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    Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader
    Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader
    Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader
    Ebook323 pages4 hours

    Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader

    By Emma Goldman, Voltairine De Cleyre, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Jo Freeman

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    This is a fascinating window into the development of the women's movement in the words of those who moved it. Compiled and introduced by the UK-based anarchist-intellectual collective Dark Star, Quiet Rumours features articles and essays from four generations of anarchist-inspired feminists, including Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre, Jo Freeman, Peggy Kornegger, Cathy Levine, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Mujeres Creando, Rote Zora, and beyond. All the pieces from the first two editions are included here, as well as new material bringing third and so-called fourth-wave feminism into conversation with twenty-first century politics. An ideal overview for budding feminists and an exciting reconsideration for seasoned radicals.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAK Press
    Release dateDec 11, 2012
    ISBN9781849351041
    Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-Feminist Reader
    Author

    Emma Goldman

    Emma Goldman (1869–1940) was an anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in present-day Lithuania to a Jewish family, Goldman immigrated to the United States in 1885. Attracted to anarchism after the Chicago Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women’s rights, and social issues. In 1917, Goldman and fellow anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to “induce persons not to register” for the newly-instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with 248 others—in the Palmer Raids during the First Red Scare and deported to Russia. Goldman later left the Soviet Union and in 1923 published a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. She died in Toronto, Canada, in 1940, at the age of seventy.

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    • 3/5
      Quiet Rumours seems like a work in progress, not a finished product. The essays inside are hit-or-miss. I loved some, and I was unimpressed by others. Some challenged me, others didn't. Spanning a century and a globe, they are not consistent, and they are poorly organized: neither by chronology nor theme.For the most part, the book includes anarchist writings about feminism, and feminist writings about anarchism. But the book failed to demonstrate a synthesis of the two, and instead contented itself on showing a symbiosis. Whereas I was reading the book to learn about the intersection of the two concepts, I came away with what I already brought: that they were paralell, and both necessary for a just society.The essays in the beginning did a lot of insisting that anarchism and feminism were interrelated without explaining why or how. The two-essay debate about structure and tyranny were practical looks at trying to synthesize at least a practice of their intersection if not a theory, but when presented together, they merely contradicted one another. The most inspiring and wonderful articles that came close to this synthesis were written by those, such as the Bolivian Mujeres Creando ("I've said it and I'll say it again that we're not anarchists by Bakunin or the CNT, but rather by our grandmothers, and that's a beautiful school of anarchism"- FUCK YES.) who were not trying to self-consciously define their anarchism as exclusionary or individualist. But several of the articles uncompellingly emphasized, in order for the authors to self-consciously differentiate themselves from other Socialists, the individualist tendency of anarchism.Emma Goldman's "A Woman Without a Country," though a great text, mentioned nothing of feminism, let alone anarchist feminism. It seems it was included because the author was both an anarchist and a feminist.AK Press and Dark Star made matters far worse for this book. First of all, there were typos in the text, one unfortunate and notable one being the word "his" where it should have said "has." Secondly, The book felt more like 400 pages than 116 pages. The type was *way* too small, sans-serif, and divided into two columns per page. This made every page take an eternity to read, and I spent a good while after every time I put the book down trying to find where I was (4 columns and 47 lines to check!). No one could call this book a page-turner. Thirdly, the pages were so large that the binding broke apart while I was reading it, which distracted greatly from the final essays, which I read while gingerly holding the book so that the wind wouldn't carry them away.Don't get me wrong, the topic is very worthy, and many of the articles within the book are really quite amazing. But I look forward to a more thoughtful collection of anarcha-feminist works in the future.

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    Quiet Rumours - Emma Goldman

    0

    WHY ANARCHA-FEMINISM?

    Revolutionary Anarcha-Feminist Group Dublin

    Why Anarcha-feminism?

    RAG IS A GROUP OF ANARCHA-FEMINIST WOMEN IN DUBLIN, Ireland. We are all feminists, united in our recognition that women’s subordination exists. Our struggle needs to be fought alongside the struggle against other forms of oppression, not treated as an afterthought or as a distraction. We are all anarchists, united in our belief for the need to create alternatives to this capitalist, patriarchal society wherein all are dominated and exploited. RAG meets weekly as a group to discuss topics which are important to us. We have produced five issues of a magazine, The Rag, and we hold occasional open meetings. The article below was written from notes on an open discussion we held called Why Anarcha-feminism? It touches briefly upon a lot of topics in a short article, so to read a more in-depth analysis of the issues raised please refer to the Rag magazine.

