Metaphysical interlude III: first-person realism is the name of the game

I am a proud pedophile (as the word has recently come to be used of bog-standard male sexuality and the now rare honesty about such), a MAP, an MRA, a male sexualist and also a first-person realist. Yes, our language evolves and while the first four labels are largely synonymous and starkly political, the last one only concerns metaphysics which I have also written about here and here.

So here comes the third installment in this series of merely philosophical reflection, in which I may not make any philosophical progress but sure do update the terminology, much like we have done in our evolution from MRA to MAP. I have previously referred to the question of whether the first-person perspective is metaphysically privileged as the "idiotic conundrum" (a term Geoffrey Klempner came up with), but now, thanks to this podcast by Robinson Erhardt and an excellent paper by his guest David Builes, I now know to refer to my position that the first-person perspective is indeed metaphysically privileged as first-person realism. Also new to me today is referring to the idiotic conundrum as the vertiginous question.

Although David Builes ultimately rejects first-person realism (he says in the podcast), his paper presents eight arguments in favor. The paper is thankfully open access, so you can all read it in full. In addition to the arguments it provides great clarity on how to think about this issue, including the terminology which I have now updated to be in line with contemporary academic philosophy. Some of his arguments are actually new to me. For example, I am not very conversant in anti-haecceitism and frankly I don't understand it much better after reading the paper either. But the decisive argument for me, which is similar to what I have said before, is the one he lists as number five:

5 PERSONAL IDENTITY: DISSOCIATION

There are puzzles of personal identity over time where I seem to have judgements about how I can persist through time that differ from my judgements about how David can persist through time. First-Person Realism can explain this, but other views can't.

For example, consider a classic fission case. Suppose I am about to go to sleep, and while I am asleep, half of my brain will be put into a body that is in a red room, and the other half of my brain will be put into a body that is in a blue room. From an external third-person perspective, it seems to me that David cannot survive this operation. After all, David can't be in both rooms, and it would be arbitrary if David went to either room, and the persistence of biological organisms like David is not a “further fact” beyond various relations of physical and biological continuity. However, when I adopt a first-person perspective and imagine myself going to sleep before the operation, it seems that I can clearly conceive of three possibilities: I can wake up the next day in a red room, I can wake up the next day in a blue room, or I can never wake up again.

However, if I judge that David can't wake up in either room tomorrow even though I can wake up in either room tomorrow, then it seems that I can't also consistently judge that I am identical to David. However, according to certain versions of First-Person Realism, it is clear how to make sense of these intuitions. For example, according to Hare's (2009) view, it is possible that tomorrow the red room is present, it is possible that tomorrow the blue room is present, and it is possible that no room will be present tomorrow. Furthermore, all three of these possibilities are consistent with David not surviving the operation.

Moreover, conceiving of David as a biological organism is not essential to the point. Even if David is a Cartesian immaterial soul, it still seems that what can happen to me can dissociate from what happens to an immaterial soul, just as what happens to me can dissociate from what happens to a biological organism.

Once you realize that there are thought experiments which show that personal identity can dissociate not only from your physical body and thus disprove physicalism but also dissociate from an immaterial soul, it becomes very hard to deny that personal identity is metaphysically privileged, beyond even what God (if he exists like any theist would have it) could create or govern! Which is why I tend to agree with Klempner that this is the deepest philosophical question.

There is the hard problem of consciousness, but then there is also the super-hard question of perspective. Even if we could solve the mind-body problem, we wouldn't know from the facts of consciousness how to explain which perspective or person goes with which mental state as opposed to any other. Why am I me and not you? We don't know! 

Also new to me in this paper is how first-person realism sheds light on time and modality. I had basically accepted eternalism after reading "The Unreality of Time" by John Ellis McTaggart, but now I am not so sure that presentism might not be true after all. Perhaps the present is privileged in an analogous way to the first-person perspective, and there is no block universe? All this and more is best explained by Builes, so once again I highly recommend reading his paper. And among his citations I recommend reading Christian List's (2023) "The many-worlds theory of consciousness" for a sort of plausible theory of how exactly the first person might be metaphysically privileged without degrading into solipsism.

