Contemporary feminism in the United States has forgotten its roots and has taken what I believe to be a disastrous turn away from the true interest of women: namely, absolute equality under just law, without privileges or sanctions based on gender. The vision of such an equality is to be found in the rich and distinctly American tradition of individualist feminism which flourished in the 19th century.1



Individualist feminism is based on natural law theory and on the derivative belief that all human beings are sovereign, or self-owners. That is, every human being has a jurisdiction over his or her own body which no other human being can rightfully violate. Individualist feminism demands equal respect for the natural rights of all individuals. In short, the law should neither grant privileges nor impose restrictions that are based on secondary characteristic such as race, gender, or religion. The law should treat everyone equally on the basis of their primary characteristic: their humanity.2



Throughout most of American history, the government has denied equality to women by relegating them to second-class status under the law. For example, entry into various professions was restricted, married women routinely lost the right to their own property including wages, and women were denied access to knowledge about their own bodies (birth control information).



Because the legal oppression of women was based on gender, it became necessary for women to organize along gender lines to demand the rights being denied to them as a sex. These organizing efforts evolved into a feminist movement, which found expression within various pre-existing traditions, including individualism. Individualist feminism advocated equal treatment of all human beings under natural law. As a movement, it demanded that the law be blind to the secondary characteristic of sex, and treat women according to their primary characteristic of being human, on the same level as men. Thus, in a letter (1837), the individualist feminist Angelina Grimke wrote, "...I recognize no rights but human rights -- I know nothing of men's rights and women's rights."3



In the last few decades, the greatest threat to genuine equality between the sexes has not come from legal restrictions imposed upon women but from legal privileges granted to women based upon gender: examples of these legal privileges include affirmative action or sexual harassment laws. For any class of people to seek or to accept legal privileges is unjust, because the privileges must come at the expense of another class. Granting privileges to women not only damages men, it also damages women who depend upon the paternalistic protection of the government rather than upon their own efforts.4



Thus, the ultimate goal of individualist feminism is a society that reflects equal respect for the natural rights of all individuals, male or female. The greatest enemy is government, which has historically legislated privileges or restrictions based on gender. Indeed, without the vehicle of government and law, men could not have oppressed women historically except on an individual basis.



The Foundation of Natural Law



What is 'natural law?' The simplest of the two words to define is 'law,' which is not used in a legal sense. It is not a synonym for legislation. Rather the word 'law' refers to a principle, or a governing rule, much as you might speak of the laws of physics, or of the law of gravity.



The meaning of the word 'natural' is a more complicated matter, and it has occasioned a great deal of debate within the natural law tradition itself. One school of natural law views the concepts of right and wrong as types of fact: that is, this school claims that certain actions are objectively right while other actions are objectively wrong. Individualist feminism tends to use a much more flexible interpretation of natural law: it argues that human values should be grounded in or based upon fact, and that the concepts of right or wrong should be discovered through a process of reasoning. It examines human nature and human interaction in order to evolve a reasonable concept of right and wrong.



According to this interpretation, natural law is nothing more than an attempt to ground human values in the facts of reality and in human nature. It asks the question: given what we know about reality and what we know about human nature, is it possible to reason out a universal code of behavior to maximize the happiness and safety of human beings?



The answer offered by many individualist traditions, including individualist feminism, is the concept of 'natural rights.' The idea of rights as an answer to a question, or as a problem solving device, was proposed by the 19th century individualist Benjamin R. Tucker. Tucker believed that all ideas arose and persisted within society because they served a need, they answered a question.5



Tucker used this problem solving approach in analyzing the concept of property. He asked, 'what is it about the nature of reality and the nature of human beings which gives rise to the concept of property in the first place?' He concluded that property arose as a means of solving conflicts caused by scarcity. In our universe, almost all goods are scarce, and this leads to an inevitable competition or conflict among human beings for their use. Since the same chair could not be used in the same manner at the same time by two individuals, it was necessary to determine who should use the chair. The concept of property resolved this social problem. The owner of the chair should determine its use. "If it were possible," wrote Tucker, "and if it had always been possible, for an unlimited number of individuals to use to an unlimited extent and in an unlimited number of places the same concrete thing at the same time, there would never have been any such thing as the institution of property."6



Individualist feminism derived its concept of rights in a similar manner. When analyzing the issue of slavery (circa 1830), abolitionist feminists considered another scarce resource -- the bodies and labor of human beings. The catalyst for their question was the institution of slavery. They asked, 'who has the rightful use of the scarce resource of black labor?' They answered, 'a human being's labor and actions must belong to the man or woman who is that human being.' With the concept of self-ownership, abolitionist feminists attacked slavery in America. They used it to address the problem of women's inequality as well.



