The Sex Question

In the writings of the 19th and early 20th century, the questions we associate with feminism were addressed under a variety of labels, one of the most economical of which was “the sex question,” which referred, in practice, to a wide range of question concerning sex, gender, sexuality, etc. The texts collected here cover a wide range of “women’s issues.” The current collection includes material previously contained in the following archives: La Frondeuse (Black and Red Feminist History), Anarchy and the Sex Question and A Beautiful Nihilist.

The Sex Question

Voltairine De Cleyre, “Mary Wollstonecraft” (1894)

August 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
For the Boston Investigator. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. Mr. Editor:—Yourself and readers will be interested to learn that the plan of establishing a “female saint’s day” among freethinkers, by commemorating the birth of Mary Wollstonecraft, proposed by myself at the international congress of freethinkers, last October, has taken practical form in this city. The Ladies’ Liberal League, of Philadelphia, (which is not, by the way, an auxiliary of the Friendship Liberal League, as state by Mr. Charlesworth in a communication last fall, and I correct the error in the interest of both societies, the former being a much more radical group than […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine De Cleyre, “Letter from Voltairine De Cleyre” (1891)

August 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
For the Boston Investigator. LETTER FROM VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. Mr. Editor:—It is so long since I made my bow to the Investigator that I feel somewhat as if an introduction were necessary in order that my friends my recognize me. I went out to the land of reputed grasshoppers and hot winds something like a year ago, to a small retreat among the Kansas prairies called Enterprise, and there resigned myself to poetry in the shape of exquisite sunsets, thrice golden moons and brilliant starts, the vast solemnity of the great waving seas of grass, and the extremely prosaic business […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine De Cleyre, “Washington Sights and Sounds” (1890)

August 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
For the Boston Investigator. WASHINGTON SIGHTS AND SOUNDS. Mr. Editor:—When Charles Dickens visited us in 1842, he wrote that Washington was rather a city that was “going to be,” than an accomplished fact. Choosing between this opinion and that of a personal friend who declares it is the only city in the United States fit to live in, I should award the palm to Dickens. Washington is still a largely “going to be” sort of place, a queer mixture of metropolitan airs and country village smells. I had heard so much of its magnificent distances that I was prepared to […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Are they Fallen?” (1902)

August 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Are They Fallen? I am not sure that the wisest policy for me, having said my say on the subject of fallen women, would not be to display a “masterly inactivity.” I have little taste for controversy, and generally feel that when one has made a strong statement of a case (at least as strong as the writer’s ability permits) the best thing to do is to let others do the arguing. However, as I feel that the point that I am urging in this discussion is, though the curious bias which the continuously negating attitude gives to the human […]
The Sex Question

Emma Goldman, “Walt Whitman” (incomplete manuscript)

August 18, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] WALT WHITMAN Last summer I listened to the reading of a very fine paper on Walt Whitman, at the Public Library of the city. I was struck by what seem[ed] to me a futile attempt on the part of some of the men who participated in the discussion to contrast Walt Whitman with some European poets. Not that Whitman was the greatest of all times or all nations. I even think some of his biographers have rendered the poet of Leaves of Grass scant services when they proclaimed him greater than Homer and Socrates. The […]
The Sex Question

L. M. S., “A Word on Martyrs’ Mistakes,” (1888)

August 15, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
A WORD ON MARTYRS’ MISTAKES. — A Woman’s Comment on a Man’s Sentimentality and Long-Range Sympathy. There should be no more of mere sentiment and gush concerning the martyrdom of our comrades from writers and speakers who claim to be fighting for freedom and justice. Either they believe in their innocence and the injustice of their sentences or they do not, and beautiful laudations and flowery eulogies do not set well with paltry excuses for their “mistakes” or vague suggestions that justice would have been better attained if their punishment had been a little less severe. What advantage to our […]
fiction

L. M. S., “A Story of a Giant” (1887)

August 14, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
A STORY OF A GIANT. A Parable Not Laid Down in the Gospels, but Which Will Bear Careful Reflection. Is a Straight-Jacket the Best Remedy for the Contortions and Writhings of the Blind Samson of Modern Industry? Once upon a tine there lived a great, strong, patient giant who faithfully served some young princes of the realm. The princes ordered him about, sent him out on all sorts of perilous errands, rode upon his shoulders, and loaded him with burdens to carry, as though he were a pack-horse. They knew he was so strong that he could have annihilated them […]
fiction

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Sorrows of the Body”

August 11, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
I have never wanted anything more than the wild creatures have,—a broad waft of clean air, a day to lie on the grass at times, with nothing to do but slip the blades through my fingers, and look as long as I pleased at the whole blue arch, and the screens of green and white between; leave for a month to float and float along the salt crests and among the foam, or roll with my naked skin over a clean long stretch of sunshiny sand; food that I liked, straight from the cool ground, and time to taste its […]
fiction

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Reward of an Apostate” (1908)

August 11, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
I have sinned: and I am rewarded according to my sin, which was great. There is no forgiveness for me; let no man think there is forgiveness for sin: the gods cannot forgive. This was my sin, and this is my punishment, that I forsook my god to follow a stranger—only a while, a very brief, brief while—and when I would have returned there was no more returning. I cannot worship any more,—that is my punishment; I cannot worship any more. Oh, that my god will none of me? That is an old sorrow! My god was Beauty, and I […]
fiction

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Heart of Angiolillo” (1898)

August 11, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Some women are born to love stories as the sparks fly upward. You see it every time they glance at you, and you feel it every time they lay a finger on your sleeve. There was a party the other night, and a four-year old baby who couldn’t sleep for the noise crept down into the parlor half frightened to death and transfixed with wonderment at the crude performances of an obtuse visitor who was shouting out the woes of Othello. One kindly little woman took the baby in her arms and said: “What would they do to you, if […]