Anarcha-feminism, also called anarchist feminism
and anarcho-feminism, combines anarchism with
feminism. It generally views patriarchy and
traditional gender roles as a manifestation
of involuntary coercive hierarchy that should
be replaced by decentralized free association.
They believe that the struggle against patriarchy
is an essential part of class conflict and
the anarchist struggle against the state and
capitalism. In essence, the philosophy sees
anarchist struggle as a necessary component
of feminist struggle and vice versa. L. Susan
Brown claims that "as anarchism is a political
philosophy that opposes all relationships
of power, it is inherently feminist". Contrary
to popular belief and contemporary association
with radical feminism, anarcha-feminism is
not an inherently militant outlook. It is
described to be an anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist,
anti-oppressive philosophy, with the goal
of creating an "equal ground" between all
genders. The term "anarcha-feminism" suggests
the social freedom and liberty of women, without
needed dependence upon other groups or parties.
== Origins ==
Mikhail Bakunin opposed patriarchy and the
way the law "[subjected women] to the absolute
domination of the man". He argued that "[e]qual
rights must belong to men and women" so that
women could "become independent and be free
to forge their own way of life". Bakunin foresaw
the end of "the authoritarian juridical family"
and "the full sexual freedom of women". On
the other hand, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon viewed
the family as the most basic unit of society
and of his morality and believed that women
had the responsibility of fulfilling a traditional
role within the family.Since the 1860s, anarchism's
radical critique of capitalism and the state
has been combined with a critique of patriarchy.
Anarcha-feminists thus start from the precept
that modern society is dominated by men. Authoritarian
traits and values—domination, exploitation,
aggression and competition—are integral
to hierarchical civilizations and are seen
as "masculine". In contrast, non-authoritarian
traits and values—cooperation, sharing,
compassion and sensitivity—are regarded
as "feminine" and devalued. Anarcha-feminists
have thus espoused creation of a non-authoritarian,
anarchist society. They refer to the creation
of a society based on cooperation, sharing
and mutual aid as the "feminization of society".Anarcha-feminism
began with late 19th and early 20th century
authors and theorists such as anarchist feminists
Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre and Lucy
Parsons. In the Spanish Civil War, an anarcha-feminist
group, Mujeres Libres ("Free Women"), linked
to the Federación Anarquista Ibérica, organized
to defend both anarchist and feminist ideas.
Stirnerist Nietzschean feminist Federica Montseny
held that the "emancipation of women would
lead to a quicker realization of the social
revolution" and that "the revolution against
sexism would have to come from intellectual
and militant 'future-women'". According to
this Nietzschean concept of Federica Montseny's,
women could "realize through art and literature
the need to revise their own roles". In China,
the anarcha-feminist He Zhen argued that without
women's liberation society could not be liberated.
=== Virginia Bolten and La Voz de la Mujer
===
In Argentina, Virginia Bolten is responsible
for the publication of a newspaper called
La Voz de la Mujer (English: The Woman's Voice),
which was published nine times in Rosario
between January 8, 1896 and January 1, 1897
and was briefly revived in 1901. A similar
paper with the same name was reportedly published
later in Montevideo, which suggests that Bolten
may also have founded and edited it after
her deportation. La Voz de la Mujer described
itself as "dedicated to the advancement of
Communist Anarchism". Its central theme was
the multiple natures of women's oppression.
An editorial asserted: "We believe that in
present-day society, nothing and nobody has
a more wretched situation than unfortunate
women". They said that women were doubly oppressed
by both bourgeois society and men. Its beliefs
can be seen from its attack on marriage and
upon male power over women. Its contributors,
like anarchist feminists elsewhere, developed
a concept of oppression that focused on gender.
They saw marriage as a bourgeois institution
which restricted women's freedom, including
their sexual freedom. Marriages entered into
without love, fidelity maintained through
fear rather than desire and oppression of
women by men they hated were all seen as symptomatic
of the coercion implied by the marriage contract.
It was this alienation of the individual's
will that the anarchist feminists deplored
and sought to remedy, initially through free
love and then more thoroughly through social
revolution.
