Introduction

This essay investigates the use of sexuality and sexual violence as an instrument of state biopower, while also highlighting the role of intersectional identities in increasing the vulnerability of the states’ victims. Ireland’s history of mother and baby homes illuminates the state’s use of sexualised power to control citizens and their bodies. This institutionalised violence is comparable to the incarceration of indigenous people in Canadian residential schools at a similar time, when indigenous people were subjugated on ethnic grounds.

First, this essay explains Michel Foucault’s theory of biopower and his theory for the history of sexuality which provides a theoretical framework for the type of power discussed in this essay. Secondly, it discusses Ireland’s mother and baby homes, and how the Irish state subordinated Irish women by regulating their sexual endeavors. It then examines race as an aggravating factor in the experience of the female victim. Further, it considers whether Ireland continues to dehumanize people within its borders today, with regard to the institutionalisation of asylum seekers in the states’ direct provision centres.

Thirdly, the essay discusses Canada’s residential schools, comparing them to the Irish case. In this case, attention is paid to ethnic discrimination as a tool of biopower, with gender acting as an aggravating factor in the indigenous experience. The recent history of Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous people is then examined, assessing whether Canada continues to dehumanise indigenous communities today. Finally, the essay assesses state apologies for what happened in their pasts. In response to the ongoing sexual violence towards women and children in minority groups in both states, the essay concludes that state apologies are simply not enough for a nation to heal. Moreover, the state must reassess its use of biopower, if it seeks to create, as vocalized by the Irish Taoiseach, a ‘more just society, grounded in respect, diversity, tolerance and equality (O’Halloran, 2021).

Foucault: ‘Biopower’

According to Foucault, states are inclined to dominate citizens through the use of bio-power. The term bio-power denotes a technology of power, which the state uses to control bodies or regulate its population (Garner, 2010, p. 59). Power is an event or relationship that happens when people have conflicting motives, and is an exercise in which we all participate (McWhorter, 2004, pp. 42-43). In events of power, people try to act on each other’s bodily actions, and this can take place on an individual level or societal level (McWhorter, 2004). According to Foucault, power struggles are not always limiting or repressive, but are also positive and creative, as they lead to the construction of new ideas (McWhorter, 2004, pp. 42-43). Through conflicts of power, new identities and situations are produced, with social structures and the self-experiencing shifts as well (McWhorter, 2004, pp. 42-43).

The state uses biopower to regulate its population through ‘Disciplinary power’ (the regulation of human bodies), and by creating categories such as gender, sexuality and nationality to describe its citizens (Garner, 2010, p. 59). Foucault’s theory of power takes two forms. The first is centered on the body as a machine, and pays attention to its discipline, and to optimizing its capabilities (Foucault, 1976, p. 139). The second is focused on the ‘species body’, or on the regulation of the population (Foucault, 1976, p.139). Foucault located important historical shifts in configurations of this power in state institutions such as schools and hospitals, and these configurations play a key role in shaping identity and experience (McWhorter, 2004, p. 43) These configurations of power bear striking similarities to the power instrumental to both Irish and Canadian institutions discussed in this essay (McWhorter, 2004, p. 43). Foucault’s theory captures the use of biopower to suppress bodies that deviate from state desired norms, and its use in controlling state populations. While the examples addressed here demonstrate biopower as a ‘creative’ phenomenon capable of molding individual identities, the Irish and Canadian cases illustrate that this power can also be limiting and repressive.

Foucault: Sex and Social Order

Although these states differ in their circumstances, as do the relevant marginalised groups, the sexualised control of bodies by the state is crucial to both cases. Foucault considered sexuality to be instrumental to a regime of biopower that develops within institutions and aims to harness the developmental potential of human bodies (McWhorter, 2004, p. 40). This regime of power came into existence in the late 19th century when people began to understand themselves as fundamentally sexual in nature, viewing sex as fundamental to pleasure, self-understanding, and health (McWhorter, 2004, p. 40). Sexual identity became a product of what Foucault called ‘normalizing power’ (McWhorter, 2004, p. 40). As such, the control of sexuality became a tactic for maintaining social order through the regulation of norms and standardised practices (McWhorter, 2004, pp. 45-46). As a result, concepts of sex and sexuality now exist as a set of power relations that give society its structure and shape individual identities (McWhorter, 2004, p. 45).

