Simone de Beauvoir — a pedophilia supporter?

26 Jan, 2020 at 17:08 | Posted in Politics & Society | 3 Comments

It has to be said that Beauvoir’s interest in these matters was not purely theoretical … She was dismissed from her teaching job in 1943 for “behavior leading to the corruption of a minor.” The minor in question was one of her pupils at a Paris lycée. It is well established that she and Jean-Paul Sartre developed a pattern, which they called the “trio,” in which Beauvoir would seduce her students and then pass them on to Sartre …

Beauvoir’s “Lolita Syndrome” … offers an evangelical defence of the sexual emancipation of the young … Beauvoir posits Bardot as the incarnation of “authenticity” and natural, pure “desire,” with “aggressive” sexuality devoid of any hypocrisy. The author of “The Second Sex” is keen to stress sexual equality and autonomy, but she also insists on the “charms of the ‘nymph’ in whom the fearsome image of the wife and the mother is not yet visible.”

Andy Martin/New York Times