For this blog, I decided to revisit Foucault’s excerpt on ‘The History of Sexuality’. Within this article he discusses a number of inferences throughout history regarding sexual discourse within societies. The first time I read this piece, I had difficulty comprehending the exact reasoning why societies in the 17th and 18th centuries radically changed their opinions regarding the discourse of sexuality activity. After reviewing it for a second time, I’ve realized not only the reasoning, but the connections between Victorian ideologies and how those ideologies changed with a growing society. 

The Victorian era was stereotyped as a time of sexual frigidity and instinctual repression. Foucault begins his discussion here. European culture in the 17th century veiled its discourse of sexuality behind a curtain of censorship or silence. This censorship imposed societal rules among “speakers and social structures” (1502).  “Areas were thus established, if not with utter silence, at least of tact and discretion: between parents and children, or teachers and pupils, or masters and domestic servants” (1502). This refinement of language created a structure of silence that was not broken until encouragement from a powerful institutional incitement. The evolution of the Catholic Church broke the silence of sex with encouragement “to speak about it with a determination on the part of the agencies of power to hear it spoken about and to cause it to speak through explicit articulation and endlessly accumulated detail” (1503). The church imposed that although sex should be a mute point in verbal conversation, it needed to be a vital discourse within confession. Due to the “Counter Reformation, yearly confession in Catholic countries increased and imposed meticulous rules of self-examination” (1503). During these confessions, the church attributed the confessor to “insinuations of the flesh: thoughts, desires, voluptuous imaginings, delectations, combined movements of the body and soul; henceforth all this had to enter, in detail, into the process of confession and guidance” (1503). The church’s insistence on sexual discourse made a major headway in the taboos of sex in European society.

Another reason for acceptance of sexual discourse was sprung from scientific data on fertility and mortality rates. The Victorian Era was a time of unprecedented growth within Europe. The population grew from 13.9 million in 1831 to 32.5 million in 1901. That’s 18.6 million more people in a span of 70 years. Due to this exponential growth in population much research was conducted regarding “birth and death rates, life expectancy, fertility, state of health, frequency of illnesses, patterns of diet and habitation” (1507). The research regarding “birthrate, age of marriage, legitimate and illegitimate births, the frequency of sexual relations, the effects of unmarried life or of the prohibitions, the impact of contraceptives” (1507) all created a conversation around a taboo subject, that in the end was the roots for a country that hoped to be rich and powerful. These conversations led to the transformation of sexual conduct of a couple into concerted economic and political behavior. For example, in China there is a one-child policy that deems parents are only able to have one child, with a number of controversial misnomers. This policy was introduced in 1979 to alleviate social, economic and environmental issues. The policy is leveled through fines to the family based upon income. In order to hold a society to these terms, the topic of sex must be deemed conversational, at least in the terms of the potential economic growth regarding population.

The third factor that integrated sexual discourse into society were secondary schools in the eighteenth century. “The architectural layout, the rules of discipline, and the whole internal organization” (1506) were constructed in regards to separating the sexuality of children. “The space for classes, the shape of tables, the planning of recreation lessons, the distribution of dormitories (with or without curtains, with or without partitions), the rules for monitoring bedtime and sleep periods” (1509) all were directly decided with thoughts of sex in mind. This practice holds true still today. When I was a girl at summer camp, all of the girls were separated to change away from the boys, the bathrooms were always separate, sometimes we were even separated when we went away on sleeping trips. I never questioned the reasoning why we were being separated at that age, other than the fact that I knew I was a girl and not a boy. When I was in elementary and middle school when we studied sexual development the girls and boys were taught separately and only on the sex of the class. I didn’t learn anything about human reproduction until I was in high school. 

Foucault’s writing highlights and shows the connections between different and seemingly small inferences that eventually broke down the taboo of sexual discourse within European society. I’ve always been interested in the taboos of different societies. It seems for many, that sex is still a strong taboo. Within the United States, it is inherently frowned upon to have sex or show sexual affection in public, romantic novels (Fifty Shades of Grey for example) are often deemed pornographic, pornographic film/photography, pornographic painting are all held with a sense of uncomfortableness in the public eye. I believe that breaking down negative connotations regarding sex is a very important and difficult thing to do. 

When I moved to New York, I met a young artist named Alexander Esguerra who is doing just that. His project titled ‘Love & Paint’ explores, breaks down and redefines the taboos of sex. The project entails a couple painting each other and making love on a canvas. The end result is a Jackson Pollack-esque display of their experience that is completely visceral and infectious. When you look at the finished result of any of these paintings it is impossible to decipher if the couple was gay, straight, married, adulterous, black, white etc. At the end of the day, any person who views one of these paintings will only see the movements and the energy that was shared between those two people in that moment in time. The concept of these paintings demand that all the negative societal judgements regarding monogamy, racism, homophobia, causal sex to become eliminated. The paintings represent an equality among everyone and that sex is the great equalizer among us all. 

