Foucault History Of Sexuality Analysis

In Foucault’s History of Sexuality, it elaborates on the history of the repression of sex and the way we look at it. Foucault thinks that people started to think bad of sex during the 17th century when the “bourgeois society” or the middleclass came into power. Then during the Victorian Age sex become a huge secret to everyone, it was meant to be kept in the bedroom between a man and a woman. The only purpose for sex was to reproduce, other than that it was suppose to be nonexistence. During this period many people wanted to keep it under control: “imposed silence, Censorship.” Foucault goes on to explain how people were so prude that people were afraid to actually say the word sex. Another big topic in this article was children sexuality,

It has become a negative topic to talk about, everyone started to sexualize their bodies and become more ashamed of it. As Foucault examples, “when anatomies were shown and intermingled at will, and knowing children hung about amid the laughter of adults: it was a period when bodies ‘made a display of themselves.’” Even though in the beginning of the 17th century people still talked freely about their bodies, it was not though of as bad or negative because it was not sexualized. People were free because as he explains, skin is just flesh there is nothing to hide or even sexualize. Yet, soon repression was used to silence pleasure and desires, and having sex outside of marriage or reproduce was not

Foucault explains that if more people would talk about sex it would only get better and not be as repressed as it is now. Since before people who talked about it, it was not such a big deal and it was not treated as it was now. As stated in the article “Tomorrow sex will be good again” here he is talking about how it will be good in terms that no one will be afraid to talk about it and the negative effects of sex will be gone. Foucault thinks that the more we talk about it, we will go against the repression and finally begin to enjoy