ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how and why the ideal of the male sexual subject has been retained within English and Australian rape law, notwithstanding legislative efforts to establish equality between the sexes. It examines developments in English and Australian rape law which represents an effort to modernise heterosexual relations and explains why they have failed. The chapter deals with an exposition of this conventional sexuality, drawing in particular on the writings of Nietzsche who was eloquent on the subject. It considers how romantic ideal of the sexes was reflected in the English common law, especially in the law of rape. 'Erotic love' in the Western view is the love between a woman and a man, a heterosexual couple, within which there are particular and different roles anticipated for the woman and for the man. When a woman is swept off her feet, when she loses herself in love's swoon, she serves to reveal the potency and sexual autonomy of man.