    What is Anarchism?

    Sometimes defined as libertarian socialism, the ultimate aim of anarchism is total democracy—for each person to have a direct say in issues that affect their lives, not rely on government to represent them. This requires the destruction of state, hierarchy and class society, and the construction of non-hierarchical bottom-up systems of organisations such as local councils and unions to replace these. There is the need for strong grassroots action and organisation in to prepare for radical change. As many people as possible need to be personally invested in organising to take control of our own resources and interests and to defend our right to do so.

    Class and Feminism

    Anarcha-feminists have tried to develop an understanding of class, race, ability and LGBTQ issues, paying attention to the fact that all women do not have the same experiences in their oppression as women. We try to be aware of privilege and to make ourselves aware of and learn from women’s struggles globally.

    From an anarchist perspective, some anarchists see feminism as a divisive issue, distracting from the real issue of class struggle. Thanks to anarcha-feminism, the anarchist approach increasingly accepts that sexism does exist, and is not just a minor side issue which will fade away with the end of capitalism. When anarchists constantly stress that all experience of patriarchy is linked to class, they can gloss over another truth: the experience of class is differentiated by gender.

    In traditional anarchist dialogue the site for revolution has been the workplace; from a feminist perspective the family and the body are additional sites of conflict. This is our literal means of production, which we should be determined to seize.

    Anarcha-feminist Identity

    Anarcha-feminists often find it easier to publicly label themselves as feminist than as anarchist. This is because many people who have not considered either concept are more willing to accept the premise that women and men should have equality than to question the core of the current economic and political systems. Many people who profess to believe in equality have not even considered life without capitalism, or that economic systems affect equality. Anarchism also suffers from negative connotations, for example the misassociation with chaos and violence. Ironically, some anarchists are unwilling to identify as feminist due to the negative connotations associated with the feminist label. The capitalist system is very effective in muddying the meaning of concepts which pose a clear threat to that system. It is important to us to be clear that we are feminists and anarchists, and that we see this as a pathway to freedom.

    Equality not Sameness

    We believe that true equality can never be achieved within any capitalist system. Capitalism will only concede enough to give a convincing illusion of equality. The ideals that early feminists courageously fought for have now been entirely diluted and sold back to us as pink and sterile girl power. We can be whatever we want to be as long as it’s sexy—politician, athlete, scientist or housewife. We need to be clear that when feminist gains are won, it is in the name of true equality for all people, not as a concession or privilege. Real feminism requires complete social restructuring which can essentially be equated with true anarchism.

    One of the misconceptions of the feminist movement has been that for women to be equal to men, we have to be the same. Women joined the rush into the modern workplace to have equal access to exploitation. Many women find they experience a double shift of work ñ both outside and inside the home. Capitalism has made effective use of patriarchy and in many ways is reliant on it—for example on the nuclear family as the unit of effective consumption and control. The work that women do in producing and caring for children, in keeping the home and in caring for the sick and the old is not valued under capitalism. The value system of capitalism is profit-driven; only that which produces profit is seen as productive.

    Queer Feminism

    There are overlaps between feminism and queer theory (queerness might be roughly defined as gender or sexuality non-conformism). Anarcha-feminism recognises the fluidity of gender and its construction from birth as a way of acting/talking/thinking. While recognising gender binaries as socially constructed, anarcha-feminism sees that society divides people into male and female, oppressing women and those that don’t fit into strict gender roles.

    Although there is some acceptance by wealthy capitalist countries of difference with regard to gender and sexuality, ultimately it is acceptable only as a lifestyle choice, not as a revolutionary force, which it should ultimately be. The destruction of the systems of capitalism, state and patriarchy would lead to an explosion in different ways of being—sexualities, gender identities, family structures, etc.

    Patriarchy and Men

    The fight for women’s equality has been framed as a battle of the sexes. However, feminism has led to a growing consciousness of male oppression under patriarchy, such as strict adherence to masculine gender roles, duty to provide in the realm of work and lack of equal rights to active parenthood. Male oppression has been misconstrued as either a product of the feminist movement, or an oversight of it. Yet it is often through feminist dialogue that a space has opened up for discussing these aspects of men’s lives and experiences. Pro-feminist solidarity between men and women can make meaningful inroads into these issues.

