"The Traffic in Women" is an essay by anarchist writer Emma Goldman in 1910. It has been circulated in a variety of publications, namely Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), published by Mother Earth, [nb 1] as well as the leading essay of The Traffic in Women, and Other Essays on Feminism (1971). Mother Earth was a monthly anarchist magazine founded by Goldman, Max Baginski, and others in 1906. [2] The essay is one of more than 20 articles that Goldman wrote during 1906 to 1940. [3]
The essay was written in response to the actions of contemporary social reformers campaigning against white slavery, whose legislative campaign Goldman claimed would only serve to create "fat political jobs" for "parasites". In the essay, she argues that the major cause of white slavery, that has been ignored by these reformers, is capitalist exploitation. Goldman criticizes the role played by Christian churches in historically encouraging and maintaining prostitution. Goldman presents marriage as on the same continuum as prostitution, arguing that in both cases women are sold and circulated, and is critical of "moralists" who condemn prostitution but not marriage for monetary considerations. [4] Goldman further argues that double standards surrounding male and female sexuality pressure women who engage in sexual activity outside marriage into a life of prostitution, thereby "society creates the victims that it afterwards vainly attempts to get rid of". [5]
American radical feminist writer Alix Kates Shulman strongly endorsed the essay, reading the entirety of it into the record of a legislative hearing on prostitution in New York. [6] She argues that Goldman's sympathy for prostitutes was due to identifying with them, "because of their class and because they defied the sexual hypocrisy of Puritanism". [7] The essay served as an inspiration for anthropologist Gayle Rubin's 1975 essay "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex". While Rubin follows Goldman in arguing that prostitution is part of the same spectrum as marriage, she also builds off of the ideas of Claude Levi-Strauss and Sigmund Freud, to describe a "sex/gender system" through which such transactions can occur. [4] Miriam Schneir included this text in her anthology Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings , labelling it as one of the essential works of feminism. [8]
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is against all forms of authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations. A historically left-wing movement, anarchism is usually described as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement.
Emma Goldman was a Lithuanian-born anarchist revolutionary, political activist, and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
Anarcha-feminism, also known as anarchist feminism or anarcho-feminism, is a system of analysis which combines the principles and power analysis of anarchist theory with feminism. It closely resembles intersectional feminism. Anarcha-feminism generally posits that patriarchy and traditional gender roles as manifestations of involuntary coercive hierarchy should be replaced by decentralized free association. Anarcha-feminists believe that the struggle against patriarchy is an essential part of class conflict and the anarchist struggle against the state and capitalism. In essence, the philosophy sees anarchist struggle as a necessary component of feminist struggle and vice versa. L. Susan Brown claims that "as anarchism is a political philosophy that opposes all relationships of power, it is inherently feminist".
Voltairine de Cleyre was an American anarchist, feminist writer and public speaker. Born into extreme poverty in Michigan, de Cleyre taught herself how to read and write, and became a lover of poetry. She was educated at a Catholic convent, which improved her literary and linguistic capabilities, but also influenced her turn towards anti-theism and anti-authoritarianism. After graduating, de Cleyre began her activist career in the freethought movement, lecturing around the country and writing for a number of rationalist publications. Drawn towards socialism and individualist anarchism, she converted fully to anarchism in the wake of the Haymarket affair, which radicalized her against the state and capitalism.
Socialist feminism rose in the 1960s and 1970s as an offshoot of the feminist movement and New Left that focuses upon the interconnectivity of the patriarchy and capitalism. However, the ways in which women's private, domestic, and public roles in society has been conceptualized, or thought about, can be traced back to Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and William Thompson's utopian socialist work in the 1800s. Ideas about overcoming the patriarchy by coming together in female groups to talk about personal problems stem from Carol Hanisch. This was done in an essay in 1969 which later coined the term 'the personal is political.' This was also the time that second wave feminism started to surface which is really when socialist feminism kicked off. Socialist feminists argue that liberation can only be achieved by working to end both the economic and cultural sources of women's oppression.
Hippolyte Havel was an American anarchist who was known as an activist in the United States and part of the radical circle around Emma Goldman in the early 20th century. He had been imprisoned as a young man in Austria-Hungary because of his political activities, but made his way to London. Then in the British metropolis he met anarchist Emma Goldman on a lecture tour from the United States. She befriended him and he immigrated to the United States.
