Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality

[@briancarroll3541]

perhaps it's due to my advancing years, but i must admit that i struggle with the statement: '[human] sexuality has no basis.' with all due respect to variation and diversity, wouldn't procreation itself tend to justify sexual dimorphism, hence the establishment of a normative, which, it must be clearly stated, is in no way necessarily synonymous with notions of 'correctness' or moral superiority? but to ignore or outright deny an ultimate and ultimately obvious purpose to human sexuality reeks of last thursdayism from my perspective, biased and limited as the aperçu may be.

[@Nicky.Slunsky]

I couldn't agree more.

[@pikiwiki]

it's not your age. It's just your common sense showing. Increasingly unacceptable. Harumph.

[@darrenwendroff3441]

I think one way to consider this is you are attaching normal to the active procreation where sex in the sense that Foucault is discussing is more along the lines of pleasure and maybe even expression. These are two very different things. To use a comparison it would be like saying that the normal way to eat is one way and there is no reason to create different expressions of food. Because the enjoyment of food is abnormal just as the enjoyment of sex might be abnormal in your example. This is my opinion, hope it makes sense, I appreciate your thoughtful response because it made me consider how I would respond to it and I always appreciate a good inquiry.

[@darrenwendroff3441]

One other thing to consider is that long before we connected the act of sex with procreation we connected it with pleasure. In prehistoric man the realization that sex created a child would have come later because there was no direct correlation, but there was absolutely a direct correlation between pleasuring oneself or someone else and the immediate experience. These are hypotheses of course, but if I were to remove all concepts to myself and just experience things as they exist within myself today I would make that connection within myself.

[@briancarroll3541]

​@@darrenwendroff3441 so if i understand you correctly, scratch 'last-thursday-ism' and substitute 'hedonism'. your statement of opinion begs my own; that to consider 'enjoyment' an ultimate or even primary function of sexual intercourse is perhaps nearly as twisted as Foucault's well-known preference for little boys. i think you are confabulating the physiological with the psychological. unless, of course, you consider that homo sapiens are somehow separate and distinct from normatives established through evolution, ie, sexual dimorphism among higher organisms in general.

[@EsatBargan]

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[@basheerthettan3186]

Thank you professor, you have very clearly explained it. Interesting analysis 🥰😍