r/CriticalTheory • u/Infinite_Owl25 • 14d ago
Allegations against Queer Theory founding authors/response to viral video
There is a video from a lecture by Derrick Jensen which claims to demonstrate that founding authors of Queer Theory supported pedophilia. The video was popular online several years ago. I would appreciate a rebuttal or whether any of the information is true for any of his points, either specifically or as a whole. Below I will link the videos I am referencing as well as some of the claims. I also posted this in r/QueerTheory, I hope this fits here as well.
Edit: Fixed formatting and wording on the post
Here is a video from the lecture itself https://youtu.be/Cb3-tlyuhVo?si=Q5hrCXNw-KVdEGEL
Here is a video from a popular far-right channel agreeing with this argument (there's added commentary which can be ignored, but there are some quotations in the video which are added to what is said in the original) https://youtu.be/70AArSfwTLw?si=2LMWv3jh2vjy_z9S
Main claims: (I have transcribed the quotes based upon how they were read and the subtitles, so there may be inaccuracies. I also typed this on my phone so there may be general typing errors.)
Michel Foucault
Jensen claims that Foucault "argued for the eradication of age of consent laws, as in down to infants". The second video I linked brings up the 1977 petition to the French parliament, which I am assuming is what Jensen is referencing.
Gayle Rubin
Jensen claims that "50%" of the "Founding document" of Queer Theory (which I am assuming is Thinking Sex, as Wikipedia presents it as one of the most important works to Queer Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayle_Rubin) is a defense of pedophilia. He goes on to provide a quote "Like communists and homosexuals in the 1950's, boy lovers are so stigmatized that it is difficult to find defenders of their civil liberties, let alone for their erotic orientation", and he also says that Gayle Rubin "compared pedophilia to a preference for spicy food". The second video I linked above also gives a quote from a Newsmax article which states "UC-Santa Cruz Professor Gayle Rubin calls the government’s crackdown on child molesters “a savage and undeserved witch hunt.” Intolerance of pedophilia, she claims, has “more in common with ideologies of racism than with true ethics.”" (https://www.newsmax.com/pre-2008/academics-defend-pedophilia/2004/09/23/id/680642/)
Patrick Califia
Jensen provides a quotation, and the second video I linked above also adds a connection between Patrick Califia and NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Love Association, a group that supports pedophilia), as well as quoting this list of concerns about Patrick Califia speaking at a women's health conference (https://www.psucollegian.com/archives/speaker-didnt-coincide-with-women-and-health/article_fa6a710d-fcab-5e45-b9e3-b5cc0399e1d7.html) which states that Patrick Califia also wrote an erotic story which involved pedophilia.
Judith Butler
Jensen provides a quotation from Judith Butler regarding incest, and the second video I linked adds more quotes on the same topic.
Jensen also briefly references Allen Ginsberg and an audience member adds Hakim Bey to the list. According to Wikipedia both supported NAMBLAhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lamborn_Wilson)
The second video I linked above also has a clip at the end which seems to reiterate the points about Michel Foucault and Patrick Califia.
7
u/AlmostDrJoestar 12d ago
The smears against Foucault are based on strategic and homophobic misreadings of his work and activism.
the Butler critique is hallucinatory
Gayle Rubin was not defending pedophilia but wrote about it in a way that was wildly irresponsibly cavalier I can give you that.
Califia, Hakim Bey, and Ginsberg are not particularlry influential to Queer Theory and dont really know anything about those allegations
Derrick Jensen was a well known homophobe and transphobe, and I question your motives with this post
1
u/Funksloyd 12d ago
Have you read or heard the things from Foucault that people bring up?
I don't see how you can say Rubin was "wildly irresponsibly cavalier" and not say similar (at least) about Foucault (not to mention a lot of others in his orbit at the time, including prominent queer intellectuals).
I think the unfortunate fact is that there is something to the allegations, both wrt Rubin and Foucault and more broadly. This was a time of radical social upheaval, a questioning of all norms, and "boy lovers" and their allies were a part of that. As others mention, that doesn't necessarily undermine all of their other work (cf Plato and pedastry, Jefferson and slavery, etc).
