dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Dave Gross) (11/22/89)
Emma Goldman (1869-1940) was an outspoken American anarchist, peace activist,
et cetera who was imprisoned many times for such charges as publicly advocating
birth control, obstructing the draft, and others. To her, personal liberation
including women's liberation and gay & lesbian rights (an unpopular subject
on which she was far ahead of her time), were an integral part of her political
liberation struggle.
The following selection on Feminism is from "Living My Life."
I hope you find that it gives an interesting perspective on the feminist
movement of that era.
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Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco were record-breaking in the size of
our meetings and the interest shown. In Los Angeles I was invited by the
Women's City Club. Five hundred members of my sex, from the deepest red to the
dullest grey, came to hear me speak on "Feminism." They could not excuse my
critical attitude towards the bombastic and impossible claims of the suffrag-
ists as to the wonderful things they would do when they got political power.
They branded me as an enemy of woman's freedom, and club-members stood up and
denounced me.
The incident reminded me of a similar occasion when I had lectured on
woman's inhumanity to man. Always on the side of the under dog, I resented my
sex's placing every evil at the door of the male. I pointed out that if he
were really as great a sinner as he was being painted by the ladies, woman
shared the responsibility with him. The mother is the first influence in his
life, the first to cultivate his conceit and self-importance. Sisters and
wives follow in the mother's footsteps, not to mention mistresses, who complete
the work begun by the mother. Woman is naturaly perverse, I argued; from the
very birth of her male child until he reaches a ripe age, the mother leaves
nothing undone to keep him tied to her. Yet she hates to see him weak and she
craves the manly man. She idolizes in him the very traits that help to enslave
her -- his strength, his egotism, and his exaggerated vanity. The inconsis-
tencies of my sex keep the poor male dangling between the idol and the brute,
the darling and the beast, the helpless child and the conquerer of worlds. It
is really woman's inhumanity to man that makes him what he is. When she has
learned to be as self-centered and as determined as he, when she gains the
courage to delve into life as he does and pay the price for it, she will
achieve her liberation, and incidentally also help him become free. Whereupon
my women hearers would rise up against me and cry: "You're a man's woman and
not one of us."...
From "Living My Life" (1931)
by Emma Goldman
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***************************dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU**************************
Most commonly censored books in U.S. schools: The Chocolate War, The Catcher
in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Deenie, Go Ask
Alice, A Light in the Attic, Forever, Blubber, Cujo, The Diary of Anne Frank...