Michel Foucault and the History of Sex, Power, and Control

When you think about Michel Foucault, a French philosopher who redefined how we see power, knowledge, and sexuality. Also known as the thinker behind the history of sexuality, he didn’t just write about sex—he showed how societies use silence, laws, and medicine to control it. Before Foucault, most people assumed sex was something private, repressed by Victorian morals. He flipped that. He said sex wasn’t hidden—it was talked about everywhere, just in the wrong ways. Hospitals, courts, schools, and even therapists turned sex into a problem to be fixed, diagnosed, and managed. That’s not repression. That’s discourse—a system of talking that shapes what we can say, who gets to say it, and what counts as normal.

Foucault’s work connects directly to the stories in this collection. The Hicklin Test, a 19th-century law that banned any material deemed potentially corrupting wasn’t just about censorship—it was a tool of control, exactly the kind Foucault studied. The Victorian separate spheres ideology, which locked women into the home and men into the public world wasn’t natural—it was built by institutions to manage behavior. Even the medical views on masturbation, where doctors claimed it caused insanity and weakness weren’t science—they were moral rules dressed in white coats. Foucault showed us that power doesn’t always come with a gun. Sometimes it comes with a doctor’s clipboard, a judge’s gavel, or a textbook that says "this is normal."

His ideas help explain why lesbian history got erased from archives, why intersex babies were operated on without consent, and why consent itself became a legal battleground. He didn’t just analyze the past—he gave us the tools to question today’s rules. When you read about the female orgasm not being needed for reproduction, or why prostitution has been both sacred and criminal across cultures, you’re seeing Foucault’s fingerprints. He taught us that nothing about sex is neutral. Every rule, every taboo, every "fact" carries power.

What you’ll find below isn’t just a list of articles. It’s a map of how sex has been shaped, silenced, and reclaimed—exactly the world Foucault mapped out. These stories aren’t random. They’re proof that power doesn’t just control bodies—it writes the stories we believe about them. And now, we’re finally starting to rewrite them.