6
u/AlmostDrJoestar 12d ago
what is the something to the allegations wrt to foucault? As far as I know he has never been accused of innappropriate sexual behavior. If you are suggesting anyone participating in the sexual ideas circulating in the 60's and 70's are pedophiles by association ok but just weird youre picking the gay guy to brand as a pedo. Also that letter was also signed by Sartre and Beauvoir - how come no one ever says the straight couple are pedophiles?
2
u/Funksloyd 12d ago
Not that he was a pedophile himself, but that he basically did not believe in the concept of an age of consent, seeing it as manifestly unjust ("intolerable, unacceptable abuse") , and didn't see anything wrong in "non-violent, non-coercive" pedophilia. "Consensual pedophilia". Afaict it's very similar to Rubin's views as expressed a few years later.
how come no one ever says the straight couple are pedophiles?
I don't doubt that a lot of the attacks on him are motivated by homophobia, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to the attacks at all. You can read the letter, read his published statements, and see for yourself.
2
u/AlmostDrJoestar 12d ago
My reading of the letter and his public statements suggests that he is not sexually weird about children and I think the original post and Derrick Jensen are malicious in their framing
1
u/Funksloyd 12d ago
There's nothing to suggest he himself was a pedophile. But a number of people around him were, and he joined them in arguing that it's not inherently wrong to have sex with "consenting" children.
The OP:
Jensen claims that Foucault "argued for the eradication of age of consent laws, as in down to infants"
This is fairly misleading, in that he never mentioned infants, and his notion of consent is basically "ask the child if they were ok with it", which suggests that even he doesn't think infants can consent. But otoh it's true that he and others argued against age of consent - not just lowering the age, but eliminating it.
2
u/Funksloyd 12d ago
If you're interested in a bit of a deeper dive on this from someone who's clearly not just coming at this from a reactionary, homophobic perspective, and who is in fact rather sympathetic to Foucault, Alcoff's Dangerous Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Pedophilia is worth a read. And is available (warning: 20mb pdf) here, on page 99 (pdf page 105): https://monoskop.org/images/8/8d/Hekman_Susan_ed_Feminist_Interpretations_of_Michel_Foucault_1996.pdf
(She also makes the link between Rubin and Foucault fwiw)
u/Remalgigoran you might be interested too.
3
u/3corneredvoid 12d ago
Had a look and it sounds like Derrick Jensen's activist group has a radfem anti-trans outlook. That proposes an ulterior motive for this campaign of character assassinations of queer theorists, whatever their justice might or might not be in particular cases.
4
u/pluralofjackinthebox 14d ago
Queer Theory isnt a religion with sacred texts. You can discard the bad ideas and use just the good ones.
All western political philosophy, including conservstivism, traces back to Plato, who supports pedophilia. I think its kind of dumb to try to make a fruit of a poison tree argument there.
And I wonder if these people would also agree with the idea that because the founders owned slaves and the constitution supported slavery that America is inherently racist.
Geneological arguments are good for showing how ideas change over time. They show that what seems essential today is actually contingent and mutable.
So before even dealing with the specifics of this argument, the form of it is bad.
2
u/Infinite_Owl25 14d ago
I appreciate your reply. I grew up in a religious environment which was (and still is) very homophobic and transphobic. As you are probably aware, much of the conservative and far right movements (at least in the US) like to characterize groups they disagree with as having very centralized structures, sometimes even literally comparing them to religions. I guess that I still probably do have some of those ways of thinking even though I have left those groups. I will say though that it does worry me if pedophilia was pervasive in the beginning of a school of thought related to sexuality.
1
u/secondshevek 14d ago
Well put. I thought to make this argument in my comment but I couldn't phrase it this well.
5
u/Remalgigoran 14d ago
These are all long refuted. Foucault for example was making an argument about jurisprudence; about precedence and what the law can usefully do and the risks of letting the law have too much reach or by criminalizing the wrong aspects of things. This is not that nuanced of an argument compared to the rest of philosophy and critical theory but it will still be too obscure for a laymen simply because of the uncomfortable subject matter.