I welcome comments on first-person realism as well as our usual discussion on (anti-)sexual legislation and prosecution. Which is so grim that it behooves is to take a break now and again and ponder some philosophy for our sanity.

Homage to my predecessors in NAFP

It has been brought to my attention that although I may be the only public MAP activist in Norway, I am not the first. And they even had an organization called NAFP. That's an acronym for Norsk arbeidsgruppe for peodofili which means Norwegian Taskforce for Pedophilia. This organization existed from 1974 to 1983.  They even held a conference in Oslo in 1979 which was probably the high point of MAP activism in Norway. Even Tom O'Carroll was in attendance! But that's just a small part of their interesting history which you can read about here:

https://www.pedofili.eu/Nafp.htm

Highly recommended reading for Norwegians! Firstly, let's quote their definition of what is now called MAP activism. This is still totally relevant today:

Det er et behov for å kjempe for rettigheter, likeverd og respekt i samfunnet... Det er kampen mot lover som på prinsipielt grunnlag forbyr pedofil seksuell praksis. Det er kampen mot lovregulert diskriminering. Likeverd er et spørsmål om å kunne bli betraktet som et menneske på linje med andre, og ikke tilhørende en bestemt gruppe tildelt de samme negative egenskapene. Og det er respekt, retten til å være fri og åpen om hvem man er, uten at dette møtes med frykt, hat eller sanksjoner.

Pedofil aktivisme er politikk. Det er politikk både i tradisjonell forstand, ved at man forsøker å influere styringsprosessene i samfunnet, dets lover og regler, men også i holdningsskapende forstand, ved å arbeide for at samfunnet skal godta oss og vår seksualitet. Pedofil aktivisme er informasjon og saklig opplysning om seksualitet, samt utformingen av akseptable retningslinjer for seksuell adferd.

However, back then they were nearly all boylovers. Not because they wanted to exclude straight guys and women, but apparently there was even less interest in political activity among heterosexual men in the 1970s to promote sexual freedom than there is now. Even though the age of consent was 16 then as now and there was not the belief in the metaphysical badness of sex causing "trauma" from consensual acts or the stigma on pedophilia that there is now. The imagined danger back then was simply that homosexuality was contagious, which albeit wrong is charmingly innocent compared to today's demonology. And as late as 1960 the government was able to be rational even if they didn't act on it.

Innstillingen fra Strafferådet av 1960 er interessant lesning, fordi det høyst sannsynlig var siste gang det offentlige på en noenlunde realistisk måte kunne diskutere lovbestemmelsene på dette området. I dag er slike diskusjoner håpløst hemmet av barns påståtte inkompetanse og behovet for å beskytte dem. Sitatet som E refererer til finnes på side 32 i innstillingen. På samme side finner vi et annet eksempel på hvordan de unge ble oppfattet den gang (jfr. med dagens lovtekst):

Innstilling fra Strafferådet 17 mars 1960, side 32:

Straffelovrådet vil, som nevnt under den foregående paragraf, foreslå at den nåværende aldersgrense på 16 år blir opprettholdt. Da det imidlertid ofte kan være tilfellet at personer under denne lavalder er vel utviklet i fysisk henseende, er det neppe riktig i lovbestemmelsen om utuktig omgjengelse med slike personer å betegne dem som «b a r n». Man har i praksis hatt tilfelle hvor det ikke har vært naturlig å bruke betegnelsen på den som gjerningsmannen har hatt den utuktige omgjengelse med. Den fysiske utvikling har i disse tilfelle vært slik at inntrykket av fornærmede som barn var utelukket. Rådet vil derfor foreslå at ordet «barn» byttes ut med det nøytrale «noen» under 16 år.

