Right-wing Women

*

We come after. We know now that a man can read

Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play

Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at

Auschwitz in the morning.

George Steiner, Language and Silence

Yet the enigma of woman’s nature (if she has, that is,

a nature, and is not merely a person altogether

equal, hoof to human hoof, with man), the enigma,

if it exists, is that women respond to him, of course

they do, it is the simple knowledge of the street that

murderers are even sexier than athletes. Something

in a woman wishes to be killed went the old wisdom

before Women’s Liberation wiped that out, something in a woman wishes to be killed, and it is obvious what does—she would like to lose the weakest part of herself, have it ploughed under, ground under, kneaded, tortured, squashed, sliced, banished, and finally immolated.

Norman Mailer, Genius and Lust

Not wanting to die, and knowing the sadism of men, knowing

what men can do in the name of sex, in the fuck, for the sake of

pleasure, for the sake of power, knowing torture, having been able

to predict all the prisons from her place in the bedroom and the

brothel, knowing how callous men are to those less than themselves, knowing the fist, bondage, the farming fuck and the brothel fuck, seeing the indifference of men to human freedom, seeing the

enthusiasm of men for diminishing others through physical domination, seeing the invisibility of women to men, seeing the absolute disregard of humanity in women by men, seeing the disdain of

men for women’s lives, and not wanting to die — and not wanting to

die—women propose two very different solutions for themselves in

relation to men and this man’s world.

The first honors the sexual and reproductive imperatives of men.

This is the right-wing solution, though those who pursue it are—

in terms of male-defined politics—all along the political spectrum

from far Right to far Left. In this solution, women accept the definition of their sex class, and within the terms of that definition fight for crumbs of self-respect and social, economic, and creative

worth. Socialist movements and revolutions are predicated on an

acceptance of this sex-class definition, as are right-wing movements

and counterinsurgencies. The far-Right expression of this solution

is usually highly religious, and it is the religious idiom that makes

it distinguishable from other expressions of what is essentially the

same accommodation to male power. Specifically, the sex-class accommodation is seen as a function of religious orthodoxy: in accommodating, women are faithful to a divine father; women accept traditional religious descriptions of women, female sexuality, and

female nature; women accept the duties of sexual and reproductive

submission to men. The far-Right solution translates the presumed

biological destiny of women into a politics of orthodox religion:

even in a secular republic, far-Right women live in a theocracy.

Religion shrouds women in real as well as magical grace in that the

sex-class functions of women are formally honored, carefully

spelled out, and exploited within clear and prescribed boundaries.