== Individualist anarchism and the free love
movement ==
An important topic within individualist anarchism
is free love. Free love advocates sometimes
traced their roots back to Josiah Warren and
to experimental communities, which viewed
sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression
of an individual's self-ownership. Free love
particularly stressed women's rights since
most sexual laws discriminated against women,
such as marriage laws and anti-birth control
measures. The most important American free
love journal was Lucifer the Lightbearer (1883–1907),
edited by Moses Harman and Lois Waisbrooker.
Ezra and Angela Heywood's The Word was also
published from 1872–1890 and in 1892–1893.
M. E. Lazarus was also an important American
individualist anarchist who promoted free
love. In Europe, the main propagandist of
free love within individualist anarchism was
Émile Armand. He proposed the concept of
"la camaraderie amoureuse" to speak of free
love as the possibility of voluntary sexual
encounter between consenting adults. He was
also a consistent proponent of polyamory.
In France, there was also feminist activity
inside French individualist anarchism as promoted
by individualist feminists Marie Küge, Anna
Mahé, Rirette Maîtrejean and Sophia Zaïkovska.
Brazilian individualist anarchist Maria Lacerda
de Moura lectured on topics such as education,
women's rights, free love and antimilitarism.
Her writings and essays landed her attention
not only in Brazil, but also in Argentina
and Uruguay. In February 1923, she launched
Renascença, a periodical linked with the
anarchist, progressive and freethinking circles
of the period. Her thought was mainly influenced
by individualist anarchists such as Han Ryner
and Émile Armand.
=== Voltairine de Cleyre ===
Voltairine de Cleyre (November 17, 1866 – June
20, 1912) was an American anarchist writer
and feminist. She was a prolific writer and
speaker, opposing the state, marriage and
the domination of religion in sexuality and
women's lives. She began her activist career
in the freethought movement. De Cleyre was
initially drawn to individualist anarchism,
but evolved through mutualism to an "anarchism
without adjectives". She was a colleague of
Emma Goldman, with whom she respectfully disagreed
with on many issues. Many of her essays were
in the Collected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre,
published posthumously by Mother Earth in
1914. In her 1895 lecture entitled Sex Slavery,
de Cleyre condemns ideals of beauty that encourage
women to distort their bodies and child socialization
practices that create unnatural gender roles.
The title of the essay refers not to traffic
in women for purposes of prostitution, although
that is also mentioned, but rather to marriage
laws that allow men to rape their wives without
consequences. Such laws make "every married
woman what she is, a bonded slave, who takes
her master's name, her master's bread, her
master's commands, and serves her master's
passions".
=== Emma Goldman ===
Although she was hostile to first-wave feminism
and its suffragist goals, Emma Goldman advocated
passionately for the rights of women and is
today heralded as a founder of anarcha-feminism.
In 1897, she wrote: "I demand the independence
of woman, her right to support herself; to
live for herself; to love whomever she pleases,
or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom
for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom
in love and freedom in motherhood".In 1906,
Goldman wrote a piece entitled "The Tragedy
of Woman's Emancipation" in which she argued
that traditional suffragists and first-wave
feminists were achieving only a superficial
good for women by pursuing the vote and a
movement from the home sphere. She also writes
that in the ideal world women would be free
to pursue their own destinies, yet "emancipation
of woman, as interpreted and practically applied
today, has failed to reach that great end".
She pointed to the "so-called independence"
of the modern woman whose true nature—her
love and mother instincts—were rebuked and
stifled by the suffragist and early feminist
movements. Goldman's arguments in this text
are arguably much more in line with the ideals
of modern third-wave feminism than with the
feminism of her time, especially given her
emphasis on allowing women to pursue marriage
and motherhood if they so desired. In Goldman's
eyes, the early twentieth century idea of
the emancipated woman had a "tragic effect
upon the inner life of woman" by restricting
her from fully fulfilling her nature and having
a well-rounded life with a companion in marriage.
A nurse by training, Goldman was an early
advocate for educating women about birth control.
Like many contemporary feminists, she saw
abortion as a tragic consequence of social
conditions and birth control as a positive
alternative. Goldman was also an advocate
of free love and a strong critic of marriage.
