Libertarian feminism and anarchist feminism overlap but are not synonymous. You can be a libertarian feminist without being an anarchist. The late Joan Kennedy Taylor, for example, was a libertarian feminist but was not an anarchist because she believed in a minimal state. The same is true for early 20th century libertarian feminist Suzanne LaFollette (see http://www.alf.org/lafollette.php). Though “libertarian” has been used in the past as a synonym for “anarchist,” many contemporary social anarchist feminists or “anarcha-feminists,” such as L Susan Brown (not to be confused with individualist libertarian feminist Susan Love Brown), Howard Ehrlich, Peggy Kornegger, Carol Ehrlich, and others would be wary of the word “libertarian” in its common modern usage as a term describing advocates of capitalism and the free market.

However what both individualist and social anarchist feminists would agree on is what I wrote in my article on Voltairine for Ehrlich’s journal “Social Anarchism”:
“Contemporary anarchist feminists contend that mainstream feminists are unwilling or unable to recognize the authoritarian nature of the modern state as just another form of patriarchy. Mainstream feminists, say the anarchist feminists, would have to give up too much if they acknowledged that the power of the State is no different in essence than the power of patriarchy. “To anarchist feminists” writes Howard Ehrlich, “the state and patriarchy are twin aberrations.” Nor have modern feminists come to grips with the role of the State in perpetuating not only legal inequality but traditional sex roles and power relationships as well. Instead mainstream feminists merely confine themselves to asking for more and more government intervention, more and more laws. Directing their criticisms mainly against conservative Republicans, these feminists insist that if they can just change the administration, they can use the power of the State to remake things in a way that would be better for women. Anarchists see it very differently. In “Government is Women’s Enemy,” the authors write “If we pass laws that force our values on others, we are no better than men who have forced their values on us through legislation.” Power is power and coercion is coercion, whether wielded by an individual man against his family or by a government against its people, say the anarchists. And for the anarchists, coercion is always a moral wrong.”

Libertarian feminists would not disagree with the above. “Government is Women’s Enemy” is in fact one of the major discussion papers for the Association of Libertarian Feminists (see http://alf.org/womensenemy.php). Quoting from that article (which was written by Lynn Kinsky and me):

“Feminism is a proposition that insists that no one exists for anyone else; that government, commerce, technology, education, etc., all exist as tools for people to use as they decide, not the other way around. Feminism rejects any system that keeps people tied to roles that depends on a hierarchical oppressor-oppressed relationship in order to function.

Feminists want women to be free – free of the domination of men, free to control their bodies and psyches as they see fit, free to make their own decisions about their own lives independent of the coercive domination of others.

Unfortunately, inconsistency has crept into the modern women’s movement. While rejecting patriarchal attitudes and dominating ways of interacting on a personal level, some parts of the women’s movement will too often ask for government favors and handouts such as free child-care centers or free abortions. Yet turning to the government just changes the sort of oppression women face, not the fact. Instead of being overburdened as mothers or wives we become overburdened as taxpayers since child-care workers, doctors, etc., have to be paid by someone unless they are to be enslaved also! Turning to the government to solve our problems just replaces oppression by patriarchs we know – father, husband, boss – with oppression by patriarchs we don’t know – the hordes of legislators and bureaucrats who are increasingly prying into every nook and cranny of our lives!

The essence of libertarianism is the belief that all social interactions should be voluntary, that no one has the right to rule another, that individuals have the right to live their lives in any manner they see fit as long as they don’t initiate force or fraud against others.

Libertarians want to repeal laws, not pass them. They are not interested in stopping people from smoking pot, having abortions, or from spending their own money as they see fit. Libertarians just want to leave people alone. They believe that there are voluntary nonauthoritarian alternatives to coercive government services and institutions that will work, even in our modern complex society.

Libertarian feminists believe that we can’t achieve a non-authoritarian society by authoritarian methods. If our goals are personal autonomy and individual freedom, we can’t achieve these goals by taking away individuals’ rights to choose for themselves. If we pass laws that force our values on others, we are no better than men who have forced their values on us through legislation. We merely substitute our tyranny for the tyranny of men. Feminist Catherine MacKinnon advocating anti-pornography laws is no better than Republican Henry Hyde advocating anti-abortion laws.”

