Janice Turner - French 'public intellectuals'

[ErrolTheDragon]

The last section of Turner's column today may be of interest - she comments on the like of Foucault, now cited in support of 'biological sex is a construct', was one of the people behind removing the age of consent in France in the 70s.

Quell surprise.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/all-i-want-in-lockdown-is-perfect-eggs-on-toast-6kgj8tvwn?shareToken=b3bfe04ebd7bfbfac48e9e256a5e3eda

There was an article in yesterday's Times about this in the Times 2 section. I'm not on a device at the moment that let's me do share tokens.

Thanks, I don't often read Times2 (perhaps I should, I wrongly assumed it was fluff!).

Here's the link

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/richard-berry-scandal-the-shaming-of-pariss-chattering-classes-mh8j6bn7n?shareToken=4226cf6cb7e621e6802b73b0ddef6730

Bloody hell.

Yes, I read about Foucault and his cronies, about queer theory and about their push for dismantling age of consent. It all ties up really because if if you want to destroy biological sex and just talk about gender and that anything goes in terms of identity and sexuality, then of course sex with minors is the next logical step.

It's very similar to how certain factions of transgender allies are pushing for medicalisation of children re:puberty blockers and cross sex hormones. Children and childhood are the final frontiers to be destroyed.

Even the Guardian had something on this yesterday. I was astonished (not at the state of French intellectuals, but at the Guardian reporting it):

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/10/france-begins-to-confront-decades-of-neglect-of-incest-cases

I think it's come up on this board before but it is worth noting that Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre also signed the relevant letters in the French press. I don't know why all of the French intellectuals at the time were taken with this but it wasn't just Foucault & Derrida.

That Richard Berry article was such grim reading. The pain and confusion those children must have felt.

It's a maturity thing isn't it? Where maturity doesn't mean age but experience/world wisdom.

To begin with it all seems fresh and new and generous and oh so progressive and it feels lovely. It's exciting to be that new generation that goes into the future where they know more and see differently and everything's all lovely and equalite and liberte and fraternite and it's like dancing with the hippies in central park.

It's only when you start to notice and think about and understand what's going on inside it, that you start to see and have to admit to yourself that there are many who will take advantage of less boundaries and are not thinking about lovely values at all but how to use other people's naivety to hurt and do harm and indulge themselves at other people's expense.

And that your parents and previous generations weren't joyless, prejudices and stupid old gits stuck in old fogeyism. They just had a fuckton more life experience than you and understood why boundaries mattered and what they prevented.

Chesterton and his fence

Now Foucault’s work is deployed to argue that biological sex is likewise not real but a social construct and that women who disagree are — like the French feminists and family therapists who opposed 1970s child-adult sex — bigots and prudes.

It is refreshing to see this get air. I have not read any of the books, but once I knew that Foucault was heavily involved in lowering the boundaries of children and those not able to go consent and influenced French law, I have been suspect of anything that people attribute to Foucault. As in, I always look for who ultimately benefits.

I am shocked though that these horrendous changes have not yet been amended in French law in all this time.

Nor did I know that it was abolished in the late 1970s after a campaign by post-modern philosophers, including Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, in French newspapers

is this correct? I know the letters exist but did they change the law? I thought there had never been one

It's a maturity thing isn't it? Where maturity doesn't mean age but experience/world wisdom.

French Intellectuals live a grand old age but never mature

I think it's come up on this board before but it is worth noting that Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre also signed the relevant letters in the French press. I don't know why all of the French intellectuals at the time were taken with this but it wasn't just Foucault & Derrida

It was the zeitgeist of the times. Feminism was in its infancy and few had really considered the power dynamic between men and women. Women were 'sexually liberated' for the first time (meaning the 'zipless fuck', but also the orgasm) and quite a few bought into this (including Greer) - again without (I think) quite considering the impact of patriarchy and male power/privilege. Many of the liberation movements were led by young people under 20 and the fledgling youth movement also demanded an end to laws that prevented them from doing a number of things, including voting (in some places), saying 'no' to being conscripted, and drinking (in some places). I don't think that many of the people who argued for lowering of ages of consent (which was 21 for what were then referred to as homosexual males) would have actively advocated for paedophilic relationships (although some obviously clearly did have this agenda).

