Moral Discourse Of Sex

Similarly discourses of sexuality relate to sex as a moral discourse. Sex became immoral when it was single woman that performed it, and as explained by Fischer (2011, p. 39), “[s]exual behavior is only moral within the institution of heterosexual, monogamous marriage.” For sex to become acceptable it had to be between a heterosexual married couples. This thereby regulates sex as only being acceptable when certain types of people perform it, not actually focusing on the sex act being taken place. For Focault (1990 as cited in Ibid),

This reflects an important historical shift that took place in the 1800s when Western societies became more concerned with conceptualizing behaviour in terms of identities, rather than acts.

In this way, the sexual behaviour of a person conveyed the truth about their

For example, the media promote men and women as inherently different, there are double standards when it comes to sexuality and sex – a male is a ‘stud’ or ‘the man’ when he sleeps with many women, a female is a ‘whore’. Stereotypes regarding femininity and masculinity become recycled and to act any other way is seen as arbitrary. Similarly, the Church promotes the idea of remaining abstinent until marriage, and has not acknowledged gay marriage as a choice for same-sex couples to have. These dominant groups therefore make it harder for subordinate groups to think outside of the discourses being promoted, as they have become regulated to the public as the ‘truth’. This thereby reinforces ideologies of femininity and female sexuality. However the media, state, Church, public etc. has always scrutinized female sexuality and sex in history since the Bible. A virgin was first described as being independent, “But later Christian translators could not conceive of the ‘Virgin Mary’ as a woman of independent sexuality, needless to say; they distorted the meaning into sexually pure, chaste, never touched,” (Sjoo 1991, p.