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Karla Flores ass.8

In chapter 4, Foucault discusses the effects of ‘Technology of sex’. He explains how the three branches of pedagogy, medicine and demography were created from the technology of sex. All the knowledge that was being acquired, allowed for all these fields to be strongly stablished. With the use of these three branches, the general public would be more informed about the topic of sex. Before this new technology sex was a taboo topic that no one knew much about but at the same time depended deeply on it. Everyone was afraid of discussing sex topics but at the same time everyone depended on knowing more about it. Through sex, many diseases could be passed on and also reproduction happens thanks to sex. So after the 19th century people acquired new information about sex and certain fields started to unfold.

With time the field of medicine got deeper into human structure and with it came the discussion about heredity. People now had a way to explain and get informed about diseases that could affect generations and the population. With it also came the study of eugenics, which could help to improve the population by controlling reproductive factors. But this new technology also gave the population a new tool with which to discriminate against others. Racism had a new tool, where the ‘unfavorable’ traits were pointed out, in which of course the minorities came out low. But this practice was ended when in the 40’s when the perversion-heredity-degenerescence system was fought against. The beginning of this technology is said to be due to the aristocratic families that placed surveillance on their kids and women in order to keep it under ‘control’. They might thought that this would be the source of sex pathology, and the introduction of medicalized sex was brought in to society with women.