I fully accept this is a provocative title. I’m especially aware how emotive the accompanying word ‘paedophile’ is and how it can be misused. Still, one shouldn’t be restricted from open discussion when we face the worsening of left-wing ideological conformity and restriction of free speech in our society. The awkward thought remains. There seems to be a link between ideologies – especially ‘progressive’ ones – indoctrination and child abuse.
The two most obvious examples are the transgender ideology being taught in schools and the grooming scandal affecting teenage English girls (2004 - 13, but ongoing) in cities like Rotherham, Oldham and Oxford, which was hidden by multiculturalism and claims of racism against those who dared speak out. As DPP, Keir Starmer persecuted those who had the courage to flag this industrial scale abuse, mostly perpetrated by Muslims from Pakistan or Bangladesh. In both cases, schools, social services and the forces of law and order played a shameful role, quashing the vital corrective of free-speech, allowing horrors to be originated, perpetrated and prolonged.
Transgender ideology is still being taught uncritically in schools, promoted by activists and effectively smuggled in by ignoring the safeguarding issues. The terrible spread is like a wave of madness, akin to the witchcraft lunacy which terrorised European and American societies for centuries.
How and where did this lunacy start? It was a mistake to pay any attention to the ‘Gender Theory’ argument (actually a command), that sex is biological but gender is fluid. The two terms were – until the madness broke – synonymous. One was regularly asked ‘Sex?’ on forms, to which some wags replied ‘Yes, please’. Apologies for restating the basics: your sex is fixed at birth; its social and cultural manifestation is often called gender. You can superficially alter the latter, in terms of presentation, but the former is immutable. A tiny number of individuals (about 0.02%) are born neither XX (female) nor XY (male). This doesn’t constitute a third sex.
Because of connotations around the word ‘sex’, the term ‘gender’ became more widely used, but this in no way corresponded with any conceptual shift or changed understanding in society. The controversial ideas behind ‘Gender Theory’ in fact originated in scientific fraud, particularly in the well-documented and undisputed activities of one man. Enter New Zealand sexologist – or ‘fuckologist’ as he insisted – Professor John Money. He sounded (and behaved) like a Martin Amis character but unfortunately existed and wrecked many children’s lives. This founder of the John Hopkins’ Gender Identity Clinic was the true originator of the transgender movement. His ideas are mainstream in British schools, which have inadvertently entered his dangerous world.
This is taken verbatim from his entry on Wikipedia. Note, no one has flagged any of the allegations made as contentious. Given how incredible are these details, and how obsessively the trans-movement patrols this debate, that says everything:
'Money pioneered drug treatment for sex offenders in order to extinguish their sex drives. He began testing anti-androgen medications on offenders as early as 1966, which yielded successful results.
Starting in the 1990s, the work and research conducted by Money has been subjected to significant academic and public scrutiny. A 1997 academic study criticised Money's work in many respects, particularly in regard to the involuntary sex-reassignment of the child David Reimer, and Money's sexual abuse of Reimer and his brother when they were children. Some of Money's sessions involved Money forcing the two children to perform sexual activities with each other, which Money then photographed. David Reimer lived a troubled life, eventually committing suicide at 38; his brother died of an overdose at age 36.
Starting when Reimer and his twin Brian were six years old, Money showed the brothers pornography and forced the two to rehearse sexual acts. Money would order David to get down on all fours and Brian was forced to "come up behind [him] and place his crotch against [his] buttocks". Money also forced Reimer, in another sexual position, to have his "legs spread" with Brian on top. On "at least one occasion" Money took a photograph of the two children performing these acts.
When either child resisted Money, Money would get angry. Both Reimer and Brian recall that Money was mild-mannered around their parents, but ill-tempered when alone with them. Money also forced the two children to strip for "genital inspections"; when they resisted inspecting each other's genitals, Money got very aggressive. Reimer says, "He told me to take my clothes off, and I just did not do it. I just stood there. And he screamed, 'Now!' Louder than that. I thought he was going to give me a whipping. So I took my clothes off and stood there shaking."
Money's rationale for his treatment of the children was his belief that "childhood 'sexual rehearsal play'" "at thrusting movements and copulation" was important for a "healthy adult gender identity".
Both Reimer and Brian were traumatized by the "therapy", with Brian speaking about it "only with the greatest emotional turmoil", and David unwilling to speak about the details publicly. At 14 years old and in extreme psychological agony, David Reimer was finally told the truth by his parents. He chose to begin calling himself David, and he underwent surgical procedures to reverse the female bodily modifications.
