Power relations are “the internal conditions” of our sexual identities.

 In order to challenge the dominant view of the relationship between sexuality and repressive power, Foucault had to re-conceive the nature of power. His major claim is that power is not essentially repressive but productive. It does not operate by repressing and prohibiting the true and authentic expressions of a natural sexuality. Instead it produces, through cultural normative practices and scientific discourses, the ways in which we experience and conceive of our sexuality. Power relations are “the internal conditions” of our sexual identities.