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Title: Anarchafeminism
Author: Anarqxista Goldman
Date: 2020
Language: en
Topics: anarcha-feminism
Source: *Anarchy and Anarchisms* https://archive.org/details/anarchy-and-anarchisms

Anarqxista Goldman

Anarchafeminism

In writing this book so far it had occurred to me that women do not

feature in it to any great extent. Whether this is my fault or not is

hard to say. I perceive of my choices for what to include in it as

fairly random in the sense that they are essentially a history of the

things which have attracted my attention. We each travel our own paths —

intellectual as well as any other kind — and the forces that act upon us

to create those paths are not always obvious to us. What remains true,

however, is that my previous chapters largely concern ideas and

movements greatly formulated and controlled by men regardless of if they

apply equally to men and women, or if they promote liberty equally for

both men and women, or not. In my translations of The Dhammapada when

discussing Buddhism, for example, I glossed over the fact that Buddhist

monks and saints were seemingly designated as male and that, in that

text, women seemingly only pop up as a source of possible temptation for

men. In discussing Nietzsche I have neglected to mention any number of

critical or disparaging comments in regard to women throughout his later

written work. We could even discuss Jesus and his apparent inner circle

of twelve disciples which was exclusively male. In each case, I believe

matters are more complicated than this but, nevertheless, I feel a

consciousness in relation to this book I am writing which whispers in my

ear, “But what about women?”

It is this same consciousness which would have me now point out that by

having a chapter labelled “anarchafeminism” it is not my intention to

suggest that women should be fenced off with anarchy or anarchism into

their own areas. Indeed, one of the [to me, joyously surprising] things

about the research I have done for this essay is how vital and

refreshing the words and actions of anarchafeminists are — and have been

— and how widely applicable they are. As I have read the things I have

read in order to compose this essay I have — probably for the first time

— become well disposed towards those who use the word “feminist” and use

it [in conjunction with “anarcha”] to describe who they are and what

they are doing. You see, for me, “feminism” has always been a problem

and this is because the loudest and most vocal feminists that I have

come across have either been the man-hating, lesbian kind of feminists

who give every impression of imagining that the world would be a better

place if men simply didn’t exist or the liberal kind of feminist who

seems to think that the goals of feminism will have been achieved when

there are as many wealthy, important and powerful white women in the

world as white men. What anarchafeminism has given me, as I hope to show

below, is a more sophisticated and intersectional appreciation of the

issues of feminism and the place of women in society — one which shows

up both these other “feminisms” for the shallow, reactionary,

self-serving nonsense that they are — whilst also showing that feminism

and anarchism operate side by side and that it is only in operating

together in this way, as one, that the goals of either are actively

achieved. Let me try to explain.

We might usefully start with that term “anarchafeminism”: what does it

signify? If one peruses The Anarchist Library online for clues [all of

my references below can be located using this resource] one finds

numerous articles of relevance.

For example, the anonymous “Anarchafeminist manifesto” from 1983 states:

“Anarcha-feminism is a matter of consciousness… Anarcha-feminism means

women’s independence and freedom on an equal footing with men. A social

organization and a social life where no-one is superior or inferior to

anyone and everybody is coordinate, women as well as men. This goes for

all levels of social life, also the private sphere.”

Deidre Hogan, in a brief article from 2004, “Anarcha-Feminism — Thinking

about Anarchism”, states that:

“Anarchism/Anarcha-feminism joins the fight against class exploitation

and that against women’s oppression together. True freedom, both for

women and men, can only come about in a classless society, where

workplaces are self-managed, private property is abolished and the

people who make decisions are those affected by them.”

In a footnote to that / formulation she adds that “Anarchism and

anarcha-feminism are the same thing — anarcha-feminism just emphasises

the feminism that is inherent to anarchism.”

For Ruby Flick in, “Anarcha-Feminism”, on the other hand:

“Anarchist feminists see the state as an institution of patriarchy, and

seeks to find a way out of the alienation of the contemporary world and

the impersonal nature of the state and its rituals of economic, physical

and psychological violence.”

In “Anarcha-feminism: Why the hyphen?” Kytha Kurin, in an article from

1980, suggests that:

“Anarcha-feminism exhibits aspects of both anarcho-syndicalism and

anarcho-communism. To the extent that women are being exploited and

degraded more than men, anarcha-feminism is like anarcho-syndicalism.

The emphasis has to be on that part of anarchism that deals with

personal and sexual exploitation. To the degree that feminism moves

beyond “reaction” to exploitation and poses a total life approach, it is

like anarcho-communism in that it becomes synonymous with anarchism.”

Kurin also argues that “an anarchism broadened by the feminist

experience [is] the most viable revolutionary direction”.

Finally, as Sofia Hildsdotter explains in “An anarcha-feminist’s

subjective perspective of anarcha-feminism”:

“Because anarchism is purported to oppose all usage of power and forms

of oppression the term anarcha-feminism should actually be unnecessary.

