To this end, a gay male in the 19th century would be exactly the same as a gay male in the 21st century, and this cannot be the case. The struggles faced by a gay male hundreds of years ago are vastly different from those faced by a male today. Instead of sexual origin -- the conceptual framework of the essentialist/constructivist approach -- it is more useful to conceive of sexuality as existing within the binary between minoritivizing and universalizing. Concepts of sexual origin are fallacious because they are totalizing and attempt to ascribe the same worldview to people within a particular sexual orientation. Moreover, the sexual origin approach suggests that one's gender is indistinct from their sexuality, which cannot be the case; it also sees nature and nurture as being permanent, when both considerations are dynamic.
What is the Repressive Hypothesis and what is Foucault's Critique of it?
The Repressive Hypothesis issued by Foucault concerns the notion that the widespread repression with regard to sexuality that occurred in the 19th century actually engendered the increased popularity of sexuality within the public sphere. Foucault argues that the attempt to censor sexuality actually established the formulation of entire discourses surrounding sexuality that made it ubiquitous within society. He states "A censorship of sex? There was installed rather an apparatus for producing an ever greater quantity of discourse about sex, capable of functioning and taking effect in its very economy" (1506). Thus, the attempts to police sexuality actually resulted in the popularizing of sexuality in society, as people began to speak of sexuality and conversations soon developed. The "apparatus" concerning sex denotes the extent to which sexuality is embedded in the power structures of society, and sexuality became embedded within the economy. The heteronormative model for sexuality assumed power and queer sexuality was marginalized...
When sexuality was constituted by discourses, it opened the door for sexuality to become the subject of conversation and people finally began to discuss their opinions regarding it. The Repressive Hypothesis thus argues that the attempt to repress sexuality actually resulted in the liberation of sexuality, and indeed the liberation of sexuality would in turn represent one of the central themes of Victorian culture and the literature of the 19th century.
The Repressive Hypothesis normalized heterosexuality because the Bourgeois class was the dominant socioeconomic class at the time and was defined through a traditional, husband-and-wife familial structure. Moreover, once homosexuality was "invented" in 1870, queer sexuality became marginalized. The association between the dominant bourgeois middle-class and heterosexuality evinces the way in which sexuality is inextricably linked with power relations in society. Within feminism, the implication would be that those feminists who are heterosexuals enjoy more power, and that for feminism to ever usurp the existing patriarchal gender dynamic, a non-heteronormative model must gain power and women must assume greater economic authority than men. However, this is difficult because the Repressive Hypothesis indicates that the dominant cultural group will always attempt to repress the sexual group that it subordinates. The Repressive Hypothesis thus elucidates how economic power is indistinct from sexual power, and that economic power is maintained through the withholding of sexual power.
Works Cited
de Beauvoir, Simone. "Introduction. The Second Sex." Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2010. 34-42.
Foucault, Michel. "Part Two: The Repressive Hypothesis." The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. 1502-1521.
Sedgwick, Eve. "Axiomatic." 243-268.
