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Assignment 07

In Foucault’s History of Sex he talks about how sex was related to pleasure and how it was suppressed throughout history. Foucault makes us look at this from different angles and aspects. He starts off with discussing the Victorian era where sex was considered a taboo, if one wanted to talk said subject it was best to do so away from the public ear. The young were forbidden to come anywhere near anything that was considered sexual both physically and mentally. Sex was contained and in a sense the people’s right to pleasure was also taken away. The only placed where one could truly let out his/her sexual desires or talk about sex was in the slums. The idea of sex wasn’t considered to be the norm despite the fact of it being completely normal (in a biological sense), such ideas weren’t  present in the slums making it the only place where an individual could let out his/her sexual desires.

Foucault then shifts to talking about experiencing pleasure through controlling others and/or exerting your power over another. He talks about the relationship in which both the oppressed and oppressor seek to gain pleasure through their actions. The church promoted the idea of confessing your sins to god, the act of confessing the sexual encounters that had occurred. At the beginning, one would simply state the actions her or she did without going into detail, however as time passed people started to confess providing much details in what had happened. In a sense people were giving a recollection of the event even adding in the thoughts what were form during the time. It was interesting how it was against the law to talk about sex but confessing all your sexual  thoughts and actions was alright. This lead to more and more people committing sexual acts and later confess them to god.

I feel like all the information provide was just for the reader to process it and for us to make our own ideas/prospective on the topic.

Q: Do you think the oppression or containment of sex in history was used was a way to control the people?

Q: When you think about sex throughout history, are we stilling following the ideas of the pass or have we really moved on and forward.