Foucault talked a lot about how power in modern societies is very, very rarely so blunt, and often seems quite humane. This can make is much more insidious and harder to fight.
For decades medical science believed being homosexual was a biological disorder, the presence of the feminine in men, of the masculine in women. Psychologists adopted similar positions. Treatments included drugs, hypnosis, electroshock, invasive surgeries and lobotomies. But that was the science, and how could someone argue against the science?
It took the communists in the Mattachine Society who came up with a theory and practice of homosexual liberation in a heteronormative society to challenge the authority of science. The idea of Pride, of raising our consciousness as a community and as loving people, was an assault against homophobia from the flanks. The science itself changed when we demanded medical authorities cease treating us like diseased pariahs.
If it were not for queer rebellion, a rebellion from a place of emotion and identity, of demanding our lives and loves be left the fuck alone, medical scientists would still be tripping over themselves for a cure, in the same way a cure is researched for conditions like bipolarity or cancer.
I'm gonna be blunt.
I find white cishet men tend to have a very simplistic view of power because "A gun to my head" tends to be the only way they experience it. Power relations maintained by cultural expectations, like Sarkeesian's look at women as rewards for men in video games, and power maintained by the experts in the sciences, like that experienced by queer people, are just not something white cishet men experience.
