st is to refute the idea our identities are somehow fixed or determined by our gender or sexual preference.
             Our thinking about sexuality is largely informed by the "repressive hypothesis," which claims that the history of sexuality over the past three hundred years has been a history of repression. Sex, except for the purposes of reproduction is taboo. The only way to liberate ourselves from this repression, according to this hypothesis, is to be more open about our sexuality, to talk about sex, and to enjoy it.
             Foucault disagrees with the claim that sex has been repressed and silenced. He argues that Discourse about sex has only intensified and proliferated since the eighteenth century. Priests expected confessions to divulge the smallest temptation or desire, and sexual behavior became an important object of study for demographic and statistical analysis. With this intensification and proliferation of discourse, the emphasis moved from married couples to cases of sexual "perversion": child sexuality, homosexuality, etc. One's sexuality was also thought to explain a great deal about one's character.
             Increasingly, sex became an object of knowledge. Other cultures have treated sex as an object of knowledge, as an ars erotica: an art of sensual pleasure. Our culture is distinct, however, in treating sex as a scientia sexualis: an object of distanced, scientific investigation. Scientific discourse mixed with the form of confession has shaped our discourse on sex. Subjects were expected to confess, to divulge their darkest secrets, and these confessions were codified into a quasi-scientific form.
             Foucault asks how it is that we have come to see sex as the key to explaining us, as holding the truth about us. The answer has
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