Michel Foucault: The Repression Of Human Sexuality
In The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault, a philosopher, historian, and social theorist, established his controversial hypothesis concerning the repression of human sexuality. Foucault’s Repressive Hypothesis states that since the Victorian era, pleasurable expenditures of energy towards human sexuality is spurned against (Foucault 3). As a prominent result of this era, human sexuality was modified to pertain to private and practical matters that should only occur between a husband and wife (37). In his repressive hypothesis, Foucault emphasizes the development of sexual outlets, often through religious confession, where through ars erotica, one’s private eroticism and sexuality identity could be discussed “safely” (57). In theory, sex, except for the purposes of reproduction transpires as taboo. According to Foucault’s hypothesis, the only way to liberate ourselves from sexual repression is to express and vocalize our sexuality (Foucault 8).
In the entirety of this class, I find Foucault’s Repressive Hypothesis fascinating as it correlates to modern sexuality. With the influential division between the physical aspect of sex and the mental component of sexuality, Foucault from my personal bias would still recognize that sex is still private and considered taboo, but human sexuality has become an endless condition. In modern society, sex is talked about openly, undividedly, and often without limitations. If this wasn 't the case, would courses analyzing culture and
Gonad The Barbarian And The Venus Fly Trap Analysis
994 Words | 4 PagesAnne McClintock wrote her essay “Gonad the Barbarian and the Venus Flytrap: Portraying the female and male orgasm” to examine pornography and how it has changed throughout history and its effects on how women perform as sexual beings. McClintock focuses on the various roles of pornography such as its emphasis on voyeurism, pleasure, and the male ego. She wants her readers to know that women are still not represented in pornography to satisfy their own desires, but they are there to cater to men and their subconscious. I will analyze how McClintock argues that due to the history of sexism towards women, the roles that men and women have in pornography are inherently different because of the societal belief that women are only seen as objects of sexual desire and are solely there to satisfy the male audience.
Analysis Of Steven Seidman's Revolt Against Sexual Identity
200 Words | 1 PagesTo understand the linkage between sexuality and gender, it is important to reimagine the relationship between sexuality and gender and the rapport they hold with self-identification. Not long ago, sexuality was tied to procreation - becoming the core of one’s identity. Gender had always been tied to biological sex. However, a crisis of gender identity emerged and blurred the gender and sexuality binaries that had become commonplace social facts. A fluidity was created that allowed individuals to not feel the pressure of fitting inside distinct identification categories.
Marie's Struggle With Gender Roles
995 Words | 4 PagesIn addition to Marie’s struggles with gender roles and the way she is forced to rewrite the body, she is constantly conscious of her sexage in terms of the appropriation of the products of her body. Her concerns with sexage are in terms of her tears themselves, rather than her actions within her gift of tears overall. Once her gift of tears first appears, Marie had not yet been ridiculed for her excessive tears. In turn, she allowed the tears to flow “so copiously from her eyes [and] on the floor of the church and plainly showed where she had been walking” (179). For a time, her tears, a product of her body were naturally running down her face, and onto the natural floor of the church, being appropriated by the patriarchal church itself.
The Feminine Mystique: Book Review
1140 Words | 5 PagesThe Feminine Mystique (1963) examines the dehumanizing conditions of middle class American women who were excluded from social and political life to be anchored in their wifely and motherly roles. The book marks the Second Wave of American feminism. Friedan writes, “Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers” (61). This meant that the whole of an American woman’s life was meant to attract and keep her husband and serve his and children’s needs. She deals with this painful ordeal of women and clearly brings out the ennui, unhappiness, and the lack of companionship experienced by women in their marriages.
Michel Foucault's Discourse On Sexuality
785 Words | 4 PagesMICHEL FOUCAULT ON SEXUALITY Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, philologist and social theorist. He made discourses on the relationship between power and knowledge and about how they are utilized as a form of social control through social establishments. This essay talks about Michel Foucault’s discourse on sexuality. He put forward his theory of the history of sexuality.
Michel Foucault's The History Of Sexuality
1413 Words | 6 PagesMichel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality(1976), indicate that the history of sexuality is the history of oppression .The relationship of sex oppression always as power, knowledge and sex. Sex becomes an object to be oppress because it is unproductive in a capitalism society. The bourgeoisie not allow the workers use energy on sex, since workers’ energy is for production.
