Sexuality through the centuries.

Michel, Foucault explains, and then, raises doubts to the "repressive hypothesis." Foucault begins by illustrating the difference between seventeenth century sexuality, where "codes regulating the coarse, the obscene, and the indecent were quite lax" , and nineteenth century sexuality, where "sexuality was carefully confined; it moved into the home"

Foucault argues that this Victorian concept of sexuality influences us today, and "the image of the imperial prude is emblazoned on our restrained, mute, and hypocritical sexuality" .

Foucault shows that Victorian sexuality required repression which "operated as a sentence to disappear, but also as an injunction to silence, an affirmation of nonexistence" . Such "halting logic" was forced to make a few concessions for illegitimate sexualities. These "Other Victorians" were regulated to a separate space of toleranceâ€" "the brothel and the mental hospital" .

Repression is the "fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality"  and so its disruption comes at considerable cost. Foucault argues that sex is not easily deciphered, but by reconstructing repression we can analyze it. In other words, repression is a factor which brings sex into discourse so we can talk about it. By speaking about sex, one has the appearance of a "deliberate transgression" that places the speaker, to a certain extent, outside the reach of power .

Foucault points out that others have argued that repression coincides with the development of capitalism. Sex is repressed because it is incompatible with the work imperative.

Foucault plans to explore the self-awareness of the individual as the subject of sexuality. In his own words, Foucault's aim is "to examine the case of a society which has been loudly castigating itself for its hypocrisy for more than a century, which speak verbosely of its own silence, takes great pains to relate in detail the things it does not say, denounces the powers it exercises, and promises to liberate itself from the very laws than have made it function.

Foucault raises historical, historico-theoretical, and historico-political doubts to the "repressive hypothesis" Foucault writes that his goal is "aimed less at showing it to be mistaken than at putting it back within a general economy of discourses on sex in modern societies since the seventeenth century"

Foucault outlined the regime of power-knowledge-pleasure that sustains the discourse on human sexuality. Foucault was interested in the "over-all 'discursive fact,' the way in which sex is 'put into discourse,'" and the "'polymorphous techniques of power'" that influence its formation propagation.