An open letter supporting the decriminalisation of sex between minors and adults was published in Le Mondein 1977, signed by eminent psychoanalysts, philosophers and writers including Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, André Glucksmann, and Louis Aragon. They argued against the detention of three men awaiting trial for sex with minors because the children were consenting, not “in any way” victims of violence. The organiser of the letter was Gabriel Matzneff, an author celebrated for his paedophilic novels...
Matzneff, lionised for decades by the French establishment, is at 84 said to be in hiding in Italy, his books withdrawn by his publisher. Patriarchal literary France is shamed. Consent, rapier-sharp, written with restraint, elegance and brevity — and beautifully translated — has done what it set out to do. I hope it helped her to write it.