You wrote:

I noticed that Foucault wrote this piece in 1976. Why, then, didn’t he so much as mention the Women’s Liberation Movement and the Sexual Revolution? … Women were protesting the power a male-dominated society had over their bodies, and over personal decisions like abortion, birth control, and choice of partners.

I too find myself frustrated with Foucault’s lack of recognition of the feminine “condition.” His analysis is so in depth and fascinating, in my opinion, so how can he have been so obtuse? For me, the beef lies with his interpretation of the young girl who got mixed up with Jouy. He has little compassion for her when is coerced into playing a game of “curdled milk.” To call it petty is an injustice.

As for your comment on repentance, I don’t think Foucault was making a case for that. His focus centered on the fact that the church was categorizing what was virtuous vs. not virtuous, thus creating a discourse that brought deviancy into the forefront of people’s minds. I find it amusing that the very sex the church attempted to stifle is the same sex it ultimately promoted through discourse.

Foucault goes one step further saying that, to his displeasure, this system of categorization identifies people by a simple act of desire. They are no longer an individual acting on a curiosity, they are unjustly labeled gay or a fetishist, imprisoned by that label, and punished for the social infraction. In this way, desire is driven from the pleasure of the act itself and transferred to the discourse about the act. Foucault’s position against this label system? Now this is something I can support.