"Whofc role did outhorlty or government ploy In human endeovor for betterment, In Invention ond discovery? None whotever, or ot leost none thot ujos helpful, it hos olwoys been the Lndlvlduol that hos occompllshed every miracle In thot sphere, usually in spite of the prohibition, persecution ond Int erference by authority, human ond divine.

Slmllorly, In the polltlcol sphere, the rood of progress lay In getting owoy more ond more from the authority of the trlbol chief or of the clon, of prince and king, of government, of the Stote. Economically progress hos meont greater well-being ' of ever loroer numbers. Culturally, It hos signified the result of oil the other ochlevements-greater Independence, political, mental and psychic ' (THE INDIVIDUAL, SOCIETY and the STATE)'

civil rlqhts, moy be good demands, but true emancipation bealns neither ot the polls nor In courts. It begins In woman's soul. History tells us thot thot every oppressed closs gained true liberation from Its mosters through Its own efforts. It Is necessary thot woman leorn thot lesson, thot she reollze that her freedom utlll reoch os for as her power to achieve her freedom reaches. It Is, therefore, for more Importont for her to begin with her Inner regeneration, to cut loose from the weight of prejudices, traditions, ond customs. The demond for equol rlqhts In every vocation of life Is just ond fair; but, ofter oil, the most vltol rlqht Is the right to love ond be loved." (THE TRAGEDY OF WOMAN'S EMANCIPATION)

"At the dances I wos one of the most untiring ond goyest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, o young boy, took me aside. With o grove foce, os If he were about to announce the deoth of o dear comrade, he whispered to me thot It did not behoove on ogltotor to donee. Certolnlu not with such reckless obondon, onywoy. It was undignified for one oho mas on the woy to become o force In the anarchist movement. Uu frivolity would hurt the Cause.

I grew furious ot the Impudent Interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown Into my face. I did not believe thot o Cause which stood for

0 beautiful Ideal, for onorchlsm, for release ond freedom from conventions ond prejudice, should demond the denial of life ond joy.

1 Insisted thot our Cause could not expect me to become a nun ond thot the aovement should not be turned Into o cloister. If It meont thot, I did not wont It. 'I wont freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, rodlont things.' Anarchism meont thot ^h-o me, and I mould live It In spite of the whole world-prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even In spite of the condemnation of my

^Thc vinet of feminism and anarchism have been intertwined at least since Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin became lovers and refused to live under the same roof. In the American past, libertarian radicals such as Stephen Pearl Andrews and Victoria Woodhull, Angela Tilton and Ezra Heywood, Sarah E. Holmes and Benjamin R. Tucker, Moses and Lillian Harmon, and Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman published Journals in which the cause of women's emancipation was advocated. To the past mipht Of WOODHULL 4 CLAFLIM'S WEEKLY, THE WORD, LIBERTY, LUCIFER, and MOTHER EARTH, we are proud to add our own present mite, THE STORMI A JOURNAL FOR FREE SPIRITS. Knowinp full well that there is no liberation other than self-liberation, we do not pretend to contribute anythinp other than a pesture of support to those women who strive for a future, and a present, which they can call their own.

This issue is being presented in conjunction with the Anarchist Feminist Conference, April 28, 1979 at Manhattan's Park Royal Hotel, sponsored by The Association of Libertarian Feminists and Hunter Collepe's Gay Men's Alliance. Due to lack of time and soace, it was not possible to include everything we intended to in this issue. We hope to include this material in the next issue of THE STORK! which will attack another manifestation of sexism and statism: the onoression of children. „ , . .

Sharon Presley is national coordinator of The Association of Libertarian Feminists, and well known activist and writer. Robert Cooke, secretary of ALF, makes his second appearance as an anarchist thinker to be reckoned with. Harold Pickett, who has stirred up several storms in past issues, is at it again with his hertical notions about anarchist practice. Pat Parker's "On Beauty" originally appeared in MINUS ONE #13, 1966. Kerry Thornley, who usually has a lot to say about sexual oppression, has chosen to write about another favorite American pastime. Jim Kernochan, my co-editor and typist, chose to direct his attack against both the Church and State. Calligraphy and drawings for this issue were a^ain the work/play of yours truly. The back cover was taken from an English anarchist poster; the front cover from the book L'ANARCHIA by E. Zoccoli, 1907.

In Merrill Moss's comment on "Parker's Position" in the last issue, the word "only" was inadvertently substituted for "not" in a passage that should have read as follows:

"(The IVA7) is a federation controlled wholly from below, ... its General Executive Board members may NOT hold (local) office, intervene or use their prestipe in local affairs — or even vote at conventions.¹¹

Edited and Published Twice a Year by Jim Kernochan and Mark A. Sullivan Apt. 2E 227 Columbus Ave. New York, N.Y. 10023 (USA)

Subscription Prices (please send check payable to Mark A. Sullivan): N.America: $.60/single copy; $2.00/4. Elsewhere: $.80/1 ; $3.00/4

Yet, Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying Streams like a thunderstorm apainst the wind. -G^ron

In the introduction to her collection, ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS, Emma Goldman lauds the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche as a V.iant mind," whose "vision of the Uebermensch ...(calls) for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves." She criticizes, too, that "narrow attitude which sees in Max Stirner naught but the apostle of the theory 'each for himself, the devil take the hind most one.' That Stirner's individualism contains the greatest social possibilities is also ignored. Yet it is nevertheless true that if society is ever to become free, it will be through liberated individuals, whose free efforts make society."

The point here is NOT, of course, that Emma Goldman was a closet Stirnerite. Karl Hess, the Goldwater supporter turned anarchist, makes am analogous observation in his book DEAR AMERICA: "(T)here exists by demonstration a social capacity of people to live by mutual aid, rather than competition, and in communities.. .Additionally, in the sort of community I cherish, self is always seen as part of community since I have no disposition to live as a hermit and since I see living with and working with other people as one of the truly human delights of life. For those who feel...that they live best when they live without reference to other people... freedom affords them every opportunity to do that - but to do it solely by their own efforts. Heroic hermits who say they live by their own lights alone, but then exhibit inherited wealth or stock dividends do not, to me, make a very good case. There is a particularly odd breed of theoretical loners who, for instance, claim that they will not be bound by anyone else's wishes. They flourish their unbridled egos like battle banners, and tell us, that they stand, walk, and apparently talk alone, proud, mighty and unchecked. . .Most of them that I have met are sad, dependent people v/no grow no food, build nothing, seem singularly inept overall and, v/hen asked how they support their grand and unbridled egos, blazingly reveal that they deal in the commodities market or in foreign exchange or some such nonsense...They claim independence - but...factually) merely nibble, like mice, at the edges of corporate capitalism and delude themselles that they are free."

I have quoted at length from these two writers so as to demonstrate emphatically how those who need to affix the proper

ective to each and every anarchist have set themselves a sisyphean labor. The stone WILL roll back down the mountain and categories WILL collapse for lack of meaning.

