JeremyStangroom.Com

A lot of people are pretty insulting about Richard Seymour. In one sense, this is understandable, because his political commitments are juvenile (I mean that literally: the SWP espouse the kind of politics one should have gotten over by the time Freshers’ week finishes at university).

But the suggestion that he is stupid – which crops up mainly in blog commentary – is completely absurd. He just isn’t. This post, for example, is an extremely good analysis of the situation confronting the far-Left in Britain in the present day.

Of course, people love to belittle their political opponents. But to be effective, the rhetoric has to have at least some resonance. Calling John Game ‘stupid’ works, because the overwhelming majority of his public utterances support this view (though not all of them, he wrote good stuff on Iran); calling Yoshie Furuhashi a ‘frothing Ahmadinejad shill’ kind of makes sense, because one does get the impression that Yoshie would like to bed the Iranian leader; but suggesting that Seymour is unintelligent is just so far wide of the mark as to be ridiculous.

Plus it smacks of intellectual jealousy.

His writing style, though – now that is ripe for parody.

Here we go again. A teacher is jailed for having consensual sex with a 16 year old girl.

I’m not going to run through the arguments again that make this a ridiculous over-reaction.

But consider the following:

Grim made a full confession to the affair, which involved sexual contact but not full intercourse.

Sentencing, Judge Paul Darlow told him… ‘In your favour I accept that you pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and you are not only of good character but people have told of your abilities as a teacher to bring on gifted children.

‘There was no intimidation and the relationship was consensual on both sides and with genuine affection.’

The guy is now in prison for ten month.

Somebody should start a campaign to end this ridiculous, infantile, illiberal, treatment of people choosing to have sex.

This is ridiculous. The boy was fifteen. It was consensual. If he is experiencing anything like trauma, it seems overwhelmingly likely that this is only because people make such a fuss about this kind of thing.

Yes, Madeleine Martin probably should have known better. Yes, the power relationship was likely asymmetrical. Yes, it isn’t a good idea for teachers to jump their students. But even so… let’s get some perspective here. It was sex that almost certainly both parties thoroughly enjoyed. It was just sex.

Here’s a newsflash for fifteen year old boys. If the worst thing that happens in your life is that you get shagged by your 39-year old teacher, then be thankful. And remember, there will almost certainly come a point in your life when you’ll be absurdly grateful if anybody wants to shag you.