The letters in favor of eliminating age of consent laws (then set at 15!) and in defense of convicted statutory rapists that most major French intellectuals signed in the 70s are actually an interesting point of comparison with the current brouhaha. A few random observations:

1. That they came together around a cause that seems so grotesque today is a reminder that faddishness and cliquishness among intellectuals are nothing new or specific to the internet age, nor is the fact that this can lead them to adopt positions that seem bizarre to outsiders.

2. That none of them were “canceled” or faced “consequences” for adopting a position that would have scandalized normies reveals that guild protections were much stronger then and that they were insulated from “accountability.” Was this better or worse? I’ll stay neutral on that.

3. One explanation of this fad was that left intellectuals’ antagonists were cultural conservatives who wanted to control sexuality, so all forms of sexual liberation were good. The weakening of this antagonist has made the internal positions of the left far more conflicted now.

4. Intellectuals probably had more outward-facing freedom with a strong, unified guild than they do today, as in they were less vulnerable to attacks from the broader public. Of course the changing mediatic environment has a lot to do with that too...

5. But the internal environment within this guild was no doubt extremely stifling in the ways it pressured members to adopt cliquish orthodoxies, many of which were popular among intellectuals because they were titillating defiances of dull bourgeois opinion.

6. This case is interesting in part because Americans often idealize France as a place that honors strong, independent intellectuals, but here what we see are all of them flocking to an abhorrent-seeming cause: independent of public opinion perhaps, but not of faddish groupthink.