(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) In a rediscovered Zoom interview, Canadian univeristy professor Rachel Hope Cleves explained her disgust for the term “pedophilia,” instead describing the abuse of children as “intergenerational sex.”
She also claimed that calling victims of sexual abuse “survivors” was incorrect, according to the Daily Caller.
In a talk on her biography on pedophile writer Norman Douglas, @uvic professor Rachel Hope Cleves described pederasty as "intergenerational sex" and says she won't use the discourse of "survivors or necessarily abuse."
Douglas was charged with raping 10-year-old children pic.twitter.com/MSu6siE3rm
— Cosmin Dzsurdzsa 🇷🇴 (@cosminDZS) March 21, 2023
In the November 2020 interview—hosted by the Chicago University Press—Cleves promoted her newly published biography of British author and convicted pedophile Norman Douglas.
“I felt like that contemporary language would have made it impossible really for us to reckon with this prior historical system,” Cleves said, suggesting that the modern-day concept of pedophilia did not exist in early 20th-century, post-Victorian England.
“So I do talk about intergenerational sex, to get to this terminology question,” she continued. “This is a contentious term because by the standards of our time—we don’t see any possibility for sex between adults and children; we see it as rape, and not following within the framework of sex and sexuality.”
Cleves argued that Douglas’s “alleged crime” was not pedophilia, but simply the exploitation of power structures—an idea itself based on the work of pedophile philosopher Michel Foucault, whose writings also informed the Marxist-oriented Critical Race Theory and other controversial concepts in leftist orthodoxy.
While laughing, Cleves described Douglas as constantly bragging about his relations with children “on the cusp of puberty,” and his preference for boys between the ages of 10-12.
Douglas also “made fun of” the children he assaulted in his books. She claimed the references were meant to be “titillating” and enlightening to readers about “a very common type of sex in that time period.”
With a smile on her face she describes how accounts of pederasty from the period were meant to be "titillating" and how Douglas "made fun of" the children he raped in his books. pic.twitter.com/Y73LLxIC6c
— Cosmin Dzsurdzsa 🇷🇴 (@cosminDZS) March 21, 2023
Although the radical Left has been at the forefront of the current child-grooming movement, which seeks to sexualize elementary-school students and normalize practices once considered to be sexual deviancy, Cleves’s support even appeared to cross party lines.
In 2017, she published an article in defense of Judge Roy Moore, the Alamaba Senate candidate who ran as a Republican to replace then-newly appointed Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
During the campaign, Moore was accused of several sexual attacks against young girls. However, Cleves insisted that even if the allegations were true, Moore was not a pedophile, per se.
“Moore’s alleged crime was not a sexual orientation toward children,” wrote Cleves and her co-author, Kansas University professor Nicholas L. Syrett. “It was his willingness to exploit the unequal power structures of gender and age to victimize young girls who couldn’t stand up to him.”
By such standards, only the act of exploitation itself might be considered illegal, paving the way for consensual sex—or less egregious offenses, such as the possession of child pornography—to gain popular acceptance.
Cleves is a professor of History at the University of Victoria, but is currently on leave for unknown reasons.
She recently penned an article for the Washington Post that claimed Republicans are rejecting historical patterns by banning drag events in order to protect children.
