Re: Rudimentary Peni

I have always loved that abrasive nasty guitar sound in Peni's music and they have such a unique style, and it would be really interesting to know if they had subsequently renounced that song and recanted their supposedly negative position on paedophilia. I do have my suspicions why they may have taken the anti position though....you see, one negative part of Crass philosophy that had really made me feel a strong sense of apprehension, right from the beginning in fact, was what I had seen as very womanist/feminazi element to it all...you know the misandronistic mentality of "all the poor abused women, and all the bad men" kind of stuff. I know I'd certainly never want someone like Eve Libertine as my wife, lol. That brand of bolshy feminism just rubs me right up the wrong way.

If this Peni song is actually an anti song, then they must have had a pretty screwed up idea of what anarchy is meant to be all about. The vast amount of anarchists I have met believe that personal choice is not a thing exclusively for adults and that children also have right to be anarchists and to make their own free choices, and this would therefore naturally include being able to participate in sexual relations with whomever they want.

As anarchists, Peni really should have known better than to fall for the anti bigotry (as it is these words "bigotry" etc that their songs are replete with). I mean they as a band were critical enough to see corruption, lies, bigotry and rot in society, so one would have assumed that they would have also detected society's bigotry towards paedophiles, and of course, it is just utterly absurd to equate paedophilia with rape..so yes they should have had enough up top to realise this. But then again, it all comes back to the Crass position that basically implies that all men are rapists and that all women are raped and abused, and no doubt Crass had an enormous influence on so many other bands of the time including Rudimentary Peni. I think Crass had some bloody good ideas but also a few fucked up ones tucked in there too.

I have met a small number anarchists/punks who had negative views towards paedophiles and that they should be punished by the law, but every time I ever met such people I'd go into a real rage and tell them that they were such audacious fucking hypocrites to take that anti position. I would always tell them of the consensual relationships I myself had from the age of 7, and that how fucking DARE THEY play the judgmental card with MY previous partners!! I'd tell them that they are not really anarchists at all and were just a part of the very society that they aimed all their anger and opposition towards. But what has always been criticised by punks themselves was the sheer amount of false punks out there who merely took on this life style just for the sake of fashion. Such people were merely just ordinary conformist members of society dressed in studded leather jackets and sporting big red mohawks--fakes. But it was at least good that most of these people I lashed out against eventually realised I was in the right and later agreed with me that paedophiles, hebephiles, children and youths alike all have the right to enter consensual sexual relationships and that what they choose to do is no-one else's damn business. So at least I steered them in the right direction in the end:)