Mu Reviews: Real Journalism by Karl Andersson

[Jim Burton]

https://www.map-union.org/blog/reviews- ... -andersson

Real Journalism (2025) is a collection of writings by Karl Andersson on (as the cover states) sexual politics, history, and culture. These articles appeared in Andersson’s self-published magazines, Destroyer and The Lover between 2006-2017. The book has a particular focus on man-boy love. Andersson includes enlightening accounts from boys who reflect on their sexual relationships with men. He reports on these interactions, and examines the social, economic, and cultural factors which influenced their development. There is much to enjoy and ponder in Real Journalism.

In this article, reviewer Felix Filus focuses on this question: Are the men in these relationships exploiting the boys? All opinions are those of the reviewer, who is not a committee member of Mu.

[Harlan]

...I argue that this is still an inherently exploitative practice and supply and demand does not justify exploitation. Andersson does not explicitly make this argument in his work, but it is embedded in the idea of exchanging services for money. Capitalism as a whole is inherently exploitative, but elaboration on this point is beyond the scope of this review...

Exploitation involves coercion without mutual benefit, such as slavery. Exchanging services for money is not exploitation, because there is choice and free will; he can agree or refuse, which means that no one is exploiting him: one party needs services, the other party needs money and may agree to provide the necessary services if the payment suits his needs. If people are in a close relationship, the other party may even voluntarily refuse money because they consider it an honor to help a friend.

When we demand that consensual and mutual relationships be distinguished from rape, we want to show that there is a confusion between healthy and violent relationships and that the presence of "sex" does not mean rape and exploitation. The same thing can happen in labor relations, and the presence of payment does not always mean exploitation; exploitation is the abuse of this relations.

...Additionally, Andersson's attraction to boys presents a conflict of interest, as it does for the authors of other prominent scholarly works on man-boy love...

The text of the review also reveals a conflict of interest and bias towards capitalism due to a passion for socialism.

[Scorchingwilde]

It's always interesting to see when someone's identity is seen as a sign that they're 'biased' on the subject they're discussing and when it's seen as a sign that they're being objective and unbiased. By that same token, any non-MAP writing on AMSC is biased in the opposite direction by their social privilege and the pressures to not be seen as defending MAPs or advocating for currently criminalized relationships. It'd be like a racist trying to claim anyone nonwhite who had an academic critique of The Bell Curve or other white supremacist pseudoscience was biased. That part of the review definitely rubbed me the wrong way, but I'm glad to have been introduced to the book nonetheless, even if I'm currently too afraid to own a copy in this day and age myself.