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Amity University
The term repressive hypothesis had been popularised by Michel Foucault who used it
to talk about the various means through which the society grants an individual the
liberty to talk about and discuss sex. Foucault is said to have used the method of
Discipline and Punish to discuss the evolving societys treatment of sexuality.
Repressive hypothesis is the common assumption that the attitude of the modern
society towards sex is negative. Society, the Victorian society in particular,
disapproves of sex in all forms but those that exist within the limits of the
monogamous marriage. Society opposed and repressed the other forms of sexuality in
order to eliminate it outside of heterosexual and socially approved union between man
and woman.
Foucault argues that the modern state used its muscle to categorise the abnormal
kinds of sexuality as against the heterosexual response to it. This categorisation had a
purpose: it was not to strengthen but to deal a blow to those who belonged to these
categories. Before we move further we ought to pause here. The societys power that
seems to repress sexuality cannot be dealt with by any form of opposition; rather the
very act of opposition and participation encourages the maturity of such power.
Foucault argues that modern power creates new forms of sexuality by creating
discourses about it. Same sex relations had been existing in history but
homosexuals as a category came to be around only recently in history thanks to the
knowledge/power system of the modern sciences. Foucault furthers this argument and
states veritable sexual explosion: talk about sex that began in the 17th century. The
Counter Reformation practice of confession explored not just sex outside of marriage
but the degree of sin involved in it. It did not even spare fantasies in trying to hit the
conscience of the fantasy bearers. Such forms of confession led to self knowledge
and this self knowledge depended upon the categorisation within which the self had
been placed.