Andrea Dworkin: Right-wing Women

crimes that define their condition, that those crimes are responses

to what women are and what women do, that the crimes committed against women define the condition of women correctly— in accordance with what women are and what women do.

T he meaning of this description of what women’s subordination

is, how women are kept subordinate, how that subordination is

acted out on women system atically, is simple for feminists: breaking the circle up, breaking down the w all, annihilating the system ’s heart, are what we must do. The meaning for antifeminists is also

simple: whatever strengthens or vitalizes any aspect of the model is

of great practical value in keeping women subordinate. Antifeminists can disagree strategically (for instance, on whether pornography should be public or private) without disagreeing in principle on what is necessary to keep women encapsulated in subjection (the

use of pornography, its cultural and psychic centrality whether it is

public or private, the use of women as pornography in public and

in private). But one cannot be a feminist and support any element

in this model: there are no exceptions— not civil liberties lawyers

or liberals or sym pathetic men or so-called feminists who indulge

in using the label but evading the substance. Antifeminist politics

come in many guises, but a vivid memory of what the condition of

women is— w hat crimes articulate it, what is at its heart, what is

the impenetrable boundary beyond which women do not pass—

provides a standard for discerning antifeminism in any political

stance. No one can defend or give aid and comfort to that which

keeps women subordinate and at the same time claim to be acting

in behalf of women’s liberation: feminism is not a lifestyle or an

attitude or a feeling of vague sym pathy with women or an assertion

of modernity. Antifeminism saturates the political spectrum from

Right to Left, liberal to conservative, reactionary to progressive.

Antifeminism is resistance to the liberation of women from the sex-

class system , that resistance expressed in constructing political defenses of the constituent parts of sex oppression. This antifeminism is a vital part of programs, values, ideologies, philosophies, arguments, actions, economic, sexual, and social manipulations that are the substance of most political discourse and organizing. Antifeminism is a potent expression of reaction, backlash, and suppression;

DRAWING 3. PROSTITUTION AS

THE MATERIAL REALITY;

PORNOGRAPHY AS

THE UNDERLYING IDEOLOGY

THE C I R C L E OF C R I M E S A G A I N S T WO M E N

P R O S T I T U T I O N

DRAWING 4. PORNOGRAPHY AS

THE SURFACE PHENOMENON:

PROSTITUTION AS

THE UNDERLYING SYSTEM

it is protean; it is easy, popular, and always fashionable in one

form or another.

Antifeminism is also operating whenever any political group is

ready to sacrifice one group of women, one faction, some women,

some kinds of women, to any element of sex-class oppression: to

pornography, to rape, to battery, to economic exploitation, to reproductive exploitation, to prostitution. There are women all along the male-defined political spectrum, including on both extreme

ends of it, ready to sacrifice some women, usually not themselves,

to the brothels or to the farms. The sacrifice is profoundly antifeminist; it is also profoundly immoral. Men mostly accept the disposition of women under the sex-class system and they mostly accept the crimes committed against women: but sometimes the

status of women is addressed, those crimes are addressed, in political discourse. Whenever some women are doctrinally delivered to sex exploitation, the political stance is corrupt. Virtually all ideologies are implicitly antifeminist in that women are sacrificed to higher goals: the higher goal of reproduction; the higher goal of

pleasure; the higher goal of a freedom antipathetic to the freedom

of women; the higher goal of better conditions for workers not

women; the higher goal of a new order that keeps the sex exploitation of women essentially intact; the higher goal of an old order that considers the sex exploitation of women a sign of social stability (woman’s in her place, all’s right with the world). Some women are sacrificed to a function—fucking, reproducing, house-cleaning, and so on. A political promise is made, and kept, that

some women will do some things so that all women must not do all

things. Women accept the sacrifice of other women to that which

they find repugnant: a seduction of antifeminism that outdoes worship of female good in getting female adherents because it is more practical. Men all along the political spectrum manipulate this seduction with great skill. Some women are sacrificed by race or class: kept doing some kinds of work that other women will then

not have to do. Supporting the use of some women in any area of

sex exploitation is the w illful sacrifice of women on an altar of sex

abuse and it is a political repudiation of the sex-class consciousness

basic to feminism: it is— whoever does it— antifeminism. And then

there is the psychological use of the same reactionary strategy: some

women, of course, like being. . . (beaten, raped, exploited, bought

and sold, forced to have sex, forced to have children). Antifem inism is also a form of psychological warfare, and of course some women do like. . . Women intend to save themselves when sacrificing some women, but only the freedom of all women protects any woman. T his is practical and true because of the nature of sex

oppression. Men, who use power against women in sex exploitation, know that it is practical and true: which is w hy it is a fundamental strategy of antifeminism to encourage the sacrifice of some women by a ll women.

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Now look at the world as right-wing women see it. T hey live in