ABSTRACT
So far we have not distinguished ‘romance’ from love. . . . When love takes place in a power context, everyone’s ‘love life’ must be affected. Because power and love don’t make it together.
So when we talk about romantic love we mean love corrupted by its power context-the sex class system-into a diseased form of love that then in turn reinforces this sex class system. We have seen that the psychological dependence of women upon men is created by continuing real economic and social oppression. However, in the modern world the economic and social bases of the oppression are no longer alone enough to maintain it. So the apparatus of romanticism is hauled in. (Looks like we’ll have to help her out. Boys!)
Romanticism develops in proportion to the liberation of women from their biology. As civilization advances and the biological bases of sex class crumble, male supremacy must shore itself up with artificial institutions, or exaggerations of previous institutions, e.g., where previously the family had a loose, permeable form, it now tightens and rigidifies into the patriarchal nuclear family. Or, where formerly women had been held openly in contempt, now they are elevated to states of mock worship.1 Romanticism is a cultural tool of male power to keep women from knowing their conditions. It is especially needed-and therefore strongest-in Western countries with the highest rate of industrialization. Today, with technology enabling women to break out of their roles for good-it was a near miss in the early twentieth century-romanticism is at an all-time high.
