Various theorists have suggested that men's violence is biologically determined, that it is learned through cultural socialization, or that it is primarily the result of deprivation and the oppressive divisions imposed by the alienated work process of capitalism. Radical feminism has further argued that men are reluctant to confront the problem of violence because men enjoy the power it gives them. The author argues that sexual violence is not innate in men in any biological sense and that it cannot be viewed as a means of defending men's own power and privilege. Neither is it a product of capitalism; rather it is the consequence of a form of gender construction that is deeply embedded in capitalist social relations. The problem of male sexual violence is thus principally that of the deep psychic construction of masculinity within the social and material meanings a culture ascribes to it. A potential for violence becomes encoded in the way men are defined as men and learn to experience themselves in relation to women. To change this in any fundamental way will require radical shifts not just in the framework of legal protection and sanctions or even just in sexual attitudes, but also in the organization of child rearing, in household structures, and in employment patterns that reproduce masculinity as it is currently constructed. 32 notes