The idea of sex is always changing. We can say there is a radical as well as conservative view of sex. We, as a society, define what we deem as radical or conservative. There is a growing discourse of sexuality since the 18th century. This discourse maintains order. Before, when sex was not transformed into a discourse, Michel Foucault would say there was the "forbidding of certain words" (1504). People were afraid to talk about sex or anything related to intimacy. The discourse now defines people by disciplining us. Foucault believes that there should no longer be a top/down relationship between people. Higher institutions should not govern sex. It should be a horizontal relationship within all people. This horizontal relationship allows each individual to regulate themselves and others. We monitor each-other and we internalize what's right and wrong.
So is sexuality censored today? The discourse of sex is not censored to PUBLIC, but each individual filters sex differently.
Depending on where you go and who you talk to their answers might differ. Answers differ from household to household, person to person, city to city, country to country, town to town, mother to daughter. Because we are subjects of an ever-changing society, with limitless technology and means of communication, everyone is susceptible to hearing the new hetero- normative variations of sex as well as the non-normative variations. Eventually those who did not belong in the norm find an acceptance over time and a new "category" of people who do not belong to the norm are created. I think it's a process of addition and substitution. There are always new variables being added, multiplied, subtracted and divided.
Foucault, Michel. The Norton ANthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York, NY, 2010. 1502-1521. Print.
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