I really enjoying the refresher on Foucault that the end of Chapter 6 gave me. His rejection of the ‘repressive hypothesis’ is an extremely interesting topic to me, and I think it certainly has a lot of place in the culture and society in which we inhabit today. Considering how sports-minded I am, I can’t help but think about Foucault’s critique of the repressive hypothesis in terms of how it applies to todays sports world.
This past February, Michael Sam, an All-American co-SEC defensive player of the year who recently graduated from the University of Missouri, admitted to the world that he was gay. This quickly became a big deal for a few reasons. The NFL had yet to welcome it’s first openly gay athlete, and Sam, who was projected to be a relatively high-draft pick, voiced his desire to break down this barrier just a few days before his scheduled NFL tryout. After Michael Sam’s admission of his sexuality, much of the sports analysis that followed consisted mainly of discussing whether or not the decision to admit his sexuality would hurt his draft projection. To reiterate, the first gay player is about to join the NFL and one of the main points discussed is whether or not he will be drafted as high as he would have been without admitting his sexuality.
The way the media has covered Michael Sam since learning he was a homosexual football player provides us with a great example of how our ability to interpret and adequately speak on sexuality is radically insufficient – and it interestingly enough somewhat aligns with the people living at the time Foucault was writing.