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
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
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
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
