Women and gendered discourses about Love: Towards a "Confluent Love" or a return to the "Romantic Love" Myth?

Abstract

The role of love in intimacy dynamics is undeniable in occidental societies, being one of the central elements of social life. The argument that love constitutes the engine of interpersonal relations development, especially for women, represents a basic issue in the construction of social discourses about human being happiness and the factors that configure it. Traditionally seen as feminine, love has been pointed to women as its supreme vocation (Beauvoir, 1976) entangling them, not quite often, in an ideal of privacy potentially castrating of its autonomy and personal freedom. This article intends to critically reflect on the implications of social construction of discourses about love in feminine heterosexual adult intimacy, from a critical feminist point of view. This paper discusses the importance to assume love discourses as egalitarian and democratic. Copyright Σ 2007 by Revista Estudos Feministas.