Michel Foucault
Child Rapist Icon of the Left
Above is the video version of my report below.
Updated July 15, 2023
CONTENTS
Who was Michel Foucault?
Foucault (& Derrida) Wanted to Molest Minors?
Did Foucault Sexually Abuse Kids?
Foucault Said Kids Want to Have Sex With Adults, So Pedophilia is Fine
Foucault Said Rape Should be Legal
Did Foucault Rape Kids?
Who was Michel Foucault?
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was a French historian associated with Marxist, existentialist, structuralist and post-structuralist philosophy and, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,1 he
has had strong influence not only in philosophy but also in a wide range of humanistic and social scientific disciplines.
Douglas Murray writes,2
Michel Foucault is one of the most cited scholars in the social sciences in the West.
Indeed, Foucault has been cited in scholarly works 1,295,294 times according to Google Scholar as of July 11, 2023. Foucault was Professor of the History of Systems of Thought at Collège de France from 1969 until his death from AIDS in 1984. He was involved in activism during this time. He also lectured and taught outside of France.3
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that like Jean-Paul Sartre,
Foucault’s work is characterized by deep antipathy for bourgeois society and culture and sympathy for marginalized groups such as the mad, homosexuals, and prisoners. They both also had strong interests in literature and psychology as well as philosophy, and both, after an early relative lack of political interest, became committed activists. . . Philosophically, he rejected . . . the individual subject as the starting point. . . Personally and politically, Foucault rejected . . . universal moral principles, such as the inviolability of individual freedom.
Quite a popular yet controversial figure, he has appeared on television often enough and indeed is a cultural icon for the left, especially in academia. In the section on iconoclasm in the Culture War Encyclopedia, we discuss the history of the destruction of both literal and figurative icons including the more recent cases waged by the left. We touch upon the double standards held by many in this regard. We have already discussed the hypocrisy of the fact that Karl Marx was Racist and yet has been spared by cancel culture and leftist iconoclasts. Here we will do the same with Foucault.
Foucault (& Derrida) Wanted to Molest Minors?
Along with deconstructionist Jacques Derrida, postmodern philosopher Jean François Lyotard, and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, Foucault signed on to a petition to make it legal for adults to have sex with minors, or
at the very least to "decriminalize" this offence.
This petition, addressed to French government in 1977, was titled (in English), Open letter to the Penal Code Revision Commission for the revision of certain texts governing relations between adults and minors and was sometimes called the “1977 French Petition against Age of Consent Laws”. Below is an image from the Francoise Dolto Archive (2013) of the last page which has the list of signees.
The document, which is on archive, is old and faded. It had been typed in real ink onto real paper with something called a typewriter which did not need electric power, just paper and a ribbon with ink on it. It is difficult to read many of the faded words. The lower case letters a, e, o are difficult to distinguish, for example. Some words have been overwritten and jumbled by the typist. Scanning the type written photocopy for text therefore yields inaccurate results. Existing text versions online therefore contain many mistakes.
I painstakingly typed it all out in French,4 corrected everything I could and then Google was able to translate it into English well enough.5 These French and English versions are contained in the footnotes in their entirety with the exception the list of signees which you can see above anyway. In this short document, one can see that they complain about the criminality of
the notion of "misappropriation of minors" (which may be constituted by the simple accommodation, for one night, of a minor)
Wait! It’s illegal for them to do it for even just one night! They can’t even do it for a just single night? Oh, oppression! They go on to complain of
the general ban on having sexual relations with children under 15
and
the special ban which targets, when they engage minors aged 15 to 18, homosexual relations, defined as "immodest or against nature ”.
They argue,
The Penal Code of 1810, promulgated by Napoleon I, did not provide for a penalty for sexual acts not accompanied by violence, whatever the age of the participants.
It was the Law of April 28, 1832 which created the offense of "indecent assault committed without violence on the person of a child under 11 years of age". . . the age of minority having been raised twice, first . . . 1863 . . . to 13 years, then . . . 1945 . . . to 15 years.
