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ANARCHA-FEMINISM * by Flick Ruby
For too long anarchist feminists have been labeled as the ladies auxiliary
of male bomb throwers. The misconception and manipulation of both
feminists and anarchist principles and practice have resulted in the use of
sensationalist and ridiculing tactics by the state and its spokespeople.
This has not only polarised the general populace from potentially
liberation concepts but has also polarised anarchist from feminists. In
the past and more so recently there has been a uniting of these beliefs and
Peggy Korneggers article; 'Anarchism; the Feminist Connection' goes so far
as to say that the two genres of thought are inextricable tied although the
connection has not been consiously articulated by feminists very often.
Kornegger agrues that feminism "emphasis on the small group as a basic
organisational unit, on the personal and political, on anti-
authoritarianism and on spontanious direct action was essentially
anarchism. I believe that this puts women in a unique position of being
the bearers of a subsurface anarchist consiousness which if articulated and
concretised can take us further than any previous group toward the
achievement of total revolution.
While anarchism has provided a frameword for the transformation required,
for far too long even this revolutionary ideology has been largely male
identified; male articulated, male targeted and male exclusive in both its
language and participation. It has therefore been unfortunately lacking in
vital analysis especially with regard to the psychological and physical
realities of oppression experienced by the majority of the human
population: women. As Emma Goldman said of the Spanish Revolution of 1936
"Despite the impressive rhetoric, most frequently male anarchists retreated
to cultural orthodoxy in the personal relationships with women ...The vast
majority of Spanish comrades continued to expect their own "companions" to
provide the emotionally supportive and submissive relationships "necessary"
for the activism of the males". Anarchism has often duplicated the very
concpts of power it sought to obliterate . One of the basic tenants of
anarchist feminsm is that we are not prisoners of the past -
The past leads us if we force it to
Otherwise it contains us,
In its asylum with not gate
We make history or it makes us"
As anarchist feminist we are not asking men to attone for the sins of the
forefathers, we are asking them to take responsibility for the masculinity
of the future, we are not asking women to be perpetually aware of their
opression but to emerge from it. Mostly we are not locating conflict with
certain people rather than the kind of behaviour that takes place between
them.
Anarchist feminism addresses these notions of power, attempts to criticise,
envision and plan. Everything is involved in the question. However it is
from a consious understanding of the lessons of the past that presses us
into the future, however angry or embarrased. While it is not my intention
to analyse in depth the traditions of anarchism and feminism, discussion
of their union in the past and the barriers to this union may help to
inform both genres as I see them as both phenomenas of urgent relevance.
Definitions of both anarchism and feminism are totally anathma as "freedom
is not something to be decreed and protected by laws or states. It is
something you shape for yourself and share however both have insisted "on
spontenaiety, on theoretical flexibility, on simplicity of living, on love
and anger as complementary and necessary compoents of society as well as
individual action." Anarchist feminist see the state as an insitution of
patriarchy, and seek to find a way out of the alienation of the
contemporary world and the impersonal narture of the state and its rituals
of economic, physical and psychological violence.
The word anarchist comes from archon meaning a ruler and the addition of
the prefix "an" meaning "without" creates the terms for concieving not of
chaos not disorganisation, but of a situtaion in which there is
emancipation from authority. Ironically what consititutes anarchism is not
goal orientated post revolutionary bliss but is a set or organisational
principles which may redress the current obstacles to freedom. As Carlo
Pisacane, an Italian anarchist wrote "The propaganda of the idea is a
chimera. Ideas result from deeds, not the later from the former, and the
people will not be free when they are educated, but educated when they are
free."
Most of the focus of anarchist discussion has been "around the governmental
source of most of societies troubles and the viable alternative forms of
voluntary organisation possible", but has paid little attention to the
manifestations of the state in our intimate relationships nor with the
invidivual psychological thought processes which affect our every
relationship while living under the tyranny of a power-over ideology. The
above quote came from George Woodcocks anthology called The Anarchist
Reader who should be forever embarrased for citing only one woman briefly
(Emma Goldman in the role of critic of the Russian Revolution). The quote
continues "and by further definition, the anarchist is the man who sets out
to create a society without government."
Exactly.
How is it that revolutionary libertarian fervour can exist so harmoniously
with machismo? It is far too easy in this instance to say that "It is hard
to locate our tormentor. It's so pervasive, so familiar, We have known it
all our lives. It is our culture." because although it is true the
essences of liberty so illustrously espoused by these people have not
extended their definition of freedom to ther sisters. Why not?? It is
often a problem of language used by idealists in their use of the term man
as generic, but what is also clear in so much of the rhetoric is that the
envisioned 'proletariat' is the male worker, the revolutionary is a person
entering into the struggle that is the seeking of a "legitimating"
expression of 'masculinity' in the political forum staked out by the
dominant male paradigm. Feminists are suspicious of logic and its rituals
and the auidence addressed by a ritual language, with reason. Consider the
folloving examples and if you are not a woman try to imagine the conflict
created by such wonderful ideas that deliberately and needlessly exclude
you from relevance or existance.
"Our animal needs, it is well known, consist in food, clothing and shelter.
If justice means anything, nothing can be more unjust than that any man
lack them. But justice doesn't stop there."
"the objection which anarchists have always sustained to fixed and
authoritarian forms of organisation does not mean that they deny
organisation as such. The anarchist is not an individualist in the extreme
sense of the word. He believes passionately in individual freedom, but he
also recognises that such freedom can only be safeguarded by a willingness
to co-operate by the reality of community"
"An integral part of the collective existance, man feels his dignity at the
same time in himself and in others, and thus carries in his heart the
principle of morality superiour to himslef. This principle does not come
to him from outside, it is secreted within him, it is immanent. It
consititues his essence, the essence of society itself. It is the form of
the human spirit, a form which takes shape and grows towards perfection
only by the relationship that everyday gives birth to social life. Justice
in other works, exists in us like love, like notions of beauty of utility
of truth, like all our powers and faculties."