While there is no position in this essay that an anarchist feminist of any stripe would disagree with, ALF itself includes both limited-state libertarians and anarchists (and men as well as women, and people of any sexual orientation). ALF does not take a position on the issue of minarchism vs. anarchism.

ALF was founded in 1973 by Tonie Nathan, the first woman (and first Jewish person) in US history to receive an electoral vote. She was the vice-presidential candidate of the new Libertarian Party in 1972, along with John Hospers. Roger MacBride, a Republican elector from Virginia who had written a book on voting your conscience as an elector, cast his vote for them. I was the first National Coordinator, followed by Lee Nason, then Joan Kennedy Taylor, and now back to me. For more on the history of ALF, its statement of purpose, and articles, see http://www.alf.org.

“In her last few years, Voltairine began to doubt the worth of anarchism, confessing in a letter to Alexander Berkman: “I cannot preach anarchism now, because I do not believe it with any great force or strength.” (Feb 17, 1910, cited by Avrich: 215.)

Do you agree with these claims?”

There are a number of things wrong with Gaylor’s description of Voltairine as described above.

The idea that Voltairine repudiated her early individualism depends on what ones means by the term. She was at first an individualist anarchist of the Tucker mold, then became a mutualist but finally called herself an “anarchist without adjectives.” In fact she said “I am an Anarchist, simply, without economic labels attached.” So for starters, Gaylor is not quite accurate in labeling her a mutualist.

Furthermore, “individualism” is not an economic doctrine, it is a philosophical one. “Individualist anarchist” has an economic meaning but “individualist” per se does not. I found an interesting definition of the term at blackcrayon.com (not an individualist anarchist site!) that is arguably a reasonable definition of philosophical individualism:
“As a moral philosophy, individualism holds that only individual persons can be moral agents. It holds that rights and responsibilities are only relevant to individuals. Individualism denies that there are any collective moral agents, and therefore denies rights or responsibilities to groups (but not to the individuals within those groups).”
Other definitions may include the idea of emphasis on independence and self-reliance, or focus on the primacy of individual goals that are not sacrificed to the group (psychology’s view of it). By any of these standards, Voltairine was a philosophical individualist so Gaylor is playing fast and loose with her terms. It’s not really OK to interchange terms that have different meanings.

By way of example, one way that Voltairine’s individualist sentiments manifested themselves was in her attitudes about feminism. I write in “Exquisite Rebel” [p. 24] “Voltairine took her anarchist feminist views beyond the realm of politics and into the realm of individual behavior as well. Insisting on a direct link between anarchism and feminism, she called for a new code of ethics that would recognize the “complete individuality of woman.” Women must free themselves through individual acts of rebellion against prevailing attitudes and behaviors. “

Even Emma Goldman wrote a famous essay on the place of the individual in society. William Reichert said of her “It has not been clearly understood in the past that Emma Goldman, far from being the advocate of a stultifying collectivism, was as staunch a champion of individualism as any of the native-born American anarchists.” [chapter 2, “Partisans of Freedom: A Study in American Anarchism,” 1976). This point further emphasizes the difference between philosophical individualism and the particular economic tenets of individualist anarchism. Emma was certainly not in agree with the economic beliefs of Tucker and his colleagues!

Re: “In her last few years, Voltairine began to doubt the worth of anarchism, confessing in a letter to Alexander Berkman: ‘I cannot preach anarchism now, because I do not believe it with any great force or strength."’ Gaylor takes this quote out of context in Voltairine’s life. As Crispin Sartwell, my co-editor, points out in his essay on Voltairine, she was “grindingly ill, both in body and spirit” with terrible headaches and roaring in her ears. [“Exquisite Rebel” p. 10] She had fits of depression all her life, tried to commit suicide several times, so a lapse like this is hardly surprising. To take this commentary literally, as Gaylor apparently does, shows that she does not really understand Voltairine’s transcendent spirit nor her passion for justice. Voltairine never gave up on the idea of justice nor on anarchism. Her essay on “Direct Action” written in 1912, two years after the above comment, as well as her support of the Mexican revolution in the last years of her life, are testimony to that.

