ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the term erotic not as a self-evident, universal category, but as a culturally defined concept that is ideological in nature. The equation of female sexual experience with surrender and victimization is so familiar in what our culture designates as erotic art and so sanctioned by both popular and high cultural traditions, that one hardly stops to think it odd. Americans, too, thrilled to images of female victims. Hiram Powers's The Greek Slave (1843) was probably the most famous and celebrated American sculpture in the mid-nineteenth century. The modern masterpieces of erotic art that the chapter have been discussing enjoy this ideological protection even while they affirm the ideals of male domination and female subjugation. And in the modern era as in the past, what has been sanctified as high art and called True, Good, and Beautiful is born of the aspirations of those who are empowered to shape culture.
