Kissack - Free Comrades - Anarchism and Homosexuality in The United States, 1895-1917

FREE COMRADES
ANARCHISM AND HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1895 -1917

FREE COMRADES
ANARCHISM AND HOMOSEXUAlITY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1895 -1917
Terence Kissack
Free Comrades:AHarchism and Homosexuality in the United States, 1895-1917
© 2008 Terence Kissack

This edition © 2008 AK Press (Oakland, Edinburgh, West Virginia)
ISBN-13 9781904859116
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction:
Anarchism and the Politics of Homosexuality
Chapter One:
"The Right to Complete Liberty of Action": Anarchism, Sexuality,
and American Culture 13
Chapter Two:
The Wilde Ones: Oscar Wilde and Anarchist Sexual Politics 43
Chapter Three:
Free Comrades: Whitman and the Shifting Grounds of the
Politics of Homosexuality 69
Chapter Four:
"Love's Dungeon Flower": Prison and the
Politics of Homosexuality 97
Chapter Five:
'''Urnings,' 'Lesbians,' and other strange topics":
Sexology and the Politics of Homosexuality 127
Chapter Six:
Anarchist Sexual Politics in the
Post-World War I Period 153
Conclusion:
Anarchism, Stonewall, and the Transformation of
the Politics of Homosexuality 181
Notes 189
Bibliography 214
Index 230
ACKNOWLE D G M ENTS
T his book began as my dissertation in United States History which I com

pleted at the City University of New York in 2004. The friends I made at
CUNY-most especially Erica Ball, David D. Doyle Jr., Megan Elias, Cindy
Lobel, Kathy Feeley, Marcia Gallo, Kerri Jackson, D elia Mellis, Jason Tougaw,
and Peter Vellon-were enormously helpful to me and were by far my best
teachers.
At CUNY I had the privilege of working with Martin Duberman, who
served as chair of my dissertation committee. Marty's knowledge of the history
of radicalism and sexuality in the United States proved to be an invaluable re
source. I am equally indebted to the other members of my committee. I spent
some of my best days as a student in seminars run by David Nasaw and T hom
as Kessner. As committee members they were masters of the art of academic
tough love. Thankfully, David and Tom both have a wicked sense of humor;
difficult lessons were taught without too much bruising of my ego. Blanche
Wiesen Cook was both a sartorial and an academic influence in my life. I was
fortunate that Lisa Duggan agreed to serve on my committee even though she
was not CUNY faculty. I am grateful for her carefu� and insightful c omments
and for her quick wit.
A number of friends, colleagues, and teachers honed my thinking and lifted
my spirits . Special thanks to Paul Avrich, Carol Berkin, The Boys at Boleri
um Books, Maljorie Bryer, Joey Cain, Phillip Cannistraro, Jack Diggins, Betty
Einerman, Jeffrey Escoffier, Michael Helquist, Kevin Jenkins, Hubert Kennedy,
Brigitte Koenig, Jon Kaufmann, Gerard Koskovich, Regina Kunzel, Barbara
Loomis, Molly McGarry, Martin Meeker, Kevin Murphy, James Osborne, D.
Sachs, Susan Stryker, Randolph Trumbach, Nancy Unger, Jim Van Buskirk, and
Willie Walker. lowe an enormous debt to my editor Zach Blue and to Barry
Pateman, whose dedication to the exploration of anarchist history and willing
ness to give his time and insights is truly remarkable.
A number of institutions and organizations assisted me during my ·research.
CUNY's History D epartment, the CUNY Graduate Center, and the Colonial
Dames of New York all awarded me much needed financial support during my
days as a student. The archivists and staff at the New York Public Library, the
Tamiment Archives at New York University, the Houghton Library at Harvard
University, the Emma Goldman Papers Proj ect of U. C. Berkeley, the Hatcher
Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor which houses the Jo�eph Labadie
Collection, and the volunteers and staff of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgen
der Historical Society were all very generous with their time and assistance .
I am enormously thankful for the love and support of my parents, Alfred
Kissack and Micheline Maccario, who never wavered in their enthusiasm for
my work . Sadly, my mother passed away in late 2007. I dedicate this book to
her. My brothers,Alec, Lyle, and Bruno; their respective partners, Laura, Clem
mie, and Maureen; and my niece and nephews, Allie, Mitch, Diego, Ramsey,
and Tyson deserve my thanks for putting me up and putting up with me during
research trips.
Finally, I want to thank my partner Mark Coleman. Mark was not in my life
when this book was in its infancy, but I would not have finished it without his
love and support.
INTRODUCTION:
ANARCHISM AND THE POLITICS OF HOMOSEXUALITY
IN THE LATE-NINETEENTH A ND early-twentieth centuries, activists living

in the urban, industrial West began to articulate a politics of homosexuality.
Though various early-nineteenth century political thinkers, like Jeremy Ben-
� tham and Charles Fourier, touched on the question of homosexuality and its
.J5
:::; place in the social order, same-sex love enj oyed increased attention in the late-
>
'"
nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries due to a quantitative and qualitative
�
'"
.c;
shift in the political and sexual cultures of the West. 1 This development is best
documented in Northern Europe, especially Germany and England. In these
countries, intellectuals and reformers including Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Edith
�
1::
Ellis, Anna Ruling, Edward Carpenter, Helene Stocker, and John Addington
g
'"
Symonds published and circulated defenses of same-sex love. In 1897, the
g' German sexologist and sex radical, Magnus Hirschfeld formed the Scientific-
E
Humanitarian Committee (SHC), the world's first homosexual rights organiza
tion. The SHC published a journal, sponsored lectures, did outreach to media,
clergy, and other professionals, and lobbied for legal reforms. The members of
the SHC and other contemporary activists were radical intellectuals, producing
new forms of knowledge and political ideas . They created new understandings
of homosexuality, forged new political terms and goals, and articulated sharp
critiques of oppressive social norms and values. These activists constructed new
;;;
:>
U
o
2 FREE COMRADES
forms of political and social consciousness that shaped the lives of millions of
people.2
Historians have not documented a similar movement in the United States
during this per � od. This is not to say that Americans in the late-nineteenth and
early -twentieth centuries were silent on the moral, social, and cultural mean
ings of same-sex love. As in the rest of the developed world, America witnessed
a dramatic increase in the level of interest in homosexuality. Sexual behavior
and identity were the subjects of a number of discussions and investigations
based in law, psy chiatry, journalism, and literature.' Few Americans, however,
produced political defenses of same-sex love similar to those being penned by
European sex radicals.
The only pre-World War I era American work comparable to those being
produced in Europe at the time is Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson's The
Intersexes: A History of Simisexualism As a Problem in Social Life. The Intersexes
engages with the texts of other reformers and seeks to add new perspectives
and information to the unfolding debate about the place of same-sex love in
Western culture. But Prime-Stevenson published his book only after moving
to Italy. There were 125 copies ofPrime-Stevenson's work printed in 1908 by a
smail, private English-language press in Rome. There is very little evidence that
Prime-Stevenson's work had much impact in the country of his birth."
In this period, there were no political groups organized along the lines of
the SHC in the United States. There is mention of one smail group, but the
veracity of the account describing its existence is questionable. In an autobio
graphical narrative published in 1922, Earl Lind claimed to have been a member
of a New York group called the Cercle Hermaphroditos that formed "to unite
for defense against the world's bitter persecution of bisexuals."s By "bisexual"
Lind meant men, like himself, who were sexually attracted to men. Accord
ing to Lind, members of this group, which "numbered about a score," met at
"Paresis Hall," a resort located in New York City's Bowery and well-known as
a hang out for "fairies," or effeminate homosexuals.6 Though members of the
group shared their experiences of job discrimination and their risk of random
street violence, they did not take any action beyond coming together for mu
tual support. At best, then, the group-assuming it existed-was, in the words
of George Chauncey, a "loosely constituted club" offering support and recre
ational opportunity to its members.7 The Cercle Hermaphroditos published
no pamphlets, journals, or books; sponsored no lectures; and left no evidence
of any activity outside of Paresis Hall. In fact, other than Lind's account, there
is no evidence that the organization actually existed, and as historian Jonathan
Ned Katz notes, "it is difficult to know exactly where Earl Lind's accounts pass
ANARCHISM AND THE POLITICS OF HOMOSEXUALITY 3
from fact to fiction."The story of the Cercle Hermaphroditos, Katz writes, may
well be "apocry phal."R
Of course, there were individuals who carved out a place for themselves by
claiming social space within cities, and refusing to conform to normative gen
der and sexual codes. Chauncey's work on gay life in New York City (as well as
the work done by others), offers a window on the lives of some of these brave
souls. Their "immediate, spontaneous, and personal" struggles are part of what
historians Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. D avis have identified
as "pre-political forms of resistance" within gay and lesbian communities.9 By
gathering in small social groups and living a life that visibly contradicted gen
der-normative behavior, thousands of gay men and lesbians asserted the validity
.and value of their lives and loves. But these efforts did not result-at least not
directly -in the creation of a body of political ideas and rhetoric that engaged
the legal, social, and cultural social norms that regulated homosexuality. Re
sistance to homophobia at the individual level was largely evanescent, limited,
and easily rolled back. "Pre-political forms of resistance" cannot substitute for a
critique that challenges the actions of the state, as well as other regulatory bod
ies and agents, in a sustained and rational manner.
The absence of a group like the SHe or a figure on the order of Ed
ward Carpenter sets the United States apart from the overall pattern of\Vestern
culture. But this apparent exceptionalism is just that-apparent and not real.
There was, in fact, a vital, engaged, political discussion of homosexuality in the
United States in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Unlike Eu
rope, however, these politics did not emerge from a nascent homosexual r ights
movement, nor was it articulated by homosexual intellectuals. Rather, the first
sustained US-based consideration of the social, ethical, and cultural place of
homosexuality took place within the English-language anarchist movement.
From the mid-1890s through the 19205, key English-speaking figures of
the anarchist movement debated the subject of same-sex passion and its place
in the social order. Among Americans, they were alone in doing so; no other
political movement or notable public figure of the period dealt with the issue
of homosexuality. Anarchist sex radicals like John W illiam Lloy d, Emma Gold
man, Alexander Berkman, Leonard Abbott, and Benjamin R. Tucker published
books, wrote articles, and delivered lectures in cities across the country that
addressed the subject of same-sex love. It was a complicated issue at the time,
and their lectures contained contradictions and limitations. W hile the anarchists
were guided by their belief that women and men had the r ight to pattern
their intimate lives free of interference from outside authority, they struggled
4 FREE CO MRAOES
at times to understand how same-sex relations fIt into their analysis of sexual
relations.
The anarchist sex radicals in the United States were well aware of the ho
mosexual political discourse going on in Europe. Anarchists like John William
Lloyd and Emma Goldman, for example, were profoundly influenced by the
ideas and work of Carpenter, Hirschfeld, Havelock Ellis, and other European
sex radicals. The anarchists were avid readers of the work of sexologists who
they identified with the overall project of sexual reform. In their travels over
seas, these anarchists met with their European counterparts, sharing ideas, and
becoming a conduit through which the ideas percolating in Europe could
reach an American audience. The European sex radicals were equally well
aware of the work by anarchists in the US. Hirschfeld praised Goldman as "the
first and only woman, indeed one could say the fIrst and only human being,
of importance in America to carry the issue of homosexual love to the broad
est layers of the public."lo The anarchist sex radicals were eager participants in
a transatlantic sexual politic that sought to end the legal and social oppression
of homosexuals and reveal new forms of scientific knowledge. The anarchists
brought their own passionate belief in the possibility of revolutionary social
and cultural transformation to this transatlantic reform movement.
The politics of homosexuality outlined by the anarchists was unprecedent
ed and unique in the United States. The anarchists were alone in successfully
articulating a pohtical critique of American social and legal rules, and the cul
tural norms that regulated same-sex relations. Anarchist sex radicals developed
and sustained a far-ranging and complex critique of "normal" social and sexual
values, which circulated across a relatively broad public. Due to their ability
and willingness to draw on the resources of the anarchist movement, these sex
radicals made homosexuality a topic of political discourse and debate. In doing
so, they helped shift the sexual, cultural, and political landscape of the United
States. They threw themselves into a fractious debate about homosexuality that
has only grown m volume and salience over the hundred years since it fIrst
began. While the contemporary homosexual rights movement is not the lineal
descendent of th e anarchist movement, the turn-of-the-century sex radicals
examined in this book raised many of the questions that continue to be at the
heart of American sexual politics.
The politics of homosexuality articulated by turn-of-the-twentieth-cen
tury anarchist sex radicals grew out of their overall political ideals and goals.
The men and women active in the anarchist movement wished to rebuild all
aspects of life according to the principles of liberty and self-rule. They worked
to bring about a revolution where all forms of human association and desire
would be transformed. Work, love, friendship, consumption, art, literature, pat

terns of settlement, and almost all other aspects of life would all be born anew.
In the words of Emma Goldman:
Anarchism ...stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion
of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property;
liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands
for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose
of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human
being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life,
according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.!!
The scope and seeming audacity of the anarchists' goals meant that no subject
was otT limits for discussion. Though Goldman does not specifically discuss
sexuality in the passage quoted above, the fundamental principle applied to the
politics of homosexuality by herself and other anarchist sex radicals is expressed
here. The anarchists insisted that there should be no external authority govern
ing people's personal or public associations; all "desires, tastes, and inclinations"
should be respected and given room to flourish. Social attitudes, laws, and re
ligious doctrines that condemned love between members of the same sex was
critiqued by the anarchist sex radicals as part of a vision of complete and far
reaching social change.
The anarchists were in profound conflict with the values and rules of the
society where they lived. They denounced the heavy hand oflaw and tradi
tion as, in the words of Alexander Berkman, "the greatest impediment to man's
advance, hedging him in with a thousand prohibitions . . . weighting his mind
down with outlived canons and codes, thwarting his will with imperatives of
thought and feeling, with 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not' of behavior and ac
tion."12 Anarchism, at least in the eyes of those who espoused it, was an attempt
to clear away the dead weight of the past in order to permit new growth. The
anarchists pursued a social revolution that would free all aspects of life from the
control of hierarchal relationships. All persons would be free to establish living,
work, and social relationships of their own choosing. This utopian bent forced
them to question the rules of the world they lived in. The anarchists, according
to Margaret Marsh, "of all the radicals and reformers during the latter half of
the nineteenth century [and early-twentieth century], came closest to a total
renunciation of not only law and government but also traditional cultural val
ues and social norms."13 The movement's dissident culture fostered and enabled
the challenge of social taboos, including those surrounding same-sex love.
6 FREE COMRADES
Various anarchist sex activists outlined different positions on the question

of homosexuality; the politics of homosexuality they articulated was essentially
an intellectual and cultural debate carried out by individual activists within the
movement. In part, this reflects the nature of the movement. "The essence of
anarchism," James Joll pointed out, "was freedom of choice and the absence
of central direction making."14 An attempt to enforce a false unity among the
various voices in the movement would obscure more than it revealed. Benja
min Tucker, for example, framed his politics of homosexuality as an abstract
discussion of individual r ights, rather than a defense of persons who were ho
mosexuals. He made no reference to identity, either individual or commu
nity-based, and avoided use of sexological terminology. Emma Goldman, on
the other hand, spoke of homosexuals as a persecuted minority, like others,
deserving better treatment. She corresponded regularly with sexologists and
was greatly influenced by their ideas. "As an anarchist," she told the German
sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, "my place has ever been with the persecuted."15
Though both Tucker and Goldman agreed on the larger principles of absolute
individual autonomy, the style of their delivery and their political rhetoric was
markedly different. No single position on the ethical, cultural, and social place
of homosexuality emerged from the ariarchist movement. There was broad,
never-ending, and impassioned debates about any number of critical questions,
including issues de aling with sexuality. T his book captures an d an aly z e s the
specific ways that the anarchists dealt with the question of same-sex love.
This is not a book about gay anarchists. While some of the anarchists dis
cussed below were attracted to members of their own sex, for the most part,
the anarchist sex radicals did not identity as homosexual, nor did they claim to
speak for all homosexual men and women. Although I do consider the indi
vidual psychology of the activists I examine, for the most part, the focus is on
the politics initiated and advanced by the anarchists. This is a study of public
pronouncements, not private actions or feelings, except as they relate to the
creation and shaping of political discourse.
The anarchist sex radicals were interested in the ethical, social, and cultural
place of homosexuality within society, because that question lies at the nexus of
individual freedon and state power. What use a person can make of his or her
body is a fundam�ntal question of any social or political order. The anarchist
sex radicals examined the question of same-sex love because policemen, moral
arbiters, doctors, clergymen, and other authorities sought to regulate homo
sexual behavior. This fact was most clearly demonstrated to the anarchists by
Oscar Wilde's trial in 1895. In the decades that followed, the anarchists found
a number of opportunities to revisit the critical questions raised by the state's
attempt to restrict personalJ.ife. They reacted against the state's control and sup
pression of the free expression of erotic desire and individual autonomy.
While there has been some work done on the sexual politics of a number
of European anarchists, historians of American anarchism have not fully ap
preciated the importance of the anarchists' politics of homosexuality.16 This is
not to say that the phenomenon has gone completely unnoticed, Several stud
ies of anarchism, in particular biographies of Emma Goldman, have noted that
the anarchists spoke out against the unjust treatment of gay men and lesbians.17
For the most part, however, these studies do not examine the homosexual
politics of Goldman and her comrades in any depth. More often than not, the
anarchist discussion of homosexuality is noted briefly, just another example of
anarchists defending individual rights. Of course, any study of anarchist sexual
politics must begin with this basic truth, but it cannot end there. This book
gives greater texture and richness to the largely anecdotal evidence that cur
rently constitutes our understanding of the relationship between American an
archism and the politics of homosexuality. In the pages that follow, I examine
why the anarchists began to address the social, ethical, and cultural place of
homosexuality ; how they went about doing so; what discourses-including
sexology and literature-shaped their thinking on the matter ; and to the extent
we can know, what effect these efforts had.
Historians and political scientists working in the field of American gay and
lesbian studies have also overlooked the work of the anarchist sex radicals. This
is largely because the anarchists do not fit into the models of gay and lesbian
identity and politics that have come to dominate historical and political dis
course in the post-World War II era. Anarchists and the politics of homosexu
ality they produced are not easily assimilated into current social, cultural, and
political categories. They were not "gay activists," nor did they operate within
the bounds of liberal, civil rights discourse.
Those who study the history of the politics of homosexuality have tended
to focus on those organizations and individuals who share the largely liberal,
reformist outlook and tactics of post-World War II gay and lesbian politics.
Hirschfeld, Ulrichs, and other European activists, for example, are easily as
similated into modern narratives of political progress and community-building,
and their politics fit within the context of contemporary strategies for social
change. Anarchists did not seek to reform legal codes, nor did they lobby politi
cians in order to get the police to stop raiding the clubs and bars frequented
by homosexuals. Their vision for change was something more fundamental-a
radical alternative to the principles of the established rules of the American
social order. The sexual politics of anarchist sex radicals was embedded in the
8 FREE COMRADES
larger political discourse of anarchism-they wrote as anarchists, not as homo

sexual rights activists. This is not a study of gay and lesbian anarchists, rather
it is an examination of what anarchist sex radicals had to say about the legal,
cultural, and social status of same-sex love.
That historians have not fully documented the work of anarchists in rela
tion to this issue is also due to the way that the Left developed in the Unit
ed States. From the late-nineteenth century through the early decades of the
twentieth century, anarchism was a vital force in the United States. Thousands
were active in organizations that ranged from experimental schools to labor
unions; anarchist journals, including Liberty and Mother Earth, enjoyed con
siderable readership; and thousands attended lectures by noted anarchists. But
the anarchist movement in the United States never recovered from the sup
pression it endured during and immediately after World War I, when most of
its journals were shut down and several of its most important activists were
imprisoned and deported under the Sedition Act of 1918. In the 1920s and
1930s, what remained of the movement was overshadowed and dogged by the
ascendant Communist Party (CP). The CP came to dominate the Left in a way
that excluded and marginalized the ideas and perspectives of the anarchists. For
many Americans the history of the Left is synonymous with the history of the
CP or its various Marxist-Leninist critics. There is little room in the American
historical imagination for libertarian socialism. As anarchism faded from collec
tive memory, the accomplishments of those who fought for a more equitable
social, economic, and sexual order languished in the archives. Though there was
a resurgence of interest in anarchism and other forms of libertarian socialism in
the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Americans-even those engaged in radi
cal sexual politics-remain largely unaware of the rich political history forged
by those who dedicated their lives to the anarchist movement. It is my hope
that this book recovers and gives proper attention to the important role that
anarchist sex radicals have played in the history of the Left and in the history of
the politics of homosexuality.
Before outlining the chapters of the study that follows, I must address the
question of language, terms, and definitions. Turn-of-the-century American
anarchism was complex; there was no party platform that delineated the shared
goals and methods that anarchists espoused. The anarchists were united in their
defense of individual freedom and in their opposition to the state, but they
were divided over the questions of ultimate goals, means, and methods. Anar
chists passionately debated questions such as: W ho should own the means of
production? Is syndicalism compatible with anarchism? And what is the nature
of free love? Most scholars consider anarchism a variant of socialism. It is im-
portant to remember, however, that while most anarchists are socialists, not all
socialists are anarchists. When I use the term socialist I am more often than not
describing those on the Left who did not reject government as a useful tool
for social change. These would include members of the Socialist Party and the
Communist Party, all of whom sought to achieve their goals by the seizure
though peaceful or violent means-of the state and by state appropriation of
the means of production. Anarchists overwhelmingly rejected this strategy. "We
do not," wrote Emma Goldman, "favor the socialistic idea of converting men
and women into mere producing machines under the eye of a paternalistic
government. We go to the opposite extreme and demand the fullest and most
complete liberty for each and every person to work out his own salvation upon
any lines that he pleases."18 Opposition to the state is the fundamental principle
upon which anarchism rests. I also use the term libertarian, which has a dis
tinct set of meanings in the context of post-World War II American political
thought. When I use it, I do so in the spirit that the turn-of-the-century anar
chists used it-that is, to indicate a politics that rejected all forms of hierarchy
and domination .
If anything, the language I use to describe same-sex sexuality is even more
loaded. What might be called the terminology problem-whether to use the
word gay, lesbian, homosexual, queer, homogenic, invert, sexual deviant, bisex
ual, or something else entirely to describe the subjects of one's study-haunts
the study of the history of sexuality like no other field. Entire library shelves
are filled with studies that carefully excavate the genesis, dispersion, and social
effects of sexological, popular, and legal categories naming same-sex love. One
can credit or blame the influence of post-structuralist theory for the fascination
with language within queer studies. The question of terminology is made all the
more difficult since there was no shared language used by those writing about
same-sex sexuality-anarchists or otherwise-at the turn of twentieth century.
The melange of language employed at the time reflects the fact that there was
a wide and oftentimes conflicting variety of ideas about the nature, cause and
morality of same-sex behavior and identity. For some it was a horrible sin, one
"not to be named." For others, it was a scientifically curious anomaly. For still
others, it was a deeply rooted set of feelings and desires. The anarchists drew
promiscuously from the wide array of terms available to them. Rather than at
tempting to impose a false unity on what was a fractured and often contradic
tory ideological landscape, I have decided to preserve the variety of terms used
to describe same-sex love in this period. Of course it is impossible to not rely
on any term to describe the subject of one's study, even if only for heuristic
purposes. I have decided to rely mainly on the term "homosexual," a word that
10 FREE CO MRAOES
was coined in the late-nineteenth century, as a neutral descriptive term. I only

rarely use the terms gay and lesbian. In instances where I employ the terms
used by the person whose politics I' m examining, I submit them to analytic
pressure. The somewhat unstable set of terms used in this study may be confus
ing, but in that, it reflects the temper and culture of the time.
The chapters of this book are organized thematically, rather than strictly
chronologically. The first chapter is a broad introduction to the anarchist move
ment with particular emphasis on anarchist sexual politics. One cannot under
stand why the anarchists would be interested in the question of same-sex love
without understanding who they were and what they stood for. The purpose
of this chapter is to identity the variants of anarchism that existed during the
period, as well as to describe the rough scope and reach of the movement, and
place it within the context of American culture. I argue that sexuality was a key
concern of English-language anarchists in the United States, which reflects the
fact that their particular movement was more middle-class in composition than
the non-English speaking sister movements in the United States and abroad. In
the course of my discussion, I identity the main figures within the movement
who wrote on the subject of homosexuality. I compare the anarchists' politics
of sexuality with that of the socialists, and discuss early-pre- 1 895-treatments
of homosexuality by English-language anarchists.
The second chapter examines the role that Oscar Wilde's trial played in the
formation of a politics of homosexuality on the anarchist movement. Wilde's
conviction and imprisonment brought a new and sharp focus on the issue of
same-sex relatiOn> to a broad public; the imprisonment of one of the world's
best-known celebrities was a scandal of enormous proportion. Conservative
moralists on both sides of the Atlantic saw in Wilde's fall, a sign of incipient
moral decadence that could only be held back by more diligent policing.
Nearly alone among their contemporaries, the anarchist sex radicals rallied
to Wilde's defense. Benjamin R. Tucker was an especially keen defender of
Wilde during his most desperate hours. Wilde made homosexuality a politi
cal issue for the anarchists in a way it had not previously been. What had been
a very minor concern of anarchist sex radicals was transformed into an issue
that received increasing levels of attention. The Wilde trial highlighted the way
in which the state sought to control and regulate the free expression of erotic
desire. In the years after the trial, Wilde remained a key figure in anarchist dis
course on homose�uality.
The third chapter examines how Walt Whitman's work played in anar
chist discussions of the moral and cultural place of same-sex love. In the late
nineteenth century, anarchists discussing Whitman's work in regards to sexual
politics did so with reference to heterosexuality. But by the early-twentieth