The names "right anarchist" and "left anarchist," for instance, are singularly useless except as expressions of obloquy. No political definition of "the right" that is not a mere assemblage of names can encompass both Lysander Spooner and Nixon; similarly, the political sense of "leftism" cannot hold both Kropotkin and Stalin

Economic distinctions are equally useless; if some people talk of "private" and others of "collective" property, we cannot therefore assume any deeper similarity. Both private property and collective property are anarchistic economic systems; under the rule of the state - ANY state - neither can exist. All the variants and combinations of these economic forms (which are not totally distinct but blend gradually to one another) are the result of the free association of communities and individuals. Communal consensus or agreement among individuals decides what will be done. In state societies, this kind of decision-making exists only to that extent that the state fails to unsurp it through either incapacity or constitutional restraints. Land and goods cease to be either private or collective property and become a third kind: state, or "public" property, controlled by, if not owned outright by, the government. Where collective or private property exist, free women and men control their own lives; where state or public property exist, these become the source of power and their control a matter of government policy. The worst economic quarrels among anarchists is far less than that which all have with the economics of statism.

The origins of anarchism, like the origins of its nemesis, the state, cannot be pinpointed precisely. Too many streams fed into the river of modern libertarian thought for any one to be THE source of anarchism. Before the Reformation of Luther, anti-authoritarian, religious radicals periodically shook the authority of Rome; during and after the sixteenth-century, Protestantism threw up increasingly militant and radical sects. Until institutional science replaced institutional religion as a partner of the state, religious dissent and political radicalism usually frequented the same circles; necessarily so, as in most of Europe (and often the early American colonies) to oppose an Established Church as to oppose the State. The extreme democratic and somewhat communistic Digger and Leveller sects emerged in England during the Civil War of the 1640's; anabaptist radicals in Germany somewhat earlier. Another English group, the Society of Friends (Quakers) produced in America both both communalist and extreme individualist ideas of liberty; although they believed strongly in the concept of community, their notion of the "individual light of conscience" led easily from religious to political dissent - especially abolitionism in the 19th century. Many of the radicals whom Henry Steele Commagen calls the American Philosophers - Paine, Jefferson, Franklin -were Diests; and lastly, the English Dissenters' circle that included Richard Price and Joseph Priestley later boasted as a principle thinker William Godwin, generally held to be the first explicit anarchist.

The French philosopher, P.J. Proudhon, was of course the first explicit anarchist writer to use the word "anarchy" in its modern sense; but before Proudhon, an American anarchist, Josiah V'arren, laid down economic principles widely accepted by anti-statists in this country until the advent of marxism. (Warren established several anarchistic communities, the best known of which was Modern Times, which was set up in 1851 and survived lonp enough to become what is today Prentwood, Lon" Island.) Proudhon and Warren have commonly been viewed by individualist, communist, and mutualist anarchists as their joint intellectual forbears*

Schism arose in the 1880's and 90's with the intellectual ascendancy of Peter Kropotkin and Benjamin Tucker. Kropotkin, the more systematic and original of the two - at any rate, he published a number of books, while Tucker had but one - held Tucker's individualism in disdain, pronouncing it bourgeois. Tucker, for his part, was a superb polemicist, known sometimes as "Benjamin Tucker the Terrible." Originally a follower of natural law theory, like the abolitionist-anarchist Lysander Spooner, Tucker repudiated his earlier beliefs for Stirnerite egoism, Voltairine de Cleyre wrote of him that he was "very able and very strong, but very narrow and hard."* As Paul Avrich writes in his recent biography of Voltairine, " a champion of unity within the movement,...(Voltairine) was repelled by his scathing attacks upon fellow anarchists, 'sending his fine hard shafts among foes and friends with icy impartiality, hitting swift and keen - and ever ready to nail a traitor.'" Among the better-known targets of his campaigns were the "single-tax" economist Henry George and the communist anarchist Johann Most. Much could be said in Tucker's favor in many of these disputes (which often appeared in his journal LIBERTY) but the fact remains that he did much to engender mutual distrust among anarchists of the several schools.

In 1908 came the demise of Tucker's LIBERTY, after which the individualists lacked any real forum. A decade later, state repression nearly finished off the rest of the anarchists who survived. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were deported; the anarcho-syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World was smashed, its leaders and organizers jailed or exiled (or even lynched); many of the remaining Utopian colonies either folded up or (like Home, Washington) metamorphosed into non-radical communities.

Anarchists continued to labor in the ensuing decades - I will mention only Rudolf Rocker, but others struggled as well -but they were few in numbers. Between the first and second world wars, war and state repression crushed strong anarchist movements in Russia, Spain, and America. By the late 1950's a handful of individuals - regarded as eccentric — and journals still argued

♦For the anarchists' quotations whose sources are not identified in the text, I am indebted to Paul Avrich and his fine biography of Voltairine de Cleyre , AN AMERICAN ANARCHIST . (1978 Princeton University Press)

anarchist ideas in America. Paul Goodman, Mildred Loomis of the School of Living, the Freie Arbeiter Stimme, the Libertarian Book Club, remnants of the I.W.W. and anarchist scholar James J. Martin not an exhaustive list, but fearfully close to being so.

In the wake of the upheavals of the 1960's, anarchism has revived as an activist movement - and so, too, have the old feuds, re-created as if we were again in the 1890's. At least one new variation of anarchism - "anarcho-capatalism" - has stirred particularly vitriolic arguments, generally revolving around the theme: who IS gin anarchist and who is NOT?

The creation of anarcho-capatalism was the consequence of a combination of several ideologies. Many young conservative activists in the 60's could not accept the pro-war, anti-civil liberties positions of establishment conservatism and between 1965 and 1969 gradually broke away to form libertarian organizations, such as in 1965 the Alliance of Libertarian Activists. Often, they became, if they were not already, students and followers of Ayn Rand's "objectivist" philosophy or of Austrian free-market economic theory (exemplified by Murray Rothbard) -or both. Economist Murray Rothbard, if he did not coin the term, anarcho-capitalist, was it chief popularizer. Many libertarians, not then familiar with individualist and mutualist anarchist thought, adopted this label. Free market libertarians attempted to distinguish betv/een "state" capitalism and "stateless" capitalism, much as nineteenth century anarchists - even individualists like Tucker - sometimes called themselves libertarian socialists to differentiate their position from state socialists like Marx.

The irony of the furor over the word anarcho-capitalism -communist anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists have been understandably appalled - is that it is fast varnishing from use. Rothbard himself seems no longer to employ the term and in the new edition of his FOR A NEW LIBERTY has substituted other expressions. Rothbard and many others now associated with the "Libertarian" Party generally avoid the use of the word "anarchist" in favor of less radical euphemisms, like "libertarian" apparently fearful of alienating the disgruntled voters they hope will elect them into power.

Others, however, eschew the label anarcho-capitalist because they see the absurdity of arguing with the shade of Nelson Rockerfeller over what capitalism REALLY is. If they are not psychologically or economically communist or syndicalist, they ARE anti-capitalist; they oppose the war machine, the coporate-state structure, the banks, and the oppression of entire groups of people such as women and gays.

A work like David Deleon's recent THE AMERICAN AS ANARCHIST simply furthers factionalism among anarchists and encourages a simplistic, stereotyped "left vs right" anarchist confrontation.