All anarchists should, if they really meant what they said about being

against all forms of oppression, work against, or at least not support,

the oppression of women. That’s theoretically. However, our reality is

that we are all products of our societal surroundings. It is also a fact

that those who find themselves in a hierarchical position of power have

a hard time accepting that a hierarchy even exists! Men do not recognise

the oppression of women to the same extent or to the same degree that

women do. Those who have power and privilege are, in addition, often

unwilling to relinquish these. Because of these reasons, many male

anarchists have not activated themselves in the struggle against the

oppression of women and, for these same reasons, it has become necessary

for female anarchists to denote themselves as anarcha-feminists.”

What binds these variously situated articles together is an awareness

that feminism and anarchism are not actually opposed movements. Those

who write them see in anarchism the promise of everything that feminism,

as they understand it, stands for. This will be a theme of all the

anarchafeminists [I choose not to use a hyphen in this term but that

signifies nothing in particular for me] I reference in this particular

essay and it is also certainly true of the first anarchafeminists, women

such as Voltairine de Cleyre and Emma Goldman, women who were both

clearly feminists and also anarchists at the same time. Here it was not

that one of these was active in some situations and the other at other

times but that one was being feminist when one was being anarchist and

vice versa. Both Goldman and de Cleyre, for example, criticised those

women who were merely being feminist in pursuing votes for women in the

early 20^(th) century. Both, consequently, wrote articles criticising

such women’s lack of anarchist ambition in only wanting equality with

men in a flawed system of representative democracy. That was feminism

but it wasn’t anarchism and that is, perhaps over simply put, the

anarchafeminist difference.

From the very first with women such as de Cleyre and Goldman,

anarchafeminism was based in a female consciousness of the way the world

is and a female experience of life. Both describe a deep set

consciousness, for example, of issues such as marriage, which was seen

as little more than another form of gender-based slavery, and

patriarchy, the male domination of women in pretty much all aspects of

society. Both Goldman and de Cleyre excoriated state and church as the

major male-dominated organs of such gender-based oppression. Any list of

concerns based in an anarchafeminist point of view, consequently, would

certainly not include less than issues such as:

control of her own body]

exploitation and the need to deal with them simultaneously

Most notable here is that anarchists themselves, primarily male

anarchists but not only so, have historically not been immune from

sexism and gender-based forms of domination. This is not only restricted

to the views of one of the architects of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph

Proudhon, who had chauvinistic views of women, nor even to harrowing

tales such as Ann Hansen’s rape by an “anarchist” she met in a London

anarchist bookshop as retold by Ruth Kinna in her anarchist handbook,

The Government of No One [p.174]. For example, one of the reasons for

the Mujeres Libres [Free Women] of the Spanish Civil War era [1930s] was

that the anarchafeminists of this time and place were only too aware

that one form of domination that had passed by their unionised,

anarcho-syndicalist male colleagues was the domination of men over

women. Consequently, autonomous Mujeres Libres groups were created in

anarchist Spain by women, pursuing both women’s liberation and the

anarchist social revolution in tandem. Such groups argued that the two

objectives were equally important and should be pursued in parallel.

Aiming towards the empowerment of working class women, they organised

activities ranging from education programs and technical classes to

childcare centres and maternity care. Therefore, anywhere, including in

anarchist movements, where women are expected to follow the men or do as

they told or do the cooking and cleaning whilst the men do “the work” is

a situation in which at least one basic form of domination has not yet

been overcome. So, one necessary reason for anarchafeminism is that

anarchism is not immune to sexism itself. Anarchafeminism is then an

explicit reminder, even to anarchists, that a basic and historic form of

domination is something of immediate concern to them in their practices

and attitudes too.

This reminds me of two historical examples. The first is a story told

about Emma Goldman who, apparently, was told by a male colleague to tone

down her behaviour on some public occasion. This gives birth to the

quote, with which Goldman is often [clearly falsely] credited, “If I

can’t dance its not my revolution.” The inference seems to be that

Goldman was not working politically for anarchist ends only to be told

by some man what appropriate female behaviour was. [We should also

remember here that Goldman was a woman who had spoken in favour of free

love for women, believing that women should determine their own

behaviour, sexual and otherwise, and so that it was for them to

determine with who, how often, how many times, and in what way, they

engaged in such behaviour.] The second example comes from Voltairine de

Cleyre who, in a direct application of anarchist ideals to feminist ones

in “The Gates of Freedom” [1891] wrote: “I never expect men to give us

liberty. No, Women, we are not worth it, until we take it. How shall we

take it? By the ballot? A fillip for your paper rag! The ballot hasn’t

made men free, and it won’t make us free.” Here we should remember that

in the late 19^(th) century most women had no vote and were largely the

property of men. Marriage in such times was characterised as both

slavery and a legal form of prostitution and what happened to married

women was nearly always a matter for their husbands. No surprise, then,

that for de Cleyre the feminist issue of women’s emancipation was also

an anarchist one. In her comments she had articulated both how men are

not themselves free but also how women are kept from freedom by men.