Despite the pain and turmoil of the brothers, for decades, Money reported on Reimer's progress as the "John/Joan case", describing apparently successful female gender development and using this case to support the feasibility of sex reassignment and surgical reconstruction even in non-intersex cases.
By the time this deception was discovered, the idea of a purely socially constructed gender identity and infant Intersex medical interventions had become the accepted medical and sociological standard.'
The specific details on the ‘surgery’ Money inflicted are horrific but need recounting:
‘In 1966, a botched circumcision left eight-month-old Reimer without a penis. Money persuaded the baby's parents that sex reassignment surgery would be in Reimer's best interest. At the age of 22 months, Reimer underwent an orchiectomy, in which his testicles were surgically removed. He was reassigned to be raised as female and his name changed from Bruce to Brenda.’
Incredibly, this appalling abuse lies behind the transgender ideological madness seen in our schools and wider society. This disgraced figure originated the nonsense which led last year to two 13-year-olds in Sussex being bullied by their teacher, for bravely refusing to accept that a fellow pupil could identify as a cat.
If there was any doubt of the horror lurking behind ‘Gender Theory’, Money had this to say on paedophilia:
‘If I were to see the case of a boy aged 10 or 12 who's intensely attracted toward a man in his 20s or 30s, if the relationship is totally mutual, and the bonding is genuinely totally mutual, then I would not call it pathological in any way.’
This is a scandal which will run and run. There are so many young people who’ve been actively encouraged to ‘transition’, without anything like enough professional concern about the damage they and their families will suffer, now and in the future. I suspect many of those were in fact simply unsure of their sexuality and undergoing the usual confusions of puberty. But, at a vulnerable and uncertain age, additional confusion and anxiety have been relentlessly sown, to satisfy a few ideologues.
I don’t believe most transitioning decisions have originated in schools. But teachers raising doubts have been bullied, insulted, defamed, ostracised – even fired. And pupils have been bombarded with a confused, incoherent ideology yet denied the right to question it through free speech; the school environment has certainly played a regrettable role.
This has caused widespread bullying and classroom turmoil. Unsurprisingly, random allegations of ‘transphobia’ are rampant, amongst kids not old enough to understand the term let alone the issue. Some teachers – notably the one in Sussex – equate questioning of trans-ideology with homophobia, showing they are also confused. Actually, the complete dominance and focus on supposed trans-pupils has meant homosexuality and heterosexuality are underdiscussed, regarded as unremarkable if not dull. This is surely shortchanging the vast majority of pupils, who could be happily gay or straight without the need for potentially irreversible ‘transitioning’.
In summary, this is a safeguarding failure active inside schools, through a mix of negligence, willful ignorance, complacency and cowardliness. I doubt many teachers are aware where this dangerous nonsense originated, or bothered to investigate. I’d say any professionally competent teacher should have, when the huge upturn in pupils transitioning became obvious. Muted surprise was expressed by many teachers but most preferred to keep quiet and look the other way. A depressing number collaborated in the madness, to curry favour and to be seen ‘on the right side of history’. A few actively promoted the scandal.
To add a final note of absurdity, many of these ‘Gender Theorists’ have now done a complete about-turn. Biological sex is now trivialised as merely ‘assigned at birth’ but gender is supposedly an inner truth, manifested under the term ‘biological destiny’. The over-reliance on terminology – their hope that controlling the language controls the reality – doesn’t work. These people simply aren’t bright enough, whatever silly semantics they attempt.
The word ‘assigned’ doesn’t prove something is trivial. In this case, there’s a basic scientific truth behind it. We assign the word ‘gravity’ to the force which pulls us down to earth. It could be assigned the words ‘Brainwashed Sussex Teacher’ or ‘Raving Sexologist Pervert’. Go to the top of the Shard and jump off, to see how that affects its underlying reality.
‘Now then, now then, now then!’ This may seem a more banal example, but what institution was that most famous of modern paedophiles, Jimmy Savile, created and enabled by? The BBC. That flagship of progressive ideology, an exemplar for utopian thinking and preaching. His personal politics (supposedly Tory) are irrelevant; he was uncritically invented and used by ‘Auntie’. And note how he hid behind charities and their fund-raising: the modern-day version of buying indulgences from a Pardoner, to absolve one’s sins. Needless to say, the BBC did absolutely nothing to stop Savile and willfully ignored the grooming scandal of more recent years, except to join in the racist name-calling against those who highlighted the terrible abuse.