With respect to his point (1) and his final paragraph, at a general level, there is an issue about the content of feminism (however defined) and Women’s Studies lurking in the background here. A little more than a century ago, when Sociology first appeared, it was necessary for practitioners to justify the creation of the new discipline, the need for which was not necessarily understood by everyone else. With more recent areas of learning, such as Women’s Studies, Black Studies, and Chicano Studies, the staking out of an academic and therefore subsidized territory of operation is also not unproblematic, particularly in a methodological sense. As far as offering classes is concerned (and I’ve taught Gender and Politics and Ethnic Rights and Politics), talking about Marcus Garvey or Myra Colby Bradwell to students who have never heard of them performs a useful broadening of the curriculum that has no downside.

However, with regard to method, Women’s Studies, Black Studies, and Chicano Studies are caught on the horns of a dilemma. As Alfredo M. Mirandé has pointed out, if these departments use traditional criteria for their publications (such as being scientific and value-free), then despite the fact that the diversity of college personnel has been increased, the research they do will nonetheless continue to impose the values of the dominant society (which, in the case of political science, will include the silly assumption that democracy is a matter of voting). On the other hand, if these disciplines don’t copy mainstream fields, what reasoning can they employ? The subject matter question can be ducked by saying they look at, respectively, women, African-Americans, and Hispanic-Americans. But how do they study them? As Smith notes, many present-day feminists come from the left side of the political spectrum, and the tendency has been for these types of department to write and teach from a pro-women, pro-black people, pro-Hispanic perspective. That’s what Karen Lehrman (Mother Jones, September/October 1993) found when she visited some Women’s Studies classes and concluded that ““Diversity” is the mantra of both students and professors, but it doesn’t apply to political opinions.” Faculty in such sectors tend to close ranks when they encounter ideas that differ in any way from the orthodoxy they have crafted, which was what Gregory Rodriguez, for example, found when he questioned some of the extreme and divisive views he believed emanate from Chicano Studies departments.

At a more specific level, I think not just de Cleyre but also Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons are better understood as anarchists than as feminists. (I’m not saying they’re not feminists.) So one question raised here is, if a thinker is a woman, or black, or Hispanic, must they become exclusively colonized by areas of study and professors working in those areas at the expense of conventional researchers and of any different field? In other words, I’ve recently written chapters on Benjamin Tucker and Lucy Parsons for a forthcoming book. Because Parsons was a woman, and partially of black and Mexican-American ancestry, have I done something wrong, as a white guy, by trying to understand her? I don’t see why I can’t write about her anarchism, and let others portray her as a feminist, or perhaps as a member of a racial minority group, or as a Texan – in the spirit of shared scholarship, not as a tyranny of shared ideas.

I believe that (2) was asked and answered earlier in our conversation – I talked about modern feminists because I needed to illustrate what they said.

I disagree about (4). I think reading Max Stirner put Tucker’s ideas on a much sounder footing by causing him to reject natural law explanations.

(passim) Smith likes to talk about “libertarian feminists.” What does this phrase mean? How can they be distinguished from “anarchist feminists?”

One modern book that does discuss the history of individualist feminist thought is “Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Rediscovered” by the late libertarian feminist Joan Kennedy Taylor. Taylor discusses, for example, the role of the idea of individual responsibility in feminist thought, both present and past. The scope of her commentary includes individualist suffragists such as Stanton and Mott, individualist writers such as Wollstonecraft , and the early 20th century libertarian Suzanne LaFollette. LaFollette’s book “Concerning Women” is a classic that has been excerpted or discussed in a number of modern commentaries on feminism, though her book is not as well-known as it deserves to be.

Smith says: “Generally speaking, I regard [Voltairine’s] contributions to freethought and feminism as more original and worthwhile than her writings on anarchism specifically.” I tend to agree with Smith on this point. In her highly original essay “Sex Slavery,” Voltairine gives a thoroughly feminist reason to be against the State—because it and the Church collude to enslave and oppress women. She writes with great passion and modernity: “Why am I the slave of Man? Why is my brain said not to be the equal of his brain? Why is my work not paid equally with his? Why must my body be controlled by my husband? Why may he take my children away from me? Will them away while yet unborn? Let every woman ask… There are two reasons why, and these ultimately reducible to a single principle–the authoritarian supreme power God-idea, and its two instruments–the Church–that is, the priests–the Statethat is, the legislators…These two things, the mind domination of the Church and the body domination of the State, are the causes of Sex Slavery.”

