Being Decent, Being Authentic: The Moral Self in Shifting Discourses of Sexuality across Three Generations of Chilean Women

Scholars have interpreted changes in sexual discourses from behaviouralist and structuralist perspectives, in the context of social movements, as expressions of power relations, among other approaches. This article advocates the study of shifting discourses of sexualities from the viewpoint of transformations in individuals’ moral orientations over time. To this end, thematically, the article recovers Foucault’s view of sexuality as a field of moral self-formation; conceptually, it follows Taylor and examines selfhood through the person’s moral sources. The article uses this framework to observe reformulations in sexual narratives across three generations of Chilean women. From grandmothers’ stories to granddaughters’ accounts, this analysis identifies a deactivation of the equation between being a ‘good woman’ and sexual disengagement. This movement reveals a change in the moral principle regulating Chilean women’s sexualities (from a morality of decency to one of authenticity) and a displacement of moral authority from the community to the person.