In 1983, Dworkin published Right-Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females, an examination of what she claimed were women’s reasons for collaborating with men for the limitation of women’s freedom. In the Preface to the British edition, Dworkin stated that the New Right in the United States focused especially on preserving male authority in the family, the promotion of fundamentalist versions of orthodox religion, combating abortion, and undermining efforts to combat domestic violence, but that it also had, for the first time, “succeeded in getting women as women (women who claim to be acting in the interests of women as a group) to act effectively on behalf of male authority over women, on behalf of a hierarchy in which women are subservient to men, on behalf of women as the rightful property of men, on behalf of religion as an expression of transcendent male supremacy”. Taking this as her problem, Dworkin asked, “Why do right-wing women agitate for their own subordination? How does the Right, controlled by men, enlist their participation and loyalty? And why do right-wing women truly hate the feminist struggle for equality?”

Andrea Dworkin – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As much as I disagree with some of her other stances, I cannot but gasp at how prophetic her views on right wing women and feminism came to be. One not need look further than Sarah Palin claiming to be a feminist to see how much Dworkin foresaw almost 30 years ago.


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