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Assignment 07

In part one of “History of Sexuality” by Michel Foucault, she basically states how and why sex had become repressed. At the beginning of seventeenth century, sexual frankness was was still common. The laws for the course or obscene was quite loose to the ones in nineteenth century. Once the Victorian Bourgeois showed up, the flexibility was completely removed. The subject of sex became the rule to be silent and when people make it too visible, they would have to pay the penalties. Children were allowed to talk about sex because they were thought not to have gender, but they surely were not allowed to have sex. People at that time were only allowed to expose sexuality at brothel or mental hospitals, and in other places, talking about sex was considered as taboo. She also mentions some people say that the free sexual expression was removed by capitalism because it would make the economic and reproduction system inefficient. This is because people sat that time thought that if sex was not rigorously repressed people would lost their motivation to do general work. The demand of sexual freedom became bigger and bigger. Even though it was strictly repressed to talk about the sex in the society, people were allowed to confess their sexuality to the church. Therefore, more and more people started confession at the church. That means people wee still seeking pleasure of sex in the era when exposing sexuality was strictly prohibited. She says that the repression might have not been obvious. This is also can be said to our current society too. How the sexuality should be can be blurred. Question 1: Why how sexuality was considered taboo, and why people were repressed t to talk about their sexuality? Question 2: Why people now have so much passion and resentment to the fact that we had once made sex a sin?