This article is a repost of a paper written by Julia Tanenbaum and published by pglavin16 on October 26, 2016. It's still accessible in Institute for Anarchist Studies' archive
To Destroy Domination in All Its Forms: Anarcha-Feminist Theory, Organization and Action 1970-1978, by Julia Tanenbaum
As anarchists look for genealogies of principles and praxis in a variety of social movements, from the anarcho-pacifists who spoke out against World War II to anarchists who joined the Black Power movement, so too should they look for their feminist foremothers, not only in the early 20th century anarchist movement but in the radical women’s movement of the 1970s. Many radical feminists shared anarchist goals such as ending domination, hierarchy, capitalism, gender roles, and interpersonal violence, and utilized and influenced the key anarchist organizational structure of the small leaderless affinity group. They grappled with the questions of how to balance autonomy and egalitarianism and create nonhierarchical organizations that also promoted personal growth and leadership. In 1974 Lynne Farrow wrote, “Feminism practices what anarchism preaches[1].”
Anarcha-feminism was at first created and defined by women who saw radical feminism itself as anarchistic. In 1970, during the rapid growth of small leaderless consciousness raising (CR) groups around the country, and a corresponding theory of radical feminism that opposed domination, some feminists, usually after discovering anarchism through the writings of Emma Goldman, observed the “intuitive anarchism” of the women’s liberation movement. Radical feminism emphasized the personal as political, what we would now call prefigurative politics, and a dedication to ending hierarchy and domination, both in theory and practice.2 CR groups functioned as the central organizational form of the radical feminist movement, and by extension the early anarcha-feminist movement. 3 Members shared their feelings and experiences and realized that their problems were political. The theories of patriarchy they developed explained what women initially saw as personal failures. Consciousness raising was not therapy, as liberal feminists and politicos frequently claimed; its purpose was social transformation not self-transformation.4 Radical feminist and anarchist theory and practice share remarkable similarities. In a 1972 article critiquing Rita Mae Brown’s calls for a lesbian party, anarchist working-class lesbian feminist Su Katz described how her anarchism came “directly out of” her feminism, and meant decentralization, teaching women to take care of one another, and smashing power relations, all of which were feminist values.5 Radical feminism attributed domination to the nuclear family structure, which they claimed treats children and women as property and teaches them to obey authority in all aspects of life, and to patriarchal hierarchical thought patterns that encouraged relationships of dominance and submission.6 To radical feminists and anarcha-feminists, the alternative to domination was sisterhood, which would replace hierarchy and the nuclear family with relationships based on autonomy and equality. A chant that appeared in a 1970 issue of a feminist newspaper read “We learn the joys of equality/Of relationships without dominance/Among sisters/We destroy domination in all its forms.”7 These relationships, structured around sisterhood, trust, and friendship, were of particular importance to the radical feminist vision of abolishing hierarchy. As radical feminist theologian Mary Daly wrote in 1973, “The development of sisterhood is a unique threat, for it is directed against the basic social and psychic model of hierarchy and domination.”8 Radical feminists opposed the “male domineering attitude” and “male hierarchical thought patterns,” and attempted to act as equals in relationships deeper than male friendships.9
To feminists familiar with anarchism, the connections between both radical feminist and anarchist theory and practice were obvious. Anarchist feminism was essentially a step in self-conscious theoretical development, and anarcha-feminists believed that an explicit anarchist analysis, and knowledge of the history of anarchists who faced similar structural and theoretical obstacles, would help women overcome the coercion of elites and create groups structured to be accountable to their members but not hierarchical.10 They built an independent women’s movement and a feminist critique of anarchism, along with an anarchist critique of feminism. To anarcha-feminists, the women’s movement represented a new potential for anarchist revolution, for a movement to confront forms of domination and hierarchy, personal and political. Unlike Goldman, Voltaraine De Cleyre, the members of Mujeres Libres, and countless other female anarchists concerned with the status of women in the 19th and early 20th century, they became feminists before they became anarchists. Anarcha-feminists eventually merged into the anti-nuclear movement by the end of 1978, but not before contributing to crucial movement debates among both anarchists and feminists, building egalitarian, leaderless, and empowering alternative institutions, and altering US anarchism in theory and practice.