A more modern example of an anarchafeminist, and one who wrote two

articles in the 1970s which ticked lots of anarchafeminist boxes, is

Peggy Kornegger. In her articles “Anarchism: The Feminist Connection”

and “Anarchism, Feminism and Economics” she articulated an

anarchafeminist agenda which still resonates over four decades later.

Taking her anarchist cues from Emma Goldman’s definition of anarchism,

she makes her own definition based on three major principles:

the further point here that anarchists believe in the dissolution and

not the seizure of power.

that “successful revolution involves unmanipulated, autonomous

individuals and groups working together to take direct, unmediated

control of society and of their own lives.”

belief that all organisation in an anarchist situation comes from below

and that anything rigidly or externally imposed risks authoritarianism

again. Flexibility is a key concept here and responding to actual needs

rather than the application of dogmas of any kind.

At this point in “Anarchism: The Feminist Connection” Kornegger gives

the example of the Mujeres Libres during the Spanish Civil War

[1936–1939] as an example of a real place where these anarchist and

feminist principles were both necessary and where, for a time, they

worked. It is, by the way, not the case that they failed because they

only lasted for three years but that they were destroyed by the fascists

in Spain who were bitterly opposed to collectivist and libertarian

living whilst being in favour of state control. Yet, In this context of

civil war, workers took over factories, people began to cultivate land

to feed the people, and a strong anarcho-syndicalist mentality was

reinforced, not least by the addition of Mujeres Libres groups which

catered for the needs of women and who fought for anarchist living

conditions for all at the same time. These groups, although having

feminist as well as anarchist interests, worked side by side with the

anarchist groups in Spain at that time but retained their independence

as part of the unionised structure of anarchism in Spain in the 1930s.

Particular women of note at this time were Lucia Sanchez Saornil, one of

the co-founders of Mujeres Libres, and Federica Montseny, an

anarcho-syndicalist union member who would for a time work in the

republican government before the military coup began.

In each case in this anarcho-syndicalist situation actions were decided

based on general membership meetings and not by designated leaders or

representatives. Such of those as there were, were merely for the

purposes of carrying out instructions or coordinating affairs and they

had no decision-making power. In addition, such people were always

workers themselves and were subject to random and immediate replacement

in order to undermine the possibility they might become brokers of

power. In the workplaces which came under anarchist control wages were

equalised and goods in abundance were distributed freely. Since any huge

profits in the hands of a few owners were eliminated by this process,

such excess money was used to purchase better equipment and to improve

working conditions. It also led to cheaper consumer prices and a raising

of the standard of living in a situation in which people were now

essentially working for themselves and their communities rather than the

employees of some boss who was more interested in profit for his own

ends. This was all based on the activities of any number [hundreds] of

anarchist collectives and unions and involved about 8 million Spanish

people. Their activities show the strength of such a federated structure

of small collectives working together on the basis of the assent of the

mass of their members. Yet, as Kornegger herself notes, “The

achievements of the Spanish anarchists go beyond a higher standard of

living and economic equality; they involve the realization of basic

human ideals: freedom, individual creativity, and collective

cooperation.”

With such an example [she also discusses the student uprisings in France

in 1968 as a further, but more unsuccessful, example of the same thing

as well] Kornegger hopes to show that not only can anarchism exist in

the real world but it can also work and bring benefit to those who live

according to it, only eventually being shot down [literally!] by those

who want control and so, consequently, oppose freedom. Kornegger thinks

her examples show that it is not [as some if not many think] impossible

to imagine an anarchist situation and set of values breaking out in a

modern, capitalist country. And here it does not matter if the enemy is

conceived of as “a ruthless, unconquerable giant”. For Kornegger, “It is

domination itself that must be abolished” and this is what motivates her

self-identification as an anarchafeminist for, in the vast majority of

cases, it is men who do the dominating and women who are nearly always,

in any situation, the ones who are dominated. Thus, Kornegger sees in

the task of ending domination, an anarchist task, the coordinate

feminist task of ending men’s domination of women too. Women, she

thinks, are the perfect agents of the necessary societal change as the

ones with a history of domination by men and as those whose liberation

would change society by their very liberation in any case. In short,

Kornegger makes the case that anarchism by itself would be meaningless

if women’s domination by men were not one of the things any anarchism

sweeps away. She, therefore, makes the case that, in many examples,

feminism has been a covert anarchism and an anti-authoritarianism which

rejects the male-dominated authority figures society sets up as the

leaders in many respects anyway. Women, for Kornegger, are incipiently

anti-patriarchal and, she notes, “women frequently speak and act as

‘intuitive’ anarchists, that is, we approach, or verge on, a complete

denial of all patriarchal thought and organization.”