century this began to change, indicating and reflecting the increased aware
ness and salience that the issue of same-sex love was developing in the larger
culture. In this chapter, I am particularly interested in the work of an anarchist
named John William Lloyd. During much of his life Lloyd described himself
as a "Whitmanite." He saw in Whitman's poetry and prose-and the work of
Whitman's emulator and admirer, Edward Carpenter-a language with which
to model same-sex love. But the rapidly changing cultural and sexual landscape
of the early-twentieth century made Lloyd's rhetorical assertions problematic
as we shall see. The last part of this chapter examines how Emma Goldman
used Whitman to address the issue of homosexuality. By comparing the vari
ous ways that different anarchist sex radicals used Whitman's writings in their
politics I will examine how culture and politics inform each other.
The fourth chapter examines the way that anarchist sex radicals used dis
cussions of prison as a framework for their politics of homosexuality. Prison
has been, and remains, a key institution through which Americans seek to un
derstand homosexual behavior and identity. As early as the 1820s, American
prison reformers and prison authorities discussed homosexual behavior among
inmates. Overwhelmingly, these reformers and administrators were concerned
with stamping out what they perceived to be a vicious and immoral practice.
What is striking about the anarchists' discussion of prison homosexuality is their
refusal to see it simply as an emblematic manifestation of a repressive institu
tion. The anarchists understood the phenomenon of sex in prison through the
prism of their larger sexual politics. In this chapter, I spend considerable time
examining Alexander Berkman's Prison Memoirs ifan Anarchist, one of the most
important texts to emerge from the pre-WWI anarchist movement. While this
book has rightly been appreciated as a political work concerned with prisons
and the larger ideas of anarchism I argue that its sexual politics-- -specifically
the way in which it examines same-sex love-is under-appreciated. Berkman's
memoir is among the most important texts dealing with same-sex love written
in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century.
The fifth chapter examines how the anarchists drew upon and helped shape
the discouJ;se of sexology. The anarchist sex radicals were drawn to the work
of those sexologists-like Magnus Hirschfeld and Edward Carpenter-that
they felt reflected their own views . Anarchists believed that the clear light of
rationality, when applied to the question of sexuality, would sweep away the
vestiges of "Puritanism" in the United States. In this chapter I pay special at
tention to the speaking tours of Emma Goldman, who, from 1913 onwards,
regularly included talks on homosexuality in her lecture repertoire. Goldman's
12 FREE C O M RADES
speeches were part of her effort to educate about the nature of homosexual de
sire and to inform the public about what life was like for homosexual men and
women. Her lectures and their goals were part and parcel of the sexological
project, which contended that, through sex education and the scientific study
of desire, social values and mores could be reshaped. Goldman's lectures were
unprecedented in their scope and reach and were a critical part of the anarchist
politics of homosexuality. She was an extremely charismatic speaker and her
discussions of the social and moral place of homosexuality were very popular. I
will examine how Goldman framed her discussions of homosexuality and how
her talks were received.
In chapter six I examine the terrible impact that W WI had on the anarchist
movement. During the war, anarchist journals were shut down and, in the im
mediate aftermath of the war, several anarchist sex radicals were deported. The
r ise of the Communist Party also damaged the anarchists, as CP activists went
out of their way to marginalize them. The communists succeeded in seizing
the Left. The anarchist work being done around sexual politics was a casualty
of this political ar:d cultural calamity. But despite the devastating impact of the
war, a number of anarchists tried to continue their work, and the ideas gener
ated by the pre-'iVWI anarchist sex radicals persisted as important influences
on the lives of intellectuals, bohemians, and activists. The lives and works of
Kenneth Rexroth, Elsa Gidlow, Jan Gay, and others are examined as a way to
capture these patterns of persistence.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Anarchism enjoyed a revival in the West
ern World and that is explored in my conclusion. This second wave of activism
constitutes a new phase in anarchist history that lies beyond the scope of this
study. Nonetheless, I hint at the complex relationship that the "New Radicals,"
as George Woodcock called them, had with their predecessors. I am, of course,
particularly interested in how the sexual politics of anarchism intersected with
the politics of hOJ1osexuality. I analy ze this intersection within the context of
the dramatically different sexual and cultural realities of pre-W WI and post
Stonewall America. In the contemporary political world, "gay " and "lesbian"
are the dominant terms to relate the politics of homosexuality, whereas in the
world that I am concerned with here, "anarchism" was the key term. This re
versal of terms--;;-and the massive social, political, and cultural changes that this
reversal signals-complicates any claims for simple continuity between the two
periods. The gay liberation and lesbian feminist politics forged in the late 1960s
were certainly inHuenced by the work of the pre-W WI anarchist sex radicals,
but they represent a distinct and new phase in the politics of anarchism and
homosexuality.
CHAPTER ONE:
"THE RIGHT TO COMPLETE LIBERTY OF ACTION":
ANARCHISM, SEXUALITY, AND AMERICAN CULTURE
IN 1912, WILL DURANT left a Catholic seminary and j oined the teaching
staff of the Ferrer Center, an anarchist school and cultural center located in
New York City. The Ferrer Center, which opened in 1911, was an early coun
tercultural institution created by tur n-of-the-centur y anarchists who sought to
construct a new world in what they saw as the decaying and corrupted body
of the existing order. Durant would eventually become one of America's most
popular historians, but at the time he was a y oung man in search of himself.
Durant was drawn to the political and intellectual life of the Ferrer Center, a
perfect counterpoint to the seminary life he turned his back on.
In addition to his teaching duties, Durant was asked to deliver a series of
lectures on the topic of sex. His talks included a presentation on free love
as well as lectures titled "Prostitution, Its History, Causes, and Effects," "Ho
,,
mosexualism," and "Sex and Religion. 1 Durant's lectures proved to be quite
o popular. For example, his discussion of "Sex and Religion " attracted a crowd
§ � of "some sixty anarchists, socialists, single-taxers, and free-lovers," a diversity
.s � of political opinion and perspective that reflected the heterodox ideological
� � culture of the anarchist movement. His argument was provocative: Christianity
� bJ and other religious traditions were shot through with erotic currents and sy m
� � boIs. According to Durant, audience members "were glad to hear me dilate on
14 FREE COMRAOES
sex as one of the sources of religion, and to learn that the phallus had in many
,,
places and forms been worshipped as a symbol of divi�e power. 2
Unlike the pe0ple at the Ferrer Center, the leaders of the Catholic Church,
with whom Dlm,nt was so recently associated, were not amused. Shortly after
his talk , Durant's brother, Sam, called to tell him that the Newark Evenil1l News
"has a story, on the front page, about the Bishop excommunicating you because
of your lecture la�t Sunday." 3 Durant's interpretation of scripture did not amuse
the Bishop and he acted to expel this newly minted heretic. By choosing to
speak at the Ferrer Center, Durant forfeited his respectability and joined the
ranks of anarchists, bohemians, disaffected intellectuals, and others interested in
exploring new ways of living and loving.
We do not know what the Bishop thought about Durant giving a lecture
on "Homosexualism," because in his public comments regarding Durant's ex
communication, he remarked only on the lectures about religion. Unfortu
nately, there is no known transcript of Durant's address, though he did draw
on a number of discourses and was inspired by others as he drafted his speech
on same-sex love. He seems also to have had a personal interest in the subject
of same-sex eroti,:ism-his choice of the topic is proof enough of that. In one
of his memoirs, Durant recounts that just prior to taking the job at the Ferrer
Center, he shared a room with "a handsome Neapolitan, with the figure of
Michelangelo's David." His admiration for his roommate's body later struck
him as having an erotic component: "There must have been a trace of the ho
mosexual in me," he mused, "for I enjoyed looking at him, especially when he
undressed for a bath."The living David that he shared a room with was not the
only man whose beauty Durant remarked upon:" I must have surprised my in
timates," he confessed, by the frequency with which he voiced his "admiration
,,
for the male body. 4 Whether or not Durant acted on his feelings is unclear,
but he was interested enough in the topic to have infor med himself and to be
willing to speak to an audience about it. 5
In constructing his speech Durant may have consulted with some of the
leading figures associated with the Ferrer Center, a number of whom-includ
ing Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman-had already or would shortly
deliver public presentations on the topic of same-sex love. There were many
anarchists, as well as those drawn to the anarchist movement, who were inter
ested in the social, cultural, and ethical status of homosexuality. For example,
Alden Freeman, himself a homosexual, donated frequently to anarchist causes
and paid Durant':, salary at the Ferrer Center. There were many people at the
Ferrer Center who could have spoken knowledgeably with Durant about his
lectures.
"THE RIGHT TO COMPLETE LIBERTY OF ACTION" 15
We do know that Durant drew upon the nascent science of sexology in

exploring his topic. His use of the term "homosexualism" indicates as much.
Durant's neologism is a variant of the word "homos�xual" itself, a new term
coined in 1869 by the Hungarian sexologist Karoly Maria Benkert, and not
introduced into English until the 1890s.6 Emma Goldman, Leonard Abbott, or
other Ferrer Center figures may well have introduced Durant to this relatively
new scientific literature. It is highly doubtful that he had encountered sexo
logical discourse at the seminary. Durant felt comfortable in using such new
terms because he could expect that his Ferrer Center audience, interested as
they were in the subject of sex, would be familiar with the new terminology
being coined by sexologists.
Durant's talk on "homosexualism" did not elicit a particularly strong reac- .
tion from the Ferrer Center audience. No one moved to excommunicate the
eager new faculty member for bringing up the subject of same-sex love. By
contrast, Durant's other presentations sparked lively discussions. Following Du
rant's talk on "Sex and Religion," for example, his audience asked "hundreds
of questions" of him, but when it came to the lecture on "homosexualism,"
the Ferrer Center audience had relatively little to say.7 The idea that "almost
every symbol in religious history, from the serpent of paradise to the steeples
on the churches in nearby Fifth Avenue, had a phallic origin" was a novelty for
Durant's audience.H The fact that two people of the same sex might love each
other and seek to express that love through sex was not, apparently, remark
able.
The relatively sedate reaction of his audience indicates that Durant's lecture
was not the first time that anarchists had publicly discussed the issue of homo
sexuality-it was a topic common enough to be unremarkable. For decades
before Durant came to the Ferrer Center, anarchist sex radicals had defended
the right of men and women to love whomever they wished. Nearly ten years
before Durant gave his lecture, Emma Goldman-one of the era's best know
anarchists-stated plainly in a talk she gave in Chicago, that "the sex organs as
well as all the other organs of the human body are the property of the indi
vidual possessing them, and that individual and no other must be the sole au
,,
thority and judge over his or her acts. 9 This was a commonly held position in
the English-language anarchist movement. The 1895 trial of Oscar Wilde gave
the issue of homosexuality a salience it lacked among American anarchists, and
it was at least from that point onward that the basic principle that each person
was "the sole authority and judge of his or her acts" was applied by anarchists
to the question of same-sex relations. In the aftermath of the Wilde trial, anar
chist sex radicals argued that as long as the sex was consensual the gender of the
16 FREE COMRAOES
participants was beside the point. Talk of homosexuality was old hat for those
who attended lectures at the Ferrer Center-nothing to get worked up about
..
and certainly not a topic that generated scandal or disapproval.
The blase attimde of Durant's Ferrer Center audience that night stands in
stark contrast to how the topic of homosexuality was greeted in other forums
of the day. That is, when it was discussed at all. Durant's lecture was, in fact, a
rather rare occurrence. Outside of anarchist meetings and lecture halls, there
were few public venues where the topic of homosexuality was discussed. More
importantly, the political, social, and cultural context of the public discussions
that did occur, was radically different than that atmosphere in which Durant
spoke.
In 1907, for example, Dr. Georg Merzbach, a colleague of the German
sexologist and homosexual rights activist Magnus Hirschfeld, traveled to the
United States and delivered a series of lectures on what he called "our area of
specialization." In March of that year, Merzbach spoke before the New York
Society of Medical Jurisprudence. His "select audience" included lawyers and
doctors, as well as "three ministers" that he took pains to invite. Merzbach
spoke before doctors, psychiatrists, lawyers, and clergymen because these pro
fessions had a vested interest in the topic of sexuality; they crafted policy and
practice that shaped the lives of people whose emotional and erotic conunit
ments revolved around members of their own sex. Despite the novelty of his
address-or perhaps because of it-Merzbach was able to tell Hirschfeld that
he "made a truly sensational impression" on the gathered professionals. Unlike
the members of the Ferrer Center, Merzbach's audience spent nearly two hours
asking questions of their visitor. Though some audience members advised their
colleagues to act with tolerance when dealing with homosexuals, others felt
homosexuality called for drastic countermeasures. Merzbach fielded questions
from doctors and other professional eager to fine-tune their methods of inter
lO
vention. These included: "Doesn't homosexuality lead ultimately to paranoia
or other psychoses?" and "Can homosexuality be eradicated by castration?"
The people who founded the Ferrer Center were opposed to the kind of
power wielded by those who attended Merzbach's lecture. Merzbach's audi
ence was made up of professionals who operated the regulatory institutions
that meted out judgment, penalty, and cure to patients, prisoners, and sup
plicants seeking redemption from illness, crime, and sin. Merzbach's audience
members made their living by establishing and enforcing norms of human
behavior. Durant's Ferrer Center audience approached the topic of sexuality,
politics, and education from a radically different perspective-one grounded
in the political ideals of absolute freedom of individual expression and associa-
tion. The anarchists had a critique of the kinds of power exercised by the elites
who helped formulate and enforce the punitive, negative view of same-sex
love, as expressed in the questions posed to Merzbach by some of his audi
ence members. The "sex act," according to Goldman, "is simply the execution
of certain natural functions of the body," and since "we do not pay or consult
a preacher or politician" when choosing to breath, walk or otherwise use the
body, why should people do so when using the sexual organs?l 1 The anarchists
would reject the idea that the professionals that attended Merzbach's presen
tation should have the power or authority to make decisions about the most
intimate parts of lives other than their own.
Durant's talk on "homosexualism" reflected the larger mission of the Ferrer
Center. The men and women who visited the Ferrer Center attended lectures
on sexuality in order to better appreciate and understand the diversity of human
life and expression. The activists who ran the Ferrer Center sponsored lectures
on a wide variety of topics in the hopes of furthering the coming of a society
in which no one would govern the life choices of others . By rejecting all forms
of authoritarian hierarchy, the anarchists hoped to craft a world in which work,
culture, and love were freely expressed and enjoyed. They envisioned a world
where each person was her or his own master, where no outside authority
would constrain the actions of others. Durant's audience attended his talk not
because they had a professional stake in the subject of the lecture, but because
the topic of sex, variation, and free expression interested them. When it came
to the exploration of the ethical, social, and cultural place of same-sex love in
American culture, there was a sharp divide between the libertarian atmosphere
of the Ferrer Center and the more censorious lecture halls of organizations like
the New York Society of Medical Jurisprudence.
The anarchist sex radicals addressed the subject of homosexuality in the
context of a radical political movement. Homosexuality was not the only as
pect of sexuality that the anarchists debated. In accordance with their ideas
about s"elf-rule, for example, they rejected marriage, which they viewed as a
coercive institution policed by both church and state. Rather than be forced to
submit passion to the cookie cutter pattern of marriage, the anarchists argued
that individuals should have the possibility of creating their own relationships.
"Commonly calling themselves free lovers," writes historian Margaret Marsh,
"anarchists believed that adults could decide what type of sexual association
they desired and were capable of choosing the nature and the duration of that
association." 12 Unlike many of their contemporaries, the anarchists did not in
sist that the only legitimate sexual relationships were those between a man
and woman bound to each other in holy matrimony. Nor did the anarchists
18 FREE C O M RADES
tie sexual express ion to reproduction. At a time when it was illegal to circulate
birth control information through the mail, the anarchists were early and loud
supporters of women's right to control their fertility. More than a few anar
chists-among them Goldman and Ben Reitman-spent time in jail tor their
efforts to end what they saw as the inj ustices of the American sy stem of laws
and values that regulated sexual behavior. It was in the context of their overall
critique of Amer: can sexual mores and rules-and in particular their rejection
of marriage and their advocacy of free love-that the anarchists considered the
question of homosexuality.
In order to understand how it came to pass that homosexuality was a topic
of political debate and discussion amongst the anarchists, one must first under
stand what the an archists stood for and what their movement looked like. W hat
follows is a brief overview of the main characteristics of the movement, with a
special emphasis on the sexual politics developed by the anarchist sex radicals.
Later chapters examine the issue of how these men and women dealt with the
issue of homosexuality in more depth, here the reasons for the topic's relative
importance to the anarchists will be outlined. No other movement in the pe
r iod was as focus"ed on exploring and defending the social, cultural, and politi
cal rights of men and women whose erotic lives were focused on members of
their own sex. The anarchist sex radicals were unique among their contempo
raries because they dealt with issues of burning importance for people whose
voices were seldom heard and little respected. They were the first Americans to
articulate a politics of homosexuality.
The sexual politics of the anarchists reflected the larger political values and
goals of the movement. Anarchists, writes Richard Sonn, "sought freedom from
domination and the r ight to determine his or her own destiny in workplace,
family, and school, while rejecting all forms of hierarchy-that of the academy,
of the church, of social class, of 'correct speech' as defined by elites-as well as
n
those coercive arms of the state, the army, the police, and the judiciary." Writ
ing in 1910 for the Encyclopedia Britannica, Peter Kropotkin, a Russian noble
man, who renounced his title and became one of the best-known anarchists of
his time, attempted to define anarchism for a general readership: Anarchists, he
wrote, advocate a "theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived
without government-harmony in such a society being obtained . . . by free
agreements . . . constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also
for the satisfaction of the infinite var iety of need and aspirations of a civilized
being." This would be a society run according to the lights of those who con
stituted it; they would obey no authority other than their own consciences. In
Kropotkin's words, "man would not be . . . limited in the exercise of his will by
fear of punishment, or by obedience towards individuals or metaphysical enti

ties, which both lead to depression of initiative and servility of mind." Freed
from religious and secular law and other regulations, people would be able to
construct lives that best reflect and fulfill their desires. Like most anarchists,
Kropotkin does not give any concrete guidelines for what an anarchist soci
ety might look like. Future arrangements, he contended, would "result from
an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the
multitude of forces and influences" in society. 14 According to the anarchists, all
manner of needs and desires would find expression in the future society oper
ated under anarchist principles.
In the United States, two variants of anarchism attracted significant mem
bership: communist anarchism and individualist anarchism. The two strains dif
fered from each other in several ways, most notably in their ideas about prop
erty ownership and in the means of bringing about social change. Communist
anarchists--such as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman-believed that
property should be held in common, while individualist anarchists-like Ben
jamin R. Tucker-believed that individuals should have control over the means
of production. Crudely put, Goldman and Berkman advocated the shared life
of the commune, while Tucker's ideal world consisted of a network of rug
ged individualists. What also set them apart was that some communist anar
chists countenanced the use of political violence, while individualists tended
to eschew violence entirely. Not all anarchists can be fit into such neat cat
egories. Though the distinctions between communist- and individualist-anar
chism was of utmost importance to some, a number of anarchists, including
figures like John William Lloyd, downplayed the differences between the two
camps. Lloyd's ideas were a mixture of communalism, individualism, and ideas
drawn from other strands of reformist and radical thought. Though the varia
tions among communist and individualists were important, the basic principles
of self-rule, freedom of individual expression, opposition to hierarchy, and the
defense of social and individual dissent were the essential heart of anarchism.
It is difficult to construct a simple profile of those who joined the anarchist
movement-anarchists found converts among the poor and the wealthy, na
tive-born Americans and recent immigrants. Some generalizations, however,
can be made with relative certainty. Anarchists were concentrated in cities in
the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific Coast areas, though there were pockets of
activism along the industrial frontier in the Western states. In the United States,
communist anarchists tended to be immigrants and more often from·the work
ing class, while individualist anarchists were often native-born, middle-class
Americans.
20 FREE COMRADES
The anarchists typically enj oyed limited success among organized, native
born workers, but what they lacked in numbers was ofEet by the ideological
influence they were able to exert. According to political scientists Seymour
Martin Lipset and Gary Marks, prior to World War I, many American labor
activists " regarded the state as an enemy and felt that government-owned in
dustry would be much more difficult for workers and unions to resist than
,,
private companies. ! 5 Samuel Gompers, the legendary leader of the American
Federation of L abor (AFL) much of its early history described himself as " three
quarters anarch ist." j(, Gompers was notoriously anti-radical and was no fan
of the anarchists, but his statement indicates the degree to which antistatist
thought circulate;:! i n labor circles. The historian J. F. Finn argues that anarchists
played a role in pushing the AFL to ban "party p olitics from the deliberations
,,
of the [union's] conventions. 17 I deologically, if not numerically, anarchism was
a force among labor's advocates.
There were fi�w anarchists in the South. The southern states were not a
hospitable environment for anarchism or any other for m of radical politics that
threatened the ra cial and class order established in the post-Rec onstruction
years . Because the South attracted few immigrants, violently suppressed activ
ism by African-Americans and other working class p e ople, and had a relatively
small and unsophisticated middle class, there was not the same c o nstituency
for anarchism as there was in cities of the North and West. Emma Goldman ,
for example, very rarely ventured b elow the Mason-Dixon Line during her
many years as a public speaker. With this in mind, it is unsurprising, given the
concentration of African-Americans in the South, that there were few black
anarchists . In this, anarchists were no different than the Socialist Party or other
Left groups of the p re-WWI era .
Compared to other branches of the Left during the period, women were
well represented among the anarchists. This was especially true in the English
language anarchis t movement. Women served both in leadership p o sitions and
among the rank and file. Rather than being relegated to "women's auxiliaries,"
as they were in so much of the turn-of-the-century Left , women were at the
c enter of the anarchist movement.
Anarchist women were especially imp ortant in the construction of the idea
o f free love and in the critique of oppressive gender patterns. At the heart of
anarchist sexual politics, was a sharp rebuke to the notion that women were less
s exual than men .md that they \vere incapable of making decisions for them
s elves. This was hrgely a sexual politics constructed by anarchist women, but
it resonated acros:; gender lines and was popular among anarchist sex radic als .
For example, when the idea that women had little sexual passion-certainly far
less than men-had great currency, the j ournal Liberty rejected that assumption
and made no distinction between female and male sexual agency. Tucker and
his largely male contributors readily acknowledged that women were quite
cap able of lustful thoughts and deeds, and that, furthermore, such actions did
not call into question their moral standing. They explicitly rej ected the notion
that women were morally superior to men by virtue of their supposed lack of
p assion. Historian, Margaret Marsh writes of Liberty that it "stood consistently
behind the campaign to eliminate the double standard and to remove any so
cial stigma from the women who chose to exercise their sexual freedom." 1 8
In addition t o taking a positive stand for women's right to pursue sexual
pleasure, the anarchists were sharply critical of the hierarchical and patriarchal
nature of marriage. Anarchist,Voltairine de Cleyre, c ompared the life of a mar
ried woman to that of a "bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her mas
,,
ter's bread, and serves her master's passion. 19 According to historian Hal Sears,
" The word 'free' in free love held two meanings for woman: the freedom not
to surrender her vagina to anybody, regardless of their relationship or supposed
,,
duty, and the freedom to offer it at wil1. 2o The radicalism of anarchist sexual
p olitics-the very thing that made it open to the defense of same-sex love-is
grounded in a feminist analysis of sexuality.
While the various ethnic groups active in the anarchist movement did co
operate at times, for the most part they remained divided along linguistic and
cultural lines. For example, in 1900, when activists from the United States at
tended an anarchist c onvention in Europe, they discussed the different ethnic
groups separately, acknowledging the distinct dynamics of each community. In
her report to the general assembly, Emma Goldman carefully distinguished be
tween what she termed the "American" movement, meaning the English-lan
guage movement, and the " foreign," or immigrant movements, in the United
States. James F. Morton told his European comrades that " the methods of pro
paganda differ greatly according to the place, language, and nationality" of the
anarchist groupS.21
The immigrant anarchists largely conducted their p olitical and cultural ac
tivities in their native tongues. To illustrate, there were Spanish, Russian, Ger
man, Yiddish, Italian, and English anarchist j ournals published in the United
States, and leading figures within the respective language groups largely com
municated in the language of their birth country. This meant that the move
ment was effectively separated into language groups. Though Emma Gold
man and Alexander Berkman delivered lectures in a variety of languages their
audience members would have been lost had they come to the lecture hall
on the wrong night. With few exceptions-Voltairine de Cleyre, the most no-
22 FREE COMRADES
table--the native·-born anarchists were linguistically separated from the newer

immigrant groups, like the Italians, Easter n European Jews, and Russians. While
some key figures like Goldman bridged the movement's linguistic divides, most
anarchists had limited contact with comrades from other language groups.
Though the decades of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries
were-in the words of historian Richard Sonn-the "heyday of the interna
tional anarchist movement," it is difficult to arrive at hard numbers of anar
chists. 22 Margaret Marsh estimates that in any given year between 1 880 and
1 920 "there were at least fifteen- to twenty-thousand committed anarchists in
the United States , and perhaps an additional thirty- to fifty-thousand sympa
thizers." 23 Since there was most likely a high rate of turnover in the movement,
hundreds of thousands of people became familiar with the ideas, goals, and
leaders of the movement.
But the influence of anarchism cannot simply be measured by tallying up
numbers of activists. The anarchists' influence on American social and cultural
thought was disproportionate to the size of the movement itself Writers, artists,
bohemians, radicals, intellectuals, and reformers-among them Jack London,
Alice Hamilton, Eugene O'Neill, Margaret Sanger, Hutchins Hapgood, Frank
Harris, Robert Henri, William James, and Margaret Anderson-were all drawn
to the ideas and passionate spirit of the anarchists. In this regard, the anarchist
movement of the turn-of-the-century can be compared to the Communist
party of the 1 930s. Like the Communists, the anarchists "considered them
selves revolutionaries, marching . . . along the path of human liberation." Their
"deep faith in their cause and its ultimate triumph" created a powerful attrac
tion. 24 Such dedication and idealism drew the attention of many outside the
movement; fellow travelers lent their support and helped magnify anarchism's
influence. The dedicated core of anarchist activists was complemented by a
much larger shadow-movement of people who might not have been willing to
embrace the full scope of anarchist ideology, but nonetheless acknowledged the
impact and relevance of its critiques of power.
The participation of a few anarchists in some of the more spectacular acts
of political violence strongly colored their reputation. Anarchists, for example,
were blamed for the Haymarket Tragedy of 1 886, a confrontation in Chicago
between workers and police that resulted in the death of eight police officers
and an unknown number of demonstrators. Eight anarchists were arrested and
convicted for their alleged participation in the incident. One of those con
victed committed suicide in prison, four were hanged, and three spent years
in prison before being pardoned by Governor John Peter Altgeld. The figure
of the anarchist as a swarthy, deranged bomb-throwing terrorist was common-
place in Western culture at the time. Some, like psychiatrist Cesare Lomobroso
went so far as to argue that " anarchists like other criminals suffered from he
reditary bodily anomalies," comparing their movement to " a form of epidemic
,,
disease. 2 5
The Haymarket Tragedy and the ensuing trial engendered a wave of anti
anarchist and anti-socialist feeling. Anarchism's influence among members of
the native-born working class suffered a severe setback. Middle class and elite
Americans were even more horrified by the thought of what might happen
should the anarchists succeed in their nefarious plots. The reaction of many
Americans can be gauged by the b ehavior of the young Theodore Roosevelt,
who was in the Dakotas trying his hand at ranching at the time of the Hay
market Tragedy. When news of Chicago's events reached the range, Roosevelt
gathered together his cowboy friends and burned the accused in effigy. Accord
ing to Paul Avrich, the reaction to the Haymarket Tragedy constitutes the first
Red S care in American history.26
This would not be the last time that Roosevelt fulminated against the anar
chists . In 1901, a young anarchist named Leon Czolgosz assassinated President
McKinley, and though he insisted that he acted alone, his actions set off another
wave of anti-anarchist hysteria, which resulted in the arrest of a number of
anarchists . Theodore Roosevelt, now president of the United States, attacked
what he viewed as a dangerous threat to the nation: " The anarchist," he de
clared, "is a criminal whose perverted instincts lead him to prefer c onfusion
and chaos to the most beneficent form of social order. . . The anarchist is ev
erywhere not merely the enemy of system and of progress, but the deadly foe
of liberty." Roosevelt called for vigorous repression of anarchism. "No man or
body of men preaching anarchist doctrines should b e allowed at large . . . An
archist speeches, writings, and meetings are essentially seditious and treason
able." In order to stem the spread of these seditious ideas, Roosevelt called for
changes in the immigration laws. "We should aim," he proposed, "to exclude
absolutely not only all persons who are known to be believers in anarchistic
principles or members of anarchistic societies, but also all p ersons who are of
low moral tendency or unsavory reputation.'m Roosevelt's view of the anar
chists as a kind of political and moral infection that required c ontainment and
drastic surgical cure was commonly held. Margaret Marsh argues that, "Ameri
,,
cans viewed anarchists as the harbingers of chaos. 28
I n order to understand Roosevelt's outrage with the anarchists it is im
portant to understand that, in addition to presenting a physical danger, the
president felt the anarchists were a threat to the nation's moral fiber. Along with
p olitical disorder, the anarchists were asso ciated with sexual chaos. The idea
24 FREE COMRADES
that anarchism would bring about an erotic revolution was both fascinating
and deeply frightening to many Americans. Newspaper accounts denouncing
the anarchists rarely missed the opportunity to note that they were "free lov
ers," whose ideas threatened the sanctity of the home and hearth. Wr iting in
the American Law Review in 1902,james Beck described the anarchists as "men
tal and moral perverts." In his 190 1 address, Roosevelt portrayed the anarchists
as a moral danger to the country and associated them with sexual disorder ; the
anarchists, Roosevelt thundered, were "perverted" and equal to "persons who
,,
are of low moral tendency. 29 Of course, Roosevelt and Beck's statements came
immediately following McKinley's assassination, but their words also reflect the
fact that the anarchists devoted considerable resources-in lectures, publica
tions, and political organizing-to addressing how power operates at the most
intimate levels of human life. In their attempt to construct a new sexual ethics,
anarchists addressed a wide variety of topics including birth control, marriage,
obscenity, and homosexuality. "The sex question," Emma Goldman believed,
,,
was "one of the most vital of our time. 3 o Goldman and her comrades chal
lenged the notion that the only legitimate form of erotic expression was sex
between marr ied people, ideally for procreative purposes. To those who felt
that sexual conduct outside the bonds of marriage was a danger to the so
cial order, the anarchists were not merely harbingers of political violence, they
were, themselves , symptoms of moral decay and sexual chaos.
Roosevelt was not alone in noting the anarchists' interest in sexu ality, though
not all observers were as critical as he was. The writer Hutchins Hapgood, who
was a great admirer of the anarchists, wrote that they were "extreme rebels
,,
against sex .conventions. 31 A good deal of his attraction to the anarchists was
due to their rejection of what he felt were the stifling sexual norms of his up
bringing, against which he was rebelling. Some accused the anarchists of doing
little else but seeking sexual liberation. Hapgood's contemporary, Floy d Dell,
observed that the anarchists, unlike the state socialists, "have left the industrial
field more and more and have entered into other kinds of propaganda." They
,
"have especially 'gone in for kissing games." 32 The anarchists, according to
Dell, "seemed to lay more stress on the importance of Freedom in the relations
of men and women than in the other relations of human society."33 Dell's com
ment regarding anarchist "kissing games" was made as an epigrammatic criti
cism, but it reflects a basic truth: Anarchism was the only political movement
of the time to treat issues of sexual liberation as fundamental to the project of
human emancipation. The anarchists, according to historian David Kennedy,
" demanded not only political but also aesthetic and especially psychological
revolution . And the cutting psychological theories the anarchists consistently

invoked aimed at one central fact of lite: sex."'4
The fact that anarchists were associated with revolt in matters social, as well
as political, constituted p art of their appeal. The mixture of sexual transgression,
p olitical upheaval, and idealism was a powerful draw for middle-class people
wanting to exp erience psychological freedom. Young Durant felt a frisson of
liberation when, shortly after leaving the seminary, he found himself delivering
talks on sex at the Ferrer Center. The breathless description of adventures that
appear in his autobiographical works give ample evidence of the excitement
Durant felt when he j oined the anarchist ranks. Others felt similarly.
In the autobiographical novel, A Girl A m ong the Anarchists, Isabel Meredith
describes the appeal of anarchism in terms that illustrate the degree to which
it was seen as a path to p ersonal liberation. " The right to complete liberty of
action," Meredith writes, " the conviction that morality is relative and personal
and can never be imposed from without . . . and that consequently no man has
a right to judge his fellow; such and similar doctrines which I heard frequently
upheld, impressed me deeply."35 Meredith was the pseudonym of Helen and
Olivia Rossetti, the nieces of the English painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who
were active in the anarchist movement in their youth. The Rossettis edited The
Torch:A RevolutionaryJournal of International Socialism that featured contributi6ns
from Emma Goldman, George Bernard Shaw, Emile Zola, and Ford Maddox
Ford. The Rossettis, Durant, and other men and women on both sides of the
Atlantic were attracted to anarchism because it served them, in the words of the
Rossettis, in their attempt to "free [themselves] from all the ideas, customs, and
prej udices which usually influence [their] class."36
The volatile mixture of personal emancipation, sexual liberation, and politi
cal radicalism also colored Hutchins Hapgood's interest in anarchism. Hapgood
wrote several works on anarchism and befriended leading figures in the move
ment. Goldman wryly commented that her friend would not have known what
to write about were it "not for the radicals." Hapgood writes "well enough,"
she teased, "but is so poor in material."37 Hapgood was drawn to the anarchists
because they symbolized revolt in all facets of life. Hapgood wrote so often and
so favorably of the anarchists that Mabel Dodge Luhan claimed that "he did a
great deal to make their cause weaker, in a way, because by writing sympatheti
cally of them, he helped remove the terror of them from people's mind."3R But
it was precisely anarchism's aura of transgression that drew Hapgood. "People
who are regarded as evil," Hapgood wrote, "have often had for me a strange
and haunting appeal."39 Mary Berenson, who like Luhan gathered artists and
intellectuals around her, claimed that Hapgood was "seeking for God and the
26 FREE C OM RADES
,,
Absolute among thieves, anarchists, prostitutes, and pederasts . 411 Berenson's
j uxtaposition o f anarchists, \vith prostitutes and pederasts indicates the degree
to which politi cd revolt was associated with sexual deviance and how both
phenomenons were linked to anarchism. The mixture of social revolt, sexual
deviance and idealism associated with anarchism was a powerful psychologi
cal resourc e for those seeking to escape conventional lives. I t was precisely this
complex mix of .lSSociations that drew Hapgood to the feet of Goldman and
her c olleagues.
We should not, however, confuse the ways that the anarchists were per
c eived-even by some of their admirers-with ho'w the anarchists sa\v them
selve s . Anarchist �;ex radicals did not b elieve they were acting to bring about
disorder-they wished to construct a new social and sexual order, and dealt
with issues of sexuality in a serious and sustained way. Nor were all anarchists
enthusiastic about pursuing sex and gender p olitics. In fact, some of the most
famous anarchist�. of the riineteenth- and early-twentieth centuries were ex
tremely conservative in their sexual politics. The mid-century, French anar
chist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, for example, thought women's emancipation
and birth control would usher in a "Pornocracy," and his unpublished writings
contain frequent condemnations of sodomy. 4 1 Johann Most, a leading figure
in American's German-language anarchist movement and a contemporary of
Tucker and Gokman, equaled Proudhon in misogyny and antipathy toward
s exual liberalisll1.
"f2
Peter Kropotkin, though hardly as vehement as Proudhon or Most, shared