NAFP made a serious effort to lower the age of consent, and in the 1970s it looked realistic to at least drop it down to 14 before all hope was lost when the global CSA psychosis set in around 1980. That's the hysteria we are still living in, but in some ways I am more optimistic about the current MAP movement than what they had back then, since it was a completely gay thing at the time. And they were less public than I would have expected. The only name which is still openly associated with NAFP is Thore Langfeldt, but they claim he wasn't really a member and recent quotes from him indicate he has gone insane and now attributes attraction to minors with an inability to relate to adults just like the worst contemporary psychological hogwash (no better than his former belief  that "den mindreårige kan bli varig homoseksuell gjennom forføring," though in a different direction blowing with the political correctness of our times). Sexologist Berthold Grünfeld (who is fixated on using puberty as a dividing line) gets an honorable mention as having at least partly supported their view, but absolutely NOBODY will own a role in NAFP any longer! All they left behind is this very well-written historical treatise with lots of primary source material.

And so it all devolves to me to take responsibility and be a public Norwegian MAP activist. Which I am proudly doing now in my role as Outreach Ambassador for Newgon.

Another quote from their historical site which resonnates with me:

Rettsapparatet i et samfunn kan ikke erstatte viljen til å leve lovlydig. Lover kan bare virke hvis det er en konsensus om deres intensjoner. Men hva er egentlig intensjonen med loven om seksuell lavalder? Skal den straffe og forhindre misbruk, eller skal den straffe og forhindre hva "de fleste foreldre" ikke liker?

Boy, did society get consensus that pedophilia is wrong! But they got it on a fraudulent basis, firstly with a fraudulent definition of children and secondly with a superstition about the metaphysical badness of sexuality and myths about a handicapped teenage brain. So in theory, it should be easy to break the will to obey the law if not the laws themselves with their powerful globalist backing, which is now much, much harder than in the 70s. All we really need for that first step is to make enough people reject the rationale behind the sex laws and see law enforcement as the enemy like I do.

Here is the NAFP historian's definition of the abuse industry that is entrenching all the antisex laws, which is spot-on like it could have been written by Angry Harry himself:

Anti-pedofili kan dermed også sees på som et foretaksfenomén. Den bygget opp og holdt liv i et koteri av sosialarbeidere, barnevernsansatte, saksbehandlere, konsulenter, foredragholdere, forskningsstipendiater, kriminaletterforskere, rettspsykiatere, psykoterapeuter, leger, spesialpedagoger, støttekontakter og advokater. De skulle etterhvert utgjøre hva vi i dag kaller misbruksindustrien, et økende antall mennesker hvis inntekt og karrière helt eller delvis avhenger av en jevn strøm med misbrukere og misbrukte. I 1978 var alt dette i sin spede begynnelse.

Finally I present the former NAFP member's philosophical musings about what has gone wrong with society's view of minors' sexuality. I am not saying I completely agree with this. Like the female sexual trade union, it is merely one angle on a complex phenomenon which I now think is best summed up as cultural drift and monoculturalism.

Hva har skjedd med seksualiteten siden 1960?

Svaret er like innlysende som det er paradoksalt. Seksualiteten har blitt ung. Hele vår kultur har blitt ung. Ungdommen og det ungdommelige har tatt over. Det er det unge som gjelder. Å bli gammel har ingen status. Alderdom er tabu. Alle skal være unge. Vi lever i de unges verden.

Alt fra rynkefjerning til hårtransplantasjoner, alt fra miniskjørt til kontaktlinser, alt fra barbering av skrittet til viagra, alt fra helsekost til treningssentre er bare uttrykk for det samme. Alle du treffer i serviceyrkene, fra ungjenta bak disken til flyvertinnen, er der fordi ungdom selger. Det er det vi vil ha.

Barnet har blitt alle kvinners skjønnhetsideal. Ungdommelige prestasjoner og ungdommelig utseende har blitt alle menns mannsideal.

Det er de pedofiles forståelse av hva som er seksuelt attråverdig som gjelder. Det var vår seksualitet som vant.

Vi vant, men seieren kostet oss dyrt. Når du dyrker det ungdommelige, vil selve ungdommen bli idolisert. Når du vil ha huden til et barn, kan du lett avgude dem som virkelig er barn. De pedofile vil rive ned idolet, besudle det, ha sex med det, og det kan ikke samfunnet tolerere. Derfor kan barn brukes til å begrense enhver menneskerettighet, kaste bort ethvert rettsprinsipp og fjerne enhver anstendighet.

