Andrea Dworkin: Right-wing Women

woman’s place in it.

Safety. For women, the world is a very dangerous place. One

wrong move, even an unintentional smile, can bring disaster—assault, shame, disgrace. The Right acknowledges the reality of danger, the validity of fear. The Right then manipulates the fear. The promise is that if a woman is obedient, harm will not befall her.

Rules. Living in a world she has not made and docs not understand, a woman needs rules to know what to do next. If she knows what she is supposed to do, she can find a way to do it. If

she learns the rules by rote, she can perform with apparent effortlessness, which will considerably enhance her chances for survival. The Right, very considerately, tells women the rules of the game on which their lives depend. The Right also promises that,

despite their absolute sovereignty, men too will follow specified

rules.

Love. Love is always crucial in effecting the allegiance of women.

The Right offers women a concept of love based on order and stability, with formal areas of mutual accountability. A woman is loved for fulfilling her female functions: obedience is an expression

of love and so are sexual submission and childbearing. In return,

the man is supposed to be responsible for the material and emotional well-being of the woman. And, increasingly, to redeem the cruel inadequacies of mortal men, the Right offers women the love

of Jesus, beautiful brother, tender lover, compassionate friend, perfect healer of sorrow and resentment, the one male to whom one can submit absolutely— be Woman as it were— without being sexually violated or psychologically abused.

It is important and fascinating, of course, to note that women

never, no matter how deluded or needy or desperate, worship

Jesus as the perfect son. No faith is that blind. There is no religious or cultural palliative to deaden the raw pain of the son’s betrayal of the mother: only her own obedience to the same father,

the sacrifice of her own life on the same cross, her own body nailed

and bleeding, can enable her to accept that her son, like Jesus, has

come to do his Father’s work. Feminist Leah Fritz, in Thinking Like

a W oman , described the excruciating predicament of women who

try to find worth in Christian submission: “Unloved, unrespected,

unnoticed by the Heavenly Father, condescended to by the Son,

and fucked by the Holy Ghost, western woman spends her entire

life trying to please. ” 3

But no matter how hard she tries to please, it is harder still for

her to be pleased. In Bless This House , Anita Bryant describes how

each day she must ask Jesus to “help me love my husband and

children. ”4 In The Total Woman , Marabel Morgan explains that it is

only through God’s power that “we can love and accept others,

including our husbands. ” 5 In The Gift o f In ner H ealing , Ruth Carter

Stapleton counsels a young woman who is in a desperately unhappy marriage: “T ry to spend a little time each day visualizing Jesus coming in the door from work. Then see yourself walking up

to him, embracing him. Say to Jesus, i t ’s good to have you home

N ick. ’” 6

Ruth Carter Stapleton married at nineteen. Describing the early

years of her marriage, she wrote:

After moving four hundred fifty miles from my first family

in order to save my marriage, I found myself in a cold, threatening, unprotected world, or so it seemed to my confused heart. In an effort to avoid total destruction, I indulged in escapes of every kind. . .

A major crisis arose when I discovered I was pregnant with

my first child. I knew that this was supposed to be one of the

crowning moments of womanhood, but not for me.. . . When

my baby was born, I wanted to be a good mother, but I felt

even more trapped.. . . Then three more babies were born in

rapid succession, and each one, so beautiful, terrified me. I did

love them, but by the fourth child I was at the point of total

desperation. 7

Apparently the birth of her fourth child occasioned her surrender

to Jesus. For a time, life seemed worthwhile. Then, a rupture in a

cherished friendship plummeted her into an intolerable depression.

During this period, she jumped out of a moving car in what she

regards as a suicide attempt.

A male religious mentor picked up the pieces. Stapleton took her

own experience of breakdown and recovery and from it shaped a

kind of faith psychotherapy. Nick’s transformation into Jesus has

already been mentioned. A male homosexual, traumatized by an

absent father who never played with him as a child, played baseball with Jesus under Stapleton’s tutelage—a whole nine innings.

In finding Jesus as father and chum, he was healed of the hurt of

an absent father and “cured” of his homosexuality. A woman who

was forcibly raped by her father as a child was encouraged to remember the event, only this time Jesus had his hand on the father’s shoulder and was forgiving him. This enabled the woman to forgive her father too and to be reconciled with men. A woman who as a child was rejected by her father on the occasion of her first

date—the father did not notice her pretty dress—was encouraged

to imagine the presence of Jesus on that fateful night. Jesus loved

her dress and found her very desirable. Stapleton claims that this

devotional therapy, through the power of the Holy Spirit, enables

Jesus to erase damaging memories.

A secular analysis of Stapleton’s own newfound well-being

seems, by contrast, pedestrian. A brilliant woman has found a socially acceptable w ay to use her intellect and compassion in the public domain— the dream of many women. Though fundamentalist male ministers have called her a witch, in typical female fashion Stapleton disclaims responsibility for her own inventiveness and

credits the Holy Spirit, clearly male, thus soothing the savage misogyny of those who cannot bear for any woman to be both seen and heard. Also, having founded an evangelical m inistry that demands constant travel, Stapleton is rarely at home. She has not given birth again.

Marabel Morgan’s description of her own miserable marriage in

the years preceding her discovery of God’s will is best summarized

in this one sentence: “I was helpless and unhappy. ” 8 She describes

years of tension, conflict, boredom, and gloom. She took her fate

into her own hands by asking the not-yet-classic question, What do

men want? Her answer is stunningly accurate: “It is only when a

woman surrenders her life to her husband, reveres and worships