their suspicions of s exual politics. When Will Durant, then on a trip to Europe ,
told Kropotkin that he intended to visit the eminent sexologist Havelock Ellis,
Kropotkin advised Durant not to go, warning that " the detailed study of sex . . .
always led to m o rbidity and perversion."43 Kropotkin issued a similar warning
to Emma G oldm an when she was visiting london. I n both cases Kropotkin
spoke in vain; neither Durant nor Goldman heeded his advice to avoid the
likes of Ellis.
In the United States , class and ethnicity-themselves largely overlapping
categories-often indicated whether or not a particular anarchist chose to put
sexuality at the heart of her or his p olitics. In general, working-class, immigrant
anarchists were less interested in sexual politics while their largely middle-class,
English-speaking p eers were more enthusiastic in their advocacy of fre e love
and more expans ive in their interpretation of what that might allow. Leading
individualist anarchists, like Ezra and Angela Heywood and Moses Harman,
for example, devoted much more attention to the subj ect of sex, the rights of
women, and the politics of culture than did communist anarchist leaders like
Johann Most. Though this is a somewhat large generalization and therefore

limited in its veracity. Some immigrant, working-class anarchists cared passion
ately about the application of anarchist principles to private life. Robert Reit
zel, for example, the editor of the Detroit based, German anarchist publication
Der arme Teufel (The Poor Devil) was, according to his biographer, "one of
,,
the first in America to speak positively of homosexuality. 44 And leading com
munist anarchists in the English language movement, including Berkman and
Goldman, devoted considerable resources to the pursuit of questions of sexual
ity. Goldman, in fact, was one the most famous sex radicals of her day, a name
to shock, delight, and conjure with.
In the United States, many of the English-language anarchists-whether
communists or individualists---shared an interest in the politics of sexuality. This
distinguished them from most of their peers in Europe and from their non
English speaking comrades in the US. Harry Kelly wrote in Mother Earth about
this disjuncture between the "European" and the "American" movements. "The
sex question," Kelly wrote, "is probably more in evidence in the American An
archist movement than in the European." Though Kelly described the ideo
logical division as being one between the continents, it applied perfectly well
to the different language groups within the United States-"European" mean
ing foreign-born, non-English-speaking anarchists, and "American" meaning
the largely native-born, English-speaking movement. Kelly, who titled his essay,
"Anarchism-A Plea for the Impersonal;' was not altogether pleased with this
development. He was troubled that the foreign-language anarchists "concern
themselves more with the mass 'movement than we do; they fight the capitalist;
we fight Comstock." 4 5 While a number of English-language anarchists shared
Kelly 's misgivings that so much attention was being devoted to sexual politics,
the majority of Kelly 's comrades were less troubled. The pages of Mother Earth,
where Kelly 's piece appeared, are filled with essays exploring various aspects of
the "sex question," including articles on birth control, free love, sexual jealousy,
and homosexuality. 46 In spite of Kelly's "plea," the English-language anarchists
in the United States were noted for the resources and time they devoted to ap
plying anarchist principles to the politics of personal life.
The issue of homosexuality proved to be a particularly contentious one
among the various anarchist communities. Goldman, for example, was con
stantly fighting what she called the '''respectability ' in our ranks." Her Italian
and Jewish anarchist comrades "condemned me bitterly," she wrote, "because I
had taken up the cause of the Homo Sexuals [sic] and Lesbians as a persecuted
faction in the human family." Goldman rejected their criticism as stemming
from an overly "economic" view of life. "Very few of them," Goldman felt,
28 FREE COMRAOES
"have come within miles of the intricacies of life that motivates human ac
,,
tion. 47 From the perspective of her anarchist critics, Goldman was wasting
critical resources speaking on topics of secondary importance. For them, the
issue of economic: inj ustice was of paramount importance. And since most im
migrant anarchists were men, there were fewer women to advocate for gender
equality in love and life. Goldman's anarchist critics were also wary of what
they saw as the negative publicity that such action generated. "Anarchism,"
in their view, "was already enough misunderstood, and anarchists considered
depraved; it was i nadvisable to add to the misconceptions by taking up per
verted sex-forms." The disapproval of her comrades deterred Goldman little,
and in fact, had the opposite effect. "I minded the censors in my own ranks,"
she wrote, " as little as I did those in the enemy's camp. In fact, censorship from
comrades had the same effect on me as police persecution; it made me surer of
myself, more determined to plead for every victim, be it one of social wrong or
moral prej udice."48 If Goldman's comrades thought that they could silence her
they were profoundly wrong.
None of this is to say that English-language anarchists did not engage in
what now might be called homophobic outbursts . In 191 5 , for example, Mother
Earth p�blished an essay by Robert Allerton Parker attacking " Feminism in
America." Parker, who may have coined the term "birth control," was a teacher
at the Ferrer Center.49 In his essay Parker described feminism as " an amus
ing and typical in stance of feminine intellectual homosexuality," a description
which belittles the goals of feminism and imputes a negative value to same-sex
love. By this point, this was a tired accusation, one already made by conserva
tive critics of the women's movement. Ironically, Parker's attack focused on
the sexual conservatism of the turn-of-the-century women's movement. He
criticized the leading figures of the movement for choosing the side of" orga
nized morality" and accused them of being " clean-handed slaves of the State,
the Charities, The Churches, and the 'captains' of industry."so Though Parker's
analysis of the women's movement was widely shared by other anarchists , his
language and style of attack were not. Parker's contribution to Mother Earth is
not indicative of a broadly shared feeling against homosexuality. Mother Earth,
which at the time was edited by Alexander Berkman, carried essays that repre
sented a diversity of voices, and not all statements or sentiments that appeared
in its p ages were shared by all of the people associated with it. Nevertheless, ex
amples such as Parker's essay complicate any effort to assert that the pre-World
War I anarchist sex radicals were wholly and completely "gay positive." Even
anarchists who expressed support for the right of men and women to love
members of their own sex made statements that contradicted those claims .
" THE RIGHT TO COM PLETE UBERTY OF ACTION" 29 ·
Whatever their shortcomings, anarchist sex radicals' views distinguished

them from their contemporaries on the Left. The non-anarchist Left held to
what has come to be called the Victorian sexual code. It was wedded to no
tions of female purity and insistent on the need to curb the supposedly baser
instincts of men. Historian Mari Jo Buhle describes the majority of Socialist
Party members as being "social purity-oriented," people who "hoped to stave
off the invasion of capitalism into personal life and attempted to preserve the
ideals of a presumably preexisting sexual morality." sl Daniel DeLeon, the leader
of the Socialist Labor Party from 1890 until his death in 1914, absolutely re
jected the notion that socialism implied the end of marriage and the sexual lib
eration of women. Following the demise of the capitalist mode of production,
women would be safely ensconced in the home. "Accordingly," writes L. Glen
Seretan, "she would be excluded from work outside the home and no longer
'unsexed' by having 'to compete with men in unseemly occupations,' while the
dross of capitalism's morally corrosive environment-promiscuity, adultery, and
divorce-would not again degrade her."s2 Though he was a political rival of
DeLeon, Eugene V Debs, the SPA's best-known leader, shared some of his foes
conservative views regarding women's place. "Debs," writes Nick Salvatore,
"saw women as subsidiary to his main concerns, in orbit around and tangential
to the leading actors . . . their fathers, husbands, and brothers."s 3
The anarchists were quick to note that the sexual and gender politics of
most American socialists did not differ significantly from those of their capital
ist rivals. Emma Goldman held that those radicals who refused to engage "the
sex question" were hardly worse than the mainstream moralists she struggled
against. She bemoaned the fact that it was possible to meet radicals "permeated
with bourgeois morality in matters of sex, thanking the Lord they are not like
the other fellows."s 4 Goldman was a sharp-if not always consistent-critic of
radicals who could not or would not include sexual freedom in their politics.
Goldman was continually frustrated with what she perceived as the conserva
tive nature of American radical culture.
Benjamin R . Tucker's essay, "State Socialism and Anarchism" illuminates just
how far the anarchists and the Marxian socialists diverged on the question of
sexual politics. In it, he discusses how the two schools of thought differed and
how they were alike. Unlike the socialists, the anarchists-according to Tuck
er-were not timid in dealing with the subject ofsexuality. Adopting a mocking
tone, Tucker writes that while socialists did not wish to dwell on "so delicate
a matter as that of the relations of the sexes, the Anarchists do not shrink from
the application of their principle" in whatever arena of life. Tucker asserts, that
30 FREE COMRADES
sexuality, like all other aspects of life, should be

governed by individual desire in free association
with others . Anarchists
acknowledge and defend the right of any man

and woman, or any men and women, to love
each other fi)r as long or as short a time as they
can, will, or may. To them legal marriage and legal
divorce are equal absurdities . They look forward 8 I N,,"''''N R. T U O J( E R.
to the time when every individual, whether man

or woman, shall be" self-supporting, and when �- .. ----� .--
each shall have an independent home of his or . -.

--- _ .. -- - - -. ..
....
her own, whether it be a separate house or rooms
in a house with others; when the love relations
between these independent individuals shall B e n j a m i n Tu cke r's State Socialism and
be as varied as are individual inclinations and Anarchism, p u b l i s h e d i n 1 895 by W.
attractions . 55
R e eves, London I c o u rtesy of the Kate
Sharpley Libra ry}.
Although Tucker's language-- " relations between the sexes"-assumes a het

erosexual couple, the logic of his analysis undercuts such a narrow reading.
Tucker's analysis does not rule out a homoerotic r.eading of his sexual p olitics,
in fact, quite th e opposite is true. Tucker was careful not to set up arbitrary
boundaries for sexual behavior. Nowhere, either in this passage or elsewhere,
does he list what is not permitted in sexual relations. According to Tucker, an
archists furnish no " code of morals to be imposed upon the individual ." And it
is the attempt to regulate the lives of others that is itself the problem. Prefigur
ing the argument that he would make when discussing the Oscar Wilde trial of
1895, Tucker wrote that "Anarchists look upon attempts to arbitrarily suppress
,,
vice as in themselves crimes . 5 6
It is difficult to know how a contemporary reader would have interpreted
Tucker's passage in regards to the matter of homosexuality. His phrasing allows
for the possibility that two or, indeed, more than two men or women would
enter into consensual relations with members of their own sex. Tucker's gen
der-neutral wording reflects his intention of treating women and men with ab
solute equality. Neither sex has a monopoly on sexual desire or greater inclina
tion toward acting out on those desires. But the result-grammatically as well
as p olitically-i:; the creation of the grounds for a homosexual reading of his
sexual ethics. This reading is most clear in a passage that states that anarchists,
"look forward to the time . . . when the love relations between . . . independent
,,
individuals shall be as varied as are individual inclinations and attractions . 5 7
Here the gender of the people involved in sexual relations disappears, and nei-
ther is the nature of their desire specified. It might b e a man attracted to other
men or a woman attracted to both men and women. In any case, Tucker was
willing to accept their desires as legitimate and worth pursuing. The emphasis
on the right of individuals to pursue their desires and attractions as they see
·
fit was the bedrock on which anarchist s exual politics res ted. Consenting in
dividuals are p erfectly within their rights to do whatever they desire. Should
two " independent individuals" who share " inclinations and attractions" wish
to pursue "love relations," then no one has the right to interfere with their
choices. As historian Laurence Veysey notes, Tucker's sexual p olitics implies the
right to explore " th e full range of sexual experiments."s8
The anarchists understood that love and s ex were not innocent of power.
They worked to expose the exercise of hierarchy and domination that lay be
hind moral codes . Some viewed sexual repression as a tool of p olitical, social,
and economic oppression. Arguments against the suppression of birth control,
for example, were often framed as attempts by the ruling elites to manipulate
demographics with an eye toward extending their power. Anarchist writer C.
L. James attacked President Roosevelt's call for large families, as well as his
vehement opposition to birth control by arguing that the "social view . . . that
propagation . . . is a duty" was merely a ploy to ensure that " food for gunpowder
,,
should [not] fail. 59 Roosevelt's dreams of an American military colossus, James
implied, could only be achieved with an abundant supply of soldiers , adminis
trators, and workers. The p resident's admonitions against family planning were
the perfect prescription for a growing military and economic power. James
insisted that Roosevelt's sexual politics were intimately tied to his dreams of
creating a rival to the European empires.
Challenging normative ideas about sex seemed, to some anarchists, to be a
revolutionary act in and of itself. William Thurston Brown, a member of the
SPA who was active in anarchist circles , argued that in "the sex question is
bound every human right, every human p o ssibility, every human fulfillment.
And you can't deal with [the] sex question sanely, manfully, eflectively, without
finding [yourself] under obligation to completely· overturn this whole system
611
of things, and build a new society from the ground Up." Rej ecting the argu
ment that agitation on the s ex question was a waste of time b etter spent on
more serious matters, James S. D enson b elieved that "emancipation from sexual
superstition will bring economic reorganization much Illo re quickly than eco
nomic reorganization will bring emancipation from sexual superstition." This
is so, D enson wrote, because, having tasted the fruits of sexual liberation, a free
woman or man will chafe under the burdens of "present economic institu
tions," and as a consequence " the energies of that s ex radical are likely to be
32 FREE COMRAOES
called into play to help on progressive industrial movement." 6 1 An anonymous

writer self-titled "Ego " wrote, " Free love will gradually undermine existing
economics."62 Sex, in other words , was the key to social transformation-an
idea that neatly tur r: s the crudely materialist analysis of the relationship be
tween sex and gender relations and economic structures on its head. Sex, ac
cording to D enson, Brown, and their colleagues was not an epiphenomenal
bubble, but a powerful set of relationships, desires, and behaviors that structured
the cultural, economic, and cultural life of all Americans . As such, it deserved
careful considerat ion and should be treated with
serIousness .
Anarchist sex radicals challenged the code
of respectable reticence that dominated middle
class culture. Angela Heywood, who published
The Word, an anarchist, free-love j ournal with
her husband Ezra Heywood, argued that rather
�han engage in literary evasions people should
make use of plain language when speaking of the
sexual organs and the sex act. Among the terms
that H eywood suggested were the terms " cock,"
" cunt," and " fuck." Needless to say, Heywood's
enthusiasm for what she called "sexnomencla
Ezra H eywo od I c o u rtesy of the Kate
ture " was not widely shared outside the anar- S h a rp l ey Libra ry).
chist movement.63 But her desire to speak plainly

about the body was widely shared among the
anarchists . John \�illiam Lloyd, for example, wrote a p o em entitled " Finger
Eleventh, Finger of Love " in praise of the p enis, and another entitled "Love
Mouth," which honored the vagina. When the body is " reckoned obscene,"
Lloyd insisted, "life reeks" and "love rots." He condemned those " ashamed of
the beauty of the animal form" and rebuked those who denied the use of " the
p assionate words of sex-admiration."64 While many Americans declined to dis
cuss homosexuality on the grounds that it was obscene-a crime not to be
named among Christians-the anarchist sex radicals felt that censoring sex talk
was the true obscenity.
Anarchist sex radicals rej ected the notion that sexuality was bestial and that
morality was a product of divine authority. In another of his p o ems , entitled
"0 Passionate Ache," Lloyd defended what he characterized as the " animal"
act of sex, stating, " would God that we were all more animal for no animal
knows lust or sins against the liberty of its mate, or condemns the natural as
vile." S exual desire, writes Lloyd, is " as pure as the hunger and thirst in your
stomach." Lloyd neatly inverts the theological arguments used against so-called
crimes against nature. "It is not the animal we are to fear," he wrote, "it is the
perverted human, it is that which rapes, that which vindicates the conventional
,,
as more holy than Nature. 65 Similarly, Michael Monahan argued that though
"the animals are frankly unmoral," they "do not die of paresis, or syphilis or any
of the disorders mentioned in the Psychopathia Sexualis."66 Monahan's reference
to the diagnosis of paresis and his mention of Psychopathia Sexualis is an indirect
naming of same-sex eroticism. Paresis was a form of mental illness associated
with homosexuality, its name used most infamously in the naming of New
,,
York's Paresis Hall, a dance hall frequented by "fairies . 67 Likewise, Psychopathia
Sexualis, Krafft-Ebing's tome on sexual deviation, was a locus classicus of homo
sexuality. Monahan's discussion of the "natural" is ironic in that animals, held to
be much closer to nature than humans, are free of the supposed sexual illnesses
that plague humanity. Both Monahan and Lloyd are playing with the idea that
animals are freer in their sexual liaisons. The problem with sex isn't that it is
innately immoral, but that people believe it is immoral and they are there
fore racked with guilt when they pursue erotic pleasure. Animals romp with
wild abandon, unplagued by modern psychosexual ills. Rather than condemn
certain acts as "unnatural" or "bestial," Monahan and Lloyd appeal to the "un
moral" laws of nature to justifY a wide variety of pleasures and to rebuke those
who, in their minds, shore up oppressive, man-made sexual norms .
One of the key elements of anarchist sexual politics-if not the most im
portant one-was a critique of marriage. Their antagonism to marriage placed
the anarchists squarely in opposition to sexual American norms. They saw mar
riage as a binding institution, policed by the state and sanctioned by religious
authority. In 1888 , the Supreme Court asserted that wedlock "is more than �
mere contract. The consent of the parties is of course essential, but when the
contract to marry is executed by the marriage, a relation is created between the
parties which they cannot change."6R Divorce was difficult to procure, though
the number of divorces rose in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centu
ries. This development was bitterly opposed by those who "clung to the view
of marriage as a lifelong, sacred commitment, and considered divorce a 'conta
,
gion." 69 The concern expressed by the justices in 1888 did not diminish with
the coming of the new century. In 1905 , President Roosevelt "issued a special
message to the Senate and the House alerting members that a growing number
of Americans believed that the sanctity of marriage was held in 'diminishing
regard' because 'the divorce laws are dangerously lax and indifferently admin
,,
istered' in some of the States. 70 Roosevelt, and those who shared his opinions,
34 FREE COMRAOES
viewed marriage as the bedrock upon which the moral and social order of
America rested.
W hile Roosevelt lamented the apparent collapse of marriage, the anar
clusts were among the institution's most fervent critics. Women, the anarchists
claimed, were the main victims of the ty ranny of the marriage bed. Though
"man . . . pay s his toll" in marriage, Emma Goldman wrote, "as his sphere is wid
, ,7 !
er, marr iage does not limit him as much [as it does] woman. Voltairine de
Cleyre described the married woman as "a bonded slave, who takes her mas
ter's name, her master's bread, her master's commands, and serves her master's
passions; who passes through the ordeal of pregnancy and the throes of travail
at his dictation-not at her desire; who can control no property, not even her
, , 72
own body, without his consent. De Cleyre was disdainful of the conserva
tive defense of the sanctity of marriage and the home. In a speech entitled "Sex
Slavery," de Cleyre denounced both "the Church" and "the State" as twin pil
lars of authoritar i anism. She mocked those who sang the praises of the good
wife: "Stay at home, ye malcontents! Be patient, obedient, submissive! D arn our
so c ks, mend out shirts, wash our dishes, get our meals, wait on us and mind our
children! , , 73 The anarchist critique of marriage was premised on the idea that
women as well as men deserved to live their lives free from the authority of
others , whether police agents, priests, or husbands. "All our social institutions,
customs, arrangements," in the words of John William Lloy d, "should be ex
, , 74
pressions of the motive that the woman must alway s be free.
The principle of equal treatment of women and men had a direct impact
on the anarchist sex radical's homosexual politics. Rather than attempt to en
force a single standard of behavior-that of sexual restraint-anarchists wished
to extend to women access to sexual pleasure that was enjoyed, if only ideally,
by men. In 1899, Emma Goldman gave a lecture in San Francisco in which she
defended women 's right to seek out love whenever and wherever they might
find it. "Why," Goldman asked, "should not the woman enjoy the same right if
, , 75
she so pleases? As historian Margaret Marsh has shown, Goldman and other
anarchist women "forged an explicit link between sexuality and self-realiza
tion" and in so doing rejected the notion of women as asexual guardians of
76
pur ity. Having eschewed the role of moral guardians, anarchist sex radical
women were more willing to accept non-normative sexual contact and rela
tionships including those between people of the same sex, as valid and worthy.
In place of marriage, the anarchists championed what they called "free-love
unions." W hen D urant spoke at the Ferrer Center on the subject of free love
in 1912, one of those in attendance remarked that many of his audience mem
, , 77
bers "were living :,n free love at the time. Free-love unions were consensual
" THE RIGHT TO COMPLETE LIBERTY OF ACTION" 35
relationships unsanctioned by church or state, which either party could leave

at will. One of the more famous-not to say infamous-advocates of free love
during the late-nineteenth century was Victoria Woodhull. Though an incon
sistent anarchist at best, Woodhull's view of free love expressed in her speech,
"The Principles of Social Freedom," is a succinct statement of the principles of
free love. "To those who denounce me," Woodhull proclaimed, "I reply,"
Yes , I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right
to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change
that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you
can frame have any right to interfere. And I have the further right to demand
a free and unrestricted exercise of that right, and it is your duty not only to
accord it, but as a community, to see that I am protected in it. I trust that I am
78
fully understood, for I mean just that, and nothing less!
Though she did not address the possibility that her choice of lover might in
clude women in her speech, the logic ofWoodhull's argument did not preclude
it. Quite the contrary, the principle of free love implied the defense of any and
all consensual relationships regardless of the gender of the individuals involved.
Because of their critique of marriage, the anarchists found themselves able and
willing to speak on other issues of sexuality, including homosexuality when, as
it did with the case of Oscar Wilde, the issue came to the fore. Their critique of
marriage opened up a space within which same-sex eroticism could be legiti
mated. The anarchist discourse of free love produced a sexual politics radically
different from that pursued by those who wished merely to reform the institu
tion of marriage. The radical potential of their critique of normative patterns
of heterosexuality can be measured by the extent to which the anarchists dealt
with same-sex relationships.
On questions regarding the politics of sexuality the Socialist Party was far
more conventional than the anarchists. This is especially true in regards to the
question of same-sex eroticism. While some socialists-particularly intellectu
als like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Cry stal and Max Eastman-wrote about
sexuality, no American socialist addressed homosexuality to any meaningful
extent when they articulated their sexual politics.79 In the first decades of the
twentieth century, one of the few times the socialist press examined the subject
of homosexuality was when the Eulenburg Affair broke in Germany. Named
after Philipp Eulenburg, a member of Kaiser Wilhelm II's inner circle, the scan.,.
dal involved "a series of courts-marital concerned with homosexual conduct in
the army as well as five courtroom tr ials that turned on the homosexuality of
prominent members of Kaiser Wilhelm's entourage and cabinet."so The scandal
36 FREE COMRADES
was precipitated by a series of scandalous revelations by Maximilian Harden,

the publisher of Die Zukunjt (The Future), an independent weekly. Harden had
known for some time about the sexual tastes of some of the Kaiser's entourage
but had restrain ed from making the information public. A series of sharp dis
agreements with imperial policy led Harden to use the information about Eu
lenburg and others to attack the Kaiser. Harden was also motivated because he
believed that "homosexuality was becoming rampant" and that, unless exposed,
S!
this vice would eat away at the German nation.
German socialists saw the Eulenburg Affair as a golden opportunity to smear
imperial rule w ith the taint of sodomy. The sexual behaviors of the country's
leaders provided the socialists with ammunition they could use to delegitimize
the regime. American socialists also used the Eulenburg Affair as a cudgel with
which to beat their opponents. In 1908, for example, an article which appeared
in the socialist publication Wilshire 's reveled in the "staggering blow" deliv
ered to the "ruling classes of Germany." The publication reproduced a cartoon
that had appeared in the German press, which showed Harden pulling back a
curtain to reveal a dinner party presided over by the emperor. The party goers
are depicted as pigs and the caption reads, "Ladies, and gentlemen, behold the
set that ruled Germany." Also reproduced in the article are the words of Au
gust Bebel, one of the leaders of the German Socialist Party: "How hideously
disgusting are the things brought to light at this trial; how disgusting are those
,, 82
who have met ruin in this investigation and must bear the responsibility !
Bebel's words give some indication of the vituperation that the Eulenburg Af
fair engendered . Wilshire's eagerly reproduced this acidic tone for its readers.
Without making direct accusations, the implication that the ruling elites of
both countries were decadent, corrupt, and rife with homosexuality was a key
to the socialist papers interest in the scandal.
Emma Goldman's journal, Mother Earth , also reported on the Eulenburg
scandal revealing that "his Majesty 's most intimate friends have a strong pen
chant for the charms of-their own sex." However, the tone of A10ther Earth's
reportage on the scandal is significantly different than that featured in Wilshire's.
Rather than using the Eulenburg Affair as an opportunity to tar the emperor
and his court as a pack of "hideously disgusting" animals exposed by the clear
light of day, Mother Earth pokes fun at the outrage of the supposedly upright
German people, the "good faithful subjects of the Fatherland," who "stand
aghast" at the conduct of their nobility. Mother Earth argues that the mindset of
those who look for moral leadership from their rulers was at the heart of the
scandal. That the Germans countenanced an Emperor is at issue, not the fact
that the Emperor or members of his court had relationships with other men. If
the "good, faithful subj ects of the Fatherland" didn't place their emperor on a
pedestal then there would be no occasion for scandal . The public condemna
tion of the emperor's coterie smacked of the value� of an outraged bourgeoi
sie: "religion, morality, and das deutsche Gemuth [the German soul or tempera
S3
ment] ." The vary ing reactions to the Eulenburg Affair by Mother Earth and
Wilshire's illustrate the important differences between the sexual politics of the
socialists and the anarchists.
The anarchists may also have been more reluctant to use the Eulenburg Af
fair because they were aware that moral outrage of the sort that swirled around
the emperor could be dangerous. Since anarchists were identified with sex
radicalism any political cr itique that prioritized normative moral standards
particularly those involving sexual conduct-could prove dangerous. In such a
climate the anarchists themselves were liabie to become targets of censors and
purity crusaders . And in fact, Mother Earth notes that one of the "first practi
cal steps " taken by authorities eager to "restore the weakening faith" of the
emperor's subjects was to initiate "a campaign of persecution against the Berlin
, , 84
anarchists . The German gover nment deflected attention away from its own
supposed immorality by attacking the anarchists, the quintessential immoralists
of the age.
Anarchists had not always discussed homosexuality in so favorable a manner
as they did in the late 1 890s and beyond. W hile their views were nowhere near
as caustic as the socialist critics of Eulenburg, the first generation of anarchist
sex radicals did not view homosexuality with tolerant eyes. Centered largely in
the Midwest, the first wave of English-language anarchists were active in the
three decades following the Civil War . Though there were not many discussions
of same-sex love by anarchists in the 1870s, 1880s, and early 1890s, the men
tions one can find are largely negative in tone. Like many of their non-anarchist
contemporaries, these pioneering anarchists, as historian Hal Sears has pointed
out, "considered homosexuality to be a physical disease or, at best, a psy chic
S5
and moral perversion." This was true even for those anarchists who kicked
against the constraints of normative sexual ideas. In the course of her defense of
free love, for example, anarchist Lois Waisbrooker condemned homosexuality.
Though she praised the beauty of the ancient Greeks who, she believed, "fol
lowed the leadings of unperverted nature in their conjugal relationships," she
lamented what she called "Grecian degeneracy " -that is, homosexuality. The
homosexuality of the Greeks "was brought about not by following the leadings
of nature but by departure therefrom." According to Waisbrooker, "artificial or
anti-natural modes of living were substituted for the native simplicity of earlier
times." Centuries of war, Waisbrooker wrote, "destroyed all the nobler, the bet-
38 FREE COMRADES
ter endowed specimens of Grecian masculinity, leaving only the ... sordid, the
cr:Jven, the malformed in mind in body " alive. "It is any wonder," she asked,
"the Greeks degenerated?"H(, Interestingly, Waisbrooker's analy sis upends the
narrative that Greek degeneracy was caused by excess luxury and lassitude; war,
she argues, was the seedbed of homosexuality.
Waisbrooker was not alone in making such arguments. In lW)O, Moses Har
man wrote that "abnormal sexuality," which for him included homosexuality,
"is the result of the attempted enforcement of a false standard or morality, false
from nature's standpoint."K7 Similarly, in 1885, C. L. James wrote, "vices are so
largely the fruit of excessive wealth, abject poverty, overwork, oppression, and
despair that with the removal of these causes they may be expected to become
rare."HH In other words, once the inequities of intolerance and economic dispar
ity disappear "vice" will no longer flourish. The idea that homosexuality was a
sign of corruption-an idea that motivated much of the socialists glee in cov
ering the Eulenburg scandal-was quite widely held among a number of Eng
lish-language anarchists in the 1870s, 188()s, and early 90s. It should be noted,
however, that none of the anarchist sex radicals who discussed homosexuality
argued that persons who engaged in same-sex behavior should be condemned
or persecuted.The kind of vitriolic attacks made by the Socialist press against
Eulcnburg is absent from the few anarchist discussions of homosexuality writ
ten by the first wave of activists. The insistence on the rights of individuals
to pursue their own desires was a paramount ideal, one that constrained and
shaped anarchist sexual politics even though, as in the case ofWaisbrooker, this
principle was somewhat less than consistently applied.
By the late-nineteenth century, however, anarchist w riting on homosexual
ity took a radical departure from the views FXT'ressed by"Xhisbrooker, Harman,
and other members of the first wave. This transformation was visible in both
quantitative and qualitative way s. First, the number of times that anarchist sex
radicals discussed homosexuality increased markedly. Noted anarchists like Al
exander Berkman and Emma Goldman regularly presented talks that explored
the social, cultural, and ethical status of same sex love. Second, the tone of
these presentations was quite different from the early, more sporadic mentions
of homosexuality made by anarchist activists. W hile Waisbrooker believed ho
mosexuality was a sign of decadence, anarchists like Tucker defended same-sex
love as a rather pedestrian expression of human erotic variability. Beginning
in the mid-1890s, leading anarchist sex radicals began to actively defend the
rights of men and women to love members of their own sex. Homosexuality
became one of the topics that the anarchist sex radicals devoted considerable
attention to. No other Americans-outside of the medical, legal, and religious
professions-devoted so much time and effort to exploring the social, moral,