Deleon writes, for example, "The drugs, sex, literature, and dress of the Left represented a more thoroughly humanist and utooiar. socialist vision than that of the Right. The leftist search was for a multi-racial, culturally pluralist, bisexual community of affection, consisting not of capitalist competitors but of brothers and sisters. The Anarcho-Capitalists more fullv incorporated the bourgeois personality and culture: the total destruction of the extended family, an emphasis on the production and consumption of goods rather than the humanist enrichment of life, and a negative concept of liberty solely as freedom from compulsion."

Sadly, some people will believe this nonsense. I do not know the source of Deleon's psychological model of "right-anarchists (he doesn't explain his use of "right" and "left", of course); aside from one obscure study, the only work in this area has been done by Sharon Presley, whom Deleon never consulted. As for the "leftist search:" SOME of the New Left was like that (I was in the movement) but many people held attitudes - while they fought for liberation - of macho traditionalism, of authoritarianism, of ideological narrowness and intolerance. Comradeship, there was sometimes, but no Utopia.

Anarchists today seem to be only slowly learning the futility and HEEDLESSNESS of the distrust and distance we maintain among ourselves. Yet, many among us in the past did come to realize that peace, if not harmony, among anarchists of varierated opinions was both needful and possible, and worked to achieve it.

Many anarchists have long attached to the political question of anarchism, an economic one: what socio-economic form will succeed the destruction or disappearance of the state? Some have favored communal arrangements, calling themselves Communist Anarchists; others (among the I.Y/.V. or CNT, for example) seek the organization of society around the factory or workplace -especially through industrial unions and call themselves Anarcho-syndicalists. Individualist Anarchists exalt the ego and the uncollectivized individual above all unions and communes; in economics many individualists have adopted the label Mutualist. (Other labels - such as Tolstoyan or Christian - have tended to be non-economic)

Anarchists of each group tend to think their system the best; this I find understandable, although it begs the question: Best for whom? and under what circumstances? Unfortunately, many of us move easily from believing our way is the best to believing that ours is the ONLY WAY; we pass quickly on to absurd scenes of communists excommunicating individualists, they returning the courtesy unstinting of effort. For a century, anarchist journals have rung with the blows.

Scarcely had the strife begun, however, when other anarchists began seeking to quell it. Ricardo Mella and Fernando Tarrida del Marnol two theorists of the Spanish anarchist movements, were among the first to attempt to separate the economic issue from the problem of anarchist politcs. Speaking in 1889, Tarrida said, "Among the various revolutionary theories which claim to guarantee complete social emancipation, that which most closely oonforms to Nature, Science, and Justice is the one which rejects all dogmas, political, social, economic, and religious - namely Anarchy without adjectives."

Other European anarchists -among them Errico Kalatesta, Elisee Reclus, and Max Nettlau - came to adopt this catholic position. Nettlau, an historian of the anarchist movement, wrote in 1914 that "neither Communism nor Individualism if it became the sole form, would realize freedom, which always demands a choice of ways, a plurality of possibilities." And Kalatesta, in 1929: "One may prefer communism or individualism or anv other system, and work (for its success) by example and propapanda...but one must beware, at the risk of certain disaster, of supposing that one's own system is the only and infallible one, good for all men everywhere and at all times, and that its success must be insured at all costs by means other than persuasion(.) Similarly, after World War One, Vsevolod Volin and Sebastien Faure propagated the doctrines of 'united anarchism' and 'synthetic anarchism.'"

A like movement coalesced among American anarchists in the 1880's, comprising those who believed that the first and primary goal of anarchism was to establish personal and social freedom. Avrich cites Dyer Lum in THE ALARM in 1886: "Anarchy, or the total cessation of force government, is the fundamental principle upon which all our arguments are based. Communism is a question of administration in the future(.)"

Voltairine de Cleyre became the foremost "apostle of tolerance" in the anarchist movement. Originally an individualist, she early drew away from this position, though not to the extent of becoming a communist. She became dissatisfied with both and finally adhered to no doctrine at all. She believed that "NO SYSTEM OF ECONOMY so far proposed is ... entirely compatible with freedom." Avrich writes, in AN AMERICAN ANARCHIST, that to the economic question, she had "no answer... ' I am an Anarchist, simply,... without economic labels attached.'" she added, concerning the contending economic systems, that "there is nothing un-Anarchistic about any of them until the element of eompulsion enters and obliges unwilling persons to remain in a community whose economic arrangements they do not agree to."

We have now, as Voltairine de Cleyre's day, single-minded, even fanatical, disciples of the several socio-economic schools, who rend the anarchist movement with accusations of heresy and imposture. The word "movement" itself becomes a farcical pretense at such times; anarchism appears then, not as a movement, but as random twitchings and spasms.

As the vigorous resurgence of anarchism has regenerated an earlier factionalism, let us look for this vitality to breed the tolerance that is faction's antidotfe. I tfo NOT argue for an end to criticism among anarchists; rather the opposite, for an attitude of tolerance, fairness and reason in argument must lead to more and better thought-out debate. The alternative is to continue with, as Voltairine de Cleyre expressed it, "those outrageous excommunications which belong properly to the Church of Rome, and which serve no purpose but to bring us into deserved contempt with outsiders."

The differences - economic, social, and psychological -among anarchists, I do not for a moment underestimate. We should see these dissimilarities, however, not as stumbling blocks in the path of the anarchist goal, but as glorious diversity and testaments to the strength and resiliance of the anarchist idea. These are not mere difficulties that we must "sfettle" later on. We need no ultimate resolution of distinctions among us; rather, as many anarchists should flourish as human imagination can conceive. If we restrict anarchism, we shall have merely another narrow utopia, which will appeal only to the handful pre-disposed to that view of life.

Anarchists should recognize that anarchy emulates the evolutionary process of nature, which, by mutation and variation of the species, allows for the spread and perpetuation of life in wildly varied terrain and climate. Similarly, people of different lands and societies will create and use that form of the anarchist idea that suits their needs. To extinguish -even to allow to vanish - any of the multiple visions of anarchy that we now possess might be to narrow the idea to include less than all of humanity; we would be wiser to encourage and support new heresies than to seek to extinguish those now existing.

Out of the numerous forerunners of anarchism sprang a concept uniting their separate rebellions into a single philosophy. As we accept new or alien versions of the basic idea we mutate and grow in flexibility and hence, in strength; when we reject novel or unfamiliar forms, we reject our own past and future. Anarchism is a philosophy of a "plurality of possibilites•" anarchists, who desire the birth of new worlds on earth, can do no less than applaud our own diversity as examples to others.

If, to be an anarchist, one need have no qualifications of economic doctrine, who can we say is an anarchist? I reply* any who can say simply as did a thinker and poet of the movement, John Henry Mackay:

This American porollel of Sumarol Zen requires ot leost two participants who core nothing whatever for their own lives, nor for the lives of others. Oddly enough, eaoer contestants ore easily found nearlu everuwhere.

The player pous a vast sum annuolly to climb Into o lorae wheeled contraption weighing approximately one or two toms which hos been manufactured for the purpose of this discipline, known os Detroit Roulette, and Is called an outomoblle. This vehicle Is then driven ot a speed of anywhere from fortu to seventy miles on hour down an asoholt runwou known os a road, which generollu has o white line pointed down Its middle.

