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, “On Liberty” (1909)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
ON LIBERTY By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE.[note]Speech delivered by Voltairine de Cleyre at the Cooper Union Protest Meeting, June 30, 1909.[/note] MR. Crosby has said he is here in the interest of “good government”; so am I. But you know the brutal saying of some white man about Indians: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” In my opinion, the only “good” government is a dead government. I am in the habit of writing out what I have to say in advance: the reasons are several, but the principal one governing me in the present instance is, that I am […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “On Liberty” (1909)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
ON LIBERTY By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE.[note]Speech delivered by Voltairine de Cleyre at the Cooper Union Protest Meeting, June 30, 1909.[/note] MR. Crosby has said he is here in the interest of “good government”; so am I. But you know the brutal saying of some white man about Indians: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” In my opinion, the only “good” government is a dead government. I am in the habit of writing out what I have to say in advance: the reasons are several, but the principal one governing me in the present instance is, that I am […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Anarchism and American Traditions” (1908-09)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Related links: Voltairine de Cleyre [main page] American traditions, begotten of religious rebellion, small self-sustaining communities, isolated conditions, and hard pioneer life, grew during the colonization period of one hundred and seventy years from the settling of Jamestown to the outburst of the Revolution. This was in fact the great constitution-making epoch, the period of charters guaranteeing more or less of liberty, the general tendency of which is well described by Wm. Penn in speaking of the charter for Pennsylvania: “I want to put it out of my power, or that of my successors, to do mischief.” The revolution is […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Open Your Eyes!” (1908)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
OPEN YOUR EYES! WHEN, at the beginning of winter, the present industrial depression, following upon the great financial paroxysm of November, threw millions of people face to face with the problem of hunger and exposure, it was a foregone conclusion that protests, conscious and unconscious, would be made; that every degree of dissatisfaction, from the quiet reasoned argument of the social student to the blind act of murderous rebellion on the part of some desperate victim of “social order,” would find expression. It was equally to be foreseen that those in power, whether as manipulators of the law or as […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Our Present Attitude” (1908)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE present organization of society, working logically and inexorably, has brought about a situation which both Socialists and Anarchists have all along foreseen and foretold. It was no more to be avoided than the leap of Niagara is to be avoided, when once the headwaters start on their outward course to the sea. Those who imagine that industrial conditions can be made or unmade by this or that inadequate legal patchwork, find themselves in the midst of a frightful boiling of irreconcilable elements, which they weakly and childishly try to explain by some trivial reason, such as the attitude of […]
fiction

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Chain Gang” (1907)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
It is far, far down in the southland, and I am back again, thanks be, in the land of wind and snow, where life lives. But that was in the days when I was a wretched thing, that crept and crawled, and shrunk when the wind blew, and feared the snow. So they sent me away down there to the world of the sun, where the wind and the snow are afraid. And the sun was kind to me, and the soft air that does not move lay around me like folds of down, and the poor creeping life in […]
fiction

Voltairine de Cleyre, “At the End of the Alley” (1907/1911)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
IT is a long narrow pocket opening on a little street which runs like a tortuous seam up and down the city, over there. It was at the end of the summer; and in summer, in the evening, the mouth of the pocket is hard to find, because of the people, in it and about, who sit across the passage, gasping at the dirty winds that come loafing down the street like crafty beggars seeking a hole to sleep in—like mean beggars, bereft of the spirit of free windhood. Down in the pocket itself the air is quite dead; one […]
fiction

Voltairine de Cleyre, “To Strive and Fail” (1908)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
There was a lonely wind crying around the house, and wailing away through the twilight, like a child that has been refused and gone off crying. Every now and then the trees shivered with it, and dropped a few leaves that splashed against the windows like big, soft tears, and then fell down on the dark, dying grass, and lay there till the next wind rose and whirled them away. Rain was gathering. Close by the gray patch of light within the room a white face bent over a small table, and dust-dim fingers swept across the strings of a […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Case of the Imprisoned Italians in Philadelphia” (1908)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
ALL readers of Mother Earth are familiar with the story of last February’s “riot,” and the subsequent arrest, trial, and discharge of H. Weinberg and myself. What they are not so familiar with is the case of the four Italian “rioters,” who were railroaded through the courts and sentenced most mercilessly by Judge Von Moschzisker. Three of these men were Social Revolutionists, the fourth an Anarchist; the latter received a five year sentence. During all the time that money was being raised for our defense, little or nothing was said about these, the worst sufferers in the whole affair; and […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Philadelphia Farce” (1908)

July 28, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
After the lapse of nearly four months from “the riot” of last February, the case of the “Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Hyman Weinberg and Voltairine de Cleyre” was called for trial on the 17th of June, the trial Judge being Mayer Sulzberger, a gentleman having a reputation of being somewhat more inclined to weigh the rights of citizens as against the attacks of the police than some other judges. On the morning of the 17th, Weinberg and myself, the witnesses for the defense, and our respective lawyers were all ready in the court room. The State, however, was not ready; […]