What is Feminism?



Consider the statement: Women are, and should be treated as, the equals of men.



For many, the foregoing sentiment constitutes the core of feminist theory and policy. But feminism is not a monolith and agreement tends to disintegrate quickly. There is substantial disagreement within feminism over the proper meaning of the term 'equality'. Does it mean equality under existing laws? Or, equality under laws that express more justice than the existing ones? Does it mean an economic equality that requires the government to rearrange economic relationships to ensure a system of distributive justice? Or is it captured by cultural equality -- a society in which women are, by law, the accorded the same social status and respect that men enjoy, and not merely the same legal status?



Throughout most of the 19th century, the mainstream of American feminism defined 'equality' as equal treatment with men under existing laws, and equal representation within existing institutions. For example, the cry of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association -- which became the League of Women Voters after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment -- was not one of revolution: it was a cry for reform. These women wanted to be included in the existing political process through which the State was constituted. As such, the mainstream of 19th century American feminist aimed at reform, not revolution.7



The more radical feminists of the day disagreed. They argued that the existing laws and institutions -- in short, the political system itself -- was the source of injustice toward women. The system was inherently corrupt and, as such, could not be reformed. The political structure needed to be entirely eplaced before women's rights could be secured. In her book Anarchist Women, the historian Margaret S. Marsh writes of the more radical feminists, who fell outside the mainstream framework, "They believed that if women truly intended to be equal, their first step must be a declaration of economic, psychological, and sexual independence from men and from male-dominated institutions, beginning with marriage." 8



In simplistic terms, the two voices of this more revolutionary feminism were socialist feminism, from which contemporary radical feminism draws heavily, and individualist feminism, which is sometimes called libertarian feminism. These two traditions establish the extreme ideological boundaries of feminism. In many ways, the traditions are ideological mirror images of each other.



Ideological Differences



One of the key ideological differences between socialist and individualist feminism resides in the concept of 'class.' A class is nothing more than an arbitrarily grouping of people who share a common characteristic, and the characteristic chosen depends entirely upon the purposes of the person defining the class. For example, a researcher studying drug addiction may break society into classes of drug using and non-drug using people. Classes can be defined by almost any characteristic, such as income, hair color, age, nationality, or sexual habits. Again, it depends entirely on the purpose of the definer.



To radical feminists today, gender is the characteristic that defines a class. Society and the political structure are broken down into two basic classes of people -- men and women. Men share not only a similar biology, but also political interests which are maintained through the institution of patriarchy: that is, it is maintained through white male culture and male economics, or capitalism. The interests of men are necessarily in conflict with the interests of women. The pioneering gender theorist Adrienne Rich defined patriarchy in her book Of Woman Born: "...the power of the fathers: a familial -- social, ideological, political system in which men -- by force, direct pressure or through ritual, tradition, law, and language, customs, etiquette, education, and the division of labor...in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male."9



Viewed through this political lens, maleness ceases to be biological trait and becomes a cultural or ideological one. Men not only share a biological identity, they also share specific political interests that are based upon their male identity. The foremost interest of men is to keep women, as a class, under their control. Thus, the concept of gender as a class becomes a causative factor in society: it predicts and determines how men will behave toward women.



To free women, it is necessary to destroy maleness itself. In Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, Catharine MacKinnon insists, "Male is a social and political concept, not a biological attribute."10 In Our Blood, Andrea Dworkin states, " In order to stop... systematic abuses against us, we must destroy these very definitions of masculinity and femininity, of men and women..."11



To individualist feminism, class has no necessary connection to gender. The political characteristic that determines the class to which an individual belongs is his or her relationship to the use of force in society. There are two basic classes: (1) the criminal or political class that uses force, including legislation, to acquire wealth and power; and, (2) the economic class that acquires wealth and power through voluntary exchange. The political class is at war with the economic class, upon which it preys. But each class can and does contain both men and women, and individuals change their class affiliations at will.12



To restate this point -- individualist feminists define class in terms of an individual's relationship to the institution of State power (or other use of force). An individual is either one of the rulers or one of the ruled. Both classes contain both men and women who can cross class lines by altering their behavior.



