Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Foucault 11/19

Foucault talks about sexuality and what constitutes as a definition for that term. He argues that sexuality, although the term has changed over the years, has mainly held the same meaning because of the ideologies that are attached to it.

"The essential features of this sexuality are not the expression of a representation that is more or less distorted by ideology, or of a misunderstanding caused by taboos; they correspond to the functional requirements of a discourse that must produce its truth." (104)

In our society, there are a lot of stereotypes or expectations that are tied with sexuality and gender. If you are a woman, you should be feminine, a good cook, motherly, and enjoy beauty products. If you are a man, you should be masculine, good at fixing things, the dominant figure, and enjoy cars and beer. Obviously those stereotypes don't hold true for each and every male and female in our world. In fact, many men and women do not go along with these stereotypes.


Here we see this famous poster that portrays this woman as strong, masculine, and independent. This is a perfect example of how the gender and sexuality stereotype does not hold true and shouldn't be further expressed in our society.

As time has gone on, our world has been more involved and recognized the LGBT community, which also goes under the umbrella term of sexuality. Sexuality doesn't just involved the vanilla boy and girl. It has become a very fluid term that has become up to the individual on how they choose to identify. 


This is Gigi, a famous youtuber who goes by the tag name gigigorgeous. She identifies as a woman and is interested in men. However, years ago she had surgery to look this way because she was born a man. Gigi is another prime example of how sexuality is more fluid than initially thought of because it is a very complex topic. We shouldn't be so quick to stereotype, categorize, or assume things that go along with being a man or woman because often they are not true.


1 comment:

  1. I find it very interesting to think about the concept of sexuality as Foucault explains it and as Savannah understands it. When I think about how Foucault defines sexuality, it does make sense that we understand sexuality especially because of the ideologies accompanied with it. However, one thing that is concerning to think about is that the stereotypes can be untrue, however they are still perpetuated in society. I do wonder one thing however, if Foucault believes because they are not always true, that such ideologies and stereotypes should no longer be furthered, then how many other people are thinking this way? When Savannah draws light to the YouTube star, I am drawn to how sexuality is represented in social media. It's important to realize how heavily entrenched our society, and especially social media, are with ideologies. I wonder then, if sexuality was no longer associated or accompanied by such stereotypes and ideologies, what would sexuality be understood as? What would it look like?

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