@YetAnotherSpartacus
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).
Yes.I don't think it can really be understood as some paedophiles pushing themselves into influence. It was a new view of sexuality, that had certain principles and a kind of logical consistency, that led to more public acceptence of these ideas. It was very much tied to general feelings that sexuality needed to be freed from constraints, that young people should be allowed a voice in society and the youth movement more generally, that sex is natural and we should treat it that way.
I'm not even sure the real problems with this are much to do with patriarchy as such - they are to do with the nature of sexual activity which has serious consequences, particularly for women, and can have a dark side. And a misunderstanding of child and youth development, the purpose of family structures, lack of respect for older people (and their silly conservative ideas) and also romantic and wholly misplaced feelings about nature.
And I think we have not entirely left it behind. Many of these ideas underpin many people's current ideas about sex and culture generally. The real difficulty is that even if people now have recognised that some of these things might have been bad (sex with minors, say), there has not been any real move to reconsider the whole package. Those underpinnings are largely accepted, and it's always possible people will follow them to their logical conclusions.
But who is going to challenge them? You will see it from some conservative thinkers, and Mary Harrington among feminists. She wrote an article for Unherd suggesting that a feminist position should reject the idea that sex before marriage is good for women - I don't see many feminists really even giving that the time of day, sexual liberalism is too much attached, a priori, to the idea of women's freedom for most.
But unpicking those ideas could lead to thoughts like that, and I suspect most will not risk ideas that could even potentially lead to such a possibility being entertained. So those ideas will be left to remain and stew under the surface in western liberal thinking.