This last point is key. In the radical feminist view, one's class affiliation is static because it is based on gender: a person is born into a class and stays there. In the individualist feminist view, class is fluid: men and women can and do change their class affiliation constantly and by choice. Thus, for individualist feminists, there is no necessary conflict between men and women. This one factor alone may explain why the individualist tradition and history contains as many prominent male figures as female ones, and why gender attacks on men tend to be rare within it. When an individualist feminist says "Women are, and should be treated as, the equals of men", there is a recognition of the logical corollary, "Men are, and should be treated as, the equals of women."



Predictably, the two traditions also define 'equality' in differing ways. To socialist feminists, equality is a socio-economic term. Women can be the equals of men only after patriarchy -- a combination of capitalism, white male culture and the family structure -- is eliminated. By contrast, to individualist feminists equality refers to equal treatment under laws that protect natural rights. When such laws are applied impartially to both men and women, equality has been achieved. Individualist feminism makes no reference to women being economically or socially equal, only to equal treatment under just laws.13



The differing approach to equality involves another profound ideological difference: it is contained in the question, 'what constitutes justice?' Since radical feminism advocates socio-economic equality, its approach to justice is ends-oriented. That is, it defines justice in terms of a specific social condition. Radical feminism provides a detailed blueprint of what social and economic arrangements constitute a just society. A just society is one without white male culture or capitalism, in which women are the political, legal, economic and cultural equals of men. In other words, justice is an end-state. Justice is the point at which society embodies certain explicit economic, political and cultural arrangements. When women arrive at this end-state, they can say "we are there, this is just."



By contrast, individualist feminism insists only upon equal treatment for women under laws that protect the freely chosen actions of individuals. As it is impossible to predict the economic or cultural choices people will make, it is not possible to define justice as a particular end-state. Thus, the individualist feminist concept of justice is means-oriented: that is, justice refers to a method of social functioning, not to a specific social end-state. Whatever results from the voluntary interactions of everyone involved is by definition politically just, because justice refers to the process by which an end-state is achieved.



Another question immediately arises: what if one does not personally approve of a social arrangement, even though it is voluntary? For example, what if a privately funded medical college refuses to admit women? The solution for radical feminists is clear: they can use the force of law to institute their version of justice. Within the context of radical feminist ideology, using the force of law makes sense. After all, the ideal of socio-economic justice can be established through legislation. A specific economic arrangement can be imposed upon society, albeit at a huge cost to personal freedom. But the individualist feminist ideal of a voluntary society cannot be created by force. Choice cannot be nurtured at the point of a gun. Indeed, the only role force plays in a voluntary society is defensive: force can be used to defend the peaceful choices of individuals, including the right to discriminate.



When confronted with voluntary situations that are immoral -- assuming here that discrimination is immoral -- individualist feminists cannot find recourse through the law. If they wish to change the situation, they must fall back on the persuasive strategies that have been used successfully by reform movements for centuries, e.g. education, protest, picketing, boycott, non-cooperation, moral suasion.



In short, radical and individualist feminists disagree on the proper role of law in society. Radical feminists advocate using the force of law to impose a standard of proper behavior on voluntary exchanges. That is, to impose a politically/sexually correct form of virtue. Individualist feminists believe that the only proper function of law is to protect the voluntary nature of the exchange -- that is, to prevent violence. Virtue must be left to the conscience of the consenting individuals involved.



The individualist feminist rejection of law as a means to impose virtue did not spring from indifference to social problems. Consider the 19th century individualist feminist Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly. Kelly worked as a medical doctor with women in New Jersey tenement houses who had been forced into prostitution by poverty. As a result, she became a determined labor activist, demanding the elimination of legal barriers that shackled women from competing in the workplace. Kelly spent her entire life working to remedy the social evils created by poverty, yet she remained firmly committed to the political principle of individual choice.



