tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85819152119677413972024-03-12T16:40:34.983-07:00anarcha libraryUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger824125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-69088265166753825542015-04-28T10:14:00.001-07:002015-04-28T10:17:04.866-07:00Gender Sabotage (2012)<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
by Stacy
aka sallydarity
published in Queering Anarchism, AK Press, 2012<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>Look how your
children grow up. Taught from their earliest infancy to curb their
love natures–restrained at every turn! …Little girls must not be
tomboyish, must not go barefoot, must not climb trees, must not learn
to swim… Little boys are laughed at as effeminate, silly girl-boys
if they want to make patchwork or play with a doll. Then when they
grow up, “Oh! Men don’t care for home or children as women do!”
Why should they, when the deliberate effort of your life has been to
crush that nature out of them. “Women can’t rough it like men.”
Train any animal, or any plant, as you train your girls, and it won’t
be able to rough it either. Now will somebody tell me why either sex
should hold a corner on athletic sports? Why any child should not
have free use of its limbs?</i></div>
<i>
</i>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>These are the
effects of your purity standard, your marriage law. This is your
work—look at it!</i></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
—Voltairine de
Cleyre<i>, Sex Slavery </i>(1890)</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>What makes me
transgendered is that my birth sex—which is female—appears to be
in social contradiction to my gender expression—which is read as
masculine. I defend my right to that social contradiction. In fact, I
want to live long enough to hear people ask, “What made me think
that was a contradiction in the first place?”</i></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
—Leslie Feinberg<i>,
Trans Liberation </i>(1998)</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Anarcha-feminists
and anarchists in general need to have some new discussions about
gender. Feminism has had an ongoing internal argument regarding
minimizing or maximizing the meanings of the differences between men
and women. Now we are seeing the influence on many anarchists and
feminists of newer ideas about gender (i.e. queer theory) that
question the idea of a concrete concept of “woman” and “man,”
even “male” and “female.” Yet some radical or anarchist
feminists and lesbians remain stubborn about questioning the
usefulness of a category called “woman.” Meanwhile, identity
politics have come under fire in anarchist circles, often
characterizing identity-oriented projects as homogenous (represented
only by each project’s most vocal proponents), and dismissing the
importance of focusing on opposition to gender, sexuality, class, or
racial oppressions.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote1sym" name="sdendnote1anc"><sup>i</sup></a></sup>
Yet that which is called identity politics often does involve
essentialism, the idea that there are essential differences between
two groups. In the case of feminism, those who most often get to
speak for the “movement” are white with class privilege, and
regularly marginalize the experiences of women of color and poor
women, and exclude transgender/transsexual people when they organize
around a universal concept of <i>women</i>. The standard radical
feminist characterization of the way gender oppression (“patriarchy”)
works legitimizes women’s exercise of domination (through
capitalism or white supremacy, etc), and makes men’s domination
seem natural and inevitable. If the criticism of identity politics is
that it hardens identities, a queer theory-influenced
anarcha-feminism then could be outside of this criticism, and indeed
may share it, while still emphasizing the real effects of the
group-based oppression.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
We’ve been made
to believe that human subordination under the law is natural—that
we need to be governed. The legitimacy of imposed government is also
emphasized through the seemingly natural differences between people.
The differences between people have been made significant so as to
promote divisions based on domination and subordination. In doing so,
those differences must be(come) clear-cut—a border must be drawn
between the two, creating a dichotomy so there is no confusion about
who is where in the hierarchy. This takes time, centuries even, to
really harden our perception of human nature. It takes laws—but
worse—it takes discipline, primarily in the form of terror and
violence, to pound a sense of hierarchy into us. Despite the
possibility that the state and capitalism may be able to function
without these imposed borders, the borders must still be destroyed.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
To achieve
liberation, we must reject the binary gender system, which divides us
into two mutually exclusive categories. This gender system not only
oppresses in the form of a hierarchy of categories, but also in terms
of gender expression—holding up masculinity as superior and
policing each person into their gender box. The significance of
gender/sex differences must be exposed as a political construct, one
which has been used to form a cross-class alliance among men, and to
make heterosexuality and women’s roles and exploitation in (and
outside) the home and family to seem natural.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
In effect, we are
imprisoned by a gender binary, though a sort of freedom may be
accessible to some, and if we don’t behave appropriately there are
plenty of prison guards to attempt to put us in our place. Clearly
those who do not fit into these gender boxes are seen as a threat and
are disciplined through threats or acts of discrimination, verbal
abuse, harassment, and/or violence. I argue not that gender
transgression or deviance is in itself revolutionary, but that we
must transcend or destroy the gender-based power relations, as part
of a sort of decolonizing. It is crucial that feminists not reinforce
these gender boxes, but also that anarchists not minimize our need to
pull these issues from the margins. The existence of these identities
created by power relations should not be denied, but instead should
be examined and opposed in the context of power.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Whereas sex is
usually defined by biological differences, gender has been used to
describe the prescribed social differences between female and male,
defining us as feminine or masculine, traits we can generally agree
are not universal throughout time or place. One point of contention
among some feminists and gender-transgressors (not that the two are
mutually exclusive) is the definition of gender. I agree with others
like Kate Bornstein that gender may refer to different concepts:
gender roles, gender identity, etc.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote2sym" name="sdendnote2anc"><sup>ii</sup></a></sup>
For lack of a better term, here I will use the term “gender
stratum” to refer to the hierarchal binary categories of gender. I
argue that what is called “gender identity” is a different aspect
of gender, which is separate from, but related to gender stratum.
“Gender identity,” which I will call “gender inclination”
since identity is problematic here, would have different meaning
without gender stratum, but should not be confused as meaning the
same thing, despite the fact that the two are conflated by many
feminists.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
We can probably
agree that gender stratum is an imposed social construct. We could
take it further by questioning whether our concepts of the biological
differences between female and male existed before hierarchy, and
whether they at least have the same significance before Western
culture interpreted the differences we understand today.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote3sym" name="sdendnote3anc"><sup>iii</sup></a></sup>
The possibility that there are really no natural differences between
the sexes—that these sexes don’t exist other than because of
political/social reasons—can be troublesome to nearly anyone. In
many ways, these ideas exist almost exclusively in the realm of
academia<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote4sym" name="sdendnote4anc"><sup>iv</sup></a></sup>
and have little relevance to most people’s everyday lives.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
On the other hand,
throughout the time humans have existed, there have been diverse
ideas about the meanings of the physical differences between those
with different organs associated with sex/gender. In considering the
experiences of intersex people<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote5sym" name="sdendnote5anc"><sup>v</sup></a></sup>
and transgender/transsexual people, it only makes sense that a
gender/sex continuum should be the basis for an understanding of
human nature. Different ideas about gender and sexuality in various
cultures, mostly where untouched by Western civilization<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote6sym" name="sdendnote6anc"><sup>vi</sup></a></sup>,
show us that not only are Western dualistic ideas about gender/sex,
sexuality, and accompanying hierarchy atypical and manipulated to
manage the people, but also that the argument that modern capitalism
accommodates transgressive gender and expressions of sexuality is
beside the point. The transition to capitalism was indeed a main
driving force of the conquest over different forms of gender
expression and sexuality, enforcing a strict gender/sex binary.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The likelihood is
minimal that we could fully understand the origins of the concept of
sex or the beginnings of gender hierarchy, even though this may
provide answers about the origins of hierarchy itself.<sup> <a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote7sym" name="sdendnote7anc"><sup>vii</sup></a></sup>
Whether biological characteristics once had neutral meaning or not,
significance has been increasingly placed on these differences,
creating these sex/gender constructs as part of a hierarchy (sex is
gendered and therefore I use the two terms somewhat interchangeably),
and the construction of the divisions between men and women has been
an ongoing process.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Woman
as a Different Species</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Certainly we can
say that the language of the witch-hunt ‘produced’ the Woman as a
different species…”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote8sym" name="sdendnote8anc"><sup>viii</sup></a></sup>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
—Silvia Federici</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
To understand the
construction of a gender binary and hierarchy, we primarily look at
Europe because of the ways in which, through
colonization/imperialism, Europe violently exported their ideas
throughout the world.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote9sym" name="sdendnote9anc"><sup>ix</sup></a></sup>
Before the witch hunts, European peasant women, having a decent
amount of social power despite sexual division of labor and
Christian-promoted misogyny, were heavily involved in revolts against
feudalism and later, capitalism. It is no coincidence, as Silvia
Federici describes in her book, <i>Caliban and the Witch</i>, that
the witch hunts, which involved the torture and murder of hundreds of
thousands of women<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote10sym" name="sdendnote10anc"><sup>x</sup></a></sup>
mostly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, occurred in
conjunction with the transition to capitalism and the colonization of
the Americas.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Federici also
explains how, over the course of a few centuries, women’s
exploitation, through their unpaid labor in the home, termed
“reproduction” (which includes procreation but is not limited to
it), as well as slave labor in the Americas, had to be constructed as
natural in the setting in which it was in the interest of capitalism
to be viewed as voluntary and contractual. By justifying their
exploitation, the dehumanization of unpaid laborers (women) allowed
Capitalists to hide/legitimize the reality that people didn’t have
a choice in the matter.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The witch hunts
were not only counter-insurgency measures. Accusations of witchcraft
and prostitution were often made to punish theft and attacks (real or
invented) on property, which increased at this time due to land
privatization<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote11sym" name="sdendnote11anc"><sup>xi</sup></a></sup>
and the exclusion of women from receiving wages. Especially important
was capitalism’s new demand for workers (partly due to population
crisis), leading to the construction of monogamous heterosexual<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote12sym" name="sdendnote12anc"><sup>xii</sup></a></sup>
marriage as natural through the forced dependence of women on men,
and criminalization of sexual acts that were not for the purpose of
reproduction. Peasant women increasingly began to get punished for
crimes such as abortion and contraception, and in the case of
witches, also for allegedly causing infertility and impotence in men,
in addition to castration and killing children. Queer peasants were
disciplined by means of terror in Europe in particular (this is where
the term “faggot,” meaning kindling, came from<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote13sym" name="sdendnote13anc"><sup>xiii</sup></a></sup>),
but also during colonization of the Americas as homosexuals and
<i>two-spirit</i> people were killed, and the continuation of these
identities/practices were averted or forced underground.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote14sym" name="sdendnote14anc"><sup>xiv</sup></a></sup></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Federici stresses
that while some peasant men participated in and even encouraged these
actions against women, and while the church played a strong role, the
greater part of the campaign of terror against women would not have
been possible without the role and interest of the state.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote15sym" name="sdendnote15anc"><sup>xv</sup></a></sup>
The ruling class’s interest in promoting the differences between
the sexes is clear, and they accomplished this task by punishing
certain behaviors and using terror to discipline women.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote16sym" name="sdendnote16anc"><sup>xvi</sup></a></sup>
Early on, European women were defined as unruly, mentally weak, and
in need of being controlled. The witch hunts served to reinforce
this, but at the same time to discipline women into a new
“nature”—that of the docile, moral, and motherly (yet still in
need of being controlled).<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote17sym" name="sdendnote17anc"><sup>xvii</sup></a></sup>
It is worth noting that while capitalism played a strong role in
shaping what became understood as the nature of women, there are
obvious examples of how those in power in any economic circumstances
(not just capitalism) seek to justify their rule by different means,
often by controlling sexuality and enforcing gender norms. So while
the concept of women and men as two different groups existed prior to
the witch hunts, there was now a new significance on the difference
between the two, functioning as a clear binary.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The notion of
inflexible divisions between humans had to be beaten into all the
people as a whole, thus creating profound alienation between men and
women, and marginalization, if not extermination, of those who
deviate from the norms. In addition, to compel the people to work
under the conditions that capitalism requires involved a sort of
conquest involving a new perception of the body as a machine or tool,
and through the criminalization of various communal activities and
non-productive sexuality.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote18sym" name="sdendnote18anc"><sup>xviii</sup></a></sup>
Workers’ subordination and women’s further subordination were
made to seem natural. Even though there seems to be no
anti-capitalist historical study of the shaping of men, this clearly
was part of the witch-hunts, the transition to capitalism, and
colonialism as well.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
In discussing human
nature, we need to be critical of the ways that certain concepts such
as hierarchy, or a need for hierarchy, are made to seem natural.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote19sym" name="sdendnote19anc"><sup>xix</sup></a></sup>
For instance, Andrea Smith wrote, “…Heteropatriarchy<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote20sym" name="sdendnote20anc"><sup>xx</sup></a></sup>
is essential for the building of US empire. Patriarchy is the logic
that naturalizes social hierarchy. Just as men are supposed to
naturally dominate women on the basis of biology, so too should the
social elites of a society naturally rule everyone else through the
nation-state form of governance that is constructed through
domination, violence and control.”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote21sym" name="sdendnote21anc"><sup>xxi</sup></a></sup>
In a speech, she said, “This is why in the history of Indian
genocide the first task that colonizers took on was to integrate
patriarchy into native communities. The primary tool used by
colonists is sexual violence. What sexual violence does for
colonialism and white supremacy is render women of color inherently
rape-able, our lands inherently invadable, and our resources
inherently extractable.”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote22sym" name="sdendnote22anc"><sup>xxii</sup></a></sup></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
An example of
colonization of the “New World” being accomplished partly through
the promotion of sexual divisions<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote23sym" name="sdendnote23anc"><sup>xxiii</sup></a></sup>
is the French Jesuits’ interactions with natives in Canada (called
the Montagnais-Naskapi) with no sense of private property, authority,
or male superiority, which according to the French, had to change if
they were to become reliable trade partners. The French taught
Naskapi men to discipline their children, and to “bring ‘their’
women to order.”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote24sym" name="sdendnote24anc"><sup>xxiv</sup></a></sup>
Witch hunts occurred in parts of the Americas (Federici discusses
Mexico and Peru) that demonized all natives and Africans, but often
focused more on the women.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote25sym" name="sdendnote25anc"><sup>xxv</sup></a></sup>
Colonization is an ongoing process which includes patriarchal
indoctrination and sexual violence in Indian Schools.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote26sym" name="sdendnote26anc"><sup>xxvi</sup></a></sup></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Gender
Stratum and Race</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The sex/gender
hierarchy is inseparable from race, colonization, and capitalism. For
example, female slaves were treated pretty much the same as male
slaves, up until importing slaves was made illegal, at which time
female slaves were made more often to breed and were increasingly
subject to the sexual violence of white men.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote27sym" name="sdendnote27anc"><sup>xxvii</sup></a></sup>
Aspects of femininity, defined here as culturally/socially dictated
as appropriate for “real” women, were constructed as a
distinguishing mark of class (and race), much like landscaped yards
that demonstrate that the owners need not use their land to grow
food. Women who didn’t have to work were to be unnaturally “weaker,
delicate, dependent, ‘lily-white’, housebound” and therefore
“the making of the white race involved the politicized un-making of
women to fit into ‘white.’”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote28sym" name="sdendnote28anc"><sup>xxviii</sup></a></sup></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Race is also a
political and social construct. Understanding one politico-social
construct can help us better understand another. Bacon’s Rebellion,
which was a more significant one of many rebellions in which European
indentured servants and African slaves joined together, frightened
the state of Virginia into passing a series of laws specifically
outlining the freedoms accessible to Europeans/Christians vs.
Africans. In doing so, they created race. “Slavery was the most
profitable form of labor in colonial Virginia, but racial slavery was
the solution to the threat of servile insurrection and the problem of
how to efficiently and peacefully get the workers—slave and free—to
work… Race emerged from the needs of the Virginia upper class to
craft a docile and productive labor force. But as the benefits of
whiteness became apparent to English laborers, they came to embrace
the system by which privileges were conferred in exchange for
policing slaves.”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote29sym" name="sdendnote29anc"><sup>xxix</sup></a></sup>
While prejudices and ideas about superiority based on differences
existed prior, this invention of whiteness created a new significance
on physical differences that had a particular function to form a
cross-class alliance among white people which still exists today.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The shaping of the
categories of race and sex was part of a longer history of hierarchy.
Additionally, just as the specific era of the witch hunts lasted a
couple centuries, so too was the construction of race an on-going
process, like in the example of the Irish not being included into
whiteness until later. Also, after the civil war, lynching was a
prominent way to terrorize—to discipline—Black people into
submission. “Before lynching could be consolidated as a popularly
accepted institution, however, its savagery and its horrors had to be
convincingly justified. These were the circumstances which spawned
the myth of the Black rapist—for the rape charge turned out to be
the most powerful of several attempts to justify the lynching of
Black people,” wrote Angela Davis. She explains further in her book
<i>Women, Race, & Class</i>, “However irrational the myth may
be, it was not a spontaneous aberration. On the contrary, the myth of
the Black rapist was a distinctly political invention.” This also
contributed to white women’s fear of black men (and to white men’s
fear of their property, women, becoming tarnished), and was part of
the precedent set which began to criminalize people of color, leading
to the high rates of people of color in U.S. prisons today.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote30sym" name="sdendnote30anc"><sup>xxx</sup></a></sup></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Despite there being
major limitations to drawing parallels between race and gender
stratum, the construction of these dichotomies allows us to see
partly how hierarchy functions. Those in power divide the people on
the basis of a physical difference (ignoring exceptions and gray
area) and amplify the significance of those differences through
criminalization<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote31sym" name="sdendnote31anc"><sup>xxxi</sup></a></sup>
and limitations of legal and economic freedoms, as well as through
violence (justified by the alleged transgressions), while affording
the favored group (men/whites) freedom from most repression. This
process functions to make “natural” the divisions and hierarchal
positions of those it involves. A cross-class alliance, rewarded with
privileges, undermines anti-authoritarian resistance and class
solidarity. In the case of women, I should point out that male
privilege includes man’s ability to dominate the women in his
family, which can be seen as more personal while being, in effect,
political.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Gender Liberation
for Everyone</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The naming of
political advantages (or “wages”) of whiteness or maleness as
privileges is a problem, however. If the way I described hierarchy’s
functioning is accurate, it would not really be in the interest of
the favored working class group to participate in an alliance with
the rich rulers since that means they will perpetually be ruled and
exploited (this is where the promise of mostly unattainable upward
mobility comes in to reinforce the alliance). White people have a
responsibility to our/themselves to abolish whiteness for these
reasons and to be fully human,<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote32sym" name="sdendnote32anc"><sup>xxxii</sup></a></sup>
in addition of course to the responsibility to end racism.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Similar to the case
of white people, when men participate in domination, they do
themselves harm. While folks assigned male at birth who don’t
comfortably fit into their assigned gender box are certainly affected
by gender oppression, the ones who do conform (willingly or not)
would also benefit from undermining the ways gender hierarchy has
been naturalized through the socialization of boys and men. They can
hardly be free, and the relationships they have with others cannot be
fulfilling, as long as emotions are suppressed, competitive
masculinity has to be established, and inequality (if not abuse) must
been maintained with women (and often children as well). Yet, why
would men choose to change if they are consistently told they are
privileged, bell hooks asks.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote33sym" name="sdendnote33anc"><sup>xxxiii</sup></a></sup>
To change means, for one, that men would have to overcome their
training to deny their emotions. Implicating women as well as men in
perpetuating this damage done to males through parenting, hooks
wrote, “Homophobia underlies the fear that allowing boys to feel
will turn them gay.”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote34sym" name="sdendnote34anc"><sup>xxxiv</sup></a></sup>
Whereas “feminism” tends to imply a fight by and for women, it
is, then, also in the interest of men to oppose gender oppression and
homophobia/heteronormativity, rather than perpetuate it. It also
means that feminism, for lack of a better word, must also address the
situation of men.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
While it is clear
that men largely benefit from this system while women do not, it
clearly functions by enforcing this gender border along with the
concepts “man” and “woman.” We must not, then, continue to
reinforce these false concepts as binary, essential, stable, and
universal categories. Clearly, even though viewing women as a
socially constructed gender/sex within a hierarchy is useful, caution
must be taken to avoid a sort of essentialism or sense of universal
experience of this oppressed group. Some feminists who see sex/gender
as a hierarchical social construct do not accept any other definition
of gender, which leads to major disagreements over gender identity.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Some might argue
that a realization of gender fluidity rather than a dichotomy would
perhaps accomplish the task of undermining the political construction
of gender/sex categories for the purpose of domination.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote35sym" name="sdendnote35anc"><sup>xxxv</sup></a></sup>
This deserves further examination. If we argue, as some have,<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote36sym" name="sdendnote36anc"><sup>xxxvi</sup></a></sup>
that hierarchical binaries like man/woman and white/black are created
to naturalize hierarchy, this implies that a hierarchy existed prior.
Therefore, while it may have been less acceptable to people, this
hierarchy existed nonetheless, so the task is surely not simply to
abolish the binaries/constructs. Yet again, there is only so much we
can know about the origins of the concept of “man” and “woman”
aside from the ways in which they have more recently been made more
significant.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
In this argument
for rejecting the binary gender system, it should not be understood
to mean that no one should identify as a man or a woman, much less
that we should vaguely “smash gender” or implement some utopian
androgyny.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote37sym" name="sdendnote37anc"><sup>xxxvii</sup></a></sup>
A truly liberatory position on gender/sex requires self-determination
of gender identity/inclination (including bodily alterations) and
freedom from coercive gender assignment.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote38sym" name="sdendnote38anc"><sup>xxxviii</sup></a></sup>
Everyone’s experiences and sense of identity should be incorporated
into an idea of what gender means. One’s inclination for femininity
(in people assigned male <i>or</i> female at birth) for example,
should not be dismissed or devalued by others who don’t relate to
it. Additionally, most trans people face dangers if they diverge much
from the standard ideas of femininity (and masculinity), and
therefore have to pass by conforming in order to survive (by
maintaining safety and employment), despite critical awareness by
many about gender hierarchy and heterosexism.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
That said, we need
to dismantle gender stratum, to separate the power dynamics attached
to gender; in that masculinity often means domination, and
femininity, subordination. Since men are taught to be dominating—that
this is equated with masculinity (being a “real man”)—we need
to make a particular point to change this. Men are denied their
emotions, and as bell hooks writes, “Patriarchy both creates the
rage in boys and then contains it for later use, making it a resource
to exploit later on as boys become men. As a national product, this
rage can be garnered to further imperialism, hatred, and oppression
of women and men globally.”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote39sym" name="sdendnote39anc"><sup>xxxix</sup></a></sup>
At the very least it teaches men in general to be apathetic about the
plight of others. Because it is instilled in men that their nature
requires them to be dominating, we must extract the domination
imperative from what it means to be a man. hooks distinguishes
patriarchal masculinity from masculinity, and this deserves further
consideration. Without the naturalization of a man/woman dichotomy,
masculinity and femininity (gender inclination) and all their various
meanings are either exposed as social only, and/or as more about
individual tendencies of personality and affinity.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is this
domination that should be opposed, no matter who is doing it or in
what form. No one ought to identify domination as part of who they
are, nor should women excuse their own (or other women’s)
participation in domination just because they believe they cannot be
oppressors. This applies to male privilege, hetero privilege, class
privilege, white privilege, etc., in addition to hierarchies perhaps
inadvertently created by those judging others as not revolutionary,
queer, or gender non-conforming enough.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the past there
was an expectation that the radical lesbian movement (and before
that, women’s suffrage) would strongly threaten the dominant order.
In fact, it has been viewed as a threat, but as we can see, it has
been defeated, recuperated or co-opted under the larger system of
domination.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote40sym" name="sdendnote40anc"><sup>xl</sup></a></sup>
If much of radical feminism/lesbianism was really the only real
threat to the system,<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote41sym" name="sdendnote41anc"><sup>xli</sup></a></sup>
then it served the dominant order to marginalize the particularly
militant tendencies and/or those of women of color, or divert the
movements to re-embrace essentialism, which reinforced the order of
things.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Some radical
feminists were certainly on to something. According to Cellestine
Ware, a black woman activist (1970) who was quoted in bell hooks’
<i>Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center</i>, “Radical
feminism…postulates that the domination of one human being by
another is the basic evil in society. Dominance in human
relationships is the target of their opposition.” hooks comments,
“As feminist movement progressed, critiques of the notion of power
as domination and control were submerged as bourgeois activists began
to focus on women overcoming their fear of power (the implication
being that if they wanted social equality with men, they would need
to participate equally in exercising domination and control over
others).”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote42sym" name="sdendnote42anc"><sup>xlii</sup></a></sup></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Attributing
violence and abuse to the nature or necessary political position of
men gives women the opportunity to participate in domination while
insisting that they can do so in a more ethical way (or that they are
by definition incapable of participating in domination). In addition,
this attitude makes male violence seem inevitable and allows us to
avoid critical thinking about systemic/institutional oppressions,
such as the likelihood that capitalism and the state promote rape.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote43sym" name="sdendnote43anc"><sup>xliii</sup></a></sup>
If rape is natural to men, then the survivors (mostly women) can
rationalize that their only recourse is through the state. Yet
prisons and police are not the solution to this problem. In addition,
acknowledging that being a woman, queer, or transgressing gender
boxes, and/or having feminist or anarchist politics does not make one
necessarily incapable of being a perpetrator of abuse and sexual
assault, we must see this as a larger project of addressing issues of
consent. Additionally, uniting around the freedom to choose what will
be done or not done to or with our bodies ties together many people’s
struggles.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
As far as identity
politics go, there must be some focus on identity in the sense that
there are very real effects of these unreal constructs. Yet the point
is to understand the gender and race divisions not only to end gender
and race oppression, but to end domination totally—to undermine
these cross-class alliances created in the process of power seeking
to naturalize itself, its law, and its divisions. Certainly
capitalism, with the state, made the divisions between genders and
races politically significant in a way that they never had been
before. This shows that much of the racism and sexism that has
existed in the last few centuries is not innate, not organic, not
grassroots, but rather manufactured. Part of this struggle will be in
exposing the ways in which our beliefs have been shaped in the
interest of power—that many of the things we consider to be natural
are in fact not just man-made, but state-made.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Illuminating the
ways that our oppression is not “natural” can be done partly
through the actual demonstrations and experiences of gender fluidity
and queerness, sometimes referred to with other concepts as “Queer.”
“Queer is…an identity that problematizes the manageable limits of
identity. Queer is a territory of tension, defined against the
dominant narrative of white-hetero-monogamous-patriarchy, but also by
an affinity with all who are marginalized, otherized, and
oppressed.”<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote44sym" name="sdendnote44anc"><sup>xliv</sup></a></sup></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
In the sense that
<i>queer </i>is unstable and destabilizing, it has much potential.
Clearly the refusal to participate in privileging political relations
would not be co-opted. We know that “LGBTQ” is co-opted just as
feminism is, and therefore the potential lies in the ways in which
queer is unco-optable. Where identity politics seeks inclusion for
its respective group, it chooses participation in domination and
reinforces binaries. Would a rejection of inclusion and participation
be the antithesis of identity politics, even if it were a politics
that focused on a specific group-based oppression?</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Gender
transgression alone may or may not succeed at destroying the gender
hierarchy. If it does, it is because it is able to render the binary
meaningless. Yet few are so optimistic about this possibility since
it would probably require a lot of participation and clear intent
because of this co-optability of transgressions of gender and
sexuality by the power structure. However, I argue that binary gender
and compulsory heterosexuality has to be destroyed because they
regulate us all into our gender and sexuality boxes, limiting our
ability to be liberated and to participate in resistance. It is
necessary to come up with new ways of resisting gender
oppression/patriarchy without reinforcing the idea that woman is a
useful category to organize around. Finally, the exposure of
gender/sex as a social construct on which a binary hierarchy was
naturalized and functions through cross-class/race alliances may
activate a clearer general understanding of how this occurs, thereby
allowing white women, for example, to better see how whiteness
functions similarly, crumbling multiple constructs at once. Imagining
new possibilities for gender, race, and power/economic relations is
necessary for liberation.</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div id="sdendnote1">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote1anc" name="sdendnote1sym">i</a><span style="font-size: small;">
See lilith, “Gender Disobedience: Antifeminism and Insurrectionist
Non-dialogue,”
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Lilith__Gender_Disobedience__Antifeminism_and_Insurrectionist_Non-dialogue.html
(accessed January 28, 2012). In response to Feral Faun/Wolfi
Landstreicher’s “The Ideology of Victimization” and other
texts on gender. </span></span>
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote2">
<div class="sdendnote" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote2anc" name="sdendnote2sym">ii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
“In hir book, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>My Gender Workbook</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">,
Kate Bornstein characterizes gender's components as fourfold: gender
assignment, gender role, gender identity, and gender attribution.
Gender assignment is what the doctor calls you at birth, so it can
be written off as a description of sex (Bornstein reserves the word
sex for sex acts so as to circumvent Essentialist argumentation).
Gender role is described as what culture thinks your niche should
be, while gender identity is totally subjective. Gender attribution
refers to how another person might interpret your gender cues.”
Stephe Feldmen, “Components of Gender,”
http://androgyne.0catch.com/components.htm (accessed January 28,
2012).</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote3">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote3anc" name="sdendnote3sym">iii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
"Nothing could be less abstract than the idea of a natural
social group, or it never occurs except in the context of an
existing power relationship, and that is the crux of the matter. An
ideology or interpretation of reality which balanced the right of
the oppressors against the nature of the oppressed, each conceivable
only in terms of the other and both belonging to the actual practice
of appropriation, could hardly be described either as reflection
(which presupposes the separateness of the practical and symbolic
levels) or as rationalization, which presupposes not only the same
separateness but also an intellectual ingredient in the exercise of
domination which is not always present in hard fact." Colette
Guillaumin, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Racism, Sexism, Power and
Ideology</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"> (1995),</span><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: small;">79.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote4">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote4anc" name="sdendnote4sym">iv</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Judith Butler wrote in </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Gender Trouble</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">,
“Can we refer to a ‘given’ sex or a ‘given’ gender without
first inquiring into how sex and/or gender is given, through what
means? And what is ‘sex’ anyway? Is it natural, anatomical,
chromosomal, or hormonal and how is a feminist critic to assess
scientific discourses which purport to establish such ‘facts’
for us? Does sex have a history? Does each sex have a different
history, or histories? Is there a history of how the duality of sex
was established, a genealogy that might expose the binary options as
a variable construction? Are the ostensibly natural facts of sex
discursively produced by various scientific discourses in the
service of other political and social interests? If the immutable
character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’
is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed perhaps it was always
already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between
sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.” Stevi
Jackson discusses Christine Delphy’s position: “She argues that
rather than the difference between men and women being a
self-evident anatomical fact, recognizing that difference is itself
a social act… It is not enough, she argues, to treat the content
of gender as variable, while assuming that the container (the
category woman or ‘man’) is unchangeable. Rather, we should
treat the container itself as a social product.” Stevi Jackson,
“Theorizing Gender and Sexuality,” in </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Contemporary
Feminist Theories</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"> (1998), 136.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote5">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote5anc" name="sdendnote5sym">v</a><span style="font-size: small;">
“Social construction of biological sex is more than an abstract
observation: it is physical reality that many intersex people go
through. Because society makes no provision for the existence of
people whose anatomical characteristics do not neatly fit into male
or female, they are routinely mutilated by medical professionals and
manipulated into living as their assigned sex…” (Emi Koyama,
TransFeminism) The Intersex Society of North America website states
that the figures for the total number of people whose bodies differ
from standard male or female is one in one hundred births. From
www.isna.org/faq/frequency (accessed January 29, 2012).</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote6">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote6anc" name="sdendnote6sym">vi</a><span style="font-size: small;">
“Patriarchy…rests on a gender-binary system; hence it is not a
coincidence that colonizers also targeted indigenous peoples who did
not fit within this binary model. Many Native communities had
multiple genders—some Native scholars are now even arguing that
their communities may not have been gendered at all prior to
colonization—although gender systems among Native communities
varied.” Andrea Smith, “Dismantling Hierarchy, Queering
Society,” Tiqqun Magazine (July/August 2010). From
www.tikkun.org/article.php/july2010smith (accessed February 6, 2012)</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote7">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote7anc" name="sdendnote7sym">vii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
I am hesitant to argue what John Zerzan does in the following quote
because addressing its significance prior to the witch hunt and
capitalism is a rather overwhelming task. Yet it is likely
significant: “[Gender] is a cultural categorization and ranking
grounded in a sexual division of labor that may be the single
cultural form of greatest significance. If gender introduces and
legitimates inequality and domination, what could be more important
to put into question?” John Zerzan, “</span><i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Patriarchy</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;"><i>,</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">
Civilization, and the Origins of Gender.” From
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/John_Zerzan__Patriarchy__Civilization__And_The_Origins_Of_Gender.html
(accessed February 6, 2012). While many feminists see gender
hierarchy as the first hierarchy, those materialist feminists who
argue that gender/sex categories were created to naturalize an
already-existing hierarchy might then argue that gender did not
introduce, but did legitimize inequality and domination. Gender
might be the first category-based hierarchy, but may not have been
the first hierarchy. The question is whether that hierarchy was in
any way gendered prior to the attempts at stabilizing the categories
of gender.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote8">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote8anc" name="sdendnote8sym">viii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Silvia Federici, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Caliban and the Witch</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">
(2004), 192.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote9">
<div class="sdendnote" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote9anc" name="sdendnote9sym">ix</a><span style="font-size: small;">
I am not arguing here that gender inequality is only a Western
phenomenon. I am arguing that the period of the witch hunt created
new meanings for gender, and these meanings were spread throughout
many parts of the world. It is worth noting that this has influenced
anthropological interpretations of gender as well.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote10">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote10anc" name="sdendnote10sym">x</a><span style="font-size: small;">
The small percentage of those hunted as witches who were men were
usually relatives of women charged with being witches. Silvia
Federici, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Caliban and the Witch</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">
(2004), 189.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote11">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote11anc" name="sdendnote11sym">xi</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Ibid.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>,</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"> 200.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote12">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote12anc" name="sdendnote12sym">xii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
The terms heterosexual and homosexual were not used until much
later.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote13">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote13anc" name="sdendnote13sym">xiii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Ibid., 197.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote14">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote14anc" name="sdendnote14sym">xiv</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Ibid., see also Walter Williams, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The Spirit
and the Flesh</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"> (1986), chapter 7: The
Abominable Sin: The Spanish Campaign against “Sodomy,” and Its
Results in Modern Latin America. Williams describes the motivation
resulting partially from the Spanish attempt to regain control of
their country from the Moors, who were more relaxed about same-sex
relations. Also, the Spanish used the rampant homosexuality in the
“New World” to justify their conquest.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote15">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote15anc" name="sdendnote15sym">xv</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Federici describes one way women’s power in the anti-feudalism
movements was broken down involved the state legalizing rape (of
proletariat women) and prostitution (during a specific time period,
since prostitution was also criminalized for other reasons), making
women’s bodies the new commons in place of the access to land and
other natural resources they were losing. Men were afforded these
privileges to damage the more equal relationships they had with
women. Interestingly, municipal brothels also served the purpose of
addressing the rampant homosexuality of the time. Silvia Federici,
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Caliban and the Witch</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">
(2004), 48-49.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote16">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote16anc" name="sdendnote16sym">xvi</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Ibid., 168. There were plenty of skeptics regarding the reality of
witchcraft, but many, like Thomas Hobbes, “approved the
persecution as a means of social control.”</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote17">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote17anc" name="sdendnote17sym">xvii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Ibid., 103.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote18">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote18anc" name="sdendnote18sym">xviii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Ibid., 136-140.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote19">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote19anc" name="sdendnote19sym">xix</a><span style="font-size: small;">
“Like the social Darwinism that preceded it, sociobiology proceeds
by first projecting the dominant ideas of current society onto
nature (often unconsciously, so that scientists mistakenly consider
the ideas in question as both "normal" and "natural").
Bookchin refers to this as "the subtle projection of
historically conditioned human values" onto nature rather than
"scientific objectivity." Then the theories of nature
produced in this manner are transferred back onto society and
history, being used to "prove" that the principles of
capitalism (hierarchy, authority, competition, etc.) are eternal
laws, which are then appealed to as a justification for the status
quo! What this procedure does accomplish," notes Bookchin, "is
reinforce human social hierarchies by justifying the command of men
and women as innate features of the 'natural order.' Human
domination is thereby transcribed into the genetic code as
biologically immutable." [The Ecology of Freedom, p. 95 and p.
92]” (Their emphasis). An Anarchist FAQ Section A.2, “What does
Anarchism Stand For?,”
http://infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionA2 (accessed January 28,
2012).</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote20">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote20anc" name="sdendnote20sym">xx</a><span style="font-size: small;">
“By heteropatriarchy, I mean the way our society is fundamentally
based on male dominance—dominance inherently built on a gender
binary system that presumes heterosexuality as a social norm.”
Andrea Smith, “Dismantling Hierarchy, Queering Society”, Tiqqun
Magazine (July/August 2010). From
www.tikkun.org/article.php/july2010smith (accessed February 6, 2012)</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote21">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote21anc" name="sdendnote21sym">xxi</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Andrea Smith, “Indigenous Feminism without Apology.” (2006)
http://www.awid.org/eng/Issues-and-Analysis/Library/Indigenous-feminism-without-apology-Decentering-white-feminism.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote22">
<div class="sdendnote" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote22anc" name="sdendnote22sym">xxii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
US Social Forum 2007, Liberating Gender and Sexuality Plenary,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5crWlrksZs (accessed January 28,
2012).</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote23">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote23anc" name="sdendnote23sym">xxiii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Overall, though, and especially after the first phase of
colonization, men and women were equally accused as
devil-worshippers and treated as such. This was done to justify to
Europe and to the Church specifically that the conquest was a
mission of conversion, not a conquest for riches. Federici, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Caliban
and the Witch</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">, 220-21.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote24">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote24anc" name="sdendnote24sym">xxiv</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Ibid., 111.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote25">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote25anc" name="sdendnote25sym">xxv</a><span style="font-size: small;">
The witch hunts in the Americas were “a deliberate strategy used
by authorities to instill terror, destroy collective resistance,
silence entire communities, and turn members against each other. It
was also a strategy of enclosure, which depending on the context,
could be an enclosure of land, bodies or social relations. Above
all, as in Europe, witch-hunting was a means of dehumanization and
as such the paradigmatic form of repression, serving to justify
enslavement and genocide.” Ibid., 220.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote26">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote26anc" name="sdendnote26sym">xxvi</a>
“Strengthening of this male power [in tribal councils] is
inextricably linked to a long history of colonialism, as well as to
federal government policy and law, such as Indian boarding schools…
The boarding schools’ purpose, for example, was to insert
patriarchy into tribal communities and to socialize children to
believe in patriarchal gender norms.” Renya Ramirez, “Race,
Tribal Nation, and Gender: A Native Feminist Approach to Belonging,”
<i>Meridians </i>Vol. 7, No. 2 (2007), 22-40
</div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote27">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote27anc" name="sdendnote27sym">xxvii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Angela Davis, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Women, Race and Class</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">,
(1981) 5-7.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote28">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote28anc" name="sdendnote28sym">xxviii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Butch Lee and Red Rover, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Night Vision</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">,
(2000) 29.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote29">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote29anc" name="sdendnote29sym">xxix</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Joel Olson, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Abolition of White Democracy</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">,
(2004) 37. I would say that “peacefully” is not a good word
here, as Olson elaborates on some of W.E.B. DuBois’ analysis of
this cross-class alliance as ensuring the stability needed to
maintain capitalism “largely through the terrorization and
subordination of the rest of the working class.”</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote30">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote30anc" name="sdendnote30sym">xxx</a><span style="font-size: small;">
See Angela Davis, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Women, Race and Class</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">,
(1981).</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote31">
<div class="sdendnote" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote31anc" name="sdendnote31sym">xxxi</a><span style="font-size: small;">
In the case of race, criminalization is now used in such a way as to
not seem related to race, even though it clearly targets people of
color at a disproportionate rate. Race-based identity politics,
focusing on inclusion and exceptionalism, tend to overlook the
criminalization of people of color.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote32">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote32anc" name="sdendnote32sym">xxxii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
“…so-called whites must cease to exist as whites in order to
realize themselves as something else…in order to come alive as
workers, or youth, or women, or whatever other identity can induce
them to change from the miserable, petulant, subordinated creatures
they now are into freely associated, fully developed human
subjects.” Noel Ignatiev, “The Point Is Not to Interpret
Whiteness but to Abolish It,” paper presented at the University of
California-Berkeley conference, "The Making and Unmaking of
Whiteness," April 1997. From
racetraitor.org/abolishthepoint.pdf (accessed February 6, 2012).</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote33">
<div class="sdendnote" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote33anc" name="sdendnote33sym">xxxiii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
bell hooks, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Feminist Theory: From Margin to
Center</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">. (1984): 73-75.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote34">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote34anc" name="sdendnote34sym">xxxiv</a><span style="font-size: small;">
bell hooks, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The Will to Change</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">
(2004): 45.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote35">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote35anc" name="sdendnote35sym">xxxv</a><span style="font-size: small;">
“Like the apartheid of race, blurring of class boundaries is the
gravest offense because it challenges the reality of the division of
reality...sexual continuity is threatening—it destroys the
male-dominated power structure completely. If there are no hard and
fast sex types, then there can be no apartheid of sex." Martine
Rothblatt, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The Apartheid of Sex</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">,
(1995): 19. “The continued oppression of women proves only that in
any binary there's going to be one up and one down. The struggle for
equal rights must include the struggle to dismantle the binary.”
Kate Bornstein, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Gender Outlaw</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">,
(1994): 106.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote36">
<div class="sdendnote" style="line-height: 200%;">
<a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote36anc" name="sdendnote36sym">xxxvi</a><span style="font-size: small;">
See Guillaumin, Collette. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Racism, Sexism,
Power, and Ideology. </i></span><span style="font-size: small;">(1995).</span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote37">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote37anc" name="sdendnote37sym">xxxvii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
"Many in the movement who yearned not only for women's
liberation, but also for human liberation, embarked on a bold social
experiment. They hoped that freeing individuals from femininity and
masculinity would help people be viewed on a more equal basis that
highlighted each person's qualities and strengths. They hoped that
androgyny would replace masculinity and femininity and help do away
with gendered expression altogether. Twenty years after that social
experiment, we have the luxury of hindsight. The way in which
individuals express themselves is a very important part of who they
are. It is not possible to force all people to live outside of
femininity and masculinity. Only androgynous people live comfortably
in that gender space. There's no social compulsion powerful enough
to force anyone else to dwell there. Trans people are an example of
the futility of this strategy... People don't have to give up their
individuality or their particular manner of gender expression in
order to fight sex and gender oppression. It's just the opposite."
Leslie Feinburg, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Trans Liberation</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">
(1998), 53.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote38">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote38anc" name="sdendnote38sym">xxxviii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
See Emi Koyama, “Transfeminist Manifesto.” (2000) From
eminism.org/readings/pdf-rdg/tfmanifesto.pdf (accessed February 6,
2012); Michelle O’Brien, “Trans Liberation and Feminism:
Self-Determination, Healthcare, and Revolutionary Struggle.”
(2003) From
anarchalibrary.blogspot.com/2010/09/trans-liberation-and-feminism-self.html
(accessed February 6, 2012); and Carolyn, “Politicizing Gender:
Moving toward Revolutionary Gender Politics.” From
www.spunk.org/texts/pubs/lr/sp001714/gender.html (accessed February
6, 2012).</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote39">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote39anc" name="sdendnote39sym">xxxix</a><span style="font-size: small;">
bell hooks, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The Will to Change</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">,
(2004): 51.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote40">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote40anc" name="sdendnote40sym">xl</a><span style="font-size: small;">
I would note that “bisexual” denotes a binary, and thus does not
necessarily upset gender, but pointing to the recuperative nature of
the power structure, Paula Rust wrote, “Thus lesbianism was
initially constructed as a challenge to gender. But once ‘woman’
was reconstructed to include ‘lesbian’, lesbians became part of
the prevailing gender structure. In effect, lesbianism was co-opted
into gender and ceased to be a challenge to it. Furthermore, the
rise of cultural feminism reified rather than challenged gender,
maximized rather than minimized the differences between women and
men, and created a concept of lesbianism that was dependent on the
preservation of gender… Given lesbians’ initial challenge to
gender, one might expect bisexuals’ efforts to break down gender
to be well received among lesbians. But because of the change in the
relationship of lesbianism to gender..., bisexuals’ contemporary
challenge to gender is also a threat to lesbianism.” Paula Rust,
“Bisexual Politics,” reprinted in Judith Lorber, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Gender
Inequality, Feminist Theories and Politics</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">,
(Roxbury Publishing Co., 1998), 93-94.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote41">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote41anc" name="sdendnote41sym">xli</a><sup><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></sup><span style="font-size: small;">“The development of sisterhood is a
unique threat, for it is directed against the basic social and
psychic model of hierarchy and domination…” Mary Daly quoted in
Peggy Kornegger, “Anarchism and the Feminist Connection.” (1975)
From
anarchalibrary.blogspot.com/2010/09/anarchism-feminist-connection-1975.html
(accessed February 6, 2012).</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote42">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote42anc" name="sdendnote42sym">xlii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
bell hooks, </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Feminist Theory from Margin to
Center</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">. (1984): 83.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote43">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote43anc" name="sdendnote43sym">xliii</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Angela Davis, “Rape, Racism, and the Capitalist Setting,” in
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Angela Y. Davis Reader</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">
(1998), 129.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="sdendnote44">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="sdendnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#sdendnote44anc" name="sdendnote44sym">xliv</a><span style="font-size: small;">
Mary Nardini Gang, “Toward the Queerest Insurrection,” From
zinelibrary.info/toward-queerest-insurrection-0 (accessed January
28, 2012).</span></span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-9994239047325258982015-03-04T21:20:00.000-08:002015-03-04T21:22:47.113-08:00Reimagining feminism on International Women's Day (2015)<br />
<a name='more'></a>from http://rabble.ca/columnists/2015/03/reimagining-feminism-on-international-womens-day<br />
<br />
Every morning I read my one-year-old daughter a fabulous children's
alphabet book. When we get to the letter F, it goes "F is for Feminist,
Fairness in our Pay." Of course a children's book is limited in its
ability to express nuanced layers of analysis, but I often wonder about
how relevant this articulation of a particular version of feminism will
be for her.<br />
<br />
Dominant liberal feminism has typically sought equal and fair rights
for women. Even subsequent waves that brought greater representation of
diverse women and trans people within these same frameworks of feminism
have rarely altered the premise of "equality" as the primary organizing
force of feminism, thus leaving the relationship of heteropatriarchy to
other social, economic and political structures of power largely
unquestioned. Patriarchy is not secondary to capitalism and imperialism;
the very foundations of capitalism, colonialism and state violence are
structured in conjunction <i>with</i> and <i>through</i> patriarchy. Marginalized women, therefore, not only endure gendered violence at higher rates, we also experience it <i>qualitatively</i> differently.<br />
<br />
<b>Feminism: Friend or foe of the state?</b><br />
The past decade has seen a surge of debate on feminist anti-violence
strategies that rely on the state. Anti-violence strategies, such as
tougher sentencing laws and increased policing, have been criticized for
emboldening criminalization that already disproportionately targets
communities of colour, poor communities, and trans folks.<br />
<br />
It is clear that the state is not interested in protecting women who
defend themselves against heteropatriarchal and transphobic violence, as
evidenced most recently in the cases of Marissa Alexander and CeCe
McDonald, both Black women who were incarcerated for defending
themselves against partner violence and transphobic violence,
respectively. A <a href="http://www.purpleberets.org/pdf/bat_women_prison.pdf" rel="nofollow">fact sheet</a>
on battered women in U.S. prisons details that as many as 90 per cent
of the women in jail today for killing men were battered by those men.<br />
<br />
Battered women in prison are part of a broader trend of incarcerating
Indigenous and Black women, women who are street-involved, sex workers,
trans women, and migrant women. The incarceration of Black women in the
U.S increased by 828 per cent over five years. In Canada, the
representation of Indigenous women in prison has increased by <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/aboriginal-women-imprisoned-in-soaring-numbers-1.1143093" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">nearly 90 per cent</a>
over the past decade. For migrant and non-status women, reporting
sexual abuse often leads to deportation, and Canada has recently
introduced a policy of conditional permanent residency that further
entrenches the vulnerability of migrant women. This criminalization,
incarceration and deportation of women and trans people <i>is</i> gender violence perpetrated by the state.<br />
<br />
<b>Feminism: A challenge to or in the service of imperialism?</b><br />
At the global level, Western feminism has been complicit in
racialized empire. Despite the fact that military occupations wreak
havoc in the lives of women and children and the documentation of rape
as a primary tool of war, many feminist organizations support
imperialist interventions. From earlier "yellow peril" myths that warned
of migrant Asian men ensnaring white women with opium to the more
contemporary justifications of the occupation of Afghanistan as a
mission to liberate Muslim women, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak portrays
the cheerleading of civilizing crusades masked as feminist solidarity as
"white men saving brown women from brown men."<br />
<br />
Liberal feminism is a handmaiden to cultural imperialism,
essentializing communities of colour as innately barbaric. Women and
queers are supposedly devoid of any agency -- forced to veil, subjected
to honour killings, coerced into arranged marriages. In the post-9/11
context, cultural imperialism is evident in debates about gender and
Islam that force a singular feminism -- secular, sexually expressive,
and liberal autonomist -- on women and queers of colour. Laws banning
the <i>niqab</i>, for example, target Muslim women for public
scrutiny, hate crimes, and state surveillance. Writing about the
architecture of feminisms in the service of imperialism, Leila Ahmed
charges, "Whether in the hands of patriarchal men or feminists, the
ideas of western feminism essentially functioned to morally justify the
attack on native societies and to support the notion of the
comprehensive superiority of Europe."<br />
<br />
<b>Colonial gendered violence: Land is Life</b><br />
Given that Indigenous women suffer the highest rates of sexual
violence, combatting gender violence requires a commitment to
dismantling settler-colonialism. Nearly 1,200 Indigenous women have been
murdered or gone missing in Canada over the past 30 years. As renowned
Indigenous feminist Lee Maracle <a href="http://nationsrising.org/itendshere-the-full-series/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">writes</a>, "It is not simply about 'ending violence,' the violation is the colonial order."<br />
<br />
Gendered violence is embedded within settler-colonialism: in racist
and heteropatriarchal laws such as the Indian Act, in policies of child
apprehension, in the practices of locking up Indigenous women and youth
at alarming rates, and in the genocidal attempts to annihilate
Indigenous laws through the very bodies of Indigenous women, girls,
trans and two-spirit people that embody and enact Indigenous
sovereignty. In particular, the systemic ideology that upholds the
colonial entitlement to and pillage of Indigenous lands is furthered by
the colonial construction of Indigenous women as sexually available. As a
Manitoba judge stated during the inquiry into the death of 19-year-old
Helen Betty Osborne: "the men who abducted Osborne believed that young
aboriginal women were objects with no human value beyond sexual
gratification."<br />
<br />
Settler-colonialism is founded on the violences of lack of free,
prior and informed consent: the "rape-ability" of Indigenous women's
bodies is intricately connected to the "rape-ability," theft, and
exploitation of Indigenous lands.<br />
<br />
<b>Climbing up the ladder on migrant women's backs</b><br />
A frequently touted success of the liberal feminist movement has been
the entry of women into the paid workforce. However, migrant women
performing domestic labour have actually facilitated the entry of these
women into the wage economy.<br />
<br />
In Canada, the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP) brings predominately
Filipina migrant workers to work as domestic workers for middle-class
and rich households. Given their temporary status, they are a vulnerable
workforce and constantly subjected to labour and human rights
violations including unpaid or excessive work hours, additional job
responsibilities, confiscation of travel documents, disrespect of their
privacy, and sexual assault. As one migrant domestic worker <a href="http://aprnet.org/?option=com_content&view=article&id=163:organizing-and-mobilizing-filipino-migrant-women-in-canada&catid=97:impact-of-globalization-on-women-labor&Itemid=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">remarks</a>,
"We know that, under the LCP, we are like modern slaves who have to
wait for at least two years to get our freedom." Freedom for some women
is, therefore, reliant on the <i>unfree</i> indentured labour of other women.<br />
<br />
<b>Reproductive justice and emotional labour: Beyond the wage economy </b><br />
Women are more likely to be stratified into low-wage work,
particularly sectors such as retail, social services, janitorial, food
service, clerical work, teaching, child care, domestic work, and
nursing. These sectors are undervalued and underpaid <i>precisely</i>
because they mirror (and reproduce) the gendered division of labour that
typically occurs within the home. As Andrea Smith writes, "Patriarchy
is the logic that naturalizes social hierarchy."<br />
<br />
Capitalism not only creates the conditions for wage theft and
precarious labour but -- through patriarchy as a mutually reinforcing
process -- it also defines what can even be characterized as labour and
ties human worth to wage-labour productivity.<br />
<br />
Single mothers become marginalized as "unemployed" and
"uncontributing" when they are in fact, as scholar Silvia Frederici
observes, reproducing labour power as a key source of capitalist
accumulation. Because reproductive labour has been naturalized as
women's unpaid work, it has provided an immense subsidy to capitalism.
