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Antonella’s assignment #8

The fourth chapter of “History of Sexuality”, Foucault introduces the concept of the ‘technology of sex.” He places a significant importance on the fact that it had affected the whole state and not only the church. The society norms of the period had forced individuals to abstain from sex and it give the impression as if there was a keen interest on those who had an input in these “illegal” sexual activities. The technology of sex was used to control sex while also measuring the impact it has on society. Medicine was seen as a cure to sexual “diseases.” The current Knowledge of medicine for the period had helped developed the eugenics movement, with the popular practices of control breeding and controlling the genetic quality of the population. The technology of sex began taking the involvement of church and religious aspect out of sex. They had begun implanting more facts and scientific based approach on sex and reproduction. The idea of controlling the genetic quality of the population had started with the control of certain hereditary characteristics of society made people more interested in sex. The Studies of hereditary made people more familiar to a certain biological responsibility with regards to future generations. The possibility of transferring diseases and un-normal hereditary traits made people more aware of the consequences of sexual activity. Medicine was being used to have sex more about life and people. The science behind medicine had taken the shame and punishment out of sex. This had allowed sex to become a more plausible topic of interest. Foucault remarks that there were certain hereditary traits such as homosexuality that were able to be passed down and that it was not able to be controlled. Homosexuality was viewed as a disability that hampers the views that society holds. Foucault attempts to explain how the society had characterizes sexuality that had decidedly changed the way people view sex. When discussing the characteristics of sex, we see how society held the lower class to a little to none standard when it came to sex. The lower class were viewed as people that did not have sex and had no knowledge of it. The lower class was seen to have no worth and the bourgeois had controlled the sexual aspects of women and children in order to eliminate any hereditary traits that would harm the future children of society. The technology had embodied an improvement over past belief on sex, though the use of eugenics to control the population still considered a faulty idea.