Man kan spørre seg om dette ikke er en selvmotsigelse. Hvis samfunnet elsker det barnlige og forguder barn, hvorfor bruker de barn som våpen mot pedofile? Svaret er mer opplagt enn vi tror. Når vi idoliserer noe, slutter vi å verdsette det. På samme måte som middelalderens religionskriger bunnet i en idolisert kristen kjærlighet, vil de idoliserte barna starte en konflikt som gjør at samfunnet river ned demokratiet og ødelegger seg selv.

Did attraction to minors "win" because everyone now wants to appear young themselves? Sounds like a cope to me, but worth thinking about.

I am now an official MAP!

I am proud to announce that I now have an official position in the MAP movement. Today Newgon has made me Men’s Movement Community Outreach Ambassador. Quoting my own statement in the their press release:

“As a veteran Men’s Rights Activist, and seeing how the Men’s Rights Movement has lost sight of our original sex-positivity, I am excited to have found Newgon which picks up the torch on advocating for sex law reforms that I considered obvious from the beginning. Increasingly draconian age of consent and related sex laws are feminism’s most insidious weapons against men. We sorely need an organizational structure wherein we can make our stance clear and have a political platform we can push, along with educational resources promoting the truth versus sex abuse hysteria. Newgon provides all of this. I am therefore delighted to be appointed by Newgon in an official role and look forward to working with them to make common cause with the Men's Movement as I envision it. As far as I'm concerned, MAP is now a political synonym for MRA and I am proud to be known by either. We can thank Newgon's ethos for establishing this idea as a cultural force, a MAP Movement which obviously deserves to include all sex-positive MRAs as well.”

To my knowledge I am the only one in Norway with an organizational role against sex abuse hysteria. During these darkest times of the antisex witch-hunts I am the one pioneer who is not afraid to proudly stand up for the truth and be an activist against the sex laws. I have praised Newgon before and now it is official.

Hopefully this will open the floodgates for MAPs to become politically aware and raise awareness in Norway and beyond. And as noted, MRAs are better off as MAPs now or at least close allies, because the MAPs are the only ones who are making their presence felt politically.

Let's all unite and work with the MAPs whether we identify as one or just support them politically. MAP is above all a political term because it is political change we need. Newgon's ethos is so similar to old-school men's rights activism of the kind Angry Harry advocated that it is a no-brainer to be one of them, especially now that there is no real alternative.

Behold! James Cantor, the leading witch-doctor, does not believe in witches!

This screenshot is epic. It's like reading a postscript to the Malleus Maleficarum where the authors inform us that oh by the way, we don't believe in any of this. It's just that social conditions are such that witches are perceived as extremely dangerous now, and studying and hunting witches is a mighty fine way to make a living. So we go along with that in our work, while on the down-low we admit there is no evidence that witchcraft itself is harmful. There is no proven harm besides the harm arising from believing it is harmful. That's an open secret in intellectual circles anyway and it really has no bearing on normie perceptions or our livelihood as witch-doctors that we admit what we really believe for those of you who actually bother to read our work. We don't want to be remembered as one of those fools who truly believed in the panic after it blows over anyway, so here is a little Easter egg of honesty.

So, there you have it. Dr. James Cantor does not believe in the metaphysical badness of sex which forms the basis of pedo panic.

Weeds don’t spoil: my reading of SOUTH WIND by Norman Douglas

“Weeds don’t spoil.” That’s my most memorable quote from South Wind by Norman Douglas and a proverb made to order for me. Because I am a weed and I’d like to think that I don’t spoil. Of course this is wishful thinking as I age all the same as anyone else, but there is still something to it because I don’t abide by convention and can therefore perhaps reap some fresher benefits than others. I dare to think differently and be different. You can all read the South Wind here as I’ve put it up on the MRA Archive and styled it pleasantly for reading on all kinds of devices. I have also corrected numerous typos throughout, so I think this is the best version on the Internet. In doing so I felt almost like the character Mr. Eames who says: “Have you ever tried to annotate a classic, Mr. Heard? I assure you it opens up new vistas, new realms of delight. It gives one a genuine zest in life. Enthralling!”

