Right-wing Women

that all the work for justice had been done on the backs of sexually

exploited women within the movement. “But surely, ” wrote Robin

Morgan in 1968, “even a male reactionary on this issue can realize

that it is really mind-blowing to hear some young male ‘revolutionary’— supposedly dedicated to building a new, free social order to replace this vicious one under which we live—turn around

and absent-mindedly order his ‘chick’ to shut up and make supper or wash his socks— he's talking now. We’re used to such attitudes from the average American clod, but from this brave new radical? ” 8

It was the raw, terrible realization that sex was not brother-sister

but master-servant—that this brave new radical wanted to be not

only master in his own home but pasha in his own harem—that

proved explosive. The women ignited with the realization that they

had been sexually used. Going beyond the male agenda on sexual

liberation, these women discussed sex and politics with one another—something not done even when they had shared the same bed with the same man—and discovered that their experiences had

been staggeringly the same, ranging from forced sex to sexual humiliation to abandonment to cynical manipulation as both menials and pieces of ass. And the men were entrenched in sex as power:

they wanted the women for fucking, not revolution: the two were

revealed to be different after all. The men refused to change but

even more important they hated the women for refusing to service

them anymore on the old terms— there it was, revealed for what it

was. The women left the men— in droves. The women formed an

autonomous women’s movement, a militant feminist movement, to

fight against the sexual cruelty they had experienced and to fight

for the sexual justice they had been denied.

From their own experience— especially in being coerced and in

being exchanged— the women found a first premise for their political movement: that freedom for a woman was predicated on, and could not exist without, her own absolute control of her own body

in sex and in reproduction. This included not only the right to

terminate a pregnancy but also the right to not have sex, to say no,

to not be fucked. For women, this led to many areas of sexual

discovery about the nature and politics of their own sexual desire,

but for men it was a dead end— most of them never recognized

feminism except in terms of their own sexual deprivation; feminists

were taking aw ay the easy fuck. T hey did everything they could to

break the back of the feminist movement— and in fact they have

not stopped yet. Especially significant has been their change of

heart and politics on abortion. The right to abortion defined as an

intrinsic part of the sexual revolution was essential to them: who

could bear the horror and cruelty and stupidity of illegal abortion?

The right to abortion defined as an intrinsic part of a woman’s

right to control her own body, in sex too, was a matter of supreme

indifference.

Material resources dried up. Feminists fought the battle for decriminalized abortion— no laws governing abortion—on the streets and in the courts with severely diminished male support. In 1973,

the Supreme Court gave women legalized abortion: abortion regulated by the state.

If before the Supreme Court decision in 1973 leftist men expressed a fierce indifference to abortion rights on feminist terms, after 1973 indifference changed to overt hostility: feminists had the

right to abortion and were still saying no— no to sex on male terms

and no to politics dominated by these same men. Legalized abor­