Tony Duvert (1945–2008)

This book has a smart form, in which Duvert dismantles the moralist arguments of a French sex education text. The sex education texts' proclamations are off putting if not revolting by the standards of today (sex is primarily for procreation, masturbation is pathological, women are overly sensual creatures who are destined to be mothers, all men should be fathers). Duvert delivers sharp jabs at the hypocrisies and prejudices of the text, but takes his distaste even further and argues two points. First, that the familial order is a tool of the oppressive capitalist power structure designed to create children (labor machines) who are diligent and free from useless if not harmful distraction (pleasure). Second, Duvert argues that freeing the sexuality of minors would serve to destabilize capitalist oppression. By this, he means not only that frisky teenagers should be allowed to have sex with each other, but that children should be allowed to engage in sexual play with themselves, other children, and perhaps even adults.

This latter point is shocking, but barely emphasized. That is perhaps good for the overall credibility of the text, being that it makes valid and important arguments that are relevant even today. This lack of emphasis on such a point however calls its validity to question, though many would argue that such an argument is invalid outright in terms of morals and ethics. If the father has ownership over the child, Duvert argues, then we could see cases of familial abuse both violent and sexual as symptomatic of capitalist oppression. Duvert argues, though, that for a child to engage (or be engaged) sexually by a stranger threatens the father's role. I am more inclined to believe that it mirrors it, that it represents a vying for property and a need to dominate. I don't think sexuality between adults and chidren, especially when so many people view children as innocent, can be enacted outside the influence of that capitalist framework. Children are viewed as property not only by family, but by adults at large.

Despite this one shaky and somewhat unsettling argument, the text is well crafted and fires off a barrage of valid points and compelling arguments against the insidious dangers of the liberal "sex education" that apply to the phenomena even as it exists today in France or America or any middle class hub. In revealing sexuality, these liberal educators reveal instead a doctrine that is entrenched in sexism, classism, and moral dogma.… (más)

The only novel by Tony Duvert presently available in English is in part a pornographic diary of the narrator's sexual exploits with adolescent boys, but it also functions as a critique of the bourgeoisie and an attack on the formulation of the family in modern capitalist society. Duvert's sexual libertinism with boys that are waifs and impoverished hustlers functions as an extreme and outlying model of rebellion against the capitalist machinations of the family that cultivate children as workhorses with the stinging whip of morality. In between blowjobs, rimming, and philosophical diatribes rest memorable descriptions of the subdued beauty of peasant boys and ravaged colonial houses in which the narrator stews and ruminates. This is a difficult and at times unsettling novel, but beneath whatever readers may find unnerving or objectionable is a blistering indictment of heteronormativity, middle class values, and bourgeois hypocrisy.… (más)