Andrea Dworkin: Right-wing Women

the bottom class in the sex-class system: women. The feminism of

women cannot match the power, the resources, the potency of the

antifeminism of the whole male political spectrum. Looking for a

way out of the sex-class system, a way beyond the boundary of

prostitution, a way around the crimes of rape, battery, economic

exploitation, and reproductive exploitation, a way out of being pornography, right-wing women look at feminists and they see w om en: inside the same boundary, victims of the same crimes, women who

are pornography. Their response to what they see is not a sense of

sisterhood or solidarity— it is a self-protective sense of repulsion.

The powerless are not quick to put their faith in the powerless.

The powerless need the powerful, especially in sex oppression be­

cause it is inescapable, everywhere: there are no free zones, free

countries, underground railways away from it. Because feminism

is a movement for liberation of the powerless by the powerless in a

closed system based on their powerlessness, right-wing women

judge it a futile movement. Frequently they also judge it a malicious movement in that it jeopardizes the bargains with power that they can make; feminism calls into question for the men confronted

by it the sincerity of women who conform without political resistance. Since antifeminism is based in power (the sex-class power of men along the whole political spectrum) and feminism is based in

powerlessness, antifeminism effectively turns feminism into a political dead end. It is the antifeminism of Right, Left, center, and all variations thereof, that makes the situation of women hopeless:

there is no hope of escape, no hope of freedom, no hope for an end

to sex oppression, because all power-based political parties, programs, and philosophies abhor the liberation of women as a basis of action, as a real goal, even as an idea. Being doomed by a reactionary political stance to social subordination is not the same as being doomed by God or nature to metaphysical inferiority—a crucial

point—but it is still real rough. The defenses of sex exploitation

are simply too consistent, too strong, too intensely felt, all along

the political spectrum of power-based discourse and organizing to

be ignored by women who recognize that they are women, not

persons, as right-wing women do. Simply put, the Right will continue to have the allegiance of most women who see how real the sex-class system is, how intransigent it is, as long as antifeminism

is the heartfelt stance of those with other political views, whatever

the views. Those optimistic women who think the antifeminism of

the Left or center is somehow more humane than the antifeminism

of the Right will ally themselves as persons with whatever groups

or ideologies best reflect their own social or human ideals. They

will find without exception that the antifeminism they ignore is a

trenchant political defense of the woman hating they are victimized

by. Right-wing women, who are less queasy in facing the absolute

nature of male power over women, will not be swayed by the politics of women who practice selective blindness with regard to male power. Right-wing women are sure that the selective blindness of

liberals and leftists especially contributes to more violence, more

humiliation, more exploitation for women, often in the name of

humanism and freedom (which is why both words are dirty words

to them).

Facing the true nature of the sex-class system means ultimately

that one must destroy that system or accommodate to it. Facing the

true nature of male power over women also means that one must

destroy that power or accommodate to it. Feminists, from a base of

powerlessness, want to destroy that power; right-wing women,

from a base of powerlessness, the same base, accommodate to that

power because quite simply they see no way out from under.

Those with power will not help; those who are powerless like

themselves arguably cannot. Feminists, after the defeat of previous

movements throughout history and facing some kind of disintegration again (with the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in the United States, the possible enactment of the Family Protection

Act, the Human Life Amendment or Statute, and other social,

political, and legal initiatives promoting female subordination*),

have to face the real questions. Can a political movement rooted in

a closed system of subordination—with no political support among

power-based political movements—break that closed system apart?

Or will the antifeminism of those whose politics are rooted in sex-

class power and privilege always destroy movements for the liberation of women? Is there a way to subvert the antifeminism of power-based political programs or parties—or is the pleasure and

profit in the subordination of women simply too overwhelming,

* Feminists all over the world report similar backlash.

too great, too marvelous, to allow for anything but the political

defense of that subordination (antifeminism)? Will it take a hundred fists, a thousand fists, a million fists, pushed through that circle of crime to destroy it, or are right-wing women essentially

right that it is indestructible? Can the wall of prostitution be

scaled? Can what is at the heart of sex oppression—the use of

women as pornography, pornography as what women are —be

stopped? If antifeminism triumphs over the liberation movement of

women—now, again, always—whoever has political power or represents social order or exercises authoritarian rule—whatever they are called, whatever they call their political line—has women for

good; the Right, broadly construed, has women for good. Stasis

and cruelty will have triumphed over freedom. The freedom of

women from sex oppression either matters or it does not; it is either essential or it is not. Decide one more time.

Notes

1. T h e P r o m is e o f t h e U l t r a -R ig h t

1. M arilyn Monroe, in a dressing-room notebook, cited by Norman M ailer, M arilyn: A B iography (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973), p. 17.

2. Terrence Des Pres, The S u rvivor: An A natomy o f Life in the

Death Camps (New York: Pocket Books, 1977), p. vi.