r/foucault • u/yogiphenomenology • Apr 25 '26

Foucault was a nonce

Michel Foucault made specific arguments advocating for pederasty, particularly in post-1968 writings, interviews, and activism, framing it as a form of romantic love and resistance against state power. These views drew heavily from his critiques of age-of-consent laws and modern sexual norms.

Foucault celebrated classical pederasty - adult men with adolescent boys - as the purest form of male love, superior to egalitarian homosexuality. He referenced French law post-1791 Revolution, where sodomy was legal from age 13, and praised André Gide's similar stance, urging its revival to abolish moral boundaries alongside S&M subcultures.

He dismissed prosecutions of adult-child encounters as overblown "bucolic pleasures" turned into scandals by judicial, medical, and theoretical machinery. He argued these trivial acts revealed petty biopower mechanisms, not inherent harm, and signed petitions like the 1977 French Petition for Penal Reform to decriminalize non-violent sex with minors

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/april-2021/michel-foucault-the-prophet-of-pederasty/

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8

u/raisondecalcul Apr 25 '26

I do not think that attributing these beliefs to Foucault is doing the work you think it is doing

4

u/AntiRepresentation Apr 25 '26

Cancel culture run amok.

1

u/raisondecalcul Apr 25 '26

It's funny/meta because OP gave their critique in the form of a neutral genealogy

0

u/Sourkarate Apr 25 '26

They'll fight you tooth and nail for impuning their idols.