The Corruption of Language

One of those things I find genuinely very hard to understand about the way that paedophilia is dealt with in our culture is the common inference throughout the mainstream media that paedophiles hurt and harm children. I don't say 'sexually abuse' children, but 'hurt and harm'. There is in fact quite an obvious difference. The deeper inference seems to be that paedophiles don't actually like children at all, and the implication from that is that deadbeat dads up and down the country (and deadbeat mums, for that matter) can demonstrate their love and commitment for the children they hardly ever see by going on protest marches orchestrated by pornographic magazines such as The News of the World, screaming "Pedo scum!", and calling for the restoration of the death penalty for anyone who, er, actually likes children.

Because the truth of course is that paedophiles do like children. (The clue is in the term itself - that is if you have even a passing familiarity with Greek.) Yes, paedophiles like children a bit too much, and they like them in the wrong way. But the general way that 'paedophile' is used in the media to mean 'scary pervert who wants to kidnap, rape and murder your 10-year-old' is quite simply a corruption of our language by a media-Establishment that is itself both sick and twisted. In fact, off the top of my head, of all the lurid and sensationalised media accounts of paedophiles who have had sex with children and then gone on to murder them I'd be surprised if I couldn't count the actual number, on both sides of the Atlantic, on the fingers of one hand.

Not that gay paedophiles are the only group of men who are often portrayed by the media as hating what they actually quite like. To take another example, how about, er, heterosexual men - or "gynophiles", as we should perhaps call them? Last year a spoof beauty pageant held at the prestigious London School of Economics led to bitter accusations from all the ugly unpopular girls at the college feminists on the campus of 'misogyny' on the part of the organisers. I mean, Huh? OK, maybe beauty pageants aren't really my thing (although even I thought the girls in the photos looked very nice). But don't men go to beauty pageants because they like women? How on earth does liking beautiful women make you a misogynist?

And so it goes on. The latest warped reversal of moral polarities I've noticed comes from the BBC (second only to The Times when it comes to reproducing the Establishment "line" on any subject!) in one of its crime drama series, in which that august bastion of fairness and tolerance attempts to demonise pro-life campaigners. Apparently if you're opposed to murdering unborn babies you're also into kidnapping and torturing them, not to mention a spot of murdering of your own! And yes, I know, we actually saw this sort of thing six years ago, when Auntie turned the very first episode of her disgusting (and embarrassingly pro-Establishment) spy-series Spooks into a crack-brained propaganda video in which pro-lifers were depicted as terrorists. (Not that their weren't real terrorists running aroung the UK in 2002, but this was before the 7/7 attacks, when MI5 was still pursuing its famously successful "softly, softly approach"! Let's be grateful that so much has changed since then!*)

Basically, it's not just sexuality that the media (in my view deliberately) just do not get. It's procreation in general. The reasons for this I think are interesting, and they should certainly inform any true debate over what it means to love boys, and how and why. But the corruption of language and the corruption of the media (and language itself is the most important medium of all) are phenomena that we need to be aware of, just as we need to remember that those we rely on to maintain and defend the values of truthfulness and honesty, often whether they mean to or not, are very seldom on our side.

*And here's hoping some of my readers can spot irony when they read it!