They also state,
The signatories of this letter consider that the complete freedom of the partners in a sexual relationship is the necessary and sufficient condition of the legality of this relationship.
They claim that the “youth” who “feel” that their excessive and
meticulous segregation
is “oppresive”. Presumably, they mean to say that the segregation of minors from adults who are interested in molesting them is “oppressive”. They argue, furthermore, that because it is oppressive to meticulously segregate minors from adults who are interested in, let us say, desegregation so they can integrate with those kids, the laws that meticulously segregate them
are no more than the instruments of coercion, rather than the garuntors of a right
They complain that
anyone, whether adult or minor, who has practiced or attempted to practice any kind of sexual relationship with a minor under the age of 15, is committing a crime
that could
incur a penalty of 5 to 10 years of criminal imprisonment.
They seem to be envious when they then argue that every day, hundreds of underage boys get away with breaking this law
with a 14-year-old girlfriend on some beach or in some H.L.M. cellar.
At any rate, they argue that because these minors get away with having sex with each other,
It therefore appears that it is appropriate at the very least to "decriminalize" this offence, and to essentially take into account the consent of the minor.
AS IF minors can give informed consent. There’s a reason why, if we are good parents, we try to prevent them from getting pregnant, getting tattoos, voting, drinking, and making irriversable life-altering body modifications like removing their genitals. They are not able to give informed consent because they’re minors, they don’t know better.
But these individuals were trying to get the government to make it legal for them, as adults, to have sex with kids, to rape children. One of them was the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, an other was the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida and an other was Michel Foucault.
They write,
The signatories of this letter denounce the unfairness and the discriminatory nature of
law that criminalize the act of molesting minors and, they write that they believe that the law
should be repealed
and
in a more general way, that the provisions claiming to "protect" children and young people . . . concern "the prevention of minors from debauchery", which can allow the charging of anyone "promoting" or "facilitating" sexual intercourse between minors, or . . . the "abuse of minors", are . . . increasingly incompatible with the evolution of our society . . . and must be
changed to recognize what they call
the right of the child and the adolescent to maintain relations with people of his or her choice.
Groomer says what?
Foucault Said Kids Want to Have Sex With Adults, So Pedophilia is Fine
"The Danger of Child Sexuality” was the name of a broadcast on April 4, 1978 by France Culture featuring Foucault.6 In this dialogue with Guy Hocquenghem and Jean Danet, Foucault complained7 that the
sexuality of the child is a territory with its own geography that the adult must not enter. It is virgin territory, sexual territory, of course, but territory that must preserve its virginity. The adult will therefore intervene as guarantor of that specificity of child sexuality in order to protect it. And, on the other hand, in each particular case, he will say: this is an instance of an adult bringing his own sexuality into the child's sexuality. It could be that the child, with his own sexuality, may have desired that adult, he may even have consented, he may even have made the first moves. We may even agree that it was he who seduced the adult; but we specialists with our psychological knowledge know perfectly well that even the seducing child runs a risk, in every case, of being damaged and traumatized by the fact that he or she has had sexual dealings with an adult. Consequently, the child must be 'protected from his own desires', even when his desires turn him towards an adult.
The psychiatrist is the one who will be able to say: I can predict that a trauma of this importance will occured as a result of this or that type of sexual relation. It is therefore within the new legislative framework - basically intended to protect certain vulnerable sections of the population with the establishment of a new medical power - that a conception of sexuality and above all of the relations between child and adult sexuality will be based; and it is one that is extremely questionable.
Guy Hocquenghem complains,8
But todays overall tendency is indisputably not only to fabricate a type of crime that is quite simply the erotic or sensual relationship between a child and an adult, but also, since this may be isolated in the form of a crime, to create a certain category of the population defined by the fact that it tends to indulge in those pleasures. There exists then a particular category of the pervert, in the strict sense, of monsters whose aim in life is to practice sex with children. Indeed they become perverts and intolerable monsters since the crime as such is recognized and constituted, and now strengthened by the whole psychoanalytical and sociological arsenal.