Thus, when individualist feminists joined the 19th century social purity campaigns, e.g. temperance, they did not advocate enforcing purity through legislation. Instead, they used voluntary measures, such as persuading people toward abstinence and circulating public oaths to that effect. The demand for voluntary participation was not merely an ideological stand, but also a pragmatic one. The writings of early individualist feminists reflect the belief that wrong choices cannot be legislated out of existence. As with the use of drugs in the present society, the abuse of alcohol in the 19th century could be countered only by changing the hearts and minds of people who made the choice to abuse substances. Laws that attempted to impose virtue only made a bad situation worse.



The Lost Women



To the extent that 19th century individualist feminists have received attention, they have generally been miscategorized. In Anarchist Women Marsh makes what I believe to be an error in analyzing the 'anarchist feminists'. She writes: "Anarchist-feminism, an ideology created and elaborated during the last third of the nineteenth century, developed directly from the cornerstone of anarchist philosophy: the primacy of complete personal liberty over all else. Although the factions within the movement disputed endlessly and vehemently about the proper methods for attaining such freedom, they all agreed on its fundamental importance." 14



Even if it is true that anarchist feminists agreed on the "primacy of personal liberty," that statement is no more enlightening than the previous definition of feminism as 'men and women should be equal.' Just as different traditions of feminism define equality in contradictory manners, so too do they approach the concept of 'personal liberty.'



The confusion is understandable. Without a clear sense of the ideology of individualist feminism it is easy to view figures within this tradition as being inconsistent socialists.15 Again, consider Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly. As well as being a medical doctor who worked with tenement women, she was Secretary of the Newark Liberal League and a frequent contributor to anarchist periodicals, including the prominent Liberty. As an Irish immigrant who had been involved in the Irish No Rent movement, Kelly brought from Ireland a hatred of rent, interest, or 'landlordism' in the language of her time. She also railed against capitalism and capitalistic practices, e.g. government-issued currency, all of which were considered to be 'usury'.



In an article on the subject prostitution published by Liberty, Kelly expressed two themes which were common to her analysis of poverty and of women. First, Kelly argued that women had been oppressed by the cultural stereotypes dominating society. Second, she contended that charity organizations and 'the rich' were hypocritical in their attitudes and behavior toward the poor.1 particularly ridiculed the philanthropic groups popular in her day in which working "...girls are given lessons in embroidery, art, science, etc., and are incidentally told of the evils of trade-unions, the immorality of strikes, and of the necessity of being 'satisfied with the condition to which it has pleased God to call them.'"



The foregoing sounds like the words of an intelligent and politically sensitive socialist feminist. But consider another article by Kelly entitled "State Aid to Science," which is a transcript of a speech that Dr. Kelly delivered to the New York Women's Medical College. There, she argued against the College soliciting or accepting any government funds. Again, she addressed two themes. In Kelly's own words, "first, that progress in science is lessened, and ultimately destroyed, by state interference; and, secondly, that even if, through state aid, progress in science could be promoted, the promotion would be at too great an expense of the best interests of the race."



She claimed it was impossible for government to promote knowledge: "It seems to be generally forgotten by those who favor state aid to science that aid so given is not and cannot be aid to Science, but to particular doctrines or dogmas, and that, where this aid is given, it requires almost a revolution to introduce a new idea." She claimed that an arrangement of government patronage creates "a great many big idle queens at the expense of the workers". In other words, Kelly argued against what is considered to be a standard 19th and 20th century feminist position -- namely, government should use subsidies or law to open the doors of professions that were otherwise closed to women.



In the presence of both articles, how would a researcher evaluate Kelly? Into what established category of feminism would she be placed? And, when Kelly did not fit neatly into an established category, would the adequacy of the categories be questioned or would Kelly's second article be dismissed as an odd inconsistency?



The fact is that both articles are consistent with each other, and with 19th century individualist feminism. Like most individualists of her day, Kelly viewed capitalism as the major cause of poverty. Yet she rejected any governmental remedy to social problems, including economic ills. Although it may sound bizarre to modern ears, Kelly considered the free market to be the natural remedy for capitalism.