According to figures by economist Raj Patel in <i>The Value of Nothing</i>, women's unpaid work is estimated at $11-$15 trillion, which is more than half the world's entire economic output!<br />
<br />
Reproductive justice movements, therefore, challenge the assumption
that the only valuable labour is that which can be commodified and sold
on the market. The greatest transformative potentials of feminism lie in
the valuing of relational work that sustains our communities and
manifests our responsibilities to each other: care work, land
stewardship, and emotional labour. By rejecting the dominant model of
competition, domination, commodification, and isolation, these forms of
labour inherently challenge male, cisgendered, ableist and capitalist
supremacy.<br />
<br />
<b>Multitude of feminisms</b><br />
Rather than a feminism that strengthens racism, imperialism, and
economic subjugation, feminism is most relevant in its subversion of the
state, capital interests, gendered relations, and the policing of
gender and sexual binaries. By challenging the ideologies of superiority
and uniformity that underlie the dominant liberal framing of feminism,
embracing a <i>multitude</i> of feminisms would diversify our
understandings of how coercion and oppression is experienced, as well as
resisted. It is no coincidence that the Idle No More movement is
credited to four women, that three Black women founded the Black Lives
Matter project, and that women in Kobane and Chiapas and Palestine and
Chhattisgarh are leading those struggles for liberation.<br />
<br />
Some days I alter my reading of Avnika's alphabet book to "F is for Feminists, Freedom Fighters Against All Violence."<br />
<br />
<i><a href="https://twitter.com/HarshaWalia" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Harsha Walia</a>
is a South Asian activist and writer based in Vancouver, unceded Coast
Salish Territories. She has been involved in community-based grassroots
migrant justice, feminist, anti-racist, Indigenous solidarity,
anti-capitalist, Palestinian liberation, and anti-imperialist movements
for over a decade. The<i> column, "Exception to the Rule," is about challenging norms, carving space and centring the dispossessed.</i></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-39904686397922947582015-01-23T16:40:00.000-08:002015-01-23T16:40:39.402-08:00Against Carceral Feminism (2014)<br />
<a name='more'></a>https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/10/against-carceral-feminism/ <br /><br />
<br />
Relying on state violence to curb domestic violence only ends up harming the most marginalized women.<br />
<br />by Victoria Law<br />
<br />
Cherie Williams, a thirty-five-year-old African-American woman in the Bronx, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCYQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsfonline.barnard.edu%2Fprison%2FChallengingMythsPanel.pdf&ei=sIo8VNbPCLe_sQTiqIKwCA&usg=AFQjCNHMcSGbClsgCczUNJKQVHTkU3geog&sig2=2J3kuvoK7RPun1C6JyGYAA&bvm=bv.77161500,d.cWc">just wanted</a>
to protect herself from her abusive boyfriend. So she called the cops.
But although New York requires police to make an arrest when responding
to domestic violence calls, the officers did not leave their car. When
Williams demanded their badge numbers, the police handcuffed her, drove
her to a deserted parking lot, and beat her, breaking her nose and jaw,
and rupturing her spleen. They then left her on the ground.<br />
<br />
“They told me if they saw me on the street, that they would kill me,” Williams later testified.<br />
The year was 1999. It was a half-decade after the passage of the
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which deployed more police and
introduced more punitive sentencing in an attempt to reduce domestic
violence. Many of the feminists who had lobbied for the passage of VAWA
remained silent about Williams and countless other women whose 911 calls
resulted in more violence. Often white, well-heeled feminists, their
legislative accomplishment did little to stem violence against less
affluent, more marginalized women like Williams.<br />
<br />
This carceral variant of feminism continues to be the predominant
form. While its adherents would likely reject the descriptor, carceral
feminism describes an approach that sees increased policing,
prosecution, and imprisonment as the primary solution to violence
against women.<br />
<br />
This stance does not acknowledge that police are often purveyors of
violence and that prisons are always sites of violence. Carceral
feminism ignores the ways in which race, class, gender identity, and
immigration status leave certain women more vulnerable to violence and
that greater criminalization often places these same women at risk of
state violence.<br />
<br />
<img alt="t_9" class="alignleft size-large wp-image-14504" height="640" src="https://www.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/t_9-1024x1024.jpg" width="640" />Casting policing
and prisons as the solution to domestic violence both justifies
increases to police and prison budgets and diverts attention from the
cuts to programs that enable survivors to escape, such as shelters,
public housing, and welfare. And finally, positioning police and prisons
as the principal antidote discourages seeking other responses,
including community interventions and long-term organizing.<br />
<br />
How did we get to this point? In previous decades, police frequently
responded to domestic violence calls by telling the abuser to cool off,
then leaving. In the 1970s and 1980s, feminist activists filed lawsuits
against police departments for their lack of response. In New York,
Oakland, and Connecticut, lawsuits resulted in substantial changes to
how the police handled domestic violence calls, including reducing their
ability to not arrest.<br />
<br />
Included in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the
largest crime bill in US history, VAWA was an extension of these
previous efforts. The $30 billion legislation provided funding for one
hundred thousand new police officers and $9.7 billion for prisons. When
second-wave feminists proclaimed “the personal is the political,” they
redefined private spheres like the household as legitimate objects of
political debate. But VAWA signaled that this potentially radical
proposition had taken on a carceral hue.<br />
<br />
At the same time, politicians and many others who pushed for VAWA
ignored the economic limitations that prevented scores of women from
leaving violent relationships. Two years later, Clinton signed “welfare
reform” legislation. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
and Reconciliation Act set a five-year limit on welfare, required
recipients to work after two years, regardless of other circumstances,
and instated a lifetime ban on welfare for those convicted of drug
felonies or who had violated probation or parole.<br />
<br />
By the end of the 1990s, the number of people receiving welfare (the
majority of whom were women) had fallen 53 percent, or 6.5 million.
Gutting welfare stripped away an economic safety net that allowed
survivors to flee abusive relationships.<br />
<br />
Mainstream feminists have also successfully pressed for laws that
require police to arrest someone after they receive a domestic violence
call. By 2008, nearly half of all states had a <a href="http://www.nij.gov/publications/dv-dual-arrest-222679/exhibits/Pages/table1.aspx">mandatory arrest law</a>. The statutes have also led to <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/218355.pdf#page=23">dual arrests</a>,
in which police handcuff both parties because they perceive each as
assailants, or they can’t identify the “primary aggressor.”<br />
Women marginalized by their identities, such as queers, immigrants,
women of color, trans women, or even women who are perceived as loud or
aggressive, often do not fit preconceived notions of abuse victims and
are thus arrested.<br />
<br />
And the threat of state violence isn’t limited to physical assault. In 2012, <a href="http://www.freemarissanow.org/">Marissa Alexander</a>,
a black mother in Florida, was arrested after she fired a warning shot
to prevent her husband from continuing to attack her. Her husband left
the house and called the police. She was arrested and, although he had
not been injured, prosecuted for aggravated assault.<br />
<br />
Alexander argued that her actions were justified under Florida’s
“Stand Your Ground” law. Unlike George Zimmerman, the man who shot and
killed seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin three months earlier, Alexander
was unsuccessful in using that defense. Despite her husband’s <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/90595503/Marissa-Alexander-Alleged-Victim-Disposition">sixty-six-page deposition</a>, in which he admitted abusing Alexander as well as the other women with whom he had children, a jury still found her guilty.<br />
<br />
The prosecutor then added the state’s 10-20-LIFE sentencing
enhancement, which mandates a twenty-year sentence when a firearm is
discharged. In 2013, an appellate court overturned her conviction. In
response, the prosecutor has vowed to seek a sixty-year sentence during
her trial this December.<br />
<br />
Alexander is not the only domestic violence survivor who’s been
forced to endure additional assault by the legal system. In New York
state, 67 percent of women sent to prison for killing someone close to
them had been abused by that person. Across the country, in California, a
prison study found that 93 percent of the women who had killed their
significant others had been abused by them.<br />
Sixty-seven percent of those
women reported that they had been attempting to protect themselves or
their children.<br />
<br />
No agency is tasked with collecting data on the number of survivors
imprisoned for defending themselves; thus, there are no national
statistics on the frequency of this domestic violence-criminalization
intersection. What national figures do show is that the number of women
in prison has increased exponentially over the past few decades.<br />
<br />
In 1970, 5,600 women were incarcerated across the nation. In 2013, <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf">111,300 women</a> were in state and federal prisons and another <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/jim13st.pdf">102,400</a>
in local jails. (These numbers do not include trans women incarcerated
in men’s jails and prisons.) The majority have experienced physical
and/or sexual abuse prior to arrest, often at the hands of loved ones.<br />
<img alt="t_1" class="alignright size-large wp-image-14505" height="640" src="https://www.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/t_1-1024x1024.jpg" width="640" /><br />
Carceral feminists have said little about law-enforcement violence
and the overwhelming number of survivors behind bars. Similarly, many
groups organizing against mass incarceration often fail to address
violence against women, often focusing exclusively on men in prison. But
others, especially women of color activists, scholars, and organizers,
have been speaking out.<br />
<br />
In 2001, Critical Resistance, a prison-abolition organization, and
INCITE! Women of Color against Violence, an anti-violence network,
issued a <a href="http://www.incite-national.org/page/incite-critical-resistance-statement">statement</a>
assessing the effects of increased criminalization and the silence
around the nexus of gender and police violence. Noting that relying on
policing and prisons has discouraged organizing community responses and
interventions, the statement challenged communities to make connections,
create strategies to combat both forms of violence, and document their
efforts as examples for others seeking alternatives.<br />
<br />
Individuals and grassroots groups have taken up that challenge. In 2004, anti-violence advocate Mimi Kim founded <a href="http://www.creative-interventions.org/">Creative Interventions</a>.
Recognizing that alternative approaches to violence need to be
demonstrated, the group developed a site to collect and publicly offer
tools and resources on addressing violence in everyday life. It also
developed the <a href="http://www.stopviolenceeveryday.org/">StoryTelling and Organizing Project</a>, where people can share their experiences of intervening in domestic violence, family violence, and sexual abuse.<br />
<br />
In 2008, social-justice organizers and abuse survivors Ching-In Chen,
Jai Dulani, and Leah Lakshmi Piepnza-Samarasinha compiled “<a href="http://www.incite-national.org/media/docs/0985_revolution-starts-at-home.pdf">The Revolution Starts at Home</a>,”
a 111-page zine documenting various efforts in activist circles to hold
abusers accountable. Piepnza-Samarasinha described how trusted friends
helped devise strategies to keep her safe from a violent and abusive ex
who shared many of the same political and social circles:<br />
<blockquote>
When he showed up at the prison justice film screening I
was attending, held in a small classroom where we would have been
sitting very close to each other, friends told him he was not welcome
and asked him to leave. When he called in to a local South Asian radio
show doing a special program on violence against women, one of the DJs
told him that she knew he had been abusive and she was not going to let
him on air if he was not willing to own his own violence.<br />
My safety plan included never going to a club without a group of my
girls to have my back. They would go in first and scan the club for him
and stay near me. If he showed up, we checked in about what to do.<br />
</blockquote>
In their article “Domestic Violence: Examining the Intersections of
Race, Class, and Gender,” feminist academics Natalie Sokoloff and Ida
Dupont mention another approach taken by immigrant and refugee women in
Halifax, Nova Scotia, one which tackled the economic underpinnings that
prevent many from escaping abusive relationships.<br />
<br />
The women, many of whom had survived not just abuse but torture,
political persecution, and poverty, created an informal support group at
a drop-in center. From there, they formed a cooperative catering
business, which enabled them to offer housing assistance for those who
needed it. In addition, women shared childcare and emotional support.<br />
<img alt="" class="alignnone wp-image-14499 size-large" height="640" src="https://www.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/t_7-1024x1024.jpg" width="640" /><br />
As these examples demonstrate, strategies to stop domestic violence
frequently require more than a single action. They often require a
long-term commitment from friends and community to keep a person safe,
as in Piepnza-Samarasinha’s case. For those involved in devising
alternatives, like the women in Halifax, it may require not only
creating immediate safety tactics, but long-term organizing that
addresses the underlying inequalities that exacerbate domestic violence.<br />
<br />
By relying solely on a criminalized response, carceral feminism fails
to address these social and economic inequities, let alone advocate for
policies that ensure women are not economically dependent on abusive
partners. Carceral feminism fails to address the myriad forms of
violence faced by women, including police violence and mass
incarceration. It fails to address factors that exacerbate abuse, such
as male entitlement, economic inequality, the lack of safe and
affordable housing, and the absence of other resources.<br />
<br />
Carceral feminism abets the growth of the state’s worst functions,
while obscuring the shrinking of its best. At the same time, it
conveniently ignores the anti-violence efforts and organizing by those
who have always known that criminalized responses pose further threats
rather than promises of safety.<br />
The work of INCITE!, Creative Interventions, the StoryTelling and
Organizing Project, and “The Revolution Starts at Home” (which sparked
so much interest that it was expanded into a <a href="http://southendpress.org/2010/items/87941">book</a>)
are part of a longer history of women of color resisting both domestic
and state violence. Their efforts shows that there is an alternative to
carceral solutions, that we don’t have to deploy state violence in a
disastrous attempt to curb domestic violence.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-47809507264319598642014-02-19T12:00:00.000-08:002014-02-19T12:00:00.906-08:00Models of Revolution (2000)<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
<h4>
Rural Women and Anarchist Collectivization In Civil War Spain</h4>
<h5>
<span class="alt">by</span> <span class="author">Martha A. Ackelsberg</span></h5>
<div class="excerpt">
</div>
This article explores revolutionary activities its rural
Spain during the years of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), comparing two
different (anarchist) perspectives on the nature of women's
subordination and empowerment. One evident in the activities of the
mainstream anarcho-syndicalist movement understood women's subordination
to be rooted in her economic domination and, consequently, viewed
economic participation as the route to empowerment. The second developed
in the anarchist women's organization, Mujeres Libres understood
women's subordination to have broader cultural roots, and, consequently,
saw the need for a multifaceted program of education and empowerment as
key to women's liberation. The article examines the agricultural
collectivization sponsored by the CNT, as well as the activities of
Mujeres Libres, comparing the successes and failures of each approach.<br />
<a accesskey="d" href="http://assets.zinedistro.org/zines/pdfs/135.pdf">DOWNLOAD</a><br />
<br />
this version originally published by Red and Black in Australia at
http //www.geocities.com/loveandrage_2000/ email
landandrage_2000@yahoo.com<br />
<br />
Models of Revolution Rural Women and Anarchist Collectivization in Civil War Spain
<br />
<br /><br />
INTRODUCTION
<br />In the first weeks and months of the Spanish Civil War, as many in
the propertied classes ,abandoned their factories or landholdings for
safety in rebel-held zones, both industrial and agricultural workers
found themselves with opportunities to reorganize their lives and social
networks.1 Unionized industrial workers in urban centers such as
Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and their environs collectivized factories
and organized worker-control committees to administer them. In rural
areas, agricultural laborers took over land belonging to the fascists or
their sympathizers, consolidated their own small holdings, and
rearranged cultivation in teams of workers. Preexisting patterns of
social relations shifted markedly as working people, both urban and
rural, gained greater degrees of control over their lives and work.<br />
This social revolution took place in the context of 70 years of
anarchist and socialist organizing, and, beyond that, of centuries-old
Spanish traditions of collectivism and communalism. Anarchist visions of
a society without domination, and perspectives on how to achieve that
vision, had particular and significant implications for women.
Anarchists challenged socialist claims that all relations of domination
and subordination were rooted in economic relations they argued that
hierarchy and authority relations existed in a variety of at least
semi-independent domains (politics, religion, the family) and needed to
be addressed in these contexts, as well as in the economic. In terms of
strategies for social change, the most significant implication of this
position was that means had to be consistent with ends. Anarchists
insisted that it is impossible to create an egalitarian society by means
of an in-egalitarian or hierarchical social movement because those in
directing positions will come to see themselves, and to be seen by
others, as indispensable. Furthermore, anarchists argued that the
essence of oppression is the denial of people s sense of their own
capabilities successful revolutionary strategy, therefore, must embody
popular empowerment. This perspective on oppression and liberation
constituted one major difference between anarchism (or libertarian
socialism) and Marxist (or authoritarian) socialism. On the anarchist
view, the only way to create a nonhierarchical society in which everyone
is empowered, and sees him or herself as a valued participant is
through organizations and movements that are egalitarian and
participatory and, therefore, empowering [Ackelsberg, 1984 1985a 199 1
Ch. 11.]<br />
What did this mean for women, who were virtually universally
acknowledged to be subordinated in Spanish culture and society? Despite
the recognition that, in general, subordination had roots that were
broader and deeper than simply economic relations, the prevailing view
in the Spanish anarchist movement (beyond that of the followers of
Proudhon, who argued that women were, and should remain, subordinate to
men within the family!) was that women s sexual and social subordination
was a consequence of their economic subordination and exclusion from
the paid workforce. Once the economic arena were restructured along more
egalitarian lines, and women engaged in paid work along with men, the
specific subordination of women would end.<br />
Another view, much less common in the movement as a whole, but which
had been developing slowly in anarchist journals in the early years of
the twentieth century, and was articulated, at the time of the Civil
War, by the newly-created libertarian women s organization, Mujeres
Libres, was that women s situation could not be understood simply in
economic terms. According to this view, women s subordination had
broader cultural roots economic domination was reinforced by childhood
socialization, the teachings of the [Roman Catholic] Church, state
practices, etc. Therefore, to overcome their subordination, women would
require a more broad-based program of empowerment, directed specifically
to them and their needs [Nash, 1976 812, and 1981 also Ackelsberg, 1991
Chs. 121.] This perspective was rooted in the belief that revolution is
a process of empowerment.<br />
During the early months of the Spanish Civil War, revolutionary
collectivization s took place in both urban and rural contexts in widely
scattered areas of the country, the content and process varying with
the local situation. This article examines the revolutionary movement in
rural areas in an effort to explore the ways these two perspectives on
women s subordination and empowerment (one, that subordination is rooted
primarily in economic domination the other, that subordination has
broader cultural roots) expressed themselves in revolutionary practice.<br />
<br />
SPANISH ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM
<br />AND THE WOMAN PROBLEM
<br />As early as 1872, the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement committed
itself to equality for women as part of its vision of an anarchist
society. The Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo, or CNT (the
anarcho-syndicalist trade union federation) renewed that commitment at
its Saragossa Congress of May 1936, which set out an extensive vision of
libertarian communism. In the section concerning family and sexual
relations, the Congress declared [CNT, 1955 19781] that Since the
primary aim of the libertarian revolution is to assure the economic
independence of all, without distinction of sex, the interdependence of
men and women, a consequence of [women s] economic inferiority created
by capitalism, will disappear along with [capitalism]. That means that
the two sexes will be equal, in both rights and duties. <br />
Consequently, although the movement often appealed to women for their
loyalty and participation, neither in the pre-Revolutionary context nor
during the years of the Civil War did it present women s emancipation
as a major revolutionary goal. And even when it did address the issue,
it rarely challenged dominant definitions of women s roles. As was the
case inmost left movements both in Spain and elsewhere in Europe most
anarchist appeals to women called on them to abandon their home and
contribute to the economy as a temporary contribution to the war effort
[Ackelsberg, 1991 Chs.341.] Very few appeals advocated a more
far-reaching reordering of women s roles and statuses. So, for example,
the women s section of the anarcho-syndicalist-affiliated Liberal
Professions Union called on women to develop your own personality , and
do not believe that your life consists only in homemaking and the
abandonment of your personality in the midst of family life . Women, it
continued, have the responsibility to develop their minds, by reading,
studying, and nourishing it [the mind] with good thoughts so that you
can take the place appropriate to your personality in both personal and
social life . Nevertheless, much of the advice seemed oriented to women
in their roles as mothers Women, the crown of female life is motherhood.
Women were encouraged to develop and educate themselves so that they
could be better mothers, and encourage their daughters (as well as sons)
to develop all their talents and abilities [Sindicato Unico, 1936 910
Manas, 1937 41.]<br />
By contrast, the beginning of the Civil War also coincided with the
founding of the anarchist women s organization, Mujeres Libres, which
set as its goal the overcoming of women s triple enslavement to
ignorance, as women, and as producers . While all its initiators were
women affiliated with one or another of the major anarchist movement
organizations the CNT, the FAI (Federation Anarquista Iberica, Iberian
Anarchist Federation) or the FIJL (Federacion Iberica de Juvetudes
Libertarias, the anarchist youth organization) each believed that a
separate organization, run by and for women, would be necessary to
overcome women s particular subordination and enable women to take their
rightful places in the revolutionary process. Accordingly, Mujeres
Libres emphasized women s emancipation as a central and necessary focus
of revolutionary activity. As its journal, Mujeres Libres, stated in an
editorial early in 1937
<br />We are not talking now about a gradual evolution, nor about
consciousness . Not even about an interest in social issues ... We have
said many times that woman s independence is inseparable from her
economic independence. We have said that the home is, in most cases, a
symbol of slavery ...<br />
But now we are not talking about any of that ... We are not talking,
here, about raises in salary, nor of gaining more-or-less recognized
women s rights, but of the future life. Of our participation and
orientation, as women, in that future life.<br />
From now on, every woman must transform herself into a defined and
defining being she must reject hesitation, ignorance ... Revolution is
not in any sense a state of being , but one of creating [or doing] that
transcends our particular anxieties, our illusions, and reaches even to
our children ... [ Mujeres! n.d., emphasis added].<br />
<br />
AGRICULTURAL COLLECTIVISATION AND WOMEN S ROLES
<br />Economic life provided the major context for the working out of
different visions of equality. In many republican-held areas,
particularly in Valencia, Aragon, and in some parts of rural Madrid,
Catalonia, and Andalusia, anarchist and socialist-inspired
collectivisation changed the face of the countryside, restructuring
long-standing patterns of land tenure and cultivation. In order better
to understand the nature and significance of collectivisation, it may be
helpful to provide some information on pre-Revolutionary patterns of
land-working and landholding.<br />
Economic development in Spain was very uneven, and patterns of land
tenure varied widely in different regions. In Andalusia and Extremadura,
for example, most land was held in large tracts, known as latifundias,
that were owned by absentee landlords, and worked by essentially
landless day labourers who lived in urban agglomerations of 1015,000
people. This area had been a major focus of anarchist unrest in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and, in the final years and
months just preceding the Civil War, witnessed numerous declarations of
comunismo liberatario (libertarian communism), when agricultural workers
joined with other townspeople to take over town halls and declare
workers communes. Most of the revolutions , however, were quickly
quelled by the Civil Guards. In the aftermath of the Generals rebellion
of July 1936, day-labourers in many of these Andalusian communities took
over lands on which they had<br />
previously worked and established collectives. However, since much of
this area fell to rebel forces by late summer of 1936, little record
remains of these efforts.<br />
The areas of the country where anarchist collectivisation was most
popular were Aragon, Valencia, and, to a lesser extent, rural Castile
and Catalonia.2 In each, the pattern of collectivisation varied with
preexisting forms of land tenure. In much of Aragon, for example, land
had traditionally been held in relatively small family plots. There,
many small landholders formed collectives by pooling land they had
always worked. Those who did not wish to join (especially those with
larger plots worked by hired labourers) were either left to themselves
as individualists , or I relieved by the collective of any land beyond
that they could work without hired labour. Others, who had owned very
little property in the prewar period established collectives on estates
expropriated from fascists , or abandoned by their owners. Susan Harding
[1984 72] has characterised the collectivisations in Aragon as
intensely and inescapably contradictory . While many villagers joined
collectives eagerly , many others participated unwillingly , and the
presence of CNT led militia troops often undermined any meaningful
notion of choice .<br />
In Valencia, once the rebellion had been put down in the cities, both
the CNT and the UGT (the Union General de Trabajadores, the socialist
trade union federation) initiated efforts to collectivise latifundial
land and land abandoned by owners disloyal to the Republic. But there
were few latifundias, and relatively little of the cultivated land was
owned by fascist sympathisers. Nevertheless, as it had in Aragon, the
C74T encouraged agricultural labourers in many villages to take over
parcels on which they had been working, and it also set up local,
regional, and national federations to assist the collectives with
production and distribution. Even so, levels of consciousness and
ability were often fairly low (see, for example, Bosch 11987 14748]).<br />
Similarly, in Catalonia in the prewar period, much land was held in
relatively small family plots, or in slightly larger holdings worked by
sharecroppers. The CNT had relatively few supporters in the area, and
most of these were daylabourers. The sharecroppers and rabassaires
[vinetenders] tended to affiliate with the Unio de Rabassaires [an
Organisation of the small-holders and sharecroppers who worked the
vineyards], formed in 1922, which pressed for legal reform of property
laws to guarantee greater security of tenure to sharecroppers, rather
than for the more radical program of collectivisation favored by the CNT
[Balcells, 1977 3534, 3591.] These differing background conditions
dramatically affected outcomes when the rebellion (and revolution) broke
out where large (and especially absentee) landholdings predominated,
revolutionary collectivisations were much more likely where land was
more evenly divided, and landlords remained in the area, more
cooperativist approaches seemed to prevail [Vilanova, n.d. especially
129341.] Thus, for example, one collective in Lerida (in Catalonia) was
formed when a few enthusiasts initiated the expropriation of a few
relatively large landholdings by those who had previously worked as
labourers or sharecroppers. In addition to the founders, only a few of
those who joined the collective had been members of the CNT prior to the
war others apparently joined less out of ideological commitment than
out of a need for work and sustenance (interviews, 1977). The
Generalitat [the autonomous Catalan government] attempted to provide
some direction and coordination of the collectives, through its Decree
of Collectivisation and Worker Control , passed in October of 1936. But
it is not clear how effective its programme of obligatory syndialisation
(meant to guarantee equity for members of different worker
organizations) actually was (see Muria, [1937 1021] for an overview of
rural collectivisations see L enquesta [19361]).<br />
In sum, the patterns of collectivisation varied as much as, if not
more than, preexisting patterns of cultivation. In many communities,
anarchist organizations took complete control of both governance and
production, creating municipal collectives. In slightly larger villages,
workers expropriated and collectivized the lands of large holders,
allowing those who had previously owned the land to continue working it,
but assuring that all who had been sharecroppers or daylabourers became
full members of the collective. Most collectives were governed by
weekly or biweekly general assemblies in which each member of the
collective had one vote. Production was usually organized by work
groups, each composed of eight to ten workers. Often members pooled
their farm animals many built new barns and/or storage areas and some
created canals, roads, and irrigation systems that made a permanent
contribution to the infrastructure of rural Spain.3<br />
For Spanish anarcho-syndicalists, this reorganization of rural social
life, like that which occurred in urban collectives, represented a
revolution that was both economic and ethical . The collectives were to
serve as building blocks of the new society. They represented an attempt
to construct ... cells of an anarchist society ... federated among
themselves that would serve as partial examples of anarchism in practice
of a society free of domination [Bernecker, 1982 1823, 26061 also
Ackelsberg, 1985b 100211.] The process of collectivisation embodied the
anarchist principle of preparation for revolution as revolution we
create a new society, and the new men and women who are to participate
in it, by creating it.<br />
What were the implications of these changes for women? What roles did
women play in the process of revolutionary collectivisation in rural
areas, and how did collectivisation affect the conditions of their daily
lives? First, it is important to note that, for all the regional
differences in patterns of landholding, virtually nowhere were women
able to inherit land in their own right. Although most women did work
the land, their labour was generally considered secondary to that of
men, and tended to be defined as women s work . Women were responsible
for the household plot and, perhaps, for a few animals that provided
milk or eggs for home consumption.<br />
Soledad Estorach, who was an activist both in the CNT and in the
Barcelona-based Grupo Cultural Femenino (women s cultural group), which
was to become part of Mujeres Libres in the fall of 1936, travelled with
representatives of anarchist organizations through Aragon, Catalonia,
and parts of Valencia in the first few months of the war. She described
[Estorach, 19821] the role of these traveling activists at least some of
whom were women in the process of collectivisation <br />
When we got to a village, we d go to the provisional committee of the
village, and call a general assembly of the entire village. We d
explain our paradise, with great enthusiasm.... And then there would be a
debate compassion [rural land-worker] style questions, discussion, etc.
By the next day, they d begin expropriating land, setting up work
groups, etc.<br />
We d help them form a union, or create work groups sometimes there
would be no one in the village who could read or write, so some of these
matters took a bit longer! We d also make sure they named a delegate to
send to the next comarcal or regional meeting. And we d go out to the
fields to work with them, to show them that we were regular people , not
just outsiders who didn t know anything about this. We were always
welcomed with open arms.<br />
Some women were involved, then, in the initial propaganda tours that
helped provide the impetus for collectivisation in many rural villages.
But, for a variety of reasons, evaluation of the roles women played in
the day-today functioning of the collectives as a whole is complex.
Neither contemporary accounts nor more recent monographic studies of
collectivisation offer much direct information on the nature or extent
of women s participation. Of surviving documentary evidence, most
focuses almost entirely on men s activities. Even oral histories have
been somewhat sketchy on women s participation on a day-today level.
Based on materials I have been able to examine, I explore here three
aspects of the functioning of rural collectives for clues about women s
place work standards and the distribution of work, salaries and wage
scales, and criteria for and/or practices of membership.<br />
Work Standards
<br />A traditional sexual division of labour seems to have prevailed in
the distribution of work within the collectives for the most part, work
was defined as the activities of men women s activities as they had been
in the prewar period tended to be dismissed as extensions of
housekeeping . The minutes of a collective in Lerida, for example,
suggest that norms for women s work were different from those for men s
not least because the participants seemed to assume that women would
continue to bear primary responsibility for domestic duties. For
example, one delegate, speaking on behalf of his companera, complained
that it was unfair to make her work the same hours as the men on the
farm, since she would, in addition, cook meals, wash, and iron clothes.
During the course of a discussion of workers who left their posts early,
one member suggested that women were the ones who tended to leave early
so that they could get to the cooperative store in time to get food and
other supplies. He proposed that men might also participate in this
process. His suggestion was rejected, however, on the strength of
another s claim that the woman knows better than anyone what she will
need during the day, or for the week to come . Finally, reports of
debates some months later indicate continued discussion over what
standards were appropriate for women workers, in particular. The minutes
report, for example, that Oriol pointed out that the issue of
companeras is a problem in all the collectives, and says that it is a
product of egoism and a failure of collective spirit .. . but in this
case, we must at least make sure that the women comrades do certain
jobs, such as laundry and cleaning the house [Colectividad Campesina
Adelante , 20 Dec. 1936,14 March, 20 June and 18 July 19371.]<br />
Evidence from other collectives reveals similar approaches. Women
were expected to work, but the conditions of their work were different
from men s. A Guide for collectives published in Cultura y Accion, the
journal of the anarchist federation of Aragon, Rioja, and Navarra, for
example, stated that all individuals over 15 years of age, of both
sexes, are obliged to work for the collective, and with respect to
married women and invalids, assemblies will determine the nature of
their obligations . A description of the collective in Morata de Tajuna
(in Castilla) made specific mention of the fact that ninety women took
part in work groups. However, since 415 families, or 1,300 persons,
comprised the collective, the figure of 90 women suggests that most were
not part of the regular work groups which were the basis of the
collective s economic structure [ Guion, 1936 CNTAIT, n.d. 49501.]
Everywhere, domestic chores fell automatically to women.4 In
Villa-franca del Panades, for example, where commerce as well as farming
was collectivized, the collective distributed ration cards to women in
order to control everything sold in the stores of the village [Boletin
de Information, CNTFAI, 19361.] And, except on small or very poor
collectives, women apparently worked outside the home only under unusual
circumstances, for example, the harvest, when all hands possible were
needed.5<br />
Wages
<br />Salaries and wage scales are another indicator of the ways the
collectives understood equality and/or sexual difference. Most
collectives attempted to move toward pay equity in some fashion. There
seem to have been two major schemes. One was to pay all members a set
amount per day. The other was the so-called family wage which adjusted
the amount of the wage to the size of the family, in an approximation to
the communist-anarchist goal of to each according to his need (for
examples, see L Enquesta [1936 19371).<br />
Some collectives paid all workers the same wage, regardless of the
type of work done. Those of Monzon and Miramel in Aragon, for example,
paid men and women equally. But most collectives set fairly significant
differentials between wages paid to women and those paid to men.6
Further (as has been the case in a variety of industrial contexts as
well, and certainly not only in Spain), even so-called family-wage
systems incorporated an unequal valuation of labour. Adelante! (in
Lerida) and El Porvenir (in Valencia), for example, paid wages to the
family head scaled according to the number, sex and ages of family
members. The (male) head of family in El Porvenir received 4 ptas. per
day for himself 1,50 for his companera 0,75 for each child over 10 and
0,50 for each of those under ten. In Granadella, the collective set a
wage of 2 ptas. per week for workers 18 years or older , I pta. for
those between 15 and 18, and 1 pta. for companeras over 18.7 Some
collectives in Aragon operated with a combination of these two systems.
In Fraga, for example, women who worked outside the home in the
traditionally women s task of tending and packing figs received the same
daily wage for their work as did men. During those months when they
simply kept house, or kept up the family plot , they were not paid. The
family wage paid to the husband or father was said to reflect their
contribution indirectly.8<br />
Although the movement as a whole, and most collectives, touted the
introduction of the family wage as a progressive step, one that would
overcome much of the exploitation that had characterised prewar rural
life, all of these, groups seemed oblivious to its implications for
women. H.E. Kaminski, who travelled in Catalonia during this period,
noted the paradox [1976 1011] In fact, this libertarian communism takes
off from the existing state of things. The proof is that the family wage
leaves the most oppressed person in Spain, the woman, in complete
dependence on men. As Bernecker [1982 1856] points out, single women who
did not live with their parents were totally ignored in this system
(though there were probably not many of them living in rural villages).
And, of course, these wage scales, which everywhere paid women less than
men, were in complete violation of the principle of equal pay for equal
work that the CNT had committed itself to as far back as its founding
conference in 1910. Despite this, the familywage scheme apparently met
with no resistance on these grounds from within the CNT ranks.<br />
Why this should have been the case is a complex question. On the one
hand, although the , CNT was committed in principle to the equality of
women, the goal of equal pay for equal work was rarely raised before the
war and, even then, usually only by small groups of women. Within the
rank and file of the movement, the Proudhonian position that women were
inferior to men, and ought to define themselves in terms of home and
children probably predominated over the more egalitarian official
position of the movement. Reinforcing this point of view was the fact
that Spanish culture was heavily dominated by the Catholic Church, which
took the position that woman s place was in the home.9 Virtually the
entire educational system including that supported by the state was
staffed by members of religious orders. Many people (including
anarchists) argued that Women were deeply affected by Church rhetoric,
as they were much more likely than men to attend Church, and because the
Church sponsored a variety of women s clubs and benefit societies. In
fact, considerable opposition to the extension of suffrage to women in
the 1930s came from leftists and republicans who feared that giving the
vote to women would effectively increase the power of the Church. Temma
Kaplan has suggested that anarchist opposition to the Church (and the
traditional family structures it supported) may well have alienated
substantial numbers of women [Kaplan, 19771] and, consequently, left the
movement, as a whole, feeling that women s issues were of only marginal
importance. Some combination of these factors probably accounts for the
relative lack of attention to economic equity for women within
mainstream anarchist organizations although pay equity was a significant
aspect of Mujeres Libres programme, as we will see.<br />
Membership
<br />The question of membership standards and criteria is also complex.
Collectives based their legitimacy on democratic authority structures,
and on a system of decision-making in assemblies, in which all members
participated and in which each had one vote. But who qualified for
membership? Bernecker [1982 178] concludes that all inhabitants of the
village had the right to vote though he notes that Hugh Thomas argued
that it seems most likely that only male workers were present at the
assemblies. My own research suggests that the situation probably varied
from village to village. Many reports from collectives published in
Boletin de Informacion CNTFA I contain phrases such as all in the
collective are workers, including both women and men , or The Collective
is composed of all those over 18, of both sexes . . . . On the other
hand, the minutes of the Lerida collective rarely refer to women at all,
and when they do, almost never by name more often, women appear as the
companera of which suggests that they were not considered members at the
same level as the men.<br />
This ambiguity also makes difficult any evaluation of participation
in leadership and decision-making within the collectives. Ile minutes of
a number of collectives, as well as interviews with male participants
on those and other collectives, suggest that women s involvement in
communal decision-making was rather limited. Given the general societal
devaluation of women s worth, however, such reports should not
necessarily be taken as indicative of the levels of women s
participation. Nevertheless, a number of women also reported that women
were often silent in meetings a silence they attributed to the fact that
most women had had little experience of speaking in public. This was to
become a major focus of Mujeres Libres programmes.<br />
It is, of course, possible that, then as now, women did much and
received little or no recognition for it. Soledad Estorach reported
[1982], for example, that there were some collectives in Aragon where
the first delegates to the village committee were women. Why? Because
men were often away from home for long periods, tending the flocks.
Those who actually kept the villages going on a day-today basis were the
women. From all reports, however, the leadership of women in these
villages probably represented an exception to the general pattern,
rather than the rule.<br />
By some measures, the collectives accomplished a great deal. Women
participated actively in many rural collectives, and even took positions
of responsibility in some of them. Particularly in those collectives
that recognized and remunerated women s work, women began to be viewed
as at least somewhat independent. In a more general sense, women s
social autonomy increased. Whereas, in the pre-Revolutionary period,
rural women were rarely if ever seen outside the home unaccompanied by a
male (except, perhaps, when marketing), young women in rural areas
began to move about more freely, even to go to bars, for example, with
other women friends. In a significant number of areas, formal marriage
ended, even if the nuclear family remained the norm.10<br />
Nevertheless, despite a long-standing CNT commitment to women s
equality within the economic sphere, without a specific focus on women s
equality and participation, there were limits to what the collectives
achieved. Even in the terms accepted by the CNT (that is basing women s
equality on labour-force participation), the collectives fell short of
their mark in a number of important respects. Most collectives treated
women as secondary workers, and placed married women, in particular, in a
kind of economic nether-world. In effect, the refusal to address women s
subordination as an independent focus left intact a public/private
split which identified women with the home and domestic duties, and
limited the ability of women to achieve equality within the broader
economic realm. Further, in the absence of specific attention to women s
subordination, apparently gender-neutral structures of participation
effectively reproduced existing gender disparities. Without a challenge
to the public/private dichotomy, and the gendered division of labour,
most women did not come to see themselves (nor were they seen by their
male comrades) as fully equal participants in rural revolutionary
transformation.<br />
MUJERED LIBRES REVOLUTIONISING WOMEN S ROLES
<br />Mujeres Libres was founded in 1936 by independent groups of women
affiliated with either the CNT, the FAI, or the FIJL, with the objective
of empowering women to take their places in the revolutionary movement.
While all its founders were members of these libertarian movement
organisations, the initiators (as they liked to call themselves)
believed a separate organisation was necessary to enable women to
overcome their triple enslavement, to ignorance, as women, and as
producers . From its beginnings early in 1936, Mujeres Libres soon
spread (helped by announcements in more mainstream anarchist and
anarcho-syndicalist media) to towns and villages throughout the
Republican zone [Ackelsberg, 1991 Ch. 4].<br />
Many of its activities were educational in nature. Its programmes in
rural areas, in particular, responded to both the accomplishments and
the limits of revolutionary collectivisations. For Mujeres Libres, women
s emancipaion would not result simply from women s incorporation into
the labour force. This was so because the forces of subordination
operated in more than simply the economic realm the Church, for example,
reinforced the subordination of women in many domains, not just the
religious. As a result, most women were not fully prepared to take their
places as equal participants, even if they were given the opportunity.
Mujeres Libres took seriously, that is, the anarchist vision of
preparation for revolution as revolution. effectively (though not always
explicitly) insisting that women s subordination in the so-called
private sphere would have to be addressed if women were to take active
roles in the social revolution.<br />
Mujeres Libres focused on the links among economic, cultural
(including, importantly, religious), and sexual subordination.11 In
Mujeres Libres view, overcoming their subordination as women was a
crucial component of women s active participation in revolution. As Emma
Goldman (an ardent supporter of Mujeres Libres) wrote in Mujeres Libres
in December, 1936 It is clear that there can be no true emancipation as
long as there is domination of one individual over another, or of one
class over another. And there cannot be any reality to the emancipation
of the human race as long as one sex dominates the other. Thus, Mujeres
Libres programmes had a number of different components encouraging
anarchosyndicalist unions and other movement organisations to take women
and women s subordination seriously working together with these largely
male organisations to train women to take their places in the paid
labour force and, most significantly, engaging in education and
consciousness-raising programmes among women to counter the influence of
the Church and to encourage women to play a broader role in the
revolution.<br />
Education
<br />Education formed the centre of Mujeres Libres programmes of
capaci[empowerment, development of one s abilities], and took primary
place in discussions of its accomplishments. Education (free from the
traditionalist views propagated by Church and state-supported
educational institutions) was essential to releasing women s potential
and enabling them to become fully contributing members of the movement
and the new society. Most basic to these programmes was a crusade
against illiteracy. Embarrassment about cultural backwardness prevented
many women from active engagement in the struggle for revolutionary
change. Literacy was to be a tool to develop self-confidence and further
participation.12 In towns and villages, as well as in major cities,
Mujeres Libres offered programs in basic literacy, as well as more
specialized courses. In an effort to support women in rural areas, for
example, Mujeres Libres established farm schools for girls who had come
to the city from rural areas to engage in domestic service, aimed at
teaching them skills that would enable them to participate more
effectively in collectivized farming in their native villages. In
addition, both nationally and regionally, Mujeres Libres established
committees focused on culture and propaganda, to spread the message in
person as well as in writing. A group in Barcelona made regular radio
broadcasts. Others travelled through the Catalan countryside to speak to
those who might not be reached by written or radio propaganda. Given
the high rates of illiteracy particularly among women these verbal
messages were especially important.<br />
Pepita Carpena, who travelled as a representative of Mujeres Libres to rural villages, described her experiences [Carpena, 1981]<br />
We would call the women together, and explain to them ... that there
is a clearly defined role for women, that women should not lose their
independence, but that a woman can be a mother, and a companera at the
same time ... Young women would come over to me and say, This is very
interesting what you re saying we ve never heard before, it s something
that we ve felt, but we didn t know... .<br />
The ideas that grabbed them the most? Talk about the power men
exercised over women ... There would be a kind of an uproar when you
would say to them, we cannot permit men to think themselves superior to
women, that they have a right to rule over them. I think that Spanish
women were waiting anxiously for that call.<br />
Employment
<br />Mercedes Comaposada, one of the originators of Mujeres Libres,
described the place and importance of employment programmes in Mujeres
Libres overall plan in conjunction with education, work was the key to
women s self-development. We wanted to open the world to women, to allow
women to develop themselves in whatever ways they wanted to ...
[19821.] Mujeres Libres viewed work as a necessary and indispensable
part of life. Humans had the capacity to use technology to lighten the
burden of labour, structuring production so that machines would be at
the service of people, and the exploitation of some by others would end
[Grangel, n.d. also Mujeres con carga , n.d. and Campesinas , n.d.l.]
Labour should be the expression of human capability and creativity, a
prerequisite for freedom [ Trabaio , 19361.] The vision of work as part
of a fulfilled life was especially important for women who, until then,
had been deemed unfit for productive labour. Mujeres Libres insisted,
that work contributed both to general social progress and to women s
emancipation more specifically, enabling women to be and to experience
themselves as productive members of the society [ El Trabajo ]. In these
respects, Mujeres Libres programmes served as an important counter not
only to prevailing social norms, but also to the perspectives propounded
by Church-supported women s and labour organisations.13<br />
In addition to working with unions to develop apprenticeship
programmes for industrial jobs, Mujeres Libres prepared women for work
in rural areas, most notably by establishing experimental stations for
agriculture and aviculture to provide women the knowledge they would
need to participate in rural production. Some articles in the journal
addressed themselves specifically to rural women, offering them the
education they would need to take their places in production Arms alone
are not enough, rural comrades. Nor is everyone s combined force
sufficient. We must change the rhythm of production and produce more,
much more....<br />
How?<br />
By organizing teams, groups of physically strong women, who are
knowledgeable about work in the fields, and to prepare two or three
women trained in agricultural technology for each of these groups ...
That way, rural workers will accomplish more with less work.<br />
In Mujeres Libres classes, you can prepare yourself for this new
rhythm of work which is so necessary, gaining knowledge about
agriculture, aviculture, and rural administration.<br />
Campesina You have always been in the fields, always with your arms
outstretched above your heads, waiting, exhausted, dark and sad, like
one more plant, devalued and enslaved. You have been waiting for clouds,
storms, floods, the tax collector ... all the disasters and calamities
of rural life ... Campesina We are now left without the old landlords,
and the fields are laughing. Along with the old masters, illiteracy,
dirt, children without number, all these will vanish ... [ Campesina ,
n.d.].<br />
Agricultural experiment stations, offering such courses, existed in
Barcelona, Aragon, and in Valencia, and women came to them from many
surrounding communities. For example, Mujeres Libres reported on a
collective in Amposta that had a new chicken cooperative, directed by a
woman. The director had been sent by the collective to an institute
sponsored by Mujeres Libres to learn how to organize and manage the work
(as reported in Gimenez [n.d.a] see also Gimenez [n.d.b] Perez [n.d.]
and Campesina [n.d.]).<br />
While even Mujeres Libres often reported on the operation of these
collectives without especially noting the overall sexual division of
labour (men tended to work in the fields, women in shops and laundry),
or the apparent assumption of women s primary responsibility for
child-rearing and domestic duties [e.g., Gimenez, n.d.a] nevertheless
Mujeres Libres did call repeatedly for women s full participation in
economic and social life <br />
How beautiful would life be with mothers and sisters who are
knowledgeable! How quickly Society would be transformed if women
participated in social struggle!<br />
A thoroughly libertarian Aragon, with well-plowed fields, men of
steel, the Aragon of struggles for revolutionary aims, also has its
brave women. Women who are able to substitute for men in the field ...
[Gomez, n.d.].<br />
Consciousness-raising
<br />Through all of these educational activities, Mujeres Libres
attempted to raise consciousness about women s social and political
participation. Virtually every issue of the journal had at least one
article on women as social-political activists, or on the exploits of
exceptional women, whether in contemporary Spain or in other historical
and geographical contexts.14 In attempts to reach both unaffiliated
women and anarchist men with its message, Mujeres Libres published
columns in other anarchist periodicals, such as Acracia, Ruta, CNT and
Tierra y libertad, dealing with women s participation in revolutionary
struggles. Representatives of Mujeres Libres joined representatives of
the CNT, FAI, and FIJL on propaganda trips to the countryside,
introducing (often illiterate) rural workers to libertarian ideas and
practices. Radio broadcasts supplemented these speaking tours. In
addition, booklets and pamphlets, as well as pictorial expositions in
Madrid and Barcelona, highlighted the achievements and activities of
women.<br />
Finally, Mujeres Libres attempted to articulate a sense of what life
might be like for fully self-conscious, self-empowered women. Women s
situation differed from that of men although men and women should engage
together in the struggle to overcome relations of domination imposed on
them from outside (primarily by capitalism), women had an additional
struggle, for their interior liberty , their sense of self. In this they
would have to struggle alone and, all-too-frequently, against the
opposition of their male comrades or family members. Nevertheless, when
you have achieved your goal, you will belong only to yourselves ... You
will become persons with freedom and equality of social rights, free
women in a free society that you will build together with men, as their
true companera.... Life will be a thousand times more beautiful when the
woman becomes a really free woman [mujer libre] [Ilsa, n.d. also La
mujer , 1937].<br />
In addition to these programmes oriented toward developing women s
capacities to enable them to participate more fully in revolutionary
transformation, other activities addressed a wide range of concerns.
