Foucault’s attitude to sex is alive and well in intersectional feminism

If inheritors of the post-Foucauldian ‘critical theory’ worldview see existing systems of power as inherently oppressive and evil, then dismantling them can only be good. It’s then incumbent on adherents of this worldview to be open-minded about the attendant dismantling of all norms associated with those systems of power.

A detailed programme for this ongoing project of dismantling was published recently by a ‘Women’s Rights Caucus’ of over 200 intersectional feminist groups, LGBT+ campaigns and trade unions around the world. As flagged by the Women’s Human Rights Campaign, of particular note is a line about how the campaign should encourage governments to eliminate ‘laws limiting legal capacity of adolescents, […] to provide consent to sex or sexual and reproductive health services’.

When we recall that the WHO defines as ‘adolescent’ everyone in the 10-19 age bracket, it becomes clear that this inserts into an ostensibly ‘intersectional feminist’ policy declaration, as mainstream consensus feminist aims, the goal of abolishing the age of consent for everyone over the age of 10.

That this has been waved through by over 200 international NGOs and self-styled feminist campaigns speaks volumes about how widespread and entrenched the commitment is to de-stigmatising all those ‘bourgeois’ sexual norms whose existence so inconvenienced Foucault. So perhaps (despite his posthumous quasi-cancellation) Foucault had the last laugh after all: thanks in part to his analysis of sexuality, ‘sexual autonomy for 10-year-olds’ is now well within the international progressive Overton window.

None of this, though, is an argument for cancelling Foucauldian analysis, as if such a thing were even possible. Rather, it’s an argument for employing it. If Foucault was right, power is inescapable and we all exist within it. I’d wager the majority of us still think it wholly legitimate and proper to use state power to stop adults sexually abusing children. For this majority, then, it’s an argument for mobilising political, social and cultural power and working methodically to remove from positions of influence every single group that has signed this declaration.