Summary Of She Is Old School Like That By Lorena Garcia
492 Words | 2 PagesOther readings have discussed the history of sexuality—A history of Latina/o Sexualities. Throughout history, women were supposed to be passive. Women were there to please the man and ofter were viewed as the inferior. Sex was viewed as something that was essential only for reproduction; it was only to be pleasurable during a marriage and through very strict guidelines set by the church. This is still an influential way which women are being treated today.
Analysis Of Alan H. Goldman's 'Plain Sex'
1425 Words | 6 PagesInside and beyond the myth and the social impact of the subject as One or Substance. Alan H. Goldman’s essay ‘Plain Sex’ is a central contribution to the academic debate about sex within the analytic area, which has been developing since the second half of the ‘90s in Western countries. Goldman’s purpose is encouraging debate on the concept of sex without moral, social and cultural implications or superstitious superstructures. He attempts to define “sexual desire” and “sexual activity” in its simplest terms, by discovering the common factor of all sexual events, i.e. “the desire for physical contact with another person’s body and for the pleasure which such contact produces; sexual activity is activity which tends to fulfill such desire of the agent” (Goldman, A., 1977, p 40).
Let's Put Porn Back In The Closet Analysis
188 Words | 1 Pages1. The Susan Brownmiller’s essay “Let’s Put Pornography Back in the Closet” is the debate between the First Amendment and pornography. There are also debates between what is obscene and what is used for educational purposes. Brownmiller believes that “…explicit sexual material has its place in literature, art, science and education” (62). Where literature broadens the mind with its descriptions and illustrations that words paint of the human body, art exposes children to what the human body looks like and satisfies their curiosity.
Foucault's Definition Of Sexuality In Society
901 Words | 4 PagesIt’s a cultural production that represents the appropriation of the human body and of its physiological capacities by an ideological discourse. Sex has no history but sexuality does. French Philosopher Michel Foucault thought that sexuality was, “a set of effects produced in bodies, behaviors, and social relations by a certain deployment.” Sexuality for a person can be narrowed down to what a person is attracted to, their desires, and pleasures. In the article, “Is There a History of Sexuality?”
Female Sexuality In Eliza Haywood's Fantomina
2406 Words | 10 PagesEliza Haywood writes the cautionary tale Fantomina in order to instruct women against pursuing their sexual desires. The protagonist, an unnamed “Lady of distinguished Birth” (41), secretly pursued her desires for Beauplaisir under the guise of four different personas, ultimately leading to the ruin of her reputation and being sent to live in a monastery. I will refer to the main character when she is not disguised as the protagonist to avoid confusion. I will be discussing female sexuality, where I will be focussing on certain aspects including sexual identity, sexual behaviour, and how social and religious aspects affect this sexuality. I will argue that Haywood uses the cautionary tale in order to represent female sexuality as distinguishable
The Purity Myth Analysis
1385 Words | 6 PagesMeanwhile, men are encouraged to express their sexuality and therefore serve as the actors in society. Furthermore, rape culture is reinforced through the media’s images of sexual objectification. As seen on a Duncan Quin
Summary Of Sedgwick's Epistemology Of The Closet
1105 Words | 5 PagesSedgwick abounds in her statement saying that “the appropriate place for the critical analysis to begin is from the relatively decentered perspective of modern gay and antihomophobic theory” (Sedgwick 2008, 1). The prospect of Sedgwick, as it is that of Butler, is to deconstruct the models of thought that Western discourse has imposed upon cultures and individuals. Thus, according to the author, the epistemology of the closet is the: [i]dea that thought itself is structured by homosexual/heterosexual definitions, which damages our ability to think. The homo/hetero binary is a trope for knowledge itself. […] 20th century thought and knowledge is structured–indeed, fractured–by a chronic, now endemic crisis of homo/heterosexual definition […]
Foucault And Identity Analysis
2352 Words | 10 PagesFoucault’s work on asylums and insanity allows for a different and unique take on the evolution of the modern self. In his 1977 work, ‘Discipline and Punish’, Foucault breaks down and analyses the connections that exists between power and knowledge. He examines these connections in relation to those in charge, which due to societal circumstances are deemed in power over the masses as they exert and impress their form of identity onto those over whom they are in control. The social construction of sexuality revitalises an even stronger argument for cultural identity and its link to power and overwhelmingly dominant discourses.
Sociological Perspective On Sexuality
928 Words | 4 PagesSociological Perspectives Sexuality has three assumptions to it 1. Sexuality of members 2. Institutions of society such as family, religion, 3. What is appropriateness or inappropriateness of sexual behavior with in the cultural it occurs in.
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