Also by Andrea Dworkin
Woman H ating
Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics
The New Womans Broken Heart
Pornography: Men Possessing Women
Right-wing Women
ANDREA DWORKIN
A Perigee Book
Perigee Books
are published by
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
200 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10016
Copyright © 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982 by Andrea Dworkin
Copyright © 1983 by Andrea Dworkin
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in
any form without permission in writing from the publisher. Published on
the same day in Canada by General Publishing Co. Limited, Toronto.
The author gratefully acknowledges permission from the following sources
to reprint material in this book:
The University of California Press for the excerpt from “The Coming
Gynocide, ” in Sappho: A New Translation, Mary Barnard, translator (1973),
© copyright 1957 by The Regents of the University of California.
New' Directions Publishing Corporation for six lines from “Canto 9 1 ”
from The Cantos of Ezra Pound by Ezra Pound. Copyright © 1956 by Ezra
Pound.
Portions of this book have been published in slightly different form in Ms.
and Maenad.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Dworkin, Andrea.
Right-wing women.
Includes index.
1. Women’s rights— United States.
2. Conservatism— United States.
3. Right and left
(Political science).
I. Title.
[H Q 1426. D898
1982b]
305. 4'2'0973
82-9784
ISBN 0-399-50671-3
AACR2
First Perigee printing, 1983
Printed in the United States of America
Acknowledgments
M any people went out of their w ay to help me in different w ays in
the course of m y w riting this book. I owe sincere thanks to Geri
Thoma, Anne Simon, Robin Morgan, Catharine A. MacKinnon,
Karen Hom ick, Emily Jane Goodman, Rachel Gold, Sandra Elkin,
Laura Cottingham, Gena Corea, and Raymond Bongiovanni.
I am very grateful to Sam Mitnick for supporting this project
and to all the people at Perigee involved in publishing it.
This book owes its existence to Gloria Steinem, whose idea it
was that I expand an earlier essay, “Safety, Shelter, Rules, Form,
Love: The Promise of the U ltra-Right” (Ms. y June 1979), into a
book. I thank Gloria not only for the idea but also for her insistence on its importance.
And I thank, once again, both John Stoltenberg and Elaine
Markson, who sustain me.
Andrea Dworkin
New York C ity
March 1982
For Gloria Steinem
In Memory of M uriel Rukeyser
Contents
1. The Promise of the Ultra-Right
13
2. The Politics of Intelligence
37
3. Abortion
71
4. Jew s and Homosexuals
107
5. The Coming Gynocide
147
6. Antifeminism
195
Notes
239
Index
245
Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens
the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place,
everywhere conceded— a place earned by personal
merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance,
wealth, family and position. Conceding, then, that
the responsibilities of life rest equally on man and
woman, that their destiny is the same, they need the
same preparation for time and eternity. The talk o f
sheltering woman from the fierce storms o f life is the
sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every
point of the compass, just as they do on man, and
with more fatal results, for he has been trained to
protect himself, to resist, and to conquer. Such are
the facts in human experience, the responsibilities of
individual sovereignty.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1892
1
The Promise of the Ultra-Right
There is a rumor, circulated for centuries by scientists, artists, and
philosophers both secular and religious, a piece of gossip as it were,
to the effect that women are “biologically conservative. ” W hile gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or
idea, or fact. T his particular rumor became dignified as high
thought because it was Whispered-Down-The-Lane in formidable
academies, libraries, and meeting halls from which women, until
very recently, have been formally and forcibly excluded.
The whispers, however m ultisyllabic and footnoted they sometimes are, reduced to a simple enough set of assertions. Women have children because women by definition have children. This
“fact of life, ” which is not subject to qualification, carries with it
the instinctual obligation to nurture and protect those children.
Therefore, women can be expected to be socially, politically, economically, and sexually conservative because the status quo, whatever it is, is safer than change, whatever the change. Noxious male philosophers from all disciplines have, for centuries, maintained
that women follow a biological imperative derived directly from
their reproductive capacities that translates necessarily into narrow
lives, small minds, and a rather meanspirited puritanism.