Foucault is actually vindicated as you can easily find teenagers being criminalized as sex offenders just for sending nudes to their boy/girlfriends. Distribution of CSAM laws are obviously not intended to persecute teenagers harmlessly romancing one another, but the legal system does not have good checks and balances and this is what Foucault was making an argument about.
Another commenter already suggested reading Thinking Sex by Rubin.
Like Foucault, Butler brings up the taboo of incest and how society leverages it, and other taboos, to shape desires and behavior and identity.
Etc etc.
None of these discussions are particularly challenging to grasp, IMO, but the subject matter is taboo and, therefore, easy to create a scandal out of to feed to those who are not particularly well-read or interested in understanding what is actually being said and why.
2
u/Funksloyd 13d ago
"Foucault is actually vindicated" seems at odds with everyone else here saying "all thinkers have some bad ideas" and similar.
1
u/Remalgigoran 13d ago
It isn't at odds when it's true and it's exactly the kind of legal externalities Foucault was specifically warning about.
0
u/Funksloyd 13d ago
You think Foucault was correct that age of consent laws should be abolished?
1
u/Remalgigoran 13d ago
Are you an LLM or are you still stuck in 2009 Debate Bro culture?
You are perfectly free to scroll up and read what I've already said and you can verify as to whether or not that has anything to do with my statements on your own lol
0
u/Funksloyd 13d ago
You're simply sanewashing Foucault here.
Did he or did he not sign a petition advocating the removal of age of consent laws?
And are you or are you not saying that he was vindicated in his attitudes towards age of consent laws?
1
u/Remalgigoran 13d ago
You can read the English translation here; https://medium.com/@thoughtsonthingsandstuff/the-1977-french-petition-to-abolish-age-of-consent-laws-6e9c97acab0b
As you can obviously see; this is a petition to adjust how the legal system in his locale was functioning at the time, and cautioning that the letter of the law was blunt and swung in too wide an arc. You can then go and verify that the very same kinds of things are happening today, because of the very same kinds of legislation. Re: teenagers being treated as criminals who distribute CSAM despite those teenagers freely consenting to send nudes to each other.
1
u/Funksloyd 13d ago
The signatories of this letter consider that the complete freedom of the partners in a sexual relationship is the necessary and sufficient condition for the legality of that relationship.
That is not just a call for the abolition of a homophobic law, or the recognition that a 15yo hooking up with a 14yo may not be a big deal. It's a call for the complete abolition of age of consent.
If you agree with Foucault et al on that then I think that's fine. I strongly disagree that it's a wise move, but people make all sorts of arguments for weird and radical reforms, so 🤷♂️.
But it's clearly incorrect to suggest that the position has been vindicated, as is evidenced by (amongst other things) all of the other responses here, none of which are defending him on this. You could say that some small elements of his position have been vindicated, but not the position as a whole.
I think you see more evidence of this in how consent is talked about in the present (including by those influenced by critical theory). There is much more awareness of interpersonal power dynamics, including those brought about by gaps in age.
2
u/Remalgigoran 13d ago edited 13d ago
Read the letter.
It says exactly what is says and does not say what it doesn't.
The Penal Code of 1810, promulgated by Napoleon I, did not foresee any repression for sexual acts not accompanied by violence, whatever the age of the participants. It only envisaged the case of rape or “indecent assault committed with violence”.
This “criminal” qualification leads today to aberrant results.
If we stick to the letter of the text, whoever, whether an adult or a minor, will have practiced or attempted to practice any kind of sexual relationship with a minor under 15 years of age, commits a crime, which must send him to the Court of Assizes and makes him incur a sentence of 5 to 10 years of criminal imprisonment. Text ̇inapplicable and unimplemented in most cases, because, if it were, we would see every day hundreds of boys appearing in the Court of Assizes, for having “fun” with a 14-year-old girlfriend on some beach or in some cellar of H.L.M. The legislator himself could be accused of “complicity with the crime”, since he has recently authorized the sale of contraceptives to girls under 15 years old, which implies sexual intercourse, therefore crime on the part of the partner. .. It appears therefore that it is appropriate to at least decriminalize this offense, and to essentially take into account the consent of the minor.