and ethical place of same-sex love. And neither did anyone else of the pe
riod develop a political understanding of the r ight of men and women to love
whomsoever they wished, whenever and wherever they wished, in the manner
of their choosing.
There are several reasons for the remarkable shift in attitude. The early
American anarchists had emerged largely from rural and small towns. In the
1870s and 1880s, some of the movement's leading papers, like Lucifer the Light
Bearer, were published in Kansas and other Midwestern, mostly rural states. By
contrast, Mother Earth was published in Greenwich Village, a markedly different
cultural and social environment than the world inhabited by Waisbrooker and
her contemporaries.Tucker began publishing Liberty in Boston, but by the end
of the century he moved to New York.There, he opened a bookstore on Sixth
Avenue that, according to an account that appeared in the New York Herald,
featured "more anarchist literature than...any other one place in the United
,,
States. 89 The more cosmopolitan anarchists of the new century were exposed
to the more variegated sexual subcultures of the urban landscape. In New York
City, as historian George Chauncey documented, homosexuality was unre
markable.
Members of the second wave of anarchist sex radicalism were also more
familiar with the sexological literature on homosexuality that began to appear
at the end of the nineteenth century. Much of this sexological literature-or at
least the texts favored by the anarchists-were themselves products of nascent
political efforts on the part of homosexual men and women, a theme that will
be explored in greater depth below. For the time being, however, one example
will suffice to illustrate this phenomenon: When John William Lloyd discussed
homosexuality and Greece he did so influenced by the work of Edward Car
penter, whose studies of the sex life of the ancient Greeks were inspired by his
desires to find historically validating examples of his own desires. Carpenter
developed historical and psychological theories about same-sex desire because
he wanted to promote a more liberal sexual culture than the one he lived in.
The new sexological work being produced in Europe circulated widely among
the anarchists, and Lloyd was hardly alone in his reading patterns. Emma Gold
man, for example, read Carpenter, as well as Ellis, Hirschfeld, and other sexolo
gists. The anarchist sex radicals examined in the pages below were consumers
of the literature of the expanding science of desire, and their sexual politics
were shaped by it.
But the most important reason for the shift in how American anarchist sex
radicals viewed the issue of homosexuality, is that, by the end of the nineteenth
40 FREE COMRADES
century, homosexuality had become a focus of surveillance and regulation by

police and other authorities. That homosexuality was given increased attention
is evident in the fact that, by the late-nineteenth century, convictions for the
cr ime of sodomy jumped and liledical journals began to feature articles on
the subject. The level of police interest and the increase in medical literature
on the topic of same-sex love were directly related. To illustrate: in 1892, Dr.
Irving Rosse, a physician from Washington, D.c. read a paper at a meeting of
the Medical Society ofVirginia that documented the extent of what he called
the "Perversion of the Genesic [procreative] Instinct" in the nation's capitol. It
also documents the degree to which homosexuality had become an issue of
concern for the police:
From a judge of the District police court I learned that frequent delinquents
of this kind have been taken by the police in the very cOIllmission of the
crime, and that owing to defective penal legislation on the subject he is
obliged to try such cases as assaults or indecent exposure. The lieutenant in
charge of my district, calling on me a few weeks ago for medical information
on this point, informs me that men of this class give him far more trouble
than the prostitutes. Only of late the chief of police tdls me that his Illen
have made, under the very shadow of the White House, eighteen arrests in
Lafayette Square alone (a place by the way frequented by Guiteau) in which
'ill
the culprits were taken in flagrante delicto...
Dr. Rosse's account is typical of the medical case studies and narratives that
began to appear in the United States at this time. III many of these texts, physi
cians document the degree to which police authorities had become interested
in these "crimes of sexuality" and indicate their willingness to assist in this
project.
in his descriptIOn of the men who frequented Lafayette Park, Rosse links
homosexuality with Charles]. Guiteau, the disgruntled political aspirant who
assassinated President James Garfield in 1881. The trial that followed became an
important precedent in the judgment and treatment of the criminally insane.
This conflation of crime, insanity and homosexuality reflects the commonly
held belief that sexual attraction-much less activity-between members of
the same sex was a danger to the moral and social order. Because of this notion,
the police were increasingly vigilant in their pursuit of those who engaged in
homosexual acts. Dr. Rosse and other professionals often assisted the police in
their efforts to contain what was viewed as a growing moral and social prob
lem.
It was not by accident, nor for idiosyncratic reasons then that the anar
chist sex radicals began to struggle with the legal, social, and moral status of
same-sex love. At a time when few Americans cared to defend the r ights of
men and women whose sexual and emotional life were made the target of
arrest, moral censure, and social ridicule, the anarchists were not afraid to do
so. Though the first generation of English-speaking anarchists in the United
States had devoted relatively little attention to the issue of homosexuality, the
second wave of American anarchist sex radicals adopted new views and they
began to engage with the issue a great deal. Tucker, Goldman, Lloyd, Berkman,
and other anarchists' level of interest mirrors the escalating attention that the
police and other moral regulators were giving the subject. As the police began
to step up their efforts to hunt down and arrest people like those poor souls
caught "in flagrante delicto" in Lafayette Park, the anarchists began to step up
their attacks on the police, their ideological allies, and assistants. The anarchist
politics of homosexuality examined by this dissertation was created in the con
text of a dialectical contest between oppression and resistance, starkly illustrated
by the Oscar Wilde trial of 1895. So it is to that trial, and the response that it
prompted among the anarchists, that we now turn.
'�--
. �-- ---�-- ----
-- 'I
Vol. XI.-No. 19. NEW YORK. N. Y., JANUARY 205, 1896. Whole No. 331.
CHAPTER TWO:
THE WILDE ONES: OSCAR WILDE AND ANARCHIST

r!: SEXUAL POLITICS
e
.0
::J
>
_m
� IN 1900, EMMA GOLDMAN and her friend Dr. Eugene Schmidt took a walk
in Paris' beautiful Luxembourg Gardens. Among the subjects the two discussed
was the fate of Oscar Wilde, the English writer sentenced to two years of hard
labor in a spectacular show trial in 1895 for committing "acts of gross indecen
cy with men."Wilde moved to France following his release from prison. Gold
man, who was in Paris for an anarchist conference, was meant to meet Wilde
the previous evening, but missed her opportunity. Dr. Schmidt and Goldman
clashed over whether or not Wilde's imprisonment was justified. In her auto
biography, Living AiyLife,Goldman paints a vivid description of her defense of
Wilde and of the doctor's reaction:
During our walk in the Luxembourg [Gardens], I told the doctor of the
indignation I had f elt at the conviction of Oscar Wilde. I had pleaded his
case against the miserable hypocrites who had sent him to his doom. "You!"
the doctor exclaimed in astonishment , "Why, you must have been a mere
youngster then. How did you dare come out in public for Oscar Wilde in
puritan America?" "Nonsensel" I replied; "no daring is required to protest
against a great injustice."The doctor smiled dubiously. "Injustice?" he repeated;
"It wasn't exactly that from the legal point of view, though it may have been
from the psychological." The rest of the afternoon we were engaged in a
b attle roy al about inversion, p erversion, and the question of s ex variation.!
44 FREE COMRADES
Unfortunately, G oldman missed her chance to meet with Wilde. He never re
covered from his prison sentence and died shortly after Goldman 's trip to Paris .
Wilde died in exile, having fled England under the darkest of clouds . Convict
ed before the bar and the court of public opinion, Wilde 's reputation as a poet,
playwright, and mcial critic was overshadowed by the turn of the century's
most spectacular sex crime trial .
Goldman's heated exchange with Schmidt was n o t the only time that she
defended Wilde against those who condemned him. Wilde served as a touch
stone for her views on sexuality. He was a glaring example of the harm done
when the state mobilized its tremendous powers in the pursuit of enforcing
common prej udices. Many of Goldman's colleagues shared her outrage at Wil
de 's imprisonment. During the trial, and in the years immediately following it,
the anarchists rose to Wilde's defense. They attacked his jailers and those who
applauded his prosecution. The efforts of Goldman and other anarchists on
Wilde's behalf constitute the first articulation of a politics of homosexuality
in the United States. In lectures, in articles in movement j ournals like Liberty,
Lucifer the Light-Bearer, and Mother Earth, and in confrontations like that which
Goldman had with Dr. Schmidt, anarchist sex radicals rose to the defense of
the disgraced writer. The Wilde case came to serve as a lens through which the
anarchists understood the ethics of same-sex eroticism.
Wilde's conviction was a wake-up call for anarchists . The trial prompted
the anarchists to engage in an examination of the social, moral, and legal place
of same-sex desire " The raw use of judicial power to convict a man for pursu
ing his desires was a vivid illustration of the kind of abuse that the anarchists
most ferociously opposed. Wilde's prosecution was illustrative of the growing
state interest in the regulation of sex. Convictions for sodomy and other sex
crimes increased markedly in the late-nineteenth century in the United States
and abroad. Beginning in the 1870s, laws like the Comstock Act, which pro
hibited the transmission of birth control information through the mail, and
the Labouchere Act, under which Wilde was convicted, began to crowd statute
books in the United States and Western Europe. This expansion of state power
was the source of conflict with the anarchists who viewed such developments
with great wariness . As the state began to seek ever-greater control over the
private lives of its subj ects, the anarchists reacted to that exercise of power. An
archist sex radicals were often alone in d efen ding the rights of people to choose
their own partners, free from state interference or social condemnation.

The anarchists had, of c ourse, always been wary of state power-opposi
tion to the state was a fundamental tenet of all anarchists. The French anarchist
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon expressed this sentiment well:
THE WILDE ONES 45
To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated

at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed,
weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right nor
the knowledge nor the virtu e. To be governed means to be, at each operation,
at each transaction, at each movement, noted, registered, controlled,
stamped, measured, valued, assessed, patented, licensed, authorized, endorsed,
admonished, hampered, reformed, rebuked, arrested. It is to be, on the pretext
of the general interest, taxed, drilled, held for ransom, exploited, monopolized,
exhorted, squeezed, tricked, robbed; than at the least resistance, at the first
word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, abused, annoyed, followed, bullied,
beaten, disarmed, strangled, imprisoned, machine gunned,j udged, condemned,
deported, whipped, sold, betrayed, and finally mocked, ridiculed, insulted, and
dishonored.2
Proudhon's animus towards the state was precisely the kind of outrage that
the American anarchist sex radicals felt at Wilde's conviction. The attack on
Wilde was a stark example of the way that the police "spied on," "docketed,"
" abused:' "bullied," imprisoned," " deported," and "ridiculed" people who vio
lated laws that regulated sexual activity. Benj amin Tucker, who, in his youth,
translated much of Proudhon's work, used language that reflected Proudhon's
deep distrust of state p ower to denounce those who attacked Wilde. "Men
who imprison a man who has committed no crime," Tucker proclaimed, "are
themselves criminals."3 The Wilde case was a perfect example of the nature of
the quality of "j ustice" and "morality" pursued by the state in its enactment of
new sex laws.
Wilde's trial was a critical turning p oint in the American anarchists' view
of homosexuality. Up until the scandal, there was relatively little discussion
of the moral and social place of homosexuality among anarchist sex radicals .
The mentions of homosexuality that do appear in anarchist texts prior to the
trial tended to be negative in tone. After Wilde's trial, however, the anarchist
sex radicals addressed homosexuality with greater frequency and in a more
favorable light. In many of the p ost-trial discussions, the scandal is referenced
either implicitly or explicitly. This is not to say that the Wilde trial was the only
cause of this shift . Certainly there were other events and forces that brought
about this change, not least of which was the rising attention paid to the topic
by medical and state authorities . Across the Western world same-sex relations
were being named and j udged with increasing frequency. The anarchists were
responding to the p olicing of homosexuality because the issue was of rising
concern to the society in which they lived. Oscar Wilde's case is merely the
best known of a variety of different things that indicate the growing interest
46 FREE COMRADES
in the topic of homosexuality. The anarchist defense of Wilde was a part of a

larger debate and discussion of homosexuality that took place at the turn of th e
century in the both the United States and Europe.
Wilde's trial was not the first time sexuality served as a source of conflict
between the anarchists and state authorities. Anarchist sex radicals were quite
familiar with the pernicious effects of sex-crime prosecution. In 1 8 86, for ex
ample, Lillian Harman, the daughter of the anarchist sex radi cal Moses Har
man, pledged her love for Edwin C. Walker in a free love ceremony that was
condoned by neither church nor state. The town ofValley Falls , Kansas , where
Harman and Wailker lived, was outraged, and the morning after their ceremony
the pair were served with arrest warrants for the crime of unsanctified, unsanc
tioned cohabitation. Walker was sentenced to seventy-five days in jail, Harman
to forty-five days; the couple were not to be released until they covered c ourt
costs . They spent six months behind bars before agreeing to pay their fine
and court costs . ! Other anarchist sex radicals faced similar harassment from
state authorities. Ezra Heywood, one of the leading native-born anarchist sex
radicals of the late-nineteenth century, was jailed numerous times for offending
public morals. Heywood was convicted for circulating information on birth
c ontrol, for publishing " obscene" works-such as Walt Whitman's poetry-and
for attacking the social, legal, and economic inequities of marriage. Heywood
served a nmnber of years in prison for his crimes .
Heywood was involved in one of few discussions of homosexuality among
anarchists that occurred prior to Wilde 's trial . In 1 890, Heywood was sentenced
to two years hard labor for, among other things, reprinting a letter from Dr.
Richard O 'Neill , a New York physician who sympathized with the anarchists.
The letter, whic h was j udged to be obscene, was originally printed in Lucifi'r
the L(llh t-Bearcr on 1 4 February, 1 890 (Moses Harman had already served eight
months for its publication) , and was largely concerned with sexual abuse of
women within marriage, but it also
discussed homosexuality. In his let
ter, O ' Neill describes how a "Mr.
P. C. of California wrote [to him]
asking if I could cure him of an in
satiable appetite for human semen."
Lucifer the Light·Bearer, Aug ust 2, 1 906 ( c o u rtesy of the
Mr. P. C. wished to stop "roaming Kate S h a rpley Library).
all over the coun try trying to find
men to allow him to 'suck them
off,' '' and hoped that Dr. O ' Neill might have a "cure.'" It should be noted that,
though Heywood made it clear that he disapproved of Mr. P. C.'s behavior, he
THE WILDE ONES 47
did not excoriate Mr. P. C, nor did he urge O'Neill to treat his patient harshly.
Heywoo d believed Mr. P. C.'s behavior was the result of the ill organization of
the society in which he lived. I t was the social order, not Mr. P. C that needed
reformation. Unfortunately, Heywood had little opportunity to engage in any
further discussion of homosexuality. Like Wilde, Heywood died shortly after
his release from prison, most likely from the tuberculosis he c ontracted while
behind bars. Cases like Heywood's created a precedent for the anarchist view
ofWilde's trial.6
Wilde's ordeal was a familiar one to the anarchists, and their response-the
determined opposition to the exercise of state p ower to regulate morals-was
in keeping with the history of their sexual politics. In the aftermath of his ar
rest and imprisonment, Wilde became a totemic figure among the anarchists.
They felt that the attack on him was an attack on many of the values they
held most dear. In her lectures and writings on drama and art, Goldman held
up the disgraced writer as an exemplary, engaged intellectual whose views she
shared. In her essay "Anarchism: What it Really Stands For," G oldman cites
Wilde approvingly a number of times . "Oscar Wilde," she writes, "defines a
perfec t personality as ' one who develops under perfect conditions, who is not
wounded, maimed or in danger.' " Goldman interprets Wilde's words as an im
plied endorsement of anarchist economic and social arrangements . "A perfect
personality," she continues, "then, is only p ossible in a state of society where
man is free to choose the mode of work, the conditions of work, and the free
dom to work."7 In a 1 907 lecture delivered to an audience in Portland, Oregon,
Goldman called Wilde's play Lady Ti7indemere 's Fan, a work that expressed the
"revolutionary spirit in modern drama."s I n 1 9 1 2, the Denver Post reported
that, in the c ourse of one of her talks, Goldman "glorified Wilde, and intimated
that while society forgives the criminal, it never forgives the dreamer."4 Gold
man saw Wilde as an anarchist-in spirit, if nothing else: " Oscar Wilde like all
true artists is terribly contradictory. He eulogizes Kropotkin and repudiates
anarchism, yet his ' Soul of Man under Socialism' is pure anarchy."
Even before his trial, Wilde was connected with anarchism. Though he was
not himself an anarchist, he did ally himself with movement causes at a number
of p oints in his life. Following the Haymarket Tragedy of 1 886, for example,
he signed a petition seeking clemency for the condemned American anarchists.
Wilde felt, as Alexander Berkman did, that the conviction of the defendants
was obtained through "pelj ured evidence" and "bribed j urymen," and that it
was motivated by "police revenge " and the desire on the part of "money inter
ests of Chicago and of the State of Illinois" to "punish and terrorize labor by
murdering their most devoted leaders." ! ! The p etition, which included signa-
48 FREE COMRADES
tures by Eleanor Marx, Edward Carpenter, William Rossetti, William Morris,

George Bernard Shaw, Olive Schreiner, and Annie Besant, was sent to Richard
J. Oglesby, the Governor of Illinois, who eventually commuted the death sen
tence of two of the condemned Chicago anarchists. 1 2 Given the high visibility
of the Haymarke t Tragedy in the anarchist movement-remembrances of those
killed at the event and those condemned to death were annual events-it is not
surprising that \1\Tilde's actions were praised in the movement. Before the scan
dal that engulfed his life and memory, Wilde had a well-deserved reputation of
being a cultural critic of decidedly progressive tendencies.
On at least one occasion Wilde, spoke of himself as an anarchist. In 1 893
the French journal L'Ermitage conducted a poll of writers and artists asking
them their political views . Wilde responded that he considered himself"an art
ist and an anarchist."13 One year later, Wilde repeated his claim. "We are all of
us more or less Socialists now-a-days," he said. "I think I am rather more . . . I
am something of an Anarchist." 14 By asserting this, Wilde aligned himself with
what he saw as the rebellious, individualistic tendencies of anarchism. He was
not a member of any anarchist groups, nor did he provide material support for
movement causes . For Wilde and those disaffected intellectuals like him, anar
chism meant a spirit of discovery, a rej ection of received ideas, and the desire
to lead one's life free of social conventions. This is what he meant when he
stated that he considered himself " an artist and an anarchist." In Wilde's mind
the two ideas-art and anarchy-were related in as much as they both prom
ised a way to refashion the self in new and unfettered ways. Wilde's mixture
of artistic ferment and ideas inspired by and borrowed from anarchism was a
fairly commonplace flxture of life in the bohemian circles of London, Paris,
and other Western European cities. I, One can flnd a similar conjunction of
ideas and tendencies a little later i n the United States in people like Margaret
Anderson, Robert Henri, Sadakichi Hartmann, Floyd Dell, and James Gibbons
Huneker. 16
Wilde also drew on anarchist ideas and texts in the construction of his
work. In his first play, Vera; or The Nihilists, for example, Wilde quotes The Cat
echism of the Revolutionist, a political tract written by anarchists Mikhail Bakunin
and Sergei Nechaev. 17 Prior to his death in 1 876, Bakunin was considered the
leading anarchist of the era. A Russian who embodied almost every stereotype
of that country's revolutionary tradition, Bakunin fought with Karl Marx for
c ontrol of the socialist movement. Nechaev was a young protege of Bakunin;
the two met in Geneva in 1 869, and within months of their meeting, they
composed The Catechism. The rhetoric of defiance and social revolt found in
its pages assured it a long and infamous history. Its language mirrors the revo-
THE WILDE ONES 49
lutionary fervor that Bakunin and Nechaev fed upon as they wrote. According
to The Catechism, the revolutionary " has broken every tie with the civil order
and the entire cultured world, with all its laws, proprieties, social conventions
and . . . ethical rules." 1 8 O n c e t h e revolutionist has taken this dramatic step, he
must struggle ceaselessly to bring down the powers that be. It i s n o t hard t o
understand why Wilde-a sharp critic o f Victorian morality, whose personal
desires made him an outsider-would be drawn to Bakunin and Nechaev's
manifesto. Ironically, the London production of Vera was shut down following
the assassination of Czar Alexan der II; a case of life imitating art which might
have pleased Wilde, except for the fact that his play was now seen as too con
troversial for the stage.
Wilde was clearly drawn to the revolutionary rhetoric of The Catechism, bl,lt
the intense nature of the relationship between Bakunin and N echaev-which
was the subj ect of gossip and political slander-may also have piqued his in
terest. When Bakunin met Nachaev he was smitten; the two were inseparable.
According to historian E. H. Carr, " [Bakunin] began to call young Nechaev
by the tender nickname of 'boy' . . . [and] the most affectionate relations were
established."19 Almost immediately rumors about the nature of the two men's
friendship began to circulate. Bakunin was said to have written a note to
Nechaev promising total submission to the younger man's desires; it was signed
with a woman's name "Matrena." To those wh o traded in this story, Baku nin's
relationship with his protege smacked of homosexuality. Though Carr does not
believe that Bakunin and N echaev were erotically involved, historian George
Woodcock argu es that th ere "seems to have been a touch of sublnerge d h omo
sexuality" running like a current between the two men . 20 Whatever the case,
rumors of the two men's relationship, fed in large part by p olitical rivals, circu
lated in the Left. Historian Hubert Kennedy argues that Marx used the accusa
tion of homosexuality against Bakunin, his ideological foe, in his successful at
tempt to expel him from the First International in l R72.21 What exactly Wilde
knew of these rumors is unknown but had he heard of Bakunin's infatuation
with Nachaev-a distinct p ossibility given the apparently broad circulation of
the rumors-it doubtless would have intrigued him .
When he did write about politics, Wilde sounded many themes that anar
chists espoused. Like Kropotkin and Tucker, his ideas were forged in "reaction
against industrialization , urbanization, modernization-against what we can
more precisely call the growth of bureaucratized corporate structure [s] in the
context of capitalist social relations."22 Critics of the late-nineteenth centuries
economic, social, and p olitical conditions, Wilde and the anarchists sought to
beautifY and dignifY labor. They j uxtaposed an ideal world of creativity and
50 FREE COMRAOES
craftsman-like dedication and pleasure in work, onto the conditions found in

modern industrial production. Wilde expressed this vision on his tour of the
United States in the early 1 8 80s. In Bangor, Maine the local paper reported
that Wilde " thought a great mistake of the age is found in the unwillingness
to honor the mechanic, the working man, and his pursuits as they should be
honored."23 Against the relentless pace of industrial manufacture, Wilde argued
for a return to craftsman-like production on a local and human scale. This is
what Goldman meant when, in her 1 9 1 2 Denver lecture, she approvingly cited
Wilde's contention that "the secret of life is in art." Wilde's discussion of aes
thetics was intended as a critical discourse and not merely a list of suggestions
on housekeeping, fashion, and visual and literary arts. He championed art for
its ability "to disturb the monotony of type, the slavery of custom, the tyranny
of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of machine."2-l These are all val
ues that one can find expressed in any number of anarchist publications in the
United States and E ngland during this period.
Many contemporaries saw Wilde 's best-known political text, The Soul if
Man under Sociali;'m, reprinted widely across Europe and popular in the United
States , as an anarchist text. 2S George Woodcock argues that "the uncompromis
ingly libertarian attitude of [ The Soul (if Man under Socialism] has much . . . in
c ommon with the ideas of. . . Peter Kropotkin." Written in 1 89 1 , Wilde's essay
"had to b e p ubli she d for a time as The Soul (if Man in order to avoid obj ections
from publishers and distributors."26 Wilde's rhetoric and goals bore a striking
resemblance to those espoused by anarchists . Though somewhat vague as to
how the social transformation he seeks would be brought about, Wilde main
tained that the implementation of his utopian ideas "will lead to Individual
ism." He rej ected the idea of state ownership of the means of production and
offered critiques of Marx that were very similar to those made by B akunin .
Wilde warned that "If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are governments
armed with econ omic p ower as they are now with p olitical power; if, in a
word, we are to have I ndustrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be
worse than the first."27 This was a vision that Goldman and her comrades could
embrace and is precisely the kind of passage she referred to when she called his
essay " pure Anarchy."2B
D espite his ideological affinities with libertarian socialism, Wilde did not
receive unanimous praise from the anarchists . In 1 89 1 Benj amin R. Tucker,
angry that commentators spoke ofWilde as an anarchist, criticized him for his
muddled thinking. "The newspaper paragraphers," Tucker wrote, "all discuss
Oscar Wilde's article on ' The Soul of Man under Socialism' and talk of his
conversion to Anarchism, thus again showing that they are hopelessly incapable
THE WILDE ONES 51
of understanding either what Oscar Wilde says or what Anarchism means."29 In