Jean Danet states that it is a serious problem that9 lawyers are reluctant
to defend someone who has touched some kid's cock for a second
Danet gripes10 that in cases of alleged child molestation, it is assumed that the child did not consent. He argues that children can give consent for such things. Foucault later complains11 that,
where children are concerned, they are supposed to have a sexuality that can never be directed towards an adult, and that's that.
Also,
to assume that a child . . . was incapable of giving his consent are two abuses that are intolerable, quite unacceptable.
Foucault is asked,12
If you were a legislator, you would fix no limit and you would leave it to the judges to decide wether or not an indecent act was committed with or without consent? Is that your position?
He replies,13
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.
No age barrier? Gee, I wonder if this man wanted to have sex with little children without risking penalties.
Foucault Said Rape Should be Legal
In Call a child rapist a “child rapist”, Julie Bindel writes for the Critic
In his book History of Sexuality there is a disturbing scene where a little girl gets dragged into a ditch and sexually assaulted, which he describes as a “timeless bucolic pleasure”. Foucault is also on the record saying that sexuality should never be criminalised, because criminalising rape is sexually repressive. He has argued that as a crime, being raped is no different from being punched in the face.
Then there is the infamous letter of 1977 that Foucault signed, in which it was argued that statutory rape should not be a criminal offence (thereby obliterating the legal concept of an age of consent). The letter was part of a broader defence of two adult men who had raped (or, as Penny puts it, “had sex with”) pre-pubescent girls.
“[Foucault] and other degenerate eggheads argued against the concept of a legal age of consent. That bit definitely happened.
Nice guy, huh?
Did Foucault Rape Kids?
As Douglas Murray writes in The War on the West under ‘WHY DO THEIR GODS NOT FALL?’,14
Kant, Hume, Jefferson, Mill, Voltaire, and everyone else connected to racism, empire, or slavery must fall. And yet a strange selection of historical figures does not. And in this fact, we get to the roots of something that is happening in the anti-Western moment.
Murray also writes15 that this double standard
is worse than inconsistent. It exists to cut a swath through every thinker or historical figure in the Western tradition. To lambaste them for holding on to one or more of the attitudes of their time that our own age holds to be abhorrent. And at the same time to ensure that figures whose work is helpful in pulling apart the Western tradition, even to the point of demanding revolution to overturn it, are never treated to this same ahistorical and retributive game. Marx is protected because his writings and reputation are useful for anyone wishing to pull down the West. Everybody else is subjected to the process of destruction because their reputations are useful for holding up the West. After all, remove every other philosopher from the field, take down all their monuments and the tributes to them, and ensure that their thought is taught primarily (and ahistorically) as a story of racism and slavery and what is left standing in the Western tradition?
For anyone who doubts that this is the game that is being engaged in, perhaps one other example may suffice. Among the modern thinkers who have the most impact on contemporary thought almost none sits higher than Michel Foucault (1926-1984). He remains the world’s most cited scholar, across an array of disciplines. His work on sexuality, and especially on the nature of power, has endeared him to generations of students. His ideas make him the most important name to drop for any scholar engaged in the activist studies of recent decades. For black studies, queer studies, and others, he is the indispensable figure. Among the reasons is that, taken in its totality, his work is one of the most sustained attempts to undermine the system of institutions that had made up part of the Western system of order. Foucault’s obsessive analysis of everything through a quasi-Marxist lens of power relations diminished almost everything in society into a transactional, punitive, and meaningless dystopia. Among those to push Foucault’s work from an early stage was Edward Said. The two would inevitably have been attracted to each other because underneath the work of both men was an effort to destabilize if not deconstruct the idea of the Western nations as having almost anything good to be said for them.
