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