So, why did I bother with this classic, and is it a classic? Given what we know about his personal life, Douglas would have identified as a sexualist or a MAP or both like I do if he had been alive today. That is why I wanted to give him a chance. I like to test the merits of an old sexualist on his word rather than his reputation. He was a weed even in his own time, once (in 1937) having to flee Florence on allegations he “raped” a 10-year-old girl, so it’s quite possible he never attained the literary estimation he deserves. Let us get directly to the sex via the character whom all the men in the novel adore:

He worshipped from afar. He would have liked to worship from a little nearer, but did not know how to set about it; he was afraid of troubling what he called her innocence. Hitherto he had scored no great success. Angelina, aged fifteen, with the figure of a fairy, a glowing complexion, and a rich southern voice, was perfectly aware of his idealistic sentiments. She responded to the extent of gazing at him, now and then, in a most disconcerting fashion. It was as though she cared little about idealism. She did not smile. There was neither love nor disdain in that gaze; it was neither hot nor cold, nor yet lukewarm; it was something else, something he did not want at all—something that made him feel childish and uncomfortable…. And another pair of eyes were watching all the time, her sinuous movements—those of Mr. Edgar Marten. This young scientist, too, cherished loving thoughts about Angelina, thoughts of a more earthly and volcanic tinge; certain definite projects which made him forget, at times, his preoccupation with biotite, perlite, magnetite, anorthite, and pyroxene.

Yeah, that is beautiful. Another sexy passage I just have to quote:

The capacity of an English girl for coming to the point will take some beating. She paralyses you with directness. I will tell you a true story. There was a young Italian whom I knew—yes, I knew him well. He had just arrived in London; very handsome in the face, though perhaps a little too fat. He fell in love with an elegant young lady who was employed in the establishment of Madame Elise in Bond Street. He used to wait for her to come out at six o'clock and follow her like a dog, not daring to speak. He carried a costly bracelet for her in his pocket, and every day fresh flowers, which he was always too shy and too deeply enamoured to present. She was his angel, his ideal. He dreamt of her by day and night, wondering whether he would ever have the courage to address so tall and queenly a creature. It was his first English love affair, you understand; he learnt the proper technique later on. For five or six weeks this unhappy state of things continued, till one day, when he was running after her as usual, she turned round furiously and said: 'What do you mean, sir, by following me about it this disgusting fashion? How day you? I shall call the police, if it occurs again.' He was deprived of speech at first: he could only gaze in what you call dumb amazement. Then he managed to stammer out something about his heart and his love, and to show her the flowers and the bracelet. She said: 'So that's it, is it? Well of all the funny boys. Why couldn't you speak up sooner? D'you know of a place round here—'"

That's my experience with English girls too and I love them for it. It gets even better:

“Chastity be blowed. It's an unclean state of affairs, and dangerous to the community. You can’t call yourself a good citizen till you have learnt to despise it from the bottom of your heart. It’s an insult to the Creator and an abomination to man and beast.”

This, I think, is Norman Douglas speaking to us as a sexualist and the heart of his philosophy. But I must say one does not read this book as a sort of erotic story, and certainly not pornographic. It is also not really a discussion of sexual ethics. I waited in vain for any sort of sustained discourse of that nature to pop up. Nonetheless, there are tidbits. There is a character called Mr. van Koppen who is just like Geoffrey Epstein except he keeps the girls on a yacht named The Flutterby rather than Lolita Island and he hoards them all for himself. Whatever discussion occurs of sexual ethics coalesces around this figure:

“Ah yes,” replied Mr. Heard. “I wondered, supposing these reports about the ladies are true, how far you and I, for example, should condone his vices.” […]

“How would you like to be haled before a Court of law for some ridiculous trifle, which became a crime only because it used to be a sin, and became a sin only because some dyspeptic old antediluvian was envious of his neighbour’s pleasure? Our statute-book reeks of discarded theories of conduct; the serpent’s trail of the theologian, of the reactionary, is over all.” [...]

