Andrea Dworkin - Right-wing Women

bargain necessitated by his greater aggression, strength, and power

is the principal reason for refuting the possibility of her claim to

independence in this model of antifeminism. He is dominant; she

must submit. Submission in the face of greater strength, greater

aggression, greater power, is unavoidable. She is simply not strong

enough to be on her own— especially not if he wants her because

she is not strong enough or aggressive enough to stop him from

taking her. So each woman has to make a deal with at least one of

the strong ones for protection; and the deal she makes, being based

on her inferiority, originating in it, acknowledges the truth and

inevitability of that inferiority. In needing to bargain because she is

too weak not to, she proves that antifeminism— the repudiation of

her freedom— is grounded in simple biological necessity, biological

common sense, biological realism.

Because the male is presumed dominant by natural right or divine w ill, he is supposed to have an exclusive authority in the realm of public power. The antifeminism predicated on natural

male dominance also maintains that men naturally dominate government, politics, economics, culture, state and m ilitary policy—

that men naturally assert their dominance by running all social and

political institutions. The token woman here and there in no w ay

interferes w ith the effectiveness of virtually all-male clubs of power

in erasing any hope of real authority or influence for women. One

woman on the Supreme Court, one woman in the Senate, a woman

prime minister, an occasional woman head of state, are not so

much role models as rebukes to economically demoralized women

who are supposed to accept the tokens as what they too could have

been if only they themselves had been different— better, smarter,

richer, prettier, not such schlemiels. Token women must go out of

their w ay not to offend the male sense of fem ininity, but by their

visibility they inevitably do so. As a result, the token women give

out the correct line on fem ininity and at the same time bear the

brunt of the critical perception that obviously they are not at home

being fucked. T he woman who is not a token is mostly condescended to by the token, a condescension that she feels not only acutely but often, since the token is always pointed out to her as

proof that her own situation does not result from an exclusionary

social system . Every all-male or nearly all-male group— profession,

institution, business, club, or power clique—is a concrete embodiment of antifeminism. By its existence it upholds and proclaims the dominance of men over women. By its existence it reinforces the

social inferiority of women to men, perpetuates the political subordination of women to men, mandates the economic dependence of women on men, and endlessly revitalizes the sexual submission of

women to men. The all-male clique of power communicates the

antifeminism of male dominance everywhere it operates, all the

time, without exception. The power of men to make decisions and

determine policy, to create culture and to control the institutions of

culture, is simultaneously held to be the logical outcome of male

dominance and proof of its existence. Every institution that is

structurally male-dominant is also ideologically male-dominant; or

its structure would change. Every group that is structurally male-

dominant functions as concrete resistance, material resistance, to

the liberation of women: it prohibits the exodus of women from the

obligations and disadvantages, not to mention the cruelties, of inferiority. Any area that is virtually all male is hostile to women, to political rights, economic parity, and sexual self-determination

for women. The verbal support of men in all-male institutions,

groups, or cliques of power for mild feminist reform has no value

in the world of real, substantive change for women: it is the allmale structure itself that must be subverted and destroyed. Male dominance and the antifeminism that defends it can only be repudiated by being ended; those who construct it by literally being the bricks of which it is built cannot change it by merely disputing

it. The antifeminism in exclusively male enclaves is not made humane through gestures; it is immune to modification through diplomatic goodwill. As long as a road is closed to women, it is closed to women; and that means that women cannot take that road, however nicely the men on it suggest they would not mind. The road is not only a road to power or independence or equity; it is often the

only road away from tremendous abuse. The antifeminism in an

all-male institution cannot be mitigated by attitude; nor can male

dominance— alw ays the meaning of an all-male enclave— ever accept that women are not inferior to men. The token woman carries the stigma of inferiority with her, however much she tries to dissociate herself from the other women of her sex class. In trying to stay singular, not one of them, she grants the inferiority of her sex

class, an inferiority for which she is always compensating and from

which she is never free. If the inferiority were not reckoned universally true, she of all women would not have to defend herself against the stigma of it; nor would her own com plicity in the antifeminism of the institution (through dissociation with lesser women) be a perpetual condition of her quasi acceptance. Male

dominance in society alw ays means that out of public sight, in the

private, ahistorical world of men with women, men are sexually

dominating women. The antifeminism in the all-male rulership of

society alw ays means that in the intimate world of men with

women, men are politically suppressing women.

The three social models of antifeminism— the separate-but-equal

model, the woman-superior model, and the male-dominant model

—are not inimical to one another. T hey mix and match with perfect ease, since logic and consistency are not prerequisites for keeping women down: no one need prove his case to justify the subordination of women; no one need meet a rigorous standard of

intellectual, political, or moral accountability. Most people, whatever their political convictions, seem to believe parts of each model, the pieces adding up to a whole view. Fragmented philosophical

and ideological justifications for the subordination of women exist

in a material context in which women are subordinated to men: the

subordination is self-justifying, since power subordinates and

power justifies; power both serves and consoles itself. Separate-

but-equal, woman-superior, and male-dominant antifeminism can