I think that what is empowering about anarcho-feminism, particularly in someone like Emma Goldman, is that there is the idea that women’s freedom fundamentally does not depend on any changes in behavior from men (though it may be offensive), so much as upon the self-development of women. This is typical of the radical strains of modernist and Enlightenment-era feminism, such as Mary Wollstonecraft—the mother of modern feminism— and the women in the French and American revolutions, who stressed women’s capacity to reason equally with men, and who focused on education as the best means of women’s emancipation.
Emma Goldman wrote works such as “Woman Suffrage,” in which she opposed suffrage for women on anarchist and feminist grounds. She argued that woman needed instead to focus on becoming equal with man as by abolishing her own self-imbued and socially-conditioned ignorance and superstitions. Her argument mirrors those of black abolitionists and slaves— following after people like Gabriel Prosser or Nat Turner—, who illegally learned and taught one another to read; and to Proudhon’s (the first anarchist) argument that the workers must abolish their superstitions to be free. The Enlightenment and modernism at large stressed, admittedly inconsistently but nonetheless thoroughly, that freedom was gained through self-development and Reason, rather than by external forces. Freedom is a gift of Nature, that can be developed, as the early anarchists, abolitionists, and feminists understood it.
The suggestion by early feminists that women should develop their good sense, or Reason, was an admission of the fact that women— like workers and like black slaves— did not develop their political capacity to the extent that the patriarchy had done, but also came with an awareness— as with mutualist anarchism and abolitionism— that this was nonetheless possible, and that so-doing would put an end to patriarchy (and slavery and the state). And they attacked the right things, like inheritance, the means by which patriarchal power is passed materially from father to son, and the inability of women to own property, to divorce, or to decide to become pregnant or not. Emma Goldman, a Nietzschean, fiercly avoided what she could of the “Slave Morality” that can be found in contemporary feminism, that sees the insensitivity of men as the source of women’s oppression (thereby putting responsibility and the ability to liberate on men, not women) rather than women’s own sensibilities, sensitivities, emotionalism, and irrationalism. These behaviors, she and others well-demonstrated were not the essence, but the condition, of women, a condition that kept them oppressed, but that they alone could pull themselves out of by way of Reason. This idea goes back at least to Spinoza, who suggested that by way of Reason we may best manage our passions (emotions), a concept that gave life to the Radical Enlightenment (from which Moderate Enlightenment is a deviation). As well as feminism, this led also to abolitionism and anarchism, which are modernist movements.
The reason the Enlightenment was important, and why abolitionism, feminism, and anarchism grew out of it, is not because feelings are unimportant— they are— but because feelings on their own are not leveling, do not produce equality. They produce instead what Max Weber called “charismatic authority,” as was the case during the Reign of Terror. Certain passionate individuals, or individuals who draw out the passions in others, may be seen as having more genuine or intense feelings than others, suggesting they have access to internal qualities that others do not. They are more “noble” (as in “nobility”). This, rather than producing equality, produces hierarchy, a hierarchy of who is perceived to be the most sensible, sensitive, emotive, or etc. The result is that the chosen individual is given decision-making power based on their being perceived as better than others. Contrast this to the Enlightenment view that anyone capable of making a well-reasoned argument (man or woman, black or white, boss or worker) can justly influence society by it. In such a case, the individual is not given power, but is allowed influence in proportion to their reasoning capacity. Feelings, which are subjective, cannot be proven or disproven, and so are more of a personal than a social affair. But Reason can be more objectively demonstrated and shared, making it a force for more popular sovereignty, as in democracy and anarchy. This isn’t so because it’s what I want— I’d prefer if everything adjusted to my feelings— but because of the limits of conveying subjective information to others and their limited ability to empathize with it.
Postmodernism, on the other hand, grew out of Romanticism, in which aristocratic sensibilities, sensitivities, and emotionalism was embraced over Reason. This was aristocratic instead of popular (as the Enlightenment and modernism— especially the realist movement— tended to be). It was part of the Counter-Enlightenment. Instead of the leveling/equalizing effects of Reason, and everyone’s ability to do it, the focus was put on subjectivity and emotions, and blaming people for those emotions. But subjectivity unbounded by Reason (subjectivity does matter of course) produces charismatic leaders around which tribes are formed, instead of fostering equality and voluntary cosmopolitanism the way Reason does. In the end, it’s the patriarchy that benefits from a Romantic or postmodern sort of feminism, because it establishes “feminism” as hysteria rather than justice. This works to the benefit of Counter-Enlightenment forces that would undo the Enlightenment that gave way to the first wave of feminism from which others deviate or upon which they build.