The connection between left-leaning ideologies and LGBTQ rights struggles has a long and mixed history. The status of LGBTQ people in socialist states have varied throughout history.
Anarchism in the United States began in the mid-19th century and started to grow in influence as it entered the American labor movements, growing an anarcho-communist current as well as gaining notoriety for violent propaganda of the deed and campaigning for diverse social reforms in the early 20th century. By around the start of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed and anarcho-communism and other social anarchist currents emerged as the dominant anarchist tendency.
Ezra Hervey Heywood, known as Ezra Hervey Hoar before 1848, was an American individualist anarchist, slavery abolitionist, and advocate of equal rights for women.
Anarchism and Other Essays (1910) is a collection of essays written by Emma Goldman, first published by Mother Earth Publishing Association. The essays outline Goldman's anarchist views on a number of subjects, most notably the oppression of women and perceived shortcomings of first wave feminism, but also prisons, political violence, sexuality, religion, nationalism and art theory. Hippolyte Havel contributed a short biography of Goldman to the anthology. The essays were adapted from lectures Goldman had given on fundraising tours for her journal Mother Earth.Anarchism and Other Essays was Goldman's first published book. "The Traffic in Women" has received particular attention from feminist scholars since the book's publication.
The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism, and Anarchism is a 1993 political science book by L. Susan Brown. She begins by noting that liberalism and anarchism seem at times to share common components, but on other occasions are in direct opposition to one another. She argues that what they have in common is "existential individualism", the belief in freedom for freedom's sake. However, she notes that in liberal works there exists also an "instrumental individualism", by which she means freedom to satisfy individual interests. Brown argues that the latter annihilates the intentions of the former because it allows individuals the "freedom" to disrupt the freedom of other individuals in its aim of achieving individual goals. On the other hand, instrumental individualism requires some degree of existential individualism to sustain itself.
Redstockings, also known as Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement, is a radical feminist nonprofit that was founded in January 1969 in New York City, whose goal is "To Defend and Advance the Women's Liberation Agenda". The group's name is derived from bluestocking, a term used to disparage feminist intellectuals of earlier centuries, and red, for its association with the revolutionary left.
Alix Kates Shulman is an American writer of fiction, memoirs, and essays, and a prominent early radical activist of second-wave feminism. She is best-known for her bestselling debut adult novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, hailed by the Oxford Companion to Women's Writing as "the first important novel to emerge from the Women's Liberation Movement."
"The Tyranny of Structurelessness" is an essay by American feminist Jo Freeman that concerns power relations within radical feminist collectives. The essay, inspired by Freeman's experiences in a 1960s women's liberation group, reflected on the feminist movement's experiments in resisting leadership hierarchy and structured division of labor. This lack of structure, Freeman writes, disguised an informal, unacknowledged, and unaccountable leadership, and in this way ensured its malefaction by denying its existence. As a solution, Freeman suggests formalizing the existing hierarchies in the group and subjecting them to democratic control.
Major anarchist thinkers, past and present, have generally supported women's equality. Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to Josiah Warren and to experimental communities, viewing sexual freedom as an expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights. In New York's Greenwich Village, "bohemian" feminists and socialists advocated self-realisation and pleasure for both men and women. In Europe and North America, the free love movement combined ideas revived from utopian socialism with anarchism and feminism to attack the "hypocritical" sexual morality of the Victorian era.
He-Yin Zhen was an early 20th-century Chinese feminist and anarchist.
Anarchism or Socialism? is a 1906/1907 work by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The work sought to analyze anarchism using Marxist methods.
Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings is an anthology edited with an introduction and commentaries by Miriam Schneir. It was originally published in 1972 and re-published in 1994 by Vintage Books. It comprises essays, fiction, memoirs, and letters by what Schneir labels the major feminist writers. The content included ranges from 1776 to 1929 and focuses on topics of civil rights and emancipation. The book has had an influence on education, being used as a resource in women's studies classes. Various scholars have given both positive and negative reviews of this book. It remains in print to this day.
"Church and State" is an article by Leo Tolstoy written in 1886. It was translated to English and then published by the anarchist Benjamin Tucker. In this text, Tolstoy condemns anyone who collaborates with the state in committing a war, and especially condemns the Eastern Orthodox Church for supporting the Tsar's wars when Christianity teaches "Thou Shalt Not Kill."
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