I’m glad the @Telegraph has published these pieces today. They represent joint work that @fernriddell and I have done on the cases used by Naomi Wolf in Outrages, and some excellent reporting on a complex matter by @patricksawer. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/05/naomi-wolf-faces-new-row-book-confuses-persecution-gay-men-paedophiles/ https://twitter.com/FernRiddell/status/1357798400226451458

Fern has laid out some of her thoughts in this thread. She’s added screenshots of lots of the c.19th records that show the real nature of the cases involved. Some of the details are shocking. https://twitter.com/FernRiddell/status/1357798400226451458?s=20

I hope the dismal affair of Naomi Wolf's Outrages will have some positive effects. The lives it misrepresents deserve more than to be used as fodder for a conspiracy theory about the c19th legal system.

There are lessons in it for publishers - and it would be good to hear something from the book’s editor, @lennievirago, on this matter.

I also wonder if Baroness Helena Kennedy, former principal of Mansfield College, Oxford - who fact-checked Dr Wolf’s work - might reconsider what she says in this piece. (Dr Wolf’s book barely, by the way mentions colonial history.) https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/naomi-wolf-outrages-gay-rights-book-error-a8979646.html

I hope other scholars will do some proper research on the cases misrepresented by Dr Wolf’s book. Scholars with genuine curiosity about history, who think professional ethics are important.

Aside from the grim part - abused boys unmentioned, cases of men performing sex acts on dogs, pigs, cows and horses offered as examples of “the criminalisation of love”- the documents you can access via @OldBaileyOnline contain the germs of so many worthwhile research projects.

For example. Look at what Dr Wolf writes here in the revised edition of Outrages. These are just names to bolster a bad argument. (John Sweeting, by the way, committed an offence “with a certain dog”and Gurr with “a ewe lamb”.)

But here’s where the sources on Wright and Smith lead. There’s a really interesting story here. A telegraph boy. And older man. A list of victims of assault. Is this a precursor of the notorious Cleveland St case? So many questions a good researcher could pursue.

So I think, after all the humbug and personal attacks from Dr Wolf, accusing me of “erasing” and “whitewashing” LGBT history, there is the prospect of something worthwhile - and the chance of putting the outrage of Outrages behind us.