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Robert Walczak Assignment 7

In “The History of Sexuality” Michel Foucault explains how the view people have on sex has changed in the pass few centuries and how we look at sex today. Foucault starts with how at the beginning of the 17th century talk of sex was normal and often but that changed with his description of a “Victorian regime” and that we are still feeling the influences of this regime. Foucault’s describes the regime as the time following the era of freedom for sexuality and the beginning when sex was something to be kept in the home. He stats that sex was changed into something that only a married couple where allowed to commit and talk of it wasn’t allowed and how it would be enforced. He brings a point that the ending of this freedom for one’s sexuality and it discussion coincides with the rise of capitalism, that the repression of this freedom people once had before was done so that people may fit into the new order being set by capitalism. How that when sex is spoken about now people feel as if they go against an established power and that others are following it. Foucault asks as to why sex is viewed as a sin to speak about, why and what had happened to led people to change their views and how that relates to power and how it is abused. How did sex fall into a pit of secrecy, that it is only between a husband and wife, where even children spoke of it to how they must have their ears covered when it is brought up? Sex was taken from the public into the house and forced to stay there where it now remains to this day.
1. What is Foucault’s belief in how people can change in how sex in viewed to return to before?
2. If sex wasn’t under such secrecy what would be different today?