On the other side of the white line and coming from the opposite direction Is ot leost one other vehicle mode of steel, weighing approximately the same and movlna ot an equivalent speed. The object Is to pass the oncomlna automobile ot a distance of from two to six feet wlthour having o collision.

If these automobiles miss one another, each contestant wins a trip to o chosen destlnotlon, provided she or he pays for the gas. If the vehicles collide, everybody loses.

In America, this sport Is o number one killer. It takes more lives than war, shortens and spoils life In oenerol bu means of side effects such os the spewlna of noxious oases Into the air. Indiscriminately, It kills ond molms not onlu participants, colled drivers, but olso possenoers ond pedestrians of oil oge groups ond levels of Involvement.

The gome Is considerable more complicated than I hove described It here, utlllzlno on Intricate set

of rules colled a motor vehicle code, os aiell os exhorbltont ployers fees colled Insurance rotes, ond chronic time payments. Spectator's subsidized traffic courts ond hlgh-woy construction, ugly odvertlzlna compalgns, deliberately colculoted obsolescence, ond o considerable titter problem of junked ond scrooped vehicles ore symptoms of loroer political ramifications.

Generol Motors, the leodlno promoter of Detroit Roulette, Is bigger thon Holland, os Gory Snuder points out. If you calculate Its Gross Coroorote Product, so to speok, you discover It exceeds the GNP of most European countries combined. This mokes possible on Impressive lobby In V.'oshlnoton. Dur-Ina World WorlI both Generol Motors ond Ford Motor Co. made combat vehicles for the Allies and the Axis powers on on eauollty opportunltu bosls. And while the toll on the Germon civilian population was enormous, little of the G.M. property was domaaed bu Allied bombers.

A variation on Detroit Roulette Is colled Detroit KAMI KAZE. You ouollfu for this oome bu mess-Ino around serlouslu with the promotion of olternotlve tronsportotlon sustems deslaned to supplant the outomoblle, ond with nonpollutlno substitutes for the Internal combustion enolne. Soon you discover oil sorts of unwelcome oddltlons to your social circle, who, If theu don't wipe uou all across the free-rooy, con always crock uou over the heod In o dork olleu.

The outomoblle Industru Is o sublime example of whot the authoritarian world considers practical and necessary.

ol the san and'eas last ditch iei'it>ai . ati pron 1 9611 hlllhoven,tujunoo,co.0104'

THE STORI'! , in the past, has occasionally been criticised by anarchists and non-anarchists alike for devotinr "too much" space to the defense of gay riphts ani the homosexual orientation of many of its writers. I was once told by an anarcho-individualist comrade that pay liberation is a personal and minority concern, havin" nothinc to do with individualism or anarchism. Oh really? I ar under the impression that anarchist individualism has EVERYTHING to do with personal and minority freedom. Apparently it remains necessary to remind even anarchists that the State activel" oppresses homosexual women and men. Homosexual acts are criminal offenses in capitalist and communist regimes alike. In the U.S. gays and lesbians rav taxes that support anti-homosexual indoctrination in State schools while homo-cidal churches are tax exempt. What is more, anti-gay propaganda oppresses ALL persons, not just those who are the objects of its attacks.

Homophobic attitudes in this country are inflicted upon the younp as part and parcel of the sex-role indoctrination cults called the Church, the Nuclear Family, and the School System. The oppression of homosexuality is a manifestation of the oppression of women. In addition to being an anarchist concern, gay liberation is a feminist issue.

As a young boy I submitted to such cult commands as "Bip boys don't cry; only GIRLS (deprecating tone of voice) cry". As a "big" boy I happily measure all of 5'4", and cry when I feel so inclined. What went wrong? Girls and boys, once they enter the School System cult, be?in to play separate games. Boys are derided for playing "house", a Nuclear Family indoctrination techniaue designed to inculcate the female sex-role. Only girls are permitted to fantasize, and thus desire, a future as household slave and breeder. Boys are encouraged to comnete with each other, and submit to such cult rituals as "Cowboys and Indians", "Cops and Robbers", football, and fist fight-in-. r'an - boys thus fantasize and

desire a future in the armed forces, killinp fellow boys (in service to the State Cult), NEVER lovinp them. Sex-role stereotyping represses the self-assertiveness of younp women, and the feelinp capacity of younp men. Women are encouraged to fulfill themselves in submission to men, while men identify the desire to own and conouer with love.

Those who slept through the procrammin" ofteD feel out of place sometimes at a very early age. In the film WORD IS OUT a gay man remarks that he wanted to be with the girls when he was supposed to be v/ith the boys. Later, v/hen he wanted to be v/ith boys, he was supposed to spend time with girls. Tomboys are pirls who play boys games; and boys who play girls games are sissies.

The oppression of homosexual men is intimately interwoven with the oppression of feminine men and of woman themselves. "Effeminate" men are considered to be, by definition, "like a woman", and by implication, "u/eaA. and Lnfe-rLor like a woman". It is feminine, thus weak and inferior, to express aliveness and emotion in your voice and body movements. It is masculine, and thus strong, (rugged tone of voice) to repress aliveness and emotion in your voice and body movements.

Masculine and homosexual women are doubly oppressed because their existence exposes the lie that women are "by nature" submissive (to men , who are "by nature" dominant) .

The existence of feminine men and women bolsters the facade of the "macho main". The existence of masculine women and gays threatens to shatter it. The cult-ural power structure that places the straight -white - male at the top is being eroded at its very base. Clearly the heterosexist male is in crisis. His power and his identity is (to borrov: an ancient revolutionist's metaphor) like a house built upon shifting sands.

As the stereotypes continue to breakdown, psychological androgyny* will become recognized. Women v/ill break thru the need to submit to men while retaining their ability to feel and to love. Men will discover their capacity to feel and love, and drop the need to compete, dominate, and kill. War and war-monpers will become extremely unpopular (unfortunately we can then exoect the State to take great pains to find a "moral equivalent" to shore-up its ebbing authority).

•Psychological androgyny is defined by Sharon Presley as "considering no psychological or personality trait as inherently characteristic of either sex."

Homosexual women and men will at last be seen as whole persons, not needing the "opposite" sex to complete themselves. Exclusively heterosexual persons will become a cause for sociological curiosity when homosexuality is accorded its status as a natural human manifestation. Many will feel free to expand their experience of life in the exploration of their capacity to love and desire persons of both sexes. Male and female v/ill denote anatomy only, and not tv;o sides of a struggle for rights and privileges.

Today, however, the struggle is a real and necessary one. Privileged "roups never five up their power voluntarily. In the struggle for a woman's right to control her own body, every person's right to do so is advanced. The natural allies of women's rights are cay men. A natural consequence of the assertion of women's rights v/ill be the destruction of the heterosexist lies that oppress all women and men, especially the very young.

Presently sex-role conspirators are in open alliance against both gay and women¹s rights. They are making gains by citing the erosion of the Nuclear Family as the dire consequence of a freer society -they are ripht! They fear that children, if exposed to homosexuals in the School System, v/ill feel free to explore their own sexuality -they are DEAD RIGHT! The crucial issue of both feminism and gay liberation is the right of young people to control th<zA,r own bodies,and discover their own sexual natures -by themselves, v/ith their peers,and with older persons. If women and gays do not support the liberation of the young, their own liberation will become synonymous with government privileges and ageist hypocricy.

