Andrea Dworkin - Right-wing Women

even be used sequentially as one whole argument for the practice of

male supremacy: men and women have different capacities and dif­

ferent areas of responsibility according to sex but their functions

and attributes are of equal importance; women are morally superior

to men (a different capacity, a different area of responsibility), except when they provoke lust, in which case they have real power over men; the biological dominance of men over women is (a) counterbalanced by the real sexual power of women over men (in which case each has separate-but-equal powers) or (b) proved in that

women are too good to be as aggressive and as rudely dominant as

men or (c) naturally fair and naturally reasonable because natural

submission is the natural complement to natural dominance (and

dominance and submission are separate-but-equal spheres, submission marking the woman as morally superior unless the submission is sexually provocative, in which case her sex gives her different-but-equal power). Either this is true or it is not. Either the arguments of antifeminism, one by one or the whole lot, are true or they are not. Either there are separate-but-equal spheres or there

are not. Either women are morally better than men or they are not.

Either women have sexual power over men simply by being

women or they do not; either provoking lust is power t)r it is not.

Either men are dominant by nature or will of God or they are not.

Antifeminism says all this is true; feminism says it is not. The so-

called feminism that says some of it is true and some of it is not

cannot combat antifeminism because it has incorporated it. Antifeminism proposes two standards for rights and responsibilities: two standards determined strictly by and applied strictly to sex.

Feminism as the liberation movement of women proposes one absolute standard of human dignity, indivisible by sex. In this sense, feminism does propose—as antifeminists accuse—that men and

women be treated the same. Feminism is a radical stance against

double standards in rights and responsibilities, and feminism is a

revolutionary advocacy of a single standard of human freedom.

To achieve a single standard of human freedom and one absolute

standard of human dignity, the sex-class system has to be dismem­

bered. T he reason is pragmatic, not philosophical: nothing less w ill

work. However much everyone wants to do less, less w ill not free

women. Liberal men and women ask, W hy can’t we just be ourselves, all human beings, begin now and not dwell in past injustices, wouldn’t that subvert the sex-class system , change it from the inside out? T he answer is no. The sex-class system has a structure; it has deep roots in religion and culture; it is fundamental to the economy; sexuality is its creature; to be “just human beings” in

it, women have to hide what happens to them as women because

they are women— happenings like forced sex and forced reproduction, happenings that continue as long as the sex-class system operates. T he liberation of women requires facing the real condition of women in order to change it. “W e’re all just people” is a stance that

prohibits recognition of the systematic cruelties visited on women

because of sex oppression.

Feminism as a liberation movement, then, demands a revolutionary single standard of what humans have a right to, and also demands that the current sexual bifurcation of rights never be let out of sight. Antifeminism does the opposite: it insists that there is a

double standard of what humans have a right to— a male standard

and a female standard; and it insists at the same time that we are all

just human beings, right now, as things stand, within this sex-class

system, so that no special attention should be paid to social phenomena on account of sex. W ith respect to rape, for instance, the feminist starts out with a single standard of freedom and dignity:

everyone, women as well as men, should have a right to the integrity of their own body. Feminists then focus on and analyze the sex-class reality of rape: men rape, women are raped; even in those

statistically rare cases where boys or men are raped, men are the

rapists. Antifeminists start out with a double standard: men conquer, possess, dominate, men take women; women are conquered, possessed, dominated, and taken. Antifeminists then insist that

rape is a crime like any other, like mugging or homicide or bur­

glary: they deny its sex-specific, sex-class nature and the political

meaning undeniably implicit in the sexual construction of the

crime. Feminists are accused of denying the common humanity of

men and women because feminists refuse to fudge on the sex issue

of who does what to whom, how often, and why. Antifeminists

refuse to acknowledge that the sex-class system repudiates the

humanity of women by keeping women systematically subject to

exploitation and violence as a condition of sex. In analyzing the

sex-class system, feminists are accused of inventing or perpetuating

it. Calling attention to it, we are told, insults women by suggesting

that they are victims (stupid enough to allow themselves to be victimized). Feminists are accused of being the agents of degradation by postulating that such degradation exists. This is a little like considering abolitionists responsible for slavery, but all is fair when love is war. In ignoring the political significance of the sex-class

system except to defend it when it is under attack, antifeminists

suggest that “we’re all in this together, ” all us human beings, dif-

ferent-but-together, a formulation that depends on lack of clarity

for its persuasiveness. Indisputably, we’re all in rape together,

some of us to great disadvantage. Feminism especially requires a

rigorous analysis of sex class, one that is ongoing, stubborn, persistent, unsentimental, disciplined, not placated by fatuous invocations of a common humanity that in fact the sex-class system itself suppresses. The sex-class system cannot be undone when those

whom it exploits and humiliates are unable to face it for what it is,

for what it takes from them, for what it does to them. Feminism

requires precisely what misogyny destroys in women: unimpeachable bravery in confronting male power. Despite the impossibility of it, there is such bravery: there are such women, in some periods

millions upon millions of them. If male supremacy survives every

effort of women to overthrow it, it will not be because of biology

or God; nor will it be because of the force and power of men per

se. It will be because the will to liberation was contaminated, un­