Other feminist criticisms of the Church had been made in the 19th century, most notably by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the “Woman’s Bible,” and Matilda Joslyn Gage in “Woman, Church and State,” but they did not bring their focus to bear on the role of the State per se. They objected to the many laws that oppressed women in the 19th century, not only the lack of national suffrage, but the lack of married women’s property rights, no ability to sign contracts, no right to child custody and so on, but failed to see the inevitable nature of the role of government in regulating women (and men) in harmful ways. In other words, they didn’t object to government per se, merely to some of its laws.

Possibly the most original of Voltairine’s contributions is her essay “Sex Slavery,” It is her discussion of what we now call the social construction of gender. In “Sex Slavery,” Voltairine attacks the idea that sex roles are inherent in human nature, seeing them as the result of socialization. She writes: “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.” This may not seem particularly remarkable to modern sensibilities but it was a radical notion in the 19th century. Since many influential male anarchists of the time rejected this idea, e.g., Benjamin Tucker and Victor Yarro, it would be hard to argue that the idea stemmed from her anarchism per se. The idea may also seem to us to be a logical extension of feminism but in the 19th century, it wasn’t seen that way. Few feminists of the 19th c. took this position. Most suffragists, for example, accepted the idea of a special “women’s nature,” they just wanted some say in how they were treated by the law. Even Margaret Fuller who wrote one of the earliest feminist books in the US, “Women in the Nineteenth Century,” couldn’t imagine the day when women would become lawyers. No one besides early 19th century feminist abolitionist Sarah Grimke had written anything like what Voltairine wrote in “Sex Slavery.”

In fact feminist historian Gerda Lerner claims that Sarah Grimke was the main 19th c. proponent of the idea of social construction of gender. Sarah, writes Lerner, understood the difference between [environmental] gender (what she called “female”) and [biological] sex (what she called “woman”) in a way that was not as clearly defined till the 20th century. However, Lerner is not entirely correct in this observation. She, like most scholars, even feminist scholars, is unfamiliar with the American anarchists. Voltairine was every bit as explicit and clear as Sarah in her understanding that gender is socially constructed. This alone makes Voltairine’s feminist writings important and yes, more original, than her anarchist writings, however good they may be.

Astutely and presciently, Voltairine also understood that “science” may work against women as well. Voltairine observed in “The Case of Women vs. Orthodoxy” that men of the “scientific “cloth” can be obstacles to women’s freedom. If women are ever to have rights, she declares, they must not only pitch out the teachings of the priests but also those of the men “who hunt scientific justifications for keeping up the orthodox standard.” Though most modern feminists would agree with Voltairine that gender roles spring more from training than biology, the idea that “anatomy is destiny” keeps resurfacing in many quarters in newer, more sophisticated, and seemingly scientific guises. The observation that science can be misused against women (an idea unrelated to anarchism and anarchist thought and certainly not an outgrowth of her anarchist ideas) alone makes her one of the most original feminist thinkers of the 19th century.

By criticizing gender roles as well as the structure of conventional marriage, what Voltairine called for was a radical restructuring of society, not just in its public institutions but in its private ones too, a step most male anarchists of the time, let alone the mainstream feminists of the 19th c., were not willing to take. This makes her a radical among radicals. To say that such original thought was merely a by-product of her anarchism would be seriously off the mark.

In a lengthy introduction to some essays by Voltairine de Cleyre, reprinted in the anthology *Women Without Superstition* (1997), editor Annie Laurie Gaylor writes:

“Voltaire repudiated her early individualism….

“In her last few years, Voltairine began to doubt the worth of anarchism, confessing in a letter to Alexander Berkman: “I cannot preach anarchism now, because I do not believe it with any great force or strength.” (Feb 17, 1910, cited by Avrich: 215.)

Do you agree with these claims?

