the great roots of the metaphysical idea that men are superior to
women because they are. Whether male dominance is described as
a kind of perpetual biological pillaging or the will of a merely
wrathful God, the hostility in male dominance is what is most consistently justified by the idea of male dominance. Keeping women a subject people is hostile. The genius of the male-dominant model
of antifeminism is the transmogrification of this hostility into what
passes for love. When one group conquers another, the act of conquest is clearly hostile; when a man conquers a woman, it is to express romantic or sexual love. Invasion is an act of hostility, unless the male is invading the female, in which case “violation” is used to mean love. Beating someone up is an act of hostility, unless
a man is beating a woman whom he loves: women, it is said, consider beating proof of love and demand or provoke this proof.
When a man tyrannizes a people, he is hostile to their rights and
freedom; when a man tyrannizes a woman, he is well within the
bounds of his role as husband or lover. When a group deemed
inferior is targeted for violence in propaganda, that propaganda is
unarguably hostile; when men target women for sexual violence in
pornography, the m aterial, the targeting, and the violence are considered expressions of sexual love. Mass terrorization of one group by another is hostile, unless women are terrorized by men raping,
in which case each rape must be examined for signs of love. Confining a group, restricting them, depriving them of rights because they were born into one class and not another are hostile acts, unless women are being confined, restricted, and deprived of rights by the men who love them so that they w ill be what men can love.
There is hostility in the world, which one recognizes as historical
and social cruelty; and then there is the love of man for woman.
The acts m ay be the same but they are so very different, because
what is done to women is measured by an absolutely unique standard: is it sexy? Women are taken to be sex, so if it— whatever it is— is done to a woman, it is likely to be sexy. If it is sexy, it
comes under the aegis of love. H ostility is defined in the dictionary
as “antagonism . ” Love is seen to be a grand antagonism; so is a
great sexual passion, while the everyday fucks are little antagonisms oft repeated. T he torturer is just a real obsessed lover when the victim is a woman, especially a woman whom he knows intim ately. Rape is just another kind of love; and nothing— no law, no political movement, no higher consciousness— has yet made rape
less sexy for those who see love in male dominance. Chains are
sexy when women wear them, prisons are sexy when women are in
them, pain is sexy when women hurt, and love includes all this and
more. Beat up a man for speaking his mind and there is a human-
rights violation— hunt him or capture him or terrorize him and his
human rights have been violated; do the same to a woman and the
violation is sexy. Nothing that falls within the purview of the love
of man for woman qualifies as a violation of human rights; instead,
violation becomes a synonym for sex, part of the vocabulary of
love. The love of the superior for the inferior must by its nature be
fairly horrific, fairly terrifying, grossly distorted. When men love
women, every hostile act demonstrates that love, every brutality is
a sign of it; and every complaint that a woman makes against the
hostility of male dominance is taken to be a complaint against love,
a refusal to be a real woman, that is, to suffer male hostility as an
ecstasy, to suffer love.
The male-dominant model of antifeminism also proposes that
