11 February

Michel Foucault challenged the idea that sex was a repressed thing that we needed to talk about. Instead he pointed out that we talk about sex now way more than we ever have in history. Why? Foucault realised that our obsession with sex in modern times is a narrowing of our desires and how they play out in our lives, into the very narrow channel of what goes on in our pants. Germaine Greer used Foucault later to challenge her own Female Eunuch, which said women’s desires were being repressed. She changed that to say sexual liberation was no liberation at all, because it did nothing to address why sex was so central to what we talk about. 13,000 hours of porn is created every year in the world, the channeling of our desires is a global industry. Both men and women are victims of this channelling.