The control of sexual relations is now instrumental to the civilising process and the maintenance of power (Inglis, 2005, p. 3). The Irish victims of institutionalised violence and incarceration were single mothers, while their counterparts in Canada were victims of ethnic discrimination. Nevertheless, the prevalence of sex and sexuality in relation to social order in both cases exhibits the profound role of sexualised power in states pursuits of social order, and this provokes need for comparisons between both states and their use of sexualised power.

Intersectionality and Social Order

Intersectionality investigates how intersecting power relations influence relationships and experiences in society (Hill-Collins et al, 2016, p. 22). Intersectionality views categories such as race, class and gender as interrelated, capable of shaping each other, and explaining complex experiences (Hill-Collins et al, 2020, p. 22). The intersectionality of identities makes individuals extremely vulnerable to institutionalised violence. In Ireland, the state sought to regulate its population and national identity by constraining women’s’ sexual endeavors, and punishing those who deviated from gender norms. However, special attention is paid to the experiences of mixed-race women in mother and baby homes, who received deeper oppression due to the colour of their skin (Department of Children, Disability, Integration and Youth, 2021, p. 74). While Canada’s residential schools affected all genders, being indigenous and female, or indigenous and ‘two-spirited’ exacerbated the experience of an already very vulnerable group. This issue is even more prevalent today in stories of Canada’s missing and murdered women, whose stories unfold later in the essay.

Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes

Ireland’s mother and baby homes demonstrate the role of sex and sexuality in power relations and the formation of individual identities. In response to Victorian prudery, Irish attempts to progress from so-called ‘savages’ to civilisation launched a desire for sexual purity (Inglis, 2005, pp. 5-14). Attempts to maintain sexualised social order were led by views of Irish women as faithful, dependent and subordinate homemakers. Women were held responsible for the enactment of sexual activity, and deviation from the idyllic ‘respectable Irish woman’ was a shame to society (Inglis, 2005, pp. 5-14). The harsh maintenance of sexual endeavors was also a reaction to Ireland’s high birth rates and population growth, which the state sought to control at the time (Inglis, 2005, pp. 1-15). The focus of this sexualised power and states’ control over women’s bodies as disciplinary power and an instrument of population control is directly applicable under Foucauldian theory. Moreover, this phenomenon bred the harrowing culture of institutional abuse that Irish women suffered for years to come.

There were 56,000 unmarried mothers and about 57,000 children in the mother and baby homes and county homes investigated during the 1960s and early 70s (Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, 2021, p. 2). These homes offered a place of refuge for young mothers who were shunned by their families and communities for becoming pregnant before marriage (Department of Children, disability, Integration and Youth, 2021, p. 1). As hostages to Ireland’s sexually repressed and patriarchal culture, some of these women became pregnant through exploitation or rape, while others had digressed societal norms that had grown out of Victorian prudery (Department of Children, Disability, Integration and Youth, 2021, p. 2). According to state inflicted sexual attitudes, women’s’ lives were ‘blighted’ by pregnancy outside of marriage (Department of Children, Disability, Integration and Youth, 2021, p. 2). While the homes tempted safety and security, they were really a state weapon in its harsh practice of biopower.

The physical and emotional conditions of the homes offered a painful reality to young mothers (Department of Children, Disability, Integration and Youth, 2021, p. 4). Women were abused mentally, physically and emotionally, and were shown little kindness, even when they needed it most (Department of Children, Disability, Integration and Youth, 2021, p. 5). Childbirth was an exceptionally traumatic experience, and women were degraded and shunned from their bedsides (Department of Children, Disability, Integration and Youth, 2021, p. 5). In the eyes of the church and state, these women were sinners, or so-called ‘fallen women’, and the only solution was to sweep them of their self-esteem and their identities (Redmond, 2018, p. 26).

