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NEW FROM @DrMatthewSweet Blind to bestiality and paedophilia: why Naomi Wolf’s latest book is its own outrage https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/blind-bestiality-paedophilia-naomi-wolfs-latest-book-outrage/
And just launched, with interviews from me, @DrMatthewSweet and the man behind the Old Bailey Online, @TimHitchcock : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/05/naomi-wolf-faces-new-row-book-confuses-persecution-gay-men-paedophiles/
Both of these will be in the paper tomorrow if you prefer a paper copy, and it’s fair to say @naomirwolf’s error’s, that begin with ‘Death Recorded’ did, not,stop, there. You can listen to the @BBCFreeThinking episode here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00057k4
I’ve never been so angry about a book in my entire career. It took me an afternoon to fact check Wolf, something her publisher, editors and more importantly, SHE, should have done after this interview.
We owe so many people an accurate retelling of their past, and gay men especially so. And I think that’s why the errors in this book are so frightening. Especially because Naomi has had every opportunity to make it better.
I was keen to get the paperback, because, as an author, this is when you puts your errors right. And yes, death recorded has been corrected.
NW no longer claims the British state was executing gay men across the 19thC, just for being gay.
NW no longer claims the British state was executing gay men across the 19thC, just for being gay.
But this wasn’t the only thing she got wrong.
You can literally hear Matthew hand her the *evidence* that two of her cases are actually child rapists.
TW going forward: this thread is going to include historical testimony from some very brave boys.
You can literally hear Matthew hand her the *evidence* that two of her cases are actually child rapists.
TW going forward: this thread is going to include historical testimony from some very brave boys.
Thomas Silver was convicted of an indecent assault on a six year old boy, Amar Smith, and John Spencer, as Matthew pointed out in 2019, assualted school boys. Wolf had presented both of these as consensual cases in the hardback, what about the new corrected paperback of Outrages?
No mention of Amar. And some how, school boys are... men?
So what the real story? Here’s the report on Thomas Silver, from the Windsor and Eton Express, on Saturday 10 December 1859.
What about John Spencer? Well, firstly you all need to read Matthew’s piece: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/blind-bestiality-paedophilia-naomi-wolfs-latest-book-outrage/ because it wasn’t ‘three different men’ as Wolf continues to claim, but five school boys, aged 10/11 at the time of the attacks.
Their names were Reuben Brascher, Leon Moresco, Samuel Penny, William Roberts and Theophilus Stock. Spencer was their teacher. He groomed them, abused them and then moved on. He was a prolific, aggressive and dangerous paedophile.
One of the most moving and heartbreaking bits of this story is the first hand testimony of these boys. We find it difficult enough to comprehend the bravery of someone facing their abuser in court today, IMAGINE doing it in the middle of the Victorian era.
And their testimony isn’t hidden, it’s not sitting on a dusty book shelf in an archive somewhere, it’s digitised. Because it was reported in the newspapers.
This is part of Leon’s from The Sun, 24th May, 1860
This is part of Leon’s from The Sun, 24th May, 1860
So imagine you’re me, or @DrMatthewSweet, or any historian/interested person accessing freely available digital archives, that use key word searches. And you’ve got a book where the author has, now, knowingly ignored the evidence they’ve depicted paedophiles as consensual gay men
What would you do?
...You’d check every case.
Which, FYI, is something the author, @ViragoBooks, and any other academic proof reader (of which there are many, she lists them all at the back) should have done before the paperback went to press.
...You’d check every case.
Which, FYI, is something the author, @ViragoBooks, and any other academic proof reader (of which there are many, she lists them all at the back) should have done before the paperback went to press.
And that’s when things get really bizarre. Let’s take Stephen Alexander and William Tibble, presented by the author as examples of the state’s brutal persecution of gay teenage boys. (Pg133-34, Outrages 2020 Virago paperback)
In reality, they were NOT teenage boys convicted of consenual gay relationships.
They both assaulted animals.
And AGAIN, do you know how easily I found this? in minutes, on a publicly accessible archive.
They both assaulted animals.
And AGAIN, do you know how easily I found this? in minutes, on a publicly accessible archive.
What about pg 200? Sounds an awful lot like John Sweeting, Charles Gurr and Frederick Parker are gay men (and boy) being punished just for being gay, right?
But they aren’t. They all sexually assaulted animals.
And there are a number of other cases involving animals, and a number of other cases involving children, or underage boys. All in all, nearly half of the cases Wolf presents as consensual sex are clearly, not. And the remaining ones are seriously questionable.
There are also a few consensual cases that appear. But they are scattered among the paedophiles and animal abuses and all presented as the same. And there are two reasons why that matters to me.
1) Writing a book about our historic past is a fucking honour. We owe the truth to the dead, and we owe it to ourselves. And that matters even more when you are writing about histories that have been hidden or for people whose histories have been ignored.
I cannot get over the overwhelming love and pain being shown for It’s A Sin atm. And I‘ve seen so many young gay and queer people say it’s made them recognise how disconnected and unaware of their own history they are.
Books like Outrages should not be where they get their history from. They deserve the true heroes, heroines and ordinary everyday LGBTQ+ lives that lie scattered across our histories. Not disguised child rapists and animal abusers.
2) After politely asking Matthew for his sources, and accepting she had made a mistake and errors that would need correcting while on air, @naomirwolf gave an interview at the Edinburgh Book Festival 2019, and said this:
Let’s be very clear.
It is not homophobic to want the histories we write about gay men to accurate represent the consensual gay lives of the past. There are so many, and so much to be celebrated.
It is not homophobic to want the histories we write about gay men to accurate represent the consensual gay lives of the past. There are so many, and so much to be celebrated.
And if Wolf’s definition of homophobia is conflating consensual gay sex with child rapists and sex offenders, she may want to take a very long, very hard look in the mirror and ask herself why she left *exactly* those errors in her ‘corrected’ paperback.
Matthew has done a really important thread with more evidence (especially about how NW ignores sex workers) and looking at how we move forward from this, you should read it, and his article, immediately: https://twitter.com/drmatthewsweet/status/1357987114613366785
So glad this thread touched a nerve with others, if you missed it in the paper and can’t get past the paywall:
“In a statement to the Guardian, Wolf said that her book had been reviewed and checked “by leading scholars in the field”, and that “it is clear that I have accurately represented the position”. 
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/08/naomi-wolf-accused-of-confusing-child-abuse-with-gay-persecution-in-outrages
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/08/naomi-wolf-accused-of-confusing-child-abuse-with-gay-persecution-in-outrages
Wolf is claiming that because sodomy prosecutions covered consensual relationships, bestiality and child abuse, she hasn’t done anything wrong.
Even tho what she’s done is present child rapists and animal abusers as gay men in consensual relationships.
Even tho what she’s done is present child rapists and animal abusers as gay men in consensual relationships.
And now @naomirwolf has updated her statement to say Symonds would not have known one of her case studies raped a child.
Did....Did he not read the newspapers? @alisonflood feb 29, 1860, The Sun.
Did....Did he not read the newspapers? @alisonflood feb 29, 1860, The Sun.
Seeing as both Virago and Naomi are laying the blame for these errors solely at the feet of her academic proof readers (really?!), like @echrso, whose work IS respected, I’d really like to know if, in light of this thread, he still stands by Outrages.
