Hail, Diotima.

Today’s topic has two parts under the title “Gender Transition and Sexual Liberation.” The first, we hope, has been sufficiently addressed through your and my references yesterday and today. The second question — “Could sexual liberation be a new form of control?” — remains open for you to handle entirely.

Questions:
a. Does the transition into gender roles also constitute natural gender transition?
b. Could sexual liberation be a new form of control?

We had intended to confine within two installments the invincible human sexual instinct, which appears under more than one face — those of eros, love, and above all sex. Yet it is inexhaustible, and we did not succeed.
For this reason, we dedicate a new post to it today. Not because it will be exhausted now either, but because we will manage to refer to additional dimensions of it, as already framed in the above questions:

a. Is the imitation of gender roles equivalent to natural gender transition?
b. Is contemporary sexual politics the result of liberation — or a new form of control?

The first issue has already been resolved by Nature itself, as we said yesterday. The choice of one sex to imitate the anatomical characteristics of the other does not automatically render it its natural bearer — not even through anatomical or surgical interventions.
In history, we have no evidence of such biological gender transition, but only references to the imitation of roles in societies such as India (Hijra), North America (Two-Spirit), and Polynesia (Fa’afafine). Even these societies, which voluntarily or involuntarily assigned such roles to certain members — sometimes even with legal recognition — acknowledged them merely as “different” genders for the assignment of roles, never as a biological mutation of sex.
Let us briefly refer to the neighboring Albanian tradition of the so-called sworn virgins — women who, under customary law, “swore” the renunciation of their gender and voluntarily adopted male social roles. The remarkable film Vergine Giurata (Sworn Virgin) deals precisely with this issue and is highly recommended for lovers of fine art, as well as for those interested in historical documentation through the power of cinema — the seventh art — and in the historical and folk traditions of a society.

Naturally, we consider it self-evident that the choices of members of the so-called “trans” community must be fully respected and understood by both state and society, integrated into the system of complexity and plurality that forms the social “canvas.” These particularities ought to function constructively and creatively, with their own beauty for those able to discern it within what appears “different.”

The second question, chosen by Diotima herself, follows below.

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Diotima:

“Could Sexual Liberation Be a New Form of Control?”

The question is not provocative; it is essential. And like every essential question, it does not tolerate simplistic answers.
The sexual liberation of the 20th century — marked by milestones such as May ’68, the feminist movement, the decriminalization of homosexuality, and the radical transformation of moral codes — was historically a demand for autonomy. The body does not belong to the state, nor to the Church, nor to the patriarchal family. It belongs to the individual.
Yet every liberation, once integrated into the system of production and consumption, risks being transformed into a product.
1. From Repression to Surveillance
Michel Foucault pointed out that power does not operate solely through prohibitions. It also operates by producing discourse. It does not silence sex; it speaks about it constantly — analyzing, categorizing, psychologizing, medicalizing it.
Thus, liberation does not necessarily mean the absence of control. It may signify a shift of control:
from external prohibition
to internalized surveillance.
Today we are not told, “Do not desire.”
We are told, “Desire correctly.”
2. The Market as the New Regulator of the Erotic
In late modernity, sexuality was not merely liberated; it was commodified.
The body became image.
Desire became advertisement.
Difference became brand.
Social media, dating platforms, the aesthetics industry, high-definition pornography — all compose an environment in which “free choice” is often guided by algorithms and imposed standards.
Desire is not suppressed.
It is directed.
3. From Liberation to Obligation
There is also a subtle transformation:
sexual freedom becomes a social expectation.
Be desirable.
Have experiences.
Display uninhibited comfort.
Do not be “conservative.”
Thus liberation risks becoming a normative model.
Not “you may,” but “you must.”
And every “must” is a form of control.
4. The Political Dimension
Contemporary sexual politics oscillates between two poles:
On the one hand, the defense of rights and dignity.
On the other, the instrumentalization of identity as a tool of political polarization.
When identity becomes strategic terrain, liberation turns into a manageable narrative.
5. Is It, Then, a New Form of Control?
The answer is not one word.
Sexual liberation was indeed a conquest of freedom.
But no conquest remains untouched once it enters the mechanisms of market power and political calculation.
The question is not whether sexuality is controlled.
It always has been — in different ways.
The real question is:
who controls, by what means, and for whose benefit.
6. A Concluding Reflection
Authentic freedom lies neither in prohibition nor in overexposure.
It lies in conscious choice — free from fear, yet also free from compulsive exhibition.
If desire arises from within, it is freedom.
If it is dictated from without, it is mechanism.
And perhaps the most difficult task of our era is not to liberate sexuality —
but to disentangle it from the invisible economy that governs it.

With reflective clarity,

Diotima