ABSTRACT
The maintenance and perpetuation of male domination over women relies on an eroticised construct of inequality between men and women, where male and female sexualities are constructed as both different and unequal. Fundamentally, sex and power are merged. This becomes apparent when we look at the issue of male sexual violence against women, and examine male sexuality and male sexual practice. Within the system of male supremacy men thus have power over women by virtue of being perceived as ‘naturally’ superior to women, but it is a system of social domination rather than natural inequality, and therefore has to be socially maintained through the eroticisation of male-female relations generally, and also by the use, and threat of, male sexual violence against women. What makes male supremacy especially enduring, is the way these mechanisms are eroticised or made ‘sexy’ and acted out in heterosexual relations, thereby appearing both ‘natural’, ‘normal’ and ‘consensual’.