She saw early feminists as confined in their
scope and bounded by social forces of Puritanism
and capitalism. She wrote: "We are in need
of unhampered growth out of old traditions
and habits. The movement for women's emancipation
has so far made but the first step in that
direction". When Margaret Sanger, an advocate
of access to birth control, coined the term
"birth control" and disseminated information
about various methods in the June 1914 issue
of her magazine The Woman Rebel, she received
aggressive support from Goldman. Sanger was
arrested in August under the Comstock laws,
which prohibited the dissemination of "obscene,
lewd, or lascivious articles"—including
information relating to birth control. Although
they later split from Sanger over charges
of insufficient support, Goldman and Reitman
distributed copies of Sanger's pamphlet Family
Limitation (along with a similar essay of
Reitman's). In 1915, Goldman conducted a nationwide
speaking tour in part to raise awareness about
contraception options. Although the nation's
attitude toward the topic seemed to be liberalizing,
Goldman was arrested in February 1916 and
charged with violation of the Comstock Law.
Refusing to pay a $100 fine, she spent two
weeks in a prison workhouse, which she saw
as an "opportunity" to reconnect with those
rejected by society.Goldman was also an outspoken
critic of prejudice against homosexuals. Her
belief that social liberation should extend
to gay men and lesbians was virtually unheard
of at the time, even among anarchists. As
Magnus Hirschfeld wrote, "she was the first
and only woman, indeed the first and only
American, to take up the defense of homosexual
love before the general public". In numerous
speeches and letters, she defended the right
of gay men and lesbians to love as they pleased
and condemned the fear and stigma associated
with homosexuality. As Goldman wrote in a
letter to Hirschfeld: "It is a tragedy, I
feel, that people of a different sexual type
are caught in a world which shows so little
understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly
indifferent to the various gradations and
variations of gender and their great significance
in life".
=== Milly Witkop ===
Milly Witkop was a Ukrainian-born Jewish anarcho-syndicalist,
feminist writer and activist. She was the
common-law wife of Rudolf Rocker. In November
1918, Witkop and Rocker moved to Berlin; Rocker
had been invited by Free Association of German
Trade Unions (FVdG) chairman Fritz Kater to
join him in building up what would become
the Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD),
an anarcho-syndicalist trade union. Both Rocker
and Witkop became members of the FAUD. After
its founding in early 1919, a discussion about
the role of girls and women in the union started.
The male-dominated organization had at first
ignored gender issues, but soon women started
founding their own unions, which were organized
parallel to the regular unions, but still
formed part of the FAUD. Witkop was one of
the leading founders of the Women's Union
in Berlin in 1920. On October 15, 1921, the
women's unions held a national congress in
Düsseldorf and the Syndicalist Women's Union
(SFB) was founded on a national level. Shortly
thereafter, Witkop drafted Was will der Syndikalistische
Frauenbund? (What Does the Syndicalist Women's
Union Want?) as a platform for the SFB. From
1921, the Frauenbund was published as a supplement
to the FAUD organ Der Syndikalist, Witkop
was one of its primary writers.Witkop reasoned
that proletarian women were exploited not
only by capitalism like male workers, but
also by their male counterparts. She contended
therefore that women must actively fight for
their rights, much like workers must fight
capitalism for theirs. She also insisted on
the necessity of women taking part in class
struggle and that housewives could use boycotts
to support this struggle. From this, she concluded
the necessity of an autonomous women's organization
in the FAUD. Witkop also held that domestic
work should be deemed equally valuable to
wage labor.
=== Mujeres Libres ===
Mujeres Libres (English: Free Women) was an
anarchist women's organization in Spain that
aimed to empower working class women. It was
founded in 1936 by Lucía Sánchez Saornil,
Mercedes Comaposada and Amparo Poch y Gascón
and had approximately 30,000 members. The
organization was based on the idea of a "double
struggle" for women's liberation and social
revolution and argued that the two objectives
were equally important and should be pursued
in parallel. In order to gain mutual support,
they created networks of women anarchists.