After birth, babies were often taken from their mothers, and in many cases, were never seen or held by them again (Redmond, 2018, p. 109). Some ‘illegitimate’ children were sent to Ireland’s industrial schools – an additional scandal in which the state sentenced orphans and disadvantaged children to a childhood of sexual, physical and emotional abuse (Redmond, 2018, p. 43). Ireland’s greatest shame it seems, is the some 9,000 children who died in the institutions as a result of neglect, and oftentimes even murder (Department of Children, Disability, Integration and Youth, 2021, p. 63). Sentenced to lifelong pain by their own state and society, Ireland’s mothers and babies rest in Irish history, as victims of the state in its abuse of biopower.

Racial Diversity in Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes

The story of Rosemary Adeser, a mixed-race child born in a mother and baby home illustrates the intersectional subordination experienced by young women who not only transgressed sexual norms, but also deviated from Ireland’s all white racial identity (Holland, 2015). Not only was Adeser born in a mother and baby home, but she later gave birth in a home in her teenage years. According to Adeser, her file from the homes ‘was peppered with references to my colour’, and she wrote that ‘The racism was relentless and brutalising (Holland, 2015).

During her time in the homes, Adeser believes she received different treatment to her white counterparts under state policy (Holland, 2015). Alongside other black women who shared a similar experience, Adeser believes there was a policy regarding mixed race and black babies being put up for adoption, which the state avoided in fear that ‘nobody would want them’ (Holland, 2015). In the homes, Adeser was abused both sexually and verbally, and was also tortured by her foster parents when she was four, who told her she was ‘filthy and nasty’ (Holland, 2015). During her time in foster care, her foster parents would strip her naked, and beat her (Holland, 2015).

In recent years Adeser was part of a campaign group called ‘Mixed race and Irish’ that sought justice for women like Adeser, who suffered ‘an extra layer of abuse’ because of their racial identity (Holland, 2015). The group rallied for the recent commission to investigate the issue of race in a module alongside disability, religion and Traveller identity (Holland, 2015). Finally, in the report released this year, racial discrimination is factored into the government’s close analysis of Ireland’s past. Records of inspectors’ reports support Adesers’ beliefs regarding racist policy, and provide proof of inspectors making explicitly racist commentary in the homes. To quote: ‘Nice looking girl, but her father is Jamaican’, and ‘The fact that T is half coloured could affect her chances of adoption.’ These remarks show the clear rejection of mixed-race babies, who were considered undesirable due to the colour of their skin (Department of Children, Disability, Integration and Youth, 2021, p. 74).

Adeser’s story, in combination with primary research by the recent commission, prove that racial discrimination was certainly a compounding factor in the severity of women’s’ experiences (Department of Children, Disability, Integration and Youth, 2021, p. 74). Moreover, the intersectionality of identities remains applicable to Foucault’s’ theory of biopower, with states desires to control racial norms aggravating the victims’ experience.

Ireland’s Direct Provision Centres: Ireland’s New Shame

As Ireland attempts to heal the past of the mother and baby homes, the continued dehumanization in Irish Direct Provision Centres today must not go unmentioned. In particular is the Irish state’s failure to protect female asylum seekers against sexual violence. Henceforth, it is considered whether this behaviour implies continuous abuse of state biopower, and a sexualised social order.

Since 2000, the Irish government has funded private contractors to house for-profit accommodation schemes for asylum seekers waiting for claims of international protection, a process with extreme delays (Amnesty International, 2019, p. 3). Asylum seekers who have fled from war zones or extreme poverty are offered little protection and are pushed into worrying living conditions (Amnesty International, 2019, p. 4) Small hostel rooms host entire families who receive a minute monthly income and minimal basic necessities (Amnesty International, 2019, p. 3). These conditions are a villainous representation of a state who, having failed its native women and children in the past, continues to dehumanize vulnerable people within its borders.

In 2019, it came to media attention that women in direct provision centres have been forced into sex work, and that cases of sexual abuse in direct provision were not uncommon. “He knew I had kids and told me you’ll make money and be supporting your children. When I told him I wasn’t interested he asked, ‘why are you refusing this opportunity, don’t you know how to have sex?’ wrote one woman, explaining the pressure inflicted on her by male asylum seekers in the home, who encouraged her to get involved with sex work to sustain her family (Pollak, 2019). This not only highlights the dominance of sex in power relations, but also the prominent role of sexual norms, and how they can be manipulated, coerced, or controlled in society through Foucault’s’ process of ‘normalization’. It seems that in the case explained above, women were not only expected to participate in sex work but were shamed or manipulated if they opted against it. Moreover, the victims of sexual exploitation are once again a minority group (non-nationals) who have the additional vulnerability of also being female.