Tucker's estimation, Wilde was not rigorous enough in his distinctions and was
too given to the kind of fuzzy, utopian feelings that Tucker delighted in dissect
ing. In his review of The Soul if Man under Socialism Tucker quoted Terence V
Powderly's views of WiIde's brand of socialism. Powderly, the Grand Master of
the Knights of Labor, was skeptical ofWilde's ideas writing that:
Oscar Wilde declares that Socialism will simply lead to individualism. That is
like saying that the way from St. Louis to New York is through San Francisco,
or that the way to whitewash a wall is to paint it black. The man who says that
Socialism will fail and then the people will try individualism-i. e. , Anarchy
may be mistaken: the man who thinks they are one and the same thing is
simply a fool. 30
Though Tucker uses Powderly's words , this

should not be taken as his endorsement of the
Grand Master of the Knights of Labor. Powderly
was a bitter opponent of the anarchists ; he felt
they had tainted the labor movement with the
smell of dynamite and disorder.3! Tucker recipro
cated Powderly's disdain, and hardly approved of
his views . But in Tucker's estimation, even a bro
ken clock tells the right time at least twice a day.
Despite Tucker's disagreements with Wilde, the
fact that both he and Powderly felt compelled
to respond to The Soul of Man under Socialism il
lustrates the extent to which Wilde was taken
seriously as a social critic and political theorist, Benjamin Tucker (courtesy of the Kate
Sha rpley Library).
by his contemporaries. One of the tragedies of
the Wilde trial is that his politics have been al-
most completely overshadowed by his role in the
century's most scandalous sex trial .
It was not only The Soul if Man under Socialism that was critiqued by anar
chists who were annoyed that the poet's reputation as an anarchist was off the
mark. In 1 88 5 , Tucker's colleague, John William Lloyd, took Wilde to task in
the pages of Liberty for having written a poem that he felt maligned anarchism.
Wilde had written a " Sonnet to Liberty," which decries "anarchy" and praises
the virtues of " order," and expresses Wilde's fear of " the mob." It is p ossible that
Wilde's awareness of himself as a sexually dissident figure may have heightened
his sense of the very real dangers of the tyranny of the maj ority; certainly the
52 FREE COMRADES
public reaction to his conviction in 1 895 was an illustration of how "the mob "
can act with great cruelty. Such a reading of Wilde's politics was lost on Lloyd,
who took great umbrage at Wilde 's use of the term anarchism to mean disorder.
It is, in fact, somewhat amusing to read the heated responses that the (mis) use
of the term "anarchy" would provoke in the anarchist press. An anthology of
such ideological outrages could easily be compiled. In the case ofWilde's trans
gression, Lloyd literally rewrote " Sonnet to Liberty," changing its name to "The
Sacred Thirst for Liberty." In his new and improved version, Lloyd lambasted
Wilde as a "false -tongued po e t," and defended anarchism.12
Despite their mixed view of Wilde, the anarchists rallied to his defense
when, in 1 895, he was swept u p into the scandal that would e n d his career.
Critical j abs at \Vilde, like those ofTucker and Lloyd, largely disappear after his
trial and conviction. Wilde was actually involved in a series of trials, all of which
revolved aroun d questions of his sexuality and public reputation. The first trial
was prompted by Wilde's suit for defamation of character against the Marquess
of Queensbury, the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Douglass. Queensbury left a
note at a club accusing Wilde of being a sodomite. Wilde challenged the ac
cusation feeling that to let it stand would be damning. In short order the case
against Queensbury collapsed and Wilde was brought up on charges of having
committed " acts of gross indecency." Lord Douglass, who enj oyed considerable
protection as a member of the nobility, was not brought before the bar. In the
trials that followed, Wilde's relations with a number of male prostitutes were
divulged. Although the more salacious details of the evidence were largely kept
out of the press, \Vilde's relationship with the young men he spent time with
was widely understood to be sexual. In addition to exposing his real life sexual
relationships, the prosecution spent considerable time elucidating Wilde's texts,
including The Picture cf Dorian Gray, searching for further proof of his criminal
nature.
Wilde was se ntenced to two years of hard labor by a judge who could
barely restrain hi , loathing. Like the judge, many of Wilde's contemporaries
were deeply stirred by the revelation of the rather pedestrian fact that acts of
male homosexuajity were regularly practiced in London. The Wilde scandal
was of international dimensions. The English press covered the trial's unfold
ing in fascinated detail, though the specific nature of the charges made against
Wilde were not made public. In the United States, the press was even more
studious in maintaining an embargo on what they viewed as the more sordid
aspects of the trial, though hints and insinuations appeared almost everywhere
and Wilde's ordeal was well known. Some of the American press, such as Salt
Lake City's The Desert News, did cover the trial-eighteen front-page stories
THE WILDE ONES 53
and two editorials-but, like their English counterparts, they kept the exact na
ture of the charge unspoken.33 This censoring zeal was evident by the fact that
in America-as was reported in the pages of Tucker's Li berty-Wilde's works
were' pulled from library shelves.34 The entire country seemed caught between
endlessly discussing Wilde's fate and desperately trying to avoid mention of the
carnal reality of the acts for which he was being j ailed. This resonant silence
was typical of the treatment of homosexuality during this period.
Wilde's American reputation was savaged. An amateur archivist of the pe
riod documented more than 900 sermons preached between 1 895 and 1 900
on the subj ect of his sins. Other guardians of public morality j oined in on the
tirade from the pulpit. In 1 896 the president of Princeton, concerned for the
welfare of his charges, compared Wilde to Nero, the Roman emperor infa
mous for fiddling while Rome burned.15 Wilde's plays An Ideal Husband and
The Importance of Being Earnest, which were running in New York at the time
of his trial, were closed and a proposed traveling production of A Woman of
No Importance was canceled.36 Wilde was reviled for years after his release from
prison. "The worst of his writing," opined the New York Times Saturday Review
in 1 906, "is beneath contempt and some is revolting."37 A 1 907 piece by Elsa
Barker-whose work, it should be noted, was considered an indication of a mi
nor Wilde revival-described Wilde as a "laureate of corruption" comparable
to Satan in his fall. "We loathe thee," wrote Barker, "with the sure, instinctive
dread of young things for the graveyard and the scar."3H From such revivals all
writers should be protected. Once a widely read poet and essayist, Wilde, over
the course of his trial, was transformed into a symbol of "corruption," a person
who was "beneath contempt."
Wilde's trial brought the question of the ethical, social, and legal status of
homosexuality in the United States into sharp focus. While there had been
previous scandals involving same-sex behavior-for example the Alice Ward/
Freda Mitchell case of 1 892-the attention paid to Wilde in the media was
unprecedented.1,! Havelock Ellis, the English sexologist, received a number of
letters from Americans about the trial and its impact. "The Oscar Wilde trial,"
according to Ellis, "with its wide publicity, and the fundamental nature of the
questions it suggested, appears to have generally contributed to give definitive
ness and self-consciousness to the manifestations of homosexuality, and to have
aroused inverts to take up a definitive attitude."40 The trial forced many people
to confront the issue of same-sex desire. The press' discretion ' was ineffective in
keeping the details of Wilde's ordeal out of public notice. Private correspon
dence of the period was less reticent in treating the details of the trial. M. Carey
Thomas followed the unfolding scandal and sent press clippings of the coverage
54 FREE C O M RADES
to her passionate friend Mary Garrett. " I have hopes," Thomas wrote Garrett,
"he will get off." The intrepid shopper on American college campuses could
purchase a set of photographs, bound in scarlet, entitled "The Sins of Oscar
Wilde."4! By the time he entered j ail, Wilde had "been confirmed as the sexual
deviant for the late-nineteenth century."42
Anarchists were among the few public defenders of Wilde during his trial
and its aftermath. They intervened forcefully in the ongoing debate that the
trials set off. I n conversation and in print the anarchists, in Goldman's words,
"pleaded his case against the miserable hypocrites who had sent him to his
doom."43 In a cutting rej oinder to the religious leaders who were denounc
ing Wilde's sins, Mr. J. T. Small, a contributor to Liberty, asked whether Tucker
might offer "a 'sermon' on the cowardice and hypocrisy of society in the way
they are hustling Wilde's b ooks out of the public libraries."44 Though no ser
mon was forthcoming, Tucker did reprint a condemnation of Wilde 's " daily
torture" in prison, written originally for a French journal, by O ctave Mirabeau,
an anarchist, whose works Tucker sometimes published."' Mirabeau's reaction
was widely shared among French artists and bohemian anarchists . La Revue
Blanche (The White Review) , for example, ran an article by anarchist Paul
Adam entitled "The Malicious Assault," which protested Wilde's arrest. And, in
1 896, a group of anarchists sponsored perforniances ofWilde's play, Salome. The
painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec provided an illustration for Adam's article
and designed the p oster for Salome.46 The reprinting of Mirabeau's article in
Liberty indicates the degree to which Tucker was aware of and influenced by
the Europ ean discussion of the Wilde case.
Like their French comrades , American anarchists refused to allow Wilde's
works to be censored. To express solidarity with Wilde and to protest the wide
spread suppression of his work, anarchist journal Lucifer the Light-Bearer reprint
ed selections of'W'ilde's writings during and after his trial. Excerpts of his work
had already app eared in the magazine, but in the context of the trial they took
o n a new importance. During the trial, Wilde's novels, plays, and poems were
cited by the prosecution and were condemned as obscene. These texts, the
prosecution argued, expressed the corrupt nature of their creator; they were
dangerously steeped in the lusts for which their author was condemned. Mere
ly reading them, it: was argued, was to risk being infected with Wilde's disease.
The anarchist" dismissed the idea that reading works like The Picture of
Dorian Gray could lead readers to emulate Oscar Wilde. In an editorial in Luci
Jer the Light-Bearer, Lilli,an Harman, though not endorsing Wilde's actions, ridi
culed the notion that his texts could lead others to engage in homosexual acts,
and like J. T. Small, she condemned the widespread suppression ofWilde's work.
THE WILDE ONES 55
C. L. James also defended Wilde in Lucifer. Though James believed that Wilde's
actions could be classified as a vice, he rej ected the idea that homosexuality was
a mark of insanity or that it was unnatural. And he certainly refused to accept
the idea that there existed a basis for state regulation of homosexual behavior.
If homosexuality is a vice, he argued, it is a minor one, akin to taking snuff
or gambling. And unlike taking snuff, homosexuality had, according to James,
a respectable pedigree. In the style of a number of contemporary apologists
. for homosexuality, James pointed out that the Greeks had permitted and even
encouraged same:-sex relations. Wilde's behavior, in other words, was hardly
unprecedented. Given the high regard for Classical Greece that existed at the
time, James felt that the condemnation ofWilde by the learned classes of Eng
land and America was hypocritical}7 James, like a number of his colleagues, was
not ready to pen positive defenses of same-sex love, but he strongly rej ected the
idea that behavior like Wilde's was deserving of punishment.
Of all the anarchists writing in the immediate context of the trial, Tucker
was the most ferocious in his defense ofWilde. "The imprisonment ofWilde,"
wrote Tucker, "is an outrage that shows how thoroughly the doctrine of liberty
is misconceived."48 Like Goldman, Tucker believed that those who hounded
Wilde were "miserable hypocrites ." His condemnation, for Tucker, was an in
dictment against the culture that charged him:
A man who has done nothing in the least degree invasive of any one; a man
whose entire life, so far as known or charged, has been one of strict conformity
with the idea of equal liberty; a man whose sole offense is that he has done
something which most of the rest of us (at least such is the presumption)
prefer not to do-is condemned to spend two years in cruel imprisonment at
hard labor. And the judge who condemned him made the assertion in court
that this was the most heinous crime that had ever come before him. I never
expected to hear the statement of the senior Henry James, uttered half in j est,
that "it is more justifiable to hang a man for spitting in a street-car than for
committing murder" substantially repeated in earnest (or else in hypocrisy)
from an English bench.4Y
This passage is perhaps the best defense ofWilde written on either side of the
Atlantic. It is also a fine example of Tucker's learned and caustic pen. He uses
Wilde's conviction to charge and convict those who presume to stand as the
moral arbiters of their society. Wilde's jailers, Tucker insists-not Wilde-are
the criminals. This unequivocal response would come to dominate the anar
chist sexual politics of homosexuality in the years following Wilde's conviction,
which starkly illustrated, for the anarchists, the danger of allowing the state to
regulate same-sex relations. And the critique of those who supported Wilde's
56 FREE COMRADES
imprisonment became a useful way for anarchists to illustrate how their p olitics
applied to private life.
Interestingly, in his defense ofWilde, Tucker questions the presumption that
Wilde's desires were not widely shared. He acknowledged that many men had
sexual relations with other men and did so to no one's detriment . One can
even read Tucker's words as implying that most men-"most of the rest of
us"-might find themselves in Wilde 's place if they acted on desires that were
c ommonly held, despite the "presumptions" that they reside only in a distinct
category of men. This was, according to George Chauncey, a fairly c ommon
c ontemporary understanding of the nature of male sexual behavior: a man
might seek sexual release through any numb er of partners , the gender of the
partner being of less importance than the fact that they played the role of the
rec eptor.50 Wilde 's age and status-most of his partners were younger, lower
class youth-would have signaled to most persons that he was the " dominant"
partner is his relationships. In this regard, Wilde was a "normal man," capable
and willing to satisfY his desires in a number of different ways . What then ,
Tucker asked his ;�eaders , made Wilde s u c h a monster? It was hypocritical in the
extreme, Tucker implied, to j ail a man for an act that was, in fact, C Olmn on. The
cynical explanation for the judge's harshness is that the court was fully aware
of how common Wilde's actions were. It was precisely that which caused the
court to react with so much fury. Wilde's conviction was part of a show trial
meant to brightly illustrate the boundaries of acceptable behavior.
Tucker was especially sharp with those on the Left who j oined i)1 attack
ing Wilde. Londo n 's Daily Chronicle, a publication associated with the Fabian
socialists, was lambasted for " outdoing" the " Philistine press in its brutal treat
ment of Oscar Wilde." Named after Fabius, the Roman general who fought a
slow and cautious war against Hannibal, the Fabians rej ected revolution, instead
pursuing reform of the existing political and economic order. Tucker could not
resist implying that the position of the Daily Chronicle was a natural result of the
Fabians' "brutal political philosophy." Tucker did allow that some of those who
were "in semi-bondage to the same brutal philosophy" did rise to the occasion,
though they did so, he implied, against the dictates of their beliefs . The Rev.
Stewart D. Headlam, the editor of the Church Reformer, was "led, by his natural
love of liberty and sympathy with the persecuted, in the magnificent inconsis
tency of becoming Oscar Wilde's surety." Tucker also gave "heartiest thanks " to
S elwyn Image, a contributor to the Church Reformer, who wrote that "whatever
in past days may have been [Wilde's] weaknesses, follies or sins, he has behaved
in the hour of trial with a manly courage and generosity of spirit which I fear
few of us under similar circumstances would have been virile and self-sacrific-
THE WILDE ONES 57
ing enough to exhibit." It was most unusual for Tucker, whose disdain for reli
gion was well established, to quote a minister. Given the almost universal con
demnation ofWilde, Tucker was forced to seek out allies in strange places. 51
Tucker's laudatory note of Selwyn Image's description ofWilde as behaving
"with a manly courage and generosity of spirit" was very much in keeping with
the general depiction of Wilde that one finds in almost all anarchist texts. In
keeping with the way that both defenders and critics of Wilde used gendered
imagery, the anarchist sex radicals much preferred the "serious " Wilde of The
Soul <if Man under Socialism, while the decadent, languid, feminized depictions
of him were favored by the writer's critics. Though attacks on Wilde almost
never failed to illustrate his effeminacy-a representation that drew upon and
helped reinforce ideas of homosexuality being a product of gender inversion
those who defended him either avoided any mention of his gender identity
or framed his actions as gender appropriate. The anarchist sex radicals who
defended Wilde invariably portrayed him as being noble, strong, and resolute
in facing his accusers. Although few of them used the overt "manly" language
employed above, the general tone of their representations were consonant with
Image's terms. The anarchist sex radicals who rose to his defense represented
Wilde as a "normal man," albeit one whose sexual tastes ran afoul of the law
and social opinion.
In addition to taking on Wilde's European critics, Tucker lashed out at some
of his American foes. The statements of Dr. E. B. Foote Jr.-a liberal physician
who, along with his father, helped fund free-love and free-speech efforts-par
ticularly incensed Tucker. The Footes were noted opponents of the moral cru
sader Anthony Comstock, and Foote Sr. had been arrested for violating the
Comstock laws prohibiting the distribution of contraceptive literature. 52 The
younger Foote gave generously to the anarchist press, including to Lucifer the
Light-Bearer, and in later years, to Goldm�an's Mother Earth. On the question of
Wilde, however, Foote Jr. found himself in agreement with the poet's j ailers.
Foote argued that Tucker had let Wilde off easily. Wilde's crime, according to
Foote, was "seducing" the young and impressionable "to his evil ways;' and
these were acts that could not easily be excused. In a letter sent to Liberty,
Foote elaborated on this theme:
One who has any knowledge of the men of his class well knows that one
of their worst p oints is the disposition to seek out and make new victims of
promising youth. This is made evident in their own confessions as quoted in
Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis It can hardly j ustifY the let-alone policy
. . .
when they set up shop to increase the "cult" of this sort of aesthetic culture;
for they are not at all satisfied to find each other out (among the perverts of
the same taste) , but they are "hell-bent" on discovering fresh, virile, healthy,
58 FREE COMRADES
vigorous, and unsophisticated young men of \vhom to make victims for

vampires. You may say that youth should be so instructed and trained as to
be safe against the wily, seductive attractions of even such glittering genius as
that of Wilde and so say I; but, if State interference is permissible anywhere,
it is against the vicious invasion of the family, which lures to destruction the
finest specimens of manhood . . . Men of the . . . Wilde type don't recognize any
youthful age limit, and boys are their constant prey . . . They can't and won't
keep to themselves, and so a few-too few-get their deserts . 53
Foote framed his attack on Wilde as a protection of the family and as a con
demnation of th ose who, like the English writer, supposedly preyed on the
young and innocent. Given the danger that these men presented, state inter
vention in the form of policing and punishment was merited. Moral order
must be maintained by force if necessary, and if that meant empowering the
state to throw men like Wilde in jail, Foote was ready to go along. Only in this
way, Foote implies, can the plague of sodomy-an infection similar to the curse
of the vampire---be stopped_ Foote finished his letter to Libf'rty by comparing
Wilde to Jack the Ripper, a seducer of little girls, lamenting that fact that Wilde
was sentenced to serve only two years at hard labor and not twenty.
Foote's condemnation ofWilde for his seduction of "young innocents" was
in keeping with contemporary accounts that demonstrated, in the words of
Ed Cohen, "an obsessive concern with the effects ofWilde 's ' corrupting influ
ences' on the younger men with whom he consorted."'· Of course, Wilde did
have sex with men younger then himself. He was convicted on evidence that
he had casual sexual relations with male prostitutes whose ages ranged from
late-teens to early-twenties. By suggesting that Wilde was seducing "innocent
youth," rather than hiring male prostitutes, Foote was able to sharpen his at
tack. Wilde responded to j ust such accusations in court, where he defended the
relations he had with the young men in question. When asked what was meant
by "the love that dare not speak its name," a coded reference to homosexuality
drawn from a poem by Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde himself made reference to
the disparity in age between himself and his partners: "The love that dare not
speak its name," said Wilde, "in this century is such a great affectioll of an elder jar
a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made
the very basis of his philosophy, as such as you find in the sonnets of Michelan
gelo and Shakespeare."55 These were carefully chosen references, linking Wilde
to some of the most celebrated figures of Western history. But this illustrious
genealogy did little to counter critics like Foote who argued that Wilde had
corrupted the young men he had sex with. Foote mobilized all the powers of
the medical profession-citing the authority of Krafft-Ebing, as well as un-
THE WILDE ONES 59
documented anecdote-to make the case that homosexuality is intrinsically

linked to the seduction of youth. Foote's rhetoric speaks of vampires, the " cult"
of the Wilde type, "the invasion of the family," and paints an image of literary
decadence run amok, threatening the hearth and home through the display of
"glittering seductions." Against the threat to youth and the family posed by the
blinding glamour of Wilde, Foote argued that the only real protection is the
power of the state.
While Tucker did not depict Wilde's relations linked to the glories of An
cient Athens or Elizabethan England, he found Foote's characterizations of the
relationships Wilde had with his sexual partners wildly off the mark. Foote
stressed Wilde's diabolical, hypnotic powers, and Tucker totally rej ected the idea
that he had played the role of the seducer. The young men Wilde had relations
with were, according to Tucker, responsible for their own behavior. They were
willing participants in a commercial exchange, not innocents whose lives had
been ruined this man. In fact, there was no crime committed, since the behav
ior now being policed was engaged in by two consenting individuals . IfWilde
were tried in the " court of equal liberty instead of ordinary law," Tucker wrote,
the charges against him "would have been promptly dismissed on the ground
that the alleged victims (not only Lord Douglas, but the others) were them
selves mature and responsible persons and, as such, incapable of any seduction of
which justice can properly take cognizance."5A Wilde's partners may have been
young, in other words, but they were hardly na'ive. It was dangerous, Tucker
maintained, to argue otherwise. The charge of seduction was an amorphous
and problematic one. To argue that Wilde's sexual partners needed the protec
tion of the state would be to legitimize external authority and begin down a
slippery slope of increased moral vigilance on the part of the police. Tucker, al
ways wary of the state, argued forcefully that people should be allowed to make
their own choices, even at the risk of making mistakes they might later regret.
As long as people were willing to bear the cost of their behaviors, no one had
a right to limit those actions. In the words of one of his colleagues, " a bestowal
of the liberty to do wrong is an indispensable condition of the acquisition of
the liberty to do right."s7
The Wilde case was not the first time that Tucker that dealt with the issue
of sexuality and the age of consent. In 1 886, for example, he protested attempts
to raise the age of consent-the age at which a person might freely enter into
sexual intercourse. The campaign to raise the age of consent-specifically for
young women-swept the nation in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth
centuries, fed by lurid tales of child prostitution and anxiety over the sexualized
culture of urban leisure. "The argument for raising the age of consent," accord-
60 FREE COMRADES
ing to historian Robert Riegel, "was that a man would be much less likely to
seduce a young girl [into prostitution] if he realized that the law would clas
sify the act as rape."58 In Tucker's mind, the problem with this logic was that it
interfered with liberty by bringing the state into the bedroom. It also flew in
the face of the fact that adolescent girls regularly married older men with the
blessing of parents, church, and state. Tucker argued that if the passions of a "girl
of seventeen . . . of mature and sane mind, whom even the law recognizes as a fit
person to be married . . . [should] find sexual expression outside of the 'forms of
law' made and provided by our stupid legislatures" it was of no interest to any
one, but the girl and her lover. The campaign to raise the age of consent, Tucker
argued, "belongs to that class of measures which especially allure stiff-necked
moralists, pious prudes, 'respectable' radicals." He rej ected the notion that rais
ing the age of consent was necessary to protect the "honor" of young women,
arguing that one could not more " dishonor a woman already several years past
the age at which Nature provided her with the power of motherhood than by
telling her that she hasn't brains enough to decide whether and in what way
she will become a mother! "5� Other anarchist sex radicals, like Lillian Harman
who herself entered into a free-love relationship with a thirty-seven-year-old
man at the age of sixteen, agreed with Tucker. 60 Unsparingly logical in his ar
guments, Tucker applied the same principles he articulated in the case of young
women to Wilde and the young men he had sex wi th .
Given his views regarding state regulation of sexuality, it is not surprising to

learn that Tucker characterized Foote's letter as "the most intolerant, fanatical,
and altogether barbarous utterance that has come from a professed ultraliberal
since I have been engaged in reform work." He reminded the younger Foote
that his father had also been sentenced to jail on charges of immorality, as de
fined by the Comstock law. Foote Jr.'s intemperate words, Tucker stated, "justity
me in reminding Dr. Foote Jr. , that, in the eyes of the public, to be convicted
by Comstock is scarcely a less disgrace than that which has fallen upon Oscar
Wilde." Tucker la:;hed out at Foote, taking him to task for misrepresentation
and for "betray [ing] . . . the fanatic's hatred of sin rather than the sane man's de
sire to protect against crime." Tucker refused to even consider the question of
Wilde's sanity since "all noninvasive persons are entitled to be let alone, sane
or insane." Tucker defended Wilde's work, stating that "his writings are a per
manent addition to the world's literature" and arguing that "even [Wilde's] en
emies admit that he has been perhaps the most influential factor in the achieve
ment of that immense advance in decorative art which England and America
have witnessed in the last decade."6! Other anarchist papers picked up Tucker's
defense ofWilde and his condemnation of Foote's response. The Firebrand very
THE WILDE ONES 61
nearly repeated Tucker's own words: "Certain people who thought they knew
as much as Dr. Foote thinks he knows would have sentenced E. B . Foote Sr. to
twenty years imprisonment for his writings, and yet strange to say, the j unior
Foote does not seem to comprehend that he is in exactly the same frame of
mind they were in."62
Four years after his heated exchange with Foote, Tucker was presented with
the opportunity to help Wilde contribute yet another "addition to the world's
literature." Tucker, who maintained his own press, was the first American pub
lisher of one of Wilde's last major work of art, The Ballad of Reading Gaol,
a powerful depiction of the cruelty of crime and punishment. The narrative
poem describes the hanging of C. T. Woolridge, a man convicted of murdering
his wife. The reader is left with the distinct impression that the punishment
inflicted on Woolridge is no less a crime than the original murder that sealed
his fate. "The poem," in the words of Richard Ellman, "had a divided theme:
the cruelty of the doomed murderer's crime ; the insistence that such cruelty
is pervasive; and the greater cruelty of his punishment by a guilty society."63
The Ballad if Reading Gaol is a bleak condemnation of mankind's capability for
violence; in the words of Wilde's poem " each man kills the thing he loves."64
In words that echo the title ofWilde's The Soul of Man under Socialism, Tucker
wrote that in Wilde 's prison poem "we get a terrific portrayal of the soul of
man under Archism."65 It is, of course, p ossible to interpret Wilde's poem as an
attack on his own treatment by a " guilty society." Tucker certainly thought so.
I n his endorsement of the poem he wrote, "I especially comm end its perusal
to Dr. E. B. Foote Jr. , who thinks that Wilde should have been imprisoned
for twenty years ."66 Given the inevitable associations attached to Wilde 's name,
publishing the poem was as much an act of sexual radicalism as it was an effort
to awaken p ublic opinion against the terrors of the judicial system.
Though the b allad was brought to p ress in England in 1 89 8 , Wilde was
unable to find an American publisher. Not even "the most revolting New
York pap er," he wrote his friend Reginald Turner, would touch his workY
In other words, not even the sensational press-whose coverage of crime and
punishment was legendary-would print The Ballad of Readincs; Gaol. Tucker,
who publicly defended the fallen poet during his trial , was more than will
ing to p ublish his poem. He set aside a number of other printing j obs and
produced two editions: a handsomely bound book that sold for a dollar and
an inexpensive pamphlet available for ten cents . Tucker encouraged his readers
to "purchase a bound copy for his own library, and one or more copies of the
pamphlet to give away." He also asked that his supporters " help this book to a
wide circulation by asking for it at bookstores and news stands in his vi cinity."6H
62 FREE COMRADES
Tucker was right in thinking that the notoriety ofWilde's work would attract
readers and help his propaganda efforts . In May 1 899, he wrote a friend, "The
Wilde book has already brought me many queries from strangers regarding my
other publications, and has given our work much publicity."(/!
Tucker's edition of The Ballad of Reading Gaol was widely reviewed in the
mainstream press . This was most likely due to Wilde's perpetually scandalous
reputation, his name continuing to sell tabloids even after his release from pris
on. Many of the reviewers confirmed Wilde's estimation of how Americans
perceived him. Tne Literary World, like most publications, identified Wilde as
the poem's author even though the author was identified only as C.3.3 (Wil
de's cell number) . They found that the poem "expresses a sickening sympathy
for the crimina1." That reviewer gave Tucker's edition a backhanded compli
ment playing on Wilde's tainted identity by noting that the poem's "publi
cation in this present dainty form seems due . . . to the morbid attraction of
its author's name."70 Given the author's damaged reputation The Philadelphia
Inq uirer thought it "surprising that there should be any demand for what Wilde
may write." Other papers were not so harsh. The Albany Press said of the ballad
"it is horrible, gruesome, uncanny, and yet most fascinating and highly ethical."
The New York Sun thought it "a pathetic example of genius gone to the dogs,"
but allowed " those who love the queer in literature will make a place for it on
their bookshelves." The Portland Oregonian held a higher view ofWilde's poem,
but reproached the author for "much unnecessary gloating over 'great gouts
of blood.' " And in a review that must surely have warmed Tucker's heart, the
Pittsburgh Press wrote, "D. R. Tucker, of New York, has just published one of the
most remarkable poems of recent times . . . Those who are craving for a sensa
tion . . . will do well to make themselves the possessors of this weird and pathetic
ballad of a j ailed one."71
It is unclear whether those who read reviews of The Ballad of Reading Gaol
would have understood the reviewers' frequent characterizations of the work
as "queer" or "weird" to imply sexual deviance. Such words did not necessarily
convey any notion of erotic deviation. Though George Chauncey argues that
the word " queer" was used at the turn of the century by men who "identified
themselves as different from other men primarily on the basis of their homo
sexual interest," it was not synonymous with homosexuality.72 However, given
the reputation that Wilde had acquired since his imprisonment, any text associ
ated with him would have some homosexual connotation. Certainly the use
of the terms "morbid," "sickening sympathy," "gruesome," and " criminal" by
the reviewers all served to remind readers of the recent trials and scandal. The
mixture of words drawn from medical, moral, and legal categories indicate the
THE WILDE ONES 63
various and c omplex ways in which these discourses formed the matrix within
which same-sex relations were viewed. By refusing to allow themselves to be
governed by the inj unctions implicit in the condemnation of Wilde's work
as "morbid" or " queer" the anarchists were contesting the dominant view of
Wilde and those like him.
Tucker's reaction to the Wilde case was typical of the response that the an
archists had to the conviction. There are, for example, some striking similarities
between Goldman's defense of Wilde against her friend Dr. Schmidt in 1 90 1
and Tucker's critique o f Foote six years earlier. I n both cases, the anarchists were
willing to contest the p ower of medical authorities to define the boundar
ies of acceptable behavior. Goldman's characterization of Wilde 's conviction
as a " great inj ustice" also parallels Tucker's view of the courts actions . And like
Tucker, Goldman published and helped circulate some ofWilde 's work. In one
of the first editions of Mother Earth, Goldman published an excerpt from Wil
de's essay De Pn�fundis. Written while still in prison, this essay describes Wilde's
struggle to make sense of his fate. Like The Ballad if Reading Gaol, De Prqfundis
c ontains passages that are sharply critical o f state power and the abuses of pris
,
on life. "Society," writes Wilde, "takes upon itself the right to iuflict appalling
punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vic e of shallowness,
and fails to realize what it has done."73 A number of Wilde's works, including
The Soul if Man under Socialism and The Ballad if Reading Gaol were advertised
in the pages of Mother Earth, and bookstores and individual readers could order
them through the Mother Earth Publishing Association.
Wilde became a powerful symbol within anarchist p olitical discourse.
In a letter to the German sexologist and homosexual rights activist Magnus
Hirschfeld, Goldman explicitly linked her defense of Wilde to her anarchist
politics . "As an anarchist," she wrote, "my place has always been on the side of
the p ersecuted." Wilde, hounded by moralists and driven to an early grave, was
an obj ect lesson in the way that outsiders were treated. "The entire persecution
and sentencing ofWilde," Goldman wrote, "struck me as an act if cruel injustice
and repulsive hypocrisy on the part of the society which condemned this man."
I n protesting the treatment of Wilde, Goldman was also protestin g the way in
which all " the p ersecuted" were treated.74 She even used a stanza from Wilde's
Ballad if Reading Gaol as preface to an article she wrote about Leon Czolgosz,
the young man who assassinated President McKinley in 1 90 1 . In condoning
Czolgosz's actions she argued that he was a tragic product of a social order
ruled by violence and coercion. Goldman c ompared Czolgosz to the prisoners
that Wilde describes in his poem. That "ininates" go mad and strike out at their
j ailers is, as Goldman saw it, a " tragedy," but it is hardly unexpected.75
64 FREE COMRADES
Other anarchists drew on Wilde's texts in the years following his impris
onment. John W-illiam Lloyd chose an excerpt from Wilde's essay, The Soul of
Man under Socialism as a preface to his utopian novel, The Dwellers in the vale
Sunrise. In the passage Lloyd excerpted, Wilde looks forward to the day when
" the true p erson ality of man . . . will grow naturally and simply." In that future
world, "man" will " not be always meddling with others or asking them to be
like itself. It will love them because they will be different."76 Wilde's text could
signifY libertarian social and cultural politics outside the realm of sexuality per
se. Dwellers in the vale Sunrise has a strong message of racial egalitarianism. Pub
lished in 1 904, the novel portrays the life of a utopian community that models
itself after those of " Indians , Eskimos , and other savages." Though the term
"savage" has a jarring quality for contemporary reade rs , Lloyd used it in an
ironic sense. This group of men and women, whose neighbors call them The
Tribe, believe that these non-Western people's "social relations . . . are superior
to the white man's ." Sometimes called "white Indians" by their neighbors, The
Tribe is a multiracial community that includes " some real Indians . . . and people
of all colors, eve n one Chinaman."77 Lloyd's representation of a racially and
ethnically diverse social group living in harmony, though marred somewhat
by a paternalistic tone, is a literary rebuke to the rising tide of Jim Crow and
other forms of in stitutionalized racism that characterized turn-of-the-century
America. Wilde 's text, which champions a tolerant attitude towards human di
versity, was a perf,�ct accompaniment to Lloyd's vision of a racially harmonious
utopia.
Within his novel, Lloyd cites Wilde as a political authority, at several points
staging debates about economic or social questions between representative
figures such as an urban socialist, a "natural man," a wise elder. These discus
sions serve as a way to explore the variety of possible solutions available to the
p ressing problems of the day. At one point, James Harvard, the urban social
ist whose very name bespeaks learning, defends the use of machinery against
those who feel that industrial development and modernity are inherently op
pressive. " There i:; nothing abnormal about machinery," Harvard tells his lis
teners . "Kropotkin is right when he says our present killing servitude to the
machine 'is a matter of bad organizations, purely, and has nothing to do with
the machine itself; ' and Oscar Wilde is right when he claims that the machine
is the helot on which our future civilization shall rise."78 Following Wilde and
Krop otkin, H arvard argues that machines will free humanity from the need to
perform tasks that sap the soul and body. I nstead, people could devote them
selves to cultivating their higher faculties . Lloyd's use of Wilde as a political
THE WILDE ONES 65
thinker was very much in keeping with way in which The Soul of Man under
Socialism and other texts were referenced by anarchists and others on the Left.
Lloyd's decision to use Wilde's text as a preface to his work illustrates how
the disgraced writer's work functioned as a powerful and polyvalent resource
for the anarchists. It was not just the content-the literal meaning of the
words-that functioned in this way. Lloyd knew that by using the writing of
a man who was tried and convicted for living his life as he chose, it would be
part of the anarchist challenge to the powerful forces of moral opprobrium
and social hierarchy. The passage from Wilde's essay advocates a liberal attitude
toward social regulation and a celebration of variety in human expression. The
economic principles ofWilde's variant of socialism had obvious appeals to the
anarchists. His vision of a world where difference is tolerated, and even cel
ebrated, fits well with Lloyd's politics.
But in the wake of his trial, using Wilde's writing was also a strategic signi
fier of Lloyd's sexual politics. Lloyd's attempt to grapple with the moral and so
cial place of same-sex love is explored in greater detail below, but the fact that
he himself may have been erotically drawn to men colors any interpretation of
his choice ofWilde as textual frame for his novel. Though Lloyd's novels are lit
tle known among those who study homosexuality in American literature, The
Dwellers in the vale Sunrise is strongly marked by homoerotic desires. The main
character, Forrest Westwood, refiects what historian Laurence Veysey character
izes as "the author's bisexual imagination."79 Westwood, who reads Greek and
Latin and wears nothing but a pair of knee-length trousers, is a combination of
the Native American and Classical literary signifiers of same-sex desire.so The
novel is replete with passages where Westwood's body is lovingly described.
Westwood, though a member of The Tribe, is a singularly independent figure.
He exists outside of the bonds of social convention and heterosexual pairing,
living his life on the social and erotic margins of respectability. The Dwellers in
the vale Sunrise belongs to genre of homoerotic writing that literary historian
James Gifford has identified as the " natural model" of homoerotic representa
tion, which celebrates "the homosocial dream of the Bachelor and the Broth
erhood, nearly always idealized to some degree, often featuring an Edenic land
scape of freedom away from the pressures of the civilized world, where men
could live with men and be free of constraints."Rl The citation ofWilde's most
famous political text would quite usefully frame Lloyd's homoerotic literary
utopia.
In addition to excerpts ofWilde's poetry and prose, articles on Wilde were
featured in anarchist publications. The first issue of The Free Spirit, for example,
featured a story by Rose Florence Freeman entitled " Oscar Wilde," which de-
66 FREE COMRADES
scribes her experience of encountering Wilde's work as a young girl. Wilde's