Mujeres Libres addressed issues of sexuality, including birth control
and conscious motherhood offered courses and pamphlets on child care and
child development sponsored institutes to train teachers in new, and
more open, methods of education to prepare young people for a
libertarian world struggled to eliminate prostitution (and proposed
liberatorios de prostitucion, centres where prostitutes could go for
retraining to develop new skills) and supported refugee services,
particularly in those rural areas flooded with ever-increasing numbers
of refugees from war zones (for more details, see Ackelsberg [1991 Ch.
5]).<br />
The exigencies of war, of course, set limits on Mujeres Libres
achievements. Mujeres Libres claimed between 20,000 and 30,000 members,
virtually all of them working-class women, and many of them in rural
areas. Thousands of these women participated in educational activities
of one sort or another. Yet, economic crisis brought on by prolonged
civil war limited both funds and opportunities for major social
reorganization. The project of liberatorios de prostitucion, for
example, never really progressed beyond the idea stage.<br />
Overall, perhaps the most important aspect of Mujeres Libres
activities was its very existence as an independent, autonomous,
organisation, setting its own goals and priorities. Its existence, in
effect, reflected in an organizational context what Mujeres Libres was
attempting to communicate at the individual level that women needed to
be able to define themselves. In fact, Mujeres Libres insistence on
autonomy and self-definition became a major source of tension within the
larger movement context the CNT and FAI did not see the need for an
autonomous women s organisation, any more than they saw the need for
specific attention to women s subordination.<br />
In the view of the major movement organisations, Mujeres Libres work
with women should have been undertaken (and understood) as auxiliary to
the work of purportedly gender-neutral working-class organisations. They
saw no need for an independent organisation of and for women, with the
authority to develop and implement its own programmes of education and
empowerment. Thus, although individual CNT unions and FAI groups engaged
in a variety of joint projects with Mujeres Libres groups at the local
level, neither the CNT nor the FAI as national-level organisations ever
accorded Mujeres Libres the respect and monetary support Mujeres Libres
believed it deserved. To the women of Mujeres Libres, this lack of
support was particularly galling given the active support the Spanish
Communist Party offered to Communist-affiliated women s groups. Of
course, Communist-sponsored women s groups were hardly autonomous or
self-defining in Mujeres Libres terms and, given the larger Civil War
context, the Communist Party had many more resources available to it
than did libertarian movement organisations. Representatives of Mujeres
Libres argued repeatedly though unsuccessfully most dramatically at the
joint plenary of libertarian movement organisations in October 1938,
that it deserved organizational recognition as an autonomous fourth
branch of the movement (along with CNT, FAI, and FIJL), and that its
work among women was crucial to the overall success of the revolutionary
project. These arguments, however, fell largely on deaf ears mainstream
organisations refused to acknowledge the connection Mujeres Libres saw
between autonomy and empowerment and, therefore, refused to support the
organisation as an autonomous entity. 15<br />
Nevertheless, the limited progress of the social revolution itself
despite all the collectives did manage to achieve demonstrates the
importance of Mujeres Libres perspective. Given the exigencies of the
wartime situation, large numbers of women in both urban and rural
contexts were drawn into nontraditional work. In rural areas, many women
took on new roles with enthusiasm, breaking gender barriers and social
expectations that had seemed unchanging for generations. New modes of
social interaction followed upon these new economic roles. Yet, without
explicit and direct challenges to women s subordination and to the
public/private split, and without specific programmes directed at
empowering women, there were limits to what women would achieve, no
matter how revolutionary the context. The experience of rural women,
even in this limited venue, seems to validate the original anarchist
perspective on domination and social change- that is, that a focus on
economic issues alone is insufficient. Effectively to overcome
domination requires empowering people in a variety of contexts,
addressing the specific conditions of their lives. Revolutionary
activity- even anarchist revolutionary activism cannot be gender-blind.<br />
<br />
NOTES
<br />1. George Orwell, traveling in Barcelona in December, 1936,
reported, for example [Orwell, 1967 4-5], that it was the first time
that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle
... In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes
had practically ceased to exist. <br />
2. Material on the process of collectivisation is taken largely from Ackelsberg [1991 77-9].<br />
3. The literature on collectives is extensive and growing. The most
thorough monographic study is Bernecker [1982]. Other helpful surveys
include Mintz [1970], Leval [1971] and Carrasquer [1986]. On changes in
the infrastructure see Breitbart [1979] and Catlla [1976].<br />
4. See, for example, Sindicato agricola [ 1937a], which discusses how
to ensure that women will complete their tasks. Also Verdu [ 1936],
which reports that, at the founding of the collective, women were
reminded to work at home sewing clothing for combat troops and Mora de
Rubielos [1936], for a similar reminder to women at the founding of that
collective.<br />
5. See, for example, the rules of a collective in Binefar [Realizaciones revolucionarias, 1977 85] also Bernecker [1982 174].<br />
6. On Monzon and Miramel, see Escuder [1979] and Carrasquer [1979].
For an overview of wages in collectives in Catalonia see L Enquesta de
la Conselleria [1936 1937].<br />
7. Information on wages in Lerida comes from Certificats de Treball .
On Tabernes de Valldigna in Valencia, see Colectividad productora El
Porvenir , de Tabernes de Valldigna (UGTCNT) , cited in Bosch [1980 29].
On Granadella, Granadella . Boletin de lnformacion, CNTFAI, 7 Dec.
1936. In Avinyonet del Penedes [Collectivitat Agricola, 1937], families
would receive 4 ptas. for the first male worker, 3 ptas. for each
additional male worker, and I pta. each for women and children.<br />
8. On Fraga, see Chine [ 1979]. A similar plan seems to have been
implemented in Alcaniz. See Sindicato Agricola Colectivo [1937b].<br />
9. See Alguaire, Boletin de Informacion, CNTFA 1, 6 Oct. 1936
Granadella , ibid., 7 Dec. 1936. See also Esplugas de Francolf ibid., 9
Oct. 1936.<br />
10. See Pons Prades [1974 93ff] and documents located in Archivo
Historico Nacional, Seccion Guerra CivilSalamanca, PoliticoSocial de
Barcelona, Carpetas 1392 and 626.<br />
11. See, for example, El problema sexual y la revolucion , Mujeres
Libres, No.9 and Liberatorios de prostitucion , Mujeres Libres, No.5.
Compare Aranguren [1963 231-43].<br />
12. See the advertisement Mujeres Libres , Tierra y Liberiad, No.47,
10 Dec. 1938, p.3. On the literacy campaign more generally see Salvemos a
las mujeres [1937 8], and Realizaciones [1938 4].<br />
13. On the role of the Church in promoting particular kinds of organisa
<br />tions among women see Capel Martinez [n.d. 21723, 25862] also Basauri [1979a 223 and 1979b 2843].<br />
14. Those by Kiralina (Lola Iturbe) were later published in book form [Kiralina, 1938].<br />
15. On tensions and struggles within the movement see Ackelsberg [1991 Ch.6] and Nash [1981 Chs.2, 7].<br />
<br />
REFERENCES
<br />Ackelsberg, Martha A., 1984, Mujeres Libres Individuality and
Community. Organizing Women in the Spanish Civil War , Radical America,
Vol.9, No.1.<br />
Ackelsberg, Martha A., 1985a, Separate and Equal ? Mujeres Libres and<br />
Anarchist Strategy for Women s Emancipation , Feminist Studies, Vol. Xl, No. 1 pp.63-83<br />
Ackelsbcrg, Martha A., 1985b, Sexual Divisions and Anarchist
Collectivization in Civil War Spain , Communal Societies Vol.5
pp.100-121.<br />
Ackelsberg, Martha A., 1991, Free Women of Spain Anarchism and the
Struggle for the Emancipation of Women, Bloomington IN Indiana
University Press.<br />
Aranguren, Jose Luis, 1963, La mujer, de 1923 a 1963 , Revista de Occidente, Nos.89 (Nov.Dec.), pp.231-43.<br />
Balcells, Albert, 1977, La conflictividad social agraria en Cataluna y
la Unio de Rabassaires hasta 1939, Agricultura y Sociedad, Jan.March,
pp.347-96.<br />
Basauri, Mercedes, 1979a, El feminismo cristiano en Espana (19001930) , Tiempo de historia, no.57 (Aug.), pp.22-33.<br />
Basaufi, Mercedes, 1979b, La mujer social Beneficiencia y caridad en
la crisis de la Restauracion , Tiempo de Historia, No.59 (Oct),
pp.28-43.<br />
Berneckcr, Walther, 1982, Colectividades y revolucion social El
anarquismo en la guerra civil espnola, 19361939, Barcelona Critica
Grijalbo.<br />
Boletin de Informacion, CNTFAI, 193637.<br />
Bosch, Aurora, 1980, Colectivistas (19361939), Valencia Almudin.<br />
Bosch, Aurora, 1987, Las colectivizacioncs estado de la cuestion y
aspectos regionales , in La Segunda Republica Una esperanza frustrada
(ed. Josep Fontana), Valencia Alfons el Magnanim, Institucio Valenciana d
Estudis i Investigacio, pp.147a.<br />
Breitbart, Myrna, 1979, Anarchist Decentralism in Rural Spain , Antipode, Vol.X, No.3.<br />
Campesina , [n.d.], Mujeres Libres, No.13.<br />
Campesinas , [n.d.], Mujeres Libres, No.8.<br />
Capel Martinez, Rosa Maria, n.d. El trabajo y [a educacion de la
mujer en Espana (1900 1930), Madrid. Ministerio de Cultura, Direccion
General de Juventud y Promocion Socio-Cultural.<br />
Carpena, Pepita, 1981, interview with author, 30 Dec.<br />
Carrasquer, Felix, 1979, interview with author, Barcelona, 16 Feb.<br />
Carrasquer, Felix, 1986, Las colectividades de Aragon Un vivir autogestionado promesa de futuro, Barcelona Laia.<br />
Catlla, Bernard, 1976. Problemes de la construction el du logement
dans la revolucion espagnole, 19361939, Saillagouse. Bernard Catlla.<br />
Certificats de Treball , n.d., Archivo Historico Nacional, Seccion Guerra CivilSalamanca, P.S. Lerida, Carpeta 5, registro 3.<br />
Chine, Valero, 1979, interview with author, Fraga, 11 May.<br />
CNT, 1955, El congreso confederal de Zaragoza (mayo 1936), Toulouse
Ediciones CNT. CNTAIT, [n.d.], Colectividades de Castilla El
colectivismo en la provincia de Madrid, Madrid Ediciones de la
Federacion Regional de Campesinos y Alimentacion del Centro.<br />
Colectividad Campesina Adelante . CPUAIT, 193637, Libro de Acias,
Archivo HistoricoNacional, Seccion Guerra CivilSalamanca, Seccion P.S.
de Lerida, Carpeta 3<br />
Collectivitat Agricola, CNTAIT, Avinyonct del Penedes, 1937,
Continuacion del cuestionario No.4 , 3 Aug., Archivo Historico Nacional,
Seccion Guerra CivilSalamanca, P.S. Barcelona, Carpeta 1322.<br />
Comaposada, Mercedes, 1982, interview with author, Paris, 5 Jan.<br />
L Enquesta de la Conselleria sobre la collectivitzacio de la terra ,
1936, butlleti del Departament d agricultura, Vol. 1, No.3 (Dec.),
pp.21-30.<br />
L Enquesta de la Conselleria sobre la collectivitzacio de [a terra ,
1937, butlleti del Departament d agricultura, Vol.11, No.4 (Jan.),
pp.75-8.<br />
Escuder Matilde, 1979, interview with author, Barcelona, 16 Feb.<br />
Estorach, Soledad, 1982, interviews with author, Paris, 4 and 6 Jan.<br />
Gimenez, Maria, [n.d.a], Una colectividad Amposta , Mujeres Libres, No. 11.<br />
Gimenez, Mary, [n.d.b], Aragon revolucionario , in Mujeres Libres No.10.<br />
Goldman, Emma, 1936, La situacion social de la mujer , Mujeres Libres, No.6 (Dec.).<br />
Gomez, Carme, [n. d.], Por Aragon , Mujeres Libres, No. 11.<br />
Grangel, Pilar, [n.d.], El trabajo intelectual y manual de la mujer , Mujeres Libres, No. 12.<br />
Guion, 1936, Cultura y Accion, 25 Nov.<br />
Harding, Susan Friend, 1984, Remaking lbieca Rural Life in Aragon
Under Franco, Chapel Hill, NC University of North Carolina Press.<br />
Ilse, [n.d.], doble lucha de la mujer , Mujeres Libres, No.7.<br />
Kaminski, H.E., 1976, Los de Barcelona (Prologue by Jose Peirats,
trans. Carmen Sanz Barbera), Barcelona Ediciones del Cotal, S.A.<br />
Kaplan, Temma, 1977, Other Scenarios Women and Spanish Anarchism , in
Claudia R. Koonz and Renate Bridenthal (eds,), Becoming Visible Women
in European History, New York Houghton Mifflin, pp.400-22.<br />
Kiralina (Lola lturbe), 1938, Mujeres de las revoluciones, Barcelona Mujeres Libres<br />
Leval, Gaston, 1971, Espagne Libertaire, 3639, Paris Les editions du cercle.<br />
Manas, M., 1937, Nosotras , Cultura y Accion, March 3.<br />
Mintz, Frank, 1970, L autogestion dans l espagne revolutionnaire, Paris Belibaste.<br />
Mora de Rubielos , 1936, Cultura y Accion, 25 Nov.
<br />La mujer y el problems de la libertad , 1937, Acracia, Vol.11, No.278, 15 June.<br />
Mujeres! , n.d. [1937], Mujeres Libres, No.7 (viii mes de la revolucion).<br />
Mujeres con carga , [n.d. 1, Mujeres Libres, No. 10.<br />
Mujeres Libres, Madrid and Barcelona, 193638.<br />
Muria, Josep Maria, 1937, La revolucion en el campo de Cataluna, Paris<br />
Nash, Mary, 1976, Mujeres Libres Espana, 19361939, Barcelona Tusquets.<br />
Nash, Mary, 1981, Mujer y movimiento obrero en Espana 19311939, Barcelona Fontamara.<br />
Orwell, George, 1967, Homage to Catalonia, Boston, MA Beacon Press.<br />
Pons Prades. Eduardo, 1974, Un Soldado de la Republica Memorias de la Guerra civil espanola, Madrid G. del Toro.<br />
Realizaciones de Mujeres Libres 1938, Tierra y Libertad, No.28 (30
July), p,4. I Realizaciones revolucionarias y estructuras colectiistas
de la Comarcal de Monzon (Huesca), 1977, Confederacion Nacional del
Trabajo de Espana, Regional de Aragon, Rioja, y Navarra Ediciones
Cultura y Accion.<br />
Salvemos a las mujeres de la dictadura de la mediocridad Labor
cultural y construct para ganar la guerra y hacer Is Revolucion , 1937,
Ruta, Vol. Il, No.29 (30 April), P.8<br />
Sindicato agricola colectivo de Alcaniz, 1937a, Acuerdos tomados en
la asambrea [sic, celebrada en este sindicato de las mujeres do esta
colectividad , 23 Nov., Archive Historico Nacional, Seccion Guerra
CivilSalamanca, Politics Social de Aragon, Car peta 136.<br />
Sindicato agricola colective de Alcaniz, 1937b, Actas, Archivo
Historico Nacional, Guerra CivilSalamanca, P.S. de Aragon, Carpeta 136.<br />
Sindicato Unico de Profesiones Liberales, Seccion femenina,
Solidaridad Libertaria , 1936, Consejos dados a las Mujeres, Boletin de
Informacion, CNTFAI, No.77 (15 Oct.)<br />
Tierra y Libertad, 193638, Barcelona.<br />
Trabajo Redoblemos el esfuerzo , 1936, Mujeres Libres, No.6, Dec.
<br />El trabajo , [n.d.], Mujeres Libres, No.13.<br />
Verdu , 1936, Boletin de Informacion, CNTFAI, 25 Sept.
<br />Vilanova, Mercedes, n.d., La propiedad territorial en dos pueblos de
la Provincia do Gerona (19301940) Posibilidades de I& ficha
perforada manual , Actas de las I Jornadas de metodologia aplicada de
las ciencias historicas, Vol.IV Historia contem, poranea, Santiago de
Compostela fundacion Juan March , Secretariado de publicaciones de la
Universidad de Santiago, pp.121-38.
<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-84395807390861727382014-02-12T12:00:00.000-08:002014-02-12T12:00:04.826-08:00‘Together we will make a new world’: Sexual and Political Utopianism (2003)<br />
<a name='more'></a>http://socialhistory.org/en/events/radical-sexual-politics<br />
<br />
By Judy Greenway<br />
<br />
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:ApplyBreakingRules/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:UseFELayout/>
</w:Compatibility>
<w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel>
</w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><br />
<!--[if !mso]><img src="//img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" />
<style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style>
<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
</style>
<![endif]-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">By reaching for the moon, it is said, we learn to reach.
Utopianism, or ‘social dreaming’, is the education of desire for a better
world, and therefore a necessary part of any movement for social change.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[i]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this paper I use examples from my research
on anarchism, gender and sexuality in </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Britain</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> from the 1880s
onwards, to discuss changing concepts of free love and the relationship between
sexual freedom and social transformation, especially for women.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">All varieties of anarchism have
in common a rejection of the state, its laws and institutions, including
marriage. The concept of ‘free love' is not static, however, but historically
situated. In the late nineteenth century, hostile commentators linked sexual to
political danger. Amidst widespread public discussion of marriage, anarchists
had to take a position, and anarchist women placed the debate within a feminist
framework.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many saw free love as central
to a critique of capitalism and patriarchy, the basis of a wider struggle
around such issues as sex education, contraception, and women's economic and
social independence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">How was free love
conceptualised?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was no single
model, but the starting point was the legal and social subjugation of women in
marriage, seen as destructive for both women and men. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; layout-grid-mode: line; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In 1885 the anarchist Charlotte Wilson
wrote: ‘</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In
the relations between men and women ... I cry for freedom as the first step </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">-</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> and after freedom, knowledge,
that each may decide...how that freedom can be used.’ <span style="layout-grid-mode: line;">She says parenthood and marriage are separate issues, that motherhood
should be chosen, and in a free society many women would not make that choice. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="layout-grid-mode: both;">Children
apart, it is an intolerable impertinence that Church or State or society in any
official form should venture to interfere with lovers. If we were not
accustomed to such a thing it would appear unutterably disgusting…<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2">
<span lang="EN-GB">[H]ave you not noticed that men
and women of the New Society which is struggling into being within the old,
naturally fall into healthy relations of cordial equality without very much
theorising?<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; layout-grid-mode: line; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Soon after, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Wilson</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> became editor and
publisher of the anarchist newspaper <u>Freedom</u>, and although the paper
concentrated on economic and political matters, it was also a public space to
discuss sex and marriage. Her critique of ‘the existing hypocritical and
unnatural sexual relations’ (marriage) becomes more extreme. Not only is state
interference ‘disgusting’, marriage itself is unnatural and unhealthy, contaminating
all relations between men and women. Free love is part of a wider conception of
a healthy, natural social world.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; layout-grid-mode: line; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In 1888, a national newspaper
launched the so-called ‘marriage controversy’. ‘Is marriage a failure?’ read
the billboards.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn4" name="_ednref4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; layout-grid-mode: line; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span></span></a></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a front page editorial in <u>Freedom</u>,
Charlotte Wilson asked: ‘If the kernel [of society, marriage is] suspected of
being unsound, what of the whole nut?’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Although recent legal and social changes made some degree of economic
independence possible for women, she argues that to become wage slaves rather
than chattel slaves in marriage is little improvement, especially for mothers. </span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Women who are awake
to a consciousness of their human dignity have everything to gain because they
have nothing to lose, by a Social Revolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is possible to conceive a tolerably intelligent man advocating
palliative measures and gradual reform; but a woman who is not a Revolutionist
is a fool.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn5" name="_ednref5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; layout-grid-mode: line; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span></span></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">This recognition of the different
perspectives of men and women is developed a few years later by another woman
writer, Aphra Wilson. New woman, she argued, wants a new man: ‘She will not put
a foot into Bondwoman's Lane ... She shall take to herself a mate; with her
shall lie the choice in childbearing.’ Happily, lovingly, they will travel together
on ‘the </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Open Road</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">… of perfect freedom </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">-</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> the heroic path of a divine </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Liberty</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">.’ But new men are
hard to find, and the enemies of liberty are the Licentious Male, the Priest,
and the Man of Science.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn6" name="_ednref6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; layout-grid-mode: line; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[6]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was clear to her and other 1890s ‘New
Women’ that they would have to seek liberation their own way, on their own
terms. Their emphasis was not just on freedom from marriage and bondage, but on
the positive virtues of choice, and the conditions in which love can flourish. </span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The public debate continued throughout
that decade.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn7" name="_ednref7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[7]</span></span></span></span></a>
It was widely thought that free love was an excuse for promiscuity and the
degradation of women. To its enemies, sexual freedom would lead to political
and social chaos, the destruction of all order – anarchy. Anarchists, on the
other hand, argued that anarchism heralded a New Order in sexual and social
relations, and that chaos, disorder and immorality lay in the capitalist system
and the patriarchal family.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn8" name="_ednref8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[8]</span></span></span></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Anarchists disagreed about
homosexuality. Although in theory the call for free love opened up a space to
discuss same-sex love, in practice, at least in public, this happened only
occasionally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the time of the Oscar
Wilde trials, <u>Freedom</u> ran an editorial condemning the hypocrisy of his
persecutors, and an article by gay anarchist Edward Carpenter, defending
same-sex love. Suggesting a more inclusive definition of free love, he argued
that ‘there can be no truly moral relations between people unless they are
free.’<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn9" name="_ednref9" style="mso-endnote-id: edn9;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[9]</span></span></span></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Emma Goldman, then living in the </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">USA</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, also publicly
attacked the persecution of Wilde.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn10" name="_ednref10" style="mso-endnote-id: edn10;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[10]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was one of several notorious anarchist
women who visited </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Britain</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> in the 1890s,
preaching free love to large audiences. Goldman argued that women should free
themselves from internal as well as external tyrants, in order to express their
true natures as women and as mothers.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn11" name="_ednref11" style="mso-endnote-id: edn11;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[11]</span></span></span></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Another visitor, Voltairine de
Cleyre, drew on her own bitter experience to advise women against living with
their lovers, as they would become mere housekeepers. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Men may not mean to
be tyrants when they marry, but they frequently grow to be such.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is insufficient to dispense with the
priest or the registrar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The spirit of
marriage makes for slavery.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn12" name="_ednref12" style="mso-endnote-id: edn12;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[12]</span></span></span></span></a></span></div>
<h2>
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11.0pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></h2>
<h2>
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11.0pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Utopianism often works by reversals which
challenge what is taken for granted, and show existing society to be dystopian.
This process can be seen in all these speeches and writings: </span></h2>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span dir="LTR"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">patriarchal capitalism is chaotic and disordered; anarchism
is the rational new order</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span dir="LTR"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">marriage constrains nature; free love is natural love</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span dir="LTR"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">marriage is immoral; free love moral </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span dir="LTR"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">unfree sex and motherhood is disgusting; love in freedom is
beautiful</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">By the end of the century women
were using their own experiences as a central part of their arguments, moving
the free love debates on by discussing psychological power relations, and
asserting the need for a free and natural sexuality which might not be confined
to one relationship. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Here it may be useful to bring in queer theory, and the
claim, derived from the concept of speech acts, that identity is created
through performance. The paradigm case of a speech act is to say ‘I do’ in the
marriage ceremony - saying the words <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i>
the act of assenting to marriage. Perhaps saying ‘I don’t’ to marriage, can
similarly be a speech act, the creation of a dissident, utopian self. In the late
nineteenth century, for women to write or speak in public about their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">own</i> sexual lives, desires and feelings,
was still scandalous, as it was to speak publicly as anarchists. In speaking
out, these women were in effect performing desire, enacting anarchist feminism,
doing utopia. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The impact of these ideas on a
younger generation can be seen in the life of Rose Witcop. Best known as a
birth control activist, Witcop grew up at the turn of the century in </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">London</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">’s </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">East End</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Jewish immigrant
community, with its flourishing anarchist movement. When in 1907, aged sixteen,
she began a relationship with twenty year old Guy Aldred, she gave him
pamphlets on free love and birth control, and spoke at length to him about her
role model, free love propagandist Victoria Woodhull.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn13" name="_ednref13" style="mso-endnote-id: edn13;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[13]</span></span></span></span></a>
Biography and autobiography, then and later, could be as influential as theory
for those seeking new ways to live their politics.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Both Witcop and Aldred were firm believers in sexual
equality and staunch propagandists for free love. For many (though not all)
anarchist women at this time, it was an integral part of a transformed society,
though it was not a popular cause in the wider pre-war feminist movement. In
1912, in the anarchist feminist journal <u>The Freewoman</u>, Witcop wrote a
sarcastic retort to a correspondent self-identified as a happily married woman:</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There is a distinction between the
terms lust, licence, prostitution and free love... freewomen are not led by
men, nor wish to lead men...we who advocate free relationships between the sexes
have no designs whatever on your particular husband...we desire merely to see
him a free man and you a free woman.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">She advises the wife to broaden her horizons beyond married
domesticity.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn14" name="_ednref14" style="mso-endnote-id: edn14;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[14]</span></span></span></span></a>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The social changes brought about by the First World War gave
a very different context to the debates, as we can see in the life of Ethel
Mannin. Anarchist, pacifist and popular novelist, she was a prominent figure in
the bohemian milieu of 1920s </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">London</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">. By her own account,
her ideas were influenced by Freud, H.G.Wells, and D.H. Lawrence, among others,
and her belief in free love developed in the context of widespread postwar
hedonism, the developing sex reform movement, the belief in female independence
and equality which was the legacy of the women’s suffrage movement, and not
least the availability of effective birth control (for the lucky few who knew
how where to get it.) However, Mannin distinguishes between defying social
convention for personal reasons, and doing so on principle as a deliberate and
politicised transgression, part of an attempt to change society. For her, free
love is not just what you do, but why and how you do it. Consciously setting
herself up as a role model, she is part of that utopian tradition which seeks
to exemplify or rehearse the possibilities of a better world not just in
fiction but in the practices of life.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In the1920s, she was part of a social and intellectual
milieu that set itself against what it characterised as bourgeois
puritanism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the early forties, in <u>Commonsense
and Morality</u>, she drew on psychoanalysis to oppose reason and commonsense
to superstition and irrationality.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn15" name="_ednref15" style="mso-endnote-id: edn15;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[15]</span></span></span></span></a> In the
late 1960s, in <u>Practitioners of Love</u>, she contrasts the ‘erotic seizure’
of lust with the ‘intense affirmation’ of true love, and commends the ‘Permissive
Society’.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn16" name="_ednref16" style="mso-endnote-id: edn16;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[16]</span></span></span></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">‘All you need is love’, sang the Beatles in 1967. ‘Take your
desires for reality’, went the situationist slogan in 1968. But what love,
whose desires, which reality? What connections were being made in the late
1960s and early 1970s between sex, love, and social change? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">1967 was dubbed ‘the summer of love’, and in chilly </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">England</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> we read about
‘love-ins’ in </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">California</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> parks. The fantasy
was about beautiful young people making love in the sunshine with flowers in
their hair. Sexual hedonism<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- but with a
political angle. ‘Make love not war’, for example. What did this mean, exactly?
If war is a keystone of an unjust world, sex is a keystone of a transformed
world: sex as pleasure; sex as rebellion; sex as solidarity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">To understand what sexual liberation meant in 1968 and
after, we need to understand what it was seen as liberation from, especially
for the immediate post-war generation to whom adulthood still meant marriage,
domesticity, social conformity. Sex, for young people, but especially for
women, was associated with anxiety; for heterosexual women the fear of unwanted
pregnancy. Lesbianism was invisible and sex between men was illegal. The
sixties saw a rapid liberalisation of social attitudes as well as legal
reforms, particularly the partial decriminalisation of male homosexual activity
and of abortion, which seemed to affirm the importance of bodily autonomy and
personal liberty. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Sex reform was associated with social change in the sense of
inevitable liberal progress. Sexual freedom was about throwing off repression,
in the name of post-war modernity, scientific enlightenment, consumerism,
pleasure, abundance. For the young in particular, sexual freedom was part of a
culture of rebellion, a rejection of ‘bourgeois values’ Amongst sexual
radicals, sexual repression was seen as a way in which power is maintained,
sexual liberation as a means to freedom. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In 1968 and after the Situationists linked love, sex and
revolution:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; layout-grid-mode: line; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The more l make love the more I feel like making
revolution; the more l make revolution the more l feel like making love.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn17" name="_ednref17" style="mso-endnote-id: edn17;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; layout-grid-mode: line; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[17]</span></span></span></span></a>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: 10.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">For them,
sex is a motivating force, sexual love is subversive, anti-authoritarian.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[ii]</span></span></span></span></a> They</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> attacked ‘a rampant
sexual nihilism’, where ‘all pleasure is absent - the freedom which modern
capitalism affords everyone is the freedom to meet, fuck, and remain as an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">object…</i>the search for authentic life and
communication which … lies at the root of all sexual experience will only be
satisfied through the transformation<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>of
all social relations.’ <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn18" name="_ednref18" style="mso-endnote-id: edn18;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[18]</span></span></span></span></a> Like Reich
and Marcuse, whose works were often referred to, if not always read,
Situationists contrasted false with revolutionary sexuality, and argued that a<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>twentieth century revolution required
a new kind of person, new kinds of relationships, a new morality. We must find
our true selves - or make new selves: ideas which may be logically
incompatible, but in practice often coincided.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">While the Situationists argued that sexual freedom was just
another aspect of consumer capitalism, gay and women’s liberationists began to
challenge male domination and heterosexism. Both movements produced new
critiques of marriage and the family. Patriarchy was alive and well within the
sexual revolution, and sexual politics was about challenging male power at all
levels. How did free love or sexual liberation fit into this? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">By this time, so-called pre-marital sex was becoming pretty
much taken for granted in mainstream society, and gay relationships were
becoming more visible. Serial monogamy was, as now, seen as a natural way of
organising sexual relationships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Non-monogamy was trickier. Some anarchist women felt that this was not
liberty but male licence, with liberated women being expected to say yes to sex
with anyone. For them, as for other feminists, the ‘free love’ of the sixties
was another imposition of male-defined sexuality. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">But the stories of experimenters like Ethel Mannin and Emma
Goldman suggested that there were other possibilities, that women could be free
and independent and set their own terms. In her best selling memoirs <u>Confessions
and Impressions</u>, Mannin had asserted the supreme value of passion,
especially sexual passion. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">At the back of all our shame
about sex is the puritanical hatred of life, and its fear of happiness..... </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[E]very women of courage and
intelligence has had numerous lovers...it is the attitude to life that
counts…not the number of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">affaires</i>,
but the amount of living.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn19" name="_ednref19" style="mso-endnote-id: edn19;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[19]</span></span></span></a></span>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In the 1930’s she met the love of her life, Reginald
Reynolds. They lived separately in what they called a ‘semi-detached marriage’,
both having other sexual relationships. Her memoirs conclude with a
reaffirmation of belief in sexual and emotional fulfilment, a denunciation of
puritanism and hypocrisy. ‘Our need is for a new social order, a new religion -
a religion not of God, but of Man; not of fear but of freedom, not of Heaven,
but of Earth.’<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn20" name="_ednref20" style="mso-endnote-id: edn20;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[20]</span></span></span></span></a>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Emma Goldman, whose autobiography <u>Living my Life</u> was
reprinted in 1970, valorised love, asserted that it must be free, and that
sexual passion is natural and central to a fulfilled life. She tells a story of
multiple sexual relationships integrated into a life of revolutionary activity.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn21" name="_ednref21" style="mso-endnote-id: edn21;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[21]</span></span></span></a></span> Such
autobiographies made such lives seem both admirable and achievable. (Only later
did we find out what was being left out of these accounts - in particular the
intransigence of jealousy.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In our attempts to discuss the politics of the personal, and
to experiment in our own lives, such narratives were centrally important, and
the burgeoning women’s liberation movement, with its emphasis on consciousness-raising,
meant that the relationship of theory to practice became an exhilarating topic
of discussion.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Free love was all very well – but what was love?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a while, a radical deconstruction of
romantic love became popular. It was not something in ourselves needing to be
liberated, but was constructed by bourgeois capitalist society to perpetuate
the nuclear family. One poster of the period read: ‘It begins when you sink in
his arms, it ends with your arms in the sink’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In <u>The Politics of Sexuality in Capitalism</u>, the Red
Collective, a group of heterosexual revolutionaries, situate love and sexual
desire in a social and political framework. The distinction between private
life and public politics must be challenged, and we must share and analyse our
internalised feelings, so that we can change our lives. Once the old patterns
are deconstructed we will be able to make life less oppressive to women in
particular, and more fulfilling for everyone Jealousy is not a natural and
inevitable obstacle to living differently; it is the product of the power
relations within a specific society. Putting theory into practice, they analyse
their own difficulties with non-monogamous heterosexual relationships.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn22" name="_ednref22" style="mso-endnote-id: edn22;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[22]</span></span></span></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">And now? Post-feminism, post-AIDS, with the renewed
popularity of a modernised biological determinism, such ideas are too easily
seen as naive. On the other hand, if sexual freedom is always defined in
relation to existing conditions, what can it mean in societies where there is
widespread acceptance of the importance of sexuality and its free expression?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">‘Our bodies ourselves’ was the slogan of the women’s health
movement, an argument for the right to abortion, to sex without fear. Now it
seems our bodies are our possessions to modify, trade or dispose of as we wish;
free love has become free trade; sexual liberation become sexual
neo-liberalism. The focus on representation means that pornography can be seen
as seen as pleasure for its consumers, regardless of its conditions of
production. Porn stars and highly paid prostitutes (the others tend to be
invisible in this argument) are seen as exercising their sexual powers in a
free market. Freedom here is individual, not social. Free choice is freedom for
individuals to sell and consume. Globalisation opens up the world for sexual
tourism and sexual trafficking, while the new world economy creates the
conditions where prostitution is for many a preferable option to sweatshops or
starvation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Audre Lorde, the African-American lesbian feminist, said
that what matters:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">is not who I sleep with…nor what
we do together… but what life statements I am led to make as the nature and
effect of my erotic relationships percolate throughout my life and being
...[H]ow does our sexuality enrich us and empower our actions?’<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn23" name="_ednref23" style="mso-endnote-id: edn23;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[23]</span></span></span></span></a> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">If in the sixties free love needed to be about the
importance of sex, and in the seventies about challenging love and the family
as sites of sexual oppression, perhaps now it needs to be about reclaiming love
from sentimentality and sex from simple hedonism, and reasserting a connection
between the individual and the social. We need to be thinking about sex and
solidarity; the relationship between passion and intimacy, commitment and
friendship. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Studies of lesbian and gay friendship networks and ‘families
of choice’ suggest new approaches.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn24" name="_ednref24" style="mso-endnote-id: edn24;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[24]</span></span></span></span></a> Love,
passion, commitment, monogamy<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>– all
these require explicit negotiation and have different meanings once we step
outside socially legitimated structures of relationships. In the words of a
seventies poster, together we can make a new world.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">If sex is
to be more than pleasure, a consolation in hard times, it is because it can
make us question the conditions in which free love might be possible. Sex is
not a solution, but as Linda Grant says:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Perhaps sex is just the ghost of
freedom but until we have utopia, it can speak eloquently what the heart
desires..<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_edn25" name="_ednref25" style="mso-endnote-id: edn25;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[25]</span></span></span></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; layout-grid-mode: both; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Free love
is not simply what people do in (or out of) bed, nor is it just one aspect of
anarchist or libertarian theory. It is to speak publicly about what the heart
desires; to try and work out, in our own lives, how a better world might be
possible. </span></div>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[i]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> For utopianism as
social dreaming, see Lyman Tower<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sargent, 1994, ‘The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited’, in <u>Utopian
Studies</u>, 5:1, pp.1-37; as the education of desire, see Ruth Levitas,
1996,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>The Concept of Utopia</u>,
Phillip Allan, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">London</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: 10.2pt;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[ii]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In love - in all love
there resides an outlaw principle, an irresistible sense of delinquency,
contempt for prohibitions and a taste of havoc’, Anon, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">February 15, 2003</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, <u>Disobedience against War</u>.
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">This quote, from an anarchist paper on sale at an anti-war demonstration
in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">London</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> earlier
this year, comes,</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">
I believe, from early seventies Situationism. I have so far been unable to
identify it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Charlotte
Wilson to Karl Pearson, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">8 August 1885</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, ms. letter, Pearson
Collection, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">London</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Wilson</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> to Pearson, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">8 October 1885</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>ms. letter, Pearson Collection.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Wilson</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, 1887, ‘Sex and
Socialism’, <u>Freedom</u>, 1:7, April 1887.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref4" name="_edn4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Lucy Bland,
1995,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>Banishing the Beast, English
Feminism and Sexual Morality 1885-1914, </u>Penguin, Harmondsworth.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref5" name="_edn5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Wilson</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, 1888, <u>Freedom</u>,
</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">3:25</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">,October 1888. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn6" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref6" name="_edn6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[6]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Aphra Wilson,
1896,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Wanted: A New Adam’, <u>The Free
Review</u>, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Jan. 1, 1896</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn7" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref7" name="_edn7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[7]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> See, e.g.,
Bland,1995, op cit., especially Chapter 4; Bland, 1986, ‘Marriage Laid Bare:
Middle Class Women and Marital Sex’, in Jane Lewis (ed.), 1986, <u>Labour and
Love</u>, Blackwell, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Oxford</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn8" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref8" name="_edn8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[8]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> LSB [Louise
Bevington], 1893, ‘Wanted: Order’, in <u>Commonweal</u>, 1:2 NS, May 1893.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn9" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref9" name="_edn9" style="mso-endnote-id: edn9;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[9]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><u>Freedom</u>, 11:94, June 1895; Edward
Carpenter, 1895,‘Some Recent Criminal Cases’, <u>Freedom</u>, 9:95, July 1895.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn10" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref10" name="_edn10" style="mso-endnote-id: edn10;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[10]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> See Jonathan Katz,
1976, <u>Gay American History,</u> Thomas Y. Crowell, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">New York</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, and Jim Kernochan,
1978, ‘Emma Goldman: Morning Star of Sexual Anarchy’, in <u>The Storm</u>,
No.6, 1978. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn11" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref11" name="_edn11" style="mso-endnote-id: edn11;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[11]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>See Emma Goldman, (1910), 1970, ‘The Tragedy
of Women's Emancipation’, and ‘Marriage and Love’, in Goldman, 1970, <u>Love
Among The Free</u>, Friends of Malatesta, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Buffalo</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">. (Although of a
later date, these essays draw on talks she had been giving over the years, and
correspond with reports of her talks in </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Britain</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn12" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref12" name="_edn12" style="mso-endnote-id: edn12;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[12]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> <u>The Adult</u>,
1:6, Jan. 1898, report of Voltairine de Cleyre's talk on 'The Woman Question'
at the </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Labour</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Church</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> in </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Bradford</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn13" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref13" name="_edn13" style="mso-endnote-id: edn13;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[13]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Guy Aldred, 1958, <u>No
Traitor's Gait!,</u> Strickland Press, Glasgow.<span style="background: yellow; mso-highlight: yellow;"></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn14" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref14" name="_edn14" style="mso-endnote-id: edn14;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[14]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Rose Witcop, 1912,
‘A Retort’, <u>The Freewoman</u>, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">February
22, 1912</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">,
p.273.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn15" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref15" name="_edn15" style="mso-endnote-id: edn15;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[15]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Ethel Mannin, nd.
[1942?], <u>Commonsense and Morality</u>, Jarrolds, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">London</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn16" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref16" name="_edn16" style="mso-endnote-id: edn16;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[16]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Mannin, 1969, <u>Practitioners
of Love: some aspects of the human phenomenon</u>, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Hutchinson</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">London</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn17" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; tab-stops: 10.2pt;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref17" name="_edn17" style="mso-endnote-id: edn17;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[17]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Anon, 1973, ‘<span style="layout-grid-mode: line;">About sexual misery’,
École du Mai, France, </span>trans. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Hester and Marianne Velmans, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; layout-grid-mode: line; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">in</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Steef Davidson,
(ed.), 1982, <u>The Penguin Book of Political Comics</u>, Penguin,
Harmondsworth, p.148.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn18" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref18" name="_edn18" style="mso-endnote-id: edn18;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[18]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Point-Blank!, 1972,
‘Of Sexual Poverty’, in <u>Point-Blank! - contributions towards a situationist
revolution</u>, Point-Blank!, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Berkeley</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, p.68.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn19" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref19" name="_edn19" style="mso-endnote-id: edn19;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[19]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Ethel Mannin, 1930, <u>Confessions
and Impressions</u>, Jarrolds, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">London</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, pp. 90, 85.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn20" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref20" name="_edn20" style="mso-endnote-id: edn20;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[20]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> ibid p. 111.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn21" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref21" name="_edn21" style="mso-endnote-id: edn21;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[21]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Emma Goldman,
(1931), 1970, <u>Living My Life</u>, Vols. 1,2, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Dover</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">New York</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn22" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref22" name="_edn22" style="mso-endnote-id: edn22;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[22]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Red Collective, nd.,
<u>The Politics of Sexuality in Capitalism: Red Collective Pamphlet 1</u>; <u>The
Politics of Sexuality in Capitalism, Part Two</u>, Red Collective, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">London</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn23" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref23" name="_edn23" style="mso-endnote-id: edn23;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[23]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Audre Lorde,
1988,‘Sadomasochism: Not About Condemnation’, in <u>A Burst of Light: essays by
</u></span><u><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Audre Lorde</span></u><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Sheba</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">London</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">, p.18.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn24" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref24" name="_edn24" style="mso-endnote-id: edn24;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[24]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> See Jeffrey Weeks,
Brian Heaphy, and Catherine Donovan, 2001, <u>Same Sex Intimacies: Families Of
Choice And Other Experiments</u>, Routledge, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">London</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn25" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8581915211967741397#_ednref25" name="_edn25" style="mso-endnote-id: edn25;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[25]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Linda Grant, 1993, <u>Sexing
the Millennium</u>, Harper Collins, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">London</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">. p.259</span></div>
</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-10614393013766257802014-02-05T12:00:00.000-08:002014-02-05T12:00:03.755-08:00Anarchism and Feminism: a historical survey<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />Sharif Gemie <br /> <br />University of Glamorgan , Pontypridd, United Kingdom<br />Published online: 19 Dec 2006.<br /> <br />ABSTRACT This article discusses a double paradox: first, that the anarchists,<br />so proud of their genuine commitment to anti-authoritarian politics, were yet<br />so blind to the oppressive effects of patriarchy. However, secondly, within this<br />generally male-orientated culture, there were still ambivalences in anarchist<br />politics, with some pockets of real sympathy for feminism. Material is drawn<br />from the experience of anarchists within Europe, 1840-1940.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09612029600200123" target="_blank">PDF</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-27004266698059133182014-01-29T12:00:00.000-08:002014-01-29T12:00:03.693-08:00Sex, Politics and Housework (1993)<br />
<a name='more'></a>http://www.judygreenway.org.uk/housework/housework.html<br /><br />
<br />
<b>by Judy Greenway</b><br />
<img align="right" alt="Book cover: Diggers and Dreamers 94/95: The Guide to Communal Living" class="leftbox" src="http://www.judygreenway.org.uk/housework/images/diggersbook.jpg" title="Book cover: Diggers and Dreamers 94/95: The Guide to Communal Living" width="160" />
<div class="intro400">
This article draws on research into the role of
women in the English anarchist movement, part of an attempt to make
sense of my own experiences as an anarchist and feminist in the 1960s
and 70s. It began as part of a group project in the Anarchist Feminist
History Group in the early 1980s. <br />
<br />
It is dedicated to my research companions, Ame Harper and Sharon
Roughan, and to Sheila Rowbotham, who inspired and encouraged us all.<br />
<br />
First published in <a href="http://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk/">Diggers and Dreamers 94/95: the guide to communal living</a>,
1993, edited by Chris Coates, Jonathan Howe, Lee Jones, William Morris,
and Andy Wood: Communes Network, Winslow, Buckinghamshire, pp.39-45.<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.judygreenway.org.uk/housework/housework.html#licence">This article</a> is available under a Creative Commons licence to download as a Word document (see box below left).</div>
<div class="intro400">
A longer, footnoted version of this article, called
Free Comrades? Theory, Practice, and the Role of Women in English
Anarchist Communities 1889-1930, was presented at the 1988 Conference of
the <a href="http://www.ic.org/icsa/about.html">International Communal Studies Association</a>
in New Lanark, Scotland, and has since been used as teaching material
in universities in London and Amsterdam. It will be made available as a
download at a future date. For more information, please contact me: judy
[at] judygreenway.org.uk.</div>
<div class="intro400">
<br /></div>
<br />
<h2>
Introduction</h2>
<br />
By the end of the Nineteenth Century, most English anarchists were
committed to the idea of equality but the trouble was that men's and
women's ideas of what this meant often differed, and even where there
was agreement in principle, the practice was something else. The
numerous anarchist experiments in communitarian living which flourished
from the 1890s onwards brought out some of the difficulties and
contradictions in attempting to change what it meant to be a man or a
woman. Sexual relationships and housework were particular sources of
tension.<br />
<h2>
Experiments in living</h2>
Women often took a leading role in setting up anarchist communities.
What did they hope to gain? In 1912, Lily Gair Wilkinson wrote: <br />
<div class="quote">
‘I believe that if we begin with immediate personal things, greater and
greater opportunities are likely to occur ... I wish to express
anarchism in my life.’</div>
She saw daily life as one form of political propaganda, and may well
have been thinking of her young anarchist friends living communally in
Marsh House in London. <br />
Two decades earlier, another communal London household, Fellowship
House, promised its inhabitants all the advantages and obligations of a
family without any of its drawbacks, according to member Edith Lees. She
argued that women should reject servitude in the home as she and her
comrades did. <br />
Men also deliberated over the role of women in such communities. In 1894
Henry Binns advertised for other people to help start a fruit-growing
co-operative, but he was worried because it ‘… bids fair to become a
Bachelor's Club’, or else a group of married couples and single men. He
wanted: <br />
<div class="quote">
‘An open, honourable, honest fellowship such as we dream of and talk of
... but for the most part fail to make for ourselves ... But, frankly,
can we trust ourselves to live above suspicions ... and jealousies? And,
frankly, are our women comrades fitted and ready for useful work? ...
We want women to help us; we cannot succeed without them; women who want
to work for their own living ... who are as eager to be truer women as
we are to be truer men.’ </div>
<img align="right" alt="men and women posing in garden with gardening tools" class="rightbox300" src="http://www.judygreenway.org.uk/housework/images/rakers.jpg" width="300px" />
In 1897, journalist Henry Nevinson recorded in his diary a visit to
Clousden Hill anarchist colony near Newcastle. After naming and
describing some of the men, he wrote: <br />
<div class="quote">
‘Kapper showed me round ... The leeks, cabbages, rhubarb, celery,
strawberries, roses, pansies were good ... Mushrooms were supposed to be
growing in the glasshouse ... About 100 chickens, 20 ducks, 3 cows, 6
goats. Some rabbits, 2 horses, and a dog were the livestock: also one
woman and three children.’ </div>
This anonymity and relegation of women is a recurrent feature of many
records. To what extent it reflects the status of women rather than the
attitudes of the (male) recorder is difficult to tell. In any case,
women were frequently in a minority in the early days. Single women
joining mixed communities ran the risk of social and familial
disapproval and rejection. Edith Lees believed one reason why so few
women were involved in the Fellowship of the New Life was that women
thought that ideals of sex and class equality, moral regeneration and
the simple life were all very well, but impractical. <br />
<h2>
Housework</h2>
Once they had joined a community, women often found housework was a
major problem, Peter Kropotkin, whose writings influenced many early
living experiments, advised the founders of Clousden Hill to: <br />
<div class="quote">
‘do all possible for reducing household work to the lowest minimum ...