To understand Kelly's position, it is necessary to appreciate the 19th century definition of capitalism within the individualist movement. Kelly considered capitalism to be an alliance between business and government in which latter guaranteed special privileges to the former through the vehicle of law. To break this alliance, it was necessary to break the power of government for, in Kelly's words, "...all the laws have no other object than to perpetrate injustice, to support at any price the monopolists in their plunder."16



Capitalism and government laws were to be fought vigorously, but with peaceful means, for, as Kelly wrote, "You cannot shoot down or blow up an economic system, but you can destroy it by ceasing to support it, as soon as you understand where its evils lie."17 Some of the specific evils she sought to destroy were restricted bargaining, protectionist tariffs and government created monopolies (e.g. currency). The solutions offered were free banking, free trade and open competition -- in short, the free market.18



The radical individualist movement of the 19th century, of which individualist feminism was a subset, repeatedly advocated the free market and the abolition of government privilege as the means to destroy capitalism. The 19th century anarchist periodical Lucifer, the Light Bearer (1883-1907), which was also the main vehicle for individualist feminism, answered the question of whether it advocated socialism with the words, "We have never advocated the abolition of private property."19



The prominent free love and free labor periodical The Word (1872-1890, 1892-1893) served as a voice for the New England Labor Reform League.20 The purpose of the League was described as follows, "Free contracts, free money, free markets, free transit, and free land -- by discussion, petition, remonstrance, and the ballot, to establish these articles of faith as a common need, and a common right, we avail ourselves of the advantages of associate effort..."21



Without the category of individualist feminism, it is difficult or impossible to make sense of a woman such as Kelly.



This difficulty may partially explain why such women are generally excluded from standard feminist histories such as the three volume biographical dictionary "Notable American Women" issued by Harvard University Press. Indeed, most of the women discussed this book do not appear in that dictionary.



To appreciate the context of individualist feminist women, it is necessary to understand that individualist feminism is not merely a contrarian position on issues like affirmative action. It is a comprehensive, integrated system of beliefs concerning women's relationship to society. It has a deep rich history that significantly impacted the status of women in the 19th century. It embraces a large body of literature -- novels, political tracts, poetry, diaries, speeches -- and it involves a distinctive historical interpretation of events such as the Industrial Revolution.



The richness of this tradition is not surprising when you ealize that the roots of American feminism were profoundly individualistic.



Synopsis of 19th century Individualist Feminist History



As an organized and self-conscious movement, American feminism arose during the 1830's.22 Although courageous figures advanced the status of women prior to this period -- women such as Anne Hutchinson and Francis Wright -- they spoke out as individuals rather than as members of a self-conscious organization dedicated to women's rights.



As mentioned previously, American feminism grew from the ranks of abolitionism -- a movement that demanded the immediate cessation of slavery on the grounds that every human being is a self-owner. Moreover, many abolitionists were Quakers, with a tradition of female ministry that led the women abolitionists to speak out. Inevitably, these women asked: 'Is it only black male slaves who are self-owners? Do not we own ourselves as well?'



Gradually, abolitionist women began to apply the principle of self-ownership to themselves. The historian, Aileen S. Kraditor, wrote in her book Up From the Pedestal:



"A few women in the abolitionist movement in the 1830s ... found their religiously inspired work for the slave impeded by prejudices against public activity by women. They and many others began to ponder the parallels between women's status and the Negro's status, and to notice that white men usually applied the principles of natural rights and the ideology of individualism only to themselves."23



This was the birth of American feminism, and it was individualistic in content. Individualist feminism was expressed largely through lectures, pamphlets and articles that appeared in periodicals, especially The Liberator (Boston 1831-1865) 24 Soon, another tradition provided a vehicle for individualistic women: transcendentalism, which is most often associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. This philosophy was rooted in natural law and a belief in the perfectibility of human beings.



The Civil War (1861-1865) led most feminists to put aside their own concerns in order to work for the war effort. Afterwards, the majority of feminists joined a mainstream campaign to embed the rights of women in the U.S. Constitution (the 14th and 15th Amendments). Their efforts failed, due to a lack of support from men. Women felt betrayed. In the History of Woman Suffrage Susan B. Anthony wrote, "We repudiated man's counsels forever." Perhaps this was the beginning of the emotional backlash against men which some believe characterizes contemporary feminism. Thereafter, the drive for women's suffrage began to dominate feminism.



