Foucault, the history of sexuality and the obscuring of women's oppression

Michel Foucault's theory on sexuality as set forth in Histoire de la sexualite' may seem appropriate to form the basis of a feminist critique of sexuality. In English and North American feminist studies, this author is regarded as important But this treatise conceals in a non-conventional way an arbitrary approach to history and a patriarchal view of women's sexuality. Foucault's study investigates the past in a dogmatic way, namely via a contemporary distortion of the historic and documentary reality of the ages he studies. As the Ancients before him, he excludes women from his research on sexuality, except regarding sexuality in marriage. He endorses misogynous prejudices as though they were normal practices and thereby perpetuates the male-dominating view of women.