Arrangements to reduce as much as possible the incredible amount of work
which women uselessly spend in the rearing up of children, as well as
in the household work, are ... as essential to the success of the
community as the proper arrangement of the fields, the greenhouses, and
the agricultural machinery. Even more’. </div>
The anarchist feminist journal ‘The Freewoman’ carried regular debate on
the housework question in 1911/12. One contributor wrote: <br />
<div class="quote">
‘As a convinced feminist and aspiring freewoman, I feel that this
question of housework … is absolutely fundamental … Women have no time
to get free. They will only have the time when domestic work has been
properly organised.’</div>
Solutions offered ranged from machine age fantasies to schemes for
collective and cooperative living. The professionalisation of domestic
work was another alternative, though women who already earned their
living as servants weren't convinced that life would be much better
working for a collective household than for individual employers. The
simple life held the promise of less housework anyway — but what did
this mean in practice? <br />
The Clousden Hill Prospectus says that all housework is:
‘... to be done on the most improved system, to relieve the women from
the long and tiresome work which unduly falls to their share today...’<br />
What this meant in real life is not recorded, though in 1897 a visitor
noted that men did the washing, women the cooking and mending. Whiteway
began on communistic lines, and the women did the domestic work
including washing, mending and cooking for all the men. Eventually the
colony moved away from communalism - amongst other reasons, the women
rebelled against doing all the washing when some of the men wouldn't
even collect firewood to heat the water. The women preferred to do
housework for just one man rather than for all of them. <br />
<img align="right" alt="three men peeling potatoes in garden, around 1917" class="rightbox300" src="http://www.judygreenway.org.uk/housework/images/peelers2.jpg" title="three men peeling potatoes in garden, around 1917" width="300px" />
Other early communities varied in whether men were expected to do
housework. Henry Binns wrote that in his proposed colony, women would
do: <br />
‘Not 'housework' only... but joining us in our work as far as they will and can, and we so far, joining in theirs’<br />
In Marsh House, before and during World War One, both sexes shared the
housework, but when Tom Keell, the editor of the anarchist paper
Freedom, moved in, he was exempted because his own work was more
important — a recurring theme in male/female relationships. Even when
the women didn't feel that housework was more natural to them, they
often ended up doing it on the grounds of efficiency, because men did it
so much more incompetently. Men in men-only collectives would do their
own, though some middle class men felt humiliated to be seen doing
‘women's and servants' work’ such as scrubbing steps. In Edward
Carpenter's homosexual household at Millthorpe, though women visitors
spoke admiringly of his domestic skills, they noted that his working
class lover took on the major responsibility for running the house. In
mixed communities, working class women were more likely than the other
women to end up doing most of the work.<br />
Often, women did both ‘women’s’ and ‘men’s’ work, as at Whiteway where
they were involved in agriculture and building. On their own,
cooperatively, or as part of a family business, some would earn money by
traditional female occupations such as dressmaking, weaving or
craftwork. This was sometimes the major or only source of family income
while the men got on with what was seen as the more important political
work. <br />
Two patterns repeat themselves: one is of women's own political and
economic contribution being undervalued — both by themselves and
historians. (We hear about the men who produced the newspapers — what
about the women who provided the food so they could do it?) The other is
of women who were doing the domestic chores, raising children, earning
money, and also participating in collective work. It is not surprising
that few women had the time to engage in public political activity after
having children. <br />
<h2>
Children</h2>
Anarchists had diverse attitudes towards motherhood and childcare. Most
men and many women felt that woman's freedom meant the freedom to fulfil
herself as a mother, with a natural responsibility for childbearing and
often for education as well. They generally believed that women had the
right to bear children outside marriage, and a few women went further,
arguing for women's right to choose to have children outside an ongoing
heterosexual relationship: <br />
<div class="quote">
‘As a freewoman, I refuse to bear children either to
the state or to a man; I will bear them for myself and for my purpose
... My children shall be mine for my pleasure, until such time as they
shall be their own for their own pleasure ...’ </div>
On the other hand, one woman wrote: <br />
<div class="quote">
‘Men must do childrearing if they are to become complete human beings
instead of mere males, if children are to have the benefit of fathering
as well as mothering, and if there is to be real equality between the
sexes.’ </div>
This was a rare viewpoint, though, and there is little evidence of men
taking a substantial role caring for young children or of women
suggesting they should do so. ‘Free motherhood’ often proved socially
and materially very difficult for those who tried it, though sometimes
childcare was shared with other women. Older children were seen as more
of a community responsibility, and men sometimes became involved in
education, though less often than women. <br />
Anarchist women were often involved in birth control campaigns, and some
practised birth control or abortion themselves. Certainly, a number of
women who were sexually involved with men and wished to remain
politically active chose to have no children, or only one. <br />
<h2>
Sex</h2>
An anarchist manifesto of 1895, in the one line it gave to relations
between the sexes, called for independence and co-operation in sexual as
in industrial and economic relations. Many early communities were
modelled on single sex settlements or religious orders. As the language
of universal brotherhood or fellowship implies, women did not fit easily
into this model, and were often seen as a potential source of
disruption. In some communities, women joined as sexual partners, not as
autonomous individuals. Single women faced particular problems and
pressures both inside and outside the community. <br />
The popular view of the anarchist belief in ‘free love’ was that it
meant constant orgies, and many visiting sightseers must have been
disappointed. Although some anarchist men and a few women believed in
having numbers of partners on the basis of sexual desire alone, for most
free love meant something different: a (heterosexual) freely chosen
monogamous commitment based on romantic love. If love died, in theory
the partnership would end blamelessly. Unfortunately, love did not
always die for both partners at the same time. Women had more to lose
than men in defying sexual convention in a society in which they were
economically and socially unequal as well as being expected to be
responsible for children. They sometimes found that what they meant and
what men meant when they spoke of love or passion were quite different.
Those who didn't believe in monogamy found sexual jealousy doesn't go
away that easily, and in practice the same old double standard of
morality, one rule for men and another for women, often operated. <br />
George Barrett, editor of ‘The Anarchist’, wrote in 1913 that the fight
for the vote was progressive, but the real war for women was in the
home, with men. This was a conclusion many women had already reached. As
one writer to ‘The Freewoman’ acidly pointed out, while men were
theorising, women were actually trying to live out their theories. They
did so with varying degrees of success. Edith Lees said in later life of
her experiences at Fellowship House: ‘Fellowship is Hell; lack of
Fellowship is heaven.’ <br />
In urban communities, marriage or its equivalent often meant leaving. In
rural communities, nuclear families tended to develop, leading an
increasingly private existence within the colony. Some women,
disillusioned with the gap between theory and practice, moved away from
anarchist ideas altogether. But for others, however imperfect the
reality compared with the ideals, the struggle for a new life was
preferable to the conventional life they had left behind. They might
leave one colony to found or join another, or to develop similar ideas
in a more individual context. Their daughters and sons would, at least,
struggle for change from a better vantage point. <br />
For more information on some of the communities discussed, <br />see:
<a href="http://www.utopia-britannica.org.uk/">Utopia Britannica</a><br />
<div class="intro400">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-72601038692444544372014-01-22T12:00:00.000-08:002014-01-22T12:00:02.299-08:00No Place For Women? Anti-utopianism and the utopian politics of the 1890s (2002)<br />
<a name='more'></a>http://www.judygreenway.org.uk/noplace/noplace.html <b><br /></b><br />
<b>by Judy Greenway</b><br />
<br />
<div class="intro400">
This is an earlier, longer version of the article published in <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/geob/2002/00000084/F0020003/art00006">Geografisker Annaler 84 B, 2002, 3-4:31-39</a> </div>
<div class="intro400">
Minor errors in the published version have been corrected here, and some additional material appears in the <a href="http://www.judygreenway.org.uk/noplace/noplace.html#appendix">appendices</a>. <br />
<br />
A downloadable version including footnotes is available <a href="http://www.judygreenway.org.uk/docs/noplace.doc">here.</a> </div>
<br />
<h2>
Introduction</h2>
'Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible', and 'Take Your Desires for
Reality' went the 1968 Situationist slogans. This article examines some
of the ways in which the polarisation between the realistic and the
impossible gets set up: the move from utopia as a place that does not
exist, to one which cannot exist. It also raises the questions: Whose
desires? Whose reality? Examples of women's writings about utopian
politics in late nineteenth century England show constructions of the
relationship between utopian and non-utopian space which render utopia
as always elsewhere. Meanwhile utopian space is often represented as
masculine or asexual, suggesting that it is no place for women. <br /><br />
Utopias, whether fictional or real life instances, are amongst other
things experiments — with imagination as a method, hope as a motivation,
and social change as a goal. As Vincent Geogehan argues: 'An
impractical, unrealistic utopianism cannot be counterposed to a
practical non utopian realism, for utopianism can issue forth in both
practical and impractical forms.' <br /><br />
How, then, has the common sense belief that utopia is self-evidently
impossible been produced? Although many theorists of utopia point out
the ambiguity of the word itself ('utopia' in its derivation meaning
both good place and no place), this kind of terminological point does
not explain why the ambiguity exists. The appeal to realism and
reality similarly begs the question — after all, much of what seemed
impossible in the past has become the taken-for-granted reality of the
present. <br /><br />
I argue that the everyday notion of utopia as inherently impossible is
produced and reproduced through the repetition of narratives and imagery
which construct a time that is not now, but once upon a time; a place
which is not here, but somewhere over the rainbow. <br /><br />
For example, in utopian fiction, the story usually starts off in a
non-utopian here and now assumed to be shared by the readers. We then
accompany a narrator, both explorer and anthropologist, to a utopian
world characterised by its otherness, its spatial and temporal distance
from our own. The detailed descriptions and explanations make the
utopian world appear realistic but at the same time emphasise its
difference (and distance). The story usually ends with the traveller's
return home, perhaps bringing back some utopian ideas for change, but in
any case leaving utopia behind. Whatever the author's intentions, the
narrative structure has a distancing effect on the reader, and to that
extent feeds into existing anti-utopian ideas.
<br /><br />
A similar kind of effect can be seen in autobiographies, where former
engagement with utopian ideas and practices is distanced by telling the
story in such a way that past hopes become almost inexplicable — at best
the product of ignorance and naivety. Characteristically, a now older
and wiser narrator recounts the past as the space of youth, dream and
fantasy, a place and time somehow outside the real world of political
maturity and adult gender relations.
<br /><br />
Anti-utopianism is ideological: in Geogehan's words, 'a conflict between
dreams masquerading as an attack on dreaming'. Anti-utopianism uses
fatalism as a method, pessimism as (de)motivation, with disengagement,
passivity or resistance to change as the goal. Instruction in
anti-utopianism is not just by means of repeated reminders of seemingly
intractable dystopias such as war, terror, oppression, and environmental
degradation, but by the endless reiteration of narratives of the
inevitable failure of utopias.
<br /><br />
This can be seen in histories of utopian experiments, which are often
told in such a way that lack of success seems predetermined. Ending is
conflated with failure, and explanations of failure become not a
challenge to think how to do things better, but a demonstration that
utopias will inevitably fail. Often there is a double standard, so that
the failure of a non-utopian project is seen as particular; that of a
utopian project, typical.
<br /><br />
In these ways the narrative conventions of utopian fiction,
autobiography and history serve to locate actual as well as fictional
utopian experiments in a world not just imaginary but always elsewhere,
unreal and unrealistic, implicitly or explicitly impossible. In this
context even sympathetic representations lend themselves to negative
interpretation.
<br /><br />
Such processes can be seen in contemporary accounts of utopian politics
in 1890s England. The term 'utopian' was used at the time as a
pejorative description of attempts to change society by transforming
personal relationships, especially those between men and women. Critics
from the right used the word in its everyday sense of hopelessly
unrealistic; those from the left drew also on Engels' contrast between
'utopian' and 'scientific' (i.e. Marxist) socialism. People described
as utopians might accept the term and seek to redefine it positively:
more often they would argue that they were not utopians, but that their
beliefs were scientifically based and/or practically attainable. I use
'utopian politics' and related terms here to refer to ideas, movements
and practices which sought to try out new kinds of social relations.
Such experiments were part of what Ruth Levitas calls 'the education of
desire ... for a better way of being and living'. In this sense,
utopian politics is about creating spaces that can be rehearsal rooms
for change. Such spaces may be textual, spaces for the imagination; or
physical, a making of literal spaces where social relations can be
reconfigured.
<br /><br />
As the twentieth century approached, the growing anarchist and socialist
movements shared a widespread optimism about the future, reflected in
the abundance of rhetoric about the coming New Age or New World, to be
inhabited by New Women — and even perhaps New Men (though the latter
term was less common). While the burgeoning of 'New Woman' fiction
generated new literary spaces, this period also saw the flourishing of
numerous attempts to create both rural and urban utopian communities,
places where new ideas could be tried out in practice. Amid fierce
debates about the transformation of society, about the boundaries
between public and private, personal and political, male and female
worlds, some groups of men and women determined to live out their
politics.
<br /><br />
The four books which I will discuss here were all written by women who
were directly involved in this milieu. I have chosen them not because
they or their authors are particularly well known or influential, but as
signs of the times, historical clues to the varied ways in which a
particular kind of politics was lived through and represented. Thus
although the main focus of my analysis is on the processes of
representation within the texts themselves, I also discuss aspects of
the lived experiences of the authors.
<br /><br />
I look first at three novels which fictionalise the authors' experiences
in order to comment on the possibilities of personal and social change.
<em>A Girl Among the Anarchists</em>, by Isabel Meredith (pseudonym
of sisters Helen and Olivia Rossetti), deals with the making of spaces
for the practice of politics, the relationship between domestic and
political space, and the ways in the latter denies or excludes issues of
gender and sexuality. <em>Attainment</em>, by Edith Lees (writing under
her married name of Mrs. Havelock Ellis), is about an unsuccessful
attempt to merge the domestic and the political by setting up a
co-operative household of men and women. In both these novels, the
heroines are unable to develop themselves freely, and abandon the
experiments. <em>The Image Breakers</em>, by Gertrude Dix, critiques
conventional domesticity as well as various forms of utopianism, while
dealing more centrally and explicitly with gender and sexual politics.
Textually, at least, a new space is created for female desire. But as
in the other novels, neither 'real' (that is, socially conventional)
life nor utopia can provide this. The fourth book discussed is <em>Whiteway</em>,
by Nellie Shaw, a non-fiction account by a member of a successful
utopian community in which gender politics has played a central part. <br />
<br /><br />
<h2>
A girl among the anarchists</h2>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/judygr/4530799843/"><img alt="The Torch" class="rightbox200" src="http://www.judygreenway.org.uk/noplace/torch.jpg" title="front page of the Torch" width="200" /></a>
<em>A Girl Among the Anarchists</em>, published in 1903, is based on
the Rossetti sisters' involvement in the anarchist movement, in
particular their experiences from 1891-6 as editors and publishers of a
journal called the <em>Torch</em>. Although they were not directly involved in setting up a utopian community as such, the <em>Torch</em>
and its offices provided textual and physical space for the development
of a political community, out of which such experiments could develop. <br />
<br />
When they began the paper, assisted by their fourteen-year-old brother
Arthur, Helen was twelve, and Olivia sixteen. They were part of an
actively political and artistic household, and their bohemian parents
reluctantly tolerated their anarchist activities as something they would
grow out of. Others took them more seriously — contributors included
writers George Bernard Shaw and Ford Madox Ford, anarchist feminist Emma
Goldman, and the artist Lucien Pissarro. Initially, the ‘Torch’ was
hand-produced in the study of the Rossetti home near Regent's Park in
London. The paper was sold at outdoor political meetings, at railway
stations, and in the street; as its circulation grew, necessitating the
purchase of a printing press, Mrs. Rossetti insisted that production be
moved to the basement, which became an anarchist meeting place as well
as an office. As historian Barry Johnson comments, 'Consigned to a
region of the house normally frequented only by servants, the young
comrades were able to disport themselves in a way which would have been
impossible upstairs.'
<br /><br />
After their mother died, their father insisted that the whole enterprise
be cleared out of the house, and it was moved to rented premises; there
ceased to be any significant overlap between the spaces of political
and domestic life. Although they continued their involvement for another
two years, they no longer wrote for it, and by the time the paper
eventually collapsed in 1897, both sisters had already moved on to other
things. <br /><br />
In their early twenties when they wrote <em>A Girl Among The Anarchists</em>,
they represent their activities of less than a decade before as
immature idealism. The book parallels the structure of many utopian
novels, written in autobiographical style with a first-person narrator,
the plot taking second place to detailed expositions of the physical
characteristics and belief systems of an unfamiliar world. The reader is
thus positioned as someone from the 'real' or non-utopian world.<br /><br />
As the novel opens, the narrator, eighteen-year-old Isabel, is
conveniently orphaned. She begins to attend political meetings and is
swept up in the pleasurable excitement of challenging convention.
Becoming morally and intellectually committed to social change, she
decides to abandon class prejudice and 'throw myself into the life and
the work of the masses'. Her way of doing this is to learn typesetting
and printing so that she can join a group of anarchists in starting a
journal, the <em>Tocsin</em>. <br />
<br />
The space of anarchist practice is exoticised, described in language more reminiscent of travel writing or ethnography:<br />
<div class="quote">
To the ordinary citizen whose walk in life lies along
the beaten track there is a suggestion of Bohemianism about the office
of any literary or propagandist organ; but I doubt whether the most
imaginative among them in their wildest moments have ever conceived any
region so far removed from the conventions of civilised society, so
arbitrary in its hours and customs, so cosmopolitan and so utterly
irrational as the office of the ‘Tocsin’. </div>
Its inhabitants include, as well as 'genuine Anarchists', a 'strange
medley of ... tramps, désoeuvrés cranks, argumentative people with time
on their hands, and ... downright lunatics. Foreigners of all tongues
... ' The office, as well as being a place for printing and publishing
the paper, 'rapidly became a factory, a debating club, a school, a
hospital, a madhouse, a soup kitchen and a sort of Rowton House, all in
one'. <br /><br />
This unboundaried world, this anarchic space of anarchism, is
constructed within the novel as simultaneously masculine and asexual.
There are few other women characters, and Isabel carefully disassociates
herself from them. One man tells her, 'You are not a woman: you are a
Comrade', and this de-gendered persona allows her, for example, to sleep
on the office floor beside the men after working late, without this
having any sexual connotations. The most politically dedicated of the
men reject any kind of domesticity, seeing sexual or emotional
relationships as a distraction from the Cause. When Isabel declares her
love to one of them, he responds by telling her that 'An Anarchist's
life is not his own. Friendship, comradeship may be helpful, but family
ties are fatal ... I thought of you as a comrade and loved you as such'.
This rigidity of approach is presented as masculine adherence to
abstract principle, and eventually Isabel can no longer accept it.<br /><br />
In her introduction to the 1992 reprint, Jennifer Shaddock says that at
the end, Isabel 'is engulfed by the ubiquitous bourgeois metaphor of
Home'. But the conclusion is more ambiguous than that. In the final
chapter, echoing the complaints against domesticity made by other
rebellious middle-class women of the period, Isabel says, <br />
<div class="quote">
I had allowed myself to be strangely preoccupied and
flustered by trifles. What were these important duties which had so
absorbed me as to leave me no time for thought, for study, no time to
live my own life? </div>
But for her it is not domestic duties, but political commitment that
distracts her from the real business of living her own life. Her
comrades have been shown to be either noble but deluded men who suppress
all human instinct or all too human grotesques. Already suffering from a
sense of political futility and depressed by tensions within the group,
Isabel goes to the <em>Tocsin</em> office, only to find it occupied by
the police. The forces of order have thrown it into a state of 'wild
disorder', and the landlord gives them notice to quit. Disillusioned
with the possibilities for social change or personal happiness, she
decides to leave the anarchist world she has helped create. Its physical
and mental spaces have become uninhabitable. But Isabel does not go
home. She says goodbye to her comrades and walks out into the London
streets. If anarchist space is impossible space, so too is 'home'. <br />
<br />
<br />
<h2>
Attainment</h2>
<img alt="Edith Lees" class="leftbox" src="http://www.judygreenway.org.uk/noplace/lees.jpg" title="Edith Lees" width="200" />
The attempt to politically reconfigure 'home' is a central issue in <em>Attainment,</em>
by Edith Lees, which is closely based on her involvement at the
beginning of the 1890s in the utopian socialist Fellowship of the New
Life. Calling in its constitution for personal as well as social
transformation, the Fellowship's main aim was 'the cultivation of a
perfect character'; its methods included simplicity of living and 'the
introduction as far as possible of manual labour in conjunction with
intellectual pursuits'. The constitution was written in the early
1880s; by the end of that decade gender was playing a more important
part in ideas about what personal and social transformation might
involve.<br /><br />
Although characterised by their critics as idealists who set themselves
the hopeless task of achieving personal perfection before social change
could come about, Fellowship members and others involved in setting up
experiments in community living saw themselves as the practical ones,
involved in working out at a personal level what a new life could be
like. For women in particular, such enterprises involved a rethinking of
the relationship between domestic and political space, and the ways in
which such spaces were gendered. <br /><br />
These issues were addressed directly in Edith Lees' life and writing.
Lees became secretary of the Fellowship in 1890, and the following year
she joined a few of its members in setting up Fellowship House, a
co-operative boarding house in London's Bloomsbury, then a relatively
cheap bohemian area. Its heterogeneous inhabitants included: Ellen
Taylor, who was Lees' companion/servant; Agnes Henry, who irritated
everyone by discussing anarchism over breakfast (I will say more about
her later); Sydney Olivier, then working at the colonial office; and
future Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. It was an experiment in
collective living that ran into familiar problems over money, housework,
and personal incompatibilities. Years later, in a parody of William
Morris's slogan, 'Fellowship is Life', Edith Lees would comment that
'Fellowship is Hell'. After eighteen months, she left to embark on an
unconventional marriage with Havelock Ellis, a founder member of the
Fellowship of the New Life who had never been tempted by community
living. Although she had rejected that particular experiment, Edith Lees
was one of a small number of women at the time advocating
'semi-detached marriage', where the wife was economically independent
and had separate living space if not a separate household. Lees had
passionate sexual relationships with women before and after her
marriage, and although she and Ellis believed in sexual freedom, living
up to their principles was to prove difficult for both partners,
emotionally and financially. <br /><br />
<em>Attainment</em>, published in 1909, centres on a humorous critique
of Fellowship House. Twenty-two-year-old Rachel, the first-person
narrator based on the author, leaves her Cornish village and travels to
London with her maid Ann (based on Ellen Taylor) to learn about life and
politics. After attending Christian socialist sermons and involving
herself with social work, Rachel studies Marx at the British Museum,
before rejecting dry political theory in favour of the idealistic
approach of a group calling itself The Brotherhood of the Perfect Life.
They decide to live, men and women together in comradely fashion, 'an
ideal life under one roof with all the obligations of a family without
any of its drawbacks'.<br />
<br />
Class and gender tensions emerge in the running of the household.
Although they all praise the simple life and the delights of manual
labour and, apart from Ann, disagree with having servants, the
housekeeping and bookkeeping eventually fall to Rachel, while Ann's
practical experience and common-sense approach mean that she ends up
doing much of the housework. Meanwhile, the men discuss the 'boundless
... courage' they need to clean a doorstep. One says, 'I literally blush
all down my back and look up and down the street as if I meditated
burying my grandfather under the step.' The problem is not just that
the men are transgressing gender and class boundaries with this kind of
work, they are doing so in public. Inside the house, the aesthetic
heterogeneity of its arrangements and furnishings symbolises the
political heterogeneity of its inhabitants. As Ann says, ‘It’s more like
a theatre than a house!’ The use of humour positions Rachel, and
through her the reader, as able to predict that the venture is doomed to
fail. <br /><br />
After her mother dies, Rachel leaves the collective household, rejecting
the merger of domestic and political space, and returns home to
Cornwall before deciding to marry. 'I dare now,' she says, 'to live out
what is real within me.' A rule-bound way of life based on narrow
idealism is implicitly suggested to be unnatural. Rachel comments that
Brotherhood House <br />
<div class="quote">
was frankly mere experiment, and was so involved in
spiritual speculations and the grammar of living ... that it rarely got
to the marrow of me. </div>
For Edith Lees, as <em>Attainment</em> and her subsequent writings
make clear, 'the real' meant the expression of 'natural womanliness',
however contradictory this enterprise may have been in her own life.
Although the novel suggests that Rachel's marriage will be based on
freedom, the implications of this are not discussed. Instead, Rachel and
her lover are described as 'Nature's children, reading her simple fairy
stories', before the book ends in a welter of metaphors. Lees has
shown the space of communal living as an impossible space and is unable
to describe a new kind of relationship between men and women as anything
other than a fairytale. Love between women is not even hinted at as a
possibility.<br />
<h2>
The Image Breakers</h2>
The problem of achieving a liberated womanliness recurs in <em>The Image Breakers</em>
by Gertrude Dix, published in 1900. Like Lees and the Rossettis, Dix
had first-hand knowledge of the utopian politics of the day. She was
active in labour politics in Bristol, and knew the Rossettis in their <em>Torch</em>
days, possibly while she was working as a governess to Sydney Olivier's
children following his time at Fellowship House. Her book, featuring a
range of socialist and anarchist groups, relates a number of incidents
and debates that closely parallel actual events.<br />
<br />
In the novels previously discussed, the characters move between spaces
implicitly or explicitly characterised as utopian or non-utopian. The
construction of <em>The Image Breakers</em> is more complex. The story
centres on Lesley, a young socialist artist in search of economic and
sexual independence. She is contrasted with an older woman, Rosemary,
who sacrifices sexual and maternal fulfilment for revolutionary
politics, only to be left isolated and entrapped by the futility of her
own principles. Throughout the novel, 'the little home' is an image for
women's domestic servitude, and various alternatives are discussed, from
urban communities similar to Fellowship House, to rural utopias.<br />
<br />
Rosemary's unrealistic utopianism is contrasted with Lesley's more
hard-headed approach. For instance, Rosemary predicts that her own
experimental way of life will develop into a communal village of the
future, with:<br />
<div class="quote">
The houses nestled cosily together in their gardens, sweet with flowers
... I can imagine the healthful day's work and the homecoming at night
to supper in the wide halls with musicians ... there would be peace,
security and harmony ... </div>
Lesley rejects such attempts to build little heavens on the edge of
hell. Yes, she thinks: within, utopia; outside, the real, brutal world
of industrial capitalism. Although Lesley turns her back on Rosemary's
doomed idyll, she does not return to conventional life; instead she
enters a sexual relationship with political pragmatist Jack, while
refusing his desire to make her the little wife in the little house. It
is in this context that the binary oppositions of real versus unreal,
pragmatism versus utopianism begin to break down, with new metaphors and
images suggesting a different sort of utopian space. <br /><br />
Lesley could take Jack 'a little way into her own fairyland' (her
internal world of creativity and imagination). Jack could 'pilot her'
into the real world of men and women, which has been rejected by the
misguided Rosemary. But 'the more subjective region, the land of the
“you and me”, was as yet an undiscovered country'. This is a place
where gender and sexual relations are transformed, and it is Lesley who
represents change and guides Jack towards this new world. Eventually,
through painful struggle, they forge a new kind of free relationship —
on her terms. Problematically, though, the key moments of resolution
take place not in the 'real, ugly' world Lesley counterposes to
Rosemary's dreams, but in an Arcadian countryside of such clichéd
artifice as to seem itself a dream, thus casting doubt on the
possibility of such a synthesis of ideals and realism.<br /><br />
The need for women to free themselves from the confines of domestic
space in order to attain psychological, sexual and social liberation is
made clear, but how they might do this is not clearly addressed. This
point applies to all these novels. While rejecting utopianism (as
defined by the authors) as well as the restrictions of conventional
life, they supply as alternatives only vague appeals to Nature, reality,
maturity and womanliness. Yet given that the novels, especially <em>Attainment</em> and<em> A Girl among the Anarchists</em>, bear a close relation to the writers' own lives, what is striking is what is omitted. <br />
<br />
<em>Attainment</em>, though commenting on the problems of the theory and
practice of its characters around sexuality, leaves heterosexuality
unchallenged. In Lees' life as well as in the novel, a utopian community
is abandoned in favour of marriage. But nothing in the novel enables us
to understand why, in her own life, Lees felt marriage to be her best
option: whether it was in fact where she felt she could best live out
'what was real' in her. Nor is there any discussion of issues centrally
important to her feminist politics, such as women's financial
independence. The latter is discussed in <em>The Image Breakers</em>,
where Lesley is unable to carry on her work as a commercial artist when
she becomes for a time dependent on Jack; economic dependence is seen as
inimical to psychological and creative freedom. (After her own
marriage, it seems, Gertrude Dix stopped writing.) <br />
<br />
In the absence of direct evidence about these silences, any comment can
only be speculative. It may be that these writers simply felt it was too
transgressive to write positively about unorthodox sexual and marital
arrangements. (It was to be several years after Attainment was published
before Lees felt able to acknowledge her lesbianism publicly.) Dix is
unusual amongst English women novelists of the period in giving not just
a positive account of free love, but in showing that it could be
initiated by and in the interests of women.<br /><br />
Unorthodox familial relationships are also sidestepped in various ways. In <em>A Girl Among the Anarchists</em>,
Isabel is an orphan, and her siblings play almost no part in the story.
The elimination of parents who might interfere with the action is a
common strategy in children's adventure stories — and it also generates
financial and emotional independence, particularly important for a
female character. In the novel, then, the absence of familial relations
makes the political journey possible, and the narrator's positioning in
the uneasy space between childhood and adulthood makes it credible. In
reality, family relationships and domestic space were a crucial
foundation for the Rossetti children's political activities. <br />
<br />
<em>A Girl among the Anarchists</em> also suggests that growing up and
growing out of anarchism is necessary to achieve (hetero)sexual
womanhood. In reality, while working on the <em>Torch</em>, Olivia
Rossetti met and formed a liaison with an Italian anarchist, Antonio
Agresti, whom she later married. Agresti already had a young daughter by
another woman; his relationship with Olivia Rossetti was facilitated
when Agnes Henry adopted this child. These more complex stories and
possibilities remain for the Rossetti sisters untold and untellable.<br />
<br />
If Dix and the Rossettis found no place for women in utopia or utopian
politics, Edith Lees spent the rest of her life in writing, public
speaking, and experimenting with new ways to live. Agnes Henry remained
involved all her life with experimental living, radical and feminist
politics. Her struggles to do this while bringing up her adopted
daughter make a fascinating, and as yet untold story. But in <em>Attainment</em>,
as well as in Edith Lees' private letters, Henry appears as a
caricature, an unnatural if not unreal figure; we get no sense of the
complexities and contradictions of an ongoing commitment to utopian
politics. <em>A Girl Among the Anarchists</em> similarly caricatures or erases the stories of women who made different choices from those of the authors.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Whiteway</h2>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/judygr/456367248/"><img alt="Lottie Camebus at Whiteway" class="rightbox200" src="http://www.judygreenway.org.uk/noplace/lottie.jpg" title="Lottie Camebus at Whiteway" width="200" /></a>
Nellie Shaw's non-fiction book <em>Whiteway</em> makes an
illuminating comparison with the novels. Published in 1935, it documents
how as a young woman in 1898 she and a small group of friends founded
Whiteway, a Tolstoyan anarchist community which they built from scratch
on unpromising land in rural Gloucestershire, and dedicated to the
simple life, practical communism, and sexual equality. During the 1890s
Shaw had been a member of the Fabians and the Independent Labour party
as well as the Croydon Socialist Society. In search of 'something
warmer, more vital, more appealing to the idealistic side of our natures
than mere economics', she and some friends started the Croydon
Brotherhood Church and associated co-operative businesses. Seeing
agriculture as 'the basis of all constructive work', some members of
this circle then began a farming community in Purleigh in Sussex. Soon
after, feeling that the community was affected by class prejudice, and
disagreeing with its anti-sex (and anti-woman) ideas, Nellie Shaw and a
few others left to found Whiteway. <br />
<br />
From the beginning, it was conceptualised as a space for women and men
together, where their 'natural instincts' could develop. Conflicts over
how this worked in practice played a major part in the restructuring of
the physical space there, most strikingly a gradual retreat from shared
living quarters into separate households, as the community grew and
women rebelled against having to do housework for many men rather than
just one. (It could be argued that it was the shift to more flexible and
individualised living arrangements that made it possible for Whiteway
to develop and expand, eventually becoming a small village with a wide
variety of inhabitants and visitors from all over the world.) <br /><br />
Shaw recognises and describes with humour some of the inadequacies and
impracticalities of the initial settlers, but commends compromise in a
spirit of freedom, and gives a sense of an ongoing process of change and
adaptation, rather than a checklist of successes or failures. As in the
novels, humour is used to suggest a perspective of realism contrasted
to impossible idealism, but in this case the implication is that
successful utopianism constantly renegotiates what is possible. However,
some of the humour also plays into mainstream notions of the
impossibility of utopianism. For example, insofar as her descriptions of
some of Whiteway's inhabitants and visitors draw, as the novels do, on
familiar stereotypes of cranks, opportunists and poseurs, so these
stereotypes distance us from the characters, and remind us of the
associated narratives of impossibility and failure.<br /><br />
Nellie Shaw remained at Whiteway all her life. (The village, still in
existence, celebrated its centenary in 1998.) Writing from within the
community over thirty years after it was started, she argues that it is
in danger of forgetting the spirit of the early pioneers. Thus the book
functions as a history which is being used to critique a present
degeneration from an Arcadian past. At the same time, though, the space
of the past is imagined continuously with the space of the present, a
temporal and geographical connection which can and should unite later
settlers in a shared sense of community purpose.<br /><br />
So Shaw does not intend to distance herself from utopianism in the same
way as the other writers discussed here. Nevertheless, she sometimes
uses language and imagery which have that effect. For instance, the book
includes a copy of a talk about Whiteway which she gave to a young
women's group in Croydon in the summer of 1899, only a year after the
first settlers arrived. She paints an Arcadian picture. On the hilltops,
she tells them, six miles from the nearest railway and town, <br />
<div class="quote">
Whiteway is reached by a most picturesque road, ascending with many
twists and curves between delightful valleys and well-wooded hills ... </div>
She goes on to refer to 'lovely' views, 'charming' villages, and 'cosy' cottages, with a recurrence of the 'picturesque'.<br />
<div class="quote">
The cooking, washing and cleaning ... are done by Jeannie, Lucy and
Nellie. Most of the meals are taken out of doors, under a tree by the
roadside. The washing, too, is done out of doors, for these three
believe in being indoors as little as possible ... Time not occupied in
this way is spent on the land ... The women do exactly the same kind
of work as the men, and do not find it too tiring. </div>
This romantic picture is tempered with a caution.<br />
<div class="quote">
Of course, there is another side to all this. Wet days, especially wet
washing days, are very trying. Endeavouring to make old trousers into
new knickerbockers, darning impossible socks, running out of some
necessary item of food ... but worst of all ... finding in ourselves
unexpected weak places, being impatient of other people's failings,
forgetting our own ... But we must have patience and learn. </div>
Again we have the combined exploration and exposition of the utopian
novel, but Shaw is also using the language and imagery of fairy tale and
adventure story. Even while speaking from within a continuum of utopian
time and space, she makes it seem distant, unreal, unrealisable.
Reading the passage from the perspective of modern feminisms, the
inequalities in gender roles leap from the page.<br /><br />
Working out ways in which men and women could live and work together is a
recurrent theme in all the texts discussed in this article. In <em>Attainment,</em>
although it is the men who are discomfited by being publicly visible
doing 'women's work', for women it is not work but sexuality which is
problematic. Outsiders can only conceptualise Brotherhood House as
immoral, sexualised space; the narrator's response is to suggest she can
only develop her true sexuality somewhere else. The inhabitants of
Whiteway also had to deal with the fantasies of outsiders. There was
constant rumour and speculation, and when a local bus route passed
nearby, passengers would crane their necks attempting to see what went
on there. Rumours of nudity and sexual orgies brought journalists and
sightseers as well as hopeful applicants to live there, all demanding to
'see the women' - who unsurprisingly tended to make themselves scarce
on such occasions. <br />
<br />
On the other hand, as Nellie Shaw suggests, the Whiteway women were
proud to be seen doing 'men's work', even though the converse does not
seem to be true. Of course this asymmetry between male and female
concerns is not specific to utopian communities, but relates to the
different gender ideologies of the period, which a newly emergent
feminism was only just beginning to challenge.<br /><br />
Yet in terms of contemporary attitudes and the possibilities then
available for women, Whiteway was in both intention and practice a place
where women could at least begin to take their desires for reality. For
instance, from the outset many men and women rejected legal marriage as
'chattel slavery' for women, and formed 'free unions' instead, based,
as Nellie Shaw says, on love, not law. That this could be difficult in
practice, and meant different things to different individuals, is clear;
and some couples did choose conventional marriage. Whiteway is shown as
a place which offers not a model of perfection, but opportunities to
try out different ways of living within a supportive framework.<br />
<h2>
Conclusion</h2>
At the beginning of this article, I asked: Whose desires? Whose
reality? All the novels discussed here suggest that 'real women' do not
belong in utopia. The writers distance themselves from their own pasts
by strategically positioning themselves and the readers in the 'reality'
of the present, explorers returned from a fantasy world which could not
sustain them. They contrast utopian space structured in accordance with
rigid masculine principles, with a real world in which their women
protagonists can negotiate a place for the feminine qualities of passion
and pragmatism. Yet how this might work in practice is excluded from
the imaginative space of the text. Nellie Shaw's <em>Whiteway</em> is a
rare example of a woman writing of (and with) passion and pragmatism
from within a utopian space, even though she too uses imagery, humour
and narrative techniques that make it all too easy to keep utopia at an
ever-receding distance.<br />
<br />
But to end the argument at that point perhaps produces yet another
anti-utopian narrative. To draw attention to and analyse the negative
ways in which utopia is represented, as I have done here, can begin to
challenge that negativity, and allow for a more complex response. A
positive direction for future research would be to place the texts in
fuller historical context, as part of ongoing debates about the
relevance of utopianism. If we see the fictional works in particular in
relation to contemporary utopian experiments, we can understand them as
part of the experimental process. Going beyond endings (of books, of
utopian communities), we can also trace continuities, of themes, of
place, and of women who remained engaged all their lives with the
project of social transformation. In these ways we create another kind
of imaginative utopian space, where new connections can be made, and old
impossibilities may become tomorrow's realities.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="appendix"><h2>
Appendix A: The Prophet’s Mantle</h2>
</a>
By the early eighteen-eighties, the labels ‘anarchist’, ‘nihilist’,
and ‘communist’ were just beginning to be widely used, and not always
consistently. Boundaries between different political groups were
relatively fluid. Socialist groups such as the Fabian Society, which
would later come to stand for a bureaucratic and elitist form of
parliamentary socialism, were in their early days meeting places for
people from a wide spectrum of political viewpoints. Several of the
writers discussed in this article had some involvement with the Fabian
Society or its predecessor, the Fellowship of the New Life, founded in
1883.<br />
<br />
One of the Fellowship’s founders was journalist Hubert Bland, husband of
the writer Edith Nesbit (later to become famous as children’s author
E.Nesbit). The Blands subsequently joined the breakaway group which
became the Fabian Society. The Fabians saw themselves as pragmatists
rather than utopians — a division that was to re-emerge in the Society
itself. However, there continued to be an overlap in membership between
the Fellowship and the Fabians, and friendship circles reached wider
still, as groups continued to divide and proliferate. <br />
<br />
All the novels discussed in this article are set in the 1880s and 90s, but the earliest to be written was <em>The Prophet’s Mantle</em>,
co-written by Edith and Hubert Bland under the name Fabian Bland, and
published in 1885. The Blands belonged to what Edith described as the
practical rather than the visionary element of the Fabian Society, and
their novel is set in and based on their first-hand knowledge of the
newly emergent anarchist and socialist movements. The book has comic
elements, with the humour aimed at parlour socialism and middle-class
hypocrisy, at those who profess ideals which they do not practise. For
the most part, however, it is a complicated political thriller with a
full complement of disguises, mistaken identities, unlikely coincidences
and violent deaths, one of which sees the main heroine, Clare, left an
orphan with an inheritance which she uses to further her literal and
metaphorical journey towards revolutionary utopianism. <br />
<br />
Clare begins her travels into the physical and mental spaces of utopian
politics when she goes to a meeting at a working men’s radical club in
London’s Soho, where she hears a speech by an exiled Russian Nihilist, a
character based on the well known anarchist geographer Peter Kropotkin.
He describes oppression in tsarist Russia, and his utopian vision of
the future, ‘a dream of a time’, when workers will get the fruits of
their labours, ‘rulers would be no more ... when every man would do as
he liked, and every man would like to do well’. Clare then attends
meetings with a group called Cleon (a thinly disguised Fabian Society,
complete with broad caricatures of some of its members). Here she
travels further on the road to revolutionary politics when she attends a
lecture given to the group by another Russian, who stirs her emotions
and convinces her with his arguments. With his guidance, she begins to
educate herself politically with a programme of reading.<br />
<br />
In a central passage, Clare and women like her are compared to Sleeping
Beauty. For them ‘the fairy prince’s awakening kiss’ can be a book, a
speech, love, or suffering, which rouse them from the slumbers of
received wisdom and conventional morality. For Clare, it is books: her
spell is broken courtesy of the rather unlikely pair of fairy princes,
Bakunin and Matthew Arnold. A passage similarly reminiscent of a fairy
tale, or perhaps <em>Alice in Wonderland </em>(first published in
1865), appears in another key scene, when the Nihilist tells Clare that
despite the messages in his own youthful writings, she should aim for
the practicable, not the visionary. Although this seems to have been the
Blands’ viewpoint, it is not their heroine’s. She is shocked at his
apparent betrayal of his principles: he ‘now seemed to her like a
dissolving view ... through the wrong end of a telescope. He lacked the
definiteness of outline, the depth of tone, the intense reality’ of the
true revolutionary. In both images, it is the non-utopian world which
is seen as unreal, the elsewhere, the bewitched sleep, the dissolving
view.<br />
<br />
The secondary heroine, Alice, is a mill worker led by love into the same
radical circles as Clare. Initially seduced and abandoned by an
unscrupulous revolutionary preaching free love, Alice meets him again
towards the end of the novel, in an outdoor setting described as a
paradise, where he proposes to her. (As in <em>The Image Breakers</em> and <em>Attainment</em>,
the countryside represents Nature, and is the place where human nature
reaches its truest expression, heterosexual love, in the most purple
prose.) After they marry, she goes with him to Russia — prepared, out
of love, not principle, to ‘follow him to the world’s end, believing in
him unquestioningly.’ <br />
<br />
Although the sexual politics are relatively underdeveloped compared with
the other novels discussed above, the theme of tensions around the
theory and practice of free love must have had particular resonance for
the authors — Edith was already pregnant when she married Hubert Bland,
and was later to live in an uncomfortable ménage-à-trois with him and
another of his lovers. <br />
<br />
For the utopian Clare, love has a place, but revolution comes first. She
wants a man who will love her, but love Liberty more, one who will be
at her side, not at her feet. At the novel’s finale, she sets off with
her lover for Russia, dedicating her life to a more dramatic political
struggle than conventional class-ridden England can offer. Even there,
they do not expect to see change in their own lifetimes. ‘Russia’ is
never actualised in the book; it is the absent place where true idealism
is born, where true idealists must return. The narrative structure thus
suggests that ultimately utopianism belongs somewhere else, not to the
here-and-now of the English reader. And both Clare and Alice are sent
‘to the world’s end’, implying that any transformation in gender
relations will also happen elsewhere. <br />
<br />
<h2>
Appendix B: Whiteway and the Journalists</h2>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/judygr/456367256/"><img alt="raymond the carpenter" class="rightbox200" src="http://www.judygreenway.org.uk/noplace/whiteway2.jpg" title="raymond the carpenter" width="200" /></a>
Over the years, journalists also used the language of fairy tale and
exploration to describe visits to Whiteway, reiterating the strange
appearance of people and houses.<br />
<div class="quote">
Through avenues of beech and larch we drove to the roof of
Gloucestershire, and then ... came suddenly upon bungalows and shacks,
wonderfully variegated, and apparently dumped down haphazard over an
area of 40 odd acres. It was like stumbling on a No-Man's-Land of
civilisation.</div>
wrote one in the ‘Daily Chronicle’ in 1924, telling in
anthropological detail how he encountered a ‘picturesque young giant’,
and:<br />
<div class="quote">
another bearded, sandalled man of striking appearance. Books were upon
the table, which was covered with a cloth of fine sacking ... in that
centrally heated frugally furnished shack, its walls lined with
bookshelves and adorned by handicraft ornaments ... </div>
The article inspired letters from numerous unsuitable people wanting to
come and live in this slightly comical, and distant — yet fascinating
and exotic — ‘No-Man’s-Land’.
This style of journalism is parodied in an unpublished anonymous short
story, written by a Whiteway resident in the late nineteen-twenties or
early thirties. <em>Alice's Adventures On Whiteway Land</em> opens with Alice reading from a newspaper article:<br />
<div class="quote">
I have found the most thrilling, mysterious place in England ... where a
strange and mysterious body of people ... have eschewed ... all
contact with civilisation. Nudism and barter are among the strange
rites practised ... Whiteway is surely a place of magic.</div>
Alice is then miraculously transported to this fairy village where
she is told ‘everything’s possible’. She investigates its geography,
and meets characters who are comic versions of actual inhabitants. The
Whiteway reader is invited to laugh simultaneously at the journalistic
fantasies and at what is fantastic in the real place.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Bibliography</h3>
<h4>
Published books and articles</h4>
<div class="boxtext">
Bland, Fabian [pseud. E. Nesbit and Hubert Bland] [1885] (1889):<em> The Prophet's Mantle.</em> Henry J. Drane: London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Briggs, Julia (1987): <em>A Woman of Passion: the Life of E. Nesbit 1858-1924.</em> Hutchinson: London. </div>
<div class="boxtext">
Coates, Chris (2001):<em> Utopia Britannica: British Utopian Experiments: 1325-1945.</em> Diggers and Dreamers: London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Dix, Gertrude (1900): <em>The Image Breakers.</em> William Heinemann: London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Ellis, Havelock (1967): <em>My Life</em>. Neville Spearman: London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Ellis, Mrs. Havelock [see also Edith Lees] (1909): <em>Attainment.</em> Alston Rivers: London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
___ (1921): <em>The New Horizon in Love and Life</em>. A&C.Black: London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
___ (1921) 'Semi-Detached Marriage' in Mrs. Havelock (1921): <em>The New Horizon in Love and Life</em>. A&C.Black: London: pp. 23-31.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Engels, Friedrich (1969) 'Socialism: Utopian and Scientific', in Lewis S. Feuer, (1969) <em>Marx and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy</em>. Fontana: Glasgow.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Garnett, Olive (1989): <em>Tea and Anarchy! The Bloomsbury Diary of Olive Garnett 1890-1893</em>, ed. Barry C. Johnson, Bartletts Press: Birmingham.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
___ (1993): <em>Olive and Stepniak: the Bloomsbury Diary of Olive Garnett 1893-1895</em>, ed. Barry C. Johnson. Bartletts Press: Birmingham.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Geogehan, Vincent (1987): <em>Utopianism and Marxism</em>. Methuen: London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Goldman, Emma (1931): <em>Living My Life</em>. Alfred Knopf: New York.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Greenway, Judy. (1993): 'Sex, Politics and Housework', in Chris Coates et al (eds) <em>Diggers and Dreamers 94/95: The Guide to Communal Living.</em> Communes Network: Winslow, Bucks. Online at:
http://www.judygreenway.org.uk/housework/housework.html</div>
<div class="boxtext">
___ (2000): 'Impossible Outlaws: Gender, Space and Utopia in Johnny Guitar', <em>Altitude</em> 1:2: online at: http://thealtitudejournal.org/2002/08/01/impossible-outlaws-gender-space-and-utopia-in-johnny-guitar/</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Grosskurth, Phyllis (1980): <em>Havelock Ellis, A Biography</em>. Allen Lane: London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Hardy, Dennis (1979): <em>Alternative Communities in Nineteenth Century England</em>. Longman: London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Johnson, Barry C. (1993): 'The Rossettis and The Torch: A History: 1891-96' in Olive Garnett (1993): <em>Olive and Stepniak: the Bloomsbury Diary of Olive Garnett 1893-1895</em>, ed. Barry C. Johnson. Bartletts Press: Birmingham. pp. 245-287</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Kumar, Krishan (1991): <em>Utopianism</em>. Open University: Milton Keynes.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Lees, Edith [see Mrs. Havelock Ellis] </div>
<div class="boxtext">
Levitas, Ruth (1996):<em> The Concept of Utopia</em>. Philip Allan: London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
MacKenzie, Norman and Jeanne. (1977):<em> The First Fabians</em>. Weidenfeld and Nicolson: London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Meredith, Isobel [pseud. Helen and Olivia Rossetti] (1992): <em>A Girl Among the Anarchists</em>. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln and London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Nesbit – see Bland.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Shaddock, Jennifer (1992): 'Introduction' in Isobel Meredith (1992): <em>A Girl Among the Anarchists.</em> University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln and London. v-xxii.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Shaw, Nellie (1935): <em>Whiteway: A Colony on the Cotswolds</em>. C.W. Daniel: London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Thacker, Joy (1993), <em>Whiteway Colony: The Social History of a Tolstoyan Community</em>, Thacker: Whiteway, Glos.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Thompson, Laurence (1971): <em>The Enthusiasts: A Biography of John and Katherine Bruce Glasie</em>r. Gollancz: London.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Tracy, Marguerite (1921): 'Introduction', in Mrs. Havelock Ellis, (1921): <em>The New Horizon in Love and Life</em>. A&C Black: London. pp. xv-xxxvii.<br />
<br />
</div>
<h4>
Unpublished Sources</h4>
<div class="boxtext">
Anon, (undated.) <em>Alice's Adventures On Whiteway Land</em>: unpublished ms.: unpaginated.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Henry, Agnes: correspondence (1894-1911), Hamon Archive, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
Lees, Edith [see also Mrs. Havelock Ellis] correspondence (1891) Public Records Office: Catalogue PRO 30-69/1136/68:70.</div>
<div class="boxtext">
MacDonald, Ramsay, correspondence (1890-92), Public
Records Office. Catalogue PRO 30-69/1135/23-24; 1136/58-74; 1137/76-92;
1137/253-257.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-33341352693479771052014-01-19T13:42:00.000-08:002014-01-19T13:44:12.157-08:00Feminism as an Anarchist Process (1978?)<br />
<a name='more'></a>http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process<br />
<br />
<div id="preamble">
<div id="texttitle">
<b>Title:</b>
Feminism as an Anarchist Process
</div>
<div id="textsubtitle">
<b>Subtitle:</b>
The Practice of Anarcha-Feminism
</div>
<div id="authors">
<b>Author(s):</b>
<a href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/authors/elaine-leeder">Elaine Leeder</a>
</div>
<div id="ourtopics">
<b>Topics:</b>
<a href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/topics/feminist">feminist</a>
</div>
<div id="preamblesrc">
<b>Source:</b>
Scanned from original
</div>
</div>
<div id="downloadformats">
<b>Downloads:</b><br />
<span id="pdfgeneric">
<a class="pdflinks" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process.pdf">
<img alt="plain PDF" class="pdfmyicons" src="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/images/pdf-gen.png" title="plainPDF" /></a>
</span>
<span id="pdfa4imp">
<a class="pdflinks" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process.a4.pdf">
<img alt="A4 imposed PDF" class="pdfmyicons" src="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/images/pdf-a4-imposed.png" title="A4 imposed" /></a>
</span>
<span id="letterimp">
<a class="pdflinks" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process.lt.pdf">
<img alt="Letter imposed PDF" class="pdfmyicons" src="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/images/pdf-letter-imposed.png" title="PDF Letter imposed" /></a>
</span>
<span id="downloadepub">
<a href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process.epub">
<img alt="EPUB" class="pdfmyicons" src="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/images/epub.png" title="EPUB (for mobile devices)" /></a>
</span>
<span id="downloadhtml">
<a href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process?print">
<img alt="clean HTML" class="pdfmyicons" src="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/images/pf-html.png" title="Standalone HTML (printer-friendly)" />
</a>
</span>
<span id="downloadtex">
<a href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process.tex">
<img alt="TeX" class="pdfmyicons" src="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/images/tex.png" title="ConTeXt source" /></a>
</span>
<span id="downloadsrc">
<a href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process.muse">
<img alt="source" class="pdfmyicons" src="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/images/muse.png" title="plain text source" /></a>
</span>
</div>
<div id="textwithoutmetadata">
<div id="pagemaintitle">
<h2>
Elaine Leeder</h2>
<h1 id="textttitleh">
Feminism as an Anarchist Process</h1>
<h2>
The Practice of Anarcha-Feminism</h2>
</div>
<div id="thework">
For the last four years I have called myself an Anarcha-Feminist. I
have participated in Anarcha-feninist groups, meetings and conferences
and have taught courses in small group process. Through my experience I
have come to realize that the interaction in an all womens’ group has a
unique flavor and style and that this is particularly true of feminist
groups. This style has been called the “mosaic” process. <a class="footnote" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process#fn1" id="fn_back1">[1]</a>
It contrasts vith traditional “linear” thinking that has pervaded human
interactions in this society. The characteristics of competition and
hierarchy are integral to a Capitalist system. Linear, logical arguments
are used in discussions to perpetuate the values of this system. Linear
thinking is done to substantiate or to argue a hypothesis. Womens’
values of cooperation, emotion, and intuition have been given little
credence in this type of thinking. The mosaic pattern that women use
includes a supportive structure with considerably less competition. <a class="footnote" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process#fn2" id="fn_back2">[2]</a>
This style uses anecdotal material, encourages the interjection of
comments into conversation, accepts emotional data as a legitimate part
of intellectual discussions, uses narratives, paraphrases, shifts
directions and moves the group together toward a mutual search for
understanding. It is an organic process, non-hierarchical and
non-competitive. It could in fact be called Anarchist because the values
of leaderlessness, lack of hierarchy, non-competition and spontaneity
have historically been associated with the term Anarchism. They are also
Feminist values. From what I have seen, this style exists less
frequently in mixed groups of men and women. In fact, it rarely even
exists in mixed groups of Anarchist men and women. Anarchist literature
is full of documentation of the exploitation by Anarchist men of the
women in their lives. <a class="footnote" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process#fn3" id="fn_back3">[3]</a> My own recent experience among old-time Anarchists, and even among the new breed, substantiates this statement.<br />
<br />
Anarchism’s principles and its current practice conflict. There
is sexism within Anarchism. It is important for Anarchists to
incorporate this “Feminist Process” into their practice so that
ultimately the principles and the practice of Anarchism can become one.<br />
<br />
There are a number of Feminists including myself who have
realized the inherent Anarchism in our process and have begun working in
groups to study and grow together as Anarcha-feminists. This hybrid
developed out of the late sixties when many of us were involved in
male-dominated, competitive, hierarchical mass organizations. At that
time (and to this day in Anarchist literature women were told to work
for the larger movement. Instead many of us formed small
consciousness-raising groups that dealt with personal issues of our
lives. These were spontaneous direct action groups organized for
ourselves. They were much like groups organized in Spain prior to 1936
and could be called affinity groups. These affinity groups were based on
similarities of interests and had an internal democracy in which women
would share information and knowledge. These groups generally consisted
of white middle-class women who often for the first time were placed in a
situation in which they were not in competition with one another. Third
world and working-class women were generally not involved in
consciousness raising groups, which is also the case today in A-F
groups.<br />
<br />
Out of these early beginnings a Feminist theory slowly evolved.