Let us not compromise, rather let us realize the total abolition of ALL sexual oppression. Let the free and voluntary expression of ALL persons rise in joyous defiance against the Church/State conspiracy of psychological and biological Death Cults. The human race, the planet earth, can no longer afford the sexual oppression of their offspring. The choice is rising above the horizon: STATIST OBLIVION OR SEXUAL ANARCHY.

It is no secret that those two degenerators of the human spirit, organized religion and government, have been cohorts in the same bed for centuries. Organized religion, the Church, a profitable industry*with millions of superstitious followers, has always sought to legally force people to adhere to its own stale morality of obedience. The State, backed by police and military power, has been used by churches as a tool for enforcing these religious morals. On the one hand, government needs religion's vast social appeal to temper and control a possibly discontent citizenry. The Church, on the other hand, depends upon government to enforce a morality which is not threatening to official religious doctrines. Together, Church and State have fought all forms of social liberation and all rebellions against blind obedience to imposed authority. Meanwhile, women constitute the largest group oppressed by this conspiracy between Church and State.

For instance, it has long, been the contention of those in religious institutions that a woman's reproductive capacity should be controlled by god alone. It is then within religious interest to reduce women to baby machines and restrict their right to control their own bodies. Conseqently, churches have been in the forefront of repressing any attempt towards legalizing contraceptives and disseminating birth control information. Historically, the Church was Margret Sanger's main foe in her crusade for legalized birth control. Even though Sanger eventually won her long fight, the government still prohibits many places from selling contraceptives, has placed restrictions on birth control advertisements, and enforces an age limit for those using contraceptives. While the State enjoys interfering with a woman's reproductive rights, Pope John Paul II, the newest papal fool, has reiterated his opposition to any form of birth control.

While the State enjoys interfering wdth a woman's reproductive rights, pope John Paul II, the newest papal fool, has reiterated his opposition to any form of birth control.

Besides attempting to restrict the use of birth control, churches are also the largest lobbying force behind the present anti-abortion movement. The 1973 Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion, a slap in the face of stale Judeo-Christian morality, has mobilized all religious forces into a powerful political terrorist organization. As a result, abortion clinics have been bombedwomen seeking abortions have been threatened with violence, and the right to control one's body is under direct attack. Government, the terrorist organization par excellence, encourages their violence by imposing controls and restrictions that dictate the time and conditions under which an abortion may be performed. As with birth control, our "wise" rulers have set an age limit for women seeking an abortion. Apparently the Patriarchal State wishes to eliminate a woman's choice in whether to be a mother or not. At the same time, the Church is lobbying politicians for a constitutional amendment to prohibit all abortions.

It has also been a religious belief that the morally acceptable sexual activity is performed by married adults in the missionary position for the sake of procreation. Consequently, churches have successfully sought to outlaw all forms of deviant sexual activity and placed a stigma on any expression of sexual freedom. In the realm of sexuality, government interference with the private sexual practices of women have been particularly oppressive. Religion, and its frigid followers, have used government to impose laws against sodomy, inter^racial marriages, and pre-marital sex. Anti-prostitution laws dictate how a woman chooses to use her body. It is the woman, not her male customer, and not her pimp, who is

arrested under such laws. Lesbians are not only engaging in illegal sexual acts, their children are also kidnapped by the State and placed in homes that will Indoctrinate them with the Judeo-Christian ethic. Government and relipion continue the indoctrination in the school systems where censorship of sex education hides important information from students. The message is clear: sex is dirty - government and relipion will use all its powers to prevent people from knowing or acting on their sexual natures.

In short, organized religion, armed by the State, has been dictating how women can use their own bodies. Restrictions on birth control, abortion, and sexual freedom are particularly blatant examples of how Stone Age religious doctrine still influences the political law makers of today. It is clear that organized religion is indeed the enemy of women. Moreover, we as anarchists should realize that as the .State enforces Judeo-Christian morality, the Church in turn upholds the dictates of the State.

PHIL010G0S o prlvote newsletter of llbertorlon commentary ond satlrlcol speculation pub. bimonthly. A. Henry Ellossen, OEHIS, P.O. Pox 2586, Tollohosee, Fl 32304 Somple 50<t 12/$5 urvrrv IgnaC6

Gay Anarchists, with their red and black banner, will be one of many groups attending the National March on Washington for gay rights on Sunday October 14, 1979. If you wish to Join us, or want more information, write to Jim Kernochan or Mark Sullivan at 227 Columbus Ave., New York, N.Y. 10023.

SISSIES IN STRUGGLE 3100 N .Romport, NeujOrleons Lo 70117 Pub. Anorchlst Blblloprophy

by K.H.Z. SOLNEMAN, o sixteen page pamphlet published by THE MACKAY SOCIETY, Is noiu ovollable In Enqllsh: f1 per copy, plus 204 per order, from: MARK A. SULLIVAN, APT. 2E 227 COLUMBUS AVE. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10023 (sole US/ Canodo distributor; outside Conodo/US order direct from the Mockay Society: Kurt Zube, Auu/oldstrasse 7 0-7800 Frelburg/Br., Germany

Car ar anarchist, not accepting the validity of government and laws, conscientiously work for the passage of civil rights laws, such as the ERA and gay rights legislation? From my personal experience and thinking, I'm convinced that not only CAN we anarchists work for the passage of these laws, but we SHOULD be working for such legislative reforms.

While our basic principles do not recognize the validity of governmental authority and the State's "right" to make lavs, I believe that another more fundamental principle is involved: individual supremacy - the right of the individual to self-determination.

Social and political stru~?les become mass movements when the lives of enough individuals are effected by the issues. The goals of liberation struggles, whether economic, political, or social, are viewed as ultimately bringing greater freedom and self-determination to the individual. The challenge is always to sore forr; of Authority. Any methods are legitimate which challenge and weaken Authority in the struggle to gain personal freedom and self-deter-mination, without, of course, harming innocent people. I believe use of the existing political process is a legitimate way to challenpe State Authority and the oppressive Authority of social institutions and public mores.

This situation is esoecially true regarding women's and gay liberation, as heterosexisrr. is so thoroughly ingrained in all aspects of society and confined merely to the actual government Authority. In challenging hetero-sexist Authority, for example, the passage of a pro-women's choice or gay rights law effectively pits the Authority of the State against the Authority of the Church. One is played against the other and in the crossing of the swords of Power, one wanifestation of Authority has to weaken. Even if the particular law is not passed, State Authority is weakened when it is challenged by [j^l

its own rules. The motion, once made, is felt. Other challenges will be forthcoming.

Large numbers of people infected by the disease of heterosexism see the forces of Authority at odds with each other. They watch State government school boards pass laws favoring the rights of gay teachers while religious Authority groups continue waging witch hunts against both gay teachers and their defenders. In the meantime, teachers have gained the right to control their own lives, gay students have the happy exposure to positive role models, and non-gay students get the educational experience of knowing teachers as real people, beyond the prejudice of seeing a derogatory label instead of a human. This is only one such example of positive gain, whether the law in question is passed by the official education system, a city council, or state legislature.