It is always unpleasant - as well as unwise - for thinkers to lambaste each other because of the habits of their personal lives. The personal is not always political and is certainly not always philosophical. Yet in March 2021, a most interesting fact emerged about the personal life of Foucault. During an interview, his fellow philosopher Guy Sorman revealed a fact that had long been rumored. Sorman revealed that in the late 1960s, when Foucault was living near Tunis, Foucault would have sex with the local children. Sorman said that on a visit to Sidi Bou Said, near Tunis, he witnessed children running after Foucault asking him for the money he offered other children before raping them. According to Sorman, these boys of eight, nine or ten years of age would have money thrown at them by Foucault, who would arrange to meet them late at night “at the usual place.” The usual place turned out to be the local cemetery, where Foucault would rape the children on the gravestones. As Sorman said, “The question of consent wasn’t even raised.” Foucault would not have dared to do this in France, according to Sorman, but there was “a colonial dimension to this. A white imperialism.”
At this point in Murray’s text is placed his book’s footnote 38 (Matthew Campbell, “French Philosopher Michel Foucault ‘Abused Boys in Tunisia,’” Sunday Times, March 28, 2021) before continuing,
One of the many oddities of these revelations is that, to date, they seem to have done nothing to dent Foucault's reputation. Nor has the fact that along with other French intellectuals, he once signed a letter recommending the age of consent in his country be lowered to twelve. His work continues to be cited. His books continue to be published. Indeed, a final, previously unpublished volume in his History of Sexuality was published after these revelations came out. The repercussions of Foucault's theories continue to be felt, and nowhere has there been any recantation by his disciples in disciplines across America or anywhere else because of the revelations of racially motivated child rape.
Those familiar with Foucault’s views know that he saw the world through oppression-tinted glasses. As far as he was concerned, the acquisition of power over people, the power to oppress, was the motivation behind everything. Considering this and considering the reality of psychological projection, it is not very surprising that Foucault would revel in exerting power over his rape victims; desperately poor foreign children.
Now, of course, these accusations stem from what one of Foucault’s “fellow philosopher” claimed in an interview. What about the other side of the story? There are some who, in defense of Foucault, claim that according to local history, the minors he had sex with were not that young and were, in fact, ephebes (or "a young person who is not yet a fully grown adult" as the term is defined16) and that in addition to non-consensual sex with minors, he also had sex with young adult men.17 At any rate, even sources sympathetic to Foucault report that he had sex with minors.
So, on the one hand, we must acknowledge that accusations do not equal truth and that even if his supporters say he had sex with minors, people should be considered innocent unless proven guilty in a fair trial by a jury of their peers. On the other hand, it is fair to judge people by their own standards. By the view of Foucault and other post-modernists and cultural-Marxists, there is no such thing as objective reality, justice, proof, and so on. There is only power and power narratives. So, by their own standards, it is more than fair to say that Foucault and his supporters are child-raping, racist, marginalizing, socialist, Nazi, commie fascists.
After writing that
nowhere has there been any recantation by his disciples in disciplines across America or anywhere else because of the revelations of racially motivated child rape
Murray continues to state that,
Like the double standard over Marx's racism, this fact is suggestive. For it would surely be different if it had worked the other way around. If one of the twentieth century's great conservative thinkers had been revealed to have travelled to the developing world in order to rape young boys on a tombstone in a graveyard at night, it might be considered suggestive. The political left would likely be unwilling to let it slide by completely. Nor would they be willing to pass up the opportunity to extrapolate some extra lessons. They might say that this habit was revealing of a wider conservative mindset. That it revealed pedophilic, rapist, racist tendencies at the heart of Western thought. They might even try to point out that a whole cultural movement or societal tendency was tarred by association with this nocturnal and noxious habit. But with Foucault, no such thing has happened. He remains on his throne. His work continues to spill out. And nobody to date seems to think there is anything especially telling about one of the founding icons of the anti-Westernism of our time having found personal pleasure in purchasing native children of foreign countries to satisfy his sexual desires.