In 2015, Amnesty International made recommendations to the Irish government to develop an alternative to direct provision, that ‘respects, protects, and fulfills the rights of asylum seekers to adequate housing, and an adequate standard of living for themselves and their families’, putting a particular emphasis on the state’s implementation of new laws surrounding sex work and sexual violence (Amnesty International, 2019, p. 5). Amnesty recommended that the Irish government repeal section 27 of Part 4 of the Criminal Law Act 2017, which criminalizes the purchase of consensual adult sex (Amnesty, 2019, p. 8). Similarly, in 2019 the US State Department accused the Irish of failing to provide effective support services for asylum seekers, such as vulnerability assessments (Pollak, 2019). By failing to provide vulnerability assessments, the state was accused of ‘under-identifying victims’, who may, in the past, have been victims of sex trafficking (Pollak, 2019).

On February 26th 2021, the Irish government finally released ‘A White Paper to End Direct Provision and to Establish a New International Protection Support Service’, in which it outlined plans to change the treatment of asylum seekers in Ireland by 2024. The new plan encompasses a non-for-profit initiative for housing migrants, with a commitment to providing accommodation, health, education, income support and other service needs to migrants, that will be both professional and grounded in a human rights approach (Government of Ireland, 2021).

As suggested by the US State Department, the State has pledged to carry out vulnerability assessments, the outcomes of which will determine the accommodations and support options available for the applicant (Government of Ireland, 2021, p. 60). Specialist refuge accommodation will be made available for those who have escaped from abusive or violent relationships (Government of Ireland, 2021, p. 32). Additionally, the plan promises to be responsive to differing identities and cultural needs, with provision of cultural competence training for all those providing services (Government of Ireland, 2021, p. 32).

While advancing change is commendable, the institutionalised neglect and diminishment of vulnerable persons over the past 21 years is evidence that the State has not yet learned from its past. The circumstances of direct provision centres are on-going, and their recentness is worrying. The stories of female asylum seekers being forced into sex work and exploitation is once again exemplary of the role that sex and sexuality plays in the practise of power and power relations, and the states failure to protect them from harm exposes it as an implicit actor of institutional and societal wrong. It’s also noteworthy that the victims of this harm are once again predominantly women and children, who carry the additional burden of being discriminated against due to their home nationality, or the colour of their skin. In the years to come, this abuse must not be forgotten, and the states’ new promises must not be broken again.

Canada’s Residential Schools

The history of Canadian residential schools bears striking similarities to the Irish mother and baby homes, particularly in how it exposes the states’ attempts to civilise society and regulate bodies through institutionalised subordination. Constructed under misguided policy and institutional harm, residential schools for indigenous children were constructed with the goal of stripping children of their aboriginal identity, or the ‘essence of their being’, which was considered a deviation from the national identity pursued by their colonisers. (Niezen, 2017, pp. 1-39). At this point, strict attention is paid to the State’s use of biopower to regulate its population on ethnic grounds, and in addition, the role that sex played in ethnic subjugation.

The conditions of the residential schools bore a striking resemblance to Irelands’ mother and baby homes and industrial schools. According to Niezen, the residential schools had ‘all the markings of a cause that provokes a kind of persistent, nagging, sympathetic sense of wrong’, brought about by institutional authority and political harm – a description also applicable to the Irish mother and baby homes (Niezen, 2017, pp. 1-39). Residential schools were off reserve and separated indigenous children from their families (MacDonald et al, 2011, p. 430). Much like the mother and baby homes, the schools were church-run, and offered harsh living standards (Macdonald et al, 2011, p. 430). Children received little medical or dietary care, were victims of violent sexual and physical abuse, and the possibility of disease or even death loomed (Macdonald et al, 2011, pp. 429). Children were forbidden to speak their native languages or practise their traditional beliefs or customs (MacDonald et al, 2011, pp. 429). Once again this is exemplary of the type of ‘normalizing power’ established by Foucault, which the state uses to strengthen norms, and punish those who deviate from the status quo (McWhorter, 2004, p. 40).

