Stephan Molyneux has recently graduated from shoddy to What is this I don’t even…, with a pair of videos on feminism, which he describes as “socialism with panties.” There is a hopeful part of me that would like to believe that nobody could take “Stef” seriously on his best days—and it is definitely not those we see in these videos—but the rest of me knows better. So I would like to draw attention to “An Open Letter to Stefan Molyneux and Other Anti-Feminists,” written by a group of good folks, including Sharon Presley, Charles Johnson, Nathan Goodman, and Ross Kenyon—and with an increasingly long list of signatories—which does a nice job of actually isolating the arguments in Molyneux’s meltdowns and responding. There are all sorts of curious notions about, and resistances to, feminism in anarchist and libertarian circles, most of which seem to involve shoe-horning a complex bundle of social and philosophical movements into one or another boxes small enough to discard, and the debate in “libertarian” circles isn’t free from some peculiar reductions. But, within that context, this is a useful, and potentially important, response. Give it a look.
Black and Red Feminism
Feminism in Lyon before 1848 — Eugénie Niboyet
This short account of the life of Eugénie Niboyet is the first part of an article that appeared in the Revue d’histoire de Lyon (Vol. 7, 1908, pp. 348-358). The second half of the article focuses on Flora Tristan in Lyon in 1844—which will be at least slightly more familiar subject-matter for most people—but the lesser-known Mme. Niboyet was really one of the most formidable figures of feminism in the 19th century. She was a prolific writer, editor, and translator. She organized around women’s issues, pacifism and the abolition of the death penalty. She had close ties to most of […]
Contr'un
God, Women and Proudhon — Eugène Stourm
Slowly, but surely, I’m assembling the various feminist responses to Proudhon. The pages of L’Opinion des Femmes is rich with that sort of thing, since it was Jeanne Deroin’s primary forum at the time she proposed herself for political office, and drew fire from Proudhon and others. In the May, 1849 issue, the following essay, by Eugène Stourm, appeared. I think it’s an interesting mix of fairly accurate critique and misunderstanding. Certainly, the more details emerge, the more interesting the conflict looks. I think this project is going to be a lot of fun. God, Women, and Proudhon. The enemies […]
Black and Red Feminism
From “L’Opinion des Femmes,” August 1848
These two short articles by Désirée Gay (Jeanne Desirée Véret Gay, 1810-1891) appeared in the August 1848 issue of L’Opinion des Femmes, which seems to have been a kind of testing of the waters before the launch of the official “First Year” of the paper. That issue had been preceded by a 4-page “Prospectus,” written by Jeanne Deroin, and the paper was essentially a continuation of La Politique des Femmes, but there was still a certain amount of work to do setting the tone for the project, and Gay seems to have taken on much of that work in the […]