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Assignment 08

I believe Foucault’s intentions in this chapter was to talk about the general discourse of sexuality and how the repression sexuality was being lifted in the twentieth century. The “technology of sex” was a different way of analyzing sexuality in relation to many things such as economics and medicine. According to him the transformation of discourse in the technology of sex opened more opportunities for other changes and techniques to be developed. In the 17th century sex was considered only to be done/discussed in the home, it was something that was shameful to talk about so Foucault believed it hindered the  development of these “technologies of sex”.

I think one of the main reasons we were able to move forward with the discourse of sex was the development and understanding of the medicine of sex. Medicine allowed the prevention of perversions and disease. Prior to this in the 19th century people would worry about them spreading throughout the classes which in turn cause hysteria. The upper class on the other hand used medicine as a form of Eugenics to create what they saw was best in themselves and allowed them to continue being wealthy and to boast the physical superiority. The bourgeois wanted utter control of everything, not only society but the sexuality of their men, women and children. With this newfound technology the bourgeois were able to regulate childbirth and marriage which would ultimately determine the population.

With the technology of medicine developing it also resulted in eugenics in the 19th century, I believe that Foucault determines that sexuality was a social construct created by the bourgeois, it was put into place to empower their social class while essentially the lower class was stunted by it due to their somewhat forced decrease in population from regulated births and marriages that came out of their fears of impurity in the family.