rape and other forced sex acts are articulated without apology. The
genre insists that sex is conquest, that the woman who resists
wants to be forced, hurt, brutalized; that the woman who wants
sex gets pleasure from being used like a thing, from pain and humiliation. The genre insists that rape, battery, physical torture, bondage, capture, and imprisonment are things done to women
because women provoke them the same way that women provoke
erection: by being there, by being female. Provoking these acts is
the power women have over men; women get men to do these
things, to perform these sex acts. In the world men seem to exercise power, but all of that comes to nothing in the face of the lust provoked by a woman. W hatever he does to her, she is still more
powerful than he is because he wants her, he needs her, he is being
driven by a desire for her. In the sexual woman-superior model,
power is articulated as being intrinsically female because power is
redefined beyond reason, beyond coherence: as if power is in the
corpse that draws the vultures. This pornographic conception of
female power is fundamental to the antifeminism of sexual-libera-
tion movements in which unlim ited sexual use of women by men is
defined as freedom for both: she wants it; he responds; vo ili! the
revolution. It is also fundamental to the antifeminism of the legal
system with respect to sexual crimes like rape, battery, and sexual
abuse of children, especially girls. The female is still seen as the
provocation for what might be a legitimate sex act, depending on
just how provocative she was. Her w ill is regarded as probably
implicit in the use the male made of her. The female is seen to have
power over the man— and responsibility for what he has done to
her— because he wanted her so bad: she has provoked whatever
desire motivated him to act. His desire is what gives her power.
Her power is in her sexual nature, her existence as a woman to
which he responds— not in her behavior. For this reason, rape inquiries search her behavior to find the truth about her nature. If her nature is finally seen to warrant his act, he is not responsible
for it— she is. T his is the power of women in pornographic sex.
The apologies for this sexual system that claim that women are
powerful because women are desired— in fact, that go so far as to
insist that women are sex-dominant and sex-controlling— uphold
this phantasmagoric female power, keeping women in real life
powerless. T he antifeminism is directly implicit in the pornographic conceptions of female power, female nature, and female
freedom. Her power is in being used, her nature is to be used, and
her freedom is in being used. Or, her power is in provoking men to
hurt her, her nature is to provoke men to hurt her, and her freedom is in provoking pain. Or, her power is in making men force her to do what she does not want to do, her nature is to make men
force her to do what she does not want to do, and her freedom is in
being forced to do what she does not want to do. These principles
of antifeminism effectively confound both power and freedom: the
response in most women is to want neither. A woman’s individual
nature is more than confounded: it is frequently annihilated.
The male-dominant model of antifeminism is virtually everywhere. Its woman-hating dimensions have been discussed brilliantly in many feminist texts; here the focus will be on how it functions to stop a liberation movement. Religion and biology are
