CRITICAL STUDIES ARE NORMATIVE PER SE.

Let's open with a methodological point.

It's likely, dear reader, that while you are reading this, somewhere there is an economics class going on where the professor is explaining the distinction between "positive" and "normative" modes of analysis.  Shorter form: an intellectually coherent explanation of a phenomenon ought not be honored as a justification for that phenomenon.

Thus, in economics, we might start with the premise that people act in what they perceive to be their best interests, and as a consequence, people with more valuable skills get paid more.  But an ethical professor will counsel students that it is in no way proper to run around arguing that people should act in what they understand their best interests to be, or that people should be paid the value of their marginal products.  And we get a lot of mileage over figuring out whether we get better explanatory power out of pushing models based on those assumptions further into the anomalies, or whether relaxing some of those assumptions (endowment effects, hysteresis, sunk costs matter) is more useful.  But then the behavioral economists who like to work from those revised assumptions have a tendency to get normative too fast, to their discredit.

I offer that prologue by way of introducing a caution.  Note, in higher education, how changing the terminology by which we understand intellectual capability from categories like "educable mentally retarded" and "profoundly retarded" and "feeble-minded" to "intellectually challenged" or the catch-all "differently abled" might have taken some of the sting out of calling attention to a person's intellectual talents, and at the same time, it might have enabled the continued infusion of special education into what used to be higher education, in a way that isn't turning out well.

Now I turn to a recent Eugene Volokh column suggesting that Old Dominion's Allyn Walker wishing to distinguish "minor-attracted people" from "pedophiles" might be academic freedom in action.

Studying people who are attracted to minors is clearly protected by academic freedom principles, and is indeed important to figuring out ways to prevent them from acting on these impulses. It seems likely that there are many millions of people like that; whether we want to change their attraction (if that's even possible) or just to get them not to act on that attraction, we need to study them and to study what allows some of them to resist their impulses.

Many adults, after all, resist their sexual impulses; adults who might prefer having multiple sexual partners, or who fantasize about multiple sexual partners, nonetheless remain faithful to their spouses. Many adults who are deeply attracted to someone with whom they know they shouldn't be sexually involved resist such temptations. Many priests or monks or nuns who have normal sexual interests in others resist that attraction because they believe that abstinence from sex is part of their religious calling.

Perhaps this is possible for adults who are attracted to children (I certainly hope it is). Perhaps it's not. But only being open to seriously studying this, including in ways that morally condemn only people who act on their attraction and not those who merely feel the attraction, can help us figure that out.

Yes, although once Student Affairs gets involved, terminology that might be specific to the discourse practice of abnormal psychology or sociology becomes mandatory.  That's the same way the priors of critical race theory become the training points of the diversity office.  "First, you take the stigma away from the attitude, then to take the stigma away from acting on the attitude."

If that isn't enough for one day, have a look at this.

Mad-positive pedagogy works by addressing and countering the ableism and sanism that is rampant within university practices and systems. For instance, some universities have begun offering Mad Studies, which aims to question what society takes for granted about mental illness.

Trauma-informed pedagogy takes an intersectional approach at recognizing different types of traumas and stresses that range from pandemic-related trauma, historical trauma, individual, community, and other types of general stressors.

That's making quite the jump from positive (attempting to understand the consequences of teaching as if all students are normal) to normative (requiring the faculty to add more special-education to their skill set.)  Oh, and teach five classes of even more Distressed Material, and keep your research current, and don't bother asking for a pay raise.

The logic bomb will detonate.