Power of the Confession

I thougt our discussion last class was interesting in regards to the idea of the confession. Specifically, I'd like to comment here on the reverse (perhaps even perverse) effect of sexual expression. As Foucault mentions in Scientia Sexualis, "it is in the confession that truth and sex are joined, through the obligatory and exhaustive expression of an individual secret...one does not confess without the presence (or virtual presence) of a partner who is...the authority who requires the confession, presecribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forginve, console, adn reconcile." In other words, the co-called sexual liberation we beleive we're engaging in when disclosing our sexcapades is nothing more than a mechanism for the authority's expansion of surveillance and control over our bodies, be it the authority of the state, social institutions like the church, or individual people. For example, when a person gets married they're often supposed to disclose their most secretive sexual desires and adventures. But, this revealing, or confession, doesn't liberate the individual: the confessor is perpetually judged, condemned, and then consoled for being a "freak." We see a more public manifestation of this in the social lives of the politician's around us. The Bill Clinton example I brought up last time is a prime case in point, where Bill was forced to publically expose his sexual deviance with Monica Lewinsky, not to liberate his internal sex drive, but to become subject to public and legal scrutiny, and literally judged by the U.S. court-system. This example also illustrates the fallacy, or atleast the fallacy of the problem-solution construction, of sexual repression. Whether or not we are sexually oppressed, this idea of the need to live public lives of sexual pleasure is a tool by the dominant system around us to prevent true emancipation.