Foucault, MacKinnon, and Masculinity

I have been thinking about Catherine MacKinnon’s “Rape: On Coercion and Consent” and the ways in which power can be constructed. In particular, I have been thinking about Michel Foucault’s panoptical structure of power and its relationship with sex and consent. Foucault’s panoptical structure of power posits power on a horizontal field where everyone, to some degree, has power over everyone else. Power dynamics may shift between individuals over time, but generally speaking each individual controlled by and has control over someone else. If this theory of power holds true, it concerns me that consenting relationships may not exist (not that MacKinnon’s theory of sexual assault contradicts this).

When MacKinnnon discusses sexual assault she does so under the presmise that men are perpetrators and women are victims, operating under the assumption that all men have power and are dominant and that all women are lacking power. This of course, denies consent. What if power relationships function like a panopticon? If two persons were seeking to consent, could they since they both hold some magnitude of power over the other? I would argue with MacKinnon to say that any form of power creates the potential for sexual violence, so consent could never be provided.

I am thinking of the construction of gender and if by identifying as a “woman” is somehow consenting to the violent landscapes that are placed on that body through state sanctions and laws. Perhaps part of the panoptical structure of power is indeed, that all men have the ability to consume, while all women have the ability to watch and monitor the consumption of men? I think MacKinnon’s establishment of male power can be seen at the roots of hegemonic masculinity, in that hegemony requires masculine men to consume (women, food, space, time, resources, etc). This might suggest that in order to change the power relationship between men and women, a critical look and undoing of hegemonic masculinity is in order. If hegemonic masculinity is undone, perhaps the attitudes regarding sexual assault might change. I am also curious if this might change the way this panoptical structure of power operates.