Some of us began to study political theories in these small groups and
discovered the inherent Anarchism in our Feminism. We began to use an
Anarchist analysis to aid in our development of theory and strategy for
social change. Some of us believed that patriarchy was a male-dominated
hierarchy and that the nuclear family perpetuated that hierarchy. The
family, we discovered, teaches us to obey Father, God, Teachers, Bosses
said whoever else is above us. <a class="footnote" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process#fn4" id="fn_back4">[4]</a>
It teaches us competition, consumerism and isolation as well as the
treatment of each other in a subject-object relationship. I have seen
this clearly in the family therapy work that I do. Nuclear families, I
know now, are the basis of all hierarchical, authoritarian systems. As a
result, if one fights patriarchy one fights all hierarchies. If we
change the nature of the nuclear family we may begin to change all forms
of leadership, domination and governments.<br />
<br />
As a result of this form of thinking, some of us now place value
on other ways of looking at things. No longer must we see the world
through only linear thought patterns; rational vs. sensual, mind vs.
body, logic vs. intuition. We have begun to lock at things on a
continuum rather than in dualistic, competitive terms.<a class="footnote" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process#fn5" id="fn_back5">[5]</a>
We have come to see that there needs to be a place for both the linear
and the mosaic patterns and that both are valid methods of thinking and
functioning.<br />
<br />
If one continues to look a,t the world in these terms, it follows
that Anarcha-feminists do not say that women should get an equal share
of the power. Instead we say that there should be an abolition of all
power relationships. We do not want a woman president. We want no
presidents at all. To us equal wages for equal work is not the crucial
issue. Hierarchies and power distribution is.
<br />
Feminist groups often follow Anarchist principles. Some of us
have articulated the connection. Others of us have not, but the form is
still there, whether it is conscious or not. Our groups are generally
small, and sometimes these groups form alliances to act together with
others on certain issues. This is similar to the Anarchist concept of
Federations. Within the groups there is an attenpt at rotation of tasks
and skill sharing so that power never resides with the same person.
According to Anarchist principles there is equal access to all
information, and these groups are voluntary and intentional. The groups
are nön-hierarchical, and self-discipline is crucial. The unskilled are
urged to take leadership positions, and the indigenous leaders
translates their skills to those not as knowledgeable in certain areas.
We work in these groups on practicing the revolution now in our daily
lives. We discuss the Immediate experience of oppression of power among
us and those with whom, we live. We work on the everyday issues that
oppress us, not just on the theoretical, abstract ideas of revolution.<br />
<br />
As a practioner I have found the issue of conflict resolution
crucial in the development of cohesion in these small groups. When
conflicts arise among us attempts are made to use self-discipline and to
put ourselves in the other person’s position. I have rarely seen
coercion used in A-F small groups. Dissension is accepted, listened to
and learned from. Sometimes there is a point that is objected to, and
then a debate ensues. It is often heard and understood, because many of
us realize that our conflicts come from different life experiences.
Generally by the end of a session there has been conflict resolution. If
not, we return next time having thought the issue through further We
then discuss it or leave it as need be. There is room for dissension
because there is a mutual trust and respect that has grown. This trust
is a difficult quality to develop in larger groups, which might explain
why we continually gravitate to smaller ones. We have learned that
communication is crucial, and that through it we can work out our
differences. Conflicts can and does occur regularly because we have
seen ourselves work it through.<br />
<br />
Because we see the need to confront sexism in our daily lives
some of us have seen the need to confront men (Anarchist or otherwise)
who do not live in their personal lives what they preach in their
political lives. It has been said that women often practice Anarchism
and do not know it, while some men call themselves Anarchists and do not
practice it. Some of us have worked on restructuring mixed political
organizations so that intuition, emotion, and spontaneity en he
experienced by people other than Feminists. In some of these mixed
groups we have tried to introduce the consensual decision-making process
that is usally part of womens’ groups. For the most part these efforts
have had only limited success. Generally competition, aggressiveness and
dominating leadership have taken over even in mixed groups that have
tried to be anarchistic. Conflicts are not as easily resolved as they
are in all women’s groups.<br />
<br />
Anarcha-feminist groups are now to be found world wide. One such
group was Tiamat, an Anarcha-feminist affinity group that existed in
Ithaca, New York from August, 1975 to August, 1978. I was a member of
that group and I think that Tiamat is an excellent example of
Anarcha-feminism in action. We took the name Tiamat from the Z. Budapest
book which described this myth: “When Tiamat created the world she
created it whole and without divisions so that life flowed spontaneously
between dark and light, season and season, birth and death and all the
faces of the moon and sun shone upon the thinking people, the humans,
without being separated, put in categories, analysed, owned. Then
Tiamat’s son grew in power and overthrew his mother, cut her into many
small pieces and scattered them everywhere. From her pieces he made his
new world, where everything had its place, Its number. From this men
called him <i>the creator</i>. Tiamat’s name was still known, and she
was worshipped by women, but men feared her now as a goddess of Chaos,
of destruction, — of anarchy. <a class="footnote" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process#fn6" id="fn_back6">[6]</a><br />
<br />
Our purpose began as study, and for the first year and a half we
read Anarchist theory together. Later each of us presented ideas and
theories that we had researched. Still later we put out a newsletter (<i>Anarcha-Feminist Notes</i>),
sponsored an Anarcha-Feminist Conference and got involved in local
political issues. For example we protested the building of a local
shopping mall, raised money for a day care center for political
dissidents in Chile. We wanted political growth, re-education,
criticism, discussion and action, and all this was accomplished.<br />
<br />
Our process was of interest. We used a procedure called check-in
in which we each spoke of our lives at that moment, issues we were
personally dealing with and how tuned in we felt to what we were going
to discuss that evening. Sometimes we spent the whole session checking
in, or discussing one person’s check-in, or perhaps an issue that
evolved out of check-in. Other times we would deal with intellectual
material. Through check-in we became responsible to each other and began
to know each other quite well. Often there would be devil’s advocate
positions taken so that we could delve deeply into a political conflict.
All this was done with an air of trust that developed over time.
Because of the differences in our perceptions and life styles, we were
able to learn much from each other. These differences were also the
source of much conflict. Half the group was heterosexual and the other
half lesbian. Because of this our personal lives were often a source of
tension but our similarities in outlook and agreement on politics and
work often helped us to work through the differences. We were a
woman-centered group that was intellectual yet action-oriented.
Sometimes we were quite linear and logical in our studies, yet there was
still a place for emotion and support. We all felt that there was an
inexplicable something that held us together through our differences for
three years. Our studies included Russian Anarchism, Spanish Anarchism,
Anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-communism. We looked at China, earlier
American Anarchists and how we as anarchists could live these principles
in cur lives. We discussed living with men, being married and having
children. We discussed separatism and its effects on the womens
movement. We looked at wages for housework, and nuclear power as it
relates to women. We had birthday parties, picnics and anti 4<sup>th</sup>
of July celebrations. We marched together in demonstrations, we tried
to help other A-F groups get started and ve provided each other vith
readings and support. We deeply cared for each other and vhen ve sav
each other at other places there vere strong feelings of unity and
comradery.<br />
<br />
At the end of three years two out of the nine members moved out
of the area. Another member withdrew slowly, feeling the need at that
time for more, involvement in the lesbian community. As a result the six
of us left felt it would not be appropriate to reconstruct a group that
had been such a unique entity. Instead we dealt with the demise
creatively, feeling that it was now time for each of us to spin off in
new directions. Some of us joined a womens anti-nuke affinity group,
others joined the Lesbian Alliance, others worked with a mixed group on
ecology issues.<br />
<br />
Prior to the group’s dissolution we sponsored an Anarcha-Feminist
Conference that brought together eighty-five women from as far away as
Italy, Toronto, Boston, New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Although
Tiamat and friends were the organizers, once the participants arrived
responsibility was shared by all present. There were numerous workshops
including Anarcha-feminism and ecology, Anarcha-feminist theory, unions,
future visions, Third World women, working with men and building an
Anarcha-feminist network, to name just a few. The setting was idyllic.
We met at a nature preserve overlooking Lake Cayuga. The rustic lodge,
the healthy and tasty food and the perfect warm sunny weather made the
weekend ideal. During the day we met in groups and in the evenings we
played music, shared poetry, and danced to women’s music. One woman,
Kathy Fire sang songs from her album “Songs from a Lesbian Anarchist.”<br />
<br />
In the discussion groups we discovered the need to keep our
numbers small. Groups of more than ten inhibited conversation. It also
seemed that designated leadership was important. The role of leader
could have been rotated but it was important that there be someone to
recognize speakers, highlight the discussion, summarize and move the
group on to new areas. We discovered though, that leadership functioned
best when it did not rest in the hands of a few. At one point in the
conference the participants decided that the schedule of workshops was
too hectic and through the use of consensual decision making a new
scheme was implemented. We struggled, tensions built, end we moved to a
new level together. There were no positions of power, decisions were
made by all, sharing was spontaneous, painful, but open and leadership
rotated. This was an example of Anarchism at work. Later, at the closing
circle, after a weekend of sitting naked in the sun, 85 women held
hands and gained strength in our numbers. We were bonded together in car
vision of a new society and what we had experienced together. We had
made contacts for our future work. We were no longer an isolated
individuals or groups. We were part of a larger network of women who
could meet anywhere in the world and have kindred ideas and hopes. We
set up rotating journals, planned to continue our journal <i>Anarcha-Feminist Notes</i> and many of us planned to meet at Seabrook and other anti-nuke demonstrations.<br />
<br />
Tiamat and the Anarcha-Feminist Conference are just two examples
of the Anarcha-femlnist process. Often groups embody these principles
without realizing the Anarchism within. Recently I have been teaching
small group process at the college level. Within these classes I try to
convey to white, middle class mainly fe male students all of the
principles I’ve discussed above by running the sessions much like an
Anarcha-feminist meeting. Here the students are treated vith respect and
interest. They slovly begin to share themselves intellectually and
personally. By the end of the semester they realize that they can learn
from each other and by looking within themselves instead of looking to
an outside expert in the hierarchy to impart knowledge to them. Through
the process they gain power over their own lives and eventually dissolve
power relationships within the class. I have had the experience here in
which these privileged students have gone directly in consciousness
from fervent Capitalists to budding collectivists without having gone
through the revolutionary left. It is possible to come to these
Anarchist conclusions through experiences such as these.<br />
<br />
It is clear to me from my experience with women in varying groups
that the time has come for Feminists to make clear and articulate the
Anarchism in our Feminism. We need to call it by name and begin to
create it as a viable and acceptable alternative. No longer does the
word “Anarchism” have to be whispered. We are living it now In our small
groups. The next step is to let ourselves and others knew who we are,
and what our vision is for nov and for the future.<br />
<br />
<div class="fnline">
<a class="footnotebody" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process#fn_back1" id="fn1">[1]</a>
Cooper, Babette, Kaxine Ethelchild and Lucy White. “The Feminist
Process: Developing a non-competitive process with work groups,” August,
1974, Unpublished.
</div>
<div class="fnline">
<a class="footnotebody" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process#fn_back2" id="fn2">[2]</a> Ibid.
</div>
<div class="fnline">
<a class="footnotebody" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process#fn_back3" id="fn3">[3]</a> Goldman, Emmaa and Alexander Berkman. <i>Nowhere at Home</i>. Richard Drennon, Ed. Shocken Books. New York. 1975. pp. 185–107.
</div>
<div class="fnline">
<a class="footnotebody" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process#fn_back4" id="fn4">[4]</a> Kornegger, Peggy. “Anarchism the Feminist Connection.” <i>Second Wave</i>, 4: 1. Spring, 1975. p. 31
</div>
<div class="fnline">
<a class="footnotebody" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process#fn_back5" id="fn5">[5]</a> Ibid. p. 32.
</div>
<div class="fnline">
<a class="footnotebody" href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elaine-leeder-feminism-as-an-anarchist-process#fn_back6" id="fn6">[6]</a> Jenny Reece as taken from Budapest, Z. and the Feminist Book of Lights and Shadow Collective. <i>The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadow.</i>
The Feminist Wicca, Lincoln Boulevard, Venice, California. 90291. 1975.
Reprinted from Anarcha-Feminist notes. Spring 1977, Volume 1, no. 2.
</div>
</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-75312548676196859382013-12-31T12:00:00.000-08:002013-12-31T12:00:01.341-08:00La Alzada: “The revolution must include the feminist struggle, with and inside the libertarian" (2013)<br />
<a name='more'></a>http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20131028003835407<br /><br />
<br />
By José Antonio Gutiérrez D.<br />
Ideas and Action (WSA)<br />
<br />
Note from translator: The word “alzada” is the feminine form of the
Spanish word that means rebel, instigator, or escalator. The term
“territorial work” refers to community and neighborhood work. In Chile
territorial work can refer to community organizations within, as well as
those who support and offer solidarity within a network of community
organizing. The word “classism” or classist is used in Latin America as
putting forward a class analysis. When someone is described as a
“militant,” it means that a person is politically committed to an
organization or group. Sometimes people are referred to as a “double
militants,” meaning they are politically active in two groups. The word
“población” is best defined as shantytown or poor working class
neighborhood. But poblaciones around Santiago have their own political
history since they evolved as land takeovers by people who migrated from
the countryside to the city. Some poblaciones have strong political
and Leftist traditions, such as La Legua and Villa Francia. An
individual who lives in a población is referred to as a pablador/a. The
term “sexual dissidence” has a particular meaning and genealogy within
Chilean feminism and activism. Sexual dissidence is critique of
patriarchy, heteronormativity, and the LGBTQ movement in its alliance
with the state, which has ceased to question the socialization of
violence and instead seeks reforms such as marriage equality and
anti-discrimination laws. It is important to remind the reader that the
target audience in this interview was the Spanish-speaking community
and those who understand or have followed Chilean politics. There are
some issues and terms that might appear strange, but remember that the
speakers allude to a different set of experiences and meanings beyond
your immediate/lived knowledge.<br />
–Lyudmila<br />
<br />
Over the last two decades, Chile has experienced the flourishing of
diverse libertarian initiatives within Chile. The gender question and
the feminist struggle has been a weaker element in comparison to the
development of other fronts. The late development of anarcha-feminism
is surprising given the nation’s conservatism where divorce was
legalized recently [in 2003]. Despite it all, various initiatives have
been made, even though short lived: the Sucias [Dirty Women] collective
in 2011, followed by the Libertarian Gender Collective. These
collectives problematized the gender question that marked native
libertarian movement and thought. Within this framework, libertarian
activists have exchanged and debated ideas that have led to an explicit
and radical critique of patriarchy. La Alzada, Libertarian Feminist
Action, came out of these experiences and the organization shall me made
public the March 9th [of 2013] in Santiago, Chile. We have maintained
an interesting dialogue with the comrades of this group to deepen and
better understand their vision as their libertarian positions mature.
We wish them lots of success in their endeavor of contributing—from the
trenches—a more radical transformation of our oppressive and
authoritarian society.<br />
–José Antonio Gutiérrez D. 6 of March, 2013<br />
<br />
1. Why form a libertarian feminist group? Do you think the gender
question is not sufficiently taken up by libertarian organizations?<br />
Our main motivation in forming La Alzada, Libertarian Feminist
Action, was due to a need to deepen feminist thought within various
socio-political spaces we function in. We felt that a gender and
feminist struggle perspective was not being reflected upon in an
adequate way. In this sense, more than just anarcha-feminists, we put
forward a libertarian vision. In an equal manner, we note the need to
revalorize women who are exploited and dominated by the capitalist and
patriarchal system. The issue of sexual dissidence is a fundamental
question included in this perspective, since the capitalist order
defends a family structure that is patriarchal, authoritarian, and
heteronormative. In our struggle for freedom, we also fight against a
culture that does not include lesbians, transsexuals, and homosexuals.<br />
<br />
Many anarchist and Leftist organization with revolutionary intent
attempt to revalorize women, especially working-class women as doubly
exploited. Most of the time it doesn’t go farther than a pamphlet,
which doesn’t create a concrete praxis. From the subordination of women
to control over our body to a critique of the family—such issues are be
part of the propaganda of various newsletters, articles, and bulletins
within the broader fights of anarchism. However, these will matter
little if we do not deepen our [political] positions. The idea of “the
emancipation of women” becomes stale without the inclusion of a feminist
framework within those same organizations. The creation of La Alzada
outlines the necessity for two jobs: on the one hand, we have a
responsibility within libertarian spaces and, on the other hand, the
need to reach out and do territorial work from a gender perspective
within those social and public spaces.<br />
<br />
As an organization, we have seen the need for libertarian-feminism to
take a leading role in poblaciones and community spaces. This will
allow us to deepen feminism in a more concrete form. Fighting not only
against the oppression of women within the patriarchal system, but also
against the social marginalization of people living their sexuality in a
different way from the social dominant model; where there is no room
for same-sex couples and people assigned men who want to be women and
vice versa.<br />
<br />
Territorial work represents a major challenge when we incorporate the
feminist struggle with the revolutionary project. We believe that it
is a difficult task, but we take on that political commitment to
libertarian-feminism as our project; to contribute to the revolution not
only in the streets, work and study spaces, but also within homes and
families.<br />
<br />
2. The dominant position of the Left has been that after the
revolution many problems will be solved and we can then think about what
to do with women, minorities, etc. While that mindset is not dominant
within anarchism, it nevertheless exists. As libertarian-feminists, how
do you articulate the feminist struggle against the state? Do you
place feminism a priority within libertarianism or vice versa?<br />
<br />
The Communist Manifesto argues that after the revolution, problems of
domination will be solved magically. There the family and marriage are
questioned and women will occupy a place in a “future classeless
society.” The Left then placed the fight against the subjugation of
woman as secondary to class struggle. But the revolution does not
guarantee anything. Fifty-seven years before Marx and Engels published
the Communist Manifesto, Mary Wollstonecraft published The Vindication
of the Rights of Woman and Olympe de Gouges wrote Declaration of the
Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen. Both discussed their deep
disappointment that the French Revolution did not bring substantial
changes to the social conditions and place of women. The bourgeois
revolution and the proletarian revolution will not give women, lesbians,
gays, trans* political space without it being built.<br />
<br />
As a libertarian we reject this magical way of thinking. Things do
not come from heaven to be poured upon the face of the earth, permeating
the world with justice; every right gained is a struggle. We reject
economic determinism because we understand the multiplicity and the
various forms of systemic domination. We take distance from the Marxist
concept of taking state power and instead propose a profound
transformation of society. We have to transform the relations of
production and the economic system, as well as the cultural and sexual,
eliminating from them power relations. In this regard, we point to a
revolutionary transformation of society that must contain a radical and
profound framework: a gender and feminist perspective of struggle. We
believe that our work should be developed with and from the libertarian,
not a priority over anarchism, but as a necessary relationship if our
goal is to build a society where freedom and equality are actually for
us all.<br />
<br />
3. A very thorny issue within the emergence of “identity politics” is
the dismissal of class struggle over other struggles such as gender,
ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, etc. Within traditional classism
the opposite phenomenon occurs in which all other forms of oppression
are seen as secondary to a vision of the class, mainly from an economic
perspective. How do you articulate classism within feminism?<br />
<br />
The political tradition of the Left, including the discourse and
practice of the feminist movement, has made us think in a binary form
about class and gender. Thus we have a class analysis on the one hand,
and on the other, an analysis of gender oppression. One was born from
an analysis of economic exploitation and the other has a social and
cultural origin. Choosing one over the other in an exclusionary form
has its advantages and disadvantages. Both paths describe a range of
discourse and forms of organizing. An array of feminists put forward
proposals oriented in transforming the dominant system that objectifies
women as a social category. A class analysis perspective states that
the category of gender is subsidiary to the category of class; that
class determines over gender and that only a change in the dominant mode
of production can we break down gender inequalities.<br />
We, like anarchism, compliment these analytical matrices and with it
recognize the legacy of our comrades who took and take up the fight for
revolution. Including those who demanded inclusion into spaces they
were denied involvement. That is how female comrades over the last two
decades did it—active women, strong, atheists, rebellious—and built it
upon many pages, organizations, their own discourse, anarchist action,
and feminism.<br />
<br />
We are classists and libertarians committed to building feminist
politics, demystifying this system based on exploitation, patriarchal
domination, and heteronormativity. We believe that this struggle must
be coupled. We are currently building a social force that comes forward
as the organized pueblo to expropriate from the bourgeoisie the means
of production. We are also currently developing feminist consciousness
centered around a critique of how our organizations relate and
interpersonal relationships, oriented not in creating “parity” but the
new world of Durruti.<br />
<br />
4. What does it mean to be a libertarian feminist in a conservative
country like Chile? Do you feel that society has advanced in recent
years? So there was a female president…<br />
<br />
From the point of view of the rights of women, it is clear that in
the last century gains have been made that were previously viewed as
unreachable such as education and suffrage, as some pragmatic examples.
However, we also know that it is within the context of capitalist and
bourgeois democracy, which has generated advances in integrating women
in public spaces, introduction into workspaces, and bringing them into a
system that subjugates and exploits them further over their status of
workingwomen. Furthermore, transsexuals, bi/homosexuals, and lesbians
are denied adequate health services. We are consumed by a social
education that is authoritarian, patriarchal, heternormative, and,
consequently, profoundly repressive.<br />
<br />
Being a feminist in Chile today presents a major challenge. Just as
we mentioned above and the fact that we had a female president and
surely such a scenario could be repeated. Apparently, for the simple
fact that some women may have access to areas of power, issues such as
sexism, gender violence, reproductive rights, the triple shifts,
machismo, etc…should be resolved.<br />
<br />
In our country, the condition of being a woman and being in positions
of power has not been and will not guarantee change. As libertarians
we believe that the capitalist system and patriarchal structure harbors
injustice, like those described above. Only a real, profound, and
popular transformation can be an effective force for change. That is
why we aim to build a new way of understanding and practicing politics.
Not only for the abolition from bourgeois political spheres, but also
within groups and Leftist organizations.<br />
<br />
From La Alzada, we attempt to relate to spaces that have been
abandoned by the dominant structures. That is how women have played an
historical role, yet often forgotten or hidden from official history.
Popular organizations have seen their fare share of female leaders. In
the case of Chile, the struggle against the dictatorship counted on the
support by various feminist organizations, Juntas de Vecinos
(Neighborhood Councils), Centros de Madres (The Center for Mothers),
Comités de Allegados (Aid Committee), Deudores Habitacionales (Housing
Debtors), and so on. These are examples of popular organized spaces
that counted on important female presence, far from political
officialism [state/institutional]. We aim to work with, for, and as
working-class woman and pobladoras.<br />
Finally, although Chile is a fairly conservative country, especially
after the regression made during the era of dictatorial rule, the
machismo problem is widespread in our society that transcends, including
Leftist groups. For this reason, it is important that as a
libertarian-feminist we reposition the struggle from a gender
perspective, noting that is not only female presence that is needed. We
also demand equal, dignified, just treatment, generating awareness
about our position, pointing to the patriarchal structure as a whole.<br />
<br />
5. What are the main obstacles for your organization? Do you feel supported by male libertarians?<br />
The biggest obstacle is germinating from nothing. We see before us
the need to build something from our principles, as well as active and
collective participation to define agreements, claims, work plans, and
insertion with all our activities. But there is also a high degree of
interest and commitment to solidify and create this project. The
challenge of bringing together female comrades from across the capital
[Santiago], workers, students, militants, and individuals from different
organizations have appeared as trivial problems in the momentum given
to building La Alzada.<br />
<br />
As for the men, not only have we been supported but we have also
integrated them into our group. We have a clear awareness of the
importance of sexual life, family in shaping the social order, and we
are certain that for everyone the emancipation of women is an essential
aspect in the process of social revolution.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, it is important to remember that this fight is also
their [men] fight because although institutional feminist thought has a
tendency to consider women as “victims,” men also suffer oppression from
the social model of gender. From an early age, when social roles are
being constructed through educational and cultural socialization, a
social model is imposed upon women, as well as men. It is imposed for
men to be strong, virile, heterosexual, prohibited from showing their
emotions, etc.<br />
<br />
Of course this patriarchal social model places men in an advantageous
position over women. However, we fundamentally consider it essential
that this struggle not be limited to women, but as a vindication for
everyone; for a free and conscious construction of gender and sexual
orientation outside the constraints of capitalism and patriarchy.<br />
<br />
6. What are the objectives of your organization so far?<br />
<br />
The purpose of La Alzada is to significantly contribute to the
abolition of patriarchy from a revolutionary perspective. To do this,
our overall objective is to contribute to the reconstruction of the
social fabric from a feminist and libertarian viewpoint. In integrating
sexual dissidence, libertarian feminism assumes an emancipatory role
with all those who are discriminated, exploited, oppressed due to their
gender and/or sex.<br />
<br />
In addition, we intend to take an active role in the development of a
praxis that promotes feminism in an extensive way within Chilean social
consciousness. As a first step within the popular sectors; followed by
reflection and discussion within organizations of the revolutionary
Left. Finally, we contribute to the development and enrichment of the
feminist gaze in social spaces. Through critical and libertarian
analysis, we will instill in daily activity of theoretical contributions
that we plan to develop in the future.<br />
<br />
Thank you.<br />
<br />
La Alzada, Acción Feminista Libertaria.<br />
Email: laalzadaafl@gmail.comUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-62877418204564085262013-12-28T08:57:00.000-08:002013-12-28T08:57:56.592-08:00The Government and the Street in Bolivia: An Interview with Julieta Ojeda of Mujeres Creando (2013)<br />
<a name='more'></a>http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/4600-the-government-and-the-street-in-bolivia-an-interview-with-julieta-ojeda-of-mujeres-creando<br />
<br />
<table class="contentpaneopen"><tbody>
<tr><td valign="top"><span class="small">Written by Benjamin Dangl and April Howard </span>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="createdate" valign="top">
Tuesday, 10 December 2013 10:22 </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><img border="0" src="http://upsidedownworld.org/main/images/stories/0-1-0-julietaojeda-2.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 4px;" /><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;">Julieta
Ojeda is a part of Mujeres Creando, an anarchist/feminist organization
in Bolivia that has been a radical voice for women’s rights before and
throughout Evo Morales’ time in office. We interviewed her at the
Virgen de los Deseos, the cultural space of Mujeres Creando in La Paz,
in May of 2012 in the midst of various social protests against the
Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) government. Among the most prominent of
these was a strike of doctors and health professionals to protest
increasing the length of their workday. Another involved a proposed
highway to be cut through the San Isiboro Sécure National Park
(TIPNIS), a protected nature reserve and home to indigenous communities
in the lowlands of the country. (Highway planning and construction was
temporarily <a href="http://nacla.org/blog/2013/4/25/bolivia-tipnis-road-hold-until-extreme-poverty-eliminated">put on hold </a>in April of this year.)</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em><br /></em></span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><strong>Benjamin
Dangl & April Howard: What do the current conflicts in the
country, particularly the one surrounding the TIPNIS, say about the
politics of the MAS government toward indigenous people?</strong></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><strong>Julieta Ojeda:</strong>
In principle Evo is a symbol of an indigenous man who has come to
power, has taken the powerful role of president, and with the very fact
of his being indigenous one assumes he would defend the indigenous. But
the relation he’s assumed with the thirty-four different indigenous
nationalities reveal that he isn’t a man who identifies with this image.
They say he’s indigenous, right? And yes, he is, but he identifies
primarily with the <em>cocaleros</em> [coca farmers]. In one sense he’s not indigenous but a <em>cocalero</em>,
and he responds to that sector. And there’s another issue. [Under the
MAS] there are first [class] indigenous and indigenous of the second
[class]. And another issue is that of Aymara-centrism and the indigenous
people who have value in this government are in the west and not the
others, those of the lowlands.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;">It
has been made clear to us that [Evo] isn’t going to be a man who
respects nature, that is, who respects “Pachamama” as he’s proposed in
his discourse. His government has a developmentalist project, a bad
developmentalist project if you will, because the lowland indigenous
people have their own forms of rational exploitation, or sustainable
management of their resources. […] There is a vision of development, but
a development that doesn’t destroy nature. And the government of Evo
Morales is completely with the other vision.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><strong>BD & AH: How is the MAS co-opting social movements in order to maintain and extend its own political power? </strong></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><strong>JO:</strong>
The MAS has penetrated certain organizations and divided them. They
enter these social movement spaces and create divisions by forming their
own parallel organizations. This is a common social movement or
opposition group practice; the MAS didn’t invent it. The difference now
is that those in the government occupy another space on the political
stage. They are no longer a social movement but they continue
functioning like a union, or a movement, and continue working at this
level of wanting to infiltrate organizations and divide them.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;">For
example, the divisions created in the indigenous movement from the
lowlands [were produced by the MAS]. They did this after the eighth
march [against the highway through TIPNIS], as it was ending. There had
been unity up to then; obviously there were disagreements and all, but
they’d preferred to put their differences aside to show unity. But
starting with the ending of the eighth march, [MAS] began to co-opt the
leaders and the communities inside of the lowland organizations. It’s
the same thing they do with other social conflicts, such as the recent
one with the doctors, when they signed an agreement with the health
administrators but not with the doctors. So it becomes a long struggle,
already at least two months of conflict.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;">They
sign an agreement with one sector, and not with the other; it’s what
they do with the miners, and what they do in regional conflicts,
creating factions opposed to those who are moving mobilizations forward.
So this is a permanent practice of the MAS to generate parallel groups
to oppose the others.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><strong> </strong></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><strong>BD & AH: In the current political climate, how do you see the role of Mujeres Creando and the impact of its work?</strong></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><strong>JO:</strong>
We’ve managed to consolidate spaces, like this house itself, a space in
this house, and also a certain degree of social legitimacy and
political relevance. That’s to say, Mujeres Creando has a place and a
space within society, but that’s also very relative. Because it’s true
for some things and not for others. We’ve always been opening a space in
radio, and also very persistent in our political project.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;">Nevertheless,
we’ve also publicly taken a position with respect to the policies of
Evo Morales, in the case of TIPNIS and the eighth march, which we joined
and supported with all our resources. And so we’ve been very critical
of certain leaders and in defense of this territory and against the
proposed highway that would cross that territory, because that’s playing
with the future.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;">And
we’ve also criticized the machismo of the president on various
occasions, the machismo of the government in its various manifestations.
For instance, the attempts to organize the Miss Universe pageant here
in Bolivia—and all this we do not with writing letters but rather in
public actions.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;">We’re
trying to generate a broader, more open debate [on abortion]. The
Church is opposed and it’s brought out all its weapons to bring
discussion to an end. In this case the government of Evo Morales has
been very lukewarm. This is a very conservative government as far as gay
rights and abortion or anything having to do with women or women’s
rights. They talk about what they’ve done, like the mother’s bonus, an
allowance for mothers, but you have to be a mother to get it. So once
again it reinforces the idea that women are only of value as mothers.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
government doesn’t really see us as an enemy, but rather we’re like a
little rock in the shoe, a constant irritation. But neither have they
decided to do anything to us, because when the government decides that
someone is an enemy, it’s terribly vengeful; with dissidents they try to
bury them politically. But we’re just a little rock in the shoe, and
we don’t really focus too much on the government’s policies since we
have our own political project, and that’s only part of what we do.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;">***</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>For more information, visit <a href="http://www.mujerescreando.org/">http://www.mujerescreando.org/</a></em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>This interview will be included in the forthcoming book, <a href="https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=567">Until the Rulers Obey: Voices from Latin American Social Movements</a>, edited by Clifton Ross and Marcy Rein, (PM Press, January 2014) </em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>Interview translation by Clifton Ross</em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em> </em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>Benjamin Dangl is a doctoral candidate in Latin American history at McGill University, and is the author of <a href="http://www.akpress.org/dancing-with-dynamite-social-movements-and-states-in-latin-america.html">Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America</a> and <a href="http://www.akpress.org/priceoffireakpress.html">The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia</a>. He edits <a href="http://upsidedownworld.org//">UpsideDownWorld.org</a>, a media outlet on activism and politics in Latin America, and <a href="http://towardfreedom.com//">TowardFreedom.com</a>, a progressive perspective on world events. Email: Bendangl(at)gmail(dot)com</em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em> </em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>April Howard teaches Latin American history at SUNY Plattsburgh.</em></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-21463467036763932382013-11-05T12:00:00.000-08:002013-11-05T12:00:00.841-08:00¿Se puede ser anarquista sin ser feminista? (2004)<br />
<a name='more'></a>http://www.nodo50.org/mujerescreativas/LIBERTAR.htm<br />
<br />¿Se puede ser anarquista sin ser feminista? <br /><br />"Sed pues abierta y enteramente anarquistas, y no un cuarto, un octavo o un dieciseisavo de anarquista, del mismo modo que se es un cuarto, un octavo o un dieciseisavo de agente de cambio" <br /><br /> <a href="http://www.nodo50.org/mujerescreativas/PROUDHON.htm">J.Déjacque</a> a P.J. Proudhon <br /><br />¿Machista, pero anarquista? Hemos podido leer en un artículo titula "La cadena o las bragas" firmado por el Grupo Libertario de Ivry las siguientes palabras a propósito de Proudhon: "Se puede ser anarquista y defender el peor de los machismos". Es posible, pero lo que no dicen los autores del artículo es si tal declaración es legítima. Joseph Déjacque, hace más de un siglo, era más radical cuando interpelaba así a Proudhon (admirándolo, por otra parte): "No se considere anarquista o séalo hasta el final". Me parece interesante hacer un breve viaje al siglo XIX con el fin de ver cuáles eran por entonces los vínculos entre anarquismo y feminismo. En efecto, si la misoginia de Proudhon ha constituido durante mucho tiempo un referente para la clase obrera, se olvida muy a menudo que en época se elevaron otras voces que fueron comprendidas. Joseph Déjacque o André Léo, respondiendo a las tesis inadmisibles (y no anarquistas) de Proudhon, demostraron hasta qué punto los ámbitos políticos y privados estaban indisociablemente ligados y afirmaron que no se puede uno considerar anarquista si no es feminista. Me parece importante recordar estos viejos debates de hace más de un siglo, porque si con frecuencia nos lamentamos que los anarquistas hayan sido eliminados de la historia oficial, olvidamos también decir que los anarquistas feministas forman parte de la historia del anarquismo... <br /><br />Los vínculos entre feminismo y anarquismo en el siglo XIX <br /><br />Si sobre la cuestión del feminismo los anarquistas del siglo XIX han estado por detrás de sus ideas revolucionarias, y si, siguiendo a Proudhon, se oyeron numerosas declaraciones antifeministas en los medios revolucionarios, anarquistas o socialistas, existe no obstante una corriente feminsta que se opone, en el seno mismo del anarquismo, a la ideología dominante. Se puede considerar que nace con Joseph Déjacqu, que se enfrenta a Proudhon en el tema de los derechos de las mujeres. <br /><br />Joseph Déjacque (1821-1864) puede ser considerado discípulo de Proudhon y de Fourier. Pierre Leroux ve en él al principal representante del anarquismo en Francia. En un artículo sobre los orígenes de las teorías socialistas (1885) escribió: "Ya no es Proudhon, en efecto, el que puede representar hoy a esta secta, debido a la conclusión final (la mujer esclava de la autoridad marital) a que ha dado lugar. Hacía falta otro. El estandarte de la libertad está hoy en manos de uno de sus discípulos, de un anarquista mucho más en serio que él. Se trata de Déjacque". En una carta dirigida a Proudhon en mayo de 1857, Déjacque demuestra cómo Proudhon, al negar los derechos de las mujeres, se muestra "igual que sus amos". Déjacque plantea el reto esencial de la igualdad de lso sexos: una revolución que hace desaparecer una forma de alienación pero que deja subsistir otra forma de dominación no es tal. La familia que defiende Proudhon, basada en el orden patriarcal, "concede al patriarcado lo mismo que el gobierno representativo es para la mayoría absoluta". La esclavitud de la mujer tiene consecuencias a la vez directamente políticas (hablamos aquí del principio de autoridad absoluta) y morales: del mismo modo que ningún hombre puede ser libre sin que lo sean los demás, ningún ser masculino podrá considerarse independiente mientras mantenga a las mujeres en situación de inferioridad, porque "quien ha sido amamantado por una esclava tendrá sangre de esclavo en sus venas"- Negar los derechos y la inteligencia de la mujer es reproducir lo que hacen los burgueses y aristócratas cuando niegan los derecho y la inteligencia al proletariado. Joseph Déjacque es uno de los primeros, junto a Proudhon, en reivindicar el término anarquista (tras la revolución de 1848); de origen popular y autodidacta elaboró y publicó, él solo, Le libertaire en el exilio. <br /><br />Pero no fue el único, a finales del siglo XIX, que insistió en la construcción de la igualdad entre hombres y mujeres como condición del anarquismo. En la "conquista del pan" (1892), Kropotkin insiste en la alienación producida por el trabajo doméstico, y se enfrenta explícitamente a los revolucionarios que quieren la liberación del género humano sin trabajar por los derechos de la mujer. Mencionaremos igualmente a André Léo, una de las escasas feministas [francesas] cercanas al anarquismo. Ella no sólo lucha en el terreno de las leyes, sino también en el de las mentalidades. Lejos de limitarse a exigir el sufragio universal, se opone sobre todo a los revolucionarios poco consecuentes: los revolucionarios de la calle son muchas veces reaccionario en sus hogares. Ataca, por tanto, al sistema patriarcal en "La mujer y las costumbres". En "Monarquía o libertad" escribe en respuesta a las tesis misóginas de Proudhon, donde denuncia a los llamados partidarios de la libertad que se convierten en déspotas cuando entran en sus casas, y afirma que un Estado en el que la mujer está oprimida no puede ser sino autoritario. <br /><br />Este género de críticas ha sido largamente recogido en los periódicos de la época, especialmente en los de Jean Grave. La Revolté, por ejemplo, reproduce el 17 de febrero de 1889 una carta de un lector que se indigna porque "los peores revolucionarios [ciertos revolucionarios] son soberanos no sólo en el hogar y a la mesa, sino también en la cama, donde transforman a sus mujeres en prostitutas": En Le Trimard, en 1896, el escritor anarquista Mécislas Golberg denuncia el hecho de que la mujer haya sido situada en el rango de la propiedad, e invoca a los revolucionarios: "Nosotros, seres sociales y antifamiliares, debemos ante todo hacer a la mujer consciente de su fuerza social". Golberg va más allá al esbozar una visión radicalmente distinta de la sexualidad. A diferencia de otros colectivos poco inclinados a abordar los problemas de la vida sexual, los anarquistas consideran a menudo la liberación sexual como parte de la emancipación integral del individuo. En sus "Cartas a Alexis (historia sentimental de un pensamiento)" podemos leer, en el capítulo titulado "Del amor", lo siguiente: "El amor es el sentimiento que una voluntad extraña nos da de nuestra propia voluntad. A menudo se produce entre personas de sexo distinto, otras veces entre gentes del mismo sexo. Eso importa poco en el fondo [...] yo creo que hombre y hombre, o mujer y mujer pueden también formar una unidad. Es ridículo creer que toda división de la materia viva establece contradicciones". <br /><br />Vemos, pues, que incluso en el siglo XIX, hay suficientes anarquistas conscientes del vínculo entre política y sexualidad, que han comprendido la necesidad de un feminismo anarquista, para poder dispensar de esta tema a Proudhon. <br /><br />Caroline Granier <br /><br />(Le monde libertaire)<br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />Extraído y copiado de la versión impresa de <a href="http://www.nodo50.org/tierraylibertad/">Tierra y Libertad</a>, marzo 2004. <br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-52910723538463733362013-10-24T12:00:00.000-07:002013-10-24T12:00:03.003-07:00La anarquía es un suelo fecundo para las mujeres (2006)<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
"La anarquía es un suelo fecundo para las mujeres" <br /><br /><img height="320" src="http://www.nodo50.org/mujerescreativas/ale_pinto.jpg" width="240" /><br /> Entrevista a Alejandra Pinto, anarcofeminista chilena y coautora con Adriana Palomera, del libro "Mujeres y Prensa Anarquista en Chile [1897-1931]", editado recientemente por Ediciones Espíritu Libertario, de Santiago de Chile. <br /><br />Nota: la presente entrevista fue realizada por Agencia de Noticias Anarquistas y recibida en anarqlat. <br /><br />Agencia de Noticias Anarquistas > ¿Como surgió la idea y la motivación de escribir "Mujeres y prensa anarquista en Chile [1897-1931]"? <br /><br />Alejandra Pinto < En realidad, fue poco lo escribimos nosotras, junto a Adriana Palomera. Lo que más hicimos fue transcribir los textos escritos por mujeres en prensa anarquista que encontramos en periódicos microfilmados en la Biblioteca Nacional de Santiago de Chile. <br /><br />La motivación inicial fue como una especie de conjugación y encuentro entre lo que estaba haciendo Paloma para su tésis de magíster y mis propias ganas de indagar en los archivos. Ella tenía contratada a una amiga en común, Jacquelín Peña, que iba una o dos veces a la semana a revisar periódicos anarquistas de comienzos del siglo XX para extraer de allá la información sobre el anarquismo en la patagonia. Yo supe de su trabajo y me picó el bichito de buscar textos escritos por mujeres, luego Paloma le encargó lo mismo a Jacquelin, así es que como estábamos haciendo las dos lo mismo, decidimos unificar fuerzas y hacer una sola búsqueda. Luego Jacquelin se retiró y quedamos las dos. <br /><br />ANA > ¿Además de la Biblioteca Nacional de Santiago del Chile investigaron en otros archivos, por ejemplo, en los archivos personales de compañeros o agrupaciones anarquistas? ¿Fueron muchos años de investigación reuniendo material? <br /><br />Alejandra < De hecho, los periódicos microfilmados eran todos anarquistas. Por eso los escogimos. Mi socia, Adriana Palomera es del área de la historia por lo que tuvo acceso a la bibliografía pertinente que nos permitió seleccionar los periódicos en los cuales buscar.<br /> Sí había más material de otros escritores ácratas, algunos muy interesantes y con mucha vigencia.<br /> Nos demoramos como dos años en juntar el material y luego otros tantos en publicarlo. Llevamos años con este trabajo que fue absolutamente autogestionado y autofinanciado... <br /><br />ANA > ¿La presencia de las mujeres en la prensa anarquistas era común, voluminosa, o algo "solitaria" y esporádica? <br /><br />Alejandra < Podríamos decir que es una presencia que oscila entre lo marginal y lo establecido como norma “correcta”. Encontramos cerca de 70 textos escritos por mujeres en una decena de periódicos en un lapso de tiempo que bordea la treintena. Es decir, si lo analizas en términos de cantidad no es mucho. Pero el anarquismo siempre ha estado “preocupado” por el tema de “la mujer”. También encontramos textos escritos por hombres que tocaban el tema de “la mujer”. <br /><br />ANA > ¿Las mujeres escribian sobre cualquier tema, o sobre algo más especifico del "universo" femenino? <br /><br />Alejandra < La verdad es que las mujeres formaban parte, como tales, de un movimiento político más extenso que era el anarquismo o la lucha social. Ellas eran mujeres, ante todo, pero también eran instigadoras, luchadoras sociales. Su textos son, en su mayoría, arengas para que las mujeres despierten y se incorporen a la lucha social, pero desde una perspectiva femenina. Es en el cruce que se da entre lo femenino y la lucha social desde donde hablan. <br /><br />Tenemos que pensar que en aquella época, albores del siglo XX, la denominada “cuestión social” en Chile estaba en pleno auge. Es decir las condiciones de vida y de trabajo de miles de chilenos y chilenas eran demasiado precarias. Por eso las mujeres se levantan y critican al capitalismo y nos hablan de cómo las mujeres deben participar y sumarse a la lucha social. <br /><br />Existen también algunos textos que nos hablan de lo específico de la dominación de la mujer, del yugo del matrimonio, de lo poco libre que es. Estos textos podríamos decir que son más específicamente “feministas”, aunque para las libertarias el feminismo era algo burgués de lo que no se hacían cargo. <br /><br />ANA> ¿Algunas de las mujeres investigadas le conmovió en especial? <br /><br />Alejandra < Me gustó mucho Valentina Franco que es una mujer que escribe desde la Pampa nortina, desde una oficina salitrera. Ella le escribe a una amiga que se va a casar, y en un tono, que yo diría que es muy lésbico, la alerta de todo lo que tendrá que sufrir por casarse y de todo lo que perderá. <br /><br />Me gustó porque la encuentro avanzada, valiente, pensando en sus condiciones de vida y de encierro ya sean materiales como subjetivas. <br /><br />ANA > ¿ Encontró alguna cosa curiosa al investigar el libro? ¿Una historia interesante? <br /><br />Alejandra < Tal vez sea este el momento de mencionar, como cosa curiosa, ciertas dudas que expresan algunas “vacas sagradas” del estudio histórico aquí en Chile. Me han planteado las dudas de que estos textos hayan sido escritos por mujeres. Es decir, se parte de la base de que las mujeres eran incapaces de escribir estos textos, lo que implica, una vez más, un sexismo aberrante. Se duda de la autenticidad de la autoría de estos textos a partir de un prejuicio historiográfico que implica que muchos hombres tomaban pseudónimos de mujer por lo que es muy probable que muchos de nuestros textos no sean escritos por mujeres. <br /><br />Nosotras encaramos ese prejuicio y aclaramos en la introducción que, aun cuando no hubieran sido escritos por mujeres, encarnan una subjetividad de lo “femenino”. Pero creemos, vehementemente, que estos textos son en su mayoría de mujeres, porque las mujeres siempre hemos estado en las luchas sociales. Hay que recordar la revolución francesa donde las mujeres eran sus principales agitadoras y que luego, al triunfo de la revolución, se les quitó la categoría de ciudadanas por el temor que les inspiraba a los hombres esta presencia femenina. <br /><br />ANA > ¿En la época investigada hubo alguna publicación que se haya destacado por haber sido hecha "sólo" por mujeres? <br /><br />Alejandra < Aquí en Chile no encontramos nada de ese caríz. Pero sabemos que sí hubo periódicos de esa índole en Argentina. Puede que en Chile existieran periódicos hechos sólo por mujeres pero no eran necesariametne anarquistas. <br /><br />ANA > ¿En sus investigaciones, además de mujeres escritoras anarquistas, encontró mujeres dibujantes, ilustradoras de la prensa anarquista? <br /><br />Alejandra < "Dibujantes"? No, no encontramos a nadie que fuera ilustradora. Por el momento, al menos, creo que no se nos había ni ocurrido. <br /><br />ANA > ¿Ustedes continuarán con esas investigaciones, abarcando otras décadas? ¿Algún otro libro en proyectos? <br /><br />Alejandra < Mi socia tiene más visión proyectiva que yo, yo soy más “presentista”, por vivir el presente. Y ella ya está pensando en seguir con otras líneas de investigación que ya veremos si llegan a término. <br /><br />ANA > ¿Es posible observar muchas diferencias entre la mujer anarquista de aquella época y las del presente? <br /><br />Alejandra < Yo diría que, si es que se pudiera hablar de un anarcofeminismo temprano, estamos, más o menos, en las mismas condiciones. Una especificidad femenina que puede llegar al deseo de una organización exclusiva de mujeres, como serán Mujeres Libres de España o posteriormente en los setenta los grupos tras la huella de Peggy Kornegger, cruzado con la “garra” libertaria o ácrata. Es decir la anarquía es un suelo fecundo para las mujeres, porque permite hablar de una dominación que afecta especialmente a las mujeres, pero no exclusivamente a ellas. Permite hablar de que la dominación tiene que ver con el patriarcado y con el capitalismo, en un mismo nivel. No como pensaban las marxistas que una vez solucionado el problema de la “clase” se terminaba el problema de la dominación. <br /><br />Pienso que tal vez una diferencia importante es los pocos espacios que tenían las mujeres de esa época, en comparación a los espacios que tenemos ahora. Pero somos, básicamente, las mismas mujeres, con sensibilidades similares, con inquietudes similares, que antes y ahora estamos presente en las luchas sociales. Aunque haya cambiado algo el escenario. <br /><br />ANA > No hice una investigación exhaustiva, pero tengo la sensación de que la presencia de las mujeres en la prensa anarquista actual, en muchos lugares no es muy diferente de la que ocupaban en tiempos pasados. O sea, ocupa un espacio limitado con respecto a los hombres; son los hombres los que escriben, dibujan... Por otro lado, también observo que en la prensa "anarquista verde", esa diferencia no es tan marcada, la participación de las mujeres es mucho más efectiva, ellas se expresan más... ¿Enfin, sabría explicar porqué sucede así? <br /><br />Alejandra < Tengo la impresión de que en el “anarquismo” en general, se produce poco texto escrito, a no ser honrosas excepciones como son Hernún en Argentina, Tierra y Libertad, El Libertario, lo que publica la Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo, etc. Pero se repite el mismo cánon, la poca producción directa de mujeres. <br /><br />En torno a este tema de las libertarias de inicios del siglo veinte, hay varias mujeres en países como Argentina o EE.UU. que han realizado trabajos de investigación en este ámbito. <br /><br />Pienso que las mujeres escribimos menos, en general, porque, tal vez, estemos más en el mundo de la vida. Preocupadas del transcurrir diario, pienso y tal vez sea un prejuicio. Pero también noto que en el mundo feminista esto no es tan así, hay muchas mujeres escribiendo en el ámbito amplio del feminismo y, por otro lado, el anarcofeminismo está agarrando cada vez más vuelo, por lo menos aquí en Chile.<br /> No sé a qué te refieres con “anarquismo verde”, ¿al ecológico? Si es así no tengo mucha información sobre ello. <br /><br />ANA > Sí, yo me refiero a la ecología en una perspectiva radical, libertaria... Pero, cuéntenos un poco acerca de esos "vuelos" del anarcofeminismo en Chile. ¿Qué destacaría? <br /><br />Alejandra < No conozco lo del anarquismo verde. Aquí en Chile, logramos, de forma incipiente, generar una especie de coordinación entre mujeres y grupos anarcofeministas. A partir de esta plataforma fuimos organizadas a la marcha del 8 de marzo donde el gobierno quería dar una imagen de que "las mujeres" habían llegado al poder. Nosotras convocamos a una "antimarcha" para desvelar que "la liberación de la mujer no tiene candidat@s", es decir, no es llegando al "poder" como nos liberamos hombres y mujeres. <br /><br />Hicimos una especie de performance donde nos disfrazamos representando a cada uno de los poderes del Estado que encadenaban a una niña. Estuvo muy bueno. De ahí no nos hemos coordinado más pero las ganas están. <br /><br />ANA > Una curiosidad. ¿El material histórico del movimiento anarquista chileno, periódicos, revistas, folhetos etc., están bien conservados? <br /><br />Alejandra < El material microfilmado está en buenas condiciones y me parece que es bastante y, lo mejor o más importante, que el acceso a él es libre, es decir, no tienes que acreditar ser investigador como en otras bibliotecas dle mundo. Hay que aclarar, sin embargo, que este material que se encuentra microfilmado es de fines del siglo XIX y principios del XX, después no sé si se pueda encontrar más material de otras décadas, no soy experta en este tema. <br /><br />ANA > Para finalizar, un mensaje a nuestros lectores, dirigido en especial a las mujeres anarquistas, libertarias, rebeldes, brujas...[risas] Gracias! <br /><br />Alejandra < No sé, Moésio, el momento histórico que nos toca vivir es complejo, para hombres y mujeres. Estamos en la bisagra de un nuevo milenio y ya los roles del siglo pasado se notan como patrones cansados, pero, por otro lado es difícil inventar cosas nuevas. Creo que en eso estamos. Creo que en relación al tema de género [hombres/mujeres] estamos pasando por un momento de crísis y de renovación. Siento que van cayendo algunas opresiones, pero siempre desde una perspectiva individual. <br /><br />Pienso en las altas cifras de la violencia en contra de las mujeres, en países como España, por ejemplo, y una se alarma con tanta muerte anual por la violencia de género. Pero creo que no podemos dejar de mirar al agresor, también, en este caso al hombre. Creo que “los hombres” también están pasando por una crísis donde tal vez este recurso de la violencia sea una forma de ahuyentar los fantasmas de la pérdida del poder. Si pudiera enviar algún mensaje sería tanto para nuestras compañeras como para nuestros compañeros: a superar la dominación sexista, la dominación capitalista, la dominación en todo sentido, a superar el PodeUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-66352230505393655032013-10-11T12:00:00.000-07:002013-10-11T12:00:04.182-07:00Feminismo Y Anarquismo (2006)<br />