The very obvious point is that power and sex are closely linked. And the moral license that so many with progressive views feel they possess immeasurably adds to this. I'd argue that ideological indoctrination of children is itself a type of abuse. Not sexual, per se, but without doubt highly coercive. It’s an obvious elision and cover, for paedophiles to then commit actual abuse. An obvious comparison could be made with the terrible history of child abuse linked to various religious ideologies – especially Catholicism and Islam.
Referring back to John Money, the very field of ‘sexology’ is bound to attract paedophiles. Not exclusively, but not insignificantly. Just as many with mental peculiarities are attracted to psychiatry and its offshoots. Simplistic no doubt but true nonetheless. Read up on Freud and his extraordinary drug taking, his endless neuroses, phobias and perversions.
Today, power is exerted through a totalising progressive ideology, taught unrestrained in our schools and dominating all our institutions. Many years in teaching have shown me this. I knew no teacher of English, History, PSHE or Geography who attempted to be even-handed, on anything vaguely political (dare I say myself excluded?). The most they’d do was acknowledge that other points of views existed, all of them dismissed as incorrect and morally reprehensible. Nor have I ever seen a school assembly (and I’ve seen way too many) without obvious left-liberal bias. Just as a fish doesn’t notice that water exists, these biases go unseen by those who claim to be even-handed. Above all, they automatically equate left-liberal opinions with moral virtue or – to be more exact – they assume that those who don’t hold them are bigoted, sexist and racist.
The common rejoinder to what I’m saying (but only when defending figures on ‘the progressive side’) is that I’m attacking ad-hominem and that ideas can rise above failings. True, but I’m not just playing the man; the ball (the idea) is the issue. And look again at John Money: how can one distinguish the two? His transgender ideas were promoted worldwide through his prolonged sexual exploitation of twin boys, albeit hidden at the time, yet now (shamefully) well known.
To make a leap into literature and a famous line from Yeats: ‘How can we know the dancer from the dance?’
I do that deliberately, since the best exploration of what I’m discussing is literary and by that greatest of novelists, Dostoevsky, in Devils. The horrific but compelling character of Stavrogin – a maniacal revolutionary student, devoured by ideology – is guilty of a prolonged and terrifying act of child-abuse, detailed in a confessional chapter which is very often censored. It leads to the heart-rending suicide of an 11-year-old girl.
Dostoevsky’s entire body of work is a wonderful resource, as an artistic exploration of how totalising ideologies and obsessions capture and corrupt individuals, then entire societies. Written prophetically in the mid to late-19th century yet foreshadowing the horrors of the 20th-century, in Russia and worldwide. His warnings are just as applicable to the insane excesses of ‘Progressivism’ we’re now mired in. He was especially farsighted in his suspicion of credentialism and the folly of uncritically following ‘intellectuals’.
Devils should be required reading for anyone dismayed by where we are. This greatest of writers could see how intellectualism, elite arrogance and hatred of the ‘masses’, asserted through lofty claims of the opposite, would play out. Just as with Dickens (from whom he otherwise much differs) the individual is everything. They must never be sacrificed for ‘the greater good’ or any other airy ideological claim.
Dickens’ novels overflow with preachy ‘liberal’ figures who are in truth selfish authoritarian hypocrites, exploiting the vulnerable – especially children. His message is that ‘progress’ counts for nothing when it ignores the sanctity of individual life. And many who claim to be progressive are in fact callous, selfish and dangerous frauds. That doesn’t in the least imply progress is impossible or undesirable, it means to be endlessly wary of those who claim they and their beliefs embody it, thus demanding others accept their moral authority.
Because all ideologies abuse power and ideologues are often attracted principally by this. Bullying ideological sanctity provides the perfect cover for paedophiles. And children are always the most vulnerable and suffer the worst. They’re the first and easiest targets, the most in need of defending – whatever the cost.
Paul is a published writer and his The Poetry of Gin and Tea has attracted favourable comment: "I marvel at Paul Sutton's unique ability to confront the demons of our time and beat them at their own game - the game of words. His poetry is a subtle affront to the censorship around us. His speech is more than simply free."
He also has a substack Against Monolithic 'Diversity' : “Paul Sutton's satirical/lyrical pieces on freedom of speech haters.”
Editor’s Note: When Paul submitted this I thought that it was another of his excellent satires, like the one he did on refined viciousness and lunacy currently prevalent in academia. So looked I up John Money, and to my shock and horror, there he is, just as Paul tells it. How can this be? My mind’s still reeling with the horror of it all. TA.
Follow this link to a harrowing interview with Sarah Wilson, a Rotherham rape gang victim. I have her book, but haven’t been able to bring myself to read it yet.