M.F. The problem is in fact this: how is it that in a society such as ours, sexuality is not simply something which secures the reproduction of the species, the family, and individuals? Not simply something which brings about pleasure and jouissancel How is it that it has been considered the privileged place where our deepest 'truth' can be read and spoken? For the essential thing is this: ever since Christianity, the West has not stopped saying: 'To know who you are, find out about your sex.' Sex has always been the focal point where, besides the future of our species, our 'truth' as human subjects is tied up. Confession, self-examination, the whole insistence on the secrets and importance of the flesh were not only a means of forbidding sex or of pushing it as far as possible from consciousness, but also a means of placing sexuality at the heart of existence and of linking salvation to the mastering of its obscure movements. In Christian societies, sex has been what had to be examined, supervised, confessed, transformed into discourse.
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Micheal Foucault (1980) studied this question.