how deeply rooted they are, what chance women stand against
them. In our society, sex-based insult is the coin of the realm.
Women live defensively, not just against rape but against the language of the rapist—the language of what a woman is called in intimacy and in public, loud and soft.
Antifeminism is also articulated through social models, of which
there are three of continuing major importance: the separate-but-
equal model; the woman-superior model; and the trusty, familiar
male-dominant model.
The use of the separate-but-equal model is particularly cynical in
the United States, where that model applied to race was the foundation for systematic racial segregation enforced by police power.
Equality was always a chimera or a lie; separation was real. The
model held that social institutions could be reasonably and fairly
constructed on the basis of biology, for instance, race or skin color.
What made separation necessary—the presumed inferiority of one
of the biologically defined groups—made equality impossible. The
idea of separation and the institutions of separation derived from a
social inequality of such astonishing magnitude and crass cruelty
that separation in idea or practice essentially denied that blacks had
a human nature in common with whites or any common human
standing. The separate-but-equal model itself originates in the conviction that men and women could not stand on common human ground. The model originates in the effort to justify the subordination of women to men (and in the justification to perpetuate that subordination) by positing male and female natures so biologically
different as to require social separation, socially antithetical paths,
social life bifurcated by sex so that there are two cultures, one
male, one female, coexisting in the same society. The separate-but-
equal model applied to sex predated the variation of the model applied to race. With respect to sex, the separate-but-equal model held that women and men were destined by biology for different
social spheres. The spheres were separate but equal, which made
the men and women separate but equal. The sphere of the woman
was the home; the sphere of the man was the world. These were
separate-but-equal domains. The woman was supposed to bear and
raise the children; the man was supposed to impregnate her and
support them. These were separate-but-equal duties. The woman
had female capacities— she was intuitive, emotional, tender,
charming (in women a capacity to arouse or entrap, not an attribute). T he man had male capacities— he was logical, reasoning, strong, powerful (as a capacity and relative to the woman). These
were separate-but-equal capacities. The woman was supposed to
do domestic labor, the precise nature of which was determined by
her husband’s social class. The man was supposed to labor in the
world for money, power, recognition, according to his social class.
This was separate-but-equal labor.
Sex segregation in practice is necessarily different from race segregation: women are everywhere, in almost every home, in most beds, as intim ate as it is possible to be with those who want to keep
them separate. Given the nearly universal intim acy women have
with men, it is astonishing to recognize how successful sex-segre-
gation bolstered by the separate-but-equal model has been and
continues to be. Women have invaded the male sphere of the marketplace, only to be segregated in female job ghettos. In jobs, duties, responsibilities, physical, moral, and intellectual capacities, division of