As a ideological voice, individualist feminism tended to find expression in radical periodicals, especially those that championed free love, free thought, and individualist anarchism. Of these three movements, free love was the most important vehicle for feminism. In his book The Sex Radicals, the historian Hal D. Sears observed, "'The doctrine of free love,' wrote an early-twentieth-century family sociologist, 'was bound to develop as an ethical counterpart of laissez-faire economics; both are anarchism; both were stimulated by the spacious freedom of the new world.'"25



Free love declared all sexual matters to be the province of the adult individuals involved, not of government. Free lovers advocated marriage reforms that ensured women's equality and free access to birth control information. As a movement, freethought insisted on the separation of church and state, leaving all spiritual matters to the conscience of individuals.26 Individualist anarchism argued for a voluntary society, which was called 'society by contract.'



Three periodicals in particular expressed the theory and voices of individualist feminism. The most important free love periodical was Lucifer the Light Bearer edited by Moses Harman.27



The anarchistic The Word, subtitled A Monthly Journal of Reform and edited by Ezra Heywood, began as a labor paper but soon focused more on free love issues such as birth control. The prime individualist anarchist periodical Liberty, subtitled Not the Daughter But the Mother of Order and edited by Benjamin R. Tucker, provided another forum for women. Its contributors were a virtual honor list of individualist feminists: Gertrude Kelly, Bertha Marvin, Lillian Harman, Clara Dixon Davidson, Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Kate Field, Emma Schumm, Juliet Severance, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, Josephine Tilton, Helen Tufts, and Lois Waisbrooker.



This book offers a glimpse into the rich history of 19th century individualist feminism by presenting commentary on and reprints from such feminists -- both male and female -- who published within these three periodicals.



Synopsis of Contents



The individualist feminists in this book were selected to provide a representative overview of the 19th century tradition in America as it was expressed through The Word, Lucifer, the Light Bearer, and Liberty. Each chapter offers a prototype.



Chapter One.



Angela Fiducia Tilton Heywood: In the Shadow of a Man.



Angela Heywood was a tireless and prominent activist for women's rights and labor reform, but history has permitted her to linger as a footnote to her husband and partner in radicalism, Ezra H. Heywood. Ezra and his contribution to American radicalism have been subjects of recent interest to scholars, and deservedly so. Angela's voice was more radical and consistent on women's issues, but Ezra's persecution under the Comstock law for circulating birth control information has given him enduring prominence. The persecution of Ezra Heywood galvanized the radical community.28 Meanwhile Angela performed the essential task of holding together the various radical organizations that the two of them had created under the umbrella of The Word.



"In the Shadow of a Man" presents a biographical sketch of this remarkable woman and offers reprints of some of her articles, which are a strange blend of flowery and sexually graphic language.



Chapter Two.



Women of the Word: The Day-to-Day Radicals.



It is a well-known phenomenon: women are responsible for he daily operation of ideologies and movements -- from planning church pot lucks to handling the phones for radical civil liberties organizations. Men commonly assume the center stage, while women perform the less visible tasks, without which the organizations could not function. This phenomenon was even more pronounced in the 19th century than it is today, when women enjoy far greater equality.



"The Day-to-Day Radicals" is a biographical dictionary of the women who worked in the background of The Word and of the organizations that surrounded it. For many of these women, even those significant in their own day, the biographical dictionary is the first visibility they have received since their names originally appeared in The Word.



Chapter Three.



Moses Harman: A Quintessential Male Feminist.



Giving a voice to silenced women is a commendable goal of modern feminism. It has an unfortunate consequence, however. Contemporary feminism tends to ignore or downplay the role of men who had made substantial contributions to the freedom and dignity of women -- men such as Moses Harman. In her autobiography Living My Life, Emma Goldman credited Harman with pioneering the public discussion of sexual issues that allowed her and Margaret Sanger to advance birth control decades later. The absence from feminist history of such vigorous champions as Harman impoverishes it.



"A Quintessential Male Feminist" provides a biographical sketch of Moses Harman along with reprints from Lucifer, the Light Bearer in order to provide a sense of his philosophy and the extent of his activism. It is a glimpse into the invaluable contributions that many men have unselfishly made to feminism.



Chapter Four.



E.C. Walker and Lillian Harman: A Feminist Couple.



In the 19th century, women relinquished many, if not most, of their rights upon marriage. For example, married women often lost the right to their own earnings, the custody of their own children, and it was de facto impossible to convict a man of raping his wife no matter how brutally he had acted. In this atmosphere, several couples came forth to oppose the legal oppression of women within marriage. Usually their challenge to the system revolved a refusal to seek church or state sanction for their sexual union. Instead, the couples signed purely private contracts that acknowledged the full equality of both partners within the union. The impact of these 'free marriages' and of the persecution endured by couples who entered them has not been adequately explored by feminist scholarship.