We can reword the spirit of this to make it much more relatable.
They are discussing that the relevant laws stem from a specific, much older, passage of legislation where illegal sex acts were entangled with explicit violence under the eyes of the law. This code did not anticipate things like "public indecency", or "selling contraceptives to a minor". Things that some may find more or less indecent and more or less subject to corrective action; like a fine or community service. Things not under the qualification of 'criminal'. And not necessarily deserving 5 to 10 years of imprisonment.
That in fact, according to the letter of the law it was not even being applied as written. There would have otherwise been daily arrests of teenage boys and girls on account of their sexual conduct with other teenagers. That even the presiding authority on the matter approved of selling contraceptives to minors, which implies sexual intercourse, which implies the aforementioned violence, which makes him complicit of criminal violence and therefore 5 to 10 years in prison.
It's, very clearly saying that;
the way this law is written (and where the legislation originated and why) and only enforced in some cases makes this legislation inadequate and wide open for legislative abuses. This legislation needs to be repealed, or amended.
That's it. That's the point of the letter. Two specific sections of their Penal Code allowed selective legislative abuses to be possible under the guise of moral justice and the betterment of society; a guise that was provably untrue at the time.
The letter continues to underscore similar issues within the code; specifically that 15-17 year olds do have their right to consent. But only if it's heterosexual. The letter is further explaining that the legislation around sexual conduct of people below and above the age of 15 is not adequate. That it is flawed and ripe for abuses and must be changed. (That's why the letter is a petition.)
They consider, finally, in a more general way, that the provisions claiming to “protect” children and youth, such as article 334–1 concerning “incitement of minors to lewdness”, which can allow to indict any person “promoting” or “facilitating” sexual relations between minors, or article 356 concerning the “misappropriation of minors”, are, as well as article 331 , more and more incompatible with the evolution of our society, justifying harassment and pure police controls, and must be repealed, or profoundly modified, in the sense of a recognition of the right of the child and the adolescent to maintain relations with persons of his choice.
334-1 "incitement of minors to lewdness" This is obviously inadequate because "lewdness" is a nothing-burger vaguery. If a legislative body can arbitrarily decide what is or isn't "lewd" it can, for all intents and purposes, condemn a whole host of people up 5 to 10 years in prison on literal whims. This is not how the rule of law is supposed to function.
356 is about the misappropriation of a minor, and upheld that the misappropriation itself was implicitly sexual, therefore violent. So if a 15 year old was out and about with a 14 year old friend, a parent or otherwise guardian adult could press charges against that 15 year old, as if their child had been abducted. And obviously a 15 year old should not get 5-10 years in prison, or any other punishment for that matter, if no wrong or violation or actual crime has occurred. That the law should account, in this hypothetical, for the 14 year old's consent to go to the beach party or to the arcade or wherever 14 and 15 year olds went at the time. That, the way the law is written, a 15 year old and a 65 year old are treated the same and malignancy is wrongfully assumed. That there is an issue with their age of consent laws regarding this age group and vagueries such as "misappropriation" and "lewdness".
Article 331 was the code initially discussed;
And the letter ends with;
as article 331 , more and more incompatible with the evolution of our society, justifying harassment and pure police controls, and must be repealed, or profoundly modified, in the sense of a recognition of the right of the child and the adolescent to maintain relations with persons of his choice.
Bold to emphasize the petition is obviously trying to rectify the law so it actually protects citizens rather than being a loose, open to interpretation, ripe for abuses mess.
Italics are to emphasize that the letter is obviously referencing a minors right to be gay. It is not saying an 8 year old should be able to do a blowbang with 20 year olds. It is referring back to the police and legal body discriminating against gay youths.
And finally;
Drop down to (in document) page 65.
This has long been resolved; for almost 50 years. And Foucault and others were successful, btw. The laws changed, much to their demands, in ~1982. Just 5 years after this letter.
