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. ------- 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 -- ***************************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...