[Nature, love and the limits of male power] It has long been taboo for feminist theorists to draw on notions of nature in their conceptualizations of gender relations. Objecting to this nature-phobia, Lena Gunnarsson argues that we need to anchor our social theories in explicit notions of the natural necessities on which any social structure draws and must ultimately accommodate. Such a reference to a “natural ontological order” is needed not only for explaining how power structures can get a hold over people, but also for specifying the ways in which the natural necessities impose absolute constraints on the forms that oppressive structures can take, ultimately creating a conatus to getting rid of the oppressive structure. In the human-social realm a crucial aspect of nature is those basic human needs that any society must meet in order to reproduce itself. One such human need that has been theoretically overlooked, although often implicitly assumed, is the need for love. Drawing on Anna G. Jónasdóttir’s theory of “love power”, Gunnarsson elaborates on the contradictions inherent in the power that men acquire by exploiting women’s love, arguing that these contradictions can be understood only with reference to natural necessities. Publication history: Translation of the article “Nature, love and the limits of male power” from Journal of Critical Realism , volume 14, number 3 2015 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1179/1476743015Z.00000000071 ). (Published 8 June 2017) Citation: Gunnarsson, Lena (2017) “Natur, kärlek och den manliga maktens gränser”, in Arkiv. Tidskrift för samhällsanalys , issue 8, pp. 77–86. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.8.3