It is in such omissions and double standards that something crucial can be discerned. Which is that what is happening in the current cultural moment is not simply an assertion of a new moral vision but the attempted imposition of a political vision on the West. One in which only specific figures – whom the West had felt proud of – are brought low, the only figures who will still remain on their pedestals (both real and metaphorical) are those figures who were most critical of the West. Meaning that the only people left to guide us would be the people who will guide us in the worst possible directions.
Also, Peterson seems to think Foucault raped children and that he had sexual contact with people after he was told that he has AIDS. See Foucault - Patron Saint of Child Indoctrination | Logan Lancing by Jordan B. Peterson on Youtube.
What do you have to say about any of this?
S O U R C E S
The Madness of Crowds - Gender, Race and Identity (2019) by Douglas Murray
Tunisia: "Michel Foucault was not a pedophile, but he was seduced by the young ephebes" by Jeune Afrique (April 1, 2021)
Call a child rapist a “child rapist” by Julie Bindel for the Critic (December 3, 2021)
The War on the West (2022) by Douglas Murray
Michel Foucault by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (First published Wed Apr 2, 2003; substantive revision Fri Aug 5, 2022)
Michel Foucault - French philosopher and historian by Encyclopedia Britannica (no date)
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) by Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (no date)
Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984) by Biblio (no date)
Lettre ouverte à la Commission de révision du code pénal pour la révision de certains textes régissant les rapports entre adultes et mineurs (1977) hosted by archives Francoise Dolto (2013) sometimes called the “1977 French Petition against Age of Consent Laws”,
Thanks,
Justin Trouble
Laughter my Shield, Knowledge my Steed
Wit I may Wield, but Question my Rede
Liberty my Right, Truth my Sword
Love my Life, Honor my Reward
This is part of the Culture War Encyclopedia!
F O O T N O T E S
Michel Foucault by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (First published Wed Apr 2, 2003; substantive revision Fri Aug 5, 2022)
Page 34 of The Madness of Crowds - Gender, Race and Identity (2019) by Douglas Murray. For this, Murray cites ‘What are the most cited publications in the social sciences (according to Google Scholar)?’, Elliot Green, LSE blogs, 12 May 2016.
Michel Foucault by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (First published Wed Apr 2, 2003; substantive revision Fri Aug 5, 2022)
Lettre ouverte à la Commission de révision du code pénal pour la révision de certains textes régissant les rapports entre adultes et mineurs. (1. Et incidemment les rapport des mineurs entre eux)
Les relations entre enfants, adolescents, et adultes, sont soumises par la loi a des restrictions importantes: soit par la notion de "detournement de mineurs" (qui peut etre constitue par le simple heberbergement, pour une nuit, d'um mineur) soit par, l'interdiction generale d'entretenir des relations sexuelles avec des moins de 15 ans, ou par l’interdiction spéciale qui vise, quand ils engagent des mineurs de 15 à 18 ans, les rapports homosexuels, définis comme “impudiques ou contre nature”.
La désuétudes des notions fondant ces crimes ou délits ('"pudeur', “nature"), l'évolution des moeurs dans une jeunesse qui ressent comme oppressifs les excès d'une ségrégation minutieuse, font que ces textes de loi ne sont plus que l'instrument d'une coërcition, au licu de garantir un droit.
Une récente affaire vient de démontrer clairement la disproportion existant entre le dispositif pénal et la nature des faits quiil sanctionne. Après plus de trois ans de détention préventive, trois personnes accuséese "d'etentat à la pudeur: consommé ou tenté sans violence sur le personne d'enfants de llun est l'eutre sexe agés de moins de 15 ans", faits que la loi (article 331 !l du Code Pénal) qualific de "crimes", ont été condamnées par la Cour d'Assises des Yvelines à 5 ans de prison avec sursis, Une détention de trois ans et trois mois, dans une affaire qui a abouti à une condamnation avec sursis, n'a été rendue possible que parce que la loi, par le la qualification "criminelle", justifie la lourde pracédure es, elors que déjà une qualification "délictuelle" aurait faire juger l'affaire par le Tribunal Correctionnel, Depuis la promulgation de la Loi du 1975, la détention provisoire, en matière correctionnolle, ne peut excéder six mois.