The comments under that article are unintentionally revealing - are people really more concerned about egg poaching methodology and lobster welfare than the issues raised around child protection?

The quality of the egg was not at issue.

Doesn't surprise me that Foucault and other so called "post-modernists" were pro removing age of consent and are also wanting to remove biological sex and other things possibly. This definitely has a connection to modern day ideas based on gender and the online rise of MAP's.
They wish to live in a world of perverted fantasy, where biology, logic and safeguarding are removed.

[quote ErrolTheDragon]Thanks, I don't often read Times2 (perhaps I should, I wrongly assumed it was fluff!).

Here's the link

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/richard-berry-scandal-the-shaming-of-pariss-chattering-classes-mh8j6bn7n?shareToken=4226cf6cb7e621e6802b73b0ddef6730[/quote]

Jesus Christ! That's horrifying

"It now seems almost unbelievable to recall the noisy campaign to legalise sex with children from 13 upwards that was supported by feminists and philosophers alike. "

I this around the same time of the PIE campaigns in the UK?

Which shows the PIE campaign wasn't simply a quirk of history where a very unusual group sought to do something completely unprecedented, but there will always be people who push for these kinds of changes and their success or otherwise is determined by how robust society is.

@Melroses

"It now seems almost unbelievable to recall the noisy campaign to legalise sex with children from 13 upwards that was supported by feminists and philosophers alike. "

I this around the same time of the PIE campaigns in the UK?

Yes, but PIE never really got any traction. Harriet Harman made a fool of herself but PIE never had the equivalent of Simone de Beauvoir speaking up for them.

Another story of abuse from France:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a5b8c1a0-6c95-11eb-bc24-b1bb9cd3bc5f?shareToken=7c4387e089aebc77977e651517a49eb4

And Melanie Reid's review of Vanessa Springora's book Consent:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/12e6d3ec-6c7e-11eb-bc24-b1bb9cd3bc5f?shareToken=99d97d7ca099a11264b9da21393c8837

I'd really recommend Heather Brunskell-Evans and Julian Vigo's "Savage Minds" podcast & their push-back against the misreading of aspects of Foucault.

Foucault's a post-structural philosopher if he's any "category" and not all post-modernist critical theory is the work of the misogynist devil. There are powerful tools to think with offered by Foucault and others - for feminists.

It's just that it's extremely complex critical theory and takes a lot of work & time to understand - but Dr Brunskell-Evans has a really interesting take on it.

savageminds.org/2010/09/08/savage-minds-the-podcast/

I have a lot of disagreements with the whole bent of French (& American versions of) critical theory/philosophy, as it's not so great on material lived experience, or material political activism, but you could say that for all philosophy and cultural theory.

I guess the short version of my post is "Be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater"

Critical theory can offer feminists really useful tools of analysis. It's about the limits of any approach - materialism has its limits as well.

John Stuart Mill, in his essays on Bentham and Coleridge talks about finding the partial truths in opposing schools of thought, and using them to construct better truths (maybe he'd read Hegel, but I don't think so).

Foucault's a post-structural philosopher if he's any "category" and not all post-modernist critical theory is the work of the misogynist devil. There are powerful tools to think with offered by Foucault and others - for feminists

Agreed, to some extent. I think part of the problem these days is that Butler, Foucault and others are taught in universities in ten-second sound bites and with the emphasis on stripping back complexity to provide a clear message otherwise, the students complain.

I'm not sure about a lot of elements of Foucault's historical explorations. I'm not sure that these are good history, and they are blind to women's experiences to a great extent (and so is much of the theorising that comes from them), but if you read a lot of his work as descriptive rather than as prescriptive it can give us some insights and tools in respect to power and how it operates.

I did a social sciences degree in to 90s and lowering the age of consent was considered a good thing in discussions around children’s rights. There was not much focus on paedophilia at that time. It was more around allowing access to contraception and decriminalisation of consensual sex.