Ghs

1) Most contemporary feminists, especially those who adopt a Marxian perspective, see their positions as intimately connected to their political principles (in a broad sense). But this doesn’t necessarily mean that their feminist interests are somehow secondary to their broader political beliefs. Shone’s analysis of the feminism of Voltairine de Cleyre, if consistently applied, would apply with equal force to many of the modern feminists that he discusses in his article.

2) I fail to understand why Shone is so concerned with the views of modern self-proclaimed feminists, many of whom hail from the political left. That their views on feminism often differ from those of Voltairine and other libertarian feminists is irrelevant. Voltairine wrote a great deal on the “Woman Question” — articles that focused on the detrimental effects of various social and political institutions and beliefs on women specifically, and she frequently went beyond calling for equal freedom in a political sense. If there is, in theory, such a thing as an “individualist feminist,” then Voltairine was an individualist feminist. To define this possibility out of existence would serve no useful purpose.

Shone doesn’t go this far, of course, but he does attempt to relegate Voltairine’s feminism to a secondary status, in effect. This doesn’t seem reasonable to me. Many libertarians specialize in a given field by applying their political principles to particular topics. This doesn’t mean that their fields of specialization are somehow secondary to their political principles. There is a philosophical connection, of course, insofar as moral and political principles may be said to be more fundamental than their specific applications, but this is a different issue.

3) As far as I know, many of Voltairine’s views on marriage were first articulated by William Godwin in *Enquiry Concerning Political Justice* (1793). Godwin argued against “cohabitation,” though this didn’t stop him from living with Mary Wollstonecraft and even marrying her. Unfortunately, Godwin could be a bit of a nut, as illustrated by his criticism of the collectivism supposedly inherent in orchestral music. Voltairine’s admiration of Wollstonecraft is well-known, and she was as much of a feminist as Wollstonecraft was.

4) I have never been impressed with Voltairine’s brand of anarchism. It takes the Proudhonian economic fallacies that plagued the Tucker circle and accentuates them, sometimes to the point of absurdity. Moreover, her caterorical rejection of natural rights — which, in opposition to Victor Yarros and other natural-right anarchists, followed the later Tucker — was a disaster of major proportions for the American anarchist movement.

When I first became aware of Voltairine nearly 40 years ago, this was because of her connection to the freethought movement (where she has always been held in high esteem), not because of her anarchism. Generally speaking, I regard her contributions to freethought and feminism as more original and worthwhile than her writings on anarchism specifically.

5) Shone mentions the similarities between the views of Voltairine and Benjamin Tucker, but there was nothing specifically anarchist about many of their shared views about the rights of women. In 1851, for example, Herbert Spencer included a radical defense of equal rights in “The Rights of Women,” a chapter in *Social Statics.* This scathing commentary attacked the English legal system that “permits a man to beat his wife in moderation and to imprison her in any room in his house,” that renders a woman “incapable of holding property,” that permits a husband to “take possession of his wife’s earnings against her will,” etc.

Spencer goes far beyond criticizing these legal atrocities. He also demolishes various arguments that had been used to prove the supposed “mental inferiority of woman.” And he argues that “Despotism in the state is necessarily associated with despotism in the family.” Spencer’s treatment predated J.S. Mill’s similar but much better-known essay, “The Subjection of Women” by nearly twenty years.

For these and other reasons, I see no reason why Spencer should not be hailed as an early libertarian feminist, even though he has been grievously overlooked in this regard. (His influence on the American anarchist movement was considerable.) I therefore agree with the efforts of Presley, McElroy and other modern libertarian feminists to resurrect the grand tradition of libertarian feminism and give it the historical pride of place that it so richly deserves. (I would argue the same point about early libertarian arguments for the rights of children. Spencer’s early views on this topic are remarkable.)

