Andrea Dworkin - Right-wing Women

for it— she is. T his is the power of women in pornographic sex.

The apologies for this sexual system that claim that women are

powerful because women are desired— in fact, that go so far as to

insist that women are sex-dominant and sex-controlling— uphold

this phantasmagoric female power, keeping women in real life

powerless. T he antifeminism is directly implicit in the pornographic conceptions of female power, female nature, and female

freedom. Her power is in being used, her nature is to be used, and

her freedom is in being used. Or, her power is in provoking men to

hurt her, her nature is to provoke men to hurt her, and her freedom is in provoking pain. Or, her power is in making men force her to do what she does not want to do, her nature is to make men

force her to do what she does not want to do, and her freedom is in

being forced to do what she does not want to do. These principles

of antifeminism effectively confound both power and freedom: the

response in most women is to want neither. A woman’s individual

nature is more than confounded: it is frequently annihilated.

The male-dominant model of antifeminism is virtually everywhere. Its woman-hating dimensions have been discussed brilliantly in many feminist texts; here the focus will be on how it functions to stop a liberation movement. Religion and biology are

the great roots of the metaphysical idea that men are superior to

women because they are. Whether male dominance is described as

a kind of perpetual biological pillaging or the will of a merely

wrathful God, the hostility in male dominance is what is most consistently justified by the idea of male dominance. Keeping women a subject people is hostile. The genius of the male-dominant model

of antifeminism is the transmogrification of this hostility into what

passes for love. When one group conquers another, the act of conquest is clearly hostile; when a man conquers a woman, it is to express romantic or sexual love. Invasion is an act of hostility, unless the male is invading the female, in which case “violation” is used to mean love. Beating someone up is an act of hostility, unless

a man is beating a woman whom he loves: women, it is said, consider beating proof of love and demand or provoke this proof.

When a man tyrannizes a people, he is hostile to their rights and

freedom; when a man tyrannizes a woman, he is well within the

bounds of his role as husband or lover. When a group deemed

inferior is targeted for violence in propaganda, that propaganda is

unarguably hostile; when men target women for sexual violence in

pornography, the m aterial, the targeting, and the violence are considered expressions of sexual love. Mass terrorization of one group by another is hostile, unless women are terrorized by men raping,

in which case each rape must be examined for signs of love. Confining a group, restricting them, depriving them of rights because they were born into one class and not another are hostile acts, unless women are being confined, restricted, and deprived of rights by the men who love them so that they w ill be what men can love.

There is hostility in the world, which one recognizes as historical

and social cruelty; and then there is the love of man for woman.

The acts m ay be the same but they are so very different, because

what is done to women is measured by an absolutely unique standard: is it sexy? Women are taken to be sex, so if it— whatever it is— is done to a woman, it is likely to be sexy. If it is sexy, it

comes under the aegis of love. H ostility is defined in the dictionary

as “antagonism . ” Love is seen to be a grand antagonism; so is a

great sexual passion, while the everyday fucks are little antagonisms oft repeated. T he torturer is just a real obsessed lover when the victim is a woman, especially a woman whom he knows intim ately. Rape is just another kind of love; and nothing— no law, no political movement, no higher consciousness— has yet made rape

less sexy for those who see love in male dominance. Chains are

sexy when women wear them, prisons are sexy when women are in

them, pain is sexy when women hurt, and love includes all this and

more. Beat up a man for speaking his mind and there is a human-

rights violation— hunt him or capture him or terrorize him and his

human rights have been violated; do the same to a woman and the

violation is sexy. Nothing that falls within the purview of the love

of man for woman qualifies as a violation of human rights; instead,

violation becomes a synonym for sex, part of the vocabulary of

love. The love of the superior for the inferior must by its nature be

fairly horrific, fairly terrifying, grossly distorted. When men love

women, every hostile act demonstrates that love, every brutality is

a sign of it; and every complaint that a woman makes against the

hostility of male dominance is taken to be a complaint against love,

a refusal to be a real woman, that is, to suffer male hostility as an

ecstasy, to suffer love.

The male-dominant model of antifeminism also proposes that

freedom is inimical to the situation of women because women must

always bargain. Since men are dominant, aggressive, controlling,

powerful because of God or nature, the weak women must always

have something to trade to get the protection of these strong men.

Either the woman is too weak to care for herself or she is too weak

to fend off men; in either case, she needs a male protector. If she

needs a male protector, she must not only bargain to get him; she

must continuously bargain to keep him or to keep him from abusing the power he has over her. This compromises any possibility of self-determination for her. The dependence of women on men, the

inability of women to have and to manifest a self-sustaining and

self-determined integrity, and the fundamental definition of a

woman as a whore by nature are all established as being implicit in

the biological relationship between men and women: implicit and

unalterable. This feature of the male-dominant model is unique to

it. Neither the separate-but-equal model nor the woman-superior

model puts women in a metaphysically defined, biologically determined relationship of prostitution to men. (Perhaps this virtue of the male-dominant model accounts for its ubiquity. ) The bargain

women must make because men are biologically dominant is

pointed to whenever a woman achieves. The bargain is searched

for—what did she sell to whom to enable her to do whatever she

did? The necessity for bargaining is used to stop rebellion. The