subordination of women; no one need meet a rigorous standard of
intellectual, political, or moral accountability. Most people, whatever their political convictions, seem to believe parts of each model, the pieces adding up to a whole view. Fragmented philosophical
and ideological justifications for the subordination of women exist
in a material context in which women are subordinated to men: the
subordination is self-justifying, since power subordinates and
power justifies; power both serves and consoles itself. Separate-
but-equal, woman-superior, and male-dominant antifeminism can
even be used sequentially as one whole argument for the practice of
male supremacy: men and women have different capacities and dif
ferent areas of responsibility according to sex but their functions
and attributes are of equal importance; women are morally superior
to men (a different capacity, a different area of responsibility), except when they provoke lust, in which case they have real power over men; the biological dominance of men over women is (a) counterbalanced by the real sexual power of women over men (in which case each has separate-but-equal powers) or (b) proved in that
women are too good to be as aggressive and as rudely dominant as
men or (c) naturally fair and naturally reasonable because natural
submission is the natural complement to natural dominance (and
dominance and submission are separate-but-equal spheres, submission marking the woman as morally superior unless the submission is sexually provocative, in which case her sex gives her different-but-equal power). Either this is true or it is not. Either the arguments of antifeminism, one by one or the whole lot, are true or they are not. Either there are separate-but-equal spheres or there
are not. Either women are morally better than men or they are not.
Either women have sexual power over men simply by being
women or they do not; either provoking lust is power t)r it is not.
Either men are dominant by nature or will of God or they are not.
Antifeminism says all this is true; feminism says it is not. The so-
called feminism that says some of it is true and some of it is not
cannot combat antifeminism because it has incorporated it. Antifeminism proposes two standards for rights and responsibilities: two standards determined strictly by and applied strictly to sex.
Feminism as the liberation movement of women proposes one absolute standard of human dignity, indivisible by sex. In this sense, feminism does propose—as antifeminists accuse—that men and
women be treated the same. Feminism is a radical stance against
double standards in rights and responsibilities, and feminism is a
revolutionary advocacy of a single standard of human freedom.
To achieve a single standard of human freedom and one absolute
standard of human dignity, the sex-class system has to be dismem
bered. T he reason is pragmatic, not philosophical: nothing less w ill
work. However much everyone wants to do less, less w ill not free
women. Liberal men and women ask, W hy can’t we just be ourselves, all human beings, begin now and not dwell in past injustices, wouldn’t that subvert the sex-class system , change it from the inside out? T he answer is no. The sex-class system has a structure; it has deep roots in religion and culture; it is fundamental to the economy; sexuality is its creature; to be “just human beings” in
it, women have to hide what happens to them as women because
they are women— happenings like forced sex and forced reproduction, happenings that continue as long as the sex-class system operates. T he liberation of women requires facing the real condition of women in order to change it. “W e’re all just people” is a stance that
prohibits recognition of the systematic cruelties visited on women
because of sex oppression.
Feminism as a liberation movement, then, demands a revolutionary single standard of what humans have a right to, and also demands that the current sexual bifurcation of rights never be let out of sight. Antifeminism does the opposite: it insists that there is a
double standard of what humans have a right to— a male standard