Perhaps it was Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, or Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Julie, or the New Heloise, that launched the first Romantic assault on Reason, favoring sensibility and sentiment instead. But Spinoza’s rationalism was derived, like Christian Gnosticism, from largely pagan sources, like the Stoics and Epicureans, and is pantheistic, and so seems more grounded in the tradition coming from Mother Earth worship than does the transcendental idealism of Kant, the deism of Smith, or the religiosity of Rousseau. Smith and Kant represent Moderate Enlightenment divergences from the Radical Enlightenment of Spinoza, and Rousseau is arguably Counter-Enlightenment. Spinoza’s Radical Enlightenment had followed after radical elements in the Scientific Revolution, such as Paracelsianism and women folkhealers (“witches”), and the Radical Reformation, which included the Beguines, women adepts of the pantheist Heresy of the Free Spirit, often cited as proto-feminists. Smith and Kant represent considerably more elitist views. The realist (and so modernist) author, Jane Austen, would feel the need to address sensibilism in Sense and Sensibility, in which she favors the good sense (wisdom) of Elinor to the sensibility (emotionalism) of Marianne. It isn’t good sense, afterall, that drove women into hysteria or that caused hysterias against women (like witch trials), but sensibility, sentimentality, and emotionalism. Jane Austen had been following in the footsteps of Mary Wollstonecraft, the first feminist, who likewise, in her purposefully self-defeating sensibilist novels, Mary and The Wrongs of Woman, attacked sensibility, sensitivity, and emotionalism as harmful to women. Romanticism and postmodernism would undo the Enlightenment and the leveling results of Reason that modern feminism had built herself upon and embraced from Mary Wollstonecraft to Emma Goldman to Jane Austen and even into our own times.
I think it’s important to consider from a feminist lens what Reason and Wisdom are, and how important to feminism they might be. Looking at it from its native Western perspective, we see that Christians associate Reason with Logos (Logic) or Christ. But we also know that, while taking a masculine form, Christ’s virgin birth represents a feminine principle. Christianity, itself a combination of beliefs from the Therapeuts and Gnostics, among others, is esoterically understood to have a Gnostic theology, as can be seen in Christian Gnostic interpretations by theologians such as Marcion, who denounced the Old Testament God as an evil Demiurge. But Gnostics also held that every soul is a fragment of Sophia, a feminine principle to which Christ is often connected. This overlaps with philosophy as a whole, philo–sophia meaning “Love of Sophia,” with Sophia representing Wisdom. By this interpretation, Reason and Wisdom are feminine principles, and Christianity, while masculine in form and even practice, nonetheless owes its essence to a feminist, almost Dianic eschatology. This was likely passed down in the mystery schools, which preserved knowledge from eras long prior, and may go back to Tantric (meaning “weaving,” traditionally performed by women) beliefs or perhaps even to Old European beliefs, such as the Venus cult.
Postmodern and postmodernist feminism often seeks to defend emotionalism and sentimentalism as valuable, on the grounds that these are feminine characteristics, and that rejecting these is rejecting the feminine. But it seems the case can be made, instead, that Reason and Wisdom are just as much feminine characteristics. In Genesis, it is Eve who first takes the Fruit of Knowledge, and this may be interpreted as Eve having turned from ignorance and superstition, themselves treated as virtues by Abrahamic religious standards. If the snake is Lucifer, and if Lucifer is the Celtic pagan god Lugus (it is common for one culture to turn another’s gods into devils or demons)— the triune God, Mercury, known as Hermes Trismegistus in Hermeticism— who is the giver of Light, then what Eve received in the fruit is Light or Wisdom, which did not please the Demiurge who trapped Sophia (Eve) in her flesh prison and did not want her to escape.
Sophia— Wisdom—, while a feminine principle, represents all whose spirits are oppressed by being held in mortal captivity, not just women. Sensibility, sensitivity, emotionalism, and etc. are the Counter-Enlightenment means by which the aristocracy keeps Sophia’s parts from coming together, because, even while having gnosis, she cannot communicate her subjectivity (fragmentedness) effectively. Instead, she is hunted down as a witch, burned alive. Reason, on the other hand, can establish shared goals upon shared analyses, and in forming shared goals we form a community, effectively piecing Sophia back together, even if incompletely until all of her shards are conjoined. An attack on philosophy— Reason, Wisdom, the love of Sophia— is an attack on Sophia and Mother Earth (Venus). Reason and Wisdom have long been associated with the feminine.