In Foucault’s’ analysis of biopower, he refers to regimes of biopower as instrumental ‘managers of life and survival, of bodies and race’, meaning they pursue the primary goal of protecting the entire population and its race (Foucault, 1978, p. 137). However, he also describes such regimes as ‘holocaust’ on the relevant populations who are suppressed and regulated in the pursuit of social order (Foucault, 1970, p. 137). Interestingly, Macdonald et al asked whether the Canadian residential schools were a case of genocide for indigenous people, making it remarkably applicable to Foucault’s’ use of the term ‘Holocaust’ in describing regimes of biopower (Macdonald et al, 2012, p. 428).

Much of the abuse carried out in residential schools was sexual abuse by members of the religious clergy, which once again highlights the prominence of sex and sexuality as an instrument of repressive power (Niezan, 2017, pp. 1-39). Indigenous children in residential schools were placed into the care of ‘sadists and pederasts’, who abused them sexually, as well as physically and emotionally, in attempts by their predators to strip them of their indigenous identity (Niezan, 2017, pp. 1-39). Much like Ireland’s mother and baby homes, and industrial schools, the residential schools were hidden from wider society until they closed in the 90s (Niezan, 2017, pp. 1-39). By the time the schools closed in 1996, approximately 140 Indian residential schools, housing 150,000 children, had been in operation (Niezen, 2017, pp. 1-39).

Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Two-Spirited People as Victims of Sexual Violence

Today, indigenous women and ‘two spirited people’ are overrepresented as victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Canada. Over the last 30 years, more than 1000 indigenous women were murdered in Canada, and more than 100 are still missing (Seramo, 2015, p. 204). However, until 2015, the issue of missing and murdered women received little to no attention from the state (Hansen et al, 2019, p. 2).

Studies report that in Canada, indigenous women are nearly three times more likely to be killed by a stranger than non-indigenous women (Hansen et al, 2019, p. 3) Indigenous women in Canada are extremely vulnerable to violence in a male-dominated, all-white society, and are branded with racial stereotypes that cast them as ‘promiscuous’ or prostitutes, although studies show that only half of Canada’s missing women are even involved in the sex trade (Hansen et al, 2019, p. 3). This widespread violence towards women and girls has been described as a ‘Femicide’ by some authors, while some researchers argue that ‘two-spirited’ indigenous people and indigenous men are equally vulnerable (Seramo, 2015, p. 206 and Hansen et al, 2019, pp. 1-14).

On the latter point, it’s interesting that little attention has been paid to those of ‘two spirit’ people who have gone missing and whose stories remain untold (Seramo, 2015, p. 205). The term ‘two-spirit’ was adopted by Indigenous people and queer allies to capture an array of Indigenous gender, sex, and sexuality identifications (Hunt, 2016, in Seramo, 2015, p. 205). Existing data shows that two-spirit indigenous people are overrepresented in cases of racism and violence in Canada, and while it’s unknown how many appear on Canada’s list of missing and murdered indigenous people, this issue demands further attention (Seramo, 2015, p. 205). Of course, indigenous men are also victims to societal and systematic discrimination, and this is not disregarded. However, due to the focus of this essay on intersectional identities and the practice of bio-power, deeper attention is paid to the cases of indigenous women and girls and ‘two-spirited’ people.

The efforts of indigenous women in recent years have brought this issue to the forefront of Canadian attention to issues surrounding institutional racism and sexism (Hansen et al, 2019, p. 4). Without their continuous efforts, the Canadian government’s ‘National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ which was launched in 2015 under Prime Minister Trudeau, might never have been launched (Hansen et al, 2019, p. 4). Unfortunately, the Harper government in power between 2006 and 2015 continuously denied the stories of Canada’s missing and murdered people as a sociological phenomenon, and did little in the way of resolving it (Seramo, 2015, p. 205).

