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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27522 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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Here is a quick rundown of some infamous 20th century French philosophers

Queer-theory jeopardy

Some videos of French intellectuals going on TV to celebrate having sex with children/teenagers.

An undergraduate paper on the subject

One excerpt of interest p35:

As sexuality—feminine, homosexual, and otherwise—coursed through public discourse in the early 1970s, a group of men styling themselves as twentieth century Marquise de Sades or Dom Jauns began to publish pedophilic literature and receive recognition in literary circles. These men—Tony Duvert and Gabriel Matzneff—were both little known writers before they made their careers between 1973 and 1975 releasing celebrated novels and essays that described affairs with minors in detail. Matzneff’s Les moins de seize ans (The Under Sixteens) lauds sex with adolescents as an act of sexual liberation to protest the moral order and publishes letters from his young lovers as proof of their enjoyment.

Matzneff was welcomed on the television show Apostrophes in 1975 to promote the book and articulate an ethics of individual development that arose out of the sex lives of minors. For him, the “strength and novelty of the affective and sexual impulses” of “children between ten and sixteen” opened a “fertile” field of sexual possibilities—both with people of their own age or an older lover—that would allow them to “discover themselves, the beauty and richness of the world and its creation.”

Is any of this supposed to contradict what I said in my last post?

There are pedophiles everywhere. You know the arguments: The plural of "anecdote" isn't data. Chinese Robber Fallacy, etc.

There are a lot fewer proud pedophiles selling diaries of their titillating pedophile adventures on French TV (or any other TV as far as I know) today than in the 70s.

Who do you see on this list of 'mixed-age sex' supporters ?

Perhaps you were trying to get with a philosophy/sociology major and you've heard of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Louis Aragon, Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre?

Who I do not see are people like Alain de Benoist, considered influential with the alt-right movement in the United States. Or his buddies Jean-Yves Le Gallou, Yvan Blot, and Henry de Lesquen.

I was on the fence on the question of whether you're some alt-right alt, but I think you managed to convince me in a single line, thanks!

Oh, I believe some are, the opposite would be surprising. But as you say, antisemites are stupid, their opinions tired and not worth discussing. But there's always some guy trying to bring them up.

I don't think I could really say much better than what @Goodguy has said in response to you. Go talk to him.

But I'll say one more thing, less directed to you than to all of the Mottezians who just loooove to spend all their time all day thinking about how much the left is full of pedophiles who can't wait to start molesting kids:
Do you know how irritating it is to have to defend a group of people whom you despise, against people who also despise those people but despise them for stupid reasons? People who want to think the left is full of pedophiles and therefore should be hated for that reason are watering down actual arguments against leftists. There's plenty of reasons to be against the left. Your efforts are better spent on those causes, and will do more to hinder leftism than this pedophilia bent.

Thank you for saying it.

The part that frustrates me is that “watering down” isn’t necessarily true. Weak men are superweapons, and all that. They just…don’t belong here.

You’re doing God’s work.

But I'll say one more thing, less directed to you than to all of the Mottezians who just loooove to spend all their time all day thinking about how much the left is full of pedophiles who can't wait to start molesting kids:

I don't know man. It seems like you aren't responding to what people are actually posting.

I tried to steelman HP0 talking about how the left of the 1970s did sometimes celebrate pedophilia. But I explicitly said that the modern left does not.

You ignored the modern part, and tried to defend the 1970s left with a "few bad apples" and "both sides" argument that as @PierreMenard has pointed out doesn't bear weight.

Why not just admit that, yeah, some 1970s leftist intellectuals believed it was sophisticated and cool to have sex with teenagers? Unlike Catholic priests or whatever, they weren't flawed sinners who slipped up. They thought what they were doing was a Good Thing. This is a legit difference between the left and the right at the time.

None of this makes HP0 less vile, it doesn't make him right about anything, and it doesn't really have much of an impact on the modern culture war except by insinuation. But the limited point still stands.

You ignored the modern part, and tried to defend the 1970s left

I'm not really interested in arguing about the 1970s left without connection to the modern left, tbh, I simply have little interest in the subject. But look at the timestamps and you'll see that your caveat of

Furthermore, I am not talking about the modern-left

Came after the post you just replied to.

Just to add another perspective (also I usually align closer with jeroboam than you, but I hope I have displayed enough neutrality in prior conversation with you that you won't consider this solely motivated reasoning): It seemed obvious to me that jeroboam was only saying that the left of yesteryear had some fascination with pedophiles. So your defensive replies looked like denial at best and gaslighting at worst. I understand what you meant now, but that was my initial impression.