work and personal history deeply shaped Freeman's views of sexuality and
moral boundaries. After reading one of his stories, Freeman approached a li
brarian to find out more about the author. Unwilling to spread the contagion
ofWilde's decadence, the librarian was not forthcoming. " She told me the skel
eton facts," Freeman noted, "and in her eyes I read evasion." When Freeman
" asked what he had done that they sent him to prison," the librarian gave
an " equivocal reply." Eventually, " and by persistent effort I discovered Oscar
Wilde was sent to prison for a sin which was called unnatural." Freeman rej ects
this condemnation, seeing in Wilde a spirit "utterly free and Pagan." She " con
ceded to every being the right of sexual expression in whatever mode best en
hanced his dream or fulfilled his desire." Despite the best efforts of those who
condemned and continued to silence him, Wilde's voice emerged triumphant.
"Those who have strutted before you," Freeman concludes , "mouthing their
little morals and chuckling at your downfall have themselves been consigned
to that oblivion toward which they so anxiously and with such foolish futility
endeavored to turn you, their superior."H2 This vision of a triumphant Wilde
was an apt symbol and reflection of Rose's own rej ection of the values of the
society in which she lived.
In several texts, anarchists identified themselves with Wilde. In 1 9 1 6, Ben
Reitman, Goldman's lover and lecture tour organizer, published a poem enti
tled "Vengeance" in 1Uother Earth. Reitman wrote the poem while imprisoned
for the distribution of birth control information. Though it does not rise to the
level of The Ballad of Reading Gaol or De Prc:lundis, the poem contains many of
the same themes as Wilde's prison texts. The fact that Reitman was j ailed for a
sex crime makes the comparison with Wilde's ordeal all the more compelling.
"Vengeance" denounces those who put him behind "cruel steel walls" and
denounces the " District Attorney [who1 can send 1 00,000 to prison" and the
"Judge who can take the light and liberty from 1 0,000 people."H3 These agents
of the state are complicit in an unjust and oppressive system .
Reitman makes the comparison between his own imprisonment for a sex
crime and Wilde's by explicitly referencing Wilde throughout his poem. In one
passage Reitman tells his reader "I have been reading . . . Wilde," and in direct
emulation ofWilde, he signs his poem using only his cell number, "Cell 424."
The anarchist publication Free Society illustrated this when it printed an excerpt
from Ballad c:f Reading Gaol under the new title, "The Prisoners,"84 in August
1 90 1 . In Reitman's poem and other anarchist texts,Wilde flll1 c tioned as a pow
erful symbol with which to express the way that the state worked to enforce
sexual norms through imprisonment, censorship, and harassment.
THE WILDE ONES 67
One of the most striking uses ofWilde in anarchist work appears in Alexan
der Berkman's journal, The Blast. In January 1 9 17 , Berkman placed an excerpt
of The Ballad of Reading Gaol on the cover. One of the most quoted passages
from the poem, it reads: "But this I know, that every law that men have made
for man, since first man took his brother's life, And the sad world began, but
straws the wheat and saves the chaff with a most evil fan." The excerpt is laid
over an illustration by Robert Minor, depicting a lynch mob chasing a lone
man who is running for his life. In the background of this portrayal of mob
violence, a scaffolds looms after.
This cover image is a complex one with multiple meanings and symbol
ogy. First, the image represents Tom Mooney, who was on trial for his alleged
involvement with a bombing that took place at a Preparedness Day event in
San Francisco in July 1916; Berkman certainly felt that Mooney was being
hounded by a lynch mob and he defended him vociferously. The depiction of
a lone man running from a mob was very much in keeping with how the an
archists portray ed Wilde's treatment by his tormentors. Whatever its interpreted
meaning, the image was prescient. The Blast was shut down by the authorities
shortly after the issue appeared. Wilde, here signified by the quotation of his
text, had become a powerful symbol to the anarchist:s. He was a tragic figure
with whom the anarchists could identify, and on whose behalf the anarchists
made their case.
Even before the trial and imprisonment that martyred him in their ey es,
Wilde appealed to the anarchists. The libertarian tone and content of Wilde's
political writing and his occasional ideological self-identifications with anar
chism were well known among his anarchist readers, but his imprisonment ce
mented the political bond. The defense of homosexuality became a way to ex
pose the workings of "the miserable hy pocrites" who acted through the state in
the name of morality, justice, and the defense of order. Wilde's ideas about the
value of individualism and the injustice of society echoed many of their own.
With his conviction, imprisonment, and early death, Wilde rose to the level
of a martyr. He came to signify something more than the prejudice against
what Goldman called "inversion, perversion, and the question of sex variation;"
Wilde became a sy mbol of the anarchist struggle to transform society. Sexual
freedom, personal liberty, the freedom from coercion by the state, and the ide
als expressed in The Soul of Man under Socialism, all came together in Wilde. By
defending Wilde's right to love whomever he wished, the anarchist sex radicals
were making a larger claim about the quality of the just society. From 1895 on,
the defense of homosexuality was a persistent topic of discussion. No other
68 FREE COMRAOES
political movement of the period engaged in a similar attempt to deal with the
legal, moral, and social place of same-sex desire.
:!full'
C H A PT E R T H R E E :
FR E E COM RAD ES: W H I TMAN AND TH E S H I FTING

G ROUN D S OF TH E POLITI CS OF HOMOS EXUALITY
IN 1 905, EMMA GOLDMAN and her comrades gathered at her New York
apartment to plan the launch of her new journal, The Open Road. The title was
inspired by the work of Walt Whitman, a celebrated figure among many anar
c:-
e
.n chists who saw a lyrical validation of their own beliefs in his work. Goldman
:::J
� felt that Whitman was "the most universal, cosmopolitan, and human of the
"
ro
American writers." l Her associate Leonard Abbott claimed that "The central
en
.<::
B motive ofWhitman's best-known and most characteristic p oetry is revolution

'"
""
m
-£
ary."2 Unfortunately, the name The Open Road was already taken and Goldman
b
;;;
was forced to choose a new title : lUother Earth, but Goldman continued to
� champion Whitman. In an early article in Mother Earth titled, " O n the Road,"
o
� she urged her readers to follow Whitman on the " open road, strong limbed,
0>
i:' careless, child-like, full of the j oy of life, carrying the message of liberty, the
a
m gladness of human comradeship." This bracing message of adventure, explora-
� tion, and solidarity reflected Goldman's understanding ofWhitman as a herald

of a new world. Whitman's poetic voice depicted "wonderful vistas," which
pointed to a way out of the crabbed society against which the anarchists strug
gled.3
Among the destinations that Whitman's " open road" suggested to his an
archist readers was sexual freedom. Whitman's work, Leonard Abbott declared,
m
o
'"
u constituted " a direct assault upon Puritanism" and "called for a complete revi-
70 FREE COMRADES
sion of sex-values."" In both form and content the writings of the "Good Gray
Poet," as Whitman was sometimes called, presented a challenge to what the
anarchists saw as the genteel tradition ofVictorian reticence. "No one can read
Leaves of Grass," wrote a contributor to the anarchist journal Free Society "with
out feeling that sex is sacred to Whitman in a way almost ne\v to the unillumi
nated world."5 In an essay entitled "Walt Whitman: Poet of the Human Whole,"
William Thurston Brown declared that, "If Whitman had done nothing else
than sing the sacredness of the body and declare that the body is j ust as divine,
j ust as clean , j ust as holy, j ust as sacred as ever the soul has been thought to be,
he would have earned the never-dying gratitude of all the u nborn myriads of
human b eings that are to come into this human world."6 Whitman challenged
the " distinction between sexual (bad) and spiritual (good) " hierarchy of values
that, according to Jonathan Ned Katz "haunted" American culture.7
The anarchists were not alone in seeing in Whitman's work a message of
sexual liberation . Among Whitman's most passionate admirers were readers
who saw him as a defender of homoerotic desire. According to Leonard Ab
bott, " H omosexuals all over the world have looked toward Whitman as toward
a leader."8 Whitman's work provided th ese readers a language to discuss same
sex love free of the taint of sin, crime, degeneration, and insanity. English critic,
John Addington Symonds wrote of Whitman that "no man in the modern
world has expressed so strong a conviction that 'manly attachments ,' ' athletic
love; [and] 'the high towering love of comrades,' is a main factor of human life,
a virtue upon which society will have to rest, and a passion equal in its perma
nence and intensity to sexual affection."9
Symonds and other readers were especially responsive to Whitman's "Cala
mus " p oems that described love between men as " the dear love of comrades."
E dward Carpenter, for example, first encountered Whitman 's work at the age of
twenty-five. "What made me cling to lWhitman] from the beginning," he later
rec alled, "was largely the p o ems which celebrate comradeship. That thought
so near and dear and personal to me, I had never before seen or heard fairly
expressed; even in Plato and the Greek authors there have been something
wanting (so I thought) ." l 0 Carpenter was profoundly shaped by his encounter
with Whitman's work. In addition to writing essays on the subj ect of sexual
ity, including same-sex love, that made frequent reference to Whitman's work,
Carpenter composed a collection of p oems entitled Towards Democracy, which
echoed the themes of Leaves of Grass.
Whitman's poetry and the homoerotic interpretations of his work, pro
duced by critics l ike Carpenter, influenced a number of anarchist sex radicals.
Whitman was a key figure through which a politics of homosexuality emerged
FREE COMRADES 71
in the anarchist movement. In the early part of twentieth century, the nature
and quality of erotic desires represented in Whitman's work became the topic of
conversation among a number of anarchist sex radicals. Unlike Wilde, Whitman
was riot involved in a dramatic scandal, trial, or a specific moment that brought
the subj ect of homosexuality into sharp, public visibility. Whitman obscured
his erotic attraction to men and, on at least one occasion, he explicitly rej ected
the suggestion that his work represented same-sex desire. l l Not surprisingly,
therefore, anarchist discussions of Whitman's work as it related to sexuality are
uneven, complex, and shifted over time. While some saw in his celebration of
comradeship a representation of same-sex desire, others read an affirmation of
intense friendship and social bonds. In the nineteenth century the anarchists'
discussions ofWhitman's work and sexuality were largely concerned with the
legitimate boundaries and expression of heterosexual desire. It is only in the
twentieth century that discussions of Whitman's work and its relationship to
homosexuality begin to appear with any frequency in the anarchist press. This
shift mirrors the way that ideas about homosexuality evolved in the opening
decades of the twentieth century. During this period, the meaning of Whit
man's work and what it implied about its author and his admirers reflected the
increased salience of the understanding of the homosexual as a distinct person
ality type, and. of sexuality as a key to understanding human psychology.
By tracing the discussions of Whitman and of sexuality that were carried
out by a number of anarchists-among them Benjamin Tucker, John William
Lloyd, Leonard Abbott, and Emma Goldman-we can get some sense of the
ways that shifting sexual norms and society's changing beliefs shaped the an
archists' politics of homosexuality. Lloyd, in particular, is an interesting figure
in this study. In the early-twentieth century, he
made a number of statements regarding the social
and ethical status of homosexuality with specific
reference to Walt Whitman. He also referenced
Whitman's work in direct and indirect ways in
his own sexual politics. Lloyd's relationship with
Whitman was influenced by his reading of Ed
ward Carpenter and other European critics, as
well as sex radicals whose changing interpreta
tion ofWhitman's work brought the " Good Gray
Poet's" erotic nature in to ever-sharper focus.
But Lloyd had difficulty negotiating the rapidly
changing sexual and political landscape of the Leonard Abbott, circa 1 905 (courtesy
early-twentieth century. He found the unstable of the Kate Sharpley Libra ry).
72 FREE COMRADES
sexual terrain treacherous. Emma Goldman-in the years following her expul
sion from the United States-also found her views of Whitman's sexuality and
the meaning of his work dramatically altered by her encounter with European
critics of his work.Just as was the case with Wilde, American anarchist sex radi
cals' understanding of Whitman's sexuality and the political implications of it
were profoundly shaped by European sex radicals.
In the nineteenth century, American critics and readers focused on poems
that represented relations between men and women when discussing the erotic
nature of his work. There were, for example, numerous attacks on Whitlllan's
poetry collection, "The Children of Adam," which contained poems such as"A
Woman Waits for Me." In this poem, Whitman declares that "all were lacking
if sex were lacking" and that "I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for
these States, 1 press with slow rude muscle."I" This kind of language did not go
unnoticed, and there were repercussions. In 1897, for example, the anarchist
journal, The Firebraml. was censored for reprinting "A Woman Waits for Me."
Until the twentieth century, though, Whitman's homoerotic texts, notably his
"Calamus" poems, which were beloved of readers such as Carpenter and Sy
monds, elicited little in the way of hostile commentary. This is not to say that
the homoerotic elements of Whitman's work went completely unnoticed: As
early as 1855, Rufus Griswold published one of the few nineteenth century
discussions of the homoerotic currents in Whitman's work. He condemned
Whitman as a "monster" of "vileness," and denounced his work for represent
ing the " Peccatum mud horrible, inter Christianos non nominandum," (the horrible
sin not to be named among Christians) a traditional legal and religious phrase
used to name same-sex acts.13 But Griswold's attack, though ferocious, was
little commented upon; its indirect language reflected the contemporary dif
ficulty of dealing with "sins" thought so "horrible" that they could "not be
named among Christians." That he used latin rather than English in making
his charge made his accusation all the more obscure.
Anarchist discussions of Whitman and his work in the nineteenth centur y
reflected the prevailing erotic interpretations ofWhitman's writing. The discus
sions and debates that did occur in the movement largely made reference to
illicit relations between men and women that figured in the work. In 1882,
for example, Benjamin Tucker engaged in a fight over an attempt to censor
Leaves <if Grass on the grounds of obscenity. That spring, Oliver Stevens, the
district attorney of Suffolk County, Massachusetts moved to prevent Whitman's
publisher, James R. Osgood, from bringing out a second edition of the book,
and sought to ban its sale in the Boston area. Osgood buckled under the pres
sure, and Whitman was forced to find another publisher. Tucker responded to
FREE COMRADES 73
the district attorney 's attack by procuring a number of copies from Whitman's
new publisher with the intention of distributing them. He later revealed that
he "inserted an advertisement conspicuously in the daily papers of Boston, as
well as fin his] own journal, offering the book for sale."Tucker refused to allow
Whitman's work to be censored; he defied the actions of the district attorney
through direct action. This bold move succeeded: Within the y ear, Tucker re
ported to Liberty's readers that"Leaves of Grass is now sold openly by nearly all
the Boston booksellers. I have won my victory, and the guardians of Massachu
setts morality have ignominiously retreated."14
Though Whitman's work was attacked because of its supposedly salacious
nature, neither Stevens nor Tucker make any mention of the homoerotic ele
ments throughout. To their ey es, as to most of their contemporaries, Whitman's
defense of comradeship did not read as specifically homoerotic. Most nine
teenth-century Americans did not equate closeness between men-even if
expressed with kisses and hugs-with homosexuality."Intense, even romantic
man-to-man fr iendships," writes Jonathan Ned Katz,"were a world apart in the
era's consciousness from the sensual universe of mutual masturbation and the
legal universe of'sodomy,"buggery,' and the'crime against nature' (legally, men's
anal intercourse with men, boy s, women, and girls, and human's intercourse
with beasts)."15 Romantic fr iendships between members of the same sex were
a respectable and valued element of middle-class social life. Homosexuality was
identified with the sin of sodomy and dramatic inversion of gender roles, not
with intense same-sex friendship. If same-sex relations were not tainted, as it
were, by gender inversion and overt sexuality then they were considered noble
and necessary. T his meant that a wide range of same-sex intimacy was tolerated.
"Romantic lovers and sodomites," writes Katz, "inhabited different spheres,
leaving a great unmapped space between them."16 In the nineteenth century,
and even into the twentieth century, Whitman's depiction of "the manly love
of comrades" was taken to be a commonplace, if somewhat excited, praise of
friendship. It was only at the turn of the century that such close bonds began
to be suspect.17 Whitman, as Eve KosotSky Sedgwick argues, straddles the ho
mosocial world of the nineteenth century and the "homosexual/homopho
bic world" of the twentieth century. 1 K The relative lack of attention paid to
the homoerotic content in Whitman's work in the nineteenth century was a
function of the fact that people were only identified as "homosexual" if they
clearly expressed inappropriate gender behavior. Whitman did not fit this ty pe.
It was not until the 1900s that a more clearly defined notion of a"homosexual
Whitman"-one premised primarily on a psy chological category, rather than a
gender identity -would emerge.
74 FREE COMRADES
Though Tucker makes no mention of the homoerotic elements of Whit

man's work, his defense ofWhitman did contribute, indirectly, to Tucker's p oli
tics of homosexJality. The efforts to censor Whitman sharpened Tucker's cri
tique of state re gulation of public morals and personal behavior. Reflecting on
his fight with Stevens over the merits ofWhitman's work, Tucker mocked "the
ever-watchful state" that rushes to protect "pure and innocent youth" from the
harmful effects of thoughts and words. Tucker admitted that some might be of
fended by Whitman's frank discussion of the body, but argue d that the costs of
censorship are much higher. And though he hardly believed that reading Whit
man would lead to illicit behavior, Tucker insisted that, even were this the case,
the c osts of suppressing sexuality were too great. " There is no desire, however
low," Tucker insisted, "whose satisfaction is so fraught with evil consequences
to mankind as the desire to rule, and its worst manifestation is seen when it
is directed against the tongues and pens and thoughts of men and women."
Tucker maintained that the state, and not works of literature, was the real threat
to the health of society. "Abolish the State," he concluded, "and leave obscenity
run its course." 1 9 Tucker's line of reasoning in his argument with Stevens was
almost exactly tbe same as that which he employed in responding to what he
c alle d the " criminal j ailers of Oscar Wilde" some thirteen years after his fight
with "the guardians of Massachusetts morality." Some might fmd Wil de's be
havior "low," but the State 's actions were by far the greater evil.
Like Goldman's Mother Earth, Tucker's Liberty carried numerous discussions
of Whitman's work and their relevance to anarchism. Their shared enthusiasm
for Whitman wa5 one of the few p oints of agreement between these two lead
ing anarchists . "Vlalt Whitman," Tucker wrote in the early 1 8 80s, "is an econo
mist as well as a poet-and of the right and radical sort toO."20 Liberty reprint
ed critical articles o n Whitman and offered readers the opportunity to order
Whitman's work , Tucker was keen to remind his readership that he had stood
by Whitman in his hour of need.
Liberty even reported on the lives of Whitman's associates : When William
Douglass O ' C onner, one of Whitman's earliest admirers, died in 1 88 9 , Liberty
carried an extensive obituary written by Horace Traubel, Whitman's caretaker
and one of his m ost devoted literary progeny. Whitman, who followed Tucker
ever since being defended by him in 1 882, wrote approvingly of the O ' Conner
obituary to friends . 2 1 It is clear from his conversations with Traubel and others
that Whitman read Liberty. He was not an anarchist-despite the best efforts of
some of his radi c al readers to make him so-but he did admire the anarchists'
fire and passion. That Tucker and other anarchist sex radicals were among his
defenders in the 1 870s and 1 880s, figured prominently in shaping his regard
FREE COMRADES 75
for them. " Tucker," Whitman told Traubel, " did brave things for Leaves of Grass
when brave things were rare. I could not forget that."22
One ofWhitman 's most vocal advocates in Liberty was John William Lloyd.
I n a poem entitled "Mount Walt Whitman," written on the occasion ofWhit
man's death in 1 89 1 , Lloyd mourned the passing of the " great, gray rock." He
declared that Whitman was the "poet of Nature, comrade of free men ; " such a
towering figure 's passing was hard to believe. "Other poets have been Olympi
an," Lloyd wrote, "But you are Olympus itself."D Lloyd, a poet himself, admired
Whitman's c ourage as a writer and an artist .
Lloyd's admiration was directly related to the poet's erotic sensibility. In
an essay on Whitman's poetry published in an 1 892 edition of Liberty, Lloyd
praised his honest treatment of sexuality and the body. Whitman, Lloyd wrote,
had " noble contempt for mealymouthedness which the great and the greatly
in-earnest have always shown, his words go to the birth of things, without
shame or sham." He was the poet of " the rude, blunt man of simple ideas, direct
action, and untamed loves and hates."24 So passionate was Lloyd's advocacy of
Whitman that their sexual p olitics were often compared. "Comrade Lloyd,"
wrote C. H. Cheyese, "is a p assionate lover of freedom, and b elieving, like
Whitman, that sex is the basis of all things, he unhesitatingly voices his thought
on sexual relations."25 Lloyd's feelings for Whitman were such that he became
identified with the " Good Gray Poet" within the movement.
In October 1 902, Lloyd returned to a discussion ofWhitman and sexuality.
No longer a contributor to Liberty, Lloyd published his piece on Whitman in
The Free Comrade, a small j ournal he edited, whose very title echoes Whitman's
rhetoric of the " manly love of comrades." Lloyd began his piece by resolutely
affirming his attraction to the opposite sex. " The love of man for woman has
been known to me, I can literally say, from my infancy. An aureola of beauty
and divinity surrounded all women in my thoughts-a feeling that has rather
grown with the years than lessened." But recently, Lloyd continued, he recog
nized that human desire and erotic attraction expanded to encompass men, as
well as women, "so that now the whole human race, in general and particular"
stood before him "in innate worshipfulness and lovableness ." This statement,
though indirect and cautious, is the strongest public declaration that Lloyd ever
makes about the legitimacy and value of same-sex relations .26
In his essay Lloyd states that two men transformed his views on the subj ect
of love and sex. " l owe much," he wrote, "to the teaching of [Walt] Whitman
and [Edward] Carpenter." They were responsible for awakening in Lloyd an
awareness of the erotic potential of "the whole human race"-that is, men
as well as women-and giving him a vocabulary with which to express his
76 FREE COMRAOES
feelings. Carpenter and Whitman's sexual ethics were refreshingly free of tra
ditional injunctions against sexual pleasure. "Whitman and Carpenter rej oice
in the fleshly-body of the human soul, which to them continually smiles from
every crevice." According to Lloyd the two p oets moved beyond the "abomi
nable asceticism which grew like a fungus on early Christianity" and which
holds "all normal human j oys and functions as the baits on Hell's trap." Their
post-Christian ethics allowed for an open defense of the body, an ethics of life
rooted firmly in the natural expression of human desire. By arguing that these
men's work could serve as a basis for a sex-positive outlook, Lloyd avoided
directly discussing the sin of sodomy, and therefore, sidestepped the Christian
inj unction against homosexuality.27
Though Lloyd was particularly effusive in regards to Carpenter's work,
he recogniz � d the Englishman's debt to Whitman's writings . " C arpenter is
to Whitman;' Lloyd wrote, "as Elisha to Elij ah , as John to Jesus , as Plato to
Socrates ."2R Carpenter himself was the first to acknowledge this debt in an essay
that appeared the same year as Lloyd's . He wrote that "Whitman by his great
power, originality, and initiative, as well as by
his deep insight and wide vision, is in many
ways the inaugu rator of a new era of mankind;
and it is especially interesting to find that this
idea of comradeship, and of its establishment as
a social institution, plays so important a part with
him."29 Compared to "Whitman's full-blood
ed, copious, rank, masculine style," Carpenter
felt that his own was " milder. . . as of the moon
compared with the sun."30 A number of crit
ics echoed Carpenter's remarks. Havelock Ellis '
first impression of Carpenter's work was that it
was "Whitman and water."31 Lloyd was more John Wi l l i a m Lloyd's poetry c o l l e ction,
kind: For him, Carpenter was "Whitman's tru Songs of the Un/blind Cupid, 1 899
( c o ll rtesy of the Kate S h a rpley Libra ry).
est c omrade, understood him best, is his best
interpreter."32
In this 1 902 article, Lloyd focused on Carpenter's work rather than Whit
man's because he, unlike Whitman, dealt explicitly with same-sex desire in
his writing, Carpenter began writing about the topic of sam e-sex love in the
waning years of the nineteenth century. At first, these essays were circulated
amongst private c ontacts, but in the mid- 1 890s, the Manchester Labour Press
p ublished a number of pamphlets, notably HomogCl1ic Love, and Its Place in a Free
Society and An Unknown People, in which Carpenter explored what he called
FREE COMRADES 77
" homogenic love." "Homogenic," like "Uranian" and the " Intermediate Sex"
were terms Carpenter used to discuss same-sex erotic relationship s . Initially
his works, which did not have broad distribution, circulated through private
networks, particularly those in progressive and radical circles. That Lloyd was
familiar with these works indicates though, that Carpenter's early writings o n
homos �xuality d i d travel across t h e Atlantic. C arpenter also produced work
that hinted at, but did not explicitly deal with, the topic of homosexuality.
These texts were published by mainstream printers and had a broad circula
tion in both E ngland and the United S tates . For example, in the same year that
Lloyd wrote The Free Comrade essay, Carpenter published Ioltius: An Anthology if
Friendship, which gathered together historical and literary examples of intense
same-sex friendships. According to Jonathan Ned Katz, Ioltius was " one of the
first collections of homosexually relevant documents of male-male intimacy."33
Its title refers to demigod Hercules' love for the young, male mortal, I oHius.
Hercules was , of c ourse, a paragon of masculine strength and nobility and so
served as an impeccable touchstone for a treatment of same-sex love. Though
Carpenter devotes much of his book to a study of Greek texts, he dedicated an
entire chapter of [altius to Whitman's p oetry of " comradeship."
Carpenter's writings on same-sex love were critical in the development of
Lloyd's sexual politics. In his 1 902 Free Comrade article Lloyd makes specific
reference to a number of Carpenter's works that dealt explicitly with homo
sexuality. He is clear about the extent of the English sex radical's influence on
his thinking:
I think most of the moderns feel as I felt-that the love of man for man, and
woman for woman was an abnormal if not a sinister thing, if at all intense
or inspired by physical beauty. And perhaps it is well for Carpenter in his
little books on "Homogenic Love," "An Unknown People," and in the recent
"Iolaus," to remind us that friendship between those of the same sex is a
spontaneous and inborn passion-in every way equal in intensity and tragedy
to that between the sexes-to a multitude of human beings in our midst, and
that among the ancient Greeks it was not only a respectable love, but the love,
about which all the honor and j oy and pride of the people centered.34
Lloyd responded to Carpenter's representation of homosexuality as a deep and