Prime Minister Harper himself claimed ‘We think the issue has been studied to death’, exposing the little care or motivation the government had for mitigating an urgent national issue (Seramo, 2015, p. 208). In line with its historically tense relationship with indigenous people, research also finds that the Canadian Police Force has failed to protect indigenous people from harm in recent years. According to CFNMP 2004, “Young Aboriginal men and women have been beaten, disappeared and died while in police contact or shortly after police contact” which suggests that violence towards indigenous people is not only enabled by the state, but is perhaps even a result of decades of systemic racism (Hansen et al, 2019, p. 4).

Apologies, Hypocrisy and National Healing

Public apologies have become instrumental in the rehabilitation of states that are seen to have committed gross human rights violations (Niezen, 2017, p. 32). At this stage, both Irish and Canadian governments have publicly apologized for their states’ subordination of marginalized groups, which, as argued in this essay, developed as instruments of biopower. Ireland’s Taoiseach Michael Martin apologised for the ‘profound generational wrong’ that was committed on Irish land, and claimed, ‘for the women and children who were treated so cruelly we must do what we can, to show our deep remorse, understanding and support.’ (O’Halloran, 2021). The Irish government has promised to respond to all recommendations made by the commission, and these suggestions include memorialisation, educational and research commitments, and information and tracing legislation will be introduced and prioritized, with the Taoiseach claiming that ‘access to one’s own identity is a basic right’. (O’Halloran, 2021). Under the pillar of restorative recognition, the state has also promised an enhanced medical card to victims of the mother and baby homes, as well as promises of access to counselling and patient liaison services (O’Halloran, 2021).

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also apologized for his state’s tragic past and the suffering it caused (Trudeau, 2017). This apology followed the attempts of Prime Minister Harper, who in 2008 apologized for the state’s use of residential schools, but failed to recognise students from provincial residential schools in Newfoundland and Labrador (Trudeau, 2017). Akin to the Irish government, the Canadian government has committed itself to providing compensation, commemoration and healing for victims of the residential schools (Niezen, 2017, p. 32).

While state apologies are valuable, they are seemingly not sufficient for our nations to heal. Truly, one wonders if a nation can ever heal from such a tragic and brutal past. Additionally, while both states’ recent efforts to protect vulnerable populations are acknowledged, both states’ failures to protect vulnerable bodies from sexualised violence and exploitation on the grounds of gender, ethnicity, or race today show their carelessness and implicit acceptance of sexual subjugation in power and power relations. Our conclusion, therefore, is not that the Irish and Canadian governments have learned from the harmful effects of sexualised, sexist and racist biopower, but that the use of biopower remains equally harmful in their behaviour today.

Conclusion

This essay has examined the role of sexuality as an instrument of power in the cases of Irish and Canadian histories until now. Foucault’s’ theory of biopower explains the states’ regulation of bodies, and use of categorization in attempts to regulate and maintain social order and desired national identity.

In accordance with this theory, this essay has examined the use of sexuality as an instrument of power for the Irish state, through its cruel regulation and maltreatment of women, their bodies, and their children. Looking closely at the circumstances of mixed-race Irish women, it was established that race undeniably increased the vulnerability of single mothers in mother and baby homes.

The essay examined the effects of institutional oppression today, looking closely at Ireland’s treatment of asylum seekers in Direct Provision Centres. In response to research regarding sex work and sexual exploitation in Direct Provision centres, the Irish government’s failure to protect the victims of its system led the conclusion that the Irish government remains an agent of sexualised power relations through inaction. The Canadian government’s funding of residential schools for indigenous people was explored, with emphasis on the role of sexual violence in the dehumanisation of indigenous people. Later, the recent experiences of missing indigenous women and ‘two-spirit’ people were discussed, with the state’s failure to act on this phenomenon contributing to a continuing cycle of societal and systemic discriminatory and sexualised violence.

Both states have apologised for the cruel, tragic and shameful events of their pasts. However, having explored the continued abuse of biopower in recent times, this essay concludes that both governments must reassess how they can positively exercise this power in the years to come. Conclusively, it is after making this shift that either state will succeed in creating an equal society that is grounded in respect, diversity, and equality for all.

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