Chemical castration

Former Conservative Justice Secretary David Gauke, in his sentencing review, has opened the door to the possibility of chemical castration for ‘paedophiles and rapists’. Whether that means those accused, charged or convicted of these allegations is not discussed. Current justice secretary Shabana Mahmood, known for her ‘progressive’ stance on justice issues, appears to agree with him. Because who wouldn’t agree with castrating such people, right? Andy Malkinson, Peter Sullivan, and Brian Buckle, all recently exonerated after spending many years in prison for sex and/or violent crimes they didn’t commit, might not.

Lost in the noise is the fact that Gauke references some who have paedophilic tendencies who would actually opt for this treatment, which almost seems like a no-brainer: except the public cannot seem to accept that people who cannot control their urges might be permitted to control their own fate (though this perception increasingly depends on how it’s written up in the mainstream media).

Mahmood might see herself as perpetually on the right side of history, and some sort of representative of the Labour Youth vanguard, but these people are strangely quiet on false allegations. Maybe it’s because they have yet to go through the fire that have so many of their adult contemporaries. It’s not all about you, kids! Though ‘infidelity as sex crime’, as often muttered in various broadsheets, might focus their minds. (This is called ‘zina’ in Arabic law, and has all sorts of punishments attached.) The Law Commission’s ‘deceit sex’ hearing may have been a dog-whistle for trans issues - but the case of Bristol’s John Lee Osborne, who got 18 years for Category-A rape for what looked more like what should have been a Malicious Communications charge, might also bring some illumination.

The ‘culture war’ points of this subject often look like the Rationalists versus the Radicals: the trads vs the progs, the new right vs the new left. But all’s apparently fair in love and war, and when it comes to institutionalised feminism, any marginalised male is good news, however that is achieved. While pacifism in World War One could be seen as an intellectual response to power struggles, and in the 21st century it seem more like cultural suicide - people are forced to take sides to survive - so the ideologues have made it with peoples’ binary sex.

The vast majority of people have major ‘ick’ when it comes to sex offences, but allegations are increasingly reported as convictions: thus many now think ‘every man is a rapist’, as per the feminist slogan of the 1970s and 80s. When Prince Andrew is regularly called a ‘pedo’ due to his friendship with billionaire ephebophile Jeffrey Epstein, and allegedly having sex with Virginia Roberts when she was 17 (and he was in his 40s), we see the definition expanding in real time. This is Andrew Doyle’s New Puritanism unfolding before us: previously covered up, human desires and instincts spun into morality tales, and the privileged class thrown onto a postmodern pyre of perversion.

The kind of castration about which Gauke is talking isn’t going at past-it 1970s prog rock keyboardists with a pair of rusty scissors, so much as taking a medicine that reduces testosterone as is already used in puberty blocker treatments and other (actually necessary) medical procedures. But while the false allegations and wrongful conviction epidemics in the west continues to far outdo any kind of equivalent for contact sexual abuse, making this procedure mandatory opens the gate to many millions in compensation when the wrongful convictions are eventually uncovered.

By Sean Bw Parker