ABSTRACT
Sexological knowledge has advanced as a result of studies done from different theoretical perspectives and disciplines. The commercialization of sexuality that is titillated by the anonymity and adventure implied in tourist marketing is only one of the areas where capital benefits from the excitement of erotic desire. Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, and the other French encyclopedists opened the door to the modern medicalization of sexuality. In sum, and as M. Foucault argued in his History of Sexuality, the psychiatrization of eroticism—the control of the sexual body—was a way of using specific knowledge about sexuality to exercise power and regulate the individual. Male phallocratic sexuality was easily conquered by the pharmaceutical industry with the launch of Viagra in May 1998. The contemporary medicalization of sexuality maintains the hetero-normative emphasis on “normal” sexuality based on vaginal intercourse. Reproductive sexuality is already under the control of the business world in consonance with the privatization of health research and services.