warm friendship. In Ioltius, homosexuality resembled the masculine love that
supposedly flourished among Greek warriors, rather than the illicit, degenerate,
and sinful lust that consumed effeminate sodomites. The marshalling of Greek
texts was important since, as Lloyd p oints out, same-sex relationships had a " re
spectable" place in that society. And, of c ourse, Classical Antiquity held a very
high place of honor in Anglo-American culture, recognized as it was as the
78 FREE COMRADES
birthplace of democracy. Lloyd was drawn by Car

penter's claim that Whitman's work would usher
IOLAvs
AN ANTHOLOGY OF FRlENDSltIP in a new Greek age. His work suggested to both
men that the "social institution" of comradeship,
which is too often "socially denied and ignored,"
will " arise again, and become a recognized factor
of modern life."35
rn,U'iUKJ) Jf
i\\AS &»I�f"'('iWI'" " t;>. UloUl'1:t>
By accumulating examples of same-sex friend
HI,m "REtT, at.(00){$ztJ'i, Wlt!JI)!;
ANti ll;' t CL� �T
t', G:a"N�\" ROW• .u.J,lClll :.T£it. ship, Carpenter sought to develop a respectable ge
lt4C$1\'I
nealogy for homogenic love. He hoped to show,

in Lloyd's words, that "the love of a man for his
loiBus, by Edward Carpenter comrade was a passion pure and divine." Seen in
Icourtesy of the Kate Sharpley the light of thousands of years of "passion pure and
libra ry).
divine," homosexuality was hardly "abnormal" or
"sinister." On the contrary, it was-according to
Lloyd-"utterly altruistic, faithful unto death,"
equal in quality and kind to the love "common between men and women
of our day."36 Both Lloyd and Carpenter responded strongly and favorably to
Whitman's skillful use of the notion of comradeship as a covering frame for
homosexuality. The language and terms associated with friendship could de
scribe passionate attachment between members of the same sex without using
the language of sin, crime, or pathology.
Perhaps the most appealing aspect of Whitman and Carpenter's work for
Lloyd was that both men implicitly refuted the notion that male homosexuality
was effeminate. " It would be easy to show," Lloyd wrote, "that in almost every
instance such homogenic love takes place where national ideas are military and
masculine."37 By insisting on the masculine nature of male-same-sex love Lloyd
was distancing the "manly love of comrades" from the figure of the "fairy," a
man who signaled his erotic attraction to other men through his inversion of
the masculine conventions of gait, dress, and mannerisms. Gender inversion
was the key framework within which Americans and Europeans understood
homosexuality. The fairy and his female counterpart, the "manly woman," were
instantly recognizable personas.
Because of their transgression of gender and sexual norms, "fairies" were
subj ect to acts of ierocious violence. Earl Lind, a self-described "fairy" and
the author of the 1 9 1 8 memoir The Autobiography of an Androgyne, tells of be
ing thrown ofT an army base by a soldier named Murphy. According to Lind,
Murphy toyed with him by lifting him by his hair, carrying him to the gate of
the base, and throwing him on the road, kicking him and "crying out for me to
FREE COMRADES 79
get along home, while I was screaming in fright."3� This was not unusual treat
ment. In fact soldiers, according to Lind, were " the easies t of c onquests ; " those
outside the armed services were less likely to treat him well.39 I n addition to
enduring near c onstant acts of violence, Lind was subj ect to verbal attacks and
blackmail, b ehavior that accompanied almost all of his sexual and social rela
tions . Given the violence and social ostracism " fairies" faced, it is not surprising
that Lloyd, like Carpenter, John Addington Symonds, and others influenced
by Whitman, argued that " same-sex passion is quintessentially manly."40 These
men gravitated to Whitman's figure of the comrade to represent homosexuality,
in part, because it stood in sharp contrast to the much-derided fairy.
Lloyd concluded his discussion of Carpenter's sexual p olitics by asking his
readers to open themselves up to variety in loves. His call for tolerance places
homosexuality within a broad spectrum of loving and noble human relations:
When we once enlarge ourselves on this matter of love, draw a free breath,
so to speak, and take a really brave look around, we shall find that nothing
but our superstitions on one hand and our selfish meanness on the other has
kept us from a whole world oflove and lovers always ready and waiting for us.
There is no reason why every kind o f l ove that has ever been known to man
should not be accepted, purified, understood, embraced, and wisely made to
yield its j oy and service to the life of every one of us. Larger! Larger!-Let us
be more! Let us give and accept more.41
"Larger" was a key term in Lloyd's political rhetoric, and it was one also em
ployed by Carpenter, who described his p olitics as the " Larger S ocialism."42 In
both men's lexicon, "larger" carries the connotation of the moral high ground,
as well as an implicit endorsement of the diversity of sexual desire and activity.
In this passage above, Lloyd implies that to restrict one's inclinations, or those
of others, bespeaks a limited understanding of the multiplicity of human desire.
This paean to sexual toleranc e is very much in keeping with anarchist argu
ments regarding the expression of desire free of external authority.
Lloyd presents same-sex eroticism as being squarely within the range of a
"larger love"-it is neither deviant nor marked as sharply distinct from het
erosexual desire. This was a very frequent theme in his writing on sex. "If you
have the Larger Love," Lloyd wrote in 1 90 1 , " every woman will be to you as
lover, mother, sister, or daughter, and every man will be to you a lover, father,
brother, or son." 43 This eroticized human family is, at the very least, open to the
possibility of same-sex relations. Every person, regardless of gender, presents the
p ossibility of friendship or sex-the two not being mutually exclusive. Else
where Lloyd would go further, stating in a 1 902 essay that, " Our Hero must be
that man or woman who can love the most men and women in the most beau-
80 FREE COMRADES
tiful, large, tender, and fearless way."44 In a poem published that same year, "Not
the Lover Who Loves But Me," Lloyd used the language of comradeship and
"largeness" to represent an eros which allows a reader multiple interpretations
of the gender, n umber, and nature of the lovers described within . "I love lib
erty more than all ," wrote Lloyd. "My lover must love immensity/And all the
great things more than me . . . l the comrade-touch is the closest kiss.".j; These
are not unequivocal defenses of homosexual desire, but that is precisely the
political effect that Lloyd sought through the concept of the "larger love." Like
Whitman and Carpenter, Lloyd used " evasion and indirection [as] strategies to
encode homoerotic content."46 He worked hard to blur the conceptual distinc
tion b etween " homosexual" and " heterosexual," framing desire within the idea
of "larger love." The inclusiveness of the larger love allows for a wide range of
desires, and situates them within a spectrum of respectable relationships.
Lloyd read Carpenter and Whitman as p olitical, as well as p oetic, masters .
This is not surp rising given that both men's essays and p oetry directly ad
dressed political questions. Carpenter, who Lloyd felt was "the greatest man of
Modern E ngland," was widely known among socialists for his poetry anthol
ogy entitled IimJards Democracy.47 The " democracy" that Carpenter urged his
readers to seek was an individual, psychological, and social liberation, as well
as an economic and p olitical one. " Towards Democracy," writes Stanley Pierson,
"foretold of the liberation of man's natural desires or instincts from the repres
sions of civilization."48 Lloyd clearly appreciated the p olitical implications of
Towards Democracy, and in 1 902, he wrote that Carp enter's anthology was " one
of the great books of the world . . a book £llll to bursting with human love,
.
tender, insistent, compassionate, comprehending, cheering, consoling, exalting,

a book manly and virile, breathing man's and Nature 's ozone from every sen
tence." Comp aring Carpenter directly to political figures he admired, Lloyd
wrote that "the 'Democracy' of which [Carpenter] prophecies and chants is
the 'Anarchy' of Kropotkin , the 'instituti on of the dear love of comrades' of
Whitman, the ' fellowship ' which is the 'life' of [William] Morris-the world
of emancipated men, free and loving."4') This mixture of social critics, literary
figures, and revolutionaries was reflective of Lloyd's eclectic p olitics.
Reading Whitman and Carpenter as political texts was not an idiosyncratic
act on Lloyd's part. " The poet of c omradeship," writes Whitman-scholar Charles
B. Willard, " gather [ ed] about him a comitatus of devoted adherents ."5o A mem
ber in good standing of this group, Lloyd employed the term used by the most
devoted followers of Whitman to describe themselves: "Whitmanites ."5 1 In
Canada, E ngland, and the United States, Whitmanite Societies formed, spon
soring j ournals, lectures, and providing forums for the discussion of literature
FREE COMRADES 81
and politics. 52 William James, a skeptical observer of this phenomenon, wrote

that Whitmanites were "infected . . . with [Whitman's] love of comrades," and
were eager to form societies, p ublish j ournals, and write, " hymns modeled on
Whitman's 'peculiar prosody.' ' '53 I n his book, The Changing Order: A Study oj
Democracy, Oscar Lovell Trigg, one of the best known of the American Whit
manites , argued, "Whitman is the first great prophet of cosmic democracy . . .
The entire volume of'Leaves of Grass' is dedicated to the cause of unity-unity
in oneself, unity with others in love and comradeship, unity of states in na
tionalism, unity of mankind in a spiritual identification." Like Lloyd, Trigg was
drawn to Carpenter's work, which seemed to spell out in greater detail the
political implications o fWhitman's own more evasive voice. Trigg p refaced The
Changing Order with an excerpt from Carpenter's Towards Democracy. 54
Lloyd did not abandon his anarchism when he threw his hat in with the
Whitmanites (which was not a formal movement, but a cultural sensibility) . He
continued to be active in the anarchist movement, though, in an act that illus
trates his complex-not to say confused-political affinities, he also became a
member of the newly launched S ocialist Party. Lloyd advocated what he called
" free socialism," a mixture of libertarian and communitarian impulses. Social
ism was, for Lloyd, a moral impulse toward community, while anarchism was a
set of ideas with which to throw off the dead weight of traditional morals . Both
freedom and commlmity, Lloyd argued, were necessary elements of the good
life. Leonard Abbott, one of Lloyd's closest colleagues expressed the idea thusly:
" To those who have lived selfishly and for themselves only, Socialism will come
as a gospel summoning them to thought and activity on b ehalf of large social
ends . To those who have been repressed by social custom and habit, who need,
above all, self-realization and a clearer vision of their own p owers, Anarchism
will seem the indispensable message."55 Anarchism, which was especially useful
in rethinking social and sexual codes, p ersisted as a strong element of Lloyd's
thinking.
Of c ourse, not every single Whitman enthusiast was engaged in a defense
of homoeroticism. Some of Whitman's fans were shocked to learn what their
peers saw between the lines. One American who read John Addington Sy
monds' study of Whitman acknowledged that, "a part of it reaches the high
water mark of criticism," but he recoiled at Symonds ' erotic reading of the
Calamus p o ems . "It seems that ' C alamus' suggests sodomy to him . . .I think that
much learning, or too much study of Greek manners and customs, hath made
this Englishman mad." 56 Most of Whitman's readers interpreted the bonds of
"manly comradeship" as signifYing platonic intensity of feeling between and
among men-including friendship and class solidarity. Such intense feelings
82 FREE COMRADES
were widely c elebrated on the Left. Nick Salvatore 's biographical study of Eu
gene V. D ebs, the leader of the Socialist Parry, identifies the central place that
" manliness" and "brotherly love " held in Debs' ethical vision. Debs was giv
en to rapturous exhortations on behalf of "the ties and bonds and obligations
[that] large souled and large hearted men recognize as essential to human hap
piness ."57 Such statements are nearly interchangeable with Lloyd and Carpen
ter's apologies for homoerotic love. It was the imprecision of the boundaries
between deviant and respectable desires and relationships that made Whitman's
work so attractive to Carpenter and Lloyd . Whitman's rhetoric of comradeship
was multivalent and could speak to a specific idealization of same-sex desire, as
well as to a set of powerful political and social values.
John William Lloyd's affinity with Edward Carpenter extended beyond ide
ology-the two men even looked alike. Both sported beards and wore the
clothes of a wo rkingman or hardy farmer. Both men represented themselves
in p ublications and photos in relaxed poses wearing broad hats and collarless
shirts . This was, of course, the very sryle of dress that Whitman, who thought of
himself as " one of the roughs," favored.58 But the connections between Lloyd
and his English counterpart were more than sartorial: in The Free Comrade and
elsewhere, Lloyd promoted Carpenter's work and compared it to his own . Both
men were refo rmers, sex radicals , and champions of Walt Whitman. Carpen
ter's p olitics, like Lloyd's , was "in harmony with the main tenets of anarchist
thought."59 They embraced a non-sectarian socialism, arguing (in the Carpen
ter's words) that, "We are all traveling along the same road."bU
Lloyd's ideological kinship with Carpenter was well known among his
contemporaries. In a tribute published in England two years after Carpenter's
death in 1 929, Lloyd was described as " Carpenter's most devoted American
disciple . . . who did more than any other follower in the United States . . . to fa
miliarize [Americans] with his doctrines ."61 According to a 1 902 profile by
Leonard Abbott, which appeared in The Comrade--a publication aligned with
the Socialist Party that published a wide array ofWhitmanite poetry and es
says-Lloyd "inherited Whitman's breadth," but he was "in a special sense the
brother of Edward Carpenter."62
It is p ossible that Abbott, who moved to the United States from England
in the late 1 890s , introduced Lloyd to Carpenter's writings on same-sex love.
Abbott met Carpenter "at a Socialist meeting in Liverpool, England" in 1 89 5 ,
where Carpenter "spoke on 'Shelley and the Modern Democratic Movement.' "
Following his talk, Carpenter led the assembly in a chorus of "his Socialist
hymn, 'England Arise,' " a poem from his collection Towards Democracy.63 Abbott
was deeply affected by meeting Carpenter, who he wrote had "been a living
FREE COMRADES 83
influence in my life during all this time."64 Carpenter was especially important
in shaping Abbott's sexual p olitics; according the historian Paul Avrich, Abbott
" specifically linked his admiration for Whitman, C arpenter, and Wilde with his
interest in homosexuality." Abbott called Carpenter a "homosexual saint" and
his Love's Coming ifAge, a "modern classic."65 He may also have passed on cop
ies of C arpenter's unpublished writings on " homogenic " love to Lloyd shortly
after the two met in the early 1 900s.
By 1 9 1 0, Abbott j oined Lloyd in editing and writing The Free Comrade.
Their c ollaboratio n was a natural one as Abbott shared many of Lloyd's in
terests and enthusiasms . Like Lloyd, Abbott embraced both the Socialist Party
and anarchism, seeing the two as complementary, rather than contradictory.
Abbott also shared his coeditor's high regard for Whitman and Carpenter. In
his introduction to the j ournal's readership, Abbott wrote, "the prophets of the
gospel we p reach are such as Shelley, William Morris, Walt Whitman, [and] Ed
ward Carpenter." Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Carpenter's Towards Democracy,
he added, " are the scriptures of our movement." B oth men shared a belief in
the importanc e of sexual p olitics . Abbott believed "that much of the storm
and c onflict of life during the next fifty years-perhaps the next five hundred
years-will center about the problems of sex." In the first issue of The Free
Comrade that the two worked on together, Abbott and Lloyd pledged to dedi
cate themselves to creating a world where sexual diversity was valued. In their
magazine, the two men advocated a social order where "those who love many
as spontaneously as others love one," as well as p eople with " homogenic" feel
ings, c ould freely express their desires. 66
In addition to his essays in The Free Comrade, Lloyd addressed same� sex
eroticism in the pages of other Whitmanite j ournals : I n 1 909, for example,
Lloyd broached one of his favorite subj ects--sex and social change-in the
p ages of Ariel. In his essay, Lloyd linked contemporary sexual mores with the
economic and p olitical rules of the day. "More than economics, more than re
ligion," Lloyd proclaimed, "the sex question will be the battle ground for those
who stand for or against Socialism . . . . For a very little thought and watching
must show any open mind that our p resent sex-relations are absolutely part
and parcel of our present system-nay are fundamental and typical ."67 In order
to enact change on the factory floor, Lloyd implied, that sexual relations must
be revolutionized. Marriage, in particular, needed to be dismantled-it was the
nexus wherein gender and class oppression were fostered and maintained. Men
and women in marriage became either "a parasite" or "a spiritless, dog-like
slave."68
B4 FREE COMRAOES
Lloyd propo sed alternatives to these deadening "sex-relations" that went far
beyond abolishing marriage. Rather than prescribe a single ideal relationship,
Lloyd envisioned a complex array of sexual combinations . "I believe," he wrote,
" that for a long, long time, and perhaps forever, all sex-relations will b e experi
mented with and tried-all that ever have been and others as yet undreamed
of." The landscape would not be totally unfamiliar. In the future some " cou
pIes . . . will . . . cling together . . . a monogamy perfect because natural , spontaneous,
unforced, and irrepressible." This is, of course, a fairly traditional description of
free love unions; two people bound together by their wills alone, free of any
external authority. Lloyd preferred the option of what he called "varietism" in
which " demi-god men . . . will draw and hold the hearts of many women" and
" queenly and goddess women" will compel the "worship " of "many men."69
Varietism was a key element in Lloyd's notion of the "larger love." Margaret
Marsh argues that varietism held particular appeal to anarchist women, who
responded to its "implicit denial of emotional possession."!I) This vision of an
array of alternatives to marriage very much reflects the anarchist alternatives to
traditional sexual relations with which Lloyd was intimately familiar.
Lloyd included same-sex sexual relations in the utopian future he sketched
out in his Ariel article. Among the cast of characters included in Lloyd's sex
ual taxonomy, are those attracted to members of their own sex. According to
Lloyd, in additi on to those who "will c ome near to loving the entire opposite
sex . . . there will be those strange ones who, on whatever plane, high or low, can
love only those of their own sex." Lloyd is careful in this article not to identifY
himself with the " strange ones" he describes. In fact by describing same-sex
love as " strange" Lloyd is distancing himself from those who " can love only
those of their ow n sex." Whil e c ertainly more ambivalent than his support for
Carpenter's ideas on "homogenic love" in The Free Comrade in 1 902, Lloyd's
discussion of an alternative sexual ethics is nonetheless significant. His vision of
a future where "there will be strange love-groups and anomalous families dif
ferent fro m any now seen or deemed possible" is remarkable for its break with
c ontempo rary rnores.71
But Lloyd's ambivalence is nevertheless important. Though at times strik
ingly radical in his critique of sexual mores, Lloyd's sexual politics and his will
ingness to articulate them were fragile. He c onfined his discussion of same-sex
sexuality to his own published j ournal and the pages of other small j ournals
situated on the fringes of the utopian Left. Outside the protective penumbra
of the Whitmanite movement, Lloyd felt vulnerable; he was unwilling to b e
identified as a " strange one." The shifting ideas about homosexuality, increas
ingly b eing discussed in the larger society also made Lloyd's particular sexual
FREE COMRADES 85
politics-which very much relied on a blurry distinction between " comrade

ship " and "homogenic " love-increasingly problematic.
By the first decade of the twentieth century, the "manly love of comrades"
was no longer viewed as entirely inn ? cent of erotic desire. The carefully p oliced
distinction between the fairy and the comrade were breaking down, and Whit
man was at the heart of his process. He served as an example of a man whose
erotic interest in other men was not necessarily betrayed by an overt gender
inversion. I n this changing context, Lloyd's sexual politics and sense of security
could be easily shattered. This is precisely what happened in 1 9 1 1 . In that year,
Lloyd turned again to the subj ect of homoeroticism in The Free Comrade, and
as in 1 902, the discussion of same-sex attraction c entered on Whitman. This
time, though, Lloyd denied any association with the man he had, nine years
earlier, cited as one of his greatest influences. He explicitly distanced himself
from Whitman in order to prevent being identified as an overly enthusiastic
advo cate of " comrade love."
Though Lloyd had praised Whitman as a "prophet" in 1 902, and a model
in 1 9 1 1 , he now renounced him. "I am in no sense that I can see a disciple
of Whitman," declared Lloyd. "I never particularly admired Walt's prose and
c ertainly never followed it." This is an explicit rej ection of his 1 902 statement.
Lloyd admitted that he found the "music " of Whitman's words pleasing, but
not "the content of his words." The man who Lloyd had once praised as the
" Mount Olympus" of p oetry had fallen dramatically in his estimation. At the
heart of Lloyd's dismissal was the dangerous subj ect of Whitman's sexuality.
Lloyd announced that Whitman's works were suspicious in a specific sense:
they reeked of homosexuality. " The 'sexual motive' of Whitman," Lloyd now
wrote, "presented itself to me, rightly or wrongly, as largely a homosexual mo
tive, and homosexuality was something from which I always shrank, for me the
hardest thing in life to understand."72 Lloyd's rej ection ofWhitman amounted
to a denunciation of "homosexuality; " this was both an act of literary criticism
and sexual politics. Lloyd put distance b etween his literary work and Whitman's
in order to avoid the charge of being too similar in his p ersonal life.
Lloyd's statement can only be read as a moment of literary, political, and
sexual panic. H e spurned not j ust the assertion that Whitman had influenced
his work, but the thought that his actions might resemble the poet's "manly
love of comrades." In his renunciation, Lloyd j ettisons language he had previ
ously employed, including Carpenter's term "homogenic love" and Whitman's
" comrade," in favor of the more clinical term "homosexuality." This too was
an act of distancing. Lloyd could not use the term comradeship, since to do so
would betray his own familiarity with Whitman 's work and reference the very
86 FREE COMRADES
terms that betrayed Whitman's "homosexual motive." Instead, Lloyd spoke as a

detached sexologist, using the more clinical, expert term "homosexual ." Just as
the language of comradeship had served to place homoerotic relations within
the broader realm of same-sex friendship celebrated within Whitmanite texts,
now the use of the word homosexuality positioned Lloyd outside that world
as a dispassionate observer. Lloyd was negotiating his own relationship to the
"homosexual motive" through his use of language.
In o rder to understand the reasons for Lloyd's behavior, it is important to
reconstruct the context in which it occurred. Doing so will allow us to isolate
and make visible the larger social and cultural transformations-including un
derstandings of s ame-sex love-that were sweeping through American society.
The immediate cause of Lloyd's renunciation of Whitman was a speech that
George Sylvester Viereck gave in the fall of 1 9 1 1 at the University of B erlin. A
transcript of the talk was published in the American j o urnal, Current Literature,
coedited by Viereck, and was reported on in at least one anarchist j ournal other
than The Free Comrade.73 Viereck's talk, like an agent in a chemical reaction,
brought to a head a series of developments which lay at the heart of Lloyd's
identification with Whitman . Lloyd's radically different public statements
the first articulated in 1 902, the second responding to a broader audience in
i 9 1 1 -regarding his relationship to Whitman's work reveals the complex shift
in the way that it was being reinterpreted as ideas about sexuality changed.
Lloyd was negotiating an evolving social, literary, and political landscape, and
was doing so in different cultural contexts. As the context changed, so too did
Lloyd's ability and willingness to identity himself with Whitman.
In his Berlin lecture, Viereck divided American poetry into four schools,
the first of which includes those "poets, who like Whitman . . . sing the song of
comradeship" and advocate a "far-reaching democracy."Viereck included Lloyd
in this groupViereck was quick to "find an erotic note" in Whitman's work, ar
guing that they c ould be read, " as studies in the psychology of sex." He argued
that, in Lloyd's writing, this sexual sub text is brought to the fore and even exag
gerated, saying, "J. William Lloyd over-emphasizes the sex motive o fWhitman ."
Viereck reduced Lloyd's " creed" to "sex worship," which he said was inspired
by the poet of comradeship.74 This juxtaposition of psychology, sexuality, and
p oetic interpretation was apparently the trigger that set off Lloyd's panicked
response. It should be noted that Viereck nowhere uses the term "homosexual
ity" in his talk. Nonetheless, Lloyd interpreted his being linked to Whitman as
an imputation of homosexuality. Whitman had become a charged symb ol of
the "homosexual motive."75
FREE COMRADES 87
That it was Viereck who delivered the lecture is of key importance in un
derstanding Lloyd's response. George Viereck was known as a decadent, libidi
nous poet-the very antithesis of the manly Whitmanite. Where Whitman and
his admirers masked homoerotic desire within the penumbra of comradeship,
Viereck amplified his dissident persona. According Viereck's friend, Elmer
Gertz, "The esoteric in love fascinated [him] b ecause it afforded new whips
with which to scourge the Philistines."76 Viereck delighted in letting his friends
know that at age sixteen he wrote a novel titled Elinor, The Autobiography if a
Degenerate. The novel's p rotagonist p asses "through every imaginable phase of
sex experience," reflecting the author's "knowledge of Casanova, Krafft-Ebing,
the Marquis de Sade, and Zola's ' Nana."'77 Though the novel, "a veritable cata
log of lust," was never published "it was talked about in the Viereck circle."7H
Though less explicit than Elinor, Viereck's published work also featured strong
homoerotic themes. One of his first collections of poetry, Nineveh: and Other
Poems, includes poems that depict the Roman emperor Hadrian's love for the
beautiful youth, Antinous, and one on the subj ect of Mr. W H . , the young man
said to have inspired some of Shakespeare's love sonnets. Lloyd was familiar
with Viereck's poetry, having reviewed it favorably.
It is also significant that Viereck gave his address in Berlin. At the turn of
the c entury, Germany had the most visible homosexual rights movement. I n
1 897, Magnus Hirschfeld, the famous German sexologist and activist, estab
lished the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in B erlin. Hirschfeld was only
one of several influential sexologists, including Krafft-Ebing, Albert Moll, and
Ulrichs, whose work was first published in Germany.79 Hirschfeld was particu
larly important in this group because Viereck knew him p ersonally. Viereck's
father, Louis, a socialist who spent time in prison for his politics before moving
to America, sponsored Hirschfeld's first lecture in Germany. The two continued
to keep in contact after the Vierecks' move to the United States. According to
Gertz, " George . . . succeeded his father in the line of friendship." Hirschfeld's
ideas about the origin and nature of homosexuality differed sharply from
Lloyd's . Hirschfdd maintained that male homosexuals constituted a "third sex,"
a sexological version of the fairy and a strikingly different gendered construc
tion than the Whitmanite comrade. The connection with Hirschfeld and Ger
many would have made Viereck's speech seem all the more fraught with mean
ing to Lloyd.
Lloyd's reaction to the assertions oNiereck's talk was further colored by the
fact that Leonard Abbott, his friend and colleague, worked alongside Viereck
at Current Literature. Historian Laurence Veysey states that Abbott and Viereck
were lovers . so Though the sources Veysey cites in his study are no longer avail-
88 FREE COMRAOES
able, there is evidence to support the claim that these two were romantically
linked . Elmer Gertz, who knew both men, wrote that they " took to each other
at once" and shared an intense relationship. Part of what drew them together
was their mutual interest in homoerotic desire, an interest that was, in part,
articulated through Whitman. According to Gertz, the two men "admired Walt
Whitman and had a fascinated intellectual curiosity about the variation of the
sex instinct."
Viereck and Abbott were not discrete about their relationship. According to
Gertz, Viereck once entertained Abbott by singing "A Little Maid of Sappho"
to him by moonlight, in Harvard Stadium.S! Viereck betrayed his affections in
print as well, dedicating the poem "The Ballad of the Golden Boy," a homo
erotic retelling of Robert Le Gallienne's ode to a "Golden Girl," to Abbott.
Viereck's poem describes Leonardo Da Vinci gilding the naked body of a beau
tiful "lad whose l ips were like two crimson spots ." The act is fatal, but the youth
dies happy knowing that he has been transformed from lowly apprentice into
" Great Leonardo's Golden Boy."82
One of the more interesting aspects of Lloyd's response to Viereck's Berlin
speech is the complete absence of any mention of Carpenter. In his rej ection
ofViereck's assertion that he is a Whitmanite, Lloyd lists intellectuals and an
archists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Josiah Warren, William Morris, and Henry
David Thoreau a:; critical influences on his thought. These thinkers, not Whit
man, Lloyd insisted are the ones to whom he was intellectually and politically
indebted. Poor Carpenter-who in 1 902 had merited the title of " the greatest
man of modern England"-is completely absent in this list of worthies . Like
Whitman, Carpenter disappeared from Lloyd's list.
Again, Lloyd's problem with C arpenter, as it was with Whitman, was that he
latter had become an identifiable marker for homosexuality. By 1 9 1 1 , Edward
Carpenter's work on same-sex love had reached a far broader audience than it
had prior to Lloyd's 1 902 writing about him. Carpenter's pamphlets, published
by the Manchester Labour Press, had circulated in relatively small circles, but by
1 9 1 1 he had begun to address homosexuality in texts published and distributed
by more mainstream publishers . The 1 906 edition of Carpenter's Love 5 Corning
of Age, his most widely read book, for example, discussed "homogenic love,"
whereas previous editions had not. In 1 908, Carpenter republished his Man
chester Labour Press p amphlets in his book, The Intermediate Sex-the first of
his maj o r publications to deal exclusively with same-sex love. By 1 9 1 1 , there
fore, it was no longer wise for Lloyd to have cited Carpenter in his denun
ciation ofViereck's speech. A panicking Lloyd could not possibly benefit from
being associated with the quintessential "homogenic" Whitmanite.
FREE COMRADES 89
Lloyd's reluctance to identifY himself with Carpenter reflected the fact that
the latter's increasingly open treatment of same-sex love led to public attacks
on his sexual p olitics. I n 1 909, for example, M. D. O 'Brien, an ardent C atholic
and member of the antisocialist Liberty and Property Defense League, pub
lished " S ocialism and I nfamy : The Homogenic or Comrade Love Exposed: An
Open Letter in Plain Words for a Socialist Prophet."The title of O 'Brien's essay
refers to the dual nature of the term comrade in Carpenter's p olitical discourse,
bringing to light the way that " comrade" signified both male lover and work
ing class solidarity. Though O 'Brien was no fan of socialism he felt even more
strongly about "homosexual lusts " which he believed ought " to be treated in a
lunatic asylum, or in a lethal chamber." O 'Brien accused Carpenter of seeking
to destroy the moral fiber of the working class by turning them away " from
their wives to the male ' comrades,' who are more capable of satisfYing their
unnatural appetites." Apparently, O'Brien feared that the male members of the
British working class were on the verge of being lured from their marriage
beds by the siren-like lure of Carpenter and his fellow "comrades." The no
tion of innocence seduced by the call of decadence mirrors the kinds of claims
made by Foote in his attacks on Wilde. In concluding his attack, O 'Brien called
upon Carpenter's readers to rej ect the call of comradeship. "Angels and min
isters of grace defend us," he proclaimed, " [against] the comrade love's effect
upon the comrades ! "�3
Similar attacks were made on Carpenter in the United States. One in par
ticular, which appeared in Socialism: TIle Nation of Fatherless Children, a C atholic
anti-socialist tract, is of special interest because it links Leonard Abbott, Lloyd's
associate, to deviant sexuality. In it, the authors, D avid G oldstein and Martha
Moore Avery, identifY Abbott as "a leading socialist of New York," who wrote
approvingly of Carpenter in The Comrade. They cite Abbott's review of Car
p enter's Love 's Coming ifAge--where he proclaimed " as suggestive and notable
a treatment of this subj ect, from the socialist p oint of view, as has yet appeared
in the E nglish language"-as a sign ofAbbott's degenerate morals. "Yes," Gold
stein and Avery mock, Love's Coming if Age "is indeed suggestive," not of a ·
utopian future, but " of the period of Sodom and Gomorrah, i n the days before
God commanded these vile spots to be wiped from off the fac e of the earth."84
In other words, Carpenter was a siren of sodomy luring men to their doom,
and Abbott, a willing accomplice in his evil plot. Like their British c ounterpart,
M. D. O 'Brien, G oldstein and Avery made explicit what was largely implicit in
Carpenter's work. I n doing so they linked Abbott and the Whitmanite defense
of the " manly love of comrades" to the sin of sodomy. I t is not clear whether
Lloyd was aware of Goldstein and Avery's attack on Abbott and Carpenter, but"
90 FREE COMRADES
the fact that such attacks were being written on both sides of the Atlantic is
an indication of the mounting risks of claiming kinship with Whitman and his
most ardent admirers. Given this turn, it is not surprising that Lloyd omitted
Carpenter from his retort to Viereck.
At the heart of Lloyd's reaction to Viereck's speech, however, is the shifting
and increased identification ofWhitman with homosexuality. There had been a
low murmur of suspicion regarding the sexual nature of Whitman's work, and
b eginning in the 1 870s, "scattered gay readings" of his work were published.85
For example, in 1 88 7 , Cuban revolutionary Jose Marti , who greatly admired
Whitman's work, felt it necessary to rebuke those "imbeciles" who, "with a
prudishness worthy of school b oys . . . believed they found in ' C alamus' . . . a re
turn to Virgil's vile desire for Cebetes or Horace's for Gyges and Lyciscus."86
Just as Carpenter used the relationship between 10Jaus and Hercules, Marti
made reference to Greek mythology to name homosexual desire. Of c ourse, in
Marti's case he did so with disgust, while Carpenter was attempting to uplift
same-sex relations. All in all, Marti 's was a rare reference to a queer reading of
Whitman at the time.
As the century closed, however, the number of queer readings of the poet's
work increased. By the 1 890s, Whitman's critics began to refer to the emergent
medical discourse on homosexuality in their discussion of his work. In 1 898,
for example, a review of an edited collection of Whitman's letters , appearing
in The Chap Book noted that the poet was a figure of interest among "sexual
psychopathists."87 The phrase used by the reviewer is strikingly similar to the
title of Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, the most famous sexological text of
the late-nineteenth century. By the early 1 900s, increasing numbers of readers
(Lloyd and Carpenter among them) were seeing in Whitman's " manly love of
comrades" something more than a defense of same-sex friendship. These sexu
alized interpretations of Whitman cast suspicion on those who championed
the his verse. One early-twentieth-century German critic went so far as to
" suggest there might b e a homosexual conspiracy designed to ' s ell' Whitman's
' homosexual ideas' to the world in the guise of'healthy' poetry."88 Similarly, in
his e arlier talk in Berlin,Viereck was essentially identifYing Lloyd as a member
o f this " homosexual conspiracy."
Viereck was responsible for very publicly exposing Whitman as a homo
sexual . In an article that appeared in Current Literature in 1 906, he reported on
the work of a " German medical writer" named Eduard Bertz, who, in 1 90 5 ,
h a d written a stu dy of Whitman for Magnus Hirschfeld's j ournal of sexol
ogy,Jahrbuche fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen (The Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual
Typ es) . "Dr B ertz,." wrote Viereck, "speaks of Whitman as a ' homosexuaL' " I n
FREE COMRADES 91
his essay, B ertz cited the work of John Addington Symonds , Marc Andre Raf
falovich, E dward Carpenter, and Max Nordau. "Dr. B ertz," Viereck tells his
readers, " conmlents of the strange mixture in Whitman of sensuous elements
and religious frenzy, and on his exaggerated feminine compassion and love
for humanity." What some had championed as the " manly love of comrades"
was, according to B ertz, really an " exaggerated feminine" trait. The comrade
exposed as a fairy in drag! Viereck finished his essay by noting that some of
Whitman's German fans had taken sharp issue with Bertz's work, insisting that
Whitman was " the prophet of a new world and a new race" and not an apolo
gist for homosexuality. 89 Viereck made clear that he believed Bertz to b e the
better judge ofWhitman's character and work.
Lloyd's response has to be understood in the context of these multiple lay
ers of signification and association. Viereck's speech brought into focus the
erotic elements of Lloyd's association with Whitman in a way that Lloyd found
deeply disturbing. The mounting awareness of what Lloyd called " the homo
sexual motive " in Whitman's work proved troublesome. By the second decade
of the twentieth century an increasing number of public discussions of homo
sexuality were being produced and read by medical authorities, moral arbiters,
j urists , j ournalists, and other social commentators. The boundaries between ho
mosocial and homosexual relations were being p oliced with greater severity.
Whitman was one of the figures used to illustrate and examine this process.
Articles like the one on B ertz in Current Literature were examples of the way
that the conversation was being carried out. Here and elsewhere, Whitman was
increasingly being identified as an exemplary " homosexual." In 1 9 1 1 , Lloyd
was caught in the middle of this sharp and contested conversation about sexual
identity, feeling exposed in a way he had not in 1 902.
This does not mean that Whitman's sexuality ceased to be of interest to the
anarchists. Nor does it mean that Whitman was no longer useful as a way to
discuss homosexual desire and its social, ethical, and cultural place in society.
Following her deportation from the United States for anti-conscription activ
ity during the First World War, for example, Goldman developed a lecture on
Walt Whitman that had a special focus on his homosexuality. However, Lloyd
and Goldman treated Whitman and homosexuality very differently. Goldman
did not adopt Whitman's language of comradeship rather she read it symptom
atically as an indication that Whitman was a homosexual. This act of transla
tion-which Lloyd found so very threatening-was , to Goldman, the key to
understanding Whitman's work and personality.
Goldman, who was a great fan of the " Good Gray Poet," seems not to have
addressed Whitman's relationship to homosexuality before the 1 920s, though
92 FREE COMRADES
she c ertainly spoke of Whitman as an erotic figure. For example, in 1 9 1 7 she