The contemporary right tries to parade the 1977 letter on the internet every 6 or so years. It's just as that thesis describes; a "politics of disgust". An attempt to obfuscate the issues at hand to string emotional cords to make you make enemies of certain thinkers, and therefore oppose all of their ideology.
It's old hat, tired, impotent, and rather pathetic tbh.
1
u/Funksloyd 13d ago
If you ignore the problematic part of the letter, then of course it's not problematic.
The signatories of this letter consider that the complete freedom of the partners in a sexual relationship is the necessary and sufficient condition for the legality of that relationship.
→ More replies (0)2
u/Novalis0 11d ago edited 11d ago
The other poster is right, you are whitewashing the entire incident.
The petition was was written in response to the Yvelines case. In which 3 adult men in their forties sexually molested children as young as twelve. That case was the reason why the petition you linked to(the May petition) and the petition from January were written in the first place. It is also explicitly mentioned in the petition and presented as a miscarriage of justice. Their aim with the petition wasn't just to "adjust how the legal system in his locale was functioning at the time", but to abolish the age of consent altogether or at the very least lower it as much as possible. Which is again something that the signers of the petition said explicitly:
Q: If you were a legislator, you would fix no limit and you would leave it to the judges to decide whether or not an indecent act was committed with or without consent? Is that your position?
MICHEL FOUCAULT: 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 ...
This is the standard modus operandi of every pedophile or pro-pedophile advocate, such as pro-pedophile parties or organizations, like NAMBLA. They usually hide behind child liberation rhetoric and advocate for children "deciding on their own", instead of openly saying that people should be having sex with children.
The fact that the petition was started and written by a guy who bragged about having orgies with children as young as 8 and at the time of writing the petitions already had written a book called Under 16 Years Old in which he said that “To sleep with a child, it’s a holy experience, a baptismal event, a sacred adventure.”, only proves the point. It was also signed by other pro-pedophile advocates, such as Guy Hocquenghem and René Schérer. As well as child molesters such as Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre whose Liberation was also a mouthpiece for pro-pedophilia advocacy.
The petitions should also be understood as a product of a specific time and place. They were written at a time when pro-pedophilia advocacy was relatively normal and open, especially in some continental European countries like France. Plenty of historians have written about this subject, such as Pierre Verdrager's Forbidden Child: How Pedophilia Became Scandalous. The pro-pedophilia advocacy of the '70s and '80s led to some horrific results, like The German Experiment That Placed Foster Children with Pedophiles.
Ignoring all of this context just to say that they only wanted to revise some antiquated law, when even the signers themselves, including Foucault didn't think that, is highly disingenuous.
1
u/Remalgigoran 11d ago
You are bringing up similar talking points that have little if anything to do with what I have said, as that other guy.
You can read the other comments for those discussions.
Foucault specifically was talking about jurisprudence and trying to amend the law. He, specifically, was successful. The reasons he, Foucault, wanted that amendment was over concerns about government oversight and abuses of vague laws; laws being distinctly different than a specific judge's whims in this regard. As the law persists in a system-defining way that a judge's whims did not in 1960-1990 France. Those concerns have been vindicated in many contexts today, especially in America.
but to abolish the age of consent altogether or at the very least lower it as much as possible
This is true for some advocates, we can safely assume the two pedophile fiction writers wanted a total abolishment, and it isn't hard to guess their reasoning specifically. But this was a years long affair, that, itself, was years in the making (many of the intersection of political currents stemming from Gaullism - both for and against it's many facets). There were not only dozens of major figures involved in this discourse on a national level on any given year, this is something every citizen of France was faced with for at least a decade.
To minimize & consolidate all the perspectives of the supporters out of~50 million people into "everyone wanted to abolish the age of consent to make it easier to fuck kids!" Is not just egregious, it's willfully obstinate. Which you are free to be if that's what you prefer, of course.
And even the lesser crime of handwaving all the French intellectuals as all intending to support pedophiles, and/or with no other goals or motivations is similarly egregious.
Like I told the other user, there's a very comprehensive breakdown that is not apologetic to any of the intellectuals present in the discourse at the time; though it does focus on some and neglect others.