“That is how I feel—expanding, and taking on other tints. New problems, new influences, are at work upon me. It is as if I needed altogether fresh standards. Sometimes I feel almost ashamed—”

“Ashamed? My dear Heard, this will never do. You must take a blue pill when we get home.” [...]

Something new had insinuated itself into his blood, some demon of doubt and disquiet which threatened his old-established conceptions. Whence came it? The effect of changed environment—new friends, new food, new habits? The unaccustomed leisure which gave him, for the first time, a chance of thinking about non-professional matters? The south wind acting on his still weakened health? All these together? Or had he reached an epoch in his development, the termination of one of those definite life—periods when all men worthy of the name pass through some cleansing process of spiritual desquamation, and slip their outworn weeds of thought and feeling? […]

In the first place it was a singular fact, much commented on, that nobody had ever been invited on board the yacht. That alone was suspicious. IF YOU WANT TO GET ANYTHING OUT OF OLD KOPPEN—so ran a local saying—DON'T PROPOSE A VISIT TO THE FLUTTERBY. More curious still was the circumstance that nobody, save the owner and certain bearded venerables of the crew, had ever been known to land on the island. How about the other passengers? Who were they? The millionaire never so much as mentioned their existence. It was surmised, accordingly, that he voyaged over the seas with a bevy of light-hearted nymphs; a disreputable mode of conduct for a man of his advanced years, and all the more aggravating to other people since, like a crafty and jealous old sultan, he screened them from public view. Impropriety could be overlooked—it could pass, where a millionaire was concerned, under the heading of unconventionality; but such glaring selfishness might end in being fatal to his reputation. […]

And then—the difference between himself and the millionaire in life, training, antecedents! A career such as van Koppen’s called for qualities different, often actually antagonistic, to his own. You could not possibly expect to find in a successful American merchant those features which go to form a successful English ecclesiastic. Certain human attributes were mutually exclusive—avarice and generosity, for instance; others no doubt mysteriously but inextricably intertwined. A man was an individual; he could not be divided or taken to pieces; he could not be expected to possess virtues incompatible with the rest of his mental equipment, however desirable such virtues might be. Who knows? Van Koppen's doubtful acts might be an unavoidable expression of his personality, an integral part of that nature under whose ferocious stimulus he had climbed to his present enviable position. And Mr. Heard was both shocked and amused to reflect that but for the co-operation of certain coarse organic impulses to which these Nepenthe legends testified, the millionaire might never have been able to acquire the proud title of “Saviour of his Country.” [...]

“That's queer,” he mused. “It never struck me before. Shows how careful one must be. Dear me! Perhaps the ladies have inevitable organic impulses of a corresponding kind. Decidedly queer. H’m. Ha. Now I wonder…. And perhaps, if the truth were known, these young persons are having quite a good time of it—”

He paused abruptly in his reflections. He had caught himself in the act; in the very act of condoning vice. Mr. Thomas Heard was seriously concerned.

Something was wrong, he concluded. He would never have argued on similar lines a short time ago. This downright sympathy with sinners, what did it portend? Did it betray a lapse from his old-established principles, a waning of his respect for traditional morality? Was he becoming a sinner himself? [...]

“Can it be the south wind?”

"Everybody blames the poor sirocco. I imagine you have long been maturing for this change, unbeknown to yourself. And what does it mean? Only that you are growing up. Nobody need be ashamed of growing up…. Here we are, at last!

Yes, here we are. We are communing with a real man, a sexualist, an antidote to the normies more so now than ever and a breath of fresh air. This is one reason to read this book, but it is not sufficient reason to read 500 pages. One must also enjoy the plot, the style, and the many characters who have little to do with sexualism. What can I say overall? Well, it was slow to get into. It was not like G.K. Chesterton’s masterpiece The Man Who Was Thursday -- also highly relevant to activism -- which I found suspenseful from the first page. But once I got into the South Wind, I can say I enjoyed this novel for all its literary qualities including a liberal sprinkling of humor throughout and good old classical learning which is so homely when you know Latin. It is a beautiful novel.