This is not to say that I disagree with everything Shone has to say. It’s just that I don’t understand the point of his basic thesis. Did many of Voltairine’s feminist views flow from her anarchistic perspective? Good. This illustrates the feminist undercurrent that has always been present in radical individualist thought, reaching back to the Levellers of the early 17th century. (In some Leveller writings, we see the equal rights of men and woman mentioned specifically, rather than the typical generic reference to the rights of “man.” These are the first such gender references that I know of in the history of political thought. )

Ghs

“Social Bliss Considered: In Marriage and Divorce; Cohabiting Unmarried, and Public Whoring” (1749), by “Gideon Archer” (i.e., Peter Annet). Available online at:

http://www.archive.org/stream/socialblissconsi00anne#page/n0/mode/2up

I first discovered this remarkable tract, written by the deist and radical whig Peter Annet, quite by accident in 1976, during one of my many visits to the William Andrews Clarke Library in Los Angeles, which has long been an annex of UCLA (even though it is located miles away).

As indicated by its title, this tract defends divorce, unmarried couples living together, and legalized prostitution. The least original part is the defense of divorce, which relies heavily on the arguments given by John Milton a century earlier. But the other two libertarian positions were virtually unheard of, at least in print, in mid-18th century England, which makes this an extraordinary work.

In addition, Annet attacks the legal power that married men in England had over the property of their wives, and his analysis of romantic love, despite some condescending asides about women, has a strikingly modern ring to it. For these and other reasons, this tract should be viewed as an early exposition of libertarian feminism.

The availability of this tract online gave me the opportunity to read it again for the first time in 35 years.

Btw, this booklet also contains “The Speech of Polly Baker,” which is presented as the libertarian-feminist speech of a woman in Puritan New England. This speech, which was often reprinted in freethought and libertarian periodicals (e.g., Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty), was widely regarded as authentic. In fact, however, it was written by Benjamin Frankin in 1747.

Annet’s first footnote to the Speech indicates that there was some doubt about its authenticity just two years after its initial publication. Annet seems to argue that, whether authentic or not, the Speech nevertheless conveys some important truths. Annet was more astute than the many later commentators who accepted the Speech at face value.

Ghs

However, when Smith writes that my discussion of the different waves of feminism “is irrelevant to his thesis,” I think he misses my point. After all, Smith accurately distinguishes my argument as being that “the positions that have caused many commentators to call her a “feminist” are not uniquely feminist positions at all, but are essentially logical spinoffs of her individualist anarchism.” I wanted to show that de Cleyre’s concerns – including her opinions about relationships – differ from those of many feminists of various affiliations, which is why I described what they had written. (That argument, as Smith appreciates, is not to claim that she wasn’t a feminist.)

In “Those Who Marry Do Ill, ” de Cleyre says that “Nothing is more disgustingly vulgar to me than the so-called sacrament of marriage.” Though she does concede that some successful marriages exist, she condemns most as being vehicles for the oppression of women. My view is that when de Cleyre states that “The desire for food, shelter, and raiment, it should at all times lie within the individual’s power to furnish for himself,” she indicates a preference for partners living separately, a stance that she shares with Tucker. After all, she warns her readers, “Never allow love to be vulgarized by the indecencies of continuous close communion,” and she expresses the belief that “Children may as well be brought up in an individual home, or in a communal home, as in a dual home.” Of course, a relationship based on physical separation, equality, equal liberty, for no fixed amount of time, without paperwork, might be viewed as a kind of marriage, which would entitle Smith to say that de Cleyre did not advocate the abolition of marriage. It just depends what you mean by “marriage.”

Although Voltairine de Cleyre de “can legitimately be called a feminist, if the specific context of that term is outlined,” the positions that have caused many commentators to call her a “feminist” are not uniquely feminist positions at all, but are essentially logical spinoffs of her individualist anarchism. Thus — to put it more simply than Shone does — Voltairine should be viewed as an anarchist, first and foremost; and her “feminism” is properly viewed as an aspect of her anarchism, according to which both women and men should enjoy equal freedom.

Although I will not go to the wall to defend my summary — for one thing, Shone hedges many of his statements with qualifiers like “perhaps” and “arguably” — this seems to be the thesis defended in the final section of his essay. But if I am correct, then the section in which Shone discusses different conceptions of feminism (first, second, and third waves, etc.) is irrelevant to his thesis and, in fact, only serves to confuse matters considerably.