Becoming Anarcha-Feminists
The term “anarchist-feminist,” later used interchangeably with anarcho-feminism and anarcha-feminism, first appeared in an August 1970 issue of the Berkeley-based movement newspaper, It Ain’t Me Babe. The newspaper published an editorial calling for “feminist anarchist revolution” next to an article about Emma Goldman. The collective did not synthesize a theory of anarcha-feminism, but rather explained how their anarchist beliefs related to the organizational structure of the paper, which they designed as an affinity group to encourage autonomy and discourage “power relationships or leader follower patterns.”11It Ain’t Me Babe exemplified the “intuitive anarchism” of the early women’s liberation movement. It’s masthead read “end all hierarchies” and the paper contained articles like Ellen Leo’s “Power Trips,” which exemplified the radical feminist tendency to oppose all forms of domination. Leo wrote in 1970, “The oppression of women is not an isolated phenomenon. It is but one of the many forms of domination in this society. It is a basic belief that one person or group of people has the right to subjugate, rule and boss others.”12 Like anarchists, these feminists connected the oppression of women to a larger phenomenon of domination. Beginning in 1968 and growing in strength until 1972, radical feminism was anything but monolithic and many participants differed greatly in regards to their views on sexuality, the family, the state, organizational structure, and the inclusion of transgender women in the movement.
Most anarcha-feminists were initially radicalized by the political and cultural milieu of the anti-war movement, but it was their experiences in the women’s liberation movement combined with the influence of Emma Goldman that led them to develop anarcha-feminism as a strategy. As feminists struggled to reclaim women’s history, Goldman became a feminist icon due to her advocacy of birth control, free love, and personal freedom. In 1971 radical feminist novelist and historian Alix Kates Shulman wrote, “Emma Goldman’s name has re-emerged from obscurity to become a veritable password of radical feminism. Her works rose from the limbo of being out of print to…being available in paperback. Her face began appearing on T-shirts, her name on posters, her words on banners.”13 Goldman criticized the bourgeois feminist movement and its goal of suffrage, which led many women to criticize her as a “man’s woman.” However, Shulman and many others argued that Goldman was a radical feminist worthy of recognition because she stressed the oppression of women as women by the institutions of the patriarchal family and puritan morality, as well as religion and the state.14 As anarcha-feminist Cathy Levine wrote in 1974, “The style, the audacity of Emma Goldman, has been touted by women who do not regard themselves as anarchists… because Emma was so right-on…. It is no accident, either, that the anarchist Red Terror named Emma was also an advocate and practitioner of free-love; she was an affront to more capitalist shackles than any of her Marxist contemporaries.”15 Feminists honored Goldman’s ideas and legacy by opening an Emma Goldman Clinic for Women in Iowa in 1973, publishing new volumes of her work, naming their theater troupes after her, and writing screenplays, operas, and stage plays about her life. 16 In 1970, the women’s liberation periodical Off Our Backs dedicated an issue to Goldman with her image on the cover. Despite this, Betsy Auleta and Bobbie Goldstone’s article about Goldman’s life discussed what they perceived as her faults (her opposition to suffrage and disconnect from much of the women’s movement) because she had become a “super-heroine” in the movement. 17
Siren and Early Anarcha-feminist Networks
Goldman encouraged women to make connections between radical feminism and anarchism, and her writings often served as radical feminists’ introduction to anarchism or the impetus for them to make connections between anarchism and feminism. To many anarcha-feminists this theory represented both a critique of the sexism of the male New Left, including its anarchist members, as well as a critique of socialist and liberal feminism. Despite this intuitive anarchism, attempts by early anarcha-feminists to develop an anarchist analysis within many radical feminist collectives felt silenced, while women in the anarchist movement, where misogyny ruled as much as in the rest of the New Left, also felt alienated. Anarcho-feminist attempts to elucidate connections between feminism and anarchism, like those of Arlene Meyers and Evan Paxton, were often met with intimidation and censorship in mixed groups. These conditions created the possibility for an independent anarcha-feminist movement, but first, anarcha-feminists would have to communicate and develop their theories.