    Meaningful Reform

    Many very real changes have been made in women’s lives due to feminist efforts. These include suffrage, the right to work outside the home, equal pay legislation, domestic violence legislation, etc. Unlike anarchism, feminist ideology can and has been accepted into capitalist reform. Yet it is socialists and anarchists who have mainly been behind meaningful reform—through the trade union movements, anti-racism work, community work and women’s liberation movements. Unfortunately, many of the ultimate aims of those who struggled to create these reforms have now been lost. Their achievements have been co-opted into seeming like the achievements of democracy when in fact they were concessions hard won by activists condemned as radicals of their time.

    While continuing to fight for meaningful reform (for example, abortion rights and free childcare), we also want to remain completely clear about what we are fighting for: not just women’s equality, but absolute equality. The ultimate endpoint of feminism is anarchism.

    1

    ANARCHA-FEMINISM: TWO STATEMENTS

    Red Rosa and Black Maria Black Rose Anarcho-Feminists

    Who we are: An Anarcho-Feminist Manifesto

    WE CONSIDER ANARCHO-FEMINISM TO BE THE ULTIMATE AND necessary radical stance at this time in world history, far more radical than any form of Marxism.

    We believe that a Women’s Revolutionary Movement must not mimic, but destroy, all vestiges of the male-dominated power structure, the State itself—with its whole ancient and dismal apparatus of jails, armies, and armed robbery (taxation); with all its murder; with all of its grotesque and repressive legislation and military attempts, internal and external, to interfere with people’s private lives and freely-chosen co-operative ventures.

    The world obviously cannot survive many more decades of rule by gangs of armed males calling themselves governments. The situation is insane, ridiculous and even suicidal. Whatever its varying forms of justifications, the armed State is what is threatening all of our lives at present. The State, by its inherent nature, is really incapable of reform. True socialism, peace and plenty for all, can be achieved only by people themselves, not by representatives ready and able to turn guns on all who do not comply with State directives. As to how we proceed against the pathological State structure, perhaps the best word is to outgrow rather than overthrow. This process entails, among other things, a tremendous thrust of education and communication among all peoples. The intelligence of womankind has at last been brought to bear on such oppressive male inventions as the church and the legal family; it must now be brought to re-evaluate the ultimate stronghold of male domination, the State.

    While we recognise important differences in the rival systems, our analysis of the evils of the State must extend to both its communist and capitalist versions.

    We intend to put to the test the concept of freedom of expression, which we trust will be incorporated in the ideology of the coming socialist Sisterhood which is destined to play a determining role in the future of the race, if there really is to be a future.

    We are all socialists. We refuse to give up this pre-Marxist term which has been used as a synonym by many anarchist thinkers. Another synonym for anarchism is libertarian socialism, as opposed to Statist and authoritarian varieties. Anarchism (from the Greek anarchos—without ruler) is the affirmation of human freedom and dignity expressed in a negative, cautionary term signifying that no person should rule or dominate another person by force or threat of force. Anarchism indicates what people should not do to one another. Socialism, on the other hand, means all the groovy things people can do and build together, once they are able to combine efforts and resources on the basis of common interest, rationality and creativity.

    We love our Marxist sisters and all our sisters everywhere, and have no interest in disassociating ourselves from their constructive struggles. However, we reserve the right to criticise their politics when we feel that they are obsolete or irrelevant or inimical to the welfare of womankind.

    As Anarcho-Feminists, we aspire to have the courage to question and challenge absolutely everything—including, when it proves necessary, our own assumptions.

    Blood of the Flower: An Anarcha-Feminist Statement

    We are an independent collective of women who feel that anarchism is the logically consistent expression of feminism.

    We believe that each woman is the only legitimate articulator of her own oppression. Any woman, regardless of previous political involvement knows only too intimately her own oppression, and hence, can and must define what form her liberation will take.

    Why are many women sick and tired of ‘movements’? Our answer is that the fault lies with the nature of movements, not with the individual women. Political movements, as we have known them, have separated our political activities from our personal dreams of liberation, until either we are made to abandon our dreams as impossible or we are forced to drop out of the movement because we hold steadfastly to our dreams. As true anarchists and as true feminists, we say dare to dream the impossible, and never settle for less than total translation of the impossible into reality.

    There have been two principle forms of action in the women’s liberation movement. One has been the small, local, volitionally organised consciousness-raising group, which at best has been a very meaningful mode of dealing with oppression from a personal level and, at worst, never evolved beyond the level of a therapy group.

