Anarcha-feminism

Anarcha-feminist flag

Anarcha-feminism is a system of analysis which combines the principles and power analysis of anarchist theory with feminism. Anarcha-feminism generally posits that patriarchy and traditional gender roles as manifestations of involuntary coercive hierarchy should be replaced by decentralized free association. Anarcha-feminists believe that the struggle against patriarchy is an essential part of class conflict and the anarchist struggle against the state and capitalism. In essence, the philosophy sees anarchist struggle as a necessary component of feminist struggle and vice versa.

Quotes

• [D]eveloping an anarcha-feminist position implies developing a feminist position which is not simply deconstructive or negative, but remains at the same time a form of feminism without patronym. (Notice here that, in contrast to other form of feminism, such as Marxist feminism or Foucauldian feminism, the very term anarcha-feminism gestures at an attempt to get rid of any patronym). And the challenges for such a position will therefore be very close to those that radical feminists had to face in the past: how to defend the specificity of womanhood without incurring any form of essentialism?
  • Chiara Bottici (2017), "Bodies in Plural: Towards an Anarcha-feminist Manifesto", Thesis Eleven 142(1), p. 95.
• Despite the fact that anarchism and Marxism often were on the same path and even converged in workers’ struggles, the major difference between them is that anarchist thinkers have historically been working with a more variegated notion of oppression that emphasizes the existence of forms of exploitation that cannot be reduced to economic factors – be they political, cultural, sexual, cosmetic and so on and so forth. Hence also its happier marriage with feminism: if the relationship between Marxism and feminism has historically been a dangerous liaison, which reproduced the same logic of domination occurring between the two sexes, then the relationship between feminism and anarchism promises to be a much more productive encounter. Historically, the two have converged so often that some have argued that anarchism is by definition feminism. The point is not simply to register that, from Mikhail Bakunin to Emma Goldman, and with the only (possible) exception of Proudhon, anarchism and feminism often converged in the same people. This historical fact signals a deeper theoretical affinity. You can be a Marxist without being a feminist, but you cannot be an anarchist without being a feminist at the same time.
  • Chiara Bottici (2017), "Bodies in Plural: Towards an Anarcha-feminist Manifesto", Thesis Eleven 142(1), p. 105.

• Feminism practices what anarchism preaches. One might go so far as to claim feminists are the only existing protest groups that can honestly be called practicing Anarchists; first because women apply themselves to specific projects like abortion clinics and day-care centres; second, because as essentially apolitical women for the most part refuse to engage in the political combat terms of the right or the left, reformism or revolution, respectively.
  • Lynne Farrow (1974), "Feminism as Anarchism," Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-feminist Reader (3rd ed.), edited by Dark Star, AK Press, p.19.