1./ What sort of child abuse does Peter Tatchell consider acceptable? In 1997 the self-styled champion of LGBTQ+ rights wrote to the Guardian arguing sex with children could be "beneficial and enjoyable". Here are some awful images of the tribe whose abuse he defended. 1 of /18
2./ In his letter Tatchell pointed to the Sambia tribe, of Papua New Guinea, as an example of "consenting inter-generational sex...considered normal, beneficial and enjoyable by old and young alike." The anthropologist he cited was Professor Gilbert Herdt. Who he ?
3./ 3 years before Tatchell quoted him approvingly Herdt was interviewed in a pro-paedophile magazine on how best to remove the taboo against paedophilia. Isn't it VERY surprising Tatchell chose to quote someone who'd been actively thinking of ways to destigmatise paedophilia?
4./ Herdt's work describes the culture of the Sambia in which boys are used sexually by adult male warriors. Men tell boys they can only become adults by eating their sperm. The more they eat the more manly they will become. Is this consensual as Tatchell claimed? Course not.
5./ I've forced myself to read Herdt's books which describe a culture too awful even for Dante's Inferno. One thing I discovered tho is that the words attributed to Gerdt by Tatchell are invented. Herdt never says that the boys grow up to "happy and well-adjusted". Why would he?
6./Anthropologists don't judge "happiness". In fact, Herdt argues Sambia culture is a brutal response to continual inter-tribal violence. It's also deeply misogynistic. Any public affection between men and women is taboo. It was Tatchell who claimed all this was "well-adjusted".
7./ Tatchell cites the Sambia as an example of "consensual inter-generational sex" but Herdt paints a different picture. The boys -as young as 7- are kept in the dark about the initiation ceremonies that await them. When they find out, some run way. If they flee they are beaten.
8./ Herdt emphasises that the boys are terrified. No wonder, the initiation begins with the boys being kidnapped and bundled into the forest. Mothers who complain are beaten. You think this is "consensual" Peter? This photo of an abduction is by Herdt himself.👇
9./ When they get to the forest the boys are surrounded by the adult men who thrash them. Disgusting and awful as this image is...I suppose at least we now know without a shadow of a doubt how compromised Tatchell's claims are about the Sambia. How is this man taken seriously?
10./ The boys' initiation begins by having the septum of their noses pierced. Herdt suggested the Sambia hate women so much and have such a horror of menstruation that this bloody ritual is some sort of revenge against women. God knows. But my ...oh my...those poor boys.😢
11./ The boys are hardly likely to protest since in order to get to the nose piercing ritual they are forced to walk through a narrow passageway of saplings that allow the adult men to beat them on both sides
12./ Is this sounding anything like the happy, well-adjusted world Peter Tatchell alleged? Once pierced the boys -remember as young as 7!! - are taught how to fellate. The men teach the boys using flutes. 🤮Herdt describes the threats made against those who don't play "well".
13./ Herdt relates how men threaten to castrate the boys or strike them with a machete if they don't do what they're told. Herdt, unlike Tatchell, acknowledges the boys are forced into submission after a violent and terrifying process of intimidation and brainwashing.
14./ If a boy's mother intervenes or complains she is beaten with "bloodied leaves". Here's a haunting image of the other women and girls looking on as a mother is beaten. We're often told that aboriginal cultures have great hidden wisdom, but frankly all this is just disgusting.
15./ By no stretch of the imagination are the Sambia -as they are described by Gerdt- any sort of model of tolerance and inclusion. The society he describes is a vision of Hell. Luckily the Sambia themselves now agree. In the 1980s and 90s they began to reject the old ways
16./ Child abuse is criminalised not ritualised now, thankfully. But isn't it revealing that a horrific culture that dispensed with all child safeguarding was cited and praised by Peter Tatchell? Doesn't that suggest his moral compass is warped
17./ The story of the Sambia reminds us children can never consent to sex. 99% of people agree. Does Peter Tatchell? He regularly proclaims his ethical superiority but next time he speaks remember the faces of those terrified boys he claims consented to sex. They didn't.
18./ If Tatchell could be so wrong about this child abuse then how can reputable journalists take his views seriously about the child safeguarding risks of puberty blockers or other trans lobby demands? Like the Sambia, it's time we ditched his glamorisation of paedophilia
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