Mais surtout, par delà le cas des accusés, l'affaire des Yvelines, jugéc en audience publique, a posé le problème de savoir à quel age des enfants où adolescents peuvent être considérés comme capables de donner librement leur consentement à une relation sexuelle. C'est là un problème de société, Il appartient à la Commission de Révision du Code Pénal d'y apporter la réponse de notre temps, puis- quz c'est celle qui est chargée de proposer au Gouvernement des textes rajounis et actuels, qui devront ensuite tre sounis eu Parlement.
Les signataires de la présente lettre considèrent que l'entière liberté des partenaires d'une relation sexuelle est lea concition nécessaire et suffisante de la licéité de cette relation.
Le Codu Pénal de 1810, promulgué paz Napoléon ler, ne prévoyait pas de rinrcesion pour los ectes suxuels non accompagnis de violences, quel quo soit l'ége dos participants, Il n'envisageait que le ces de viol ou “d'attentat à le pudour commis avec violences".
C'est la Loi du 28 Avril 1832 qui créa l'infraction "d'attentat à la pudeur commis sans violences sur la personne d'un enfant de moins de 11 ans". Ce texte, calqué sur le texte vivant les "attentats commis avec violences", donnait aux faits la mème qualification “criminelle". Il est resté en vigueur jusqu'à aujourd'hui, l'age de la minorité ayant été élevé à deux reprises, tout d'abord sous Nepoléon III, par la Loi du 13 Mai 1863, qui le porte à 13 ans, puis per l'Ordonnance du Gouvernement Provisoire du 2 ÿuillet 1945, qui le porte a 15 ans.
Cette qualification "criminelle" aboutit aujourd’hui à des résultats aberrant. À s'en tenir à la lettre du texte, e, quiconque qu'il soit mejcur ou mineur, eura pratiqué ou tenté de pratiquer une reletion sexuclle quelccsnque avec un mineur de moins de 15 ans, commet un crime, qui doit l'envoyer en Cour d'Assises et lui fait encourir une peine de 5 à 10 ans de réclusion criminelle.
Texte inapplicable et inappliqué dans la plupart des cas, car, s'il l'était, on verreit chaque jour comparaitre des centaines de garçons in Cour d'Assises, pour s'être "amusés" avec une petite amie de 14 ans sur quelque plage ou dans quelque cave de H.L.M.. Le Législateur lui-mime pourrait être accusé de "complicité avec le crime", puisqu'il viont récemment d'autoriser la vente de contréceptifs aux filles de moins de 15 ans, ce qui suppose repports sexuels, donc crime de la parti du partenaire.
Il apparait donc qu'il convient tout au moins de "décriminaliser" cette infraction, et de tenir essentiellement compte du consentement du mineur.
En ce qui concerne par ailleurs les adolescents et adolescentes de 15 à 17 ans, la loi, d'ores ot déjà, leur reconnait capacité et liberte de s'adenner à des relations sexuclles, mais sous réserve, eminemment discriminatoire, qu'il s'agisse de relations hétérosexuelles. Leur Pertenaire, mejeur ou mineur, ne commet aucun délit à entretenir des relations sexuelles avec eux, du moment qu'il est d'un sexe différent et qu'il ne les incite pas à se soustraire à l'autorité de leurs parents ou tuteurs.
Per contre, ce partenaire, majeur ou mineur, s!il est du même sexe, se rend coupable d'un délit passible d'un "emprisonnement de 6 mois à 3 ans ct d’une amende de 60F à 15.000F." (article 331 ss 3 du Code Pénel).