While such measures are reformist, we can not discount the benefits to the freedom and self-determination of the individuals concerned. Life is only for the living and it is short. Whatever contributes to an individual's satisfaction and free self-expression is good. Lives can not be wasted waiting for a total revolution which may never be seen. Anar-are an evolutionary force in the world: we must evolve society as much, or as little, in ways v;e can accomplish at the present moment.

As long as laws exist, we need to use them to our own advantage. That does not mean we honor or respect laws. It does mean that we face reality. If one group is protected by law against economic or other forms of discrimination, the measures should be consistent across the board for all groups. We may also support laws which serve as a check against other laws. In all cases, our emphasis is not on the legitimacy of law, but on that which best serves the needs of the sovereinn individual at the present moment. Nor should we abandon our long-range goals: it is the vision of a free anarchist society, itself, that gives us our true perspective on laws we work to

We would do well to remember that we do not have a choice between "law" and "no law". If such a choice now existed, the situation would be very different. As it is, though, pass-ape of the EPA and pay rights serve as a formidable challenge to Authority.

The power of the State is not independent. It exists with the supDort of other powerful concerns which oppress the needs and minds of (the) people. Capatalist corporations and churches are obvious examples in weilding power to support the State while retaining their sep-erate domains of exerted Authority. However, the domains often overlap and their claims to Authority often conflict. Innocent people are caught in the midst of these conflicts. At such times when these powerful creatures conflict, we have greater opportunities to support the interests of the people and the course of greater freedom. Sometimes, supporting a government lav can help to undermine the powers of other oppressive institutions.

Churches and religious institutions are prime offenders in opposing civil liberties and the individual right to conscience and free choice. Churches, with a few laudable exceptions, preach anti-human lies and work against such civil rights as the ERA, gay rights, the right to abortion, and lesbian and gay parent's rights. They are more vile than the State when justifying their oppression by "Divine Law" and "holy" scriptures. If State laws will help weaken the power of these religious multi-national corporations, I will support passage of the laws. Nor do I see such support as increasing the power of the State. It already has its power, armies, and police force. Instead, State prileges are extended more consistently, equally to all. Thus, while not increasing the power of the State, we do decrease the power of the churches.

While we may very well ignore laws which impose upon our free-spirited pursuits of happiness, we are foolish to ignore progressive legislation, as though we were r^ historical ostriches with our heads 11" stuck in the purist sands of archaic thought. If at all consistent,

those anarchists among us who opp~ ose passage of, and who do not actively support, the ERA and gay rights legislatior would also oppose all progressive reforms since the Eighteenth Century. They would oppose the laws that forbid involuntary slavery, that limit "voluntary" slavery to eight hours a day, and that extend the vote to blacks and to women. Such "purist" argue-ments only play into the hands of our oppressors. By not taking our inch of freedom when we can, we give the reactionaries the power to measure our lives with the entire yardstick. Only a few fanatic Marxist-Leninists oppose all progressive reforms, hoping that a general prevailing misery will spark the total revolution of their own vision and leadership. Anarchists are more humane.

Even if women and gays might wish to do so, we do not live apart from this society and its laws. We are forced to pay hard-earned money in unfair taxes. Women and gays still have taxation without representation If we were not subject to arrest at the whims of police and were not forced to pay taxes, we would have little reason to ask the State to extend equal rights to us. As the deplorable facts are, however, it is the reactionary religious institutions which are tax-exempt. Despite the fact that such religious organizations violate the grounds of thei tax-exemption, they are never penalized for working to deprive others of their civil rights. This is an outrage. Possibly, women and gays will organize a tax revolt as a means of protest. However, laws which confront the civil extension of oppressive religious power must also be supported if freedom is not to remain a vague abstraction.

Attempts to legislate a greater degree of freedom can not be dismissed as "ill-advised". Such a method of struggle is already being waged by the larger women's and gay movements. In the face of their attacks by a growing international right-wing conspiracy to crush all social and human rights, we must not stand by .idly. Such a position

Looks ore nob o vLrbue. Beouby Ls nob merely physical perfecbLon - lb Is on emoblon, lb Is ollveness, lb Is response. Beouby Is bhob mhlch unifies, bhob mhlch Is fully expressed, free. Descre ls ofben beouby.

PhyslcoL perfecbLon Is pleasing bo bhe eye. ALL bhob *>osb people seem bo ask Is bhob you should be good bo look ob. A «on manbs o tDomon mho mill be odmlred, desired, ond envied by obhers. Therein lies her obbrocblon and deslroblllby - she Is o possession. lb Ls obher people. lb Is njhob THEY bhlnk of hun BECAUSE he omns o desirable ooman bhab Is laporbonb.

lb Is cruel bhob so many people never blossom Inbo reol beouby because bhay ore Inhibited by people oho dlsopprove of bhem for nob roeosurlng up bo bhe sbondord of physlcoL perfecbLon of bhe age In mhlch bhey live.

Looks are nob a vlrbue. They are on occldenb of blrbh. We should never be mode bo feel guilty because me do nob hove bhe kind of face or figure bhob hoppens bo be Ln vogue.

Disapproval and fear of ridicule bhrnorb grombh and creobe inhibitions, mhlch Is »hy so-colled ploln people are often defensive ond aggressive. Their senslblvlty bo criticism creates a vicious circle. In carboons, novels ond films bhe ploln motion Is bhe bobble-axe mho nogs, mhereas bhe good-looking moman Is smeeb, feminine, Loaded mlbh sex-appeal and balks Llbble.

Support of progressive legislation does not mean we stop trying to repeal repressive laws, or neglect work in non-reformist agitation-propapanda areas, or abandon attempts to create alternatives to the conditions around us. Rather, legislative reform helps fertilize the grounds in which more specifically anarchist activities can freely flourish.

Of course, we know that the State can not make us free and that it is insane that the rights of a minority can be decided upon by the majority. Yet, we must expose the "majority to the basics of libertarian thought while resisting controls on our lives. Progressive legislation ,

accomplishes this. I, for one, prefer living under a government where I can publicly express my thoughts and live openly with a same-sex lover than under one wher such activities automatically brin lengthy prison sentences or death.

I encourage anarchists to help organize and participate in demonstrations and actions supporting such reforms as passage of the ERA and gay rights, to write letters t elected officials, and to vote against reactionary right-wing pol itical candidates.

In this type of political activity, let us prepare and widly distribute clear statements of principle, and specific, logical reasons for anarchist support. Progressive laws will not ultimately make us free, but they may insure a longer lifetime in which to pursue that freedom.

Emma Goldman called her "the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced." Yet today Voltairine de Cleyre is virtually unknown even among libertarians. She is discussed only briefly in histories of American anarchism and is not even mentioned at all in the more general studies of James Joll, George Woodcock and Daniel Guerin. Though her writing was both voluminous and powerful, she appears in only one modern anarchist antholopy.l Only two recent collections of American radical thought include her classic "Anarchism and American Traditions"; and ironically, neither is primarily anarchist in content.2

Voltairine de Cleyre was, in the words of her biographer, Paul Avrich,3 "A brief comet in the anarchist firmament, blazing out quickly and soon forgotten by all but a small circle of comrades whose love and devotion persisted long after her death." But "her memory," continues Avrich, "possesses the plow of legend."