<a name='more'></a>http://www.nodo50.org/mujerescreativas/FEMINISMO%20Y%20ANARQUISMO.htm<br /><br />La Historia nos demuestra que los acontecimientos nunca suceden de manera casual; son consecuencia de una larga serie de circunstancias, de muy diversos tipos y orígenes, encadenadas entre sí <br /><br />Tanto el feminismo como el anarquismo tuvieron como antecedentes numerosas historias de desigualdades, injusticias y atropellos y su enclave histórico se sitúa en una sociedad decimonónica donde la burguesía, gestante de la revolución industrial y política, veía como la clase obrera se revelaba cansada de soportar todas las cargas sin poder disfrutar de los privilegios. Pero hay ciertos aspectos que diferencian fundamentalmente la lucha de los trabajadores de la específicamente femenina. En la primera se da una conciencia de clase que no existe entre las mujeres, ya que ellas se sienten mas unidas a los varones de su propio status que a sus compañeras de género pertenecientes a status diferentes. Así mismo, habría que añadir la escasa conciencia social femenina, consecuencia de muchos siglos de sumisión y tutelaje. Es cierto que hubo pensadores como Stuart Mill que se implicaron en la defensa de los derechos femeninos, pero ninguna revolución puede hacerse sin sus protagonistas. La mujer tenía que suprimir una mentalidad que la alienaba al varón y aprender a valorarse y sentirse autosuficiente.. <br /><br /> El sentido de confusión en que se han movido históricamente los vocablos feminismo y anarquismo, contribuye a que, tanto las personas defensoras como las detractoras de estos términos, descarguen sobre ellos golpes ciegos sin saber muchas veces que defienden o que combaten. <br /><br /> El feminismo primitivo, propulsor del derecho de la mujer a una participación política, ha dado paso a numerosas formas de feminismo que sería demasiado largo analizar. Algunas de ellas ven al hombre como un oponente a quien combatir a cualquier precio, pero no son esas las que interesan a las mujeres anarquistas, ya que estas consideran al varón como un compañero que necesita ser concienciado, ya que se encuentra tan castrado por la sociedad patriarcal como la propia mujer. <br /><br /> Feminismo y anarquismo no son dos ideas contrapuestas, sino complementarias. Ambas aspiran a una sociedad formada por seres iguales, libres y responsables. El anarquismo lucha por la emancipación del individuo y, como tal, también por la mujer, pero ella sabe que solo puede llevarse a cabo una revolución igualitaria si todos los individuos que participan en ella lo hacen en las mismas condiciones. <br /><br /> El problema de la emancipación femenina no surge de la diferenciación genética entre hombre y mujer, ya que las desigualdades biológicas que separan a ambos son muy escasas. La falta de entendimiento entre los dos géneros que forman la Humanidad se genera en un ejercicio de poder. <br /><br /> La subordinación de la mujer al hombre no se ha debido nunca a cuestiones de tipo biológico, sino ideológico y económico. <br /><br /> <br /><br />Salvo en casos excepcionales, debido a situaciones de privilegio, la mujer no tuvo conciencia de su opresión como género hasta finales del s. XVIII. En 1791, la Revolución Francesa asumió en parte las inquietudes femeninas con la publicación de "Los derechos de la mujer y la ciudadana", que redactó Olimpia de Gouges basándose en la Declaración de los Derechos del Hombre. Casi simultáneamente, Mary Wollstonecraft, seguidora ideológica de Saint Simón y Fouriere, publicaba en Gran Bretaña "Vindicación de los derechos de la mujer" y provocaba una catarsis en una sociedad donde los derechos femeninos eran inexistentes y las normas legales sometían a la mujer a una total obediencia y dependencia del varón. Este debía ser ciegamente obedecido por las mujeres de su familia, era quien fijaba el domicilio conyugal, quien debía autorizar a la compra o venta de cualquier bien y quien se quedaba con todo el patrimonio en caso de separación o abandono. <br /><br />No obstante, debido a la indiferencia social, las corrientes de opinión favorables a la emancipación femenina no tomaron cuerpo hasta mediados del s.XIX . Mujeres como Flora Tristán, E. Cady Stone o Lucrecia Mott sembraron las primeras semillas de rebeldía. Numerosos grupos femeninos se organizaron en Francia, EE.UU. y Gran bretaña, y salieron a la calle solicitando su derecho al voto como elemento de presión política para conseguir ciertas mejoras. Incluso hubo inmolaciones a favor de la causa, como el suicidio de Emily Davison que se arrojó a los pies de los caballos que corrían el Derby de Epsom.. <br /><br />Así comenzó un imparable movimiento sufragista que sería el germen del feminismo. Millicent G. Fawcett fundó en Gran bretaña una asociación que, tras cincuenta años de lucha consiguió en 1918, una ley aceptando el voto de las mujeres mayores de 30 años. Así mismo, Emmeline G. Pankhurst fundó en Londres, en 1903, la Unión Femenina Social y Política y Brunschwing, en 1909, fue la creadora de la "Unión Francesa para el Voto de las Mujeres". <br /><br />En Alemania hasta 1908, se consideraba a la mujer solo apta para "el hogar, los niños y la iglesia" y en Gran Bretaña, universidades tan prestigiosas como Oxford Harvard o Candbridge, seguieron manteniendo cerradas sus puertas a la mujer. Ni la burguesía ni el proletariado facilitaban la incorporación social del mundo femenino. Pese a todo, una nación tras otra fue reconociendo el derecho de las mujeres al voto, con excepción, entre otras, de Francia y Suiza.. Pero como pudo comprobarse muy pronto, el voto no había dado a la mujer su libertad y, tras un corto letargo, el feminismo surgió de nuevo con otras reivindicaciones y metas diferentes. <br /><br /> <br /><br /> Paralelo al despertar de la conciencia femenina en el S. XIX, estaba tomando cuerpo el anarquismo. William Godwin (1756-1936) atacaba la propiedad privada y acusaba al estado de basar su existencia en la fuerza y en la opresión del individuo y posteriormente Proudhon (1809-1865), que también condenaba la propiedad privada, rechazaba la actividad política y defendía un sistema social en el cual la libertad no surgiría de un orden, sino que sería el origen del mismo.. <br /><br />El Anarquismo nunca hizo diferenciación de géneros, pero sus ideólogos, resultado de la época que les tocó vivir, ignoraron por completo a la mujer. <br /><br />Fue la Revolución Industrial, con la incorporación de millones de mujeres al trabajo asalariado, quien sirvió como revulsivo a una situación en exceso injusta; aunque bien es verdad que el cambio se inició muy lenta y paulatinamente. La sociedad burguesa admitió a la mujer en el mundo laboral, pero considerándola un individuo de segunda clase. Trabajadora poco cualificada y por tanto mano de obra barata, era fácilmente manipulable debido a unos rígidos principios religiosos y morales y estaba llena de miedos y prejuicios. <br /><br />La inhumana situación que empezaron a soportar las mujeres en las fábricas situó la reivindicación de la emancipación femenina en el centro de una lucha social y política. Se produjo así una alianza histórica, la del feminismo con los movimientos obreros. <br /><br />A pesar todo lo dicho anteriormente, la mujer obrera, sin acceso a la cultura, sin derechos legales y con muy bajada autoestima debido a su secular sometimiento al varón, no se encontraba capacitada para iniciar su propia revolución. <br /><br />Debemos observar como las primeras mujeres sufragistas no solo surgieron de la burguesía, lo que les permitía tener una saneada economía , sino que estuvieron unidas a hombres con inquietudes sociales. Podemos mencionar, entre otros muchos ejemplos, a Mary Wollstonecraft que estaba casada con el ya mencionado William Godwin, considerado por muchas personas como el primer teórico anarquista y a Millicent Fawcett , esposa de Henry Faucett, discípulo de los economistas Smith y Stuart Mill , profesor de economía política en Cambridge y Ministro de Correos británico en 1880. <br /><br />Como podemos deducir del anterior análisis, los movimientos feministas tienen una raíz burguesa y sufragista. Pretendían conseguir la igualdad de los géneros tomando como base la posición del varón en la sociedad; es decir, no buscaban una transformación social, sino la participación de la mujer en los privilegios, el poder y los estamentos jerárquicos que hasta entonces eran exclusivamente masculinos. Por esto, las mujeres anarquistas nunca se consideraron feministas e incluso llegaron a ridiculizar a quienes eran consideradas como tales. Se automarginaron y a la vez fueron marginadas por el feminismo. Sin embargo, todas ellas desencadenaron una lucha férrea contra la sociedad patriarcal y dejaron patente su voluntad de enfrentarse tanto al estado que las alienaba en cuanto personas, como al patriarcado que les impedía su liberación como mujeres. Sin ellas mismas saberlo estaban actuando como verdaderas feministas puesto que se desvinculaban de la lucha masculina en cuanto género. <br /><br /> <br /><br />Mientras en el resto de Europa, los movimientos feministas surgieron de la concienciación de las mujeres, en España fueron los intelectuales varones quienes se preocuparon del feminismo. La falta de un desarrollo industrial, de una clase media fuerte y numerosa y la inestabilidad política que dominó España hasta 1975, frenaron los avances educativos de la mujer y la imposibilitaron para tomar conciencia de su situación. El siglo XX comenzó con una población analfabeta del 63,7 por 100, solo algo inferior a la de Portugal que estaba en 709,1 por 100 y Bulgaria que se encontraba en el 80 por 100. Y la mayoría de ese analfabetismo estaba entre las mujeres <br /><br />Solo dos mujeres, María Egipcíaca Demaner y Gongoreda y Josefa Amar y Borbón, se interesaron por el tema de la instrucción femeninaen el s. XVIII y lo hicieron de una manera elitista, en la que se identificaban dinero e inteligencia se identificaban y la mujer del pueblo era volorada exclusivamente como elemento productivo. <br /><br />No podemos hablar de movimientos feministas hasta el s. XX, aunque sí de feminismo, ya que aparecieron corrientes, aunque no organizadas, que lucharon por la emancipación de la mujer; como las surgidas en torno a Emilia Pardo Bazán, Concepción Arenal o Cecilia Böll de Faber (Fernan Caballero), traductoras de numerosas obras de feministas francesas y británicas <br /><br />Como precursora de los movimientos feministas aparece en Cataluña en 1871 la Asociación para la enseñanza de la mujer. En ese mismo año, Teresa Claramún organizó un sindicato para trabajadoras del textil y en 1903 Belén Segarra fundó la Federación de mujeres malagueñas. <br /><br />Teresa Mañé, conocida en los medios libertarios como Soledad Gustavo, fue una de las grandes feministas de principios de siglo pese a no haber utilizado nunca ese apelativo. Junto con su compañero, Juan Montseny ( escritor anarquista conocido con el pseudónimo de Federico Urales) fue editora de la Revista Blanca, publicación que llegó a dirigir mientras Urales se veía obligado a un exilio interior por orden gubernamental. <br /><br />En 1996, la Ley de Asociaciones dio paso a la formación de la Ley de Asociaciones diuó paso a la formación del Sindicato U.G.T. que agrupó a los trabajadores, casi de manera exclusiva, hasta la aparición del anarcosindicalismo con la C.N.T., que alcanzaría su máximo esplendor en 1931. <br /><br />En Junio-julio de 1908 , se celebró un congreso anarquista, del que saldría la "Federacin Regional de Trabajadores", embrión de la futura C.N.T., en el cual se trató la organización de la mujer en la lucha obrera y los medios a seguir para conseguirlo. El Congreso declaró "obligación ineludible procurar por todos los medios lícitos la organización de los sindicatos de mujeres (compañera, hijas etc..) que empleando su actividad en alguna industria u oficio convivan con los cenetistas. En los sindicatos mixtos, deberán las Juntas Administrativas ser mixtas también, a fín de que la mujer se interese por sus luchas y defienda directamente su emancipación económica". <br /><br />La C.N.T. se preocupó de atraer a la mujer española a su militancia, de resolver sus problemas laborales y de lograr su plena integración social. <br /><br />En 1910 se fundó en Barcelona la "Biblioteca popular per la Dona" y ese mismo año tuvo lugar el Congreso fundacional de la Confederación nacional del Trabajo. En el se reconoció oficialmente la necesidad del empleo femenino como base para la consecución de la independencia de la mujer mediante un salario que, en todo momento, debía ser equiparable al del hombre. No obstante, acostumbrado el varón a tutelar a la mujer como si de una menor de edad se tratase, debemos señalar que le costaba le costaba mucho poner en práctica lo que defendía de manera teórica. <br /><br />Al tratarse de un sindicato con planteamientos anarquistas, la CNT no apoyó ni participó en ningún momento de las aspiraciones de los denominados movimientos feministas. Partidaria de la acción directa, su lucha no se encaminó a la obtención del voto femenino, sino a la consecución de igualdades laborales y salariales para los dos géneros. <br /><br />A pesar de todo, el número de trabajadoras continuaba siendo minoritario. En 1921, con el desastre de "Annual", muchos combatientes prefirieron morir en inmundos barracones acondionados como hospitales sin ninguna ayuda médica, antes que ser curados por manos femeninas. A esa descalificación de la mujer en los comienzos del s. XX, se debe en parte el subdesarrollo de España en años posteriores. <br /><br />En 1920 se creó en Valencia la Sociedad Concepción Arenal y en 1922, Margarita Nelken publicó "La condición social de la Mujer" que contribuyó a la concienciación de buena parte da la sociedad femenina. <br /><br />En 1928 se fundó la Asociación Nacional de Mujeres Españolas, de tendencia izquierdista. Dos años después, Hildegart Rodríguez publicó "Al servicio de la Nueva Generación y un año más tarde, otra obra que despertó una encendida polémica en todo el país, "Educación sexual". <br /><br />Pero no fue hasta 1936, cuando anarquismo y feminismo unidos tomaron cuerpo en una organización que sirvió de revulsivo social. En ese mismo año se fundó la Agrupación Mujeres Libres, formada por mujeres militantes de la C.N.T., conscientes de que una revolución de mujeres solo podría ser realizada por mujeres. <br /><br />Mujeres Libres, propiciada por Lucia Sánchez Saornil, Mercedes Comaposada y Amparo Poch, llegó a contar con 119 agrupaciones, de las cuales 22 estaban en Madrid y 6 en Barcelona. El resto se dispersaban por Bélgica, Checoslovaquia, Francia, Holanda, Inglaterra, Polonia, Suecia, Argentina, EE.UU. etc. <br /><br /> Por mucho que se escriba sobre Mujeres Libres y por muchos homenajes que se le tributen, nunca se le podrá hacer justicia.. <br /><br />Quisieron ser una rama más del Movimiento Libertario, lo mismo que la C.N.T., la F.A.I. o JJ.LL, lucharon por su emancipación de la triple esclavitud, de género, cultural y laboral. Deseaban estar en la vanguardia de la Revolución Social que preconizaba el Anarquismo, y crear una conciencia solidaria entre hombres y mujeres para convivir sin ningún tipo de exclusiones y asumiendo una obra común. <br /><br />Aquellas mujeres tenían muy claro algo que actualmente defendemos otras muchas que nos consideramos anarquistas. El cambio social no supondrá la terminación feliz de todas las marginaciones femeninas. El Estado extiende los tentáculos de su poder sobre tres pilares sociales fundamentales, el laboral, el familiar y el educativo. Para esto necesita ejercer su fuerza sobre la mujer pero, como hay muchas facetas de la cotidianidad que se le escapan, ha buscado el apoyo del hombre convirtiéndolo en su cómplice. Este es manipulado para que ejerza por delegación su fuerzo sobre la mujer. <br /><br />¿Por qué el hombre se presta a este juego?. Sencillamente, porque el rol en que ha sido educado (y aquí las mujeres, como primeras educadoras tendrían que iniciar su "mea culpa"), le permite identificarse con el poder. Cualquier varón, aúnel más oprimido y ansioso de libertad, ve en el poder una tentación y un objetivo a alcanzar. Sin embargo, la mujer (y aquí no caben las excepciones que todos/as conocemos/) a costumbrada a padecer el poder sobre su cabeza, lo analiza desde la realidad de su vivencia cotidiana y puede verlo con la cotidianidad que da la lejanía. Ella sabe por experiencia que el poder en sí mismo supone la castraciuón, la negación de la libertad.. <br /><br /> El tipo de relación que la mujer se ve obligada a mantener con su entorno, es decir los roles de esposa y madre que la sociedad patriarcal ha establecido para ellas, hace que asuma los valores ideológicos dominantes a través de la educación , entendida como tal no solo la escolarización, sino la socialización global. <br /><br /> <br /><br />Es verdad que la mujer estás accediendo cada vez más al mundo de la cultura que ha entrado masivamente, no solo en la enseñanza media, sino también n la universitaria, pero también es verdad que, empeñada en que siga conservando sus roles tradicionales, la sociedad patriarcal la ha encaminado mayoritariamente hacia disciplinas consideradas humanísticas, en tanto que a los varones les ha incitado a las técnicas.. Esto ha ocasionado que las humanidades estén devaluadas y que se de prioridad a una enseñanza cada vez mas técnica y práctica.. <br /><br />La preparación intelectual que el poder concede a la mujer, intenta situarla en un segundo plano y sirve como pretexto para impedir su avance social. Su incorporación tiene así un carácter subsidiario, es decir, cuando el hombre no puede trabajar, los ingresos masculinos son escasos o la mujer no tiene pareja que la apoye económicamente. <br /><br />Sin embargo, la actual esclavitud de la mujer tiene unas connotaciones muy particulares. En cualquier caso de opresión, la lucha termina con al liberación el individuo subyugado, . Sin embargo, en el caso de la liberación femenina, no ocurre así. Ella no desea romper los lazos que la unen a su opresor. Por este motivo, la mujer que debe liberarse de esta sociedad pensada para los varones, ha de enseñar a estos a liberarse de sí mismos. La liberación de la mujer no se agotará,. por tanto en si misma, sino que tendrá que extrapolarse al varón si quiere ser eficaz. Y este es uno de los más importantes retos que tendrá que asumir.. <br /><br />Es posible que, sin ella misma percibirlo, la mujer actual esté poniendo los cimientos de una sociedad nueva, pero el verdadero cambio tiene que realizarse en su interior para continuar después en el interior del hombre.. <br /><br />Solo cuando él aprenda a resistir la tentación del poder, cuando aprenda a contemplarlo con una mirada más objetiva y libre de la que le permite su actual implicación, lograremos los dos géneros unidos nuestros objetivos, que no son contrapuestos, sino convergentes.. <br /><br />Ningún género puede ser realmente libre si no lo es el otro y esa sociedad en anarquía justa e igualitaria con que tantos y tantas soñamos, no podrá conseguirse jamás si la mitad de la humanidad permanece en silencio subyugada por la otra mitad.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-9143781269693335032013-10-08T12:00:00.000-07:002013-10-08T12:00:02.721-07:00Rehenes del Estado (2007)<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAjFneV-tcCA8DjIiGYGz6kHQo20YKeG26zvxE1uCg_Sq4dEathjvDXcGDULneZJbsWjwUtkr2W8CNdeBE6vWAHfZjGivtdLPvyJk8Q0BfKzIhgdMiaYsDfw-fKuwta5axcmKKKQP_PGg/s1600/1111.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAjFneV-tcCA8DjIiGYGz6kHQo20YKeG26zvxE1uCg_Sq4dEathjvDXcGDULneZJbsWjwUtkr2W8CNdeBE6vWAHfZjGivtdLPvyJk8Q0BfKzIhgdMiaYsDfw-fKuwta5axcmKKKQP_PGg/s320/1111.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
http://www.nodo50.org/mujerescreativas/paredes.htm<br />
<br />
Julieta Paredes <br />
<br />
Como feministas integrantes de Mujeres Creando estamos en la responsabilidad de no ser secundonas, es decir seguidoras ciegas, de lo que las masas, tan patriarcales ellas, quieran imponer. <br />
<br />
Cuando yo hablo, estoy hablando a nombre mío, pero no individualista sino que formo parte de un movimiento. Nosotras Mujeres Creando somos un movimiento feminista, aquí no hay ni jefas, ni representantes, aunque alguna quiera parecerlo, no hay jefas en Mujeres Creando, lo que dice cada una es su propia responsabilidad. <br />
<br />
Nuestro pueblo siempre a sido combativo, esta no es una novedad, la novedad de este momento es que estamos cercados por un muro de emputes acumulados pero que no tienen salidas claras, porque las salidas no aparecen, no son un acto de magia de pakpacos de Harvard o pakpakos (charlatanes) de la Plaza de San Francisco. Encontrar salidas es una acción de alumbramiento, es como parir una wawa que hay que cuidar siempre, una acción cotidiana y sostenida a través del tiempo, que poco a poco sienta bases de reflexión, acción y reacción ante diversos ataques que surgen del Estado depredador de sueños, una acción que creemos nosotras deben apuntar a anular el control del Estado sobre nuestras vidas y nuestras esperanzas. <br />
<br />
El sistema necesita tenernos en su cancha para darnos paliza. <br />
<br />
El patriarcado ha impuesto una lógica, una forma de relacionarse con los otros y otras, esta metodología de relación, tiene varios componentes, tácticas, técnicas y estrategias todos con el objetivo de que su poder no se acabe. Uno de los aspectos que nos ocupa hoy en el análisis es la metodología de arrastrar siempre al otro, a su terreno y una vez arribado el otro y la otra a su terreno, le dan con todo lo que pueden. <br />
<br />
El terreno es el de la violencia, el autoritarismo y la jerarquización, este terreno ha sido inventado por el Patriarcado, es el lenguaje de la guerra, es el lenguaje del poder. Si quienes queremos cambiar el sistema entramos en la cancha de la violencia, vamos a salir trasquiladas, nos van a hacer pomada, para eso están sus armas, que siempre ellos van a tener más y mejores armas que nosotras \ os, es claro porque ellos son los fabricantes de armas, ganan dinero de las guerras y conflictos armados, pero no es solo eso, no es solo cosa de armas, es a la vez una cultura de la violencia que se enraíza en nuestros comportamientos cotidianos, convirtiéndonos en tributarias, contribuidoras y contribuidores del sistema a través de nutrirlo con la violencia anidada en nuestras vidas, peligroso eso muy peligroso. <br />
<br />
Cuando el sistema no nos pueda arrastrar a su cancha, no va a saber como actuar contra nuestra lucha, de ahí que con creatividad y una convicción firme de que las formas violentas nos llevan solo a nutrir al poderoso, podemos lograr victorias profundas contra el sistema. <br />
<br />
Esto no es cosa de una persona, por muy anarquista que yo sea, no es un acto individual ni tampoco de grupo, tiene que ser un movimiento y ahí esta uno de nuestros desafíos avanzar hacia la construcción de un movimiento en circunstancias tan adversas y descalificadotas. <br />
<br />
En este momento no tenemos esa organización y tampoco un proyecto de país no tenemos propuesta sea como feministas o grupo o sindicato, pero no por eso vamos a la calle a correr con un cartel tras de todas o cualquier marcha que pasa por la vía pública dando vueltas como huyroncos sin saber a donde vamos y apostando cada día a que la cosa crece y los del gobierno apuestan a que no crece Puff, carajo puede crecer o no, lo importante es saber a donde vamos y eso no esta claro. Mal pues, no se trata de hacer seguidismos creo que tenemos que tratar de construir otro instrumento, los seguidismos son actos catárticos y justificatorios o como decimos un saludo a la bandera y punto. ¿¿Entonces hay que meterse en la casa y no hacer nada?? No, claro que no. <br />
<br />
El gas es para los juguetes de nuestras wawas no para que se masturben las transnacionales <br />
<br />
La crisis que estamos pasando tiene varios temas actoras actores y reivindicaciones, no es uno solo pero si hay un tema aglutinador, que es que el gas debe ser aprovechado por quienes vivimos en Bolivia. Inmediatamente surge la pregunta ¿Cómo?, y hay respuestas desde la NO venta a nadie y se queda solo para Bolivia, hasta si podría salir por Chile pero con buenos precios y buenas condiciones. Mi opinión es que la abrogar la ley de Hidrocarburos que regala nuestra riqueza a las transnacionales, es el primer paso, la revisión y corrección de la ley de capitalización el segundo y el tercero proyectos concretos de industrialización del gas aquí en Bolivia, estas son las bases de discusión, agarrar a puñetes a quien dice: venderemos, no nos permite discutir, que es lo mejor para Bolivia, si ahora aprendemos a escucharnos nos prepara para desechar al Estado como lugar de solución de nuestros problemas. Diferentes medios de comunicación están haciendo programas muy interesantes, de información y propuesta pero no hay una coordinación para aprovechar mejor estos espacios, que son de reflexión. Esta primando la acción de vomito de la gente en las calles, vomito que crece sin un sur donde arribar. <br />
<br />
Hay un tema articulador, el gas, pero no tenemos confianza ni credibilidad en la delegación de representación para la toma de decisiones sobre este fruto de la Pachamama y ahí estamos jodidas por eso es que el conflicto dura tanto, un gobierno de hienas mediocres (como Sánchez Berzaín y Yerco Kukoc) que se comen nuestras entrañas, no podrían con nosotras, pero nos paran con la represión y nuestra incapacidad de comprometernos y construir un instrumento antipatriarcal que haga cambios de verdad, somos repetitivas\os entramos a círculos viciosos y otros al circulo de la violencia para que nos derroten y nos vayamos con la cola entre las piernas. Que protestar no sirve, ¡sirve pues! claro que sirve, como autoafirmación, pero como presencia viva, la protesta tiene que tener una propuesta antipatriarcal sino, es a la corta o larga reciclar nomás al Patriarcado con nuevas figuras. <br />
<br />
Los hombres y mujeres de nuestro pueblo que no rompen o no quieren romper el cerco de la violencia que les atrae jugar en la cancha del Patriarcado violento, siempre nos van a causar pérdidas, ¿acaso no tenemos memoria? No rompen el cerco estatal de la violencia entran dentro del juego y se convierten en víctimas y rehenes del Estado, justo donde los querían tener. <br />
<br />
Quiero distinguir la violencia de la legítima defensa, no son lo mismo y no hay que confundir. La defensa es legítima contra quien te golpea directamente, por ejemplo el policía, el soldado, o tu marido o tu amigo. Si otra persona no piensa como tú o nosotras no le vamos a ir a pegar, porque dice que no esta de acuerdo contigo, no pues la gente que no quiere luchar tienen derecho a pensar diferente, pero no por eso les vamos a agarrar a puñetes, ahí fallamos, y no convertimos en otros policías que pegamos a quien no nos ha agredido directamente. Las ideas se rebaten con ideas y si nos golpean hay que defenderse de quien nos ha golpeado. <br />
<br />
Quiero preguntar dos cosas <br />
¿QUIENES SON LOS HOMBRES Y MUJERES QUE NOS ESTAN MATANDO Y REPRIMIENDO EN LAS CALLES Y CAMINOS?? <br />
<br />
Son soldados enviados por sus propias madres y padres con muchos festejos al cuartel, las cifras nos indican que las mujeres que se presentaron a la premilitar se han triplicado, porque somos hipócritas, si es el propio pueblo que nutre al Estado con sus hijas e hijos, donde esta un gran movimiento contra el servicio militar obligatorio, somos voces pequeñas de locas como las Mujeres Creando que vamos a los colegios a hablar sobre el tema con las wawas, es verdad que hay también algunas otras personas hablando del tema pero no como un gran movimiento. <br />
¿QUIEN LE NOMBRO AL JACHO (POLICIA) VARGAS DIRIGENTE DEL PUEBLO?? <br />
<br />
Bastó que este machito maneje armas y las use para pedir salarios de privilegio para los policías sus compinches o como él dice sus camaradas, para que el pueblo crea en él y salte a ser dizque nuestro dirigente ¿No estaban de por medio para su amotinamiento sus intereses salariales? Entonces si alguien quieres ser dirigente que entre a ser policía o militar se amotina y acaba de dirigente del pueblo. ¿Este policía ahora se sienta a decirnos que hacer? VAYASE A LA MIERDA ningún policía me dice como amar la libertad y construir la justicia social. Y SE VAN A LA MIERDA QUIENES LO PUSIERON DE DIRIGENTE. <br />
<br />
Diversos problemas, una crisis que muestran la crisis del Estado <br />
<br />
Siempre nuestras sociedades han estado llenas de problemas que resolver desde los de cada casa, barrio, ciudad, Departamento, sector, clase, sindicato, grupo, etc. Pero la calidad de los problemas ahora presentados, atentan contra el Estado de los patriarcas, cuando hablo de calidad de los problemas me estoy refiriendo que aunque todavía son demandas al propio Estado, es decir se le otorga el poder de resolverlos, son problemas que demuestran la incapacidad de los y las gobernantes, su clase, casta, y grupo dominante y el Estado no es un señor es una institución donde actúan personas concretas y empezamos a vislumbrar esas personas. Esto pone en peligro su hegemonía y deteriora la imagen del simbólico de dominación que es el Estado, socava la confianza de los y las pobres en el instrumento, mentiroso por cierto, del bien común o Estado, los gobiernos pasan, pero el Estado perdura. Simbólico a través del cual nos hemos dejado arrastrar a una democracia, que no es por la que, luchamos y casi perdemos la vida. <br />
<br />
Lo que fue el simbólico de la teología para el dominio de la monarquía, es ahora el Estado el simbólico para el dominio de la burguesía reciclada es verdad que el neoliberalismo a puesto en juego otro simbólico, el de Estados supranacionales o el gobierno de las transnacionales, pero la base es la misma y no era tan consistente, por eso ahora muchas de las economías y países están retornando hacia lo local hacia los Estados nacionales. <br />
<br />
Las propuestas son autoritarias y fascistoides. <br />
<br />
Las propuestas que salen desde nuestro pueblo son también patriarcales y dentro de una cultura fascista, no son solo metidas de pata que el Solares (ejecutivo de la COB) haya hablado de guerra civil y después tenga que revisar su discurso, para ahora hablar de resistencia civil, son machitos bien giles, creen que no nos damos cuenta de su forma de querer resolver los problemas, son igual que los del gobierno, quieren resolver las cosas a bala. <br />
<br />
Pepita Peralta Presidenta, <br />
<br />
El gringo Gonzalo y su club de mediocres, violentas hienas hambrientas de cadáveres, saben que no tenemos alternativas de representatividad y coordinación de luchas y sueños, saben y conoce la lógica de machitos (los dirigentes) como ellos y sabe que cuando quiere, los lleva a su cancha para darles paliza, por eso nos dice por tele, tan cínicamente que no va ha renunciar, entonces pensaremos en lo que hay que hacer, no seguiremos nutriendo su violencia con nuestra energía, porque lucha que no sabe donde va, se convierte en energía para la \ el contrario. <br />
<br />
En la situación que estamos muchos son candidatos a la silla presidencial o al gobierno de Bolivia, por eso nosotras decimos Pepita Peralta presidenta, Pepita Peralta no es nadie y puede ser cualquiera. Es decir es una estupidez pensar en este momento que la solución viene de una persona o un grupo, votar a una persona y poner a otra. El gringo Gonzalo no sabe solucionar los problemas, pero tiene razón en que es una soncera pedirle la renuncia, eso en poco tiempo les fortalecería como clase dominante, pues quien venga no va a poder y el problema va a continuar, con la diferencia que a quien tendremos al frente no va ha ser el gringo Gonzalo sino uno surgido del pueblo y ahí nos vamos a dar cabeza con cabeza, para beneficio de la derecha que ahora esta al pedo. <br />
<br />
Socavarle el piso al Estado desprestigiarlo ante su clase, la viabilidad de la anarquía <br />
<br />
Creo que tenemos dos oportunidades, por un lado hacer los esfuerzos de unidad y coordinación para el tema del gas que tome por centro personalidades con credibilidad popular nacional e internacional, para hacer un cabildo de propuestas de solución, proyectos sobre industrialización del gas, una especie de espacio alterno a la cancha del Estado donde están tan metidos los dirigentes y proponemos a Doña Ana Maria de Campero como ex Defensora del Pueblo que sea el punto aglutinador. <br />
<br />
Y otra oportunidad es la de ponerles el espejo a su mediocridad que quienes tienen la hegemonía del poder se miren que vean su mediocridad, su estupidez y falta de inteligencia que vean lo flojos que son, hay que burlarnos de su incompetencia y que no vengan a hacerse los y las pobrecitas ahora que lo han jodido todo, si algo bueno le pasa o tiene Bolivia es gracias al pueblo, estos riquillos siempre ha sido gente parásita y bueno pues hay que a cada rato refregarles eso y refregarnos a nuestros ojos eso, porque es por el voto del pueblo que fue al MNR al, MIR, al NFR, ADN, a la UCS que ahora estos maleantes están ahí en el parlamento y el gobierno entonces aquí no hay angelitos cada quien asumiremos nuestras responsabilidades. <br />
<br />
Es un momento para ver claro, si queremos ver yo soy feminista anarquista y nunca tan claro se ve la inutilidad del Estado, se ve que no es de cambiar al gringo por el cocalero o por el indio o por Pepita Peralta es el momento de la responsabilidad de la libertad . Es el momento de no tener miedo a pensar en darnos nosotras y nosotros mismas las soluciones, de valorar nuestra palabra de comprobar que somos capaces de directamente participar, sin mediaciones de los partidos y coordinar nuestras necesidades y el bien común sin necesidad del Estado. <br />
<br />
La huelga de hambre en estas circunstancias es una medida oportunista <br />
<br />
La clase media, esa misma que sostuvo el gonismo neoliberal, al no tener que decir en un proceso asambleario de las juntas vecinales, los últimos días del proceso oportunistamente lanza una huelga de hambre con la clara intencion de arrebatar el protagonismo que el pueblo alteño se lo habia ganado por su consecuencia en la defensa de los recursos naturales de nuestro país. En pocos minutos traslada la atencion de los medios de comunicación social hacia los piquetes de huelga, mientras que las masacres continuaban en El Alto, una maniobra oportunista buscando el protagonismo, cuando habia que estar en las calles al lado de nuestro pueblo que pacíficamente se manifestaba defendiendo los recursos naturales. Octubre clarifica las posiciones en todas las organizaciones y Mujeres Creando no es una escepción algunas de Mujeres Creando se lanzaron en una huelga de hambre en busca de protagonismo, cohincidiendo con la clase media gonista, protagonismo en una lucha que ya tenía sus protagonistas en El Alto.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-17992352432116511502013-09-24T12:00:00.000-07:002013-09-24T12:00:04.728-07:00Anarquismo feminista (2011)<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Anarquismo feminista</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
El anarquismo feminista o anarcofeminismo es una teoría y movimiento que
enlaza el feminismo con el anarquismo. El anarcofemenismo busca la
autonomía de cada mujer, es decir, su emancipación y realización como
individuo y cómo género particular. Ven en el patriarcado una
manifestación del poder involuntario o autoritarismo, por ello piensan
que la liberación contra el patriarcado es una parte esencial de la
eliminación del Estado, puesto que ambos se fundamentarían en la
ausencia delibertad y en las relaciones sociales involuntarias.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Según el anarcofeminismo, elanarquismo al ser una filosofía política que
se opone a todas las relaciones de poder forzadas o coactivas, sería
intrínsecamente feminista, según expresa Susan Brown. En esencia, esta
corriente ve el anarquismo como un componente necesario del feminismo y
viceversa. Su originalidad reside especialmente en su visión política, y
en no ser una corriente dogmática, por lo que se pueden encontrar
diversos planteamientos libertarios al respecto de lo que es la mujer,
el feminismo, la feminidad, etc.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Ideología<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Ejes primarios</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Al igual que toda escuela anarquista se fundamenta en los principios de
libertad individual, asociación libre y cooperación voluntaria de cada
persona, sin distinción. Sus características adicionales son:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Aplicar los principios del anarquismo desde la condición y situación de las mujeres.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Identificar el eje de la dominación actual en el dúo patriarcado-Estado.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Consideran que el patriarcado es una de las primeras, si es que no la
primera, manifestación de jerarquía forzada o poder involuntario en la
historia humana y asimismo la primera forma de opresión ocurrida en el
dominio del sexo masculino por sobre el femenino y por tanto un problema
fundamental de la humanidad. Argumentan que bajo este esquema se
pretende uniformizar a las mujeres bajo un modelo único, cultivado por
medio de la adoctrinación masiva, y que los hombres también son
uniformizados y obligados a reprimir sus particularidades individuales. Y
sobreesta ideología de uniformización y dominación patriarcal se
sustenta buenaparte de la legitimación del Estado, al repetir los mismos
patron es patriarcal es de dominación.<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Planteamientos</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Las y los anarcofeministas concluy en que si las feministas están en
contra del patriarcado, deberían estar también en contra de toda forma
de jerarquía forzada, y, por lo tanto, rechazarla naturaleza autoritaria
de tales instituciones es una parte integral tanto dela emancipación
individual como de la identidad femenina, por lo tanto:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Se colocan en oposición contra el Estado ytodo orden coercitivo o
involuntario (político, económico, etc.) comomanifestaciones del
patriarcado y como estructuras opresivas por sí mismas, incluyendo al
"feminismo burocrático" o pro-regulaciones gubernamentales sobre la
libertad individual. La libertad individual para el anarcofeminismo es
objetivo y camino al mismo tiempo.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Así mismo se sitúan en oposición al "feminismo revanchista" o hembrismo,
al que señalan como reflejo resentido del machismo, esto debido a que
afirman que debe verse a los hombres como compañeros y no enemigos, ya
que el patriarcado es una institución decontrol social indiferente a los
géneros.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Su meta y estrategia normalmente es influenciar desde dentro a ambos
movimientos, al feminismo y al anarquismo,algunas proponen asociaciones
libres de mujeres (autónomas, federalistas y descentralistas o
policéntricas), haciéndose cargo de que las mujeres tienen
particularidades y que a partir de ellas encarnan la anarquía de
particular manera, aunque no todas son partícipes de esta idea. El
feminismo anarquistaclásico y el anarcofeminismo moderno aparecen en
versiones individualistas ycolectivistas, las primeras con más adeptos
en América y las segundas con másénfasis en Europa.<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Historia</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Si bien el anarquismo feministaha estado presente desde los inicios del
movimiento anarquista, su conceptualización moderna antipatriarcal y el
término anarcofeminismo surgen enla segunda ola feminista en la década
de 1960, de la mano del feminismo radical, con personajes como Peggy
Kornegger o Cathy Levine.<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Orígenes y fuentes</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Se inspira en autores y teóricos del feminismo anarquista estadounidense
de fines del siglo XIX y principios delsiglo XX como Emma Goldman,
Voltairine de Cleyre y Lucy Parsons. También enla organización
anarquista y feminista de la revolución española, MujeresLibres. Ambos
movimientos fueron organizados para defender las ideas anarquistas y
feministas. En Latinoamérica la primera ola feminista en lamayoría de
estos países surgió en principio de mujeres anarquistas.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Este primer feminismo anarquistasurge ante las consideraciones de
algunos anarquistas de que el patriarcado esun problema del sistema
estatista o de clases, y que sólo desaparecería coneste. O también
porque algunos anarquistas suponían que la mujer tenía que desarrollarun
rol tradicional en la familia. Ante eso las primeras anarquistas
feministassostuvieron que ambas conquistas de libertad van de la mano, y
que los roleshabrán de ser elaborados o escogidos voluntariamente por
las mujeres.12 Es deresaltar que es el anarquismo feminista temprano el
primer movimiento queplantea la soberanía del cuerpo en todo ámbito, o
pro-elección, como expresiónde la soberanía individual.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Estas características delanarquismo feminista temprano (de inicios del
siglo XX), sumado el hecho queeran abstencionistas, colocaron a sus
partidarias en contradicción con la mayoría de feministas de la primera
ola, las sufragistas, y sus propuestas dentro del feminismo quedaron en
una situación de marginación que no cambiaríasino hasta la segunda ola
feminista (segunda mitad del siglo XX), cuando algunas feministas
radicales retomaron sus planteamientos sobre individuo y género, y
además adoptaron el modelo organizacional de pequeños grupos
deasociación voluntaria, flexibles para no descuidar el desarrollo
personal decada una, como base para construir un movimiento feminista.<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Contemporánea</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Contemporáneamente se haya influído por el feminismo de la diferencia y
por el ecofeminismo. El feminismo de la diferencia considera que las
personas y los géneros se destacan por susparticularidades y sus
diferencias en igualdad, lo que ha sido un conceptotradicional del
humanismo anarquista. El ecofeminismo argumenta que la mujer hade darle
importancia a la regeneración de la naturaleza y a la cultura de
laintegración armónica con esta, y que según indica Janet Biehl,
fortalezca lavisión holística del anarquismo (naturaleza autogobernada =
sociedad autogobernada). En el caso de las anarcosocialistas suelen
incluir el concepto de lucha de clases, sin embargo no existe una
interpretación homogénea deeste concepto. Las anarcoliberales en cambio
defienden más la igualdad dederechos y obligaciones entre hombres y
mujeres y se muestran en contra de todotipo de discriminación positiva
hacia ellas. Ambos sectores resaltan elderecho y necesidad de las
mujeres a la defensa personal.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Grupos y movimientos contemporáneos destacados son Mujeres Creando de
Bolivia, KURWA de Polonia,Radical cheerleaders en Norteamérica y Europa,
y la conferencia anual deBoston, La Rivolta!. Existen además grupos
anarcofeministas en algunas ciudadesdel mundo, aunque de relevancia
netamente local o sectorial, por ejemplo dentrodel anarcosindicalismo.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Recientemente, Wendy McElroy hadefinido el ifeminismo o feminismo
individualista, que combina el feminismo conel anarcocapitalismo,
argumentando que una visión pro-capitalista voluntaria, anti-Estado es
una posición que implica igualdad de derechos y obligaciones,
laexpresión libre de la sensualidad del cuerpo, y el empoderamiento de
lasmujeres. El feminismo individualista se fundamenta en el feminismo
anarquistaclásico de EE.UU. basado en el anarquismo individualista.<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Temas</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
Un aspecto importante de anarcofeminismo es su oposición a las
concepciones tradicionales de la familia,la educación y los roles de
género. La institución estatal-eclesiástica del matrimonio es una de las
más atacadas a la vez que han promocionado enrespuesta la unión
libremente pactada, relaciones de responsabilidad compartida, y una
sexualidad libre y responsable. De Cleyre sostuvo que el matrimonio
ahogaba el crecimiento individual, y Goldman argumentó que "esen primer
lugar un acuerdo económico [...] en que la [mujer] paga por él con
sunombre, su privacidad, su autoestima, su propia vida". También han
apoyadolas familias y las estructuras educativas no jerárquicas, como
las escuelas modernas.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-35103951024868604012013-09-17T17:58:00.000-07:002013-09-17T17:58:00.859-07:00Lacerda de Moura, Maria, 1887-1944<br />
<a name='more'></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://libcom.org/files/imagecache/article/images/history/Maria%20Lacerda%20de%20Moura.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://libcom.org/files/imagecache/article/images/history/Maria%20Lacerda%20de%20Moura.jpg" /></a></div>
http://libcom.org/history/maria-lacerda-de-moura-1887-1944<br />
<i>Biography of the respected Brazilian anarchist-feminist teacher, journalist, writer, lecturer and poet. </i><br />
<br />
Maria Lacerda de Moura was a teacher, journalist, writer, lecturer and poet and in everything she did her anarchist beliefs in human emancipation shone through, even when she never explicitly used the word ‘anarchism’. <br />
<br />
She was born on the Monte Alverne farm in Manhuaçu in Minas Gerais state, Brazil on 16 May 1887. She was the daughter of Modesto de Araújo Lacerda and Amélia de Araújo Lacerda, freethinkers and educated folk from whom she certainly inherited her strong anticlerical outlook. <br />
<br />
Five years after she was born they moved to Barbacena, the town where she started her schooling and by the age of 16 she was training as a primary teacher, the profession to which she was deeply committed. One year later she married Carlos Ferreira de Moura, the companion who always supported her – even after their relationship had ended. <br />
<br />
In 1915 the couple adopted two orphans, a girl and one of Maria’s own nephews. At that point, she was so committed to her profession as an educator that she set up the League Against Illiteracy and gave free classes. From that valuable experience she came to the conclusion that the purpose of the educational system was to shape people’s personalities, forcing them to abdicate their own individual identities in order to tailor their behaviour to what suited the interests of the established order. Furthermore she realised that it was not enough just to fight illiteracy if they were to achieve a fairer world. That would require a more profound change, a real social revolution! <br />
<br />
So she embarked upon her study and investigation of libertarian education as well as delving into the social question. In 1918 she began her career as a writer, issuing her first book On Education. Such was the impact it made that the following year she published two follow-ups Why Does the Future Triumph? and Renewal. <br />
<br />
In 1921 she and the family moved to the city of São Paulo where she started work as a private tutor. At that time of great social upheaval she started to give lectures (some in the city of Santos) to trade unions, cultural centres, anarchist theatre groups and labour associations and the likes of the Printing Workers’ Union, the Anticlerical League and the Union of Footwear Crafts. She also started to write for the anarchist press, among it the newspaper A Plebe where she wrote about ‘the underlying and ancillary sciences of education and educational psychology’ carrying on and adding to the work done in that field by Neno Vasco with the weekly newspaper A Terra Livre in 1906. <br />
<br />
At around the same time she helped to found the International Women’s Federation and the Women’s Anti-war Committee, based in São Paulo. The object of both organisations was to organise the women of Santos and São Paulo into a movement for human emancipation that would look beyond simple electoral goals, since in those days many women saw the most important goal as winning female suffrage. <br />
<br />
In February 1923 she launched the monthly review Renascença which made no bones about spreading libertarian feminist ideas and dealing with other social issues. This review was circulated in nine states of Brazil as well as in Argentina and Portugal. The following year she issued her most famous book Is Woman Degenerate? by way of an outraged retort to the thesis ‘Epilepsy and pseudo-epilepsy’ written by the psychiatrist Miguel Bombarda in which he tried to show through pseudo-scientific case studies that woman was man’s biological inferior. In 1926 she issued another class work: The Religion of Love and Beauty. <br />
<br />
In 1927 she parted from her husband Carlos once and for all, although they remained on very amicable terms. Due to her great popularity in countries such as Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Mexico she was invited to give talks in Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Santiago. On her return she carried on with her activities as a libertarian propagandist in São Paulo until she moved in 1928 to Guararema in the interior of São Paulo state where she lived on a farm belonging to a commune that included the Italian anarchist Artur Campagnoli. The commune was made up of Italian, Spanish and French conscientious objectors to the Great War who intended to live together in harmony in an egalitarian libertarian arrangement whilst offering peaceful resistance to all forms of violence. During Maria’s time on the farm, she set up a school for the commune’s peasants and after that bought some land nearby where she built a modest home and schoolroom. All without giving up on her writing activity: in 1931 she issued two more books, Clergy and State and Civilisation – Body of Slaves. In 1932 she published yet another outstanding book, Love … and Do Not Multiply. <br />
<br />
In 1934 suffering from severe rheumatism she was forced to quit her home in Guararema to move into Rio de Janeiro where, although greatly weakened, she carried on writing for the local press and giving talks to labour circles. In 1935, under pressure from the repression emanating from the dictatorial Getúlio Vargas government she returned to Barbacena with the intention of ending her days there with her mother. But she was barred from teaching in the public school system by the authorities who regarded her as a ‘dangerous communist’. So, in 1937, she returned to Rio de Janeiro where she was obliged to work hard just to survive. In 1938 she moved to the Ilha do Governador meaning to give more lectures on education and libertarian subjects. In 1940 she published her last book, a handbook entitled Portuguese for Commercial Courses, in which, among other things, she included an essay by José Oiticica on ‘Style’. <br />
<br />
In September 1944 her mother died and in December she moved back to Rio de Janeiro once and for all. Maria Lacerda de Moura died on 20 March 1944, aged not quite 58. Her funeral was a modest affair with no wreaths and only a few flowers. Among the labour papers she wrote for were O Culinário Paulista, A Patrulha Operária, A Plebe, A Lanterna and O Trabalhador Gráfico. <br />
<br />
Among her closest friends were the anarchists Rodolfo Felipe, Angelo Guido, José Oiticica, Osvaldo José Salgueiro and Diamantino Augusto. Maria Lacerda de Moura led an intense life questing after genuine social equality: she was the first Brazilian feminist to express her thoughts in newspaper, review and book form. In Brazil she pioneered the spread of a stand against fascism and campaigned against experiments on animals. Her work reached out to the continents of America and Europe and yet her output and her story are glossed over and maliciously ignored by contemporary historians. All because in her life pride of place was given to honesty in that she had no interest in the party political game. Maria Lacerda de Moura was a real revolutionary in the full sense of the word. An exemplary woman whom today’s reformist feminists would rather forget. <br />
<br />
From: Singularidades (Lisbon, No 16, November 2000) . Translated by: Paul Sharkey. <br />
From the <a href="http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/gf1w8f"> Kate Sharpley Library </a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-55947300697083535032013-09-09T12:00:00.000-07:002013-09-09T12:00:05.632-07:00Zazzi, Maria, 1904-1993<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<div class="content grid-6 alpha" id="node-page">
<div class="field field-type-filefield field-field-photo">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item odd">
<a class="imagefield imagefield-lightbox2 imagefield-lightbox2-article imagefield-field_photo imagecache imagecache-field_photo imagecache-article imagecache-field_photo-article" href="http://libcom.org/files/maria-zazzi.jpg" rel="lightbox[field_photo][Maria Zazzi]" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Maria Zazzi" height="265" src="http://libcom.org/files/imagecache/article/maria-zazzi.jpg" title="Maria Zazzi" width="239" /></a> </div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-type-text field-field-introduction">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item odd">
<i>A short biography of life-long Italian anarchist militant Maria Zazzi. </i></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="content grid-6 alpha" id="node-page">
http://libcom.org/history/articles/1904-1993-maria-zazzi</div>
<div class="content grid-6 alpha" id="node-page">
<br />
Maria Zazzi<i><br /> Born 10 June 1904, Coli, Italy, died 5 January 1993, Bologna, Italy </i><br />
<br />
Born on 10th June 1904 at Coli, in Italy. She emigrated to France at the age of 19 to join her brother Luigi, whose wife had just died. Luigi was a maximalist socialist and had fled Italy to escape fascist persecution. She then moved to Paris, where she moved in Italian exile circles. She moved towards anarchism, and established a relationship with the Bolognese anarchist Armando Malaguti. Her involvement in propaganda and solidarity work was much appreciated in this exile community, among which she had a good friendship with the <a href="http://libcom.org/history/articles/1918-1949-marie-louise-berneri">Berneri</a> anarchist family. <br />
<br />
She was among the few anarchist women activists and gained respect for her energetic activity and her strong personality. The French authorities expelled Malaguti at the beginning of 1927 and she moved with him to Luxembourg, and then to Belgium. At Brussels Maria got to know Russian anarchist <a href="http://libcom.org/history/articles/1901-1973-ida-mett">Ida Mett</a> and her companion <a href="http://libcom.org/history/articles/1895-1975-nicholas-lazarevitch">Nicolas Lazarevitch</a>, and then <a href="http://libcom.org/history/articles/1896-1936-buenaventura-durruti">Buenaventura Durruti</a> and Francisco Ascaso. One member of the group in which she was involved was the university professor Giulio Manon, who was sentenced to 10 years for putting a bomb in the house of a judge who had handed out a heavy sentence to a young anarchist. <br />
<br />
She was heavily involved in propaganda work and visited prisoners , pretending to be their aunt! This earned her the nickname of Aunt Marie! She was active in Brussels, alongside Angelo Sbardellotto and Bruno Gualandi in the defence campaign of Italian anarchists <a href="http://libcom.org/history/articles/sacco-vanzetti">Sacco and Vanzetti</a> which ended on the day of their execution with a general strike in Belgium in which workers turned out en masse despite the disapproval of the union officials. This was in no small way thanks to the activities of the three comrades who had heavily leafleted the trams in Brussels at rush hour time, whilst the union bureaucrats did little to mobilise. <br />
<br />
Hunted down by the Belgian police, Maria and Armando left for Paris in 1932. There they met Ukrainian <a href="http://libcom.org/history/articles/1889-1934-nestor-makhno">former guerrilla Nestor Makno</a> and Volin. Up until 1936 the couple went between Brussels and Paris. Maria remarked about all these outstanding anarchists that she had met that they were all similarly exceptional, all modest and sharing an exceptional camaraderie. The press depicted them as people of action, but they were as at home with ideas and were all able to defend themselves well in debate. <br />
<br />
In August 1936 after the start of the <a href="http://libcom.org/history/articles/spanish-civil-war-1936-39">Spanish Civil War and Revolution</a> Armando enrolled in the Ascaso Column in Spain and he fought at Monte Pelato on the Aragon Front. Maria moved to Barcelona to take part in the Revolution. For Maria arriving in Barcelona was like entering another world where one lived in full solidarity and fraternity. Malaguti was arrested in France in March 1937 whilst on leave in France and Maria returned to Paris to arrange support for the returning comrades, finding shelter and documents for them. <br />
<br />
With the German invasion Maria was arrested by the Gestapo and interrogated for three days about the whereabouts of Armando, which she refused to divulge. Armando was later arrested and deported to a concentration camp in Germany and later to Ventotene in Italy. In 1942 she herself tried to cross the Italian border and eventually got to Ventotene. Subsequently Armando was transferred to Ustica and then to the concentration camp of Renicci d’Anghiari from where he escaped on 8th September 1943. The couple then worked in Bologna in anti-fascist activity. <br />
<br />
Armando died in 1955 and Maria established a relationship with the anarchist Alfonso “Libero” Fantazzini, who had fought as a partisan and who she was already acquainted from her exile years. Their home became an important reference point for anarchists living in Bologna or visiting, thanks to the hospitality of the two old militants. Despite her fragile appearance Maria maintained a contagious energy. She had a quasi-maternal role for the young militants of the new generation and became a tutor of Libero’s son, Horst - later famous for his exploits as “the gentleman bank-robber” and his long periods of imprisonment!<br />
<br />
During the 1970s she was active in agitating for the release of framed anarchist Valpreda. She took part in the conferences and meetings of the Italian Anarchist Federation up till the 80s when she was struck down with a grave form of paresis. Her illness and the imprisonment of his son caused a rapid psycho-physical deterioration in the health of Fantazzini and he died on 14th December 1985. Maria spent the last years of her life in a hospice, dying in Bologna on 5th January 1993. <br />
<br />
<br />
“The anarchist movement is always my point of reference, the idea is always the same and I am happy to see young comrades work with conviction” <br />
<br />
<br />
Nick Heath</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-51212370261658624952013-09-05T12:00:00.000-07:002013-09-05T12:00:00.837-07:00Resistance to Difference: Sexual Equality and its Law-ful and Out-law (Anarchist) Advocates in Imperial Japan (2002)<br />
<a name='more'></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.executedtoday.com/images/Suga_Kanno.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.executedtoday.com/images/Suga_Kanno.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<center>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">
Resistance to Difference:
<br />
</span>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">
Sexual Equality and its Law-ful and Out-law (Anarchist) Advocates in Imperial Japan</span> <span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t1"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n1">[1]</a>
</span>
<br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica;"><i>Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context</i>
<br />
Issue 7, March 2002
</span><br /><br /> <a href="mailto:hbowenr@unsw.edu.au">Hélène Bowen Raddeker</a><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">
</span></center>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">
<b>Introduction</b>
<br /><br />
</span><br />
<li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">
In imperial Japan sexual equality had many champions, though definitions
of what constituted equality varied markedly. The following discussion
concerns three women who were among the most radical of its advocates:
Kanno Suga (1881-1911), Itô Noe (1895-1923) and Kaneko Fumiko
(1903-1926). All three, it will be noted, died young. Not one of them,
moreover, died from natural causes but, rather, at or in the hands of
the State. This may come as no surprise since all were anarchists or
(in the case of Fumiko) strongly influenced by anarchism; as we shall
see below, two of the three were even self-confessed traitors who
believed in political violence as a necessary strategy. These three
women did not fall foul of state power due specifically to their
advocacy of sexual equality, yet this was an intrinsic part of the
political standpoints and identities they embraced. If it had not been
for their resistance to hierarchical notions of male-female difference
and their demands for equal recognition and treatment by society, their
fates may have been different. The self-denial and self-effacement
traditionally expected of women was, for each of them, not an option,
for it ruled out the possibility of a true subjecthood and destiny of
her own choosing.