    The other principle mode of participation has been large, bureaucratized groups which have focused their activities along specific policy lines, taking great pains to translate women’s oppression into concrete, single-issue programmes. Women in this type of group often have been involved in formal leftist politics for some time, but could not stomach the sexism within other leftist groups. However, after reacting against the above-mentioned attitude of leftist males, many women with formal political orientations could not accept the validity of what they felt were the ‘therapy groups’ of their suburban sisters; yet they themselves still remained within the realm of male-originated Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyist, Maoist rhetoric, and continued to use forms of political organisation employed by the male leftist groups they were reacting against. The elitism and centralisation of the old male left thereby has found, and already poisoned parts of the women’s movement with the attitude that political sophistication must mean ‘building’ a movement around single issue programmes, thereby implying that ‘we must be patient until the masses’ consciousness is raised to our level.’ How condescending to assume that an oppressed person must be told that she is oppressed! How condescending to assume that her consciousness will grow only by plodding along, from single-issue to next single issue.

    In the past decade or more, women of the left were consistently intimidated out of fighting for our own liberation, avoiding the obvious fact that all women are an oppressed group. We are so numerous and dispersed that we have identified ourselves erroneously as members of particular classes on the basis of the class of ‘our men’, our fathers or our husbands. So women of the left regarding ourselves as middle-class more than oppressed women, have been led to neglect engaging in our own struggle as our primary struggle. Instead, we have dedicated ourselves to fight on behalf of other oppressed peoples, thus alienating ourselves from our own plight. Many say that this attitude no longer exists in the women’s movement, that it originated only from the guilt trip of the white middle class male, but even today women in autonomous women’s movements speak of the need to organise working class women, without concentrating on the need to organise ourselves—as if we were already beyond that level. This does not mean (if we insist first and foremost on freeing ourselves) that we love our oppressed sisters any the less; on the contrary, we feel that the best way for us to be true to all liberation struggles is to accept and deal directly with our own oppression.

    Why Anarchism?

    We do not believe that rejection of Marxist-Leninist analysis and strategy is by definition political naiveté. We do not believe it is politically naive to maintain the attitude that even a ‘democratically centralised’ group could be considered the ‘vanguard’ spokeswoman for us. The nature of groups concerned with ‘building’ movements is: 1) to water down the ‘more extreme’ dreams into ‘realistic’ demands, and 2) to eventually become an organ of tyranny itself. No thanks!

    There is another entire radical tradition which has run counter to Marxist-Leninist theory and practice through all of modern radical history—from Bakunin to Kropotkin to Sophie Perovskaya to Emma Goldman to Errico Malatesta to Murray Bookchin—and that is anarchism. It is a tradition less familiar to most radicals because it has consistently been distorted and misrepresented by the more highly organised State organisations and Marxist-Leninist organisations.

    Anarchism is not synonymous with irresponsibility and chaos. Indeed, it offers meaningful alternatives to the outdated organisational and policy-making practices of the rest of the left. The basic anarchist form of organisation is a small group, volitionally organised and maintained, which must work toward defining the oppression of its members and what form their struggle for liberation must take.

    Organising women, in the New Left and Marxist left, is viewed as amassing troops for the Revolution But we affirm that each woman joining in struggle is the Revolution. WE ARE THE REVOLUTION!

    We must learn to act on impulse, to abandon the restrictions on behaviour that society has taught us to place on ourselves. The ‘movement’ has been, for most of us, a thing removed from ourselves. We must no longer think of ourselves as members of a movement, but as individual revolutionaries, co-operating. Two, three, five or ten such individual revolutionaries who know and trust each other intimately can carry out revolutionary acts and make our own policy. As members of a leaderless affinity group, each member participates on an equal level of power, thus negating the hierarchical function of power. DOWN WITH ALL BOSSES! Then we will not be lost in a movement where leadership determines for us the path the movement will take—we are our own movement, we determine our own movement’s direction. We have refused to allow ourselves to be directed, spoken for, and eventually cooled off.

    We do not believe, as some now affirm, that the splintering of the Women’s Movement means the end to all of our revolutionary effectiveness. No! The spirit of the women is just too large to be guided and manipulated by ‘a movement’. Small groups, acting on their own and deciding upon their own actions, are the logical expression of revolutionary women. This, of course, does not preclude various groups working together on various projects or conferences.

    To these ends, and because we do not wish to he out of touch with other women, we have organised as an autonomous collective within the Women’s Centre in Cambridge, Mass. The Women’s Centre functions as a federation; that is, not as a policy-making group, but as a centre for various women’s groups to meet. We will also continue to write statements like this one as we feel moved to. We would really like to hear from all and sundry!

    ALL POWER TO THE IMAGINATION!

