Andrea Dworkin - Right-wing Women

farmer worked her. The land was valued because it produced a

valuable crop; and in keeping with the mystique of the model itself, sometimes the land was real pretty, special, richly endowed; a man could love it. The cow was valued because of what she produced: calves, milk; sometimes she took a prize. There was nothing actually idyllic in this. As many as one quarter of all acts of battery

may be against pregnant women; and women die from pregnancy

even without the intervention of a male fist. But farming implied a

relationship of some substance between the farmer and what was

his: and it is grander being the earth, being nature, even being a

cow, than being a cunt with no redeeming mythology. Motherhood ensconced a woman in the continuing life of a man: how he used her was going to have consequences for him. Since she was

his, her state of being reflected on him; and therefore he had a

social and psychological stake in her welfare as well as an economic

one. Because the man farmed the woman over a period of years,

they developed a personal relationship, at least from her point of

view: one limited by his notions of her sex and her kind; one

strained because she could never rise to the human if it meant

abandoning the female; but it was her best chance to be known, to

be regarded with some tenderness or compassion meant for her,

one particular woman. Nevertheless, the archaic meaning of the

verb to husband is “to plow for the purpose of growing crops. ”

There is not a lot of room for tenderness or compassion in that.

Still, it is no wonder that women hang on possessively to any generic associations of women as such or “the female” with the land, nature, earth, the environment, even though those culturally sane-

tioned associations posit a female nature that is not fully human

and perpetuate a hard and mean tradition of exploitation: there is

some splendor and some honor in the association. The association

has a deep resonance for men too, though not the same sentimental

meaning: they after all did the plowing. The cultural and sexual

intersection of women and earth is potent for men when they

bomb “her, ” strip-mine “her, ” scorch “her, ” torch “her, ” denude

“her, ” defoliate “h er, ” pollute “her, ” despoil “her, ” rape “her, ”

plunder “h er, ” overcome, manipulate, dominate, conquer, or destroy “her. ” The significance of the farming model is both wide and deep. It has been the major w ay of using women— as mothers

to produce children; metaphorically speaking, men have used the

earth as if it were female, a huge fertile female that— one w ay or

another— they w ill fuck to death. There are limits to how much

the land can endure and produce, plowed so much, respected so

little.

Both the farming model and the brothel model dispose of women

as women: they are paradigms for the mass use of a whole class; in

both there is no hum anity for women. The brothel model has been

efficient. It uses the women in it until they are used up. Men get

sex from them with a graceful economy of means: effective force;

hunger, degradation, drugs; rare escape. The woman is easily reduced to what she sells. Women under the yoke of the brothel model do not organize political movements; they do not rebel collectively; the yoke is too heavy. Quite sim ply, a percentage of the class women is given over to the brothel model; whatever its laws,

societies accept this disposition of a significant number of females

for sex service. Once within that model, these women are controlled and used; what men want from them they get; their bodies go where their sex is wanted; there is an absolute equation between

what they are and what they provide, between their physical

bodies and their function, between their sex and their work. There

is no wasted energy here: a prostituted female serves her purpose

absolutely. The farming model has always been relatively ineffi­

cient. It is sloppier. Picking a woman who lives in the home with

the man on a continuing basis is harder. Picking a woman who can

and will have children is harder. There is more leeway for her

attitudes to interfere. She has ways of saying no or subverting male

sexual and reproductive intentions. The brothel model simply requires that the women under it be women: it does not matter who they are or what they are like or where they come from or what

they think; they get worn down fast by being used the same way

and being reduced to the same common denominator; nothing is

necessary except that they be female. The farming model requires

the constant application of force (explicit or implicit, usually a nice

combination), incentive, reward; and a lot of plain luck with respect to fertility and reproductive vigor. When a man wants sons, as most do, the inefficiency inherent in the model is particularly

emphasized: no matter how many babies she has, there is no certainty that any of them will be male. And, for all the coercion of the farming model, the women subject to it have organized politically, have found ways to seize the time between babies and domestic chores—here and there, now and then—to foment some rebellion. The very fact that such women have been involved in

movements, especially feminist movements, argues for the inefficiency of the farming model. The farming model has haphazard success: there are too many factors besides the efficacy of the fuck

that can interfere with the harvesting of the crop. The quality of

the crop cannot really be predetermined either. Men, recognizing

the inefficiency of the farming model, have simply imposed it on

all women not prostituted so as not to miss a chance: they use

social and economic sanctions to punish women who try to live

outside it, especially so-called spinsters and lesbians. To anticipate

and counterbalance the failures, the losses, the tremendous element

of chance, the bad breaks, the power of men as a class has been

exercised to keep all women not prostitutes reproducing under the

explicit domination of a husband. This has been the best way men

have had to control reproduction, to appropriate the uteruses of

women in order to have children, to keep the women subject to the

reproductive w ill of the men. The use of women by men in this

reproductive tyranny has been presented as what women are for: a

proper use of females, the best actualization of their human potential because, after all, they are women.

Reproductive technology is now changing the terms on which

men control reproduction. The social control of women who reproduce— the sloppy, messy kind of control— is being replaced by medical control much more precise, much closer to the efficiency