Feminism : Women's Rights

1798 ~ Assorted Letters , by Mary Wollstonecraft The following Letters may possibly be found to contain the finest examples of the language of sentiment and passion ever presented to the world. They bear a striking resemblance to the celebrated romance of Werter, though the incidents to which they relate are of a very different cast. Probably the readers to whom Werter is incapable of affording pleasure, will receive no delight from the present publication. The editor apprehends that, in the judgment of those best qualified to decide upon the comparison, these Letters will be admitted to have the superiority over the fiction of Goethe. They are the offspring of a glowing imagination, and a heart penetrated with the passion it essays to describe. To the series of letters constituting the principal article in these two volumes, are added various pieces, none of which, it is hoped, will be found discreditable to the talents of the author. The slight fragment of Letters on the Management of Infants,...

Review: Feminism Is For Everybody : Feminism Is For Everybody by Bell Hooks, South End Press, 2000 , by Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC)
bell hooks is one of the most prominent and well respected feminist academics and authors in the United States. She is often the subject of study by college students and academics, as well as a frequent guest on talk shows and other mass media. Her work in feminist theory has been groundbreaking, yet it is often limited to academic, literary, and other elite circles. Feminism Is For Everybody is hooks’ attempt to create a quick, simple primer on feminist history, theory, and politics to the masses who receive a misinformed, misunderstood, and maligned version of feminist movement. To that end, she has written an easy to read, concise book which documents her experiences as a feminist activist and academic. As an anarchist with some exposure to hooks’ writings, I have a great deal of respect for her. This was once again reinforced by the content of Feminism Is For Everybody. Whether hooks identifies herself as an anarchist or not, much of what I found in the boo... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

8th March — Self-Determination of Our Freedom : FdCA Gender Commission Statement , by Federazione Dei Comunisti Anarchici
We are witnessing the preparations for a clear and determined attack on the freedom and self-determination of the women who live in this country, an attack which is aimed at several fronts but which has the sole objective of reducing the public voice and presence of women. One of the prime areas where women’s freedom is worse threatened is in regard to sexuality, with the ongoing demonization of free and responsible sexuality with regard to contraceptives and to the use of Law 194 of 1978 concerning voluntary abortions. Always foremost in the minds of the Right and the Catholic church, this attack on women’s freedom to responsibly and autonomously manage their relationships and their sexuality is now at the center of a mad rush to gain control of public funds in order to ensure that the private clinics, financed by our money, are run according to the demands of the church and a certain political ideology, yet another attack on the public healthcare syst... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

1793 ~ The Love Letters Of Mary Wollstonecraft To Gilbert Imlay , by Mary Wollstonecraft [Havre] Sunday, August 17 . I have promised —— to go with him to his country-house, where he is now permitted to dine—I, and the little darling, to be sure—whom I cannot help kissing with more fondness, since you left us. I think I shall enjoy the fine prospect, and that it will rather enliven, than satiate my imagination. I have called on Mrs. ——. She has the manners of a gentlewoman, with a dash of the easy French coquetry, which renders her piquante.—But Monsieur her husband, whom nature never dreamed of casting in either the mold of a gentleman or lover, makes but an aukward figure in the foreground of the picture. The H——s are very ugly, without doubt—and the house smelt of commerce from top to toe—so that his abortive attempt to display taste, only proved it to be one of the things not to be bo...

A Vindication Of The Rights Of Men, In A Letter To The Right Honourable Edmund , by Mary Wollstonecraft
ADVERTISEMENT. Mr. Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution first engaged my attention as the transient topic of the day; and reading it more for amusement than information, my indignation was roused by the sophistical arguments, that every moment crossed me, in the questionable shape of natural feelings and common sense. Many pages of the following letter were the effusions of the moment; but, swelling imperceptibly to a considerable size, the idea was suggested ivof publishing a short vindication of the Rights of Men. Not having leisure or patience to follow this desultory writer through all the devious tracks in which his fancy has started fresh game, I have confined my strictures, in a great measure, to the grand principles at which he has leveled many ingenious arguments in a very specious garb. A LETTER TO THE Right Honorable EDMUND BURKE. SIR, It is not necessary, with courtl...

1911
Our reformers have suddenly made a great discovery--the white slave traffic. The papers are full of these "unheard-of conditions," and lawmakers are already planning a new set of laws to check the horror. It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted from a great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency, gambling, saloons, etc. And what is the result of such crusades? Gambling is increasing, saloons are doing a lively business through back entrances, prostitution is at its height, and the system of pimps and cadets is but aggravated. How is it that an institution, known almost to every child, should have been discovered so suddenly? How is it that this evil, known to all sociologists, should now be made such an important issue? To assume that the recent investigation of the white slave traffic (and, by the way, a very superficial investigation) has discovered anything new, is, to say the least, very foolish. Pros... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

1910
No one at all capable of an intense conscious inner life need ever hope to escape mental anguish and suffering. Sorrow and often despair over the so-called eternal fitness of things are the most persistent companions of our life. But they do not come upon us from the outside, through the evil deeds of particularly evil people. They are conditioned in our very being; indeed, they are interwoven through a thousand tender and coarse threads with our existence. It is absolutely necessary that we realize this fact, because people who never get away from the notion that their misfortune is due to the wickedness of their fellows never can outgrow the petty hatred and malice which constantly blames, condemns, and hounds others for something that is inevitable as part of themselves. Such people will not rise to the lofty heights of the true humanitarian to whom good and evil, moral and immoral, are but limited terms for the inner play of human emotions upon the human sea o... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

1788
Mary and Caroline, though the children of wealthy parents were, in their infancy, left entirely to the management of servants, or people equally ignorant. Their mother died suddenly, and their father, who found them very troublesome at home, placed them under the tuition of a woman of tenderness and discernment, a near relation, who was induced to take on herself the important charge through motives of compassion. They were shamefully ignorant, considering that Mary had been fourteen, and Caroline twelve years in the world. If they had been merely ignorant, the task would not have appeared so arduous; but they had caught every prejudice that the vulgar casually instill. In order to eradicate these prejudices, and substitute good habits instead of those they had carelessly contracted, Mrs. Mason never suffered them to be out of her sight. They were allowed to ask questions on all occasions, a method she would not have adopted, had she educated them f...

1911
I begin with an admission: Regardless of all political and economic theories, treating of the fundamental differences between various groups within the human race, regardless of class and race distinctions, regardless of all artificial boundary lines between woman's rights and man's rights, I hold that there is a point where these differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole. With this I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The general social antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public life today, brought about through the force of opposing and contradictory interests, will crumble to pieces when the reorganization of our social life, based upon the principles of economic justice, shall have become a reality. Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confron... (From : Anarchy Archives.)

1798 ~ Or, the Wrongs of Woman
Earnestly as Maria endeavored to soothe, by reading, the anguish of her wounded mind, her thoughts would often wander from the subject she was led to discuss, and tears of maternal tenderness obscured the reasoning page. She descanted on “the ills which flesh is heir to,” with bitterness, when the recollection of her babe was revived by a tale of fictitious woe, that bore any resemblance to her own; and her imagination was continually employed, to conjure up and embody the various phantoms of misery, which folly and vice had let loose on the world. The loss of her babe was the tender string; against other cruel remembrances she labored to steel her bosom; and even a ray of hope, in the midst of her gloomy reveries, would sometimes gleam on the dark horizon of futurity, while persuading herself that she ought to cease to hope, since happiness was no where to be found.—But of her child, debilitated by the grief with which its mother had been assailed before it saw...