The “sex strike theory” of human origins suggests that women on sex strike, supported by their brothers (who would have been beta males), is what made us who we are. Now feminists damn all men, and are financed by patriarchs to do so in school (“women’s studies,” financed by patriarchs), and fail because of it (to much satisfaction of the patriarchy, which benefits from confusing all men with itself). When women and “beta” males are divided, the alpha male patriarchs win.
A patriarch is a father. Not all men are fathers. Therefore not all men are patriarchs. And so not all men are involved in patriarchy. This is true by simple deduction.
Feminists— and women more generally—, your brothers would like to share in Reason with you. Please don’t forget that; and certainly not because of sensibility, sensitivity, or emotions, because that’s how the Counter-Enlightenment (older, even more oppressive patriarchy) infiltrates feminism. It’s true that men need to be more sensible, sensitive, and emotionally aware. But such things must come by way of their sisters’ leadership, who both assert their own collective power (as by strikes and other passive resistance), and remain open to educating their brothers into how to be more sensible. In the end, most men gain from being sensible, if women don’t reward insensible behaviors, because most men do want to have women in their lives, to love them, and to see the women in their life happy. Men themselves are prone to superstitions, prejudices, and ignorance that anything but compassion and grace, within well-enforced boundaries, can only stoke to be more fierce. When we attack people’s emotions, we put people on the defensive (and those men do find ignorant women to pair with instead, reinforcing their behavior), but— so long as we self-develop our power of influence by way of consistent and confident use of Reason— we can pressure and educate them instead. People’s petty notions based in aristocratic sensibilities (related to nobless oblige as a means of maintaining patriarchal control, like opening a door for a woman) are something to disregard and educate against. Feminism cannot be built on apologies for the past, or on shaming, but must develop from asserting boundaries clearly and keeping them, and creating new manners of relating together. Women must take the lead on this. But it must be compassionate toward the selfhood of all, and depends at least in part upon the help of your brothers.
I’m favorable to certain forms of feminism (classical anarcho-feminism, in particular), but the angry, persecutory postmodern sort shoots itself in the foot. Perhaps most dangerously, postmodernism has twisted the definition of privilege to mean something entirely different from the original. It no longer implies a legal relationship to authority and the state, but belonging to a group sharing accidental characteristics (race, sex, etc.) with it, confusing these accidental characteristics (see Aristotle) for essence. Now, elite women of the professional-managerial class can point to the “white male privilege” of trailer trash, hillbillies, crackers, rednecks, and other Poor Whites—common stereotypes of racists and misogynists— to much benefit to the patriarchy. They too, even if not always the most sensitive or sensible, are Sophia, they are the brothers needed for coalition-building against the patriarchy.
Sensibility is found most amongst the elite. The patriarchy has always maintained noble chivalry, aristocratic etiquette, bourgeois good manners, etc. The patriarchy, as is male nature, is often gynocentric. It is the beta males, made target by chivalrous, economic alphas, that feminists have no other material choice but to form coalitions with, because these beta males are the ones who do not inherit the patriarchy. They are defensive of their masculinity and lack sensibility, which they perceive as feminine. This is uncomfortable, but discomfort is not necessarily injustice, and these lower class males do not have the power to discriminate against women, to sexually harass them, or etc. from positions of patriarchal authority. It’s the owners of the means of production, who maintain a politeness in their manners— the most powerful of which have refined tastes, and “conspicuous beliefs” (often a belief in intersectionality)—, and the Bobo (Bohemian bourgeois) professional-managerial class— the most privileged of whom share in these sensibilities to the degree accessible to them— that maintain the ability to discriminate, to sexually harass without reprisal, to ignore maternal needs, to dismiss opinions, and etc. This power is least of all in the hands of the sexually-defensive, emasculated male, low on the totem pole, who feels their lack of sensibility is a sign of raw, masculine sexual energy. Annoying as they may be, as unenlightened and lacking in good sense as they may be, they only— according to feminists like Emma Goldman— share the greater with women in their condition as such. Both would benefit from an end to patriarchy, and would enjoy each other’s company all the greater because of it. They have benefitted in the past from working together, given rise to humanity even, and Reason calls upon them to do so again.
