Andrea Dworkin - Right-wing Women

the same world as all women: a world of sex segregation and sex

hierarchy; a world defined by the crimes of rape, battery, economic and reproductive exploitation; a world circumscribed by prostitution; a world in which they too are pornography. T hey see

the system of sex oppression— about which they are not stupid—as

closed and unalterable. It is unchangeable to them, whether they

take as their authority God or man. If sex oppression is real, absolute, unchanging, inevitable, then the views of right-wing women are more logical than not. M arriage is supposed to protect them

from rape; being kept at home is supposed to protect them from

the castelike economic exploitation of the marketplace; reproduction gives them what value and respect they have and so they must increase the value of reproduction even if it means increasing their

own vulnerability to reproductive exploitation (especially forced

pregnancy); religious marriage—traditional, correct, law-abiding

marriage—is supposed to protect against battery, since the wife is

supposed to be cherished and respected. The flaws in the logic are

simple: the home is the most dangerous place for a woman to be,

the place she is most likely to be murdered, raped, beaten, certainly the place where she is robbed of the value of her labor. What right-wing women do to survive the sex-class system does not

mean that they will survive it: if they get killed, it will most likely

be at the hands of their husbands; if they get raped, the rapists will

most likely be their husbands or men who are friends or acquaintances; if they get beaten, the batterer will most likely be their husbands—perhaps 25 percent of those who are beaten will be

beaten during pregnancy; if they do not have any money of their

own, they are more vulnerable to abuse from their husbands, less

able to escape, less able to protect their children from incestuous

assault; if abortion becomes illegal, they will still have abortions

and they are likely to die or be maimed in great numbers; * if they

get addicted to drugs, it will most likely be to prescription drugs

prescribed by the family doctor to keep the family intact; if they

get poor—through being abandoned by their husbands or through

old age—they are likely to be discarded, their usefulness being

over. And right-wing women are still pornography (as Marabel

* Before 1973, both abortion and contraception were mostly illegal. Perhaps two thirds of women aborting were married (in one good study 75

percent were married) and most had children, as far as can be discerned

from the scanty evidence. With legal abortion and legal contraception,

about three quarters of the women seem to be single. As many people

suggest, women no longer feel compelled to marry on becoming pregnant,

which accounts in part for the demographic change. But I think that the

availability of contraceptives in conjunction with abortion is mainly responsible for the lower percentage of married women among those aborting. I suspect that married women use contraceptives with more precision

Morgan recognized in The Total Woman) just like other women

whom they despise; and what they do— just like other women— is

barter. T h ey too live inside the wall of prostitution no matter how

they see themselves.

More than anything else, it is antifeminism that convinces right-

wing women that the system of sex segregation and sex hierarchy

is immovable, unbreachable, and inevitable— and therefore that

the logic of their world view is more substantive and compelling

than any analysis, however accurate, of its flaws. It is not the antifeminism of the Right specifically that keeps the allegiance of these women: it is the antifeminism that saturates political discourse all

along the political spectrum, the antifeminism that permeates virtually all political philosophies, programs, and parties. Antifeminism is not a form of political reaction and suppression confined to the far Right. If it were, women would have compelling reason for

moving aw ay from the far Right toward philosophies, programs,

and parties not fundamentally antifeminist; women would also

have good reason to see sex-class oppression as transformable, not

absolute and eternal. It is the pervasiveness of antifeminism, its

ubiquity, that establishes for women that they have no w ay out of

the sex-class system . The antifeminism of Left, Right, and center

fixes the power of the Right over women—gives the huge majority

of women over to the Right— over to social conservatism, ecoand consistency than do single women—certainly than do the teenagers who characteristically do not use contraceptives at all and who skew the

percentages toward single women. If the Human Life Amendment or Statute passes, or any similar legislation, both the intrauterine device and the low-dosage birth control pill will become illegal. They will be considered

abortifacients because they are known to stop the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall, thereby “killing” it. If effective contraception is once again unavailable—so that both contraception and abortion are inaccessible—I suspect the percentage of married women having abortions will once again skyrocket.

nomic conservatism, religious conservatism, over to conforming to

the dictates of authority and power, over to sexual compliance,

over to obedience—because as long as the sex-class system is intact, huge numbers of women will believe that the Right offers them the best deal: the highest reproductive value; the best protection against sexual aggression; the best economic security as the economic dependents of men w ho must provide; the most reliable

protection against battery; the most respect. Left and centrist philosophies, programs, and parties tend to vicious condescension with respect to women’s rights; they lie, and right-wing women are

quite brilliant at discerning the hypocrisy of liberal support for

women’s rights. Right-wing women do not buy the partial truths

and cynical lies that constitute the positions of various liberal and

so-called radical groups on women’s rights. They see antifeminism,

though they call it simple hypocrisy. They are outraged by it.

What is it that right-wing women see, then, when they look at

feminists? The Right, Left, and center have firm bases of power in

that they all come out of and serve and are led by the top class in

the sex-class system: men. They are all profoundly opposed to the

destruction of the sex-ckss system. Feminists want to destroy the

sex-class system but feminists come out of and serve and are led by