SEX & POWER: THE REPRESSIVE HYPOTHESIS IN THE

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
HST 420: The History of Sexuality
Morgan Redding

WHAT IS THE REPRESSIVE HYPOTHESIS?

In Foucault’s words, the repressive hypothesis is merely “that Western man has
been drawn for three centuries to the task of telling everything concerning his sex; that
since the classical age there has been a constant optimization and an increasing
valorization of the discourse on sex; and that this carefully analytical discourse was
meant to yield multiple effects of displacement, intensification, reorientation, and
modification of desire itself” (Foucault, 23). Thus we are to either accept or reject the
sexual repression hypothesis. But, by questioning the existence of such a repression,
Michel Foucault is, in turn, raising the question as to why it was/is perceived that such
a sexual repression ever existed, noting the fact that portraying past sex and sexualities
as repressed provided a basis for the idea that by rejecting past moral systems future
sex and sexualities may be “free.”1 As Foucault says,

It was essential that the state know what was happening with its citizens’ sex,
and the use they made of it, but also that each individual be capable of
controlling the use he made of it. Between the state and the individual, sex
became an issue, and a public issue, no less; a whole web of discourses, special
knowledges, analyses, and injunctions settled upon it (Foucault, 26).

This situation simply states that things were said in a different way; not any less was
said on the matter of sex or sexuality in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth
centuries. If the state needs to know what is happening with its citizens, logically, the
easiest way for it to gain that knowledge is to restrict the movements and actions of its

                                                                                                               
1
“What sustains our eagerness to speak of sex in terms of repression is doubtless this opportunity to speak out
against the powers that be, to utter truths and manifold pleasures; to pronounce a discourse that combines the
fervor of knowledge, the determination to change the laws, and the longing for the garden of earthly delights”
(Foucault, 7).
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citizens, but even so, institutions, citizens, and society in general still talked about and
had sex.

SEX & POWER?

According to Foucault, the question is, “In a specific type of discourse on sex,
in a specific form of extortion of truth, appearing historically and in specific places
(around the child’s body, apropos or women’s sex, in connection with practices
restricting births, and son on), what were the most immediate, the most local power
relations at work” (Foucault, 97)? When Foucault talks of power he is referring to the
first instance in which large numbers of force relations operate and constitute their
own organizations (the origin), the process which transforms, strengthens, or reverses
them, and the behaviors in which they take affect. The true power comes from the
majority and not the institutions which govern.2 Foucault gives us five propositions
regarding power (Foucault, 94-5):

1. Power is not something that is acquired, seized, or shared…power is

exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of non-egalitarian and
mobile relations
2. Relations of power are not in a position of exteriority with respect to other
types of relationships (economic processes, knowledge relationships, sexual
relations) but are immanent in the latter…they have a direct, productive
role, wherever they come into play
3. Power comes from below; that is, there is no binary and all-encompassing
opposition between rulers and ruled at the root of power relations, and
serving as a general matrix—no such duality extending from the top down
and reacting on more and more limited groups to the very depths of the
social body
4. Power relations are both intentional and non-subjective

                                                                                                               
2
“By power I do not mean ‘Power’ as a group of institutions and mechanisms that ensure the subservience of the
citizens of a given state. By power, I do not mean, either, a mode of subjugation which, in contrast to violence has
the form of the rule. Finally, I do not have in mind a general system of domination exerted by one group over
another, a system whose effects, through successive derivations, pervade the entire social body” (Foucault, 92).
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5. Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently,

this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power

from which we are able to ascertain that power in the hands of governing
constituencies is relatively useless. But neither does power exist within the individual.
Power is everywhere, emanating from all social relationships; it comes from bottom-
up, rather than top-down, as Foucault argues; society has the power, but it is the
society that believed they were repressed. This, therefore, gives society power to create
a, sort of, new type of sexuality; it is the repressors’ sexuality, in Foucault’s case, the
Bourgeoisie. 3

WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY?

In today’s society and culture, people are still fighting for sexual liberation, as
seen largely in gay pride and other such demonstrations. As people become aware of
sex and sexuality they are given the power to act on that awareness. But that still leaves
us with the question: are people sexually repressed? And if so, under what constraints
does this repression exist? If we look back at Foucault, we know his stance on the
repressive hypothesis, the idea that people were repressed in a discursive manner—
meaning that sex and sexuality was not to be discussed, acted upon, or observed in any
such artistic, academic, political, or recreational manner; the idea that it could not exist
outside the parents’ bedroom—could not have existed because it was talked about,
Foucault gives us political and academic examples of psychiatrists and mental
institutions, and, as we saw with Chauncey,4 it was acted upon.

                                                                                                               
3
“This line was not the same as the one which founded sexuality, but rather a bar running through that sexuality;
this was the taboo that constituted the difference, or at least the manner in which the taboo was applied and the
rigor with which it was imposed. It was here that the theory of repression—which gradually expanded to cover the
entire deployment of sexuality, so that the latter came to be explained in terms of a generalized taboo—had its point
of origin” (Foucault, 128).
 
4
This conclusion was drawn largely from the book in its entirety but especially Chapter 4 of Gay New York, “The
Forging of Queer Identities and the Emergence of Heterosexuality in Middle-Class Culture.”
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So, are we sexually repressed in the twenty-first century? Maybe,5 but the basis
of which that repression is expressed has changed. The idea of the discursive
repression is history, and, today, individuals fight for sexual liberation in terms of
societal acceptance. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean a repression. Logically, and
according to Foucault’s propositions of power, power comes from the masses within a
society and comes from the bottom and works its way up. We, as a society, have always
been able to act upon our sexual urges, or lack of, and, therefore, sex and sexuality—
including the levels of restriction and liberation—are constantly being reshaped and
redefined. This modern fight for sexual liberation is merely the change of how sex and
sexuality is now expressed.

                                                                                                               
5
I say “maybe” largely because the radical part of me is begging for complete sexual liberation free of any judgment
or discrimination.