<br /> </span></li>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">
<li>
Not unusually, tradition in Japan held that femaleness and an individual
identity and destiny were oxymoronic. Thus, when the Tokugawa
(1603-1867) authorities chose to execute a woman, she would be given a
man's name. This was not unlike the view of progressive medieval
Buddhists that enlightenment was not, after all, out of the reach of
women. In male bodies, transformed at the point of death through the
grace of Amida Buddha, they might gain immediate entry to the Pure Land.
Either style of 'annihilation' meant dying a 'man'. However, after the
Meiji imperial restoration of 1868, Western-style modernity brought
with it a new view of women as modern citizens. The Meiji Constitution,
Civil Code and political assembly laws fell far short of according them
equality in terms of their rights or duties to the nation, yet the new
criminal code promulgated in 1880 spelt a certain equality for women in
granting them equal access to criminality.
<br /> </li>
<li>
Under the Meiji (1868-1912) criminal code, no longer was the 'name of
woman' incompatible with the severest of penalties. As a woman the
anarchist-feminist, Kanno Suga, could in 1912 be sentenced to death for
the intent, not an attempt, to assassinate the Meiji emperor. As a woman
she could be, and was, lawfully executed.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t2"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n2">[2]</a>
This was together with eleven male comrades, anarchists and other
socialists—or, not quite together, since Suga was garrotted separately
from them, one day later. Years later in 1926, another woman, Kaneko
Fumiko, was sentenced to death, once again for lese-majesty, for
conspiring to import bombs from the mainland to use on the imperial
family. Politically, Fumiko identified with nihilistic egoism, a
position strongly associated with individualistic anarchism influenced
by European moral nihilists such as Nietzsche and Max Stirner. For
egoists then in Japan, the assertion of the individual will,
self-determination and the liberation of the Self were all-important.
In some cases this position may have led to a lack of social conscience
or narrow self-centredness that ruled out collective political action,
but this was not the case with Fumiko. None the less, for her it was
largely the assertion of the individual Self and will, through political
resistance, that would lead to the mitigation, if not necessarily the
destruction, of State and bourgeois power.
<br /> </li>
<li>
What was just as central to egoistic thinking was the importance of an individual identity. Having a <i>name</i> was important to Fumiko partly because she had grown up a <i>musekisha</i>
[legally unregistered person] (a person not registered legally in a
family register, not even as an 'illegitimate' child). Thus, it was
fortunate that being sentenced to death no longer necessitated having
her identity effaced. In her prison memoir she was scathing about the
effects on a child of having no legal existence until the age of nine,
being denied entry to schools and facing other forms of discrimination.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t3"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n3">[3]</a>
Fumiko, it might be noted, had her death sentence commuted to life
imprisonment. Not long after that, however, she took what she saw to be
her <i>own</i> life in her prison cell. At first the special
circumstances of her death in prison were thought suspicious by some,
yet Fumiko's threats to kill herself during her testimonies left little
doubt that she did take her own life—even if torture and beatings were
not uncommon in Japanese prisons then, sometimes resulting in death.
Intimates such as her (socialist) lawyer and anarchist comrades then and
later believed she had killed herself, as a political statement. She
had retorted whilst ripping to shreds the imperial pardon commuting her
sentence to life imprisonment: 'You toy with people's lives, killing or
allowing to live as it suits you.... Am I to be disposed of according
to your whims?'<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t4"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n4">[4]</a>
<br /> </li>
<li>
Fumiko had been arrested immediately after the Great Kantô earthquake of
1923 at the same time as patriots, including civil and military police,
were doing the state the favour of ridding Japan of known or likely
subversives. Those murdered included the former <i>Bluestocking (Seitô</i> editor and anarchist-feminist publicist , Itô Noe, who like Fumiko had been greatly inspired by egoism.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t5"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n5">[5]</a>
Noe's murder was not a legal one but, even if it had been, by now
there was no danger of her losing in death the highly individualistic
identity that had been important to her. In all three cases, these
women were accorded the 'right' of execution, whether lawfully or
unlawfully, together with their male partners.
<br /> </li>
<li>
Inhering in these events are multiple ironies, one of which has already
been suggested: the fact that women had few rights under the law and no
equality, except when it came to equal 'discipline and punishment' in
the sense outlined above. A further irony lay in the likelihood that in
all three cases, the main targets of the authorities were the women's
male partners. Suga was one of a handful of guilty defendants amongst
the total of twenty-six sentenced either to death or 'life' and was even
accused by lawyers in the case of being the 'ringleader' of the Meiji
high treason plot—a charge that was somewhat exaggerated. Yet the
undisputed leader of the anarchist wing of the early socialist movement
was her lover, the anarchist theorist, Kôtoku Shûsui, who had been
responsible for introducing anarchism to Japan. Kanno's interrogations
reveal that the authorities were intent on ridding themselves of him,
regardless of the fact that he had lost interest in the assassination
plans well before their arrests.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t6"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n6">[6]</a>
Noe's partner, Ôsugi Sakae, was the subsequent leader of Japanese
anarchism by the 1920s. He was a flamboyant figure whose popularity in
radical Left circles derived from his being a theorist and active
publicist. Since by then he had embraced anarcho-syndicalism, his
influence was particularly strong in the radical wing of the union
movement. Ôsugi was infamous in other circles, however. According to
the mainstream press he was a dangerous troublemaker, and was the sort
of radical leader targeted in the government's attempts to introduce in
the early 1920s a bill to control the 'twin evils of anarchism and
communism.' There must have been jubilation in some quarters on the day
of his death. The captain of the squad of MPs who strangled him, Noe
and a small nephew 'extra-legally' was brought to trial but let off
virtually scot-free. Finally, Fumiko's partner, Pak Yeol, was not only
the leader of a small group of nihilists and anarchists, but he was
Korean rather than Japanese. Korea had been a Japanese 'protectorate'
since 1905 and a colony since 1910, and the police kept a particularly
vigilant watch on Koreans in Japan—especially students and others
involved in political groups.
<br /> </li>
<li>
The circumstances of the arrest of this group of mainly Koreans are
therefore complicated both by Pak Yeol's nationality and by the fact
that they were arrested just after the earthquake. After this natural
disaster a massacre of some actual Japanese subversives occurred,
together with potential subversives numbering hundreds of Chinese and
thousands of Koreans. Clearly, most were simply ordinary labourers and
the like who were unfortunate enough to become scapegoats—caught and
lynched amidst the post-earthquake panic and public hysteria. Pak and
Fumiko's group had called themselves the 'Futeisha' ['society of
outlaws, rebels or malcontents'], satirising the way Koreans were
referred to by the authorities as troublemakers. If it had not been
mostly comprised of Koreans, the group probably would not have been
arrested, supposedly for their own 'protection'; furthermore, the
charges may not have escalated from vagrancy, to an explosives control
law violation, and then to treason, with which Pak and Fumiko were
ultimately charged. Pak was not entirely innocent of the charges of
trying to import explosives, even of hoping to use them on the emperor
or crown prince.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t7"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n7">[7]</a>
However, sympathisers had good cause to suspect a 'lawful' conspiracy
to use his case both as warning to others not to resist Japanese
imperialism and as a post-hoc justification of the massacre of mostly
Koreans. The Japanese authorities had been censured by the foreign
press and diplomats for allowing such an atrocity to occur, so the case
enabled them to claim that Koreans had indeed been plotting subversion:
the Pak Yeol/Futeisha case was proof positive of the real danger of
Koreans' 'causing trouble' amid the post-earthquake destruction and mass
confusion, trying to take advantage of it for their own rebellious
ends. Ultimately, Pak's death sentence, like Fumiko's, was reduced to
life imprisonment, ostensibly through the 'benevolence' of the Japanese
emperor. Nevertheless, it was Pak, not Fumiko, who had always been the
main target of the authorities.
<br /> </li>
<li>
The authorities' actions (both lawful and unlawful) with respect to
Suga, Noe, and Fumiko underscored a further irony. For such actions
revealed a recognition that women, too, could constitute a danger to
state and society in their own right. Despite hegemonic constructs of
feminine nature as passive, and regardless of woman's lack of a true
subjectivity of her own, independent of a male Other (emperor, parents,
husband, child), she could still be almost as fearsome a potential force
of disorder as a man.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t8"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n8">[8]</a>
In the minds of law—and policy-makers and conservative
ideologues—woman was undeniably different, yet still she could be
accorded a certain sort of 'equality' when it came to social control
through force or through the force of ideas.
<br /> </li>
<li>
In the discussion that follows, I begin with an account of how law in
imperial Japan was underscored by the conviction that women, being
essentially different, required even fewer rights and freedoms than
those granted to men. Indeed, as I shall show, they were singled out
for special attention when it came to denying them free political
expression, membership and assembly. Their duties to emperor and nation
were styled as different, too, though some sought to represent womanly
(mothering and other nurturing) duties as equal in national import.
Woman's essential difference did not save them, however, when it came to
legal or extra-legal punishment for 'thought crimes' that were grave
enough when committed by men, but 'unheard of' and treacherous indeed
when perpetrated by women. Woman, it seems, was not always a fount of
virtuous, ego-less passivity after all: despite the reinforced negative
ideal of womanhood that had taken shape by 1912, the end of Meiji, she
(still) had her 'yin'/dark and destructive side.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t9"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n9">[9]</a>
<br /> </li>
<li>
Following this account of government policies on women and dominant
gender constructs, I consider how the written and unwritten 'law' on
feminine difference, and the limited 'rights' and 'equalities' that went
with it, did not go uncontested. Amongst those women who engaged in
their own reinventions of feminine subjectivity and interpretations of
sexual equality were Suga, Fumiko and Noe, each of whom advocated an
'out-law' equality that laid claim to an independent subjecthood, yet
'sameness' with their men. This included the demand that, being
positioned the same politically, they should not receive special
treatment due to their womanhood; they should be treated the same by
state and society. And that they were ultimately—at least when it came
to the political consequences of their resistance. Though some
interpreters have found psycho-biographical approaches too tempting to
resist, I doubt that any of the three had a 'death wish',<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t10"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n10">[10]</a>
even Fumiko who was the most explicit of the three in demanding
equality with her partner, especially in death. Perhaps she was not the
only one of the three who felt a grim satisfaction at being accorded by
the state this rare measure of equality. Unfortunately, however, their
battle for equality with their men was continued beyond their deaths by
various commentators, some of whom very nearly negated what they had
achieved. This constitutes one final irony to be discussed in the
concluding pages of the paper—the fact that well-meaning contemporaries
and 'sympathetic' scholars alike have continued to gender each woman in
terms of an essential feminine difference rather than sexual equality.
<br /> </li>
<li>
The approach I take in this paper has been inspired, in large part, by
my reflections on the relationship between the identity politics of
these Japanese women and two broad styles of feminism often
distinguished as feminisms of (sexual)) 'equality/sameness' and
feminisms of (sexual) 'difference'. As used here, the latter category of
'feminisms of difference' does not refer to an emphasis on class,
racial, ethnic or other differences between women, but rather to
arguments for an essential sexual difference between women and men. An
emphasis on an essential difference did not originate with Western
'second-wave' radical feminists and separatists (from the 1960s), though
it has often been associated particularly with them—as well as with the
'French feminists', Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, and
other post-/neo-Freudians or Lacanians. Their works on psycho-sexual
difference and their influence are widely known.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t11"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n11">[11]</a>
Though difference-oriented feminists have added their voices to
feminist critiques of traditional gender constructs of
feminine/masculine difference, whether they have succeeded in
transcending the essentialism that inheres in conventional constructs or
have merely inverted the hierarchies involved in such binarisms is open
to question. It is a question that is neither within the scope of this
paper, however, nor relevant to its particular focus on feminisms of
equality.
<br /> </li>
<li>
As already intimated, there is no doubt that Suga, Noe and Fumiko all
subscribed to a feminism of equality or 'sameness'. What is not so
clear, however, is the question of whether one would necessarily expect
anarchists to do so, especially those who adhere to individualistic
anarchism. Amongst postwar second-wave feminists the tendency to
emphasise women's equality to men to an extent tantamount to claiming
that women are at base the same, was common amongst both liberal and
socialist feminists. Morwenna Griffiths, author of a work that sets out
distinctions between feminisms, especially with regard to conceptions
of the self and identity politics,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t12"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n12">[12]</a>
notes that, according to the 'liberal' view, the self is 'not gendered
... [but] individuated by its particular needs and desires'; and these
are much 'the same for both sexes'. Thus far, this approach is
suggestive of all three women. What would not have been acceptable to
them, however, is the latter part of this liberal proposition cited by
Griffiths as follows: there being 'no male or female, only persons ...
as soon as the playing field is levelled [legal equality achieved],
everyone can go ahead and realise their own ambitions, meet their own
needs, and have perfect freedom to become unequal individuals'.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t13"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n13">[13]</a>
This is not a revolutionary, nor even particularly radical vision.
Even Fumiko, the least convinced of the three that a revolution in Japan
(such as had occurred in Russia) would bring social equality in its
wake, would have seen this proposition to be a bourgeois cloak for
ongoing economic or class inequalities. Like Suga and Noe, Fumiko's was
the sort of feminism of 'equality/sameness' rightly associated more
with socialism. Socialism in its various forms, however, is left out of
the equation by Griffiths because her model of different feminist
approaches to the self or individual identity hinges upon modernist
versus postmodernist (liberal and <i>post</i>-liberal or poststructuralist) feminisms.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t14"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n14">[14]</a>
<br /> </li>
<li>
The association between 'equality feminism' and both liberalism and
socialism, the latter usually being seen to include anarchism, has been
common but not necessarily universal. This, too, is a model. Fumiko
might be seen to be an exception to the rule because, despite the fact
that she was a more determined and consistent advocate of sexual
equality than were Suga or Noe, she was also the least 'socialist' of
the three. She and Noe, both, subscribed to a highly individualistic
form of anarchism, but unlike Noe, Fumiko was not so concerned with
trying to square egoism with collectivist (anarchist) struggles and
goals. Fumiko was also less 'socialist' in being less idealistic and
utopian than either Noe or Suga in her belief that socialist revolution
would bring in its wake a new ruling class and renewed oppression of the
masses. The fact that her 'socialism' is in question does not mean
that she was less class-conscious than they, nor any less opposed to
capitalism. The issue of whether individualistic anarchists are rightly
included in the broad ranks of socialists along with collectivistic
anarcho-communists or syndicalists, or whether their individualism makes
them ultra-radical liberals, is open to debate. Either way, however,
the general association between equality feminism and socialism and
liberalism still stands: all three of these prewar Japanese advocates
of what can now be seen to be a feminism of equality or sameness fit the
pattern. Each of them, furthermore, demanded from the state, society,
male comrades and partners a sexual equality that, arguably, was tied to
a vision of social equality that was more far-reaching and meaningful
than that typically held by liberals, feminist or otherwise, then or
since.
<br /><br /><br />
<b>The 'Law' on Sexual Difference and 'Equal' Rights</b>
<br /> </li>
<li>
In imperial Japan, as elsewhere, gender constructs rested upon
public-private binarisms: the Meiji maxim 'good wife, wise mother' [<i>ryôsai kenbo</i>]
hinged upon a public-private dichotomy that was almost as strict as in
earlier samurai society. Meiji law standardised restrictions on women's
rights to a public voice, to property, and so on, while the State also
attempted to force upon Japanese people of all classes, the so-called
feudal family, the prototype of which was the rigidly stratified and
phallocratic samurai <i>ie</i>. Through the new civil code of 1898, the government sought to lock even peasant women into this strictly patriarchal <i>ie</i>,
treating them like legal minors subject to the authority of male family
heads and educating them in the ways of premarital and marital
chastity.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t15"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n15">[15]</a>
The latter did not apply to men, who under Meiji law could not be
divorced on the grounds of adultery. Before Meiji, premarital sex as a
prelude to the free choice of spouse was common in peasant society;
divorce, too, had often been initiated by peasant women. However, the
state's attempts to subject sexual and marital practices to a
homogenisation (or 'samuraisation'<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t16"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n16">[16]</a>) both through law and ideological propagation was having some impact on village life even by the end of the period, 1912.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t17"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n17">[17]</a>
Though there had been some legal rights accorded to females—the right
since 1872 to at least an elementary education, for example, and some
new employment opportunities of varying quality for women of different
classes—the question of whether the post-1868 Meiji 'revolution'
represented progress for Japanese women of all classes is therefore
moot.
<br /> </li>
<li>
Related to such legal changes was the fact that the new 'good wife, wise
mother' construct had gained ground particularly after the passage of
the Law on Political Associations and Assembly in 1890. Under its
Article Five, women were treated as a special case—required symbolically
to join the exalted ranks of public servants whose ostensibly
non-partisan duty to the State required them to be banned from
'political' activity. Actual and potential good wives and wise mothers
were now permitted to dedicate themselves to a selfless service of
modern <i>public</i> goals so long as they were those identified as such
by the State. The only women who could be politically active in public
and remain unmolested by police were those, in the Patriotic Women's
Society, for example,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t18"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n18">[18]</a>
who did 'charity' work in support of war efforts from the time of the
Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Other philanthropic organisations such as
Japan's own temperance union, the proto-feminist Kyôfûkai [Women's
Society for Moral Reform], also tended to blur the boundaries between
charitable work and politics in their fight against prostitution and
concubinage.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t19"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n19">[19]</a>
<br /> </li>
<li>
Paradoxically, then, women who stepped over the line drawn by the state
between patriotism and politics or pro- and anti-state activities were
accorded equal punishment. Kanno Suga, for example, had begun serving a
prison term in 1910 for a publications offence; it was while she was
in prison that she was also charged with treasonous conspiracy and
sentenced to death with other comrades. What was not equal was the fact
that female democrats or socialists did not have the right to be as
active politically as their male colleagues, given the provisions of
Article Five. According to this legislation women could not join
political associations or attend political meetings. In short, the
state and conservative ideologues accorded women similar or different
treatment, and applied varying constructs of womanly identity—as force
of light or darkness, source of disorder or fount of virtue —at their
own convenience.
<br /> </li>
<li>
In some respects, the emerging hegemonic ideal of a modern woman
appeared to be an advance on traditional gender constructions that had
primarily been negative. Now, for example, a mother had the capacity to
be wise; indeed, she was encouraged to be so. Through the new universal
education system she could receive the sort of education that would
enable her to educate the children she bore her husband in the 'moral'
duties of modern citizenship. This applied even to his (<i>sic</i>)
sons, so it seems that the old samurai idea that too much contact with
women would result in the effeminisation of boys was losing its force.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t20"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n20">[20]</a>
Women gained a small measure of equality with the legal right to at
least an elementary education; and before long higher education was
also available to females—but in special colleges with a specialised
feminine curriculum. Yet the new good wife-wise mother was still,
essentially, a non-person because the negative logic behind the
construct remained unchanged. Her Self was still, as in Confucianism
and Buddhism, a non-self. Self-effacement and self-denial continued to
be demanded of her, though she was granted a wider field of masculine
figures for whom she could sacrifice herself. Gone were the days when a
woman had 'no lord but her husband' (and his sons and paternal
relatives) to venerate and obey; she could now serve the emperor, as
well as his vast array of agents in public authority. In the new
patriarchal 'family state' [<i>kazoku kokka</i>], headed symbolically
by the emperor in the guise of national father-figure, it seemed that a
woman could for the first time have a formal public role. But, whether
she be housewife, factory girl, philanthropist or patriot, the role
still had to be one of service. In reality, this was still a private
role, writ large. Androcentric definitions of feminine (non)identity
were now employed to show how the traditionally virtuous (i.e., samurai)
woman who was nurturing and self-sacrificing could, in a modern nation,
be dutiful daughter, virtuous wife and wise mother even to her national
'family'.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t21"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n21">[21]</a>
<br /><br /><br />
<b>Resistance to Difference; and Out-law Equalities</b>
<br /> </li>
<li>
Little wonder, then, that feminists from the late nineteenth century in
Japan directed much of their social critique at this ideological
construct of 'good wife, wise mother' or at its legal counterpart, the
family [<i>ie</i>]. They resisted it in practical ways in their
everyday lives, too, often with great hardship—by working and living
independently of their families, by choosing their own partners, or by
stepping outside the realm of the conventional wife and mother in
becoming politically active.
<br /> </li>
<li>
Kanno Suga, Itô Noe and Kaneko Fumiko all moved in prewar Japan's small
Leftist circle, and they all lived the final years of their lives in
Tokyo. Suga's short career as a journalist, then increasingly radical
socialist-feminist and finally anarchist was terminated just before
Noe's Bluestocking and anarchist career began. Noe and Fumiko were
contemporaries in Tokyo in the early 1920s but, while Fumiko appears to
have been acquainted with Ösugi through lecture meetings and had
probably met Noe, it is unlikely that she knew her well. The two had
much in common ideologically, however, in their shared commitment to
egoism. Partly through Ôsugi's writings, egoism had become popular in
Japan's radical leftist circle in the second decade of the 20th century
(after Suga's time), though by the twenties it had partly been displaced
in Ôsugi's own thinking by anarcho-syndicalism. Though historians have
tended to assume that Noe necessarily followed Ôsugi's lead, perusal of
her late writings reveals a primary identification with egoism,
particularly in an essay published in a feminist magazine in April 1923,
<i>Josei Kaizô </i>, which she entitled 'The Happiness of Revivifying the Ego.'<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t22"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n22">[22]</a>
Whilst anarchism was commonly seen to be the State's anthithesis or
potential negation, at the individual level Noe and Fumiko could not
have embraced a doctrine more absolutely opposed to the dominant gender
construct of self-effacing feminine (non)-identity than moral nihilism
or egoism.
<br /> </li>
<li>
The insistence of both Noe and Fumiko on what we would now call a
feminism of equality/sameness was apparently more inspired by egoism
than by feminism.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t23"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n23">[23]</a>
Certainly, both of the two self-proclaimed egoists said as much,
though in reality their egoism may not have been easily separable from
feminist principles. This was suggested in their writings or testimonies
where Noe and Fumiko each went to great lengths to emphasise their
equality with their respective male partners: first and foremost, they
were their <i>comrades</i>, not mere (common-law) wives, lovers or even
friends or companions. The egoist political-personal partnerships they
idealised were far from the 'good wife, wise mother' ideal; nor was
this the 'bourgeois companionate ideal'<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t24"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n24">[24]</a>
of love-matches or marriages. In Fumiko's case this 'comradeship' was
extended to claiming to be an equal threat to society and demanding a
sentence equal to Pak's, even though she expected it to be the death
penalty.
<br /> </li>
<li>
Fumiko let it slip late in the Supreme Court proceedings in 1926 that,
in order to receive the same penalty as Pak, she had actually gone so
far as to exaggerate her guilt in order to receive the same penalty as
Pak.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t25"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n25">[25]</a>
She had not, after all, conspired with him to import bombs to use on
the imperial family. He had tried to keep from her the knowledge of his
attempts to procure explosives for this purpose. If he did this in an
attempt to protect her, it does not suggest that he was in fact treating
her as an equal. During the preliminary proceedings in 1923, Pak
agreed with interrogators that Fumiko had been involved in the
conspiracy only after being made aware of how she had implicated herself
in it.
There was good reason, therefore, for the authorities to doubt Fumiko's
equal guilt of the lese majesty charge. Yet still she achieved her aim;
and the fact that she was sentenced
to death and then to life imprisonment together with Pak probably had
much to do with her behaviour and threats whilst in custody. For
example, when she finally admitted her lack of guilt with respect to the
specific charge, she nevertheless added that she would have
wholeheartedly supported Pak's plans to assassinate members of the
imperial family (the prime symbols of class and racial inequalities),
had she known of them. Fumiko was often scathing in her condemnation of
social inequalities and injustice, class and racial discrimination, the
authorities and even the imperial family, and she warned her captors
more than once that they would come to regret it if they released her
from prison. In fact, she was so impassioned in her stand, hostile and
cynical toward figures of authority that the authorities subjected her
to a psychological examination. Yet she was found to be quite sane.
<br /> </li>
<li>
The claim to equality/sameness on the part of both Fumiko and Noe also
extended to de-emphasising specifically female aspects of their
experience. Noe was unlike Fumiko in being self-consciously a feminist
and the mother of several children, yet in her late writings Noe styled
herself as 'essentially' an egoist and partly for that reason, perhaps,
seemed to want to avoid the subject of motherhood. She discussed the
children mostly in relation to Ôsugi's ('ideal anarchist') fatherhood
and their ideal revolutionary partnership. Partly, this avoidance may
have been due to a desire to dissociate herself from either the
conservative ideal of the 'good wife, wise mother' or from feminist
maternalists whose demands for state welfare protection for working
mothers she had already opposed. As Vera Mackie has pointed out, for
some maternalists mother's love was so creative and powerful that it was
'the fount of all that is good, the seedbed of human compassion', and
even 'the source of patriotism [and] the source of social order'.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t26"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n26">[26]</a>
Noe may have wanted to avoid being associated with this (patriotic)
claim to maternal/feminine difference and superiority, but what was
clearer was her apparent need as an egoist to lay claim to a selfhood
independent of state and society, husband and children. The
'difference' from Ôsugi that she underlined was in the area of
contributing to the Cause differently, and was the product of radical
individualistic notions of the unique 'I': it did not hinge upon
notions of sexual difference. The same can be said of the other
self-styled nihilistic egoist, Fumiko. She recounted in one testimony
that at the beginning of her political-personal partnership with Pak she
had insisted that their relationship be based on mutual respect: he
was to forget she was a woman and treat her just as he would any
comrade.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t27"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n27">[27]</a>
<br /> </li>
<li>
As for Suga, it would seem that she had not always been consistent in
laying claim to an equality with Kôtoku and other male comrades. Though
it seems out of character for her, according to one of the defendants'
lawyers, in Suga's final statement in court she attributed the
conspirators' failure to realise their plans for rebellion to her
'womanly lack of spirit'.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t28"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n28">[28]</a>
If the lawyer did faithfully reproduce her words, it would seem that
she was suffering from the humility expected of a woman in such a
situation, especially one presuming to speak for male comrades.
Elsewhere, however, her emphasis was on the commitment to anarchist
struggle they shared and on the victory they would share even amidst
apparent defeat. Their 'sacrifice' or their martyrdom would serve to
help the Cause live on. Together with this recourse to a shared and
equal triumph, Suga underlined her own personal victory, for her
character was such. She said in her prison diary on January 1911, that
she had 'never been prepared to accept defeat.' Furthermore, like Noe
later, the one area in which Suga emphasised her difference from her
sexual partner, Kôtoku, was in their different but equal contributions
to the Cause. This was a difference based on her inclination to radical
'direct action' rather than theorising (this being what Kôtoku was
suited for: proselytising, including communicating the news of their
struggle and the trial to comrades in the international anarchist
movement); it had not stemmed from her womanhood.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t29"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n29">[29]</a>
<br /> </li>
<li>
In their individual ways, Suga, Noe and Fumiko each resisted dominant
essentialist notions of male/female difference. In the first instance,
they did this by belonging to political associations and by working for
radical social change together with male partners and other comrades. It
should be recalled that this was against the law for women whose higher
'service' to the public or national good placed them above the divided
world of politics. Women, it seems, were to be 'equal' in their
contributions as modern citizens, so long as they contributed to the
hegemonic notion that Japan was uniquely endowed with social 'harmony'.
In addition, however, Suga, Noe and Fumiko all responded directly in
their writings and testimonies to an androcentric view of women that
held that in order to be true women they should sacrifice them (already
non-) selves to the interests of a range of paternal figures, as well as
to the welfare of their children. At this time, in this 'family state'
the name of woman had to be effaced because, despite the fact that the
state's antitheses or enemies could now conceivably be female, woman's
identity was 'up for grabs' by anyone but woman herself.
<br /> </li>
<li>
Those who attempted to define or, more, to assert their own 'true'
selves risked being dismissed as 'hysterics' or worse. Witness the
court's doubts about Fumiko's sanity, as well as the tendency during the
earlier treason trial for even the defendants' lawyers to be
unsympathetic to Suga, the so-called 'ringleader' of the plot, and to
blame her for the plight of her comrades. She was the archetypal
feminine figure of evil and destruction, it seems, while others who were
equally guilty (excluding Kôtoku) would doubtless have been seen as
'sincere men of will'. It was common then and later in Japan for people
to admire at least the 'sincerity' demonstrated in acts of violence,
political assassinations and the like, even if they were carried out by
political rivals or enemies. Being a woman, however, Suga could not
share in this samurai-style popular heroism.
<br /> </li>
<li>
It must be noted that this lack of sympathy for Suga long extended to
her treatment in works of history—where her romantic liaisons and even
her chastity or, rather, her lack of it, have too often been of more
interest to scholars than her political writings, ideas and actions.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t30"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n30">[30]</a>
Perhaps they should have heeded Suga's own retort about men of her
time which was basically a comment on hypocritical sexual double
standards: they would do well to look to their own chastity and become
'good husbands and wise fathers', she said, before harping on chastity
and virtue just for women.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t31"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n31">[31]</a>
To my mind, whilst each woman's representation of her sexual
partnership is justifiably of interest, scholars have overlooked the
part that such a representation played in her positioning of herself
politically and her contestation of gendered discourses of difference.
Even in relatively recent sources,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t32"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n32">[32]</a>
the romances of these anarchist women are the main focus. What this has
meant is that these women have been represented in ways that
diametrically oppose the political ends to which they presented
themselves in relation to male partners they claimed as comrades and
equals.
<br /> </li>
<li>
Representations of Fumiko as the Japanese 'woman who sacrificed herself
for Pak and Korea' are perhaps the most glaring examples of gendered
constructions of her character, motives and political stand that
directly contradict her own political project. On the one hand her
socialist lawyer eulogises about the 'pure womanly self-sacrifice' that
led her to 'die for Pak and Korea';<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t33"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n33">[33]</a>
on the other Fumiko herself denies, in her prison memoir and
testimonies, that the struggle for Korean liberation was her own,
heaping scorn in egoistic fashion on any sort of self-sacrifice and, on a
number of occasions, putting a Stirneresque view that 'the own will of
me is the State's destroyer.'<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t34"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n34">[34]</a>
Often, she indicated a rejection of altruistic self-sacrifice for
anyone or anything (e.g., the masses), just as Noe had done a few years
earlier. Yet, as noted above, Fumiko was even more sceptical than Noe
of standard altruistic and utopian ideals of (communist or anarchist)
revolution, and the elitism involved in them. For Fumiko, resistance
constituted 'jiga shuchô', the assertion of the individual ego or will,
which was the only way to counter state and ruling class power. Thus,
she styled herself in the mode recommended by Stirner or Nietzsche:
living life to the full (through resistance), and dying proudly in the
knowledge that death, too, was for oneself and 'one's own free choice':
<br /><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">
<dd>One's limbs
</dd><dd>may not be free
</dd><dd>and yet—
</dd><dd>if one has but the will to die,
</dd></span><dd><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">death is freedom.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t35"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n35">[35]</a>
</span>
<br />
<br />
This was one of Fumiko's prison <i>tanka</i>, traditional short poems of 31 syllables. The 'glorious, pure self-sacrifice of woman' indeed!
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Conclusions</b>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<li>
In denying that they were different because of their sex and in laying
claim to an 'out-law' equality that was beyond the imagination of most
contemporaries, Suga, Noe and Fumiko played a part in determining their
own destinies. They put themselves outside the 'law' on feminine
difference in a variety of ways and, by so doing, risked more than
losing a contest over their true identities—more than mere social
censure anyway. Noe put herself at risk by becoming the partner of the
most infamous anarchist of the day and, worse, by publicising her pride
in their revolutionary partnership, commitment and achievements. Both
she and Fumiko set up a contrast between their own sexual/familial
relationships and conventional relationships that were 'warped' by
society and relations of power. To cite another of Fumiko's poems:
<br /><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">
<dd>Bent over,
</dd><dd>watching others from beneath
</dd><dd>my thighs—
</dd><dd>the state of the world
</dd></span><dd><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">I need to look at, upside-down.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t36"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n36">[36]</a>
</span>
<br />
<br />
In Fumiko's writings the inverted, or distorted, or warped nature of modern society was a common theme.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t37"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n37">[37]</a>
This may have derived from a Marxian-style assumption of the social
alienation suffered under capitalism, or perhaps from an anarchist
tendency to counterpose this to a true, original way of Nature in which
people could be fully human and free. Similarly, a couple of years
earlier, Noe had noted in a journalistic article entitled 'A Couple's
Life of Love,' that the same society that saw her and Ôsugi's anarchist
life together as abnormal accepted the sort of family in which people
were raised 'cowering and warped' as if in a prison.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t38"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n38">[38]</a>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<li>
The two 'traitors', Suga and Fumiko, refused to give the authorities the
satisfaction of throwing themselves on their mercy and begging for
forgiveness. The same can be said of Noe who more than once expressed
fears in her writings for Ôsugi in particular, but also for the family
as a whole. The two 'traitors', Suga and Fumiko, refused to give the
authorities the satisfaction of throwing themselves on their mercy and
begging for forgiveness. All three remained committed and defiant
despite the real dangers they faced. Naturally, there were other women
in their time who also demanded to be treated as equal both by comrades
and political antagonists in various struggles for social justice and
change. However, Suga and Fumiko took this demand to its logical
conclusion when they were in prison facing the death penalty. To save
themselves they might have gone the way of claiming an essential sexual
difference, even the 'feminism of difference' that then existed in
Japan, namely, the maternalism that emphasised, among other things,
woman's intrinsic and superior peace-loving qualities. They could have
thrown themselves on the sort of paternalism that might bring mercy to
individuals whose prime contribution to the state was seen to be
biological. ('Fancy executing actual or potential "mothers of the
nation"!') To do so, however, would endanger the sort of equality to
which each laid claim—an anarchistic position that ruled out special
protections for women, especially those granted by a State. This,
moreover, was a state whose pretensions to 'benevolence' all were
sceptical of, but none more so than Fumiko, egoist <i>par excellence</i>.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t39"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n39">[39]</a>
<br /> </li>
<li>
Fumiko was, undeniably, the most dismissive of any difference in
essentials between men and women and the most determined advocate of an
out-law equality that would extend even to death, with her Korean
('outlaw') male partner. But she had had the examples of Suga and Noe
to follow. She must have known of Suga's execution in the Meiji high
treason case along with her lover and ten other comrades, and she
certainly knew of the fate of Ôsugi and Noe. The following poem may
have been dedicated to them:
<br /><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">
<dd>Sadly
</dd><dd>I recall the vow
</dd><dd>I made
</dd><dd>to the spirits of departed friends.
</dd></span><dd><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">It's September 1st!<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t40"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n40">[40]</a>
</span>
<br />
<br />
September 1 was the day of the earthquake in 1923 and it was shortly
after it that Noe and Ôsugi were murdered and Fumiko herself arrested.
Whether the reference was to them or to murdered Korean friends, one
wonders what sort of 'vow' she might have made on this day of
commemoration. It is impossible to know for certain. It would be
consistent with her declarations elsewhere if it were a pledge to avenge
those murdered, or to ensure that her destiny/death would be of her own
choosing. Alternatively, it could have been a vow to die, one way or
another, like Suga and Kôtoku or Noe and Ôsugi, together with her equal
partner in 'crime' or, rather, in out-law passions and (identity)
politics.
<br />
<br />
<br />
<li>
Enemies and sympathisers alike would seem to have been intent on effacing not the proper names<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t41"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n41">[41]</a>
but the political identities so painstakingly constructed by these
three women. Yet still their own voices can be heard through all the
gendered hype about 'woman' in their own time and since. One might
recall that Suga-the-'woman' necessarily lacked a true will or
rebellious spirit (read: manly 'sincerity'). The same defence lawyer
who reported Suga's (?) words about her failure stemming from her
'womanly lack of spirit' was generally very sympathetic toward the Meiji
high treason defendants, but saw her as 'absurd'. Noe-as-'woman'
apparently had a passive follower-mentality, even if she was attracted
to anarchism and acquainted with egoism before meeting Ôsugi and
retained more of a commitment to egoism than he did—possibly because it
had a particular utility for her feminism of equality. Overshadowed, no
doubt, by the in/famous Ôsugi and too busy with the children to spend
as much time on her own political career as she would have liked, Noe
was still intent on carving out an egoist identity of her own in
1923—the year of her death.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t42"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n42">[42]</a>
Finally, and most laughably, perhaps, there was the 'Fumiko' to whose
pure womanhood her lawyer attributed her capacity for self-sacrifice for
her man and his country.
<br /> </li>
<li>
The socialist lawyer, Fuse Tatsuji, made these remarks to a welcoming
committee of comrades on the day Pak was finally released from prison at
the close of the war in 1945, nearly twenty years after Fumiko's death.
On that day Fumiko, the nihilistic egoist, would have been turning in
her grave (which was, by the way, in Korea, her ashes having been taken
there by comrades!) to hear his well-meant but very inventive eulogy to
her. His assessment of the two's relative contributions to the struggle
might appear to be near-equal. After all, even if Pak had battled his
destiny and emerged victorious, as indicated in the title of Fuse's
biography of him,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="t43"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#n43">[43]</a>
he was merely to be congratulated on his 'wonderful, farsighted
survival', while all were to pay 'homage' to Fumiko's 'pure-hearted and
stubborn' death in prison. According to Fuse, her taking what she saw
as her <i>own</i> life whilst in prison symbolised a 'glorious love of
her comrades that crossed ... national boundaries.' As is often the way
with constructs of feminine nature, this 'homage' to woman was
double-edged. Not only was Fumiko being enlisted as a martyr to a Cause
(Korean nationalism) she had specifically rejected as not her own, and
gendered in terms of self-sacrifice which went against the grain of her
egoism; she was also being represented in terms of a sexual difference
from Pak that she herself had denied. Yet, for Fuse, Fumiko's
difference from Pak was apparently based on more than merely her
'womanly' impulse to self-sacrifice. Pak's 'farsighted' political stand
of opting to survive his prison term was, it would seem, the more
pragmatic and therefore rational of the two. One need hardly ask what
it was, according to this picture of Fumiko, that lay behind her
'purehearted and stubborn' preference for death over surviving, as Pak
had done, in order to carry on the struggle. If in doing so he was able
to resist his 'destiny', did it mean that Fumiko had submitted to her
fate? Is it 'woman's' fate to be ruled by the emotions? To return in
closing to an observation I made at the beginning of the paper, in
imperial Japan sexual equality had almost as many definitions as
champions. Few of its champions, however, had the capacity to
comprehend how far-reaching, indeed how <i>farsighted</i> women such as Fumiko, Noe or Suga were in their advocacy of it.