Flying day-care centres were set up in efforts
to involve more women in union activities.The
organization also produced propaganda through
radio, traveling libraries and propaganda
tours in order to promote their cause. Organizers
and activists traveled through rural parts
of Spain to set up rural collectives and support
for women. To prepare women for leadership
roles in the anarchist movement, they organized
schools, women-only social groups and a women-only
newspaper to help women gain self-esteem and
confidence in their abilities and network
with one another to develop their political
consciousness. Many of the female workers
in Spain were illiterate and the Mujeres Libres
sought to educate them through literacy programs,
technically oriented classes and social studies
classes. Schools were also created for train
nurses to help injured in emergency medical
clinics. Medical classes also provided women
with information on sexual health and pre
and post-natal care. The Mujeres Libres also
created a woman run magazine to keep all of
its members informed. The first monthly issue
of Mujeres Libres was published on May 20,
1936 (ack 100). However, the magazine only
had 14 issues and the last issue was still
being printed when the Spanish Civil War battlefront
reached Barcelona, and no copies survived.
The magazine addressed working class women
and focused on "awakening the female conscience
toward libertarian ideas".
==== Lucía Sánchez Saornil ====
Lucía Sánchez Saornil (December 13, 1895
– June 2, 1970), was a Spanish poet, militant
anarchist and feminist. She is best known
as one of the founders of Mujeres Libres.
She served in the Confederación Nacional
del Trabajo (CNT) and Solidaridad Internacional
Antifascista (SIA). By 1919, she had been
published in a variety of journals, including
Los Quijotes, Tableros, Plural, Manantial
and La Gaceta Literaria. Working under a male
pen name, she was able to explore lesbian
themes at a time when homosexuality was criminalized
and subject to censorship and punishment.
Writing in anarchist publications such as
Earth and Freedom, the White Magazine and
Workers' Solidarity, Lucía outlined her perspective
as a feminist. Although quiet on the subject
of birth control, she attacked the essentialism
of gender roles in Spanish society. In this
way, Lucía established herself as one of
the most radical of voices among anarchist
women, rejecting the ideal of female domesticity
which remained largely unquestioned. In a
series of articles for Workers' Solidarity,
she boldly refuted Gregorio Marañón's identification
of motherhood as the nucleus of female identity.
=== Italian migrant women ===
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
Paterson, New Jersey was a major center of
the anarchist movement. Most of the anarchists
in the area were Italian migrants who worked
in the mills and women played an important
role in the movement.Northern Italian migrants
Maria Roda, Ernestina Cravello and Ninfa Baronio
founded Paterson's Gruppo Emancipazione della
Donna (Women's Emancipation Group) in 1897.
The group gave lectures, wrote for the anarchist
press, and published pamphlets. They also
formed the Club Femminile de Musica e di Canto
(Women's Music and Song Club) and the Teatro
Sociale (Social Theater). The Teatro performed
plays which challenged Catholic sexual morality
and called for the emancipation of women.
Their plays stood in marked contrast to other
radical works in which women were depicted
as victims in need of rescuing by male revolutionaries.
They often traveled to perform their plays,
and connected with other Italian anarchist
women in Hoboken, Brooklyn, Manhattan and
New London, Connecticut. The Paterson group
met regularly for about seven years and inspired
other women to form similar groups. Their
Southern Italian contemporaries included Elvira
Catello in East Harlem, who ran a popular
theater group and a radical bookstore; Maria
Raffuzzi in Manhattan, who co-founded Il Gruppo
di Propaganda Femminile (Women's Propaganda
Group) in 1901; and Maria Barbieri, an anarchist
orator who helped organize the silk workers
in Paterson.Anarchist Italian women such as
Maria Roda flouted convention and Catholic
teaching by rejecting traditional marriage
in favor of "free unions". In practice, these
unions often turned out to be lifelong and
monogamous, with the division of labor falling
along traditional lines. The anarchist writer
Ersilia Cavedagni believed that "the woman
is and will always be the educator of the
family, that which has and will always have
the most direct and the most important influence
on the children".
== Contemporary developments ==
An important aspect of anarcha-feminism is
its opposition to traditional concepts of
family, education and gender roles. The institution
of marriage is one of the most widely opposed.
