Andrea Dworkin - Right-wing Women

obtains is sex segregation. The separate-but-equal model applied to

men and women continues to be effective because it is seen to correspond to biology accurately and fairly. The model has credibility because the sexual subordination of women to men is seen to be in

the nature of things and a logical premise of social organization— a

biological reality that is properly reiterated in social institutions,

civil prerogatives, and sex-segregated obligations. The model is

perceived as fair because in it men and women are kept biologically

separate (discrete), socially separate (discrete), and they are declared equal because each is doing equally what is appropriate to

their sex. Separation is seen to be the only real vehicle of equality

for women. The notion is that women competing with men, not

limited to a female sphere, could never achieve social or economic

or sexual equality because of their nature—which in all of these

areas would simply be inferior to male nature; females are inferior,

however, only because they have left the female sphere, which in

itself is equal, not inferior; females are only inferior to men in a

male sphere, where they do not belong. Equality is guaranteed by

setting up separate spheres according to sex and simply insisting

that the spheres are equal. This amounts to a kind of metaphysical

paternalism: constructing a social model in which women need not

experience their inferiority as a burden but instead are assigned

such social value as women that their inferiority is of equal social

worth to the superiority of men. The separate spheres are declared

equal with no reference to the material conditions of the persons in

the spheres and this is the sense in which women have equality

with men under this model. There need not be equality of rights,

for instance; indeed, it is counterindicated. Since the sexes are not

the same, they should not be treated the same, and something is

wrong when a common standard is applied to both. In this social

model, separation by sex class is viewed as the only basis for equality; sex segregation is the institutional expression of this egalitarian ethic, its program in fact. With sex as with race, separation is a

fact; equality is a chimera or a lie.

The woman-superior model of antifeminism is found in two apparently opposing realms: the spiritual and the sexual. In the spiritual realm, the woman is superior to the male by definition; he worships her because she is good; her sex makes her moral or gives

her the responsibility for a morality that is sex-specific. Being

female, she is higher, by nature closer to some abstract conception

of good. She is credited with a moral sensibility that men are hard

put to match (but then, they are not expected to try): she is ethereal, she floats, her moral nature lifts her up, she gravitates toward

that which is pure, chaste, and tasteful. She has an instinctive, sex-

based knowledge of what is good and right. Her moral sensibility

is unfailingly benign, always an influence toward the good. Her

sex-class business includes the business of being virtuous— a

strange assignment by sex, since the Latin root of the word v irtu e

means “strength” or “m anliness, ” which perhaps shows the futility

of the project for her. T his goodness of her sex is essentially based

on a presumed chastity, a necessary chastity— of behavior but also

of appetite. She, as a woman, is not supposed to know sexual desire. Men lust. As one who by her nature does not lust, she is the opposite of man: he is carnal; she is good. There is no notion of

female m orality or of a woman’s being good in the world that is not

based largely on chastity as a moral value. The great female tragedies are stories of sexual falls. The tragic flaw in a female hero—

H ardy’s Tess or Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina— is sexual desire. All

the drama of a female life, in great or in banal works, basically

replicates the biblical fall. Seduction (or rape) means knowledge,

which is sexual desire; sexual desire means descent into sin and

inevitable punishment. As a cultural symbol, the good female is

innocent: innocent of sex, innocent of knowledge— chaste in both

ways. H istorically, ignorance has been a form of grace for the good

woman; education was denied women to keep them morally good.

The elevation of a woman requires that she have this innocence,

this purity, this chastity: she must not know the world, which men

embody. The worship of a woman or a female religious symbol is

often the unmediated worship of chastity. The virgin is the great

religious symbol of female good, the female who is by nature (in

her body) good, who embodies the good. The awe and honor accorded the chaste female by men are frequently pointed to to show that men do not hate or degrade women, that men worship, adore,

and admire women. The m orally superior nature of women is honored mostly in the abstract, and women are worshiped mostly in the abstract. The worship is worship of a sym bol— a symbol ma­

nipulated to justify the uses to which fallen women are put. The

morally good woman is put on a pedestal—a small, precarious,

raised stage, often mined, on which she stands for as long as she

can—until she falls off or jumps or it goes boom.

In the secular world, women are also credited with having a

sense of good that is intrinsically female, a sense of good that men

do not have. This is a frequent feature of contemporary environmentalist or antimilitarist movements. Women are seen to have an inborn commitment to both clean air and peace, a moral nature

that abhors pollution and murder. Being good or moral is viewed

as a particular biological capacity of women and as a result women

are the natural guardians of morality: a moral vanguard as it were.

Organizers use this appeal to women all the time. Motherhood is

especially invoked as biological proof that women have a special

relationship to life, a special sensitivity to its meaning, a special,

intuitive knowledge of what is right. Any political group can appropriate the special moral sensibility of women to its own ends: most groups do, usually in place of offering substantive relief to

women with respect to sexism in the group itself. Women all along

the male-defined political spectrum give special credence to this

view of a female biological nature that is morally good.

However this premise about a biologically based morality is

used, the woman-superior model of antifeminism is operating to