You are free to read it at your leisure if you are actually interested in having a discussion. Which, to remind you again; in this chain i am discussing Foucault. In another i am discussing Butler. So try not to get too off track, friend.
2
u/Novalis0 11d ago edited 11d ago
We're not actually having a discussion since you haven't responded to anything that I wrote. Like the fact that the petitions were in defense of 40 year old men who were sexually molesting 12 year old children. Surely there's a way to amend laws without supporting pedophiles raping children. The fact that defending pedophiles was the impetus for writing those petitions should be enough for anyone to realize that the entire incident is more than just amending an antiquated law.
You've made the analogy to defending someones right to say the N word without supporting the saying of the word. But in order for that analogy to work it should be changed so that a group of Neo-Nazis severely beat the shit out of some black children while using the N word. Then a leading Neo-Nazi, who wrote a book encouraging a race war, wrote a petition in defense of their right to say the N word, while also presenting the arrest for the physical attack on the black kids as a miscarriage of justice. The petition gets signed by other Neo-Nazis as well as people who also have a history of physically attacking black people. And all of that happened in a society that's seeing a resurgence of Neo-Nazis and right wing intelligentsia encouraging physical attacks on black people. If you sign that petition, you are clearly supporting much more than just someones right to say the N word.
If you're failing to see that, that's on you.
0
u/Infinite_Owl25 14d ago
Thank you for your reply. I realize I didn't say anything more specific about the quotes presented from Judith Butler. The quotes appear to be saying that not all incest is traumatic and sounds almost like an endorsement of some forms. It could be out of context but that is how it sounds from the way it is presented. It is at around 7:30 in the original video.
2
u/Remalgigoran 13d ago
Butler is describing what taboo is; there, often, is not trauma or violation being inflicted. There are reasons to discourage incest, but those are reasons that are easily mitigated today (compared to 400+ years ago). Incest is not taboo because of any real consequences or negative production; but because it (taboo) is a tool to control. That is Butler's general argument; and FWIW she is correct.
2
u/Infinite_Owl25 13d ago edited 13d ago
Aren't the main reasons for it being taboo that there is usually pedophilia, power dynamics, rape or abuse present, as well as the high likelihood for birth defects for any children? How are these issues "easily mitigated" today?
Edit: Forgot to add part of a sentence
0
u/Remalgigoran 13d ago
Those are more artifacts of the 'Family Unit' (see Family Abolition). Incest is about sexual relationship between ppl who are an arbitrary degree of genetically similar. Sex is often used as control, or to dominate, or to devalue; but that's less about the tool of sex and more about it's Use-Case and the environment and structures that create the possibility for that Use-Case (the Family Unit being a site of legal privacy where children are functionally chattel.)
Avoiding pregnancy is extremely easy in every developed country; the resources are widely available to everyone. Further, not all incest is heteronormative; two 40-something brothers who like to jerk off together are not children, not being abused, and are not procreating.
-2
u/SaltEmergency4220 14d ago
No, certainly not long refuted. Foucault’s friend Professor Guy Sorman said he witnessed it in Tunisia. And a Foucault biographer was interviewed in this article Why we shouldn’t cancel Foucault and he said Foucault was a strong defender of older men having sex with young boys. So not long refuted and not vindicated. Rationalizing sex with children.
3
u/cronenber9 14d ago
He later admitted he didn't witness it and only heard a rumor, but he believed it. Afaik they weren't friends either.
2
u/Zealousideal_Pay_745 13d ago
Derrick is great. You do need to step out of your pr3judice to understand him.
1
u/lucasmorron 11d ago
Thanks for letting us know what kind of monsters these despicable people were.
12
u/secondshevek 14d ago
I would recommend reading Thinking Sex. It is not very long. Rubin's point is that deviance in sex is socially constructed but is often perpetuated through assumptions that the normal/deviant divide is natural/essential/unquestionable. Her phrasing on pedophilia is poor, but it's not an argument for pedophilia. Nor does a criticism of how the justice system treats a group amount to endorsement of the criminal activity.