u/Disk-Infamous — reddlx

I started to wonder this because of the association with Peter Sotos and the very small degree of separation a lot of them had from him.

William Bennett was in a band with him. If I was in a band with a man distributing a magazine about the violation of children I would not expect to convince anyone that I'm not interested in it too. It's not a turning a blind eye to unusual personal preferences situation - it's simply too close to the celebration of sex crime against children.

Steven Stapleton did work with William Bennett. That's a little too close to a guy who has no qualms about being a collaborator with Sotos. There's also a photo of John Balance at his house in England's Hidden Reverse, and Balance was in the supposedly borderline (but if you ask me, well over it and clearly designed to not be ambiguous) video for Love's Secret Domain. I like NWW a lot but he doesn't exactly associate with people I would feel safe having around children which is quite strange as the book says Stapleton has a family.

Throbbing Gristle had a picture of a nearly undressed child down in the corner of The Second Annual Report and also had a famously porn-obsessed band member called Sleazy who was also in Coil with you guessed it, John Balance from the video shot in Thailand, which is white sex tourism heaven.

David Tibet was in a video with Balance playing as a person undergoing sexual torture and seemed to be quite close with him overall. Tibet was also friends with people who collected Nazi medals while hanging around in squats which seems like another thing to trust your gut about and leave.

It seems to me that everyone in this scene was happy to be friends with a paedophile or one degree separate from one. The only other place I've seen Sotos' name come up in an interview is one where Dennis Cooper calls him a friend which would put another paedophilia-obsessed (but in an artistic way of course) individual uncomfortably close to these people.

If Steven Stapleton was even a sympathiser I would be very disappointed because the work is so dark and that is an uncomfortable energy to have so close to enthusiastic paedophilia. It would be shame because he's the only one I find artistically satisfying from the whole group and I only read the book because of him.

I feel like this scene, if not rampant with paedophilia, was stupidly suggestive of it in its image which makes no sense from the perspective of a normal person. The idea that they were 'exploring dark themes' seems a bit facile. What regular person would want to have someone going around wondering are they or are they not a paedophile. I am just so disappointed.