"A Feminist Couple" briefly sketches the non-state, non-church marriage of Edwin Cox Walker and Lillian Harman, as well as their resulting imprisonment.



Chapter Five.



Sarah E. Holmes: One of the Silenced Women.



For every woman like Gertrude Kelly with a will strong enough to court public controversy, there were numerous others who shied away from a contentious limelight. The men who shared their views and published in the same periodicals could have encouraged them. Too often, such men did precisely the opposite and the discouraged women fell silent. One such woman was Sarah E. Holmes, who performed a valuable service as a publisher and translator of feminist and other radical works. Holmes strayed onto the center stage of Liberty with her own work only fleetingly, however. The core of her intellectual foray was an exchange with Victor Yarros, the associate editor of Liberty. It became a classic work within individualist anarchist and individualist feminist literature. The disrespect which Holmes was accorded, however, also signaled her departure as a contributor of original material to the periodical.



"A Silenced Woman" chronicles the unfortunate interaction between Holmes and Liberty that seemed to be what impelled her to return to a less visible role. The chapter also reprints some of Holmes' original work.



Chapter Six.



Gertrude B. Kelly: A Disillusioned Woman.



Unlike The Word or Lucifer, Liberty was not particularly respectful of women or 'the woman question,' as feminist issues were often labeled in the late 19th century. The men who formed the intellectual circle surrounding Liberty behaved toward their women counterparts, such as the brilliant Gertrude Kelly, in a manner that probably typified the behavior of most radical men of the day. The women were treated as nominal equals, but the men's air of courtesy often dissolved into condescension. Kelly is a good example of the price that periodicals like Liberty paid for being unenlightened, if not boorish toward its women contributors. They left its pages.



"A Disillusioned Woman" presents a biographical sketch of Gertrude B. Kelly which emphasizes her relationship with Liberty, as well as reprinting several articles by her from that periodical.



Since the purpose of this book is to make a neglected tradition within feminism more visible, my commentaries often defer to contemporary voices by offering their observations of people and events.



ENDNOTES:



1. Although the American tradition draws heavily upon British classical liberalism -- especially the work of British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft -- American women organized around issues that were uniquely their own, such as Puritanism, the American Revolution and the American experience of slavery.



2. For a bibliographic essay on the history of individualist feminism in America, please see Wendy McElroy "A Brief Bibliographic Essay" Sexual Correctness, pp.169-179.



3. as quoted in McElroy, Wendy (ed.) Freedom, Feminism, and the State, 2nd ed. p.31.



4. Recent books addressing this reversal of gender justice and its negative impact are: Daphne Patai Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998; Cathy Young Ceasefire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality. New York: Free Press, 1999; and, J. Edward Pawlick Freedom Will Conquer Racism (and Sexism). Mustard Seeds Inc. 1998.



5. As an illustration of this theory, consider a universe which is parallel to our own but which runs along different metaphysical rules. The inhabitants of this alternate universe fill their needs simply by wishing for goods or other forms of satisfaction. Food magically appears in their hands, clothes miraculously drape their limbs, and a bed pops into existence under their tired bodies. In such a society, it is unlikely that the concept oF money would evolve, simply because that peculiarly human concept arose as a means to solve the problems of transferring and storing wealth -- problems that exist in our universe, but not in the parallel one.



6. "The Attitude of Anarchism toward Industrial Combination" in Liberty XIV (December 1902) p.3.



7. Equally, the National Organization for Women (N.O.W.), American feminism -- in the mainstream -- has tended to define 'equality' as equal treatment for men and women under existing laws and equal representation within existing institutions. Certainly, mainstream feminists have called and do call for the reform of laws and the overhauling of institutions, such as the court system.



8. Margaret S. Marsh, Anarchist Women 1870-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University press, 1981) p.46.



9. Adrienne Rich. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. London: Virago, 1977, p.57.



10. Catharine MacKinnon. Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989, p.114.



11. Andrea Dworkin. Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics. New York: Harper & Row, 1976, p.48.



12. For an individualist theory of class, see Franz Oppenheimer The State. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1940, or Ludwig von Mises. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics Fox and Wilkes, 1997.



