Let's Talk about Sex...

In History of Sexuality (1990), Foucault charts the analytics of power surrounding sex and how sex has become a scientia sexualis in Western culture. Foucault details how instead of the usual belief that our society was once sexually repressed in the olden days and is now becoming more sexually liberated, it is in fact trapped in the power of discourse that has relegated sex to a dangerous secret that everyone knows about. Since we could not talk about sex directly, we could only justify talking about it in terms of it as a medical problem – “perversions” such as masturbation, the hysterical woman and homosexuality.

How can we use Foucault’s History on Sexuality as a heuristic device to understand contemporary matters related to sex and power? His argument seems most easily related to questions connected to feminism and homosexuality. Based off this work, where would a Foucauldian analysis of issues such as rape, abortion, female genital mutilation (FGM) and gay marriage lead us exactly?

To me, it seemed like an interesting gap that Foucault did not talk about rape when talking about sex and power. Rape is power transformed into sexual violence – it has been used as a strategy of warfare, an exercise of dominance. Would Foucault view rape as such? Or am I not heeding Foucault’s advice to break away from the agency of sex and instead again falling for the repression hypothesis? Am I only thinking of sex “in terms of law, prohibition, liberty and sovereignty” (90)? In order to avoid this problem, Foucault suggests that we focus instead on “bodies and pleasures”, but how is that possible when dealing with a subject like rape (157)?

Take the example of the “simple-minded” farmhand who paid little girls for sexual favors (or “inconsequential bucolic pleasures” according to Foucault), and who was then shipped off to a psychiatric institution to be “studied” (31). Foucault seemed to be a bit saddened about the farmhand’s fate and used this as an instance of how the state controls sex as a scientific subject. While I do think that there is some truth to how sexual “perversions” have been controlled by institutions of knowledge and power, I still think I would see the farmhand as committing statutory rape – a perspective that Foucault did not seem to address. However, even as I write it out, I realize that the definition of statutory rape was created by the state – so am I still falling into the trap of imbuing sex with a repressive power? If that is the case, does that mean that we should only view rape as an act of violence, and completely separated from sexuality? Isn’t such a view problematic?

Continuing on this idea of sex, power and women, is the controversy over abortion a sign of how the state and parts of the public wish to exercise control over a woman’s body? What about FGM – is this a cultural practice or another form of power wielded over women to manage their bodies, sexuality and their ability to experience pleasure? FGM is sometimes promoted by women themselves – is this an example of how power and sex has been diffused throughout discourse so that it has become internalized?

Can we view Foucault’s discussion on how the political economy of population became a dominant aspect of the discourse around sex – to be controlled, monitored, and kept within the realm of the mother-father bedroom – as one of the reasons why gay marriage is still struggling to be legal in the States? If masturbation is a problem because the solitary pleasure does not lead to babies, then that argument could be extended to gay marriage, for if sex is for procreation only, then same sex relationships do not fit the bill. But what would Foucault think about the gay rights movement in general? If we take the view that the movement is operating on a platform of sexual orientation, is it in fact “part of the same historical network as the thing it denounces (and doubtless misrepresents) by calling it ‘repression’?” (10). In a sense, is the movement using the same language that tried to repress it in the first place?

As you can see, I have a lot of questions about Foucault’s analysis of power, sex and discourse. While at first the idea that power is a pervasive force throughout society is a compelling one, when trying to see how I can free myself from this repressive idea of sex, especially when it came to rape, I found myself more confused than illuminated.