There is a character named Mr. Keith which for some reason reminds me of our commenter Jack here. He and others really come alive and their various musings are worth listening to. Correct me if this is not also your philosophy, Jack:

Money enables you to multiply your sensations—to travel about, and so forth. In doing so, you multiply your personality, as it were; you lengthen your days, figuratively speaking; you come in contact with more diversified aspects of life than a person of my limited means can afford to do. The body, you say, is a subtle instrument to be played upon in every variety of manner and rendered above all things as sensitive as possible to pleasurable impressions. In fact, you want to be a kind of Aeolian harp. I admit that this is more than a string of sophisms; you may call it a philosophy of life.

The setting, too, is beautiful. A fictional island called Nepenthe situated near Italy shines vividly in my imagination, not least through the brilliant device of Mr. Eames the annotator of a classical work about the island which is often quoted along with potential annotations to update us on how it developed until the present day. The south wind -- the sirocco -- which blows all summer is also an essential ingredient tying it all together. I learned later that Nepenthe has a real equivalent called Capri, but it works just as well as a complete fiction.

And all the characters have flaws which makes them so human, because although it gets over-the-top sometimes it is not far from the truth. Everybody cheats in some way, just like in real life, some in more harmful ways than others. I have to say that cheating the sexual norms like Norman Douglas himself did so much, and I do and we male sexualists and MAPs make our creed and ideology, is one of the more harmless ways to cheat social norms. There is, in addition to the Epstein clone, a forger of antique sculptures, a cruel Duke Ferdinand who used to rule the island (“his method of collecting taxes—a marvel of simplicity. Each citizen paid what he liked. If the sum proved insufficient he was apprised of the fact next morning by having his left hand amputated; a second error of judgment—it happened rather seldom—was rectified by the mutilation of the remaining member”), a drunkard lady who exposes the bad natures of those who profess to be concerned about her, a corrupt judge, the Bishop of Bampopo with an African perspective, a bunch of savage Russians including an illiterate Messiah figure, a murderess whom everyone including the reader excuses, a lawyer who is so immoral that he is moral…

He was profoundly convinced of the prisoner’s guilt. This was lucky for the young man. Had he thought otherwise he would probably have refused to take up the case. Don Giustino made a point of never defending innocent people. They were idiots who entangled themselves in the meshes of the law; they fully deserved their fate. Really to have murdered Muhlen was the one and only point in the prisoner’s favour. It made him worthy of his rhetorical efforts. All his clients were guilty, and all of them got off scot free. “I never defend people I can't respect,” he used to say.

This resonates with me. When I was charged with incitement in 2012, in all sincerity I was and am still the guiltiest man ever to be brought up on those charges since Vidkun Quisling, and that is precisely why I got away with it, because I am not messing around. Sometimes guilt is redemption, especially when one is honest to a fault, because the laws were not designed to catch an honest man and it is below the paygrade of a great lawyer to defend a man who is simply innocent.

Now I understand why Nabokov includes this figure in Lolita as a kindred spirit to MAPs or at least pederasts (Gaston Godin, Humbert's homosexual colleague at Beardsley College, has a photograph of Norman Douglas on his studio wall). Yes, Douglas was a boylover -- but he also says he deflowered 1100 virgins and South Wind is all about girls. It belongs on the MRA Archive and is thankfully out of copyright since it was first published in 1917. It is not a succinct work of activism by any means, but is a literary masterwork and spiritual food for our sexualist hearts. This is forceful writing which leaves me feeling uplifted both on its literary merits and because it offers some escape from the brainless, hateful, humorless, pedophobic antisex bigotry which consumes our present times, especially the Epstein hysteria which is so artfully mocked in the excerpts I have presented herein, proving once again that weeds don’t spoil. Indeed, Norman Douglas is fresher a hundred years later than he could have foreseen and even his normie characters are rebels now.