Tracing the Malign Push to Normalize Adult-Child Sex
Commentary
In my youth, sexual abuse of children was a little understood and never publicly discussed phenomenon. Pedophiles were considered to be deviants of the worst kind, in no way associated with “respectable” society or “decent” people.
But in the 1970s, the veil of our ignorance was lifted by the open flirtation of far-left ideologues with the normalization of pedophilia (sex with prepubescent children) and hebephilia (sex with children aged 11 to 14).
Last January, a French woman, Vanessa Springora, launched a memoir, “Le Consentement,” in which she recounted her seduction by celebrated writer Gabriel Matzneff when she was 14 and he was 50. In what has been termed France’s #MeToo moment, Springora’s book has cast an unflattering light on the country’s literary environment, described as “male chauvinist, quite misogynistic, and which stays silent — omertà.”