What is needed, according to Kornegger, however, is to make the implicit

link between feminist and anarchist activities explicit. In seeking to

throw off male domination, for example, the task is actually to destroy

ALL domination. This is anarchafeminism for it is not the case such

people want male bosses replaced by female bosses but that they want no

bosses at all. The anarchist and the feminist goals then cohere. Thus,

“If we want to ‘bring down the patriarchy’, we need to talk about

anarchism, to know exactly what it means, and to use that framework to

transform ourselves and the structure of our daily lives. Feminism

doesn’t mean female corporate power or a woman President; it means no

corporate power and no Presidents.” This is to say, as the late 60s

radical feminist, Valerie Solanas did, that such people should be “out

to destroy the system, not attain certain rights within it”. This, once

more, is a difference between a more liberal feminism and

anarchafeminism. As Peggy Kornegger adds, “Challenging sexism means

challenging all hierarchy — economic, political, and personal. And that

means an anarcha-feminist revolution.” Kornegger sees this, as in Spain

in the 1930s, as based in any number of women’s collectives and affinity

groups but she thinks the feminist consciousness these groups exhibit

need a more explicitly verbalised anarchist understanding. Hierarchy,

patriarchy and domination of women will be ended when it is ended in all

its forms everywhere. And so, once more, what is needed is the open

expression of an anarchafeminist direction based on an anarchafeminist

understanding of what needs to take place.

But here Kornegger issues a very important warning and its something I

want to ponder for a moment in the context of one anarchafeminist issue,

pornography. First of all, Kornegger says:

“This is not, however, to underestimate the immense power of the Enemy.

The most

treacherous form this power can take is co-optation, which feeds on any

short-sighted un-anarchistic view of feminism as mere ‘social change’.

To think of

sexism as an evil which can be eradicated by female participation in the

way things

are is to insure the continuation of domination and oppression.

‘Feminist’ capitalism

is a contradiction in terms. When we establish women’s credit unions,

restaurants,

bookstores, etc., we must be clear that we are doing so for our own

survival, for the

purpose of creating a counter-system whose processes contradict and

challenge

competition, profit-making, and all forms of economic oppression. We

must be

committed to ‘living on the boundaries’, to anti-capitalist,

non-consumption values.

What we want is neither integration nor a coup d’etat which would

‘transfer power

from one set of boys to another set of boys’. What we ask is nothing

less than total

revolution, revolution whose forms invent a future untainted by

inequity, domination,

or disrespect for individual variation — in short, feminist-anarchist

revolution. I

believe that women have known all along how to move in the direction of

human

liberation; we only need to shake off lingering male political forms and

dictums and

focus on our own anarchistic female analysis.”

This is an important statement and a reminder that power will ALWAYS try

to co-opt people to its cause in order to facilitate its continuance. I

increasingly believe one form of male dominance does this by means of

pornography and various forms of sex work which, even though they may

seem liberating, are actually enslaving. It will not have passed

everybody by, for example, how the enticement of young women to

platforms dedicated to sexual exchange has exploded in our current

century with the increasing spread of high speed Internet connections

which make such sites viable. In mentioning this I am not making any

moral argument, lest anyone confuse what I am about to say with a

prudishness which disdains nudity or sexuality. The issue in such

activities is not whether showing people your naked body for money is

right or wrong [this is, for me, a complete non-issue anyway] but who,

in such situations, has the power.

Is it not at least conceivable that in such situations it is certain men

who hold the power [these companies are almost uniformly owned by men

and it is men who profit from them] and so that it is men who induce

women to things [for their own survival in a harsh, capitalist world I

do not doubt] which then affect society’s view of, and treatment of,

women? One would not be at all surprised to find that male pornographers

view women as objects to be slavered over whilst they count all the

money rolling in from those that partake of the services offered. Yet is

it not then the case that young women have been bribed by a

male-dominated world into becoming sex objects for the enjoyment of a

largely male audience in the service of capitalist goals that encourage

the view of women as sexual commodities, things that can be bought if

one is prepared to pay — even things that should allow themselves to be

bought if cash is offered? I am far from always convinced that the women

caught in this trap are so aware of the full consequences of their

actions and, from an anarchafeminist perspective, I think that their

wholly understandable actions to support themselves need to be balanced

up against an analysis of what is really happening on such sites and

what is taking place between men and women because of them. It is not a

simple equation. Yet it does not seem to be the “total revolution” or

“human liberation” of which Peggy Kornegger is speaking. It seems to me

that “co-optation” is taking place in which young women are seduced [by

powerful men] to the possibilities of money and fame and to taking part

in a system which is ultimately to their own detriment and to the

detriment of freedom and liberty more widely conceived. In short, one

needs to ask if one advances freedom whilst showing your cooch to and

for a man and a man, no less, who is in charge of the entire process in

most cases in terms of patriarchal attitudes to women, if not

individually.

