More Foucault
The third of Foucault “strategic unities” (103) for knowledge and power over and about sex is “a socialization of procreative behavior” (104) for partners in relationships. The socialization is, in essence, all the factors “brought to bear on the fertility of couples” (104-105). This is a discussion worth bringing into the present, and into present politics.
First, the idea of socialization — and making something a part of acceptable social behavior (or creating standards of social behavior) – brought to mind a discussion on a previous post on the blog, about the use of the word “family planning” when discussion condom-use. The issues was “family planning” implies that sex and ways of preventing pregnancy are for people who want kids/families, and only for couples.
This is where it becomes more political. A family friend, who works in a hospital, recently regaled me with a host of fascinating stories about life in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit). She mentioned that a set of twins in the NICU were in the process of being adopted by a couple. “They’re a lesbian couple,” she stated bluntly. “And they are the sweetest women in the world.” She told me they already fostered a 13-year-old boy who was being neglected by his biological parents, “and when he comes to see the babies, you can see how much he loves his moms.” Then she shook her head, and added, “Can you imagine there are fools out there who want to prevent those kids from getting the love they need? Because the moms are gay!” She’s referring to the set of laws that have passed in some states (Utah and Mississippi come to mind) that prevent unmarried couples from adopting – laws generally understood to target homosexual couples, who have no right to marry in the states where the laws pass.
Just as those laws make it impossible for new kinds of families to be created, the use of the word “family planning” also prevents people from seeing relationships, and families, in new ways. Sex and kids are apparently for straight, married couples only. It all traces back to Foucault’s list.
I find it interesting that Foucault puts a lot of blame on psychiatrists for “discoursing” sexual behavior, especially so-called “deviant” or “perverse” sexual behavior. Compelled as I may feel to defend those in my chosen career path, he has a good point. After all, it wasn’t until 1973 that homosexuality was taken off the list of mental illnesses.
— The discussion of the figures of sexuality has an uncomfortably eugenics feel to it – the “child surrounded by domestic servants, tutors, and governesses, who was in great danger of compromising …the obligation to preserve a healthy line of descent for his family and his social class [emphasis added]” (121). The same way Margaret Sanger’s birth control movement harbored support of sterilization for the unfit, and exclusion of specific immigrant groups (though she was never a “positive eugenics” promoter), the sexualization of children – and especially the concerns of “onanism” – held within it bigoted tendencies. The “urban proletariat” (122) may have been moralized, but it was the schoolboy of prominence (whose family line must be preserved) who was the concern.
Tags: discourse, eugenics, homosexuality, psychology