<br /><br /><br />
<b>Endnotes</b>
<br /><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n1"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t1">[1]</a>
This essay is similar, in part, to a recent paper on Itô Noe entitled
'Anarcho-Feminist Discourse in Prewar Japan: Itô Noe's Autobiographical
Social Criticism' which I contributed to <i>Anarchist Studies</i>
(U.K.) 9, 2 (October 2001): 97-125. This was focussed upon her egoistic
resistance in her late writings and her 'autobiographical' style as
itself egoistic resistance. A full-length work on the other two women
discussed here, Kanno Suga and Kaneko Fumiko is: Hélène Bowen Raddeker,
<i>Treacherous Women of Imperial Japan: Patriarchal Fictions, Patricidal Fantasies</i>, London and New York: Routledge, 1997.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n2"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t2">[2]</a> Kanno Suga's prison diary, 'Shide no michikusa' (A Pause on the Way to Death) has been translated in Hane Mikiso, ed., <i>Reflections on the Way to the Gallows: Rebel Women in Prewar Japan</i>,
New York: Pantheon, 1988, pp. 58-74. Cf. Bowen Raddeker, 'Death as
Life: Political Metaphor in the Testimonial Prison Literature of Kanno
Suga,' <i>Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars</i> 29, 4 (1997): 3-12.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n3"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t3">[3]</a> Kaneko Fumiko, <i>Nani ga watashi o kôsaseta ka</i>
[What made me like this?], Tokyo: Chikuma Shobô, 1984, p. 53. This
prison autobiography is available in English translation: Jean Inglis,
trans., <i>Kaneko Fumiko: The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman</i>,
New York and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1991. Cf. Bowen Raddeker, 'The Past
Through Telescopic Sights—Reading the Prison-Life-Story of Kaneko
Fumiko,' <i>Japan Forum</i> 7, 2 (Autumn 1995): 155-69.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n4"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t4">[4]</a> Cited in Setouchi Harumi, <i>Yohaku no haru</i> [Blank Spring], Tokyo: Chûkô Bunko, 1975, pp. 335-36.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n5"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t5">[5]</a> On the Bluestockings see Sharon Sievers, <i>Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan</i>, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n6"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t6">[6]</a>
This was according to Kanno's police interrogations and trial
testimonies, for example: Kanno's Sixth Preliminary Court
Interrogation, 13 June 1910, reproduced in <i>Kanno Sugako Zenshû</i> [The Collected Works of Kanno Sugako], III, Shimizu Unosuke, ed., Tokyo: Kôryûsha, 1984, pp. 248-50.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n7"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t7">[7]</a>
Fumiko, certainly, and possibly also Pak tended to exaggerate their
guilt, so it is difficult to separate bravado from reality. However,
their and the group's testimonies (the authenticity of which were not
questioned by defence lawyers then or later) show that there were such
plans afoot. See, for example, Kaneko Fumiko, 'Tokyo District Court
Preliminary Interrogation,' no. 3 (22 January 1924), in <i>Pak Yeol, Kaneko Fumiko Saiban Kiroku</i> [Records from the trial of...], Tokyo: Kokushoku Sensensha, 1977, pp. 15-19.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n8"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t8">[8]</a> Sharon H. Nolte & Sally Ann Hastings, 'The Meiji State's Policy Toward Women, 1890-1910,' in <i>Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945</i>,ed. Gail Lee Bernstein, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1991, pp. 151-74.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n9"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t9">[9]</a> This sort of point was made in Nolte and Hastings, 'The Meiji State's Policy Toward Women, 1890-1910.'
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n10"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t10">[10]</a> Hane Mikiso (<i>Reflections on the Way to the Gallows</i>)
has taken a psychobiographical approach to Fumiko's character,
suggesting that she had a 'death wish' and was somewhat unbalanced.
However, this ignores her determination to resist and to be accorded the
same treatment as her male, Korean partner.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n11"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t11">[11]</a>
Different feminisms (liberal, socialist, radical, and also the
'poststructuralist'/psychoanalytic feminism of Kristeva, Irigaray and
Cixous) are discussed in: Chris Weedon, <i>Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory</i>, Cambridge MA and Oxford UK: Blackwell, 1987. See, especially, pp. 14-19, 63-73.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n12"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t12">[12]</a> Morwenna Griffiths, <i>Feminisms and the Self: The Web of Identity</i>, London and New York: Routledge, 1995.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n13"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t13">[13]</a> Griffiths, <i>Feminisms and the Self </i>, p. 77.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n14"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t14">[14]</a>
Griffiths' model of two broad types of feminism, modernist and
postmodernist, is based upon different conceptions of the Self as either
an essentialised, 'core' or centred Self inspired by liberal-humanist
individualism or an acentric/decentred Self (or multiple/dispersed
Selves) inspired by theorists associated with poststructuralism such as
Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. Her liberal vs 'post-liberal'
approach leads her to overlook socialist feminism, as noted. Even more
problematic is where a brand of 'socialist' feminism such as
individualistic anarchism/egoism might fit into her schema. This is
alluded to below, and I have discussed it in more detail in connection
with Itô Noe in Bowen Raddeker, 'Anarcho-Feminist Discourse in Prewar
Japan,' pp. 115-20.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n15"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t15">[15]</a> Cf. Robert J. Smith, 'Making Village Women into "Good Wives and Wise Mothers" in Prewar Japan,' in <i>Journal of Family History</i> 8, 1 (Spring 1983): 70-84; Mariko Asano Tamanoi, 'Songs as Weapons: The Culture and History of <i>Komori</i> [Nursemaids] in Modern Japan,' <i>Journal of Asian Studies</i> 50, 4 (November 1991): 793-817.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n16"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t16">[16]</a> Jean-Pierre Lehmann, <i>The Roots of Modern Japan</i>, Houndmills and London: Macmillan, 1982, pp. 97-8.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n17"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t17">[17]</a>
Such trends notwithstanding, ethnographic studies of village life much
later in the 1930s still revealed more independence for peasant women
in the area of sexual and marital practices: see Ella Lury Wiswell and
Robert J. Smith, <i>The Women of Suye Mura</i>, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1983; and Smith, 'Making Village Women into "Good Wives
and Wise Mothers" in Prewar Japan.'
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n18"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t18">[18]</a> Sheldon Garon, 'Women's Groups and the Japanese State: Contending Approaches to Political Integration, 1890-1945,' in <i>Journal of Japanese Studies</i> 19, 1 (Winter 1993): 5-41.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n19"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t19">[19]</a>
As Christian opponents of concubinage and prostitution, these moral
reformers had sometimes moved in the same circles as early Christian
socialists, inviting state suspicion. On the Kyôfûkai, see Sievers, <i><b> Flowers in Salt: </b>Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness</i> (especially Chapter Five, 'The Women's Reform Society'), pp. 87-113.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n20"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t20">[20]</a> Winston L. King, <i>Zen and the Way of the Sword: Arming the Samurai Psyche</i>, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 144-48.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n21"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t21">[21]</a> Nolte and Hastings, 'Meiji State's Policy toward Women.'
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n22"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t22">[22]</a> Itô Noe, 'Jiko o Ikasu koto no Kôfuku,' reprinted in <i>Itô Noe Zenshû </i> II [Collected Works, in 2 vols], Tokyo: Gakugei Shorin, 1986, pp. 495-505.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n23"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t23">[23]</a> Bowen Raddeker, 'Anarcho-Feminist Discourse in Prewar Japan,' pp. 114-15.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n24"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t24">[24]</a> Vera Mackie, <i>Creating Socialist Women in Japan, 1900-1937</i>, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 52.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n25"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t25">[25]</a> A copy of this statement made on 26 February 1926 in the Supreme Court in Fumiko's handwriting is included in <i>Trial Records</i>, pp. 739-48.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n26"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t26">[26]</a> Yamada Waka, one of the more conservative of the 'Bluestockings,' cited in Mackie, <i>Creating Socialist Women</i>, p. 190.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n27"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t27">[27]</a> Kaneko, Preliminary Court Interrogation, no. 4 (23 January 1924), in <i>Trial Records</i>, p. 20.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n28"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t28">[28]</a> Defence lawyer, Hiraide Shû, cited in Itoya Toshio, <i>Kanno Suga: Heiminsha no Fujin Kakumeika Zô </i> [Kanno Suga: Portrait of a Woman Revolutionary of the Commoners' Society], Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 1970, p. 197.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n29"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t29">[29]</a> Kanno's Sixth Preliminary Court Interrogation (13 June 1910), in <i>Collected Works, III</i>, pp. 248-50.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n30"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t30">[30]</a>
Earlier sources were often over-influenced by the dismissive and
judgmental treatment of Suga by a jilted lover, Arahata Kanson. An
exception to this rule, fortunately, is the editor of the above-cited
edition of her collected works, Shimizu Unosuke.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n31"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t31">[31]</a> Kanno Suga, 'Hiji Deppô' ['Rebuff,' published 15 April 1906], reproduced in Kanno's <i>Collected Works, II</i>, pp. 111-14.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n32"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t32">[32]</a> Sources in Japanese on Suga, Noe or Fumiko have often sported titles such as 'Hangyaku to Ai to' (Treason and Love), in <i>Shisô no Kai e (Kaihô to Kakumei)</i>, 21, <i>Josei—Hangyaku to Kakumei to Teiko to</i>, ed. Suzuki Yûko, Tokyo: Shakai Hyôronsha, 1990, pp. 30-52.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n33"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t33">[33]</a> Fuse Tatsuji, <i>Unmei no Shôrisha, Pak Yeol</i> [Victor over Destiny, Pak Yeol], Tokyo: Seiki Shobô, 1956, pp. 25-27.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n34"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t34">[34]</a> Max Stirner, <i>The Ego and His Own</i>, London: Jonathan Cape, 1971.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n35"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t35">[35]</a> <i>Akai Tsutsuji no Hana: Kaneko Fumiko no Omoide to Kashû</i> [Red Azaleas: Reminiscences of Kaneko Fumiko and her Collected Poetry], Tokyo: Kokushoku Sensensha, 1984, p. 39
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n36"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t36">[36]</a> <i>Akai Tsutsuji no Hana: Kaneko Fumiko no Omoide to Kashû</i>, p. 29.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n37"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t37">[37]</a> Kaneko, <i>Nani ga Watashi o kôsaseta ka?</i> [Prison autobiography], pp. 91-95.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n38"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t38">[38]</a>
Itô Noe, 'Ai no Fûfu Seikatsu—Watashitomo o musubitsukeru mono' ['A
Couple's Life of Love—What Binds us Together,' first published in <i>Josei Kaizô</i>, April 1923], in <i>Collected Works, II</i>, pp. 475-80.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n39"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t39">[39]</a>
Even before her arrest Fumiko had criticised Japanese pretensions to
paternalistic benevolence toward Koreans. She wrote in one of the
group's newspapers that those assimilationists who were so 'showy' in
parading their 'love of humanity' needed first to transform Japanese
colonists and the colonial authorites in Korea (where she had lived for
some years as a child) into humans with whom Koreans could assimilate.
Later during the trial she emphasised that under the supposedly 'godly'
imperial rule by the loving 'father of the nation', children in Japan
were crying with hunger, suffocating in the coal mines, being crushed to
death by factory machines. 'Fumiko,' 'Omotta koto, Futatsu-Mittsu' [A
Few Things on My Mind'], in <i>Kokutô</i>, 2 (10 August 1922): (<b>full page numbers of article please</b>, p. 1 reprinted in <i>Trial Records</i>, p. 810; and her 12th testimony (14 May 1924), in <i>Trial Records</i>, pp. 57-62.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n40"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t40">[40]</a> Kaneko, <i>Red Azaleas</i>, p. 33.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n41"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t41">[41]</a>
Re 'proper names', it should be noted that Fumiko had even before her
arrest signed her name as 'Pak Fumiko', doubtless as a political
statement against discrimination against Koreans and probably also
against the father who had disowned her for living with a 'base' Korean.
She also legally married Pak while in prison and wore Korean national
dress into the Supreme Court, as he did, to show their contempt for the
legal proceedings of Japan's imperialist state. I doubt that
nationality, <i>per se</i>, would have been important to her, however,
since she had distanced her more radical 'nihilism' from the movement
merely for Korean independence.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n42"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t42">[42]</a> Bowen Raddeker, 'Anarcho-feminist Discourse in Prewar Japan,' pp. 114-15.
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="n43"></a><a href="http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/raddeker.html#t43">[43]</a> Fuse Tatsuji, <i>Unmei no Shôrisha, Pak Yeol</i> (readers are reminded that the title of Fuse's biography of Pak was 'Victor over Destiny').
</span></li>
</dd></li>
</dd></li>
</dd></li>
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-53268358171975249642013-08-28T12:00:00.000-07:002013-08-28T12:00:00.354-07:00Espertirina Martins (2013)<br />
<a name='more'></a>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://anarquista.net//wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Espertirina-Martins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://anarquista.net//wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Espertirina-Martins.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
http://www.anarquista.net/espertirina-martins/<br />
<br />
Natural de Lajeado, RS, Espertirina era a mais jovem das irmãs Martins, nascida em 1902. Junto com as irmãs Eulina, Dulcina e Virgínia, os irmãos Nino, Henrique (que mudaria seu nome para Cecílio Villar) e Armando, os cunhados Djalma Fetterman e Zenon de Almeida, participa da militância operária e <a href="http://www.anarquista.net/">anarquista</a>. Foi aluna da Escola Moderna de Malvina Tavares, onde estudava também seu futuro marido Artur Fabião Carneiro. <br />
<br />
Com apenas quinze anos, em 1917, carregava a bomba com que Djalma Fettermann enfrentou a carga de cavalaria da Brigada Militar na batalha campal travada na Várzea, hoje avenida João Pessoa, entre anarquistas e brigadianos, em janeiro deste ano. O confronto se deu durante o enterro de um trabalhador assassinado pela repressão. Espertirina levava essa bomba disfarçada dentro de um buquê de flores… Meses depois, em julho, estouraria a greve geral que ficaria conhecida como “A Guerra dos Braços Cruzados”, que pararia Porto Alegre e outras cidades do estado, e da qual Espertirina e sua família participaram ativamente. <br />
<br />
Segundo relata seu sobrinho Marat Martins: “Morou com a irmã Eulina, esposa de Zenon de Almeida, em Rio Grande, onde participou de comícios, manifestações e passeatas, inclusive de um encontro sangrento com as forças da repressão. Teve o curso primário completo, estudou violino, escrevia e era oradora ardente. Com Zenon, no prelo portátil, imprimia os panfletos e jornais revolucionários, distribuindo-os nas fábricas e bairros operários. De novo em Porto Alegre, já moça feita, tornou-se uma <a href="http://www.anarquista.net/anarcofeminismo/">feminista</a> convicta . Em 1925 foi residir com Eulina e Zenon em Campos (RJ), ligando-se novamente aos grupos <a href="http://www.anarquista.net/anarquistas/">anarquistas</a>, quando promoveu reuniões e pronunciou conferências”. <br />
<br />
“Com a irmã Dulcina, que se havia casado com Djalma Fetterman, foi residir no Rio, na Ilha do Governador, Praia da Bandeira, aí casando-se com Fabião Carneiro, o qual logo a seguir foi trabalhar em uma empresa de publicidade Eclética, em São Paulo. Nesta cidade ambos ligaram-se a Edgar Leuentoth, junto a quem prosseguiram nas atividades revolucionárias, até voltarem para Porto Alegre. Aqui. Espertirina veio a falecer em 22 de dezembro de 1942, em virtude das complicações de um parto prematuro e apendicite. Faleceu antes de completar quarenta anos, fiel a suas posições revolucionárias. <br />
<br />
Fonte: Os anarquistas do Rio Grande do Sul – João Batista Marçal <br />
<br />
As condições de trabalho no início do século passado eram as piores possíveis. As fábricas não tinham janelas, os trabalhadores trabalhavam mais de 14 horas por dia, em 6 dias da semana, os salários eram miseráveis. Aconteciam muitos acidentes de trabalho, mas não havia indenização. Não existia o direito à aposentadoria. Grande parte da força de trabalho era constituída por crianças de cinco ou menos anos de idade. As crianças eram freqüentemente espancadas por seus “patrões”. Em 1920, metade dos trabalhadores das fábricas de tecidos do país eram mulheres e crianças com menos de 14 anos de idade. Grande parte dos trabalhadores eram imigrantes vindos da Europa, em especial da Itália. <br />
<br />
O ano de 1917 foi tomado por grandes greves em todo o país. A vida estava cara demais, a fome era grande mesmo entre os que trabalhavam, as condições de trabalho eram péssimas, e a exploração do trabalho infantil e feminino começaram a revoltar os operários. <br />
<br />
Os operários, organizados em seus sindicatos, fizeram então uma pauta de reivindicações para lutar até conquistar seus direitos. Nela, exigiam: medidas para diminuição dos preços dos alimentos e artigos de primeira necessidade, da água, aluguel e bondes; aumento dos salários, jornada de 8 horas de trabalho e de 6 horas para mulheres, e proibição do trabalho infantil. <br />
<br />
No ano de 1917 a vida urbana foi completamente alterada. Participaram da greve pedreiros, padeiros, trapicheiros e estivadores, trabalhadores da Cia Força e Luz, operários das fábricas de tecidos, carroceiros, caixeiros, choferes, tipógrafos, entre outros. Começava a Guerra dos Braços Cruzados, que levou este nome por ter sido realmente uma guerra do povo contra as elites para conquistar seus direitos. Ocorriam piquetes, manifestações, apedrejamentos, barricadas, motins e ocupações de fábricas todos os dias. <br />
<br />
Nesta luta toda, em Porto Alegre a brigada matou um operário. Os operários, em greve, organizam então o enterro do colega assassinado, que era também um protesto por sua morte. Milhares de operários, homens, mulheres e crianças acompanharam o enterro em procissão pela Avenida. Na frente estava Espertirina Martins carregando um buquê de flores. Ao lado contrário da avenida, vinha a carga de cavalaria da Brigada Militar para reprimir a procissão dos operários. Quando os dois grupos se encontraram, Espertirina com seu buquê de flores se aproximou dos brigadianos, que estavam prontos para atacar, e jogou seu buquê no meio dos brigadianos. O buque explodiu, matando metade da tropa e assustando os cavalos. Começou então uma verdadeira batalha campal, que graças ao preparo dos operários, saíram em vantagem. <br />
<br />
Espertirina Martins (1902-1942) pertencia a uma família de militantes anarquistas, lutadores, que tiveram muita importância nas lutas operárias daquela época. <br />
<br />
Graças a toda a batalha, foram conquistadas as 8 horas de trabalho, o fim do trabalho infantil, a aposentadoria, a licença-maternidade, o direito à assistência médica e a indenização no caso de acidente de trabalho. <br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-68396997739522120382013-08-27T12:00:00.000-07:002013-08-27T12:00:04.472-07:00Mett, Ida, 1901-1973<br />
<a name='more'></a> http://libcom.org/history/articles/1901-1973-ida-mett<br />
<br />
<i>A short biography Ida Mett, Russian anarchist and author of The Kronstadt Commune about the uprising against the new Bolshevik dictatorship following the Russian Revolution. <br /><br /> Ida Mett<br /> Born Ida Gilman, July 1901 - Smorgon’, Russia, died 27 June 1973 - Paris, France </i><br /><img alt="http://libcom.org/files/ida-mett.jpg" class="decoded" src="http://libcom.org/files/ida-mett.jpg" /><br />Ida Gilman was born on 20th July 1901 at Smorgon’, within the Russian Emire in what is now Belarus. This was a small industrial town with a mainly Jewish population where the principal employer was a tannery (it was also famous for the baking of bagels, renowned throughout Russia!). Her father was a cloth merchant and she had many siblings. She chose to study medicine. She began to frequent anarchist circles in Moscow. A few weeks before getting her diploma in 1924, she was arrested by the Soviet authorities for subversive activities. At the age of 23 she escaped from Russia with the help of Jewish smugglers. After living in Poland for 2 years and then a stretch in Berlin, she arrived in Paris in 1926. She had by now adopted the surname Mett (many other Russian revolutionaries had done this, such as Volin, Novomirsky, etc.) <br /><br />She took part in the editing of <a href="http://libcom.org/library/dielo-trouda">Dielo Trouda</a>, the magazine set up by <a href="http://libcom.org/history/articles/1889-1934-nestor-makhno">Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno</a> and Russian <a href="http://libcom.org/history/articles/1887-1937-peter-arshinov">Peter Arshinov</a>. She fell out with the group in 1928. The reason she gave was that she was excluded for performing religious rites. On the death of her father, Meyer Gilman, she had lit a candle. But other reasons have been given. She helped Makhno edit his memoirs, she suggested changes which Makhno refused, and they fell out, Ida refusing to make up. <br /><br />She had met him Nicolas Lazarevitch in the Dielo Trouda group, they became companions and jointly edited the paper La Liberation Syndicale. They began to organise campaigns exposing the situation of the working class in Russia. Meetings were held in France, Belgium and Switzerland. <br /><br />On November 25th 1928, following one of these campaigns, they were expelled from France. They moved to Belgium and lived there until 1936 with 2 years spent in France (illegally) and in Spain. They met anarchists Ascaso and <a href="http://libcom.org/history/articles/1896-1936-buenaventura-durruti">Buenaventura Durruti</a> in Belgium. On their invitation, Mett and Lazarevitch addressed several large meetings in Spain. She attended the May 1st celebrations in Barcelona in 1931 with Volin as representatives of the Russian movement. Mett offered her medical knowhow after shooting broke out there, which resulted in Ascaso being wounded in the arm. Ida wrote about her experiences in the revolutionary Syndicalist paper La Revolution Proletarienne, edited by Perre Monatte and others. <br /><br />Mett was active in anarchist and antimilitarist circles in Belgium. She took up her medical studies again, and got her diploma but she was not allowed to practice as a doctor in either Belgium or France. Together with Jean De Boe she and Lazarevitch edited the bimonthly paper Le Reveil Syndicaliste (only one issue of which appeared, thanks to their expulsion) and were charged on a number of occasions for their activities. <br /><br />Mett and Lazarevitch returned to France in 1936, living illegally at Pre Saint Gervais. All attempts at naturalisation were refused, and neither received it right up to their deaths, receiving only stay permits handed out reluctantly. <br /><br />Arrested again in the 8th May 1940, they were imprisoned. Ida and her 8 year old son Marc were sent to the detention camp at Rieucros until April 1941. They got a transfer to Marseilles planning on leaving for the USA. This was refused. Thanks to Boris Souvarine, one of their friends, they were able to take refuge at la Garde Freinet in the Var department, but under surveillance. They then relocated to Draguignan until spring 1946. <br /><br />Ida was secretary of the gas workers union in 1936 at the local workers’ centre, or bourse de travail. From 1948 until 1951 she worked as a doctor in a sanatorium for Jewish children at Brunoy. From the beginning of the 1950s until her death she worked as a technical translator in the chemical industry. <br /><br />She brought out her famous book <a href="http://libcom.org/library/the-kronstadt-uprising-ida-mett">The Kronstadt Commune</a> in 1948. This was published by the Spartacus publishing house and re-awakened controversy over the events. She also wrote the important study The Russian Peasant in the Revolution and Post Revolution which appeared in 1968 again published by Spartacus. Another work, Medicine in the USSR appeared in 1953. She also contributed to a special edition of the journal Est et Ouest (East and West) in 1957, on European communism since the death of Stalin alongside Souvarine and others. With Lazarevitch she wrote The Soviet School in 1954. <br /><br />She died in Paris on 27th June 1973. <br /><br />Nick HeathUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-86235016114575413192013-08-22T12:00:00.000-07:002013-08-22T12:00:00.842-07:00Women's subversive individualism in Barcelona during the 1930s (1992)<br />
<a name='more'></a>by Michael Seidman<br />
<a href="http://misterscruffles.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/subversive.pdf" target="_blank">PDF</a><br />
<br />
The Anarcha-Feminism series, pamphlet n°5<br />
<br />
This text was originally published in the International Review of Social History / Volume 37 / Issue 02 /<br />
<br />
August 1992, pp 161-176.<br />
<div data-canvas-width="8.848000263690949" data-font-name="g_font_p0_1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 539.733px; top: 1018.53px; transform-origin: 0% 0% 0px; transform: scale(0.994157, 1);">
<br />
SUMMARY: <br />
A focus on politically uncommitted working-class women alters the traditional <br />
historiographical emphasis on collective militancy in the Spanish Revolution. A large <br />
number of females acted ambivalently towards the cause, and revolutionaries were forced <br />
to confront women's individualism. In the search for the collective identities of class and <br />
gender, this individualism has been ignored. Instead of neglecting or condemning the <br />
personal, historians should try to understand how an exploration of the varieties of <br />
subversive individualism – resistance to workplace discipline, opportunism, and petty fraud <br />
– can expand the boundaries of social history and help to contribute to a theory of the <br />
state.</div>
<div data-canvas-width="8.848000263690949" data-font-name="g_font_p0_1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 539.733px; top: 1018.53px; transform-origin: 0% 0% 0px; transform: scale(0.994157, 1);">
<br />
http://misterscruffles.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/womens-subversive-individualism-in-barcelona-during-the-1930s-by-michael-seidman/ </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-29137382637813997022013-08-19T12:00:00.000-07:002013-08-19T12:00:01.043-07:00Coletiva Anarcafeminista Marana (2012)<br />
<a name='more'></a>http://bastademachismo.blogspot.com/2012/10/coletiva-anarcafeminista-marana.html<br />
<br />
Reflexões para um debate sobre as agressões machistas: Espaços "libertários" não estão isentos de agressões!<br />
<br />
Coletiva Anarcafeminista Marana<br />
<br />
É muito difícil deixar de viver valores, atitudes e comportamentos que assumimos como normais. Isto requer pensar, debater, questionar-se, tanto a nível pessoal quanto coletivo. É preciso criar um discurso, que seja sincero, crítico e construtivo.<br />
<br />
E já faz algum tempo que estamos vendo crescer o número denuncias públicas de agressões machistas contra mulheres e lésbikas dentro de movimentos sociais, autônomos e/ou libertários, por outro lado o enfrentamento a esses processos tem sido extremamente duro, pois muitas dessas companheiras têm sido questionadas sob a veracidade de suas denúncias. Apesar disso, a tomada de posicionamentos e solidariedade tem aumentado, o que nos faz crer que as reflexões pessoais e coletivas têm dado diferentes respostas as agressões concretas. É preciso reconhecer o valor destas denuncias e ampliar essa rede de apoio às mulheres que tem denunciado as agressões.<br />
<br />
O ressurgimento do debate sobre o feminismo, auto-organização das mulheres e lésbikas, violência machista e estratégias de ação, lançou luz sobre questões antes negligenciadas ou armazenadas numa gaveta, por isso não é tão fácil evitar se envolver ou desviar o olhar. Algum@s pessoas estão levantando esta questão pela primeira vez, outr@s foram se escondendo atrás de velhos privilégios, posições confortáveis e imóveis, de modo que nada muda, outr@s continuaram a crescer em diferentes direções. <br />
<br />
São essas vozes de várias perspectivas, tempos e lugares que compartilham com um traço comum no debate: o olhar sobre a violência machista contra as mulheres e lésbikas como um problema cotidiano, estrutural, multicausal, que nos atravessa. Esta visão compartilhada se opõe à imagem midiatizada que só destaca as conseqüências mais brutais de violência, e se resume a uma questão de "alguns homens doentes e machistas, e algumas pobres mulheres vítimas que precisam ser protegidas". Então quando falamos de violência machista contra as mulheres e lésbikas dentro dos movimentos sociais e/ou libertários, precisamos romper com as fronteiras internas que não são diferentes da externa, ou da sociedade em geral. Afinal, a violência é a mesma. <br />
<br />
E é por isso que nós, feministas continuamos falando da violência machista nos movimentos sociais, autônomos e/ou libertários, onde nós estamos, porque englobamos diferentes realidades com certos códigos compartilhados que permite nos entendermos, e, acima de tudo, porque eles começam a partir de uma vontade que é transformadora e que devemos recorrer. Fazer ações públicas que permitam colocar nome e rosto de agressores, colabora para que deslegitime e tire o poder deles, além de desmistificar a violação machista que ainda é encarada como algo que sempre vem de fora e praticada por "outros" (bêbados usuários de drogas...) e acaba ficando estigmatizada. <br />
<br />
A vergonha é deles e não nossa!<br />
<br />
Na noite de 3 de outubro de 2012, Paula Dahmer, ativista feminista de Curitiba veio a público denunciar que foi agredida na rua e depois dentro de sua casa pelo seu companheiro, Gustavo Oliveira (ativista do MPL - Movimento Passe Livre, CMI - Centro de Mídia Independente e vocalista da banda punk Nieu Dieu Nieu Maitre e Holodomor, de Curitiba/PR). <br />
<br />
Nós consideramos legítima a ação da ativista, especialmente quando realizada em um ambiente político, como foi neste caso e outros que já presenciamos. Mesmo diante das circunstâncias, encontramos resistências de muitos lados para reconhecer a existência de um agressor nos espaços de militância, e chamamos a atenção para os ataques, questionamentos, e interpretações perigosas a respeito das ações feministas e de seus objetivos. Isto nos faz pensar que os movimentos sociais, sobretudo no campo da esquerda (possivelmente por falta de costume e prática) pouco tem avançado no combate ao machismo e violência contra as mulheres nos espaços políticos. <br />
<br />
Não existe nenhuma justificativa para o que aconteceu com Paula. Não podemos ser coniventes com esse tipo de situação, nem disfarçar o ocorrido. O agressor só agiu dessa maneira porque ela é mulher e porque ele sente respaldo na sociedade (e nos espaços de militância) nas suas atitudes machistas. A denúncia é uma ação feminista como uma das respostas que visa contribuir para que tenhamos novos caminhos e olhares, mesmo nos momentos difíceis para afrontar a violência machista e fazer da luta anti-sexista uma realidade. <br />
<br />
E nós, Mulheres e Lésbikas Anarcofeministas da Coletiva Anarcafeminista Marana, manifestamos repúdio às agressões machistas ocorrida com a ativista, e queremos dizer publicamente que admiramos sua coragem em seguir com a denúncia e que estamos dispostas a apóiá-la no que for preciso.<br />
<br />
Este também é uma chamada para a auto-organização das mulheres e lésbikas, a sororidade, a ação direta, para continuarmos criando iniciativas de luta contra a violência machista, dentro e fora dos espaços de militância política.<br />
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">NENHUMA
AGRESSÃO MACHISTA FICARÁ SEM RESPOSTA!</span></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Kozuka Gothic Pro H";"> </span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Kozuka Gothic Pro H";">COLETIVA
ANARCAFEMINISTA MARANA</span></b></div>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Kozuka Gothic Pro H";">Contato: <span style="color: black;"><a href="mailto:coletivamarana@gmail.com">coletivamarana@gmail.com</a></span> </span></b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-20783722920698974412013-08-18T18:14:00.000-07:002013-08-18T18:14:29.296-07:00Radical refusals: On the anarchist politics of women choosing asexuality (2010)<br />
<a name='more'></a><a href="http://www.breannefahs.com/uploads/1/0/6/7/10679051/2010_sexualities_fahs.pdf" target="_blank">PDF</a><br />
<br />
<div data-canvas-width="221.7893381404878" data-font-name="Helvetica" dir="ltr" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; left: 183.772px; top: 221.333px; transform-origin: 0% 0% 0px; transform: scale(1.02207, 1);">
Breanne Fahs</div>
<div data-canvas-width="221.7893381404878" data-font-name="Helvetica" dir="ltr" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; left: 183.772px; top: 221.333px; transform-origin: 0% 0% 0px; transform: scale(1.02207, 1);">
Sexualities</div>
<div data-canvas-width="89.70133527755738" data-font-name="Helvetica" dir="ltr" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; left: 285.273px; top: 206.667px; transform-origin: 0% 0% 0px; transform: scale(1.01933, 1);">
2010 13: 445</div>
<div data-canvas-width="70.91333487033845" data-font-name="Helvetica" dir="ltr" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; left: 214.359px; top: 206.667px; transform-origin: 0% 0% 0px; transform: scale(1.01305, 1);">
<br /></div>
<div data-canvas-width="92.12133533000946" data-font-name="Helvetica" dir="ltr" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; left: 248.606px; top: 192px; transform-origin: 0% 0% 0px; transform: scale(1.00132, 1);">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8581915211967741397.post-31388643565531137532013-08-15T10:56:00.000-07:002013-08-15T10:56:05.203-07:00The Problem with “Privilege” (2013)<br />
<a name='more'></a>http://andrea366.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/the-problem-with-privilege-by-andrea-smith/<br />
<br />
by Andrea Smith<br />
<br />
<em>For a much longer and detailed version, see my essay in the book Geographies of Privilege </em><br />
<br />
In my experience working with a multitude of anti-racist organizing
projects over the years, I frequently found myself participating in
various workshops in which participants were asked to reflect on their
gender/race/sexuality/class/etc. privilege. These workshops had a bit
of a self-help orientation to them: “I am so and so, and I have x
privilege.” It was never quite clear what the point of these
confessions were. It was not as if other participants did not know the
confessor in question had her/his proclaimed privilege. It did not
appear that these individual confessions actually led to any political
projects to dismantle the structures of domination that enabled their
privilege. Rather, the confessions became the political project
themselves. The benefits of these confessions seemed to be
ephemeral. For the instant the confession took place, those who do not
have that privilege in daily life would have a temporary position of
power as the hearer of the confession who could grant absolution and
forgiveness. The sayer of the confession could then be granted
temporary forgiveness for her/his abuses of power and relief from
white/male/heterosexual/etc guilt. Because of the perceived benefits
of this ritual, there was generally little critique of the fact that in
the end, it primarily served to reinstantiate the structures of
domination it was supposed to resist. One of the reasons there was
little critique of this practice is that it bestowed cultural capital to
those who seemed to be the “most oppressed.” Those who had little
privilege did not have to confess and were in the position to be the
judge of those who did have privilege. Consequently, people aspired to
be oppressed. Inevitably, those with more privilege would develop new
heretofore unknown forms of oppression from which they suffered. “I may
be white, but my best friend was a person of color, which caused me to
be oppressed when we played together.” Consequently, the goal became
not to actually end oppression but to be as oppressed as possible.
These rituals often substituted confession for political
movement-building. And despite the cultural capital that was, at least
temporarily, bestowed to those who seemed to be the most oppressed,
these rituals ultimately reinstantiated the white majority subject as
the subject capable of self-reflexivity and the colonized/racialized
subject as the occasion for self-reflexivity.<br />
<br />
These rituals around self-reflexivity in the academy and in activist
circles are not without merit. They are informed by key insights into
how the logics of domination that structure the world also constitute
who we are as subjects. Political projects of transformation
necessarily involve a fundamental reconstitution of ourselves as well.
However, for this process to work, individual transformation must occur
concurrently with social and political transformation. That is, the
undoing of privilege occurs not by individuals confessing their
privileges or trying to think themselves into a new subject position,
but through the creation of collective structures that dismantle the
systems that enable these privileges. The activist genealogies that
produced this response to racism and settler colonialism were not
initially focused on racism as a problem of individual prejudice.
Rather, the purpose was for individuals to recognize how they were
shaped by structural forms of oppression. However, the response to
structural racism became an individual one – individual confession at
the expense of collective action. Thus the question becomes, how would
one collectivize individual transformation? Many organizing projects
attempt and have attempted to do precisely this, such Sisters in Action
for Power, Sista II Sista, Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, and
Communities Against Rape and Abuse, among many others. Rather than
focus simply on one’s individual privilege, they address privilege on an
organizational level. For instance, they might assess – is everyone
who is invited to speak a college graduate? Are certain peoples always
in the limelight? Based on this assessment, they develop structures to
address how privilege is exercised collectively. For instance, anytime
a person with a college degree is invited to speak, they bring with
them a co-speaker who does not have that education level. They might
develop mentoring and skills-sharing programs within the group. To
quote one of my activist mentors, Judy Vaughn, “You don’t think your way
into a different way of acting; you act your way into a different way
of thinking.” Essentially, the current social structure conditions us
to exercise what privileges we may have. If we want to undermine those
privileges, we must change the structures within which we live so that
we become different peoples in the process.<br />
<br />
This essay will explore the structuring logics of the politics of
privilege. In particular, the logics of privilege rest on an
individualized self that relies on the raw material of other beings to
constitute itself. Although the confessing of privilege is understood
to be an anti-racist practice, it is ultimately a project premised on
white supremacy. Thus, organizing and intellectual projects that are
questioning these politics of privilege are shifting the question from
what privileges does a particular subject have to what is the nature of
the subject that claims to have privilege in the first place.<br />
<br />
The Confessing Subject<br />
<br />
My analysis is informed the work of Denise DaSilva. She argues in <i>Toward a Global Idea of Race </i>that
the western subject understands itself as self-determining through its
ability to self-reflect, analyze and exercise power over others. The
western subject knows that it is self-determining because it compares
itself to ‘others” who are not. In other words, I know who I am because
I am not you. These “others” of course are racialized. The western
subject is a universal subject who determines itself without being
determined by others; the racialized subject is particular, but is
supposed to aspire to be universal and self-determining.<br />
<br />
Silva’s analysis thus critiques the presumption that the problem
facing racialized and colonized peoples is that they have been
“dehumanized.” Anti-racist intellectual and political projects are
often premised on the notion that if people knew us better, we too would
be granted humanity. But, according to Silva, the fundamental issue
that does not get addressed, is that “the human” is already a racial
project. It is a project that aspires to universality, a project that
can only exist over and against the particularity of “the other.”<br />
<br />
Consequently, two problems result. First, those who are put in the
position of racialized and colonized others presume that liberation
will ensue if they can become self-determining subjects – in other
words, if they can become fully “human.” However, the humanity to which
we aspire still depends on the continued oppression of other
racialized/colonized others. Thus, a liberation struggle that does not
question the terms by which humanity is understood becomes a liberation
struggle that depends on the oppression of others.<br />
<br />
Silva’s analysis implies that “liberation” would require different
selves that understand themselves in radical relationality with all
other peoples and things. The goal then becomes not the mastery of
anti-racist/anti-colonialist lingo but a different self-understanding
that sees one’s being as fundamentally constituted through other
beings. An example of the political enactment of this critique of the
western subject could be glimpsed at the 2008 World Social Forum that I
attended. The indigenous peoples made a collective statement calling
into question the issue of the nation-state. In addition to challenging
capitalism, they called on participants to imagine new forms of
governance not based on a nation-state model. They contended that the
nation-state has not worked in the last 500 years, so they suspected
that it was not going to start working now. Instead, they called for
new forms of collectivities that were based on principles of
interrelatedness, mutuality and global responsibility. These new
collectivities (nations, if you will, for lack of a better world) would
not be based on insular or exclusivist claims to a land base; indeed
they would reject the contention that land is a commodity that any one
group of people should be able to buy, control or own. Rather, these
collectivities would be based on responsibility for and relationship
with land.<br />
<br />
But they suggested that these collectivities could not be formed
without a radical change in what we perceived ourselves to be. That is,
if we understand ourselves to be transparent, self-determining
subjects, defining ourselves in opposition to who we are not, then the
nations that will emerge from this sense of self will be exclusivist and
insular. However, if we understand ourselves as being fundamentally
constituted through our relations with other beings and the land, then
the nations that emerge will also be inclusive and interconnected with
each other.<br />
<br />
Second, the assumption that we have about liberation is that we will
be granted humanity if we can prove their worthiness. If people
understood us better, they would see we are “human” just like they are,
and would grant us the status of humanity. As a result, anti-racist
activist and scholarly projects often become trapped in ethnographic
multiculturalism. Ironically, in order to prove our worthiness, we put
ourselves in the position of being ethnographic objects so that the
white subject to judge our claims for humanity.<br />
<br />
Rey Chow notes that within this position of ethnographic entrapment,
the only rhetorical position offered to the Native is that of the
“protesting ethnic.” The posture to be assumed under the politics of
recognition is the posture of complaint. If we complain eloquently, the
system will give us something. Building on Chow’s work, this essay will
explore how another posture that is created within this economy is the
self-reflexive settler/white subject. This self-reflexive subject is
frequently on display at various anti-racist venues in which the
privileged subject explains how much s/he learned about her complicity
in settler colonialism and/or white supremacy because of her exposure to
Native peoples. A typical instance of this will involve non-Native
peoples who make presentations based on what they “learned” while doing
solidarity work with Native peoples in their field research/solidarity
work, etc. Complete with videos and slide shows, the presenters will
express the privilege with which they struggled. We will learn how they
tried to address the power imbalances between them and the peoples with
which they studied or worked. We will learn how they struggled to gain
their trust. Invariably, the narrative begins with the presenters
initially facing the distrust of the Natives because of their
settler/white privilege. But through perseverance and good intentions,
the researchers overcome this distrust and earn the friendship of their
ethnographic objects. In these stories of course, to evoke Gayatri
Spivak, the subaltern does not speak. We do not hear what their
theoretical analysis of their relationship is. We do not hear about how
they were organizing on their own before they were saved/studied by
these presenters.<br />
<br />
Native peoples are not positioned as those who can engage in
self-reflection; they can only judge the worth of the confession.
Consequently, the presenters of these narratives often present very
nervously. Did they speak to all their privileges? Did they properly
confess? Or will someone in the audience notice a mistake and question
whether they have in fact become a fully-developed anti-racist subject?
In that case, the subject would have to then engage in further acts of
self-reflection that require new confessions in the future.<br />
<br />
Thus, borrowing from the work of Scott Morgensen and Hiram Perez, the
confession of privilege, while claiming to be anti-racist and
anti-colonial, is actually a strategy that helps constitute the
settler/white subject. In Morgensen’s analysis, the settler subject
constitutes itself through incorporation. Through this logic of
settlement, settlers become the rightful inheritors of all that was
indigenous – land, resources, indigenous spirituality, or culture.
Thus, indigeneity is not necessarily framed as antagonistic to the
settler subject; rather the Native is supposed to disappear into the
project of settlement. The settler becomes the “new and improved”
version of the Native, thus legitimizing and naturalizing the settler’s
claims to this land.<br />
<br />
Hiram Perez similarly analyzes how the white subject positions itself
intellectually as a cosmopolitan subject capable of abstract theorizing
through the use of the “raw material” provided by fixed, brown bodies.
The white subject is capable of being “anti-“ or “post-identity,” but
understands their post-identity only in relationship to brown subjects
which are hopelessly fixed within identity. Brown peoples provide the
“raw material” that enables the intellectual production of the white
subject.<br />
<br />
Thus, self-reflexivity enables the constitution of the white/settler
subject. Anti-racist/colonial struggles have created a colonial
dis-ease that the settler/white subject may not in fact be
self-determining. As a result, the white/settler subject reasserts
their power through self-reflection. In particular, indigenous peoples
and people of color become the occasion by which the white subject can
self-reflect on her/his privilege. If this person self-reflects
effectively, s/he may be bestowed the title “ally” and build a career of
her/his self-reflection. As many on the blogosphere have been
commenting recently (see for instance @prisonculture and @ChiefElk), an
entire ally industrial complex has developed around the professional
confession of privilege<br />
<br />
Of course, this essay itself does not escape the logics of
self-reflexivity either. Rhetorically, it simply sets me up as yet
another judge of the inadequacies of the confessions of others. Thus,
what is important in this discussion is not so much how particular
individuals confess their privileges. If Native peoples are represented
problematically even by peoples who espouse anti-racist or anti-settler
politics, it is not an indication that the work of those peoples is
particularly flawed or that their scholarship has less value.
Similarly, those privileged “confessing” subjects in anti-racism
workshops do so with a commitment to fighting settler colonialism or
white supremacy and their solidarity work is critically needed.
Furthermore, as women of color scholars and activists have noted, there
is no sharp divide between those who are “oppressed” and those who are
“oppressors.” Individuals may find themselves variously in the position
of being the confessor or the judge of the confession depending on the
context. Rather, the point of this analysis is to illustrate the larger
dynamics by which racialized and colonized peoples are even seen and
understood in the first place.<br />
The presupposition is that Indigenous peoples are oppressed because
they are not sufficiently known or understood. In fact, however, this
desire to “know” the Native is itself part of the settler-colonial
project to apprehend, contain and domesticate the potential power of
indigenous peoples to subvert the settler state. As Mark Rifkin has
argued, colonial logics attempt to transform Native peoples who are
producers of intellectual theory and political insight into populations
to be known and hence managed. Native struggles then simply become a
project of Native peoples making their demands known so that their
claims can be recognized the by the settler state. Once these demands
are known, they can they be more easily managed, co-opted and
disciplined. Thus, the project of decolonization requires a practice of
what Audra Simpson calls “ethnographic refusal” – the refusal to be
known and the refusal to be infinitely knowable. The politics of
decolonization requires the proliferation of theories, knowledge, ideas,
and analyses that speak to a beyond settler colonialism and are hence
unknowable.<br />
<br />
<div align="center">
Alternatives to Self-Reflection</div>
Based on this analysis then, our project becomes less of
one based on self-improvement or even collective self-improvement, and
more about the creation of new worlds and futurities for which we
currently have no language.<br />
<br />
There is no simple anti-oppression formula that we can follow; we are
in a constant state of trial and error and radical experimentation.
In that spirit then, I offer some possibilities that might speak to new
ways of undoing privilege, not in the sense of offering the “correct”
process for moving forward, but in the spirit of adding to our
collective imagining of a “beyond.” These projects of decolonization
can be contrasted with that of the projects of anti-racist or
anti-colonialist self-reflexivity in that they are not based on the goal
of “knowing” more about our privilege, but on creating that which we
cannot now know.<br />
<br />
As I have discussed elsewhere, many of these models are based on
“taking power by making power” models particularly prevalent in Latin
America. These models, which are deeply informed by indigenous peoples’
movements, have informed the landless movement, the factory movements,
and other peoples’ struggles. Many of these models are also being used
by a variety of social justice organization throughout the United States
and elsewhere. The principle undergirding these models is to challenge
capital and state power by actually creating the world we want to live
in now. These groups develop alternative governance systems based on
principles of horizontality, mutuality, and interrelatedness rather than
hierarchy, domination, and control. In beginning to create this new
world, subjects are transformed. These “autonomous zones” can be
differentiated from the projects of many groups in the U.S. that create
separatist communities based on egalitarian ideals in that people in
these “making power” movements do not just create autonomous zones, but
they <i>proliferate</i> them. These movements developed in reaction to
the revolutionary vanguard model of organizing in Latin America that
became criticized as “machismo-leninismo” models. These models were so
hierarchical that in the effort to combat systems of oppression, they
inadvertently re-created the same systems they were trying to replace.
In addition, this model of organizing was inherently exclusivist because
not everyone can take up guns and go the mountains to become
revolutionaries. Women, who have to care for families, could
particularly be excluded from such revolutionary movements. So,
movements began to develop organizing models that are based on
integrating the organizing into one’s everyday life so that all people
can participate. For instance, a group might organize through communal
cooking, but during the cooking process, which everyone needs to do
anyway in order to eat, they might educate themselves on the nature of
agribusiness.<br />
<br />
At the 2005 World Social Forum in Brazil, activists from Chiapas
reported that this movement began to realize that one cannot combat
militarism with more militarism because the state always has more guns.
However, if movements began to build their own autonomous zones and
proliferated them until they reached a mass scale, eventually there
would be nothing the state’s military could do. If mass-based
peoples’ movements begin to live life using alternative governance
structures and stop relying on the state, then what can the state do?
Of course, during the process, there may be skirmishes with the state,
but conflict is not the primary work of these movements. And as we see
these movements literally take over entire countries in Latin America,
it is clear that it is possible to do revolutionary work on a mass-scale
in a manner based on radical participatory rather than representational
democracy or through a revolutionary vanguard model.<br />
<br />
Many leftists will argue that nation-states are necessary to check
the power of multi-national corporations or will argue that
nation-states are no longer important units of analysis. These groups,
by contrast, recognize the importance of creating alternative forms of
governance outside of a nation-state model based on principles of
horizontalism. In addition, these groups are taking on multinational
corporations directly. An example would be the factory movement in
Argentina where workers have appropriated factories and seized the means
of production themselves. They have also developed cooperative
relationships with other appropriated factories. In addition, in many
factories all of the work is collectivized. For instance, a participant
from a group I work with who recently had a child and was breastfeeding
went to visit a factory. She tried to sign up for one of the
collectively-organized tasks of the factory, and was told that
breastfeeding was her task. The factory recognized breastfeeding as
work on par with all the other work going on in the factory.<br />
<br />
This kind of politics then challenges the notions of “safe space”
often prevalent in many activist circles in the United States. The
concept of safe space flows naturally from the logics of privilege.
That is, once we have confessed our gender/race/settler/class
privileges, we can then create a safe space where others will not be
negatively impacted by these privileges. Of course because we have not
dismantled heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, settler colonialism or
capitalism, these confessed privileges never actually disappear in “safe
spaces.” Consequently, when a person is found guilty of his/her
privilege in these spaces, s/he is accused of making the space
“unsafe.” This rhetorical strategy presumes that only certain
privileged subjects can make the space “unsafe” as if everyone isn’t
implicated in heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, settler colonialism and
capitalism. Our focus is shifted from the larger systems that make the
entire world unsafe, to interpersonal conduct. In addition, the
accusation of “unsafe” is also levied against people of color who
express anger about racism, only to find themselves accused of making
the space “unsafe” because of their raised voices. The problem with
safe space is the presumption that a safe space is even possible.<br />
<br />
By contrast, instead of thinking of safe spaces as a refuge from
colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, Ruthie Gilmore suggests
that safe space is not an escape from the real, but a place to practice
the real we want to bring into being. “Making power” models follow this
suggestion in that they do not purport to be free of oppression, only
that they are trying to create the world they would like to live in
now. To give one smaller example, when Incite! Women of Color Against
Violence, organized, we questioned the assumption that “women of color”
space is a safe space. In fact, participants began to articulate that
women of color space may in fact be a very dangerous space. We realized
that we could not assume alliances with each other, but we would
actually have to create these alliances. One strategy that was helpful
was rather than presume that we were acting “non-oppressively,” we built
a structure that would presume that we were complicit in the structures
of white supremacy/settler colonialism/heteropatriarchy etc. We then
structured this presumption into our organizing by creating spaces where
we would educate ourselves on issues in which our politics and praxis
were particularly problematic. The issues we have covered include:
disability, anti-Black racism, settler colonialism, Zionism and
anti-Arab racism, transphobia, and many others. However, in this space,
while we did not ignore our individual complicity in oppression, we
developed action plans for how we would <i>collectively</i> try to
transform our politics and praxis. Thus, this space did not create the
dynamic of the confessor and the hearer of the confession. Instead, we
presumed we are all implicated in these structures of oppression and
that we would need to work together to undo them. Consequently, in my
experience, this kind of space facilitated our ability to integrate
personal and social transformation because no one had to anxiously worry
about whether they were going to be targeted as a bad person with undue
privilege who would need to publicly confess. The space became one
that was based on principles of loving rather than punitive
accountability.<br />
<br />
<div align="center">
Conclusion</div>
The politics of privilege have made the important
contribution of signaling how the structures of oppression constitute
who we are as persons. However, as the rituals of confessing privilege
have evolved, they have shifted our focus from building social movements
for global transformation to individual self-improvement. Furthermore,
they rest on a white supremacist/colonialist notion of a subject that
can constitute itself over and against others through
self-reflexivity. While trying to keep the key insight made in
activist/academic circles that personal and social transformation are
interconnected, alternative projects have developed that focus less on
privilege and more the structures that create privilege. These new
models do not hold the “answer,” because the genealogy of the politics
of privilege also demonstrates that our activist/intellectual projects
of liberation must be constantly changing. Our imaginations are limited
by white supremacy, settler colonialism, etc., so all ideas we have
will not be “perfect.” The ideas we develop today also do not have to
be based on the complete disavowal of what we did yesterday because
what we did yesterday teaches what we might do tomorrow. Thus, as we
think not only beyond privilege, but beyond the sense of self that
claims privilege, we open ourselves to new possibilities that we cannot
imagine now for the future.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0