Blog 1 — 29 Jan 2020

To what extent is sexuality is repressed through the proliferation of discourse?

While in small groups today, we considered examples that support the idea that sexuality is repressed through discourse. One that I found particularly interesting was about adding more and more labels for variations of sexual orientation. We discussed how adding labels may feel like sexual liberation and is empowering, but instead labels create more categories that distinguish between sexualities, or rather, highlights “the other,” and emphasizes the necessity of sexuality as an identity. Thus, these labels have potentially begun to rigidly define sexuality as well as how we discuss sexuality. People may have a more difficult time with sexual fluidity if they the discourse compels us to self-categorize. Additionally, people may feel disconnected from sexual discourse if the jargon of the sexuality becomes too removed from the population’s shared vocabulary. In this sense, continuing the discourse on sexual orientation has potentially acted as a form of repression.

Furthermore, we discussed talking about sex in an academic setting, like our class or sex ed in high school (as directed in the workshop). When we talk about sex in an academic setting, we further distance sex and sexuality from emotions. Despite the amount of attention and conversation sexuality is given, we still struggle to comfortably acknowledge one another as sexual beings. Although we may feel we are making progress through acknowledgement of sexuality in an academic setting, in reality we are just adding a brick to the wall that boxes in human sexuality to discrete areas and topics of respectful conversation. Through this academic discourse, we inadvertently remove sexual pleasure from the conversation and society as a whole. This conversation implicitly restricts sexuality to academia, so we condition ourselves to think clinically and anatomically about the subject, further repressing sexuality.

However, given the timing of Foucault’s writings and society’s progressions since, I’m unsure if all “rebellious” discourse is repressive. Are conversations today productive in “freeing” us from the repression or are we still repressing ourselves?

In 1953, “The Sexually Adequate Female” by Frank S. Caprio was published, claiming that women who prefer clitoral stimulation over vaginal stimulation “suffer from frigidity,” thus invalidating women’s sexual pleasure. However, I believe that today’s society has moved against this ideology in recent years. This can be seen in the popularizing and normalizing of women’s sex toys and societal responses to the news. Cosmopolitan magazine publishes many POV articles of women searching for new ways to achieve orgasm. The magazine is known for its sexually forward articles targeted for women, which in turn acknowledge the woman as a sexual being. Furthermore, when popularized news articles like recently when T.I. said that he takes his daughter to the gynecologist annually to check if she is still a virgin, and when DJ Khaled said he would never give his wife oral sex, yet expects oral sex from her, people respond and openly reject these world views. T.I. was discussed on many TV news channels and online magazines in a disparaging light, and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson responded publicly to the DJ Khaled news stating “Ahem.. *clears throat* As a man, I take great pride in mastering ALL performances.” These responses generalize how our discourse is positively changing how we view women’s sexuality to be more accepting. I struggle to see how this public discourse perpetuates repression. Of course, this is only in respect to women’s sexuality (implicitly heterosexual) and not other sexual and gender identities.

Furthermore, there is an on-going discussion regarding sexual education in the United States. A focus of that conversation is the teaching of abstinence-only education as opposed to a discussion of contraceptives. While in practice not much has changed in the school system, the discourses absolutely promotes a change in our conception of sexuality. Although we are discussing children’s sexuality in an academic context (contraceptives aren’t “sexy”) the discussion itself acknowledges that recreational sex occurs and is normal, which is potentially shifting the discourse to be more accepting of recreational sex, which is a step towards seeing sex as a form of pleasure (bringing our society closer to “ars erotica”).

Ultimately, this blog/thought-exploration has helped me recognize that although repression through discourse is absolutely present, I disagree that all of sexual discourse is a form of repression. We must take a more nuanced perspective regarding the repression of sexuality through the proliferation of discourse, especially taking into account how and in what circumstances we discuss sexuality.

Also, an unrelated question prompted by our class discussion:

How come innocence is often synonymous with an ignorance of sex? Especially since often that “ignorance” is obviously feigned, we expect it from each other, especially children.