Born in a small villape in Michigan in 1866, Voltairine, plagued all her life by poverty, pain and ill health, died prematurely at the ape of 45 in 1912. The short span of her life, ending before the great events of the 20th century, is, in Avrich's opinion, the major reason why Voltairine de Cleyre has been overlooked, unlike the longer-lived Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.

The strength of v/ill and independence of mind which so strongly characterized this remarkable woman manifested themselves early in Voltairine's life. Forced into a Catholic convent school as a teenager, she chafed at the stifling, authoritarian atmosphere and and was later to speak of "the white scars on my soul" left by this painful experience. Bruised but unbroken, Voltairine emerged an atheist and soon gravitated toward the flourishing freethinkers' movement. Influenced by Clarence Darrow, she flirted bre-iflv with socialism but her deep-runninp anti-authoritarian spirit soon rejected it in favor of anarchism.

de, CCewg,;

A WOMAN AGAIMST THE STATE.

by Sfwion., J>neACejj

As with Emma Goldman, the hanpinp of the Haymarket martyrs made a profound impression on Voltairine and was the major impetus in her turn toward anarchism. In 1888, she threw herself into the anarchist movement, dedicating herself passionately and unceasingly to the cause of liberty for the rest of her life.

Thouph seldom in the public limelight - unlike Emma Goldman, she shrank from notoriety - Voltairine was a popular speaker and an untiring writer. In spite of financial circumstances which forced her to work long hours,and despite a profoundly unhappy life which included several near-suic-ides, an almost fatal assassin's bullet, and a number of ill-fated love affairs, she authored hundreds of poems, essays, stories and sketches in her all too brief life. Highly praised by her colleagues for the elegance and stylistic beauty of her writings, Voltairine possessed, in Avrich's opinion, "a greater literary talent than any other American anarchist," surpassing even Berkman, Goldman, and Benjamin R. Tucker. Goldman herself believed Voltairine's prose to be distinguished by an "extreme clarity of thought and originality of expression." Unfortunately, only one collection of her writings - SoZojcXo^d ll'or/id of VottjxLrLrxo. do. Ctouf.ro., edited by Berkman and published by WotAer Carth in 1914 - was ever

Roth Voltairine's life and her writings reflect, in Avrich's words, "an extremely complicated individual." Though an atheist, Voltairine had, according to Goldman, a "religious zeal which stamped everything she did...Her whole nature was that of an asctic." "By living a life of religiouslike austerity," says Avrich, "she became a secular nun in the Order of Anarchy." In describing that persistence of will which inspired her, the anarchist poet Sadikichi Hartmann declared, "...her whole life seemed to center upon the exaltation over, what she so aptly called the Dominant Idea. Like an anchorite, she flayed her body to utter more and more lucid and convincing arguments in favor of direct action."

"The Dominant Idea," wrote Emma Goldman in her commemorative essay Voltai,rLn<z do. CLeuro., 4 "was the Leitmotif throunh Voltairine de Cleyre's remarkable life. Though she was constantly harassed by ill-health, which held her body captive and killed her at the end, the Dominant Idea energized Voltairine to ever greater intellectual efforts, raised her to the supreme heights of an exalted ideal, and steeled her Will to conquer every handicap in her tortured life."

Yet the ascetic also had the soul of a poet. In her poetry and even in her prose, Voltairine eloquently expressed a passionate love of music, of nature and of Beauty. "With all her devotion to her social ideals," says Emma, "she had another god - the god of Beauty. Her life was a ceaseless struggle between the two; the ascetic determinedly stifling her longing for beauty, but the poet in her determinedly yearning for it, worshipping it in utter abandonment..."

Another manifestation of Voltairine's complex nature was her ability to be both rational and compassionate, a combination that Benjamin Tucker, like some

Copyright, Shoron Presleu, 1979. (£) modern day individualist anarchists, thought led to inconsistency and ambivalence. Voltairine didn't see it that way. "I think it has our peorle, especially our American Anarchists represented by Benjamin R. Tucker, to disclaim sentiment," she declared. In her essay, "Why I am an Anarchist," she wrote, "It is to men and women of feeling that I speak...Not to the shallow egotist who holds himself apart and with the phar-iseeism of intellectuality, exclaims, 'I am more just than thou'; but to those whose every fiber of being is vibrating with emotion as aspen leaves quiver in the breath of Storm! To those whose hearts swell with a great pity at the pitiful toil of women, the weariness of young children, the handcuffed helplessness of strong men!"

But Voltairine was no emotional sentimentalist, wanting in serious arguments. Though Tucker became increasingly skeptical of her talents, most of her associates considered her a brilliant thinker. Marcus Graham, editor of Wan.' called her "the most thoughful woman anarchist of this century" while George Brown, the anarchist orator, declared her "the most intellectual woman I ever met." Joseph Kucera, her last lover, praised her logical, analytic mind. Avrich hinself, a careful historian not given to undue praise, concludes that she was a "first-rate intellect."

Voltairine's political stance in the anarchist spectrum was no less complicated than her other views and even less well-understood. Avrich dispels the myth created by the erroneous claims of Rudolph Rocker and Emma Goldman that Voltairine became a communist anarchist. In 1907, points our Avrich, Voltairine replied to Emma's claim, saying, "I am not now and never have been at any time a Communist." Beginine as a Tuckerite individualist, Voltairine turned in the 1890's to the mutualism of Dyer Lum. But she eventually grew to the conclusion that neither individualism nor collectivism nor even mutualism was entirely satisfactory.

»I an an Anarchist, simply, without economic labels attached," she was finally to declare.

Unhyphenated anarchism or "anarchism without adjectives" had other adherents as well - Errico Malatesta, Max Nettlau and Lum among them. These advocates of non-sectarian anarchism tried to promote tolerance for different economic views within the movement, believinr that economic preferences would vary according to individual tastes and that no one person or group had the only correct solution. "There is nothing un-Anarchistic about any of (these systems)," declared Voltairine, "until the element of compulsion enters and obliges unwilling persons to remain in a community whose economic arrangements they do not agree to."

Voltairine's plea for tolerance and cooperation among the anarchist schools strikes a modern note, making us realize how little things have changed. Factionalism rages yet, with fervent apostles still all too eager to read the other side (whether "anarcho-cap-italist" or 'anarcho-communist") out of the anarchist fold. The notion that the pluralistic anarchist societies envisioned by people like Voltairine de Cleyre might in fact be the most realistic expectation about human nature seems even more lost on anarchists today than in her time.

Probably Voltairine's best known intellectual contribution is the often - reprinted essay "Anarchism and American Traditions," in which she shows how the ideas of anarchism follow naturally from the premises on which the American Revolution v/as based. The Revolutionary Republicans, she says "took their starting point for deriving a minimum of government upon the same sociological ground that the modern Anarchist derives the no-government theory; viz., that equal liberty is the political ideal." Put the anarchist, unlike the revolutionary republicans, she goes on to point out, cannot accept the premise of majority rule. All governments, regardless of their form, say the anarchists, will

minority. She then goes on to cite other similarities between the ideas of the anarchists and the republicans, including the belief in local initiative and independent action. "This then was the American Tradition, she writes, "that private enterprise manages better all that to which it is equal. Anarchism declares that private enterprise, whether individual or cooperative, is equal to all the undertakings of society.