Early anarcha-feminist theory and debate emerged through Siren newsletter. The first issue, produced as a journal in 1971, contained “Who We Are: The Anarcho-Feminist Manifesto,” written by Arlene Wilson, a member of the Chicago Anarcho-Feminist Collective.18 The manifesto focused on differentiating anarcha-feminism from socialist feminism through a critique of the state: “The intelligence of womankind has at last been brought to bear on such oppressive male inventions as the church and the legal family; it must now be brought to re-evaluate the ultimate stronghold of male domination, the State.”19
In February of 1970 Arlene Meyers and the Siren collective switched from journal to newsletter format, which allowed feminists throughout the US to participate in defining anarcha-feminism and its theory.20 Siren allowed women in diverse (often not explicitly anarchist) collectives in many regions of the country to communicate and develop their theory. Later issues of the newsletter included news items related to feminist and anarchist activism, including political prisoner support for anarchists in Spain through the Anarchist Black Cross, women’s health clinics, childcare and living collectives, and working at infoshops like Mother Earth Bookstore.21
The last three issues of Siren, published in 1973, contain the majority of the newsletter’s analysis and debate, covering topics such as state power and authoritarianism, prefigurative politics, lesbian feminism, and gender identity and expression. Issue 10 of Siren contained two statements by transgender individuals, critiquing both sexism and the gender binary, and offering a progressive vision of transgender inclusion within the movement. Eden W, a member of the Tucson Anarcho-Feminists, described her experiences as a “male woman” and critiqued “the authoritarianism that demands that males must be of one gender and females of another,” thus critiquing the gender binary itself as a form of authoritarianism..22 Finally, she asked feminists to look on “femmiphiles” as their sisters.23
This essay stood in contrast with the prejudice towards trans women in the larger radical feminist movement, which sometimes portrayed them as interlopers who brought male privilege into women only spaces. That same year radical feminist Robin Morgan famously denounced male to female transgender feminist songwriter and activist Beth Elliot as a rapist and “infiltrator” at the 1973 West Coast Lesbian Conference, although it is worth noting that two-thirds of the conference-goers voted for Elliot to stay.24 Some feminists conflated transgender women with men in drag, accused them of being rapists, and felt that they retained male privilege and should not be allowed in feminist spaces.25 Although anarcha-feminists were undoubtedly influenced by this discourse, attitudes towards transgender people were not monolithic in the feminist movement at large. Eden W’s statement emphasizes that she is heterosexual, perhaps because of this widespread fear of transgender women as rapist infiltrators. This limited discussion of transsexuality nevertheless reveals that anarcha-feminists were willing to discuss this conflict, and give transgender people a voice in the movement.
Issue 8 of Siren also contained “Blood of the Flower,” a statement written by Marian Leighton and Cathy Levine, members of the Cambridge based Black Rose Anarcho-Feminist collective.26 Unlike Wilson, Leighton and Levine reject not only socialist feminism’s analysis of the state, but its tactics and the idea of movement building altogether. To them, “movements,” as represented by the male Left and its ideas of a vanguard, separated politics from personal dreams of liberation until women abandoned their dreams or dropped out of the movement altogether. Instead, they advocated leaderless affinity groups in which each member could act as an individual, and presented this anarchist form of organization as the alternative to hierarchical movement politics practiced by socialist feminists and liberal feminists. The small leaderless affinity group allows members to participate “on an equal level of power” without leadership determining the direction of the movement.27 They wrote, “Organizing women, in the New Left and Marxist left, is viewed as amassing troops for the Revolution. But we affirm that each woman joining in struggle is the Revolution.”28 This anarcha-feminist vision, almost similar to the cell-like structure of earlier insurrectionary anarchist groups, emphasized valuing individual contributions in small groups instead of building the large, often authoritarian, and impersonal “revolutionary armies” that many New Leftists and socialist feminists envisioned. To achieve this, anarcha-feminists would build their movement through small affinity groups and participating in various feminist and anarchist counter-institutions.
Small Groups, Growing Networks
Notes
- Peggy Kornegger, “Anarchism: The Feminist Connection,” in Reinventing Anarchy: What Are Anarchists Thinking These Days?, ed. Howard Ehrlich (Routledge and Kegan Paul Books, 1979). ↩