delivered a lecture entitled "Walt Whitman , The Liberator of S ex," but made
no mention of the homoerotic aspect ofWhitman's work. And though Gold
·
man delivered lectures on homosexuality before her exile, she did not, as far as
we know, refer to Whitman in them. This indicates the uneven and complex
nature of the ways in which Whitman's relationship to homosexuality emerged
as a topic of discussion among anarchists-and Americans more broadly-in
the first decade� of the twentieth c entury. Prior to her years of exile, Gold
man continued to view Whitman much as Tu cker had in the early 1 880s-as a
s exual rebel, but one whose erotic rebellion did not extend beyond the bound
aries of heterosexuality. It is only after the World War I, and during her exile in
Europe, that Goldman began to reexamine her understanding ofWhitman and
the meaning of his work.
Though Goldman knew them both, there is no evidence that Abbott or
Lloyd shared their views on the homoerotic aspects of Whitman's work with
her. Both men were careful to compartmentalize their discussions ofWhitman,
feeling implicated in any discussion of the topic of same-sex love in a way that
Goldman did not. Both felt vulnerable to being marked as sexual deviants,
even by friends and comrades whose sexual politics quite explicitly included a
defense of same-�;ex love. As we have seen, Lloyd distanced himself from Whit
man when he felt it necessary. This was not unusual for public intellectuals
grappling with the deeply personal and volatile issue of homosexuality at the
time. Carpenter responded in much the same way at several points in his life.
In 1 90 9 , for example, a reviewer for the
British Medical Journal (BMj) published
a particularly hostile review of The Intermediate Sex, and Carpenter responded
by writing a letter to the Blvlj in which he maintained "there is not a single
passage in the book where I advocate sexual intercourse of any kind between
those of the same sex." He insisted that he was merely advocating "sincere at
tachment and warm friendship."YO Carpenter may have been particularly anx
ious to respond to the BMJ since it was a voice of medical authority, and an
increasingly important regulatory voice in sexuality. In judging the actions of
Carpenter, Lloyd, and Abbott it is imp ortant to keep in mind the social context
in which they operated. All three men articulated their politics in what histo
rian Jeffrey Weeks poignantly describes as, " the shadowy area b etween honesty
and p ublic scandal."91
Like Lloyd, Goldman came to think ofWhitman as, what she ofI-handedly
referred to as a "pronounced Homo " by reading the work being produced by
literary critics and others who explored the meaning of Whitman's text and
life. As she was preparing her lectures on Whitman's sexuality in 1 927, Gold-
FREE COMRADES 93
i:nan wrote her friend Ben Capes, that she was " gorging myself on everything
p ertaining to Walt Whitman, [including] biographies, commentators, and his
own writing."n Much of the new Whitman scholarship reflected the rising in
fluence of psychological explanations of sexuality. I n Europe, where Goldman
lived following her deportation, this type of study was fairly advanced. B ertz,
for example, had expanded his thinking on the subj ect considerably since the
early 1 900s, publishing a series of articles on Whitman and same-sex love. But
even in the United States, interpretations ofWhitman as a "homosexual" were
increasingly visible. I n 1 922, Earl Lind wrote that Whitman " stands foremost
among American androgynes . . . many passages of Leaves of Grass and Drumtaps
exist as proOC'93 Androgyne was Lind's term for what might be best understood
as a " masculine fairy." Even the mainstream press began to reflect this emerg
ing discussion of Whitman as the classic "American androgyne." For example,
Harper's A1agazine, in the late 1 920s, published an article by Harvey O ' Higgins,
which argued that the " sexual expression" in Whitman's poetry "is dangerously
near the homosexual level." Influenced by the popular Freudian theories of the
day, O ' Higgins commented that Whitman's c ondition was "to be expected"
since the poet's "sexual impulse is anchored by a mother-fixation and [was]
unable to achieve a heterosexual goal." Neatly reversing Lloyd's admiration of
Whitman's masculinist representation of homosexuality, O ' Higgins maintained
that Whitman's defense of "the manly love of comrades" was proof of his psy
chological condition: "like many another case of arrested development he was
always 'a man's man ."'94
Emma Goldman's interpretation of Whitman was also informed by the
idea that his work expressed his essential psychological nature. Always an ea
ger reader of sexologists and psychologists, Goldman was an early advocate
of the theory that homosexuality was an innate drive that p ermeated the en
tirety of a person's life, work, and spirit. Her willingness to identifY Whitman
as a homosexual reflects her own b elief, expressed on numerous occasions, that
sex-conceived of as a fundamental drive or motivating urge-was a key to
understanding human psychology. In order to understand Whitman then, it was
essential to deal honestly with the root of his p ersonality. Goldman was con
vinced that Whitman's "whole reaction to life and to the complexities of the
human spirit can b e traced to his own complex sexual nature."90
G oldman believed that Whitman had deliberately obscured the themes
of his work and p ersonality, in order to protect himself against homophobic
attacks . She recognized this because she herself felt the attraction of secrecy
when speaking about sex, politics , and revolution. Goldman began preparing
her lecture on Whitman and homosexuality j ust as she started work on her au-
94 FREE COMRAOES
tobiography and wrote a friend that she felt that she faced problems similar to
Whitman's struggle with disclosure and secrecy. "I feel," Goldman wrote, "that
it will be extremely difficult to write a frank autobiography." Her effort to be
truthful echoed his; Whitman "began his career by flinging the red rag in the
fac e of the Puritan Bull, and then spent the rest of his life in trying to explain
what he meant by some of this ideas on sex and love." She also faced the same
need for discretion b ecause of the difficulty of writing a personal narrative that
preserved the privacy of friends and family. Goldman thought Whitman was
more interested in protecting his own reputation than in revealing the truth
about himself. Though "his 'Calamus' poems are as homosexual as anything
ever written . . . he absolutely denied it, and even advanced the story, whether
true or not has never been proven, that he was the father of six children."96
G oldman was intent on exposing Whitman 's true nature in her lectures.
Goldman acknowledged that Whitman's need to obfuscate was due to
the homophobia of the culture in which he lived. "I am inclined to think,"
she wrote, " that even his most devoted friends, with the exception of Horace
Traubel, would have dropped him like a shot if he had openly owned up to his
leanings ." The fear of the taint of homosexuality was precisely what led Lloyd
to act as he did m 1 9 1 1 . By denying Whitman, Lloyd was moving quickly to
avoid guilt by association. Goldman lamented the fact that the truth about
Whitman's sexuality was continuing to be denied. "This is best seen," she ar
gued, "by the constant apologies that nearly all of his American and English
biographers and commentators are making." In Goldman's opinion, by denying
this side of Whitman his critics were diminishing the stature of their subject.
"The fools do not seem to realize that Walt Whitman's greatness as a rebel and
poet may have been conditioned in his sexual differentiation, and that he could
not b e otherwise than what he was ."97 I n her lectures Goldman challenged "the
fools" who continued to deny the fact ofWhitman's "sexual differentiation."
Goldman saw it as her mission-and as a progressive step in her sexual poli
tics-to clearly identifY Whitman as a homosexual . This strategy did not work
for Lloyd, whose sexual politics were, paradoxically, dependent on obfuscating
the very thing that it named. Lloyd fled " the homosexual motive " in Whitman's
work, while Goldman sought to bring it into sharper view. Though Lloyd ad
vocated for the right of people to love members of their own sex, his politics
of homosexuality was dependent on plausible deniability. As long as "the manly
love of comrades" could remain unmarked in the larger social context of same
sex romantic friendship and homo social bonds, Lloyd felt relatively safe. As
the distinction be tween intense friendship and sexual interest between men
collapsed, Lloyd's political language and his sense of safety followed. In 1 9 1 1 ,
FREE COMRADES 95
when the cogmtIve dissonance between " the manly love of comrades" and
" homosexuality" became too great, Lloyd retreated from his association with
Whitman. For Goldman the reverse was true; as Whitman became increasingly
identified as a homosexual, she was able to use him to discuss sexual ethics in a
new way. She believed that by telling the truth about Whitman's nature she was
opening up the subj ect for greater discussion, and clearing the way for social
tolerance. What silenced Lloyd created the opportunity for Goldman to speak.
Rather than following a pattern of increasing openness and disclosure we find
that the changing social and sexual landscap e within which they worked-as
illustrated in the shifting views ofWhitman-both inhibited and enabled dif
ferent anarchist sex radicals to speak out on the moral, legal, and social status
of same-sex love.
P!UION MBMOIRS
OP .,.
ANARCHIST
--
----
C HAPTER FO U R :
" LOVE'S D U N G EO N FLOWER": P R I S O N AN D TH E
PO LITI CS O F H O M O S EXUALITY
IN THE SUMMER OF 1 9 1 6 , Ben Reitman, Emma Goldman's lover, was

released from New York's Queens County Jail . He had been imprisoned for
distributing birth control information-an act of civil disobedience that was
meant to highlight the inj ustice of state regulation of sexuality. Shortly after
to:
.c
� :> his release, Reitman addressed a gathering of supporters at New York City's
� � Lenox Hall . " I was sent to j ail," he told the crowd, "because I believe in happy,
:: �e- welcome babies and because
,�
I believe that motherhood should be voluntary,
�", � and also b ecause Judges McInerny, Moss, and Russell decided that I had bro-
U)
� � ken the law and must p ay the penalty." ! Reitman used his talk to condemn the
� � penal system and the society that created it. "Jail, Judges, [and] Governments,"
.� � he declared, " are all miserable failures. They are the greatest forces for evil, and
� � they succeed in maintaining themselves only by ignorance and force."2 This is
<:: 0
.� � a fair representation of the anarchist view of prisons and the judicial system. To
"- :g'
b .§ Reitman and his colleagues, prisons were the concrete manifestation of turn-
� § of-the-century America's hierarchical, undemo cratic, and brutal social order.

E .� Speaking in the shadow of the war in Europe, Reitman told his audience that,
�
-c
.� " I n a decent society we will need neither j ails nor judges any more than we
'"
E � will need wars ."3

0. C>
. � � To illustrate the absurdity of the prison system Reitman described the fate
j � of a number of the men he met behind bars . He highlighted cases, dramatiz-
98 FREE COMRADES
ing the deleterious consequences of New York's " repeat offender" laws, which
stipulated that repeat offenders receive lengthy and harsh sentences. Among
the cases that Reitman shared with his audience that day was a "young fel
low . . . arrested on the charge of pederasty, a common form of homosexuality."4
Reitman presents the prisoner's story as clear evidence of the brutal and unen
lightened nature of the judicial system:
The Judge sentenced him to the penitentiary for fourteen years. As far as
the Judges and the police are concerned, all the literature on that subject
might never have been written. The Judges and the police and everybody
else merely said that the boy was a degenerate and a dangerous crimin;<l, and
now for fourteen years he must languish in a hell all because God made him
that way.s
It is unclear what Reitman means by "pederasty" in this instance. The term

was used to describe relations between an adult and a minor, but it could
also refer to relations between two adults. Reitman describes the prisoner as a
"young tellow" and a "boy" so it is possible that he was the younger partner.
More likely Reitman is using the term without specific reference to age-struc
tured homosexual relations. We also don't know if aggravating circumstances
such as prostitution or public sex prompted the "young fellow's" arrest, nor is it
clear whether the prisoner's prior conviction, which doomed him to a lengthy
prison stay, was a sex crime or some other charge. Whatever the case, Reitman
dismissed the idea that the young man's actions rose to the level of criminal of
fense-he had done nothing for the court to concern itself with.
In his attack on the court's view of the "young fellow's" sexuality, Reit
man castigated th e court for its ignorance of "the literature on [the] subj ect."
The j udges, in other words, were not versed in the new sexological discourse
on homosexuality that the anarchist sex radicals were familiar with. Since they
were unfamiliar with what Reitman saw as the enlightened, scientific perspec
tive o n such questions, they were merely acting out their bigotry and cruelty.
How else, Reitman implies, could one explain sentencing a "boy" to fourteen
years "all because God made him that way?" Reitman understood homosexu
ality as an existential condition not a sin or a crime, and he lashed out at what
he saw as the j udge 'S ignorance. Reitman's colleagues might have flinched at his
mention of God--anarchists being overwhelmingly atheists-but they surely
agreed with Reitman's view that a sentence of fourteen years for "a common
for m of homosexuality" was outrageous . Like Reitman, they saw the court's
actions as betrayin g a sad lack of knowledge, an ignorance that they might well
have expected from the bench, but that was lamentable nonetheless. And, of
"LOVE'S OUNGEON FLOWER" 99
course, the fact that judges and jailers should regulate sexuality was anathema
to the anarchists.
That Reitman should discuss homosexuality in the context of a speech on
the subj ect of prisons is unremarkable. Since the establishment of the modern
American prison system in the early-nineteenth century, reformers , prison au
thorities, and former p risoners have written accounts of prison life that men
tion sex b ehind bars . As early as 1 826, Louis Dwight, a prison reformer, wrote
to inform government officials that in institutions "between Massachusetts and
Georgia . . . the sin of Sodom is the vice of prisoners." Sex between prisoners
was, in Dwight's words, a " dreadful degradation" that needed to be stamped
out. Dwight hoped the authorities would take action. "Nature and humanity," he
wrote, " cry aloudfor redemptior! from this dreaciful degradation."6 I n the decades that
followed Dwight's report, many such pronouncements were made. In 1 9 1 9 ,
Kate Richard O ' Hare, a member o f the Socialist Party, lamented the "ugly fact
that homosexuality exists in every prison and must ever be one of the sinister
facts of our penal system."7 Though writing nearly one hundred years after
Dwight, O'Hare was in agreement with her predecessor that homosexuality
was an ill disease bred in prison yards. By the early-twentieth century, there
existed "a large literature on homosexuality among . . . prisoners ."� This litera
ture tended to reflect the view that sex in prison was an illicit, immoral, and
criminal behavior-an evil weed that flourished in the hothouse environment
of the nation's j ails .
T h e views of American anarchist s e x radicals who wrote o n homosexu
ality and prison differed in crucial ways from other social critics and prison
reformers. O 'Hare 's opinion stands in sharp contrast to those of Reitman and
other anarchist sex radicals . When anarchists wrote about sex in prison, they
did not approach the topic from a relentlessly negative p erspective. O'Hare
was, of course, a well known member of the Socialist Party, an organization
whose sexual politics were strikingly different from the anarchists' . The con
trast between their views is all the more striking when one realizes that O 'Hare
was actually imprisoned with Emma Goldman when she made her observa
tions. O ' Hare was in the Missouri State Prison for violating the Espionage Act,
Goldman for conspiracy against the Selective Draft Law. While in j ail, the two
became friends , but O ' Hare did not absorb Goldman's views on the question
of homosexuality. Goldman knew about same-sex relations among prisoners,
but nowhere does she denounce them in O ' Hare's manner. In fact, in a letter to
Magnus Hirschfeld, Goldman suggested that her politics around homosexual
ity was informed by the knowledge she gathered during her prison stays .9 And
while O 'Hare denounced the homosexual relations she saw in the Missouri
1 00 FREE COMRADES
State Prison, Goldman's memory of her prison stay was of the "warm heart
beneath Kate's outer coolness." HI Goldman was not a fan of the Missouri State
Penitentiary but u nlike O 'Hare, she did not use prison homosexuality in her
critique the prison system. She did not lash out at the relationships she and
O ' Hare witnessed.
The anarchists understood the phenomenon of homosexuality in prison
through the prism of their larger sexual politics. Reitman, for example, presents
the "young fellow" as a victim of inj ustice not a tragic product of a warped sys
tem. Reitman, of course, was not defending sexual exploitation and violence in
prison. But that is exactly the point. Rather than critique prison life by expos
ing what O ' Hare called "the sinister facts of our penal system," Reitman uses
his discussion of prison to defend those who practice homosexual acts. The
only "sinister fact" Reitman sought to expose was that someone who practiced
a " common form of homosexuality" should be sentenced to jail-for fourteen
years, no less. Other anarchists, including Alexander Berkman, condemned the
sometimes brutal world of prison sex, but went further. Unlike O'Hare and
those who shared her views, Berkman also wrote about consensual, loving re
latio nships b etween prisoners. Like Reitman, Berkman's analysis of sex behind
bars was informed by his larger political b eliefs . The anarchist sex radicals used
their attacks on prisons also as an opportunity to explore and defend the ex
pression of same--sex desire.
Accounts of prison and prison life were a familiar genre of anarchist writ
ing. A number of leading figures in the movement spent time in j ail and later
wrote about their experiences. These accounts were considered imp ortant po
litical texts for the movement. Peter Kropotkin's account of his imprisonment
and escap e from the Czar's j ails and his short imprisonment in France, pub
lished as In Russian and French Prisons, was well known among movement ac
tivists. "Here," wrote Leonard Abbott in a review of the book in A-fother Earth,
" are the very throb and passion and romance of the revolutionary struggle." ! !
Goldman, Berkman, Reitman , and other anarchists also wrote about prisons,
and like Kropotkin, their stories of imprisonment explored major themes in
anarchist thought. The stark contrast between prison life and the ideals of anar
chism made for tense and engaging reading.
In Russian and French Prisons only hinted at the existence of homosexual
relations in prisons. In this, Kropotkin, whose radical views did not extend to
questions of sexmlity, was in full agreement with prison authorities. Of the
existence of homosexuality, he wrote, "1 shall say only what will b e supported
by all intelligent and frank governors of prisons, if I say that the prisons are the
nurseries for the most revolting category of breaches of moral law." ! 2 Though
"LOVE'S DUNGEON FLOWER" 1 01
he never specifically names the "breaches of moral law" he refers to, he does
point the reader to other prison literature that is less reticent in dealing with
the sex lives of prisoners .
Kropotkin's views do not reflect the sexual p olitics of some English-speak
ing American anarchists. It is in fact remarkable that, when it came to the ques
tion of homosexuality, Kropotkin found he shared the views of those who ran
I
the prisons� Anarchists did not typically cite the views of "intelligent and frank
governors of prisons" in their discussion of prisons. Kropotkin's views are in
sharp contrast to those held by the American anarchist sex radicals. Reitman's
defense of the "young fellow" is, clearly, quite different from Kropotkin's harsh
condemnation of homosexuality. Reitman's more accep ting attitude of the
variation of sexual desire is far more representative of the sexual politics of the
English-language anarchist movement. Even when discussing prison sexuality,
the governing principles of free love that guided the anarchist sex radicals in
their thinking remained paramount.
By far the most famous text written by an American anarchist that discusses
the moral and social status of same-sex love in the context of prison is Alex
ander Berkman's Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, Berkman's book is an account
of the fourteen years he spent in Pennsylvania's Western Penitentiary following
his conviction for a failed assassination of Henry Clay Frick, the manager of
Andrew Carnegie's steel empire. Frick was in charge during the Homestead
Steelmill Strike of 1 892. The book, published in 1 9 1 2, was widely reviewed
inside and outside of anarchist circles. Some of his mainstream critics dismissed
Prison Memoirs as the rationalization of a would-be killer, others saw more.
A reviewer in the socialist j ournal, The Coming Nation, stated that B erkman's
work "is a great human document, a remarkable presentation of prison con
ditions, and an intimate study of prison types." ! 3 Writing for Mother Earth, a
young Bayard Boyesen said that " here, from an Anarchist, is a book of rare
power and beauty, maj estic in its structure, filled with the power of imagination
and the truth of actuality, emphatic in its declarations and noble in its reach." !4
Boyesen's praise for Berkman's book mirrored that of anarchists and o thers
sympathetic to their politics.
In order to ensure that his prison memoirs reached as broad an audience
as possible, Berkman sought a noted writer to compose an introduction. He
first approached Jack London, who had himself spent time in prison and had
expressed some sympathy for anarchist ideas. I S London's introduction proved
too permeated by his political loyalties-he was a member of the Socialist
Party-fo r Goldman and Berkman who ultimately declined to use it, partly
because London criticized B erkman's attempt to kill Frick. Interestingly, Lon-
1 02 FREE COMRAOES
don's proposed introduction stated that, "It sickens one with its fIlth and deg
radation and cruelty, with its relentless narration of the evil men do. It smells
from the depths." To replace London, Berkman turned to Hutchins Hapgood.
Hapgood was wildly enthusiastic about the text and fascinated by anarchism.
His introduction was extremely complimentary. "I wish," Hapgood wrote, "that
everybody in the world would read this book . . . because the general and care
ful reading of it would defInitely add to true civilization." Hapgood believed
that Berkman's book would help " do away with prisons" and he commended
Berkman's skill at illustrating the human relationships that structure prison life.
"[ Prison Memoirs] shows, in picture after picture, sketch after sketch, not only
the obvious brutality, stupidity, [and] ugliness permeating the institution, but
very touchingly, it shows the good qualities and instincts of the human heart
perverted, demoralized, helplessly struggling for life; beautiful tendencies basely
expressing themselves." 1 6 Although Hapgood was dearly a partisan voice his
enthusiasm reflects that Prison Memoirs is one of the most important and widely
read texts to emerge from the turn-of-the-century anarchist movement.
Homosexual desire, in all its manifestations, is a key theme of The Prison
Memoirs if an Anarchist. I t documents, not j ust the coercive sexual culture of
prisons-rape an d prostitution-but also the consensual loves that exist behind
bars. It is this aspect of the work-its careful consideration of the possibility
of love b etween people of the same sex-that makes Berkman's text such a
rare document within the corpus of prison writing. Written from an insider's
perspective, his work is an astute sociological and psychological analysis of the
intimate life of prisoners . According to Berkman, prison life is, at times , deeply
marked by " the swelling undercurrent of frank irrepressible sex drive." 17 In
several lengthy pa.ssages, Berkman recounts the sexual and emotional brutality,
pleasures, and desires shared by his fellow prisoners . Towards the end, Berk
man devotes an entire chapter to the moral, ethical, and social place of same
sex desire. He presents love between inmates as a form of resistance to the
spirit-crushing environment of prison. The representations of homosexuality
in Prison Memoirs span the full range of human emotions and behavior. It con
tains one of the most sustained considerations of same-sex relations of any of
the published works produced by the turn-of-the-century anarchists. It is one
of the most important political texts dealing with homosexuality to have been
written by an American before the 1 950s.
Berkman's text is not a simple defense of same-sex love, and the repre
sentations of homosexuality contained within are complex . In fact, Berkman
was quite critical of much that he witnessed in jail, which is especially obvi
ous in the beginni ng of the book. Berkman's initial reactions to the existence
"LOVE'S OUNGEON FLOWER" 1 03
of prison homosexuality are shock and disgust. By the end of his narrative,
however, he has considerably altered his view of homosexuality. In his mem
oirs, Berkman describes the evolution of his attitudes toward same-sex prison
relatio nships and tells how his initially horrified response to homosexuality is
replaced with understanding and even an appreciