French petitions against age of consent laws

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Between 1977 and 1979, while a change in the French Penal Code was under discussion in the Parliament, a number of French intellectuals, including prominent names, signed petitions and open letters defending either the abolition of age of consent laws or the release of individuals arrested under charges of statutory rape.

Contents

[edit] 1977 petition addressed to the Parliament

In 1977, a petion was addressed to the parliament calling for the abrogation of several articles of the age-of-consent law and the decriminalization of all consented relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen (the age of consent in France).

The document was signed by the philosophers Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and André Glucksmann, by the philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes, by the novelist/gay activist Guy Hocquenghem, the actor/play-writer/jurist Jean Danet, the writer and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet (elected in 2004 a member of the Académie Française), the writer Philippe Sollers, the pediatrician and child psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto and also by people belonging to a wide range of political positions. [1]

[edit] 1977 petition to the Parliament - List of signatures

[edit] 1978 radio conversation between Foucault, Hocquenghem and Danet

Main article: Sexual Morality and the Law

On April 4, 1978, an extensive conversation detailing the reasons for their pro-abolition positions was broadcast by radio France Culture in the program "Dialogues". The participants, Michel Foucault, Jean Danet and Guy Hocquenghem, had all signed the 1977 petition, along with other intellectuals.[3]

They believed that the penal system was replacing the punishment of criminal acts by the creation of the figure of the individual dangerous to society (regardless of any actual crime), and predicted that a society of dangers would come. They also have defined the idea of legal consent as a contractual notion and a ‘trap’, once ‘no one makes a contract before making love’. [4] The conversation has been published as “Sexual Morality and the Law” and later reprinted as “The Danger of Child Sexuality”.

[edit] Open letters published in French newspapers

[edit] Le Monde – January 26, 1977

An open letter was published in Le Monde, on the eve of the trial of three Frenchmen, (Bernard Dejager, Jean-Claude Gallien, and Jean Burckardt), all accused of having sex with 13 and 14 year old girls and boys. Two of them had then been in temporary custody since 1973 and the letter referred to this fact as scandalous.

The letter was signed by 69 people, including Jack Lang (who later served as France’s Minister of Culture and Minister of Education), Bernard Kouchner (who has been France’s Minister of Health and co-founder of Doctors Without Borders), Michel Bon (formerly CEO and Chairman of Carrefour and of France Télécom and now President of the Pasteur Institute), and public intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, André Glucksmann and Guy Hocquenghem, along with 9 specialists – 5 psychiatrists, 1 doctor, 1 psychologist, 1 psychoanalyst, and 1 social scientist. [5] [6] [7] [8]

The document claimed there was a disproportion between the qualification of their acts as a crime and the nature of the reproached acts, and also a contradiction once adolescents in France were fully responsible for their acts from the age of 13. The text also pointed out that if 13 year old girls in France had the right to receive the pill so they should be able to consent. [9] [10]

[edit] Le Monde – Complete list of 69 signatures

The complete list of names follows:

The specific signature of writer Gabriel Matzneff in the petition may be seen as a result of bias, once he is a self-proclaimed post-pubescent adolescent girl lover. [11]

[edit] Libération – March, 1979

A similar, but more polemical letter was published in the paper Libération in 1979, supporting Gérard R., an accused child sex criminal awaiting his trial for eighteen months, signed by 63 persons, including Pascal Bruckner, Georges Moustaki, and Christiane Rochefort. The letter says that Gérard R. lived with young girls aged 6 to 12, "whose blooming shows before the eyes of all, including their parents, the happiness that they found with him". The letter was later reproduced in the paper L’Express, in the issue of March 7, 2001. [12] Other than Christiane Rochefort, it is not recorded that any of the signatories of the 1977 letter also signed the 1979 letter, or that they were aware of it.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Foucault, Hocquenghem and Danet are referenced several times as petitioners in the Michel Foucault’s text “Sexual Morality and the Law” (see online version in English). The name of Françoise Dolto and the term “people belonging to a wide range of political positions” are mentioned on page 273 (see also the online version in English). The names of philosophers Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser and André Glucksmann come from the Dignaction.org website (in French). Finally, the names of philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Roland Barthes, as well as of the writers Alain Robbe-Grillet and Philippe Sollers, come from the Denistouret.net website (also in French).
  2. ^ The term “people belonging to a wide range of political positions” is mentioned on page 273 of Foucault’s text, Sexual Morality and the Law, Chapter 16 of Politics, Philosophy, Culture –Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984. Edited by Lawrence D. Krizman. New York/London: 1988, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-90082-4 (see also the online version in English)
  3. ^ Foucault, Hocquenghem and Danet are referenced several times as petitioners in the Michel Foucault’s text “Sexual Morality and the Law” (see online version in English). The name of Françoise Dolto and the term “people belonging to a wide range of political positions” are mentioned on page 273 (see also the online version in English). The names of philosophers Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser and André Glucksmann come from the Dignaction.org website (in French). Finally, the names of philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Roland Barthes, as well as of the writers Alain Robbe-Grillet and Philippe Sollers, come from the Denistouret.net website (also in French).
  4. ^ FOUCAULT, Michel. Politics, Philosophy, Culture –Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984. Edited by Lawrence D. Krizman. New York / London: 1988, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-90082-4. Chapter 16, Sexual Morality and the Law, pp. 271-285. See page 285 or Online version.
  5. ^ 1977 Le Monde petition - text and signatures (in English)
  6. ^ 1977-1979 petitions and signatures (in French)
  7. ^ 1977 Le Monde petition (in French) (lists some of the signatures, see item 6)
  8. ^ 1977 Le Monde petition - list of signatures (in Italian)
  9. ^ 1977 Le Monde petition - text and signatures (in English)
  10. ^ 1977-1979 petitions and signatures (in French)
  11. ^ Gabriel Matzneff's official site
  12. ^ 1977-1979 petitions and signatures (in French)

[edit] References

[edit] In English

  • FOUCAULT, Michel. Politics, Philosophy, Culture –Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984. Edited by Lawrence D. Krizman. New York / London: 1988, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-90082-4. Chapter 16, Sexual Morality and the Law, pp. 271-285. The 1977 petition to the Parliament is mentioned on pages 272-273.

[edit] In French

  • NOTE: The website Dignaction.org seems to present a more neutral and non-biased point-of-view with respect to the 1977-1979 French petitions, trying not to judge them or their signatories (the title of the page in the navigation bar is “Equivocated petitions, or not”), while on the other side Robert Ménard in the website Denistouret.net sees with guilt the alleged “mistakes” of a “whole generation”, treating all the 1977-1979 petitions as if they were equal, and associating them with some controversial passages of Le Grand Bazar, a book written by Daniel Cohn-Bendit and published in 1975 by Éditions Belfond. A carelessly written sentence of the book led to false accusations of pedophilia for Bendit, in the context of a political campaign in 2001. Daniel Cohn-Bendit (now an European MP) was one of the lead participants of the May 1968 movement in France, as well as many of the intellectual petitioners, but it is not recorded if Bendit himself has signed any of the 1977-1979 petitions.

[edit] In Italian

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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