ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses power relations that support acts of sexual violence, focusing especially on their relation to masculine-feminine polarity. It explores their sources and inquires deeply into the modes and categories of thought subjacent to these phenomena. The chapter discusses two sources at the roots of power relations that support acts of sexual violence: the sexual-drive field and the field of ideals as found in discourse and socio-cultural relations. It shows that relations between sexuality and power may develop strongly in masculine–feminine gender binarism. Organisation of power relations between genders is sustained by rigid binary subject–object opposition. Recognition of inter and transsubjective power relations, of ideals and discourses that sustain and multiply them, as well as their imbrications with drive sources, produces psychical effects which may contribute elements for to understand manifestations of sexual violence in the diverse fields in which it is expressed.