    2

    FEMINISM AS ANARCHISM

    Lynne Farrow

    FEMINISM PRACTICES WHAT ANARCHISM PREACHES. ONE MIGHT go as far as to claim feminists are the only existing protest groups that can honestly be called practicing Anarchists; first because women apply themselves to specific projects like abortion clinics and day-care centres; second, because as essentially apolitical women for the most part refuse to engage in the political combat terms of the right or the left, reformism or revolution, respectively.

    But women’s concern for specific projects and their a-political activities constitute too great a threat to both the right and the left, and feminist history demonstrates how women have been lured away from their interests, co-opted on a legislative level by the established parties and co-opted on a theoretical level by the Left. This co-option has often kept us from asking exactly what is the Feminist situation? What’s the best strategy for change?

    The first impulse toward female liberation came in the 1840’s when liberals were in the midst of a stormy abolition campaign. A number of eloquent Quaker women actively made speeches to liberate the slaveholding system of the South and soon realized that the basic rights they argued for Blacks were also denied women. Lucy Stone and Lucretia Mott, two of the braver women abolitionists, would occasionally tack some feminism ideas on the end of the abolition speeches, annoying to an unusual degree their fellow liberals. But the women were no threat so long as they knew their place and remembered which cause was the more serious.

    Then in 1842 the World anti-slave convention was held in London and some American women crossed the Atlantic along with other Abolition delegates to find that not only were women denied a part in the proceedings, but worse, they were forced to sit behind a curtain. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cade Stanton, enraged at the hypocrisy of the liberal’s anti-slavery gathering denying women participation, then and there determined to return to America and organise on behalf of liberating women.

    The first Women’s Rights Convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, attracting with only three days’ notice in a local newspaper a huge number of women filling the church in which they met. At the end of the very moving convention the gathering drew up a Declaration of Rights and Sentiments based on the Declaration of Independence only directed at men rather than England’s King George. After this convention which is identified as the formal beginning of the Women’s Rights Movement in America, feminism picked up quickly aiming at women’s property laws and other grievances.

    As American Feminism gathered a small measure of support, liberals became nervous that these women were spending energy on the woman issue rather than the real issue of the time: abolition. After all, they insisted, this is the negroes’ hour and women shouldn’t be so petty as to think of themselves at a time like this. When the Civil War became imminent this rhetoric grew from subtlety to righteous indignation. How could women be so unpatriotic as to devote themselves to feminism during a national crisis. Virtually every feminist in America suspended her feminist consciousness and gave support to the liberal interests at this point, assured that when the war was over and Blacks were given equal rights under the Constitution women would be included.

    Susan B. Anthony, an ardent Abolitionist, was the only known feminist at the time that refused to buy the liberals’ proposal. She continued appealing for the rights of women despite the gradual disintegration of her following who had been co-opted by the Abolitionists into joining their ranks. She insisted that both struggles could be run simultaneously and if they didn’t women would be forgotten after the war. She was right. When the 14th Amendment was introduced in Congress after the war, not only were women omitted, they were specifically excluded. For the first time the word male was written into the Constitution making it clear that when it referred to a person that was the equivalent to male person.

    This substantial blow to organised feminism hindered further legal advance for women. Then around 1913 when British women launched their militant tactics bombing buildings and starting fires, Alice Paul, an enthusiastic young American woman of Quaker stock, traveled to England to study and ended up working with the notorious Pankhursts. She returned to the States determined to rejuvenate the cause of suffrage and soon had persuaded the practically non-functioning National Woman’s Suffrage Association to re-open the federal campaign for suffrage in Washington.

    In a very short time and due to nothing but her sheer genius for organising and strategy Alice Paul created a multifactional movement to be reckoned with. Her most effective tactic was picketing the White House with embarrassing placards denouncing President Wilson’s authoritarian stand on Woman Suffrage while he preached democracy abroad. World War I approached steadily and the stage was again set for the feminists’ co-option.

    The pacifists appealed to the women to suspend their cause temporarily and join the peace effort while at the same time the majority, the war hawks, were scandalized that the women abandoned their country at a time like this. Again the women were co-opted as thousands left the feminist cause to go to the aid of their parties, but nevertheless a small efficient group, the National Woman’s Party, stayed intact to fight suffrage through.

    It is difficult to ascertain which side, the right or the left, has been more responsible for co-opting the feminist efforts at change. History assures us their methods have been identical and their unquestioning confidence in the priority of the larger struggle inevitably leads to a dismissal of feminist issues as tangential. The analysis of the current Black Movement and the Marxist dominated left squeezes women into their plans symptomatically, i.e. when the essential struggle is fought and won women

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