Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

Women, love And Marriage /24 1
There is a roadside market where men sell the daughters of the people. The
daughter of the rich is sold fo r her dowry and is given to whomever her family wishes.
The daughter of the poor is taken by whoever wants her. Neither girl is ever asked her
own wishes.
In our world, the proletarian is a slave; the wife of a proletarian is even more a
slave. Women's wages are simply a snare because they are so meager that they are illUSOry.
Why do so many women not work There are two reasons. Some women cannot
find work, and others would rather die of hunger, living in a cave, than do a job
which gives them back less than enough to live on and which enriches the entrepreneur
at the same time.
Prostitution is the same. We practice Caledonian morality, and men don't count
women fo r much here either. There are some women who hold tight to life. But then,
fo rced on by hunger, cold, and misery, they are lured into shame by the pimps and
whores who live from that kind of work. In every rotten thing, there are maggots.
Those unfortunate women let themselves be formed into battalions in the mournful
army that marches from the hospital to the charnel house.
When I hear of one of these miserable creatures taking from a man's pocket
more than he would have given her, I think, "So much the better." Why should we
close our eyes If there were not so many buyers, that sordid market would not exist.
And when some honest woman, insulted and pursued, kills the scoundrel who is
chasing her, I think, "Bravo, she has rid others of the danger and avenged her sisters."
But too few women do it.
If women, these accursed-even the socialist Proudhon said they can only be
housewives and courtesans, and indeed they cannot be anything else in the present
world-if, as I say, these women are often dangerous, to whom does the blame belong
Who has, fo r his pleasure, developed their coquetry and all the other vices
agreeable to men Men have selected these vices through the ages.
We women have weapons now, the weapons of slaves, silent and terrible. No
one has to put them into our hands. It is done.
I admit that a man, too, suffers in this accursed society, but no sadness can compare
to a woman's. In the street, she is merchandise. In the convents, where she hides
as if in a tomb, ignorance binds her, and rules take her up in their machinelike gears
and pulverize her heart and brain. In the world, she bends under mortification. In her
home, her burdens crush her. And men want to keep her that way. They do not want
her to encroach upon either their fu nctions or their titles.