We "Other Victorians"

Michel Foucault: The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1

Our attitude toward sex was not always one of repression. Sexual practices during the XVIII were considerably more open and tolerant regarding what we now deem illicit behavior. Sexuality was only confined during the Victorian Era, where it was associated with family and procreation. Sex became a matter of reproduction, kept within the walls of the marital bedroom and dominated by an aura of secrecy. Children were, despite all evidence to the contrary, considered unsexed. Thus, sex was non-existent, since it was not uttered.

What is unclear to Foucault is whether speaking about sex is an act of liberation or merely nurturing the repressive system itself. Indeed, by speaking against it, one only engages in a power struggle in the same terms of repression. -->Indeed, it seems minorities are empowered through sexual discourse. Foucault criticizes Freud for his medical, scientific approach to sexuality, which guaranteed him to remain in the realm of social acceptance. --> Sexology is also an attempt to "legitimize" speaking of sex, put in terms that are less shocking by making it acceptable by using the suffix "logos", or "knowledge".

Repression is the historical link between sexuality, power, politics and knowledge. Sexuality is repressed because it goes against the intensive work imperative (-->Marxist claim associated with his participation in the Communist Party): we should waste less time on sex and be more productive. -->Speaking of sex is kept within the confinements of religion (we tell our preacher of our sexual frailties), psychology (in the form of a patient-therapist relationship). --> We pay to speak of sex. The discourse of sex in the end promises a new day to come, finding truth, a promise of happiness.

Why speak of sex? Society is hypocritical: through sexual discourse it expects to free itself from the laws that make it work. Saying one is repressed is contradictory.

Foucault's three main concerns are the following:

a. Is sexual repression truly a fact?
b. Do the manifestations of power really belong to the category of repression?
c. Does sexual discourse oppose the established power structures or is it "part of the same historical network as the thing it denounces"?

In other words, the goal is to "define the regime of power-knowledge-pleasure that sustains the discourse on human sexuality in our part of the world". Who is speaking? From which viewpoint do they speak? Which institutions prompt people to speak? Who has the power to do so and how is it done?