"Chomsky argues that the basis of Humbolt's social and political thought is
his vision "of the end of man"...the highest and most harmonious develpment
of his powers to a complete and consistent whole. Freedom is the first and
indispensable conditions which the posasibility of such a development
presupposes."
And as if bearing witness to the sucesses of the socialisaion process,
women too use this language as Voltairie de Clayre said "And when modern
revolution has thus been carried to the heart of the whole world if it ever
shall be, as I hope it will - then may we hope to see a ressurection of
that proud spirit of our fathers which put the simple dignity of Man above
the gauds of wealth and class and held that to be an American was greater
than to be a king. In that day there shall be neither kings nor Americans
- only men, over the whole earth MEN."
Well save me from tommorrow! Sometimes you have to edit your reading with
so many (sic) (sic) (sick's) it renders the text unreadable. And so to
what extent than has revolutionary ideology created and spoken to women
when the language, the focus and the freedom offered is so often clearly
for men? The fact is that women have only so very recently acquired access
to education and also do not often have the opportunity for political
involvement, consider both the physical and psychological barriers. There
have always been a womans voice in political forums and feminism builds
upon these tradition, theories and courage to create a body of thought that
specifically addresses womens empowerment.
As Robin Morgan points out in her book The Demon Lover, the left have been
dominated asnd led by a male system of violence which has created with
reactionary punctuality its "opposite" (duplicate) of action theory and
language. She argues that in the search for "legitimacy" that male
revolutionaries adopt the forums and language of violence and domination
that continue to oppress women but that because these fourms are seeminsly
the sole route for political transgression; that women are enticed and
engaged in the struggle that while purporting to be revolutionary it is
revolutionary on male terms and will use and betray her. So often feminist
have been abused by and asked by male revolutionaries to make ther claim
and focus subsurvient to "the wider struggle". From the women
Abolitionists jeered at when they gave a feminist understaning of the
problems of male drunkeness and its devestating effects on women, to the
suffragists accused of diverting attention from the war effort, to Zetkin,
Luxumbourg and Goldman all suffering the eye roll and brutality of both the
state that is and the state that would be. We see Alexandra Kollontai the
only women involved in the Russian cabinet after the 1917 Revolution being
exiled to Norway after all her references to the necessity of a feminist
component to revolution were edited and diluted. We are asked to stop
pursuing our cause and start defending it but to argue for the validity of
our cause that would imply we wanted "in". Even recently a once respected
friend said that "The womens meeting is on now, the real meeting will state
in half and hour." When questioned he added "the full meeting". The
fullness of the lack filling penile participation I supposed, lubricated
and made ready, as always in isolation. Ah but how can one quibble about
the sloppiness of language when it serves our purposes so well. Thankyou
Mirabeau for the following "Every party has its criminals and fools because
every party has its men."
Entering into political circles with men is an exercise in the risk of
compromising and being obedient to this attitude or in confronting it.
Ridicule is the worst, tokenism is little better and so gloriously rare and
acute is our joy when the issues are taken seriously that we could be
mistaken for groaning clapping seals unless we are already cringingly
braced in anticipation of the backlash of men genuinely perplexed but
inarticulate except in the socialised male response; defensiveness. But
there must be some way in which to address the political nature of our
polarisiaion as sexes in political forums which involve men. There must be
some way to point to the coercive power structures that display a hidden
elite, invariable of men but also of women. I believe like Peggy Krogger
that feminism could be the connection that links anarchism to the future,
both add to eachothers struggle not to seize but to abolish power, but both
go further than the socialists and assert that people are not free becuse
they are surviving, or even economically comfortable. They are only free
when they have power over their own lives. Anaerchist feminist say that
the goal is not to fabricate the new and artificial social forms but to
find ways or articulating people so that out of their groupings, the
insitutions appropriate to a free society might evolve."
Socialist organisations are popular with a lot of people who are flocking
to these groups because it is felt that one must be involved with a
revolutionary group,. Indeed. But their gender blind hierarchical
bludgenoning from the poduim organisations have a typical style of
interpreting feminist concerns and concrete grievances as irrelevant to or
symptomatic of the larger struggle. "They appeal to the women to suspend
their cause temporarily which inevitable leads to a dismissal of women's
issues as tangential, reducing them to subsidiary categories."
Anarcha-feminist have said that often the "definitive body of theory which
is so often the comforting cushion for male reclining, such theoretical
over articulation gives one the illusion of responding to a critical
situaion, without ever really coming to grips with ones perception of it.
With capitalism and patriarchy so safely reduced to an explination, we
distance ourselves from the problem and the necessity to immediately
interact with it or respond to other people." So often revolutionaries
deal with concepts and not people.
But while as anarcha-feminists we object to much of the politics of
socialist (as a friend of mine says "After your revolution we'll still be
us, but you'll be them, ) we also argue that liberation needs to happen in
small afinity groups so that people are not blugeoned into opinions and can
build up the personal relationshiop of trust that facilitates the grieving,
the sharing and the exorcisms of the psyhological though processes and
experiences that brought them to their politics.. This is often a sanity
compromising process or do we actually become sane through that difficult
time when we realise that the personal is political.
"Those of us who have learnt to survive by dominating others, as well as
those of us who have learned to survive by accepting domination need to
socialise ourselves into being strong without playing dominance submission
games, into controlling what happens to us without controlling others."
"To this end anarchism must start with a solid feminist consiousness and
practise it or it is doomed to just as much internal contradiction and
failure as anarchists traditionally foresaw for hierarchical Marxism."