De Cleyre argued that marriage stifled individual
growth and Goldman argued that it "is primarily
an economic arrangement... [woman] pays for
it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect,
her very life". Anarcha-feminists have also
argued for non-hierarchical family and educational
structures and had a prominent role in the
creation of the Modern School in New York
City, based on the ideas of Francesc Ferrer
i Guàrdia."The Fine Art of Labeling: The
Convergence of Anarchism, Feminism, and Bisexuality",
by Lucy Friedland and Liz Highleyman, is a
piece in Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People
Speak Out (1991), an anthology edited by Loraine
Hutchins and Lani Ka'ahumanu which is one
of the seminal books in the history of the
modern bisexual rights movement.Contemporary
anarcha-feminism has been noted for its heavy
influence on ecofeminism: "Ecofeminists rightly
note that except for anarcha-feminist, no
feminist perspective has recognized the importance
of healing the nature/culture division". Contemporary
anarcha-feminist writers/theorists include
Maria Mies, Peggy Kornegger, L. Susan Brown,
the eco-feminist Starhawk and the post-left
anarchist and anarcho-primitivist Lilith.In
the past decades, two films have been produced
about anarcha-feminism. Libertarias is a historical
drama made in 1996 about the Spanish anarcha-feminist
organization Mujeres Libres. In 2010, the
Argentinian film Ni dios, ni patrón, ni marido
was released which is centered on the story
of anarcha-feminist Virginia Bolten and her
publishing of the newspaper La Voz de la Mujer
(English: The Woman's Voice).
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== Bibliography ==
Ackelsberg, Martha A. Free Women of Spain:
Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation
of Women, AK Press, 2005. ISBN 978-1-902593-96-8.
Brown, L. Susan (1995). "Beyond Feminism:
Anarchism and Human Freedom". Reinventing
Anarchy, Again. San Francisco: AK Press. pp.
149–154. ISBN 978-1-873176-88-7.
Cornell, Andrew (2016). Unruly Equality: U.S.
Anarchism in the Twentieth Century. University
of California Press. ISBN 9780520286757.
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne (ed.). Quiet Rumours:
An Anarcha-Feminist Reader, Dark Star: 2002.
ISBN 978-1-902593-40-1.
Ferguson, Kathy (2011). "Emma Goldman: Political
Thinking in the Streets".
Goldman, Emma. Anarchism and Other Essays.
3rd ed. 1917. New York: Dover Publications
Inc., 1969. ISBN 978-0-486-22484-8.
Guglielmo, Jennifer (2010). Living the Revolution:
Italian Women's Resistance and Radicalism
in New York City, 1880-1945. University of
North Carolina Press. pp. 160–162. ISBN
9780807898222.
Liu, Lydia, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko,
ed. (2013). The Birth of Chinese Feminism:
Essential Texts in Transnational Theory. New
York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231162906.CS1
maint: Extra text: authors list (link)
Ibárruri, Dolores (1984). Memorias de Pasionaria,
1939-1977: me faltaba España. Editorial Planeta.
Marsh, Margaret S. Anarchist Women, 1870–1920,
Temple University Press, 1981. ISBN 978-0-87722-202-6.
Marshall, Peter. Demanding the Impossible:
A History of Anarchism. London: HarperCollins,
1992. ISBN 978-0-00-217855-6.
Wexler, Alice. Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. ISBN 978-0-394-52975-2.
Zimmer, Kenyon (2015). Immigrants against
the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in
America. University of Illinois Press. ISBN
9780252097430.
== Further reading ==
Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian
Ideas - Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism
(300CE-1939) (ed. Robert Graham) includes
material by Louise Michel, Charlotte Wilson,
Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman, Lucia
Sanchez Soarnil (Mujeres Libres), and Latin
American (Carmen Lareva), Chinese (He Zhen)
and Japanese (Ito Noe and Takamure Itsue)
anarcha-feminists.
Guglielmo, Jennifer. "Donne Sovversive: The
History of Italian-American Women's Radicalism".
OSIA. Archived from the original on June 25,
1998.
== External links ==
Anarcha-feminism at Curlie
Anarcha- Communist Gender news
anarcha-feminist articles at The anarchist
library
Anarcha-Feminism at Infoshop.org
Anarcha
Modern anarchist writings by women
Libertarian Communist Library Archive