If anyone is interested in this guys work, he’s incredibly talented.

Check out his work:

Love and Paint

Valentine’s Day Romance Love Art Gift

Judith Butler: Gender Trouble

Why does Judith Butler call gender “trouble? She starts off by explaining that the word trouble always caries a negative connotation with it, instead of thinking of trouble as something negative, we should embrace the idea of the indeterminacy of gender. “To make trouble was, within the reigning discourse of my childhood, something one should never do precisely because that would get one in trouble. The rebellion and its reprimand seemed to be caught up in the subtle ruse of power: the prevailing law threatened one with trouble, even put one in trouble, all to keep one out of trouble” (Butler 2540). When Butler speaks about power, I believe she is speaking about the power an individual has in the rebellion against the “prevailing law”. Trouble is hard to escape when it comes to gender because trouble seems to threaten and linger all around it in its attempts to keep one out of trouble. Trouble is a paradoxical phenomenon because it convinces us to stay away from it but if you are a subject it is inevitable. “Power seemed to be more than an exchange between subjects or a relation of constant inversion between a subject and an Other; indeed, power appeared to operate in the production of that very binary frame for thinking about gender” (Butler 2540). To be a female is to be subject to the male gaze power, therefore, to be female is to always be in trouble.

Why does Judith Butler speak about the body so much and why is it important? Speaking about the body is imperative to Judith Butler’s argument because it fits into the idea of inner and outer expression. Butler starts off by speaking about this “otherness” and the pollution of the body and how this all was constructed in society. “Any discourse that establishes the boundaries of the body serves the purpose of instating and naturalizing certain taboos regarding the appropriate limits, postures, and modes of exchange that define what it is that constitutes bodies” (Butler 2544) Bodies are seen to have boundaries, and when these boundaries are trespassed (taboos) they become demonized, are seen as pollution to the body, unnatural and uncivilized. Homosexuality is seen as crossing a boundary, which shows how bodies are permeable and impermeable in the power structure of hegemonic order. “Those sexual practices in both homosexual and heterosexual contexts that open surfaces and orifices to erotic signification or close down others effectively reinscribe the boundaries of the body along new cultural lines” (Butler 2545). I think in this piece, Butler wants to expose the power of hegemonic order and show how it has been naturalized through society, she then makes us realize that these “bodies” and “polluted actions” are not as black and white as we make them seem. Bodies and actions can cross boundaries as they are completely. Butler also speaks about abjection as the process of how we constitute “others” in our society. She goes on Young’s point about fitting into the hegemonic order, identities have been created to separate each other through exclusion and domination. “…homophobia, and racism, the repudiation of bodies for their sex, sexuality, and/or color is an ‘expulsion’ followed by a ‘repulsion’ that founds and consolidates culturally hegemonic identities along sex/race/sexuality axes of differentiation” (Butler 2546). Butler applies this to our body and excrement and explains the division between “inner” and “outer” worlds that causes us to form this idea of an “other”. Boundaries are being passed during the process of excrement, therefore, bodies show permeability as well. This relates to gender because Butler argues that gender is a permeable line that is not fixed with the actual anatomy.

Why is drag such an imperative point in her argument? Drag captures the epitome of her argument and acts as a proof or an example of the dynamics between the anatomy, gender identity and gender performance. “As much as drag creates a unified picture of ‘woman’ (what its critics often oppose), it also reveals the distinctness of those aspects of gendered experience which are falsely naturalized as a unity through the regulatory fiction of heterosexual coherence.” (Butler 2550). Drag is the proof that just because you have a penis, does not mean you have to act a certain way, but it also proves that you will be trained a certain way according to culture.

My favorite line within the piece that Butler presents is “That disciplinary production of gender effects a false stabilization of gender in the interests of the heterosexual construction and regulation of sexuality within the reproductive domain.” this line tells us that the construction of gender may operate as a part of a larger power structure of heterosexuality within our culture.

What If Katniss Didn’t Have to Choose Between Peeta and Gale?

NPR’s Linda Holmes wrote a great article about the gender dynamics in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and concluded, “…you could argue that Katniss’ conflict between Peeta and Gale is effectively a choice between a traditional Movie Girlfriend and a traditional Movie Boyfriend.” I do love the way Holmes puts this.

Minus the whole point about monogamy and polygamy, I believe that this article highlights Butler’s point about gender being performative. When Katniss is with Gale, she plays more of a nurturing role. When Katniss is with Peeta however, she plays a more masculine and protective role. Her gender role switches depending on the person she’s with, proving that sex and gender are two completely separate things and that gender is based on performance.