[Comic strip] Voltairine De Cleyre - « Anarchism without a Label » - Booklet [PDF]

Born on November 17, 1866, to an American woman and a French man from Lille who emigrated to the United States. He named his daughter Voltairine in honor of Voltaire.
Her parents divorced in 1880, and her father placed her in a convent. Upon her release, Voltairine became involved in the Freethinker movement.
Influenced by the writings of Thomas Payne and Mary Wollstonecraft, she gave lectures and wrote newspaper columns.
Following a bomb attack during the Haymarket Square Riot, on May 1^st, 1886, 8 anarchists were wrongly accused of it and four executed on November 11, 1887, causing Voltairine to become an anarchist.
In 1890, her essay Sexual Slavery was published. She condemned the beauty queens who encouraged women to distort their bodies, and the educational practices that molded children according to their gender.
Her son, Harry, was born on June 12, 1890. She never lived with the child’s father, James B. Elliott, nor with any of her other lovers.
Emma Goldman considered her as « the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America has ever produced. »
Having become close to individualist anarchists, she advocated an anarchism without adjectives : « I no longer call myself anything other than a simple anarchist. »
In 1895, in a lecture on « The Sexual Question », she declared to women : « (...) Because of the prohibition that weighs upon us, its immediate consequences on our daily lives, the incredible mystery of sexuality and the terrible consequences of our ignorance about it. »
On December 9, 1902, she survives Herman Helcher’s assassination attempt.
She forgave him: « It would be an outrage to civilization if he were sent to prison for an act that was the product of a sick mind. »
In her lecture « Marriage is a Bad Deed » in 1907, she asserts :
« The marriage contract, imposing a promiscuity of souls and bodies, runs against love. »
In the spring of 1911, Voltairine de Cleyre regained hope in change. Thanks to Ricardo Flores Magón, « the most important Mexican anarchist of the time », according to historian Paul Avrich.
She gave lectures to explain the importance of international solidarity, raised funds to help the revolution, and became the Chicago correspondent for the Regeneración newspaper.
In her 1912 essay, Direct Action, she points out that « direct action has always been employed and enjoys the historical sanction of the very people who now repudiate it. » A poet, essayist, feminist pioneer and supporter of anarchism, Voltairine de Cleyre died of septic meningitis in Chicago on June 20, 1912.