power and sexuality

say hello to foucault!

theorising is dead, for most part. i'm fairly new to the world of sociological theory, so that might've been a fairly brash statement. but i really haven't heard any life-changing discourses on society since foucault (except for probably, amartya sen's identity and violence).

foucault has the stuff of great theorists- he has invited passionate reactions (which can swing from worship from the post-everythingists to downright hatred from the marxists) and a beautiful unifying theme of the "knowledge-power-truth trinity discourse".

the first thing that came to mind when i read this article was his three (supposedly running into four) volume history of sexuality. here's the text of the article:

A little spanking never hurt anybody

Surveys Show S&M Is Actually Therapeutic

London: Revelations of kinky sex leave many prominent celebrities blubbering abject apologies. Not Max Mosley. The British multi-millionaire and Formula One boss insists there’s no shame in a little hankyspanky, and he has sued the tabloid News of the World for suggesting otherwise. This week he has been testifying with remarkable sang-froid in his defamation and invasion of privacy suit before London’s high court.
Last March, Mosley invited five women to a posh Chelsea apartment to engage in what he readily admits was a sadomasochistic orgy, replete with canes, prison uniforms and oldfashioned spanking (a true Englishman, Mosley served the women tea after their session), reported Time.com. To his ultimate distress, hidden cameras were rolling. The tabloid posted the footage online, accompanied by an article that described the event as “a depraved Nazi-style orgy in a torture dungeon.” Formula One racers and sponsors called for his resignation, and Mosley faced accusations of finding titillation in Third Reich scenarios.
Mosely, 68, denies that the encounter had any Nazi connotations. His testimony has openly challenged the idea that BDSM—that’s bondage, domination, submission and sadomasochism—is an unwholesome pursuit. “I think it is a perfectly harmless activity provided it is between consenting adults who want to do it, are of sound mind, and it is in private, ” said Mosely.
The British have a reputation for being colder than dead fish on ice. Perhaps that’s why the News of the World video so enthralled the public, drawing 1.4 million views within a day of going online. But if Mosley is any indicator, British frigidity may give way to something much livelier in the bedroom. No one has exact numbers, but small-scale BDSM surveys estimate that 10-15% of the British population indulges in the behaviour. And BDSM may actually be therapeutic.
In fact, those involved with BDSM say the behaviour may be linked to success. Mistress Kimberley, an experienced dominatrix in London, says well-paid professionals make up the bulk of her clientele; they fork over between $300 and $500 per hour for services ranging from a “sensual tie and tease” to “severe bondage and domination torture,” reported Time.com. Her clients’ high-powered lives make them eager to submit. “They’re running multi-million dollar companies and make decisions all day, every day,” she says. “They genuinely want to be submissive.”
David Mirich, a psychologist in Colorado, measured the intelligence of 220 BDSMers and found that they posted above-average IQ scores, “which is very unlike the criminal population of sex offenders and criminals,” he says. Their behaviour doesn’t appear to be a response to an unhealthy upbringing, nor correlate to psychopathology. Whatever the outcome of the Mosley suit, BDSM will live on in England.

this article by itself is slightly ridiculous. the correlation between iq's and deviant sexual behaviour hasn't been clearly explained. At any rate, it has little relevance considering every individual, high iq or not, is entitled to his/her kinks- what matters is whether people choose to talk about them freely or not.

redefining repression.

we live in a repressed society, not because the subject of sexuality is kept under wraps. according to foucault, we're repressed because we talk abut our sexuality and this, he calls 'the represssive hypothesis'. this hypothesis can be refuted, but there is plenty of evidence in our day-to-day existence to support it.

take the wildly popular sexpert column in mumbai mirror, cosmo's sex tips, the durex surveys or any other discussion of sex in the mainstream media- it's glaringly serious and sterile. even those in the sex trade seem to speak of it in almost academic terms.

confession is the key to repression and in this day and age- we're constantly seeking validation for intensely private actions and the media, by providing an outlet, is gaining power. foucault, of course, spoke of the power of medical and legal institutions. it's high time, though, that we acknowledge the increasingly powerful role of media in the domain of sexuality.

thus, while people continue to engage in sexual practices both "acceptable" and "deviant", there nonetheless exists a heavy realisation that everything you do is subject to the dominant paradigm- you are never truly free to satisfy your most animalistic urges without actually contemplating how you're judged. after all, people talk.

just do it.

repression cannot have a value judgement attached- there's no good or bad, it just is.

foucault wrote the history of sexuality in the late 1970s and early 80s. of course, a lot has changed since.

back in the day, people indulged in their kinks, going perhaps only to the shrink or church to confess. now, the fear of AIDS, among other things, has encouraged people to talk about safe sexual practices and about sex, per se, on the larger platform of the mass media. this, of course, has been a source of power to the institution of media.

somewhere deep down, i like to think that the history of sexuality is probably foucault's most personal work, almost an autobiography of sorts that throbs with rage against the society as a whole. it is believed that he had a penchant for bdsm clubs in san francisco and that's probably where he got his inspiration from.

nonetheless, the history of sexuality, already three volumes long has a near complete 4th volume which never got published. michel foucault had died of AIDS before he could complete it.