French Intellectuals And The Age Of Consent.
An overview of a degenerate idea by people that society accepts as "Intellectuals".
Michel Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jacques Derrida are the most famous French intellectuals, each of them has put forward an ideology that in one way or another, has shaped our modern time. For Michel Foucault, it was Postmodernism, Simone de Beauvoir had groundbreaking ideas surrounding feminism, Jean-Paul Sartre popularised the term Existentialism and Jacques Derrida developed the philosophy of Deconstruction.
We can say that all of them focused on a particular area of philosophy, but we can also say that they all agreed on one thing; that age of consent laws needed to be removed1. After discovering a petition signed by philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir, advocating for the removal of the age of consent-laws, I initially thought there might be a misunderstanding. I couldn't believe that intellectuals I admired would support the idea of adults having sexual relations with children. However, further research deeply disappointed me.
One of the petitions emerged in 1977 following a trial where three men were imprisoned for non-violent sexual offenses against 12- and 13-year-old children. The petition expressed outrage at the severity of the punishment, arguing that French law recognized the capacity for discernment in children of that age. It called for the acknowledgment of children's rights to engage in relations with whomever they choose.
"French law recognizes in 12- and 13-year-olds a capacity for discernment that it can judge and punish," said a second petition signed by Sartre and De Beauvoir, along with fellow intellectuals Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida; a leading child psychologist, Françoise Dolto "But it rejects such a capacity when the child's emotional and sexual life is concerned. It should acknowledge the right of children and adolescents to have relations with whomever they choose."
After reading this, we can all see the degeneracy behind these thinker’s intentions, however, there is little argument provided to support their petition, this is why, on April 4, 1978, Michel Foucault agreed to an interview produced by Roger Pillaudin and broadcast by France Culture2 in which Foucault said the following:
Where children are concerned, they are supposed to have a sexuality that can never be directed towards an adult, and that's that. Secondly, it is supposed that they are not capable of talking about themselves, of being sufficiently lucid about themselves. They are unable to express their feelings about the whole thing. Therefore they are not believed. They are thought to be incapable of sexuality and they are not thought to be capable of speaking about it. But, after all, listening to a child, hearing him speak, hearing him explain what his relations actually were with someone, adult or not, provided one listens with enough sympathy, must allow one to establish more or less what degree of violence if any was used or what degree of consent was given. And to assume that a child is incapable of explaining what happened and was incapable of giving his consent are two abuses that are intolerable, and quite unacceptable.
Here Foucault argues that it is crucial to listen to children attentively and with empathy. By doing so, we can gain insight into the nature of their relationships and determine the presence of violence or consent. Assuming that children are incapable of explaining their experiences or giving consent is unacceptable and constitutes a violation of their rights and agency. Foucault emphasizes the importance of challenging these assumptions and allowing children to have their voices heard and believed. In the same interview Michel says “In any case, an age barrier laid down by law does not have much sense. Again, the child may be trusted to say whether or not he was subjected to violence.”
Despite these awful statements, Michel Foucault is considered one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, he seems to be the fuel of the modern left in their campaign to destroy Western Civilization by attempting to eradicate everything that we accept as truth. If this sounds hyperbolic, read this article by a left-leaning magazine Current Affairs: Why We Should Abolish the Family 3.
The great philosopher Roger Scruton said it best when asked why are so many people dragged to the left, Scruton said: Most “intellectuals” are on the left because it’s easier to destroy than to build”. Indeed, destruction is the only thing that should be attributed to these thinkers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of_consent_laws
https://www.uib.no/sites/w3.uib.no/files/attachments/foucaultdangerchildsexuality_0.pdf
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/09/why-we-should-abolish-the-family