People who want to think the left is full of pedophiles and therefore should be hated for that reason are watering down actual arguments against leftists.

This is not my argument.

My argument was that :

1- major leftist intellectuals of the 70s, during which the infamous Sexual Revolution was proclaimed, were either pedophiles or very close friends with open pedophiles (kid-diddling diary-publishing kind of open pedophiles)

2- these people and their students are still quoted, studied in humanities departments all over the West producing the rank-and-file of the regime, among which some of the people you will (have to) trust your children to

If a guy was showing you his vacation pictures in bed with children in Thailand and then persuasively told you to essentially blow up all existing rules in your society because 'dude Christianity is so oppressive and man parents can't tell you what to do'.

Would you do it?

This is apparently more or less what happened to several Western countries in the 70s.

Shows bad the pre-Sexual Revolution society was to many people they'd put up with the weirdos.

But, do you think Led Zeppelin, Rick Springfield, and the dozens of other popular mainstream artists, actors, and such who engaged in what were the time, consensual relationships with teenage girls should have their records banned, and so forth, like you want to do with these intellectuals? Like, Robert Plant being a bit of scumbag doesn't make him a worse singer and many of these intellectuals have good arguments despite their preference for young teenage girls.

Shows bad the pre-Sexual Revolution society was to many people they'd put up with the weirdos.

Luckily the whole thing is going down the drain. Thanks to the Sexual Revolution, the whole mistake of a Western civilization is just going away.

The legacy of the 70s is Oblivion. BUH-BYE

But, do you think Led Zeppelin, Rick Springfield, and the dozens of other popular mainstream artists, actors, and such who engaged in what were the time, consensual relationships with teenage girls should have their records banned, and so forth, like you want to do with these intellectuals?

Their records banned? Try all records. Only the calls of the muezzins should remain

Only the calls of the muezzins should remain

In fairness, some of those nasheeds legitimately slap.

Does it?

Or maybe a movement that formed around making excuses for garbage people is going to attract garbage people.

A bunch of ancient Greeks liked having sex with boys. Does that mean that all ancient Greek social/political/economic views are suspect?

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson held people captive and forced them to work by threat of violence. Does that mean that all of their social/political/economic views are suspect?

I agree with you broadly but:

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson held people captive and forced them to work by threat of violence. Does that mean all of their social/political/economic views are suspect as a result?

I have absolutely encountered people making basically this argument.

Sure, but I think that they are wrong. And I think that the same argument, but used against leftists, is also wrong.

No, not necessarily, unless we're talking specifically about social/political/economical views regarding sexual mores. ie you can make a reasonable argument that somebody supports importing enslaved young boys because they have a history of pursuing having sex with young boys

In the case of these French leftists, we have a combination of people who advocated changing French laws regarding the age of consent/sexuality in general and people who were going on vacation to Tunisia or other foreign countries to have sex with young boys (and girls).

In some cases, some of these people explicitly argued that they wanted an existing oppressive social and legal system changed in order to make it more convenient and less risky to fulfill their sexual desires. This ended up being called the Sexual Revolution.

My point is that it makes no sense to say that leftism as a whole is suspect because some leftists are pedophiles.

As for the Sexual Revolution specifically, I am sure that you could have removed every single leftist pedophile who existed back then and the Sexual Revolution would still have happened almost entirely the same as it actually happened historically.

My point is that it makes no sense to say that leftism as a whole is suspect because some leftists are pedophiles.

Well you've successfully defeated the argument that I was not making, thank you for correcting the record.

As for the Sexual Revolution specifically, I am sure that you could have removed every single leftist pedophile who existed back then and the Sexual Revolution would still have happened almost entirely the same as it actually happened historically.

Of course if you only remove the pedophiles you're not resolving 100% of the issue. If American universities started purging pro-pedophile thinkers from their programs like European institutions Russian-related material after 2022, there would be a lot less progressive propaganda going around.

As the meme goes, 'first they came for the pedophiles, and I did not speak out, because I was not a pedophile...'

'(...) then they stopped coming because every problem had basically been resolved'.

Well you've successfully defeated the argument that I was not making, thank you for correcting the record.

Yes, but my comment was addressing the arguments being debated in this thread as a whole, not just your particular comment.

Regarding your particular comment, I thought that you were implying that pedophile leftists were the main driving force behind the Sexual Revolution. If I misunderstood that, then my apologies.

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