Week 2 readings (sorry this is late)

So last week we discussed Foucault's observation that people have the misconception of being sexually repressed and how that fosters our confessionist society. Further, these confessions show a will to knowledge in that one discovers his truth in these confessions.

I found "We 'Other Victorians'" very interesting. This idea that power regimes keep us repressed is extremely evident. Protests, sexual exhibitionists, and pop icons like Christina Aguilera and Fiona Apple all claim repression from outside powers like the growing conservativism of the American people or social stereotypes that label them as something negative. If they were truly sexually repressed, they would not be able to speak out, act, and dress the way they do. Foucault does well to see that power and the idea of repression works positively in that it drives people to stand for something in which to believe.

"Scientia Sexualis" was very enlightening in how it detailed the way our society empiricized sex in relation to the self. It's all a very complicated web of ideas:

The listener holds power over the confessioner while the confessioner, in
telling of thoughts and feelings regarding sex, finds self-truth in the
interpretation of this confession which then also gives truth to sex, but
it is only a relative truth because it is from that person's personal thoughts
and feelings on sex.

I would rather live in a society that functions with an ars erotica. Passion and excitement are lost when you have to communicate to your partner how you feel during sex (at least verbally). Divulging those private and innermost desires to someone you don't even know, e.g. a therapist, makes your sex very public and less speical. The mystery of pleasure and what drives it during sex should be a private, shared experience between the two commiting the act.