Another of Voltairine's special concerns was the issue of sexual equality. In a time when the law treated women like chattel, Voltairine de Cleyre's whole life," says Avrich, "was a revolt against this system of male domination which, like every other form of tyranny and exploitation, ran contrary to her anarchistic spirit." That such a brilliant, unusual woman would be a feminist is no surprise. "Let every woman ask herself," cried Voltairine, "Why am I the slave of Han? Why is my brain said not to be 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 labor in the household, giving me in exchange what he deems-fit? Why may he take my children away from me? Will them away while yet unborn? Let every woman ask." "There are two reasons why," Voltairine answered in her essay "Sex Slavery", and these ultimately reducible to a single principle -the authoritarian supreme power GOD - idea, and its two instruments -the Church - That is, the priests -and 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."

These themes of sexual equality and feminism provided the subjects of frequent lectures and speeches in Voltairine's years of activity, including topics like "Sex Slavery," "Love in Freedom," "The Case of Woman vs. Orthodoxy," and "Those Who Marry Do 111."

The subject of marriage wac ^Lone of Voltairine's favorite topics. Though she valued love, she totally reiected formal marriage, considering it "the sanction for all manner of bestialities" and the married woman "a bonded slave." Her own unfortunate experiences with most of her lovers, who, even without the ties of formal arriage, treated her as sex object and servant, convinced Voltairine that even living with a man was to be avoided. When she learned that William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecroft (her heroine) had lived in separate apartments even though they were lovers, she was delighted. "Every individual should have a room or rooms for hLm&Uf <ijvcUu&Iv<Ujj, " she wrote to her mother, "never subject to the intrusive familiarities of present family life¹...To me, any dependence, any thing which destroys the complete selfhood of the individual, is in the line of slavery and destroys the Dure spontaneity of love."

Not surprisingly for that day, Voltairine's bad experience: with the traditionalism of her lovers was a misfortune she shared with Emma Goldman. Though totally different in personality - "Voltairine differed from Emma as poetry differed from prose," says Avrich -the lives of the two women had curious parallels. Most of their lovers turner* out to be disapoint-ingly conventional in matters of sexual roles but there was in each woman's life at least one lover who was not of thie traditionalist stripe. Each loved a man who was her intellectual equal and who treated her as an equal - for Voltairine, it was Dyer Lum, for Emma, Alexander Berkman. But, sadly, both v/omen lost these men as lovers. Lur committed suicide in 1893 and Berkman's 14 years in prison left psychological scars that changed the nature of his physical relationship with Emma, if not their emotional one.

But in other matters, Voltairine and Emma had little in common. In fact, they quickly took a personal dislike to each other. Voltairine thought Emma flamboyant, self-indulgent, unattractive and dumpy; Emma considered Voltairine ascetic and lacking in personal charm. Emma claimed that "physical beauty and feminine attraction were withheld from her," another myth that Avrich shows to be false. In truth, most of Voltairine's comrades, both men and women, found her beautiful, elepant and charming. The photos of Voltairine included in Avrich's biography testify to the truth of these views - pictured is a delicate woman with a soft, mysterious beauty that was in sharp contrast to Emma's earthy robustness. Emma, a friend once pointed out, was not above jealousy.

Yet, in spite of their personal differences, Emma and Voltairine respected each other intellectually. For her part, Voltairine publicly defended Emma on several occasions, including the passionate plea, "In Defense of Emma Goldman and Free Speedh," 5

which Emma notes in her commemoration of Voltairine. In that essay, Emma pays eloquent tribute to Voltairine. She v/as, writes Emma, "a wonderful spirit...born in some obscure town in the state of Michiran, and who lived in poverty all her life, but who by sheer force of will pulled herself out of a living p.rave, cleared her mind from the darkness of superstition - turned her face to the sun, perceived a great ideal and determinedly carried it to every corner of her native land...The American soil sometimes does bring forth exquisite plants."

Vlan! Art Antho-Logu. of- AnarcJvi^t 3A<ulA., C-zaomA., Poe^trij., and Common tar 14 Edited by Marcus Graham. Cienfuegos Press, 1974.

'An Amo.rL<um AnarcJvL&t: Ulxe. XLf-e. of I/ottaLrLne. de. Ctejj.ro. by Paul Avrich. Princeton University Press, 1978.

'This is the title as remembered by Goldman. However, it appeared in print as "In Defence of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation."

This essay originally appeared in a slightly altered and shorter version in the LIBERTARIAN REVIEW (March, 1979)

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MINUS ONE, o journol for Individualists »onorchlsts ond eoolsts. Edited ond published by S.E.PorKer 186 Gloucester Terroce,London W2, Enqlond. $3 for 6 Issues.

Ah, once to stand unflinchingly on the brink of that dark gulf of passions and desires, once at last to send a bold, straight-driven gaze down into the vocanic Me, onc«, and in that once forci/cr, to throw off the command to cover and flee from the knowledge of that abyss,-nay, to dare it to hiss and seethe if it will, and nake us writhe and shiver with its force! Once and forever to realize that one is not a bundle of well-regulated little reasons bound up in the front room of the brain to be sermonized and held in order with copy-book maxims or moved and stopped by a syllogism, but a bottonless, botto~less depth of all strange sensations, a rockinr sea of feeling wherever sweep strong storms of unaccountable hate and rage, invisible cortortions of disappointment, low ebbs of meanness, quakir^s and shudderin-s of love that drives to radness and will not be controlled, hunperin-s and r-oanings and sobbings that smite upon the inner ear, now first bent to listen, as if all the sadness of the sea and the wailing of the -neat pine forests of the f'orth had met to weep together there in that silence audible to you alone. To look down into that, to know the blackness, the midnight, the lead ares in oneself, to feel the jungle and the teast within,-anthe swamo and the slime, and the desolate desert of the heart's despair-to see, to know, to feel to the uttermost,-and then to look at one's fellow, sitting across from one in the street-car, so decorous, so veil got up, so nicely combed and brushed and oiled and to woncer what lies beneath that conr.onrlace exterior,-to picture the cavern in him which sorev.here far belov has a narrow gallery running into your own-to inagine the pain that racks hir, to the finger-tips perhaps while he wears that placid ironed-shirt-front countenance-to conceive hov he too shudders at himself and writhes and flees fro- the lava of his heart and aches in his prison-house not daring to see himself-to draw back respectfully from the Self-gate of the plainest, most unpromising creature, even from the most debased criminal, because one knows the nonentity and the criminal in oneself-to spare all condemnation (hov much more trial and sentence) because one knows the stuff of which man is made and recoils at nothing since all is in himself,-this is what Anarchism may mean to you. It means that to me.

And then, to turn cloudward, star-ward, skyward, and let the dreams rush over one-no longer awed by outside powers of any order-recognizinc nothing superior to oneself-paintinc endless pictures, creating unheard symphonies that sing dream sounds to you alone, extending sympathies to the dumb brutes as equal brothers, kissing the flowers as one did when a child, letting oneself go free beyond the bounds of what f<tar and ouAtom call the "possible, "-this too Anarchism may mean to you, if you dare to apply it so.