 16 year olds can have sex with each other but a 17-year-old can’t do so with a 13-year-old. So it’s not a licence for dirty old men in their 50s to fiddle legally with 12-year-olds.
Between 1990 and 2002 the age of consent in the Netherlands was in effect 12, regardless of the age of the older partner. The “tiered arrangement” referred to, limiting the age difference between partners, was introduced not as a result of any evidence of victimisation (there was none) but is attributable, rather, to the rising feminist dogma that all relationships must be equal – a literally power mad ideology now so insanely rampant that ordinary man-woman relationships are put under suspicion where there is even a modest age gap.
As for “fiddling” in a non-consensual encounter at any age, that is criminal sexual assault. But it is the same as consensual “fondling”, which is acceptable at any age. Resorting to emotive language is a distraction from the important point: Was the activity an unwelcome intrusion? At any age, it may not have been. What the law should allow is a more pragmatic consideration. The 1990 Netherlands law worked well.
I have never reviewed or praised The Betrayal of Youth – and would not do so. Where did this review appear and what date? Please produce a copy. Some paedophiles are very angry with me for condemning their sexual abuse of children and have been threatening to “get me” for some time. So I am not surprised that they want revenge. Back in 2010, the far right BNP originated the public campaign that I support sex with kids (which I emphatically do not), in revenge for me embarrassing their leader Nick Griffin. They resorted to faking placards, quotes, leaflets etc that they claimed were mine. They were not. This seems like more of the same. My public record of opposing adult-child sex is long-standing and clear to anyone with an open mind. See my first post in this thread