In her last reply to Shone, Sharon Presley contends that Voltairine was an authentic feminist, and (by implication) that her feminism was not merely a byproduct of her anarchism. I think Presley is absolutely right here, as illustrated by Voltairine’s article,. “Those Who Marry Do Ill” (1907).

Shone discusses this article, and he characterizes Voltairine’s position, in part, as follows:

“Voltairine de Cleyre was an outstanding political thinker who valued liberty and sought equality for men and women within an anarchist framework of social justice that would watch over the needs of all people, regardless of gender. To that end, she advocated the abolition of marriage, which she considered a repressive and unnecessary institution. Such a program is compatible with many feminist goals, but it is not specifically a feminist approach, and thus the attribution of the adjective “feminist” when de Cleyre is mentioned often substantially distorts the record of her many intellectual achievements….. ”

Although I am by no means an authority on Voltairine de Cleyre it comes as a surprise to hear that she advocated the “abolition of all marriage.” In “Those Who Marry Do Ill,” she offers an ideal conception of marriage that has nothing to do with either state or church — a kind of marriage based solely on mutual consent — and she certainly doesn’t call for the “abolition” of such arrangements. But she does advise against them, based on their supposedly detrimental effects on love.

Now here is my major point: Voltairine does far more than criticize government (or church) involvement in marriages, and she is not specifically concerned with the “sex slavery” that state marriages of her day entailed. As she puts it:

“But it is neither a religious nor a civil ceremony that I refer to now. when I say that ‘those who marry do ill.’ …By marriage I mean the real thing, the permanent relation of a man and a woman, sexual and economical, whereby the present home and family life is maintained. It is of no importance to me… whether it was blessed by a priest, permitted by a magistrate, contracted publicly or privately, or not contracted at all. It is the permanent dependent relationship which, I affirm, is detrimental to the growth of individual character, and to which I am unequivocally opposed. (Presley and Sartwell, “Exquisite Rebel,” pp. 198-99).

Voltairine expressly distinguishes between the “legal and social forms” of marriage; and here, in a manner similar to Wilhelm von Humboldt and J. S. Mill (neither of whom were anarchists), she is primarily concerned with the detrimental effects that even *voluntary* social institutions can have on the development of “individuality.”

So what, for Voltairine, makes the issue of even an ideal marriage — one based on “free contract” with no state involvement whatsoever — of special concern for women? Might it not be said, as Shone suggests, that she was concerned with women and men equally? Well, of course, in a sense — but she specifically (p. 202) notes that the harmful “interdependence” fostered by marriage affects “the man less so [than the woman]. and the woman wretchedly so.” She calls attention to the same imbalance in other respects as well.

The same focus on women is evident is other essays by Voltairine, and in many cases there is nothing specifically “anarchist” about her concerns. Indeed, in “The Woman Question” (1913; Presley and Sartwell, p. 223), Voltairine criticizes a “section of anarchists” who deny that there exists a “Woman Question” per se, apart from he common concerns of anarchists.

In short, a large part of Voltairine’s feminism is not merely a logical corollary of her individualist anarchism. It is psychological and social, not political; and an individualist anarchist could disagree with her arguments (e.g., about voluntary marriage) without sullying his anarchist credentials.

Ghs

For the record, I have never stated “that because some writers fail to call her a feminist that maybe she isn’t one.” Let me reiterate, too, that I’ve never claimed that de Cleyre was not a feminist. Additionally, for some reason Sharon Presley has “corrected” not only my personal qualities but also my name, an action that, in most contexts, I would assume to be just an error, but given the tenor of her posts, I wonder if it constitutes an additional attempt to demonize me, to obliterate any contribution I might make to scholarly debate, simply because I adopt a standpoint to which Presley believes she will one day be opposed. As indicated on the Liberation Papers web-site, I am “Steve J. Shone,” which is the name on my other publications, and indeed is also my legal name that is on my driver’s license and other documents, and under which I am registered to vote.

On the other hand, perhaps I should be happy that Sharon Presley directs her venom at a phantom author, since the attitudes she attributes to me are likewise specters conjured up from the depths of her imagination, which tells her also that only she and those who concur with her absolutely may be permitted to utter an opinion about Voltairine de Cleyre. Certainly, De Cleyre would not approve of Presley’s tactics.