Antifeminism can accommodate reform: a recognition that some
forms of discrimination against women are unfair to women or that
some kinds of injustice to women are not warranted (or entirely
warranted) by the nature of women. But underneath the apparent
civility, there are facile, arrogant assumptions: that the remedies
are easy, the problems frivolous; that the harm done to women is
not substantial nor is it significant in any real way; and that the
subordination of women to men is not in and of itself an egregious
wrong. This assessment is maintained in the face of proved atrocities and the obvious intractability of the oppression.
Antifeminism is always an expression of hating women: it is way
past time to say so, to make the equation, to insist on its truth.
Antifeminism throws women to the wolves; it says “later” or
“never” to those suffering cruel and system atic deprivations of liberty; it tells women that when their lives are at stake, there is no urgency toward either justice or decency; it scolds women for
wanting freedom. It is right to see woman hating, sex hatred, passionate contempt, in every effort to subvert or stop an improvement in the status of women on any front, whether radical or reform. It is right to see contempt for women in any effort to subvert or stop any move on the part of women toward economic or sexual independence, toward civil or legal equality, toward self-determination. Antifeminism is the politics of contempt for women
as a class. T his is true when the antifeminism is expressed in opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment or to the right to abortion on demand or to procedures against sexual harassment or to shelters for battered women or to reforms in rape laws. T his is true whether the opposition is from the H eritage Foundation, the Moral
M ajority, the Eagle Forum, the American Civil Liberties Union,
the Communist Party, the Democrats, or the Republicans. The
same antifeminist contempt for women is expressed in resistance to
affirmative action or in defenses of pornography or in the acceptance of prostitution as an institution of female sex labor. If one sees that women are being system atically exploited and abused,
then the defense of anything, the acceptance of anything, that promotes or continues that exploitation or abuse expresses a hatred of women, a contempt for their freedom and dignity; and an effort to
impede legislative, social, or economic initiatives that would improve the status of women, however radical or reformist those measures are, is an expression of that same contempt. One sim ply cannot be both for and against the exploitation of women: for it
when it brings pleasure, against it in the abstract; for it when it
brings profit, against it in principle; for it when no one is looking,
against it when someone who might notice is around. If one sees
how exploited women are— the systematic nature of the exploitation, the sexual base of the exploitation— then there is no political
or ethical justification for doing one whit less than everything—
using every resource—to stop that exploitation. Antifeminism has
been the cover for outright bigotry and it has been the vehicle of
outright bigotry. Antifeminism has been a credible cover and an
effective vehicle because the hatred of women is not politically
anathema on either the Right or the Left. Antifeminism is manifest
wherever the subordination of women is actively perpetuated or
enhanced or defended or passively accepted, because the devaluation of women is implicit in all these stances. Woman hating and antifeminism, however aggressive or restrained the expression, are
empirical synonyms, inseparable, often indistinguishable, often interchangeable; and any acceptance of the exploitation of women in any area, for any reason, in any style, is both, means both, and
promotes both.
Antifeminism breaks down into contempt for particular kinds of
women—as men envision the kinds of women there are. There is a
