Foucault and The Myth of Repression
The common narrative goes like this: until recently, Western societies repressed sexuality. Michel Foucault tells a different story. In The History of Sexuality, he argues that the so-called Victorian silence around sex was not repression but an explosion of discourse. From doctors and priests to teachers and psychologists, everyone began talking about sex—not to liberate it, but to classify it, study it, and normalize it.
What emerged was not less sexuality, but more: more labels, more scrutiny, more power.
Sex as Knowledge, Sex as Control
Foucault’s central insight is that sexuality is not simply a natural instinct waiting to be set free. It is a historical construct, produced through language, science, and institutions. When we speak of sexual identities—straight, gay, bisexual, asexual—we are speaking the language of power. These terms may empower, but they also sort and discipline.
Consider the rise of medical discourses in the 19th century that defined certain sexual behaviors as pathological. Or the legal systems that criminalized homosexuality while ostensibly protecting public morality. These were not accidental judgments—they were techniques of governance.
The act of making sexuality knowable was also an act of control.
Surveillance of the Soul
Foucault’s famous metaphor of the panopticon—the circular prison where inmates can be observed at any moment—extends deeply into the realm of sexuality. But unlike prisons, which have walls, the surveillance of sexuality happens within. We police our desires. We confess them to therapists, algorithms, and sometimes even to social media.
We internalize the gaze.
Today, apps track our menstrual cycles, our pornography habits, our dating preferences. What began as a regime of confession in the church has become a regime of data in the cloud. But the structure remains: sexuality is something to be examined, revealed, managed.
Identity and the Trap of Visibility
Foucault was ambivalent about identity politics. He saw the power of marginalized groups naming themselves and demanding recognition. But he also warned that identity could become another form of control—a script to follow, a box to inhabit.
Being named as “queer,” “trans,” or “nonbinary” can be liberating, but also surveilling. It can invite solidarity or scrutiny, protection or persecution. Visibility is not always freedom.
This does not mean abandoning identity. Rather, it means approaching it critically, as a tool rather than a destiny. Foucault once said that his goal was not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are.
Toward an Ethics of Intimacy
What would it mean to resist the surveillance of the intimate? Not by withdrawing into silence, but by reclaiming complexity. Foucault suggests that we explore “the art of existence,” inventing new ways to live, love, and desire that are not merely reactive to norms.
In a world that insists on translating intimacy into data, the act of preserving ambiguity, of refusing to fully confess, becomes a political gesture. Not to hide, but to hold space for the unknowable, the fluid, the sacred.
Sexuality, then, is not a secret to be decoded. It is a terrain of struggle—over identity, over power, over who gets to define what love and desire can mean