13. The 19th century parallel to the 20th century rebellion against 'white male culture' is to be found in the social purity crusades that characterized the last decades of the 1800s. The purity crusades revolved around various issues as pure food, prostitution, and temperance.



14. Margaret S. Marsh, Anarchist Women 1870-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University press, 1981) p.45.



15. The situation is further confused by the fact that individualists sometimes called the social arrangements they favored 'socialism.' The term, as they used it, had a different meaning than is currently ascribed to it. For example, an advertisement for a pamphlet entitled "Socialism!" in The Word included free trade and the issuance of private currency (free money) as expression of socialism.(The Word VIII January 1880, p.4).



16 "The Wages of Sin is Death" in Liberty #81 p.5, May 22, 1886.



17. Ibid.



18. 20th century individualist feminists generally express a different view of economics than their 19th century counterparts.19th century individualists accepted a labor theory of value. Although they championed the free market, they opposed capitalism as a distortion of the market place. By contrast, 20th century individualist feminism abandoned the labor theory of value, and generally incorporated an advocacy of laissez faire capitalism.



19. Moses Harman as quoted in Lucifer May 8, 1885, p.2.



20. The Word has been misidentified as a socialist periodical, yet its editor, Ezra H. Heywood, and the contents of its pages falls clearly and solidly within the individualist framework.



21. Ezra Heywood (ed) Declaration of Sentiments and Constitution of the New England Reform League Boston, 1869, p.6. Article 2.



22. For background information see Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973); and Blanche Glassman Hersh, The Slavery of Sex: Feminist Abolitionists in America (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1978). For an overview of women's participation in the American Revolution, see Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic (Williamsburg, Va.: University of North Carolina Press, 1980).



23. Kraditor, Up From the Pedestal, pp. 13-14.



24. ed. William Lloyd Garrison, available on microfilm from the Massachusetts Historical Society.



25. Hal D. Sears. The Sex Radicals p.20.



26. The best source for women in freethought is George A. MacDonald's two volume 50 Years of Freethought (N.Y.: Truthseeker, 1929, 1931), which centered around the periodical the Truthseeker (1873-present). Raymond Lee Muncey's Sex and Marriage in Utopian Communities: 19th century America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973) provides a good general overview of feminism within utopian communities.



27. Lucifer succeeded the Valley Falls Liberal (1880) which began with no formal editors; it was, in turn, succeeded by The American Journal of Eugenics (1907-1910), ed. by Moses Harman.



28. More accurately stated, the first persecution galvanized radicals. When Heywood continued to flaunt the Comstock law, many fellow-travellers began to blame the Heywoods for so flagrantly flaunting the law and, thus, bringing legal problems down upon themselves.





CITED WORKS



Ellen Carol Dubois, Feminism and Suffrage (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1980).



Andrea Dworkin, Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics, (New York: Harper and Row, 1976).



Blanche Glassman Hersh, The Slavery of Sex: Feminist Abolitionists in America (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1978).



Emma Goldman, Living My Life, 2vols. (Dover, 1930).



Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic, (Williamsburg, Va.: University of North Carolina Press, 1980).



George A. MacDonald, 50 Years of Freethought, (New York: Truthseeker, 1929, 1931).



Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist theory of the State, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1987).



Margaret Marsh, Anarchist Women 1870-1920, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981).



James J. Martin Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827-1908 (Colorado Springs: Myles Publisher, Inc., 1970).



Wendy McElroy, (ed) Freedom, Feminism, and the State, 2nd. (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1991).

--------------- Sexual Correctness: The Gender-Feminist Attack on

Women, (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1996).



Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, (Fox & Wilkes, 1997).



Raymond Lee Muncey, Sex and Marriage in Utopian Communities: 19th Century America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973)



Franz Oppenheimer, The State, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1940).



Daphne Patai, Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism, (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998).



J. Edward Pawlick, Freedom Will Conquer Racism (and Sexism), (Mustard Seeds, Inc., 1998).



Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973).



Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, (London: Virago, 1977).



Hal D. Sears, The Sex Radicals: Free Love in High Victorian America (Lawrence, Kansas: Regents Press, 1977).



Cathy Young, Ceasefire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, (New York: Free Press, 1999).