Patriarchal capitalism will always play such games, of course, and will

always try to seduce and, as Kornegger says, “co-opt” people into its

system, constantly wanting to induce people to act against their own

best interests and betray themselves. To this, Kornegger opposes

anarchafeminism as the best antidote. But it is not a fast process for

people who have been drowning in dominating patriarchal narratives and

systems for their whole lives, who have been taught it with their

mother’s milk if not actually by their mothers. As Kornegger says, it:

“takes years of preparation: sharing of ideas and information, changes

in consciousness and behavior, and the creation of political and

economic alternatives to capitalist, hierarchical structures. It takes

spontaneous direct action on the part of autonomous individuals through

collective political confrontation. It is important to ‘free your mind’

and your personal life, but it is not sufficient. Liberation is not an

insular experience; it occurs in conjunction with other human beings.”

Kornegger here shows a very collective, down to earth mentality. For

her, people are not free unless their material conditions are free.

Freedom for Peggy Kornegger is a socially-lived experience. It is a

“tak[ing] control over our own lives” and it involves creating dual

options for our existence, ones which replace “the way things are”.

Essentially, we create a world of anarchafeminist values by creating

ways to live by anarchafeminist values. Yet this involves preparative

action in three areas: the educational, the economic/political and the

personal/political. The first is a matter of writing, studying, and

using any available media to get a message across. [This essay is

hopefully an example of this!] The second involves direct action and

confrontation of political problems. It might involve sabotage, strikes

or boycotts, for example. It is any communal action taken against “the

system” to improve your material conditions of life. The third area

involves becoming involved with others of like mind such as anarchist

affinity groups. Anarchism only works in tandem with others and so you

need to make connections with others of like mind to bring the anarchist

goal closer to a reality.

In a supplementary article to “Anarchism: The Feminist Connection” Peggy

Kornegger addresses the issue of where “economics” fits into the

constellation of anarchafeminist concerns. It is a tricky business and

not least because “feminist business” would seem to be a complete

contradiction in terms when everything feminism stands for is against

the male-dominated concept of “business”. Of course, it would also go

without saying in an anarchafeminist context that the anarchist side of

that equation stands wholly opposed to business in any capitalist form –

and capitalism whole and entire. Yet, as Kornegger notes:

“Women’s growing awareness of the need for economic as well as political

analysis

and action is an Important phenomenon within the feminist community. Our

survival,

as individual women and as a revolutionary movement, is directly

connected to how

we deal with money and the capitalist economy. We have to talk about

work, how we

make money to survive, how race, class, and privilege affect what

choices women

have for jobs, and most important, how to confront and ultimately

abolish an

economy based on competition, hierarchy, and patriarchal (i.e.

authoritarian)

concepts of social and political organization.”

So these subjects can never be avoided. But, as Kornegger goes on to

say, it does then matter what you think feminism is for. Is it, for

example, to see women making a success of themselves in a male-dominated

world, women playing by the men’s rules and, somehow, becoming one of

the men? This invites comparisons with people like Queen Victoria [an

empress, no less] or the British Prime Minister of the 1980s, Margaret

Thatcher [the Milk Snatcher, so-called because she stopped school

children from having a free bottle of milk at school]. These women

hardly advanced the lives of women in their times and places and this,

not least, because they played by men’s rules in a men’s world. They

essentially succeeded by being good men. One form of feminism, so

Kornegger argues, simply wants women to stand side by side with men in a

man-shaped world and compete as their equals in a world of domination

and exploitation. For such “feminists” equality is being able to snatch

their own piece of the pie like any man could too.

But Kornegger opposes this thinking to that which thinks of feminism as

a revolutionary [and so more anarchist] thing in which “feminist

business” is business which opposes the values and purposes of a

male-dominated business world. This is not, then, business as domination

but business as revolution. Thus, she writes:

“For me, feminism implies revolution: my radical feminism includes an

anarchist

vision of political transformation. That is, what I want as a feminist

and as an

anarchist is 1. the dissolution of all power (personal, political, and

economic) and all

hierarchy (leader/follower, employer/employee, governor/governed) and 2.

a

revolutionary process which equates the means with the ends and

emphasizes the

necessity for a balance between spontaneity and organization and between

collectivity and individuality. This is a highly condensed definition,

but it is, I hope,

adequate for the purposes of this discussion. The point I want to make

is that if I

believe that all power should be abolished and that the means always

create the

ends, then it would be contradictory and counter-revolutionary to talk

about getting

economic or political power and control.”

Therefore, she goes on to say:

“it is a contradiction to refer to businesses as “feminist.” Business is

an invention

of a capitalist system based on hierarchy, power, and competition. It

can’t be “used”

by feminists for their own purposes. That’s the same old myth that tells

us we can

“change the system from within” (elect a woman senator, vote for

equalities

legislation, etc.). The political economic system we live under (and I

do mean under)

does not admit change: it will change anyone or anything to suit its own

purposes.

Thus, the capitalist business, operating as it does under the strict law

of survival at

any cost, will twist and bend any political theory to the obedience of

the laws of

business. And the laws of business are the laws of capitalism made to

benefit a few

at the expense of many.”

