Disciplining women in contemporary discourses of sexuality

Abstract

Although the boundaries demarcating what is permissible for women may have changed, contemporary discourses of women and (hetero)sexuality still define women's sexuality in relation to men and deny women autonomy. This paper explores dominant themes in contemporary discourses to illustrate this: the domestification of pornography; the search for gender equivalence; the construction of female (hetero) sexual desire as a means of self expression. While such themes may be taken to signal women's sexual assertiveness and equality with men, I argue that they can be understood, historically, as manifestations of the same discourse in which women are identified with their bodies, sexualised within a disciplining heterosexuality and their liberation constructed in predominantly (hetero)sexual terms. Based on Foucault's work on power, sexuality and ‘techniques of the self, my analysis suggests that women's sexuality is shaped and controlled through the creation of new demands and coercive practices of the self rather than through repression or denial.

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