En effet, alors que, de 1790 à 1942, ji'arsenal des lois pénales françaises, inspiré par les lumières du XVIIIème siècle, ignoreit totalement un quelconque délit d'hemosexualité, celui-ci a é té constitué par la Loi de Vichy du 6 Août 1942 visant "quiconque aura . . . commis un ou plusieurs ectes impudiques ou contre nature avec un mineur de son sexe" (J.0. de l'Etat Français du 27 Acût 1942), Ce texte, devonu article 331 ss 3 du Code Pénal (Ordonnance du 8 Février 1945 — J.0. du 9 Février 1945), est toujours en vigueur, et est journellement appliqué, laissant ainsi subsister dans notre pays occidentaux depuis la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale, l'évolution des moeurs et des idées a conduit les législatcurs à le faire disparaitre des Codes.
Les signateires de la présente lettre dénoncent l'iniquité et le caractère discriminetoire de l'article 331 ss 3 du Code Pénal. Ils estiment que ce texte doit être abrogé, comme ont été heureusement ebrogés les textes réprimant l'aduitère, l'interruption de grossesses et les pratiques anticonceptionnelles. Ils estiment, enfin, de foçon plus générele, que les dispositions prétendant à unel"protection" de l'enfance et de la jeunesse, comme l'article 334-1 concernent "lliac ne tation de mineurs à la débauche", qui peut permettre d'inculper-tour personne "favorisant" ou "facilitant" des rapports sexuels entre minours, ou l'article 356 concernant le "détournement de mineurs", sont, de mème que l'article 331, de plus en plus incompatibles avoc l'evolution de notre société, justifiant des tracasseries et des contrôles purement policiers, et doivent Être ebrogés, ou profondément modifies, dans le sens d'une reconnaissance du droit de l'enfant et de l'edolescent à entretenir des relations avec des personnes de son choix.
Open letter to the Penal Code Revision Commission for the revision of certain texts governing relations between adults and minors. (footnote 1: And, incidentally, the relationships between minors).
Relations between children, adolescents and adults are subject by law to significant restrictions: either by the notion of "misappropriation of minors" (which may be constituted by the simple accommodation, for one night, of a minor) or by the general ban on having sexual relations with children under 15, or by the special ban which targets, when they engage minors aged 15 to 18, homosexual relations, defined as "immodest or against nature ”.
The disuse of the notions founding these crimes or misdemeanors ('modesty', 'nature'), the evolution of mores in a youth who feel the excesses of meticulous segregation as oppressive, mean that these legal texts are no more than the instruments of coercion, rather than the garuntors of a right
A recent case has just clearly demonstrated the disproportion between the criminal system and the nature of the acts it punishes. After more than three years of preventive detention, three people accused of "indecent assault: consumed or attempted without violence on the person of children of one sex under the age of 15", facts that the law (article 331 !l of the Penal Code) qualified as "crimes", were sentenced by the Court of Assizes of Yvelines to 5 years in prison, suspended, A detention of three years and three months, in a case which resulted in a suspended sentence, was only made possible because the law, by the "criminal" qualification, justifies the heavy procedure, whereas already a "criminal" qualification would have the case judged by the Correctional Court, Since the promulgation of the Law of 1975, provisional detention, in correctional matters, cannot exceed six months.
But above all, beyond the case of the defendants, the Yvelines case, judged in open court, posed the problem of knowing at what age children or adolescents can be considered capable of freely giving their consent to a sexual relationship. This is a social problem. It is up to the Commission for the Revision of the Penal Code to provide the answer to it in our time, since it is the one responsible for proposing to the Government updated and up-to-date texts, which must then be submitted to Farlement.
The signatories of this letter consider that the complete freedom of the partners in a sexual relationship is the necessary and sufficient condition of the legality of this relationship.