This is a powerful argument, one which applies most forcefully to the

question of pornography and the commodification of sexuality that I

spoke about briefly above. I notice a lot of young women on social

media, for example, who seem to consider themselves both “sexual

entrepreneurs” and variously libertarian, socialist and anarchist types

of people. They seem to want to put forward the narrative that they are

commercially sexual whilst being politically at the freedom-loving

anarchist end of the political spectrum. Yet it is not clear to me how

many of them justify this as they constantly advertise their various

services for cash on websites owned by multi-millionaire males where

even how much money they get and when is dictated to them by these same

men who have encouraged their search for money and fame for their own

male advantage. As I said before, is this not male co-optation of women

for wholly capitalist purposes, activity which reinforces capitalist

values and makes women perform for the entertainment of men in a way the

men always control? Does it not insist that women are objects which have

a price and make everything subject to money? Is it not a means of

exchange based in authority and power? How do we make an anarchafeminist

revolution, in Kornegger’s terms, like this? Such women may think, and

I’ve seen some argue, that they seek their own autonomy through such

work but, as Kornegger points out, “you don’t challenge an authoritarian

political economic structure by using authoritarian methods [i.e. the

capitalist model].” All you do is feed it and become bent to its will, a

slave reinforcing the system you claim, politically, to be against. In

my own life I once faced this choice. I subsequently refused a possibly

lucrative life being filled full of cum or masturbated over for money

for the genuine liberty of anarchism. Kornegger is, in fact, quite clear

in both her articles that “the means create the ends”. We become

anarchafeminist by being anarchafeminist. Thus, we need to find ways of

surviving which don’t feed the values we stand against but which promote

the ones we do. What we need, instead of coercion to money and profit

which makes us all capitalists reinforcing the oppressive capitalist

system, is human solidarity between those of like values and mutual aid

of those within such circles.

Yet as the Italian professor of philosophy and herself an

anarchafeminist, Chiara Bottici, reminds us, “No single factor, be it

nature or nurture, economic exploitation or cultural domination, can be

said to be the single cause sufficient to explain the multifaceted

sources of patriarchy and sexism.”

[The following commentary on Bottici’s work refers to her article online

at

publicseminar.org/2019/12/anarchafeminism

]

Bottici notes at the start of this article that it is these days de

rigeur to position oneself in relation to intersectionality and to

recognise that oppressions occur in many ways and at many levels

simultaneously. But she also points out that anarchafeminists —

feminists also attracted by the anarchist narrative — have “a particular

vital contribution to offer today” — and not least because they

recognised this particularly intersectional nature to oppression many

decades ago. This starts theoretically for Bottici [she is a

philosopher, after all!] with “the need for a form of feminism that

opposes the oppression of people who are perceived as women and who are

discriminated against precisely on that basis.” Note there the words

“perceived as”. Bottici uses “woman” “in a way that includes all types

of women: female women, male women, feminine women, masculine women,

lesbian women, transwomen, intersex women, queer women, and so on and so

forth.” ANARCHAfeminism is then necessary because “anarchists have

always been crystal clear in arguing that in order to fight patriarchy

we have to fight the multifaceted ways in which multiple factors —

economic, cultural, racial, political, etc. — converge to foster it.”

The anarchafeminist advantage in this respect, as Bottici perceives it,

is that women’s liberation can then be achieved on the basis of a more

widespread human liberation from all forms of domination rather than

being a never ending merry-go-round of liberations at the expense of the

domination of others. For example, she notes that “feminism has been

accused of being mere white privilege” and that “The emancipation of

women from the global north can indeed happen at the expense of further

oppression of women from the global south who most often replace them in

the reproductive labor within the household.” It is, then, Bottici’s

suggestion that an anarchafeminist analysis which was always more

intersectional in approach can help us here to achieve both feminist and

anarchist goals.

In order to make this point, Chiara Bottici quotes the Chinese female

anarchist, He Zhen, and it is worth repeating the quotation in full to

demonstrate the intersectional nature of oppression that

anarchafeminists highlight:

“The majority of women are already oppressed by both the government and

by men.

The electoral system simply increases their oppression by introducing a

third ruling

group: elite women. Even if the oppression remains the same, the

majority of women

are still taken advantage of by the minority of women. […] When a few

women in

power dominate the majority of powerless women, unequal class

differentiation is

brought into existence among women. If the majority of women do not want

to be

controlled by men, why do they want to be controlled by women?

Therefore, instead

of competing with men for power, women should strive for overthrowing

men’s rule.

Once men are stripped of their privilege, they will become the equal of

women. There

will be no submissive women nor submissive men. This is the liberation

of women.”

Once again, here we see that, for anarchafeminists, it is the end of all

domination which secures women’s liberation. No woman can then be free

whilst any form of domination, even that by women, exists. So, in answer

to the question, “Why anarchafeminism?” Bottici replies:

“because it is the best antidote against the possibility of feminism

becoming simply

white privilege and, thus, a tool in the hands of a few women who

dominate the vast

majority of them. In an epoch when the election of a single woman as

president is

presented as liberation for all women, or when women such as Ivanka

Trump can

claim feminist battles of the past by transforming the hashtag

womenwhowork into

a tool to sell a fashion brand, the fundamental message of

anarchafeminists of the

past is more urgent than ever:

‘Feminism does not mean female corporate power or a woman president: it

means

no corporate power and no president’.” [quoting Kornegger]

One of the distinctives Chiara Bottici brings to her philosophical

analysis is something from her philosophical work more generally which

she terms “transindividuality”. This is not something which comes from

the trans debate — although it applies to trans people as to any others

— but conceptual thinking which she applies to all people. In short,

Bottici urges that we do not see people – or specifically “women” [note

her usage of this term as set out above] — as “objects” nor in any

essentialist sense. There is, for Bottici, no “essence of a woman” and

neither is a woman a “pre-given object”. For Bottici, then, we cannot

say “that’s a woman and that’s not” by looking at our chart of “what a

woman is”. Bottici thinks that in order “to articulate a specifically

feminist position while maintaining a multifaceted understanding of

domination, we need a more nuanced understanding of ‘womanhood.’” Thus,

Chiara Bottici conceives that:

“bodies in general, and women’s bodies in particular, must not be

considered as

individuals, as objects given once and for all, but rather as processes.

Women’s

bodies, like all bodies, are bodies in plural because they are

processes, processes

that are constituted by mechanisms of affects and associations that

occur at the

inter-, intra– and the supra-individual level. To give just a brief

example of what I

mean here, think of how our bodies come into being through an

inter-individual

encounter, how they are shaped by supra-individual forces, such as their

geographical locations, and how they are made up by intra-individual

bodies such as

the air we breath or the food we eat.”

Bodies, then, are processes that are the results of processes. As such,

they are much more interactive and anti-hierarchical than “pre-given

objects” would be as the result of exploitative classification

processes. Consequently, Bottici thinks that:

“this transindividual understanding allows us to articulate the question

‘what does it mean to be a woman?’ in pluralistic terms, while also

defending a specifically feminist form of anarchism. Developing the

concept of women as open processes also means going beyond the

individual versus collectivity dichotomy: if it is true that all bodies

are transindividual processes, then the assumption that there could be

such a thing as a pure individual, who is separate, or even opposed, to

a given collectivity, is at best a useless abstraction and at worst a

deceitful fantasy.”

Transindividuality, in other words, makes us interactional,

inter-relational beings, parts of a whole, parts affected by the whole,

and provides a model approaching the problems of domination

anarchafeministically and intersectionally. This whole concept also

reminds me of things I discussed during my discussion of Zenarchy [for,

yes, part of my argument here is that these, seemingly disparate,

anarchisms are actually interpenetrative themselves rather than discrete

objects] and not least that “we are what we think”. If we think in

dominating ways why should we then be surprised if we become people who

live by domination — and vice versa?

So putting anarchafeminist critique at the heart of our collective

approach to liberty “means taking the entire globe as the framework for

thinking about the liberation of women”. It means the avoidance of

“methodological nationalism, that is, of privileging certain women and

thus certain national or regional contexts”. It means not “taking state

boundaries as an unquestionable fact”. The context for anarchafeminist

liberation is “the globe first” which is to say that “anything less than

the entire globe as our framework is at best naĂŻve provincialism, and at

worst obnoxious ethnocentrism.” This, by Kornegger’s measuring scale, is

clearly a revolutionary view of the purpose of feminism, a view in which

such action changes the values of the world. This is not the feminism

which imagines [and imagines is all it does] that if some middle class,

educated, white woman is free then all other women everywhere else must

be free as well. Anarchafeminism, thus, according to Bottici, “avoid the

pitfalls of any form of methodological nationalism, but... also

perceive[s] the global interconnectedness of forms of domination,

beginning with the intertwinement of capitalist exploitation and

colonial domination.” Thus, “the vitality of the anarchafeminist

tradition consists precisely in its capacity to transcend state

boundaries, methodological nationalism, and even the Eurocentric biases

that a lot of radical theory produced in the global north still carries

within itself.” This is not white feminism for the advancement of white

women in a white man’s world. It is intersectional and carried out in a

global framework and against a global background.

One claim Bottici makes in this respect is, at first, quite surprising

for those who have had all their education in bastions of Western

capitalism:

“It is only with the emergence of a worldwide capitalist system that

gender binary

“men” versus “women” became hegemonic worldwide. This does not mean that

sexual difference did not exist before capitalism. It simply means that

binary gender

roles were not as universally accepted as the primary criteria by which

to classify

bodies. Modern capitalism made the mononuclear bourgeois family, with

its binary

gender roles, hegemonic.”

We should note here, of course, that “classification” is always a

dominating procedure done according to an ideology in which some

[probably male-dominated] grouping literally designates the world as

they see it. On the basis of this classification their domination of it

can take place. Bottici points out, after “Marxist feminists”, that

capitalism needs “gendered bodies” so that it can regard women as “doing

their job” when they cook and clean and look after the home. This is

then their function and they are fulfilling their nature according to

such classification procedures which act, ideologically, to divide waged

work from that which is simply a result of gender. If we add to this the

concept of race we arrive at what Maria Lugones refers to as the

“coloniality of gender”. As Bottici explains, with this move we

“emphasize how the binary division ‘men/women’ and the classification of

bodies according to their racial belonging went together, being exported

by Europeans through the very process of colonial expansion that

accompanied the worldwide spread of capitalism.” As Bottici further

suggests, on the basis of Lugones’ research:

“gender roles were much more flexible and variegated among Native

Americans

before the advent of European settlers. Different indigenous nations

had, for

instance, a third gender category to positively recognize intersex and

queer

subjectivities, whereas others, such as the Yuma, attribute gender roles

on the basis

of dreams, so that a female who dreamed of weapons became a male for all

practical purposes. There has been a systematic intertwinement among

capitalist

economy, racial classification of bodies, and gender oppression.”

Utilising the classificatory point I have already made above, and

referring to the scholarship of the Nigerian scholar, Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí,

Bottici also here pertinently points out that “It is manifest, and yet

all too often forgotten, that to classify people on the basis of their

skin color, or their genitalia, is not an a priori of the human mind.

Classifying bodies on the basis of their sex, as well as classifying

them on the basis of their race, implies, among other things, a primacy

of the visual register.” Oyěwùmí regards this as typical of the West in

comparison with some African, pre-colonial cultures where age, for

example, was the basis of social hegemony. Indeed, she points out that

“They did not even have a name to oppose men and women before

colonialism: put bluntly, they simply did not do gender.” This needs to

be born in mind by those in the capitalist global north where ideologies

are set in stone and regarded as “natural” and “normal” and certainly

never to be questioned. We need to ask both whose interests we serve and

where such distinctions come from when we assume or speak to them lest

we find ourselves supporting things detrimental to freedom because we

find ourselves unable to think in any other way. But the fact is that

neither sex nor gender is a “pre-given object” and both can be thought

of in other ways — as Bottici examples. Therefore:

“questioning the coloniality of gender means also questioning the

primacy of the

visual: it is by seeing bodies that we say: “here is a woman!” or “that

is a man!.” But it

is also within such a visual register that we have to operate to

question such

hegemonic and heteronormative views of womanhood and thus open new paths

toward subverting them. Put in a slogan, we could say:

‘Another woman is possible; another woman has always already began.’”

All this is to say that to see and act differently in this way is to

practice a revolutionary anarchafeminism, something which undermines

domination [through classification] and so changes the world for all

genders. Chiara Bottici is interested in this and has composed “a new

anarchafeminist manifesto” which she begins at the end of this article

and continues elsewhere in more detail at

publicseminar.org/2020/05/anarchafeminist-manifesto-1-0

She bases this on fellow Italian, Errico Malatesta’s, observation that

anarchism is a method and not a program that can be given once for all.

It, thus, retains the flexibility Peggy Kornegger spoke of previously.

It is also to be open-ended [readers can add clauses to the manifesto

given at the web address above for inclusion in a further recension of

the manifesto] in accordance with the transindividual ontology which

sustains such thinking by means of ongoing processes. Bottici begins

this manifesto by proceeding along what she calls “three axes” which I

leave you with for consideration of your own anarchafeminist manifesto

as I end this chapter here:

historical fact of constant historical movement and migration. Fixed

states with fixed borders are a relatively modern phenomenon [and things

like passports which label and administrate our identities into

nationalities even more so]. Consequently, we must refuse to think in

the fixed, dominating and classifying ways of the state and think beyond

boundaries and borders – and so beyond any and all ethnocentrisms. You

do not undermine domination by replicating its patterns of thought but

by subverting them.

simply “Do not aim to seize state power or wait for the state to give

you power, just start exercising your own power right now.” So we should

“resist gender norms, play with them, refuse to comply, civilly disobey,

boycott capitalism, and so on and so forth.” These “can go hand in hand

with larger projects, such as the increasing examples of mass

mobilization, general strikes, communal living and queering the family

that are proliferating around the globe” in a multi-faceted and

interlocking group of strategies which defy individual/collective

classification.

is again something we heard before from Peggy Kornegger. Anarchafeminism

stands for flexibility of approach but also for achieving your end by

using it as your means to it. “In other words, search for freedom in all

your social relations, not simply in electoral and institutional

politics,” states Bottici. However, “if freedom is both the means and

the end, then one could also envisage a world free from the very notion

of gender as well as the oppressive structures that it generated. [But]

because gendered bodies are still the worldwide objects of exploitation

and domination, we need an anarchafeminist manifesto here and now” in

order to combat this. However, it is envisaged this may be a ladder we

pull up behind us if and when this form of domination is overcome.