“One day in 1867, a farm hand from the village of Lapcourt, who was
somewhat simple-minded, employed here then there, depending on the
season, living hand to mouth from a little charity or in exchange for
the worst sort of labor, sleeping in barns and stables, was turned in to
the authorities. At the border of a field, he had obtained a few
caresses from a little girl, just as he had done before and seen done by
the village urchins round about him; for, at the edge of the wood, or
in the ditch by the road leading to Saint-Nicolas, they would play the
familiar game called “curdled milk.” So he was pointed out by the
girl’s parents to the mayor of the village, reported by the mayor to the
gendarmes, led by the gendarmes to the judge, who indicted him and
turned him over first to a doctor, then to two other experts who not
only wrote their report but also had it publishsed. What is the
significant thing about this story? The pettiness of it all; the fact
that this everday occurrence in the life of village sexuality, the
inconsequential bucolic pleasures, could become from a certain time, the
object not only of a collective intolerance but of a judicial action, a
medical intervention, a careful clinical examination, and an entire
theoretical elaboration“–Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality I
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