The Penal Code of 1810, promulgated by Napoleon I, did not provide for a penalty for sexual acts not accompanied by violence, whatever the age of the participants. It only envisaged acts of rape or "attack on the modesty committed with violence".
It was the Law of April 28, 1832 which created the offense of "indecent assault committed without violence on the person of a child under 11 years of age". This text, modeled on the living text of "attacks committed with violence", gave the facts the same "criminal" qualification. It has remained in force until today, the age of minority having been raised twice. , first of all under Nepoleon III, by the Law of May 13, 1863, which increases it to 13 years, then by the Ordinance of the Provisional Government of July 2, 1945, which increases it to 15 years.
This "criminal" qualification leads today to aberrant results. To stick to the letter of the text, anyone, whether adult or minor, who has practiced or attempted to practice any kind of sexual relationship with a minor under the age of 15, is committing a crime, who must send him in the Court of Assizes and makes him incur a penalty of 5 to 10 years of criminal imprisonment.
The law is inapplicable and unenforceable in most cases, because, if it were, we would see hundreds of boys appearing every day in the Court of Assizes, for having "amused themselves" with a 14-year-old girlfriend on some beach or in some H.L.M. cellar. The Legislator himself could be accused of "complicity in crime", since he recently authorized the sale of contraceptives to girls under 15, which implies sexual relations, therefore crime of the partner's party.
It therefore appears that it is appropriate at the very least to "decriminalize" this offence, and to essentially take into account the consent of the minor.
As regards adolescents aged 15 to 17, the law already recognizes their capacity and freedom to engage in sexual relations, but subject, eminently discriminatory, that it is about heterosexual relationships. Their Partner, adult or minor, does not commit any offense to maintain sexual relations with them, as long as he is of a different sex and that he does not incite them to evade the authority of their parents or guardians.
On the other hand, this partner, adult or minor, if he is of the same sex, is guilty of an offense punishable by "imprisonment of 6 months to 3 years and a fine of 60F to 15,000F." (article 331 ss 3 of the Penal Code).
Indeed, whereas, from 1790 to 1942, the arsenal of French penal laws, inspired by the enlightenment of the 18th century, totally ignored any offense of hemosexuality, this was constituted by the Vichy Law of 6 August 1942 aimed at "anyone who has . . . committed one or more immodest or unnatural acts with a minor of his sex" (J.0. de l'Etat Français of 27 August 1942), This text, devonu article 331 ss 3 of the Penal Code (Ordinance of February 8, 1945 - J.0. of February 9, 1945), is still in force, and is applied daily, thus leaving in our Western countries since the end of the Second World War, the evolution of mores and ideas led legislators to remove it from the Codes.
The signatories of this letter denounce the unfairness and the discriminatory nature of article 331 ss 3 of the Penal Code. They believe that this text should be repealed, as have fortunately been repealed the texts repressing adultery, termination of pregnancy and contraceptive practices. They consider, finally, in a more general way, that the provisions claiming to "protect" children and young people, such as article 334-1 concern "the prevention of minors from debauchery", which can allow to charge anyone "promoting" or "facilitating" sexual intercourse between minors, or article 356 concerning the "abuse of minors", are, like article 331, increasingly incompatible with the evolution of our society, justifying hassles and purely police checks, and must be abrogated, or profoundly modified, in the sense of recognition of the right of the child and the adolescent to maintain relations with people of his or her choice.
The Danger of Child Sexuality - an interview with Michel Foucault published in: Michel Foucault: politics, philosophy, culture: interviews and other writings. Ed. by Lawrence D. Kritzman. (New York: Routledge, 1988). Translated by Alan Sheridan, with the title "Sexuality Morality and the Law."
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The War on the West (2022) by Douglas Murray, page 174
The War on the West (2022) by Douglas Murray, pages 180-181
Tunisia: "Michel Foucault was not a pedophile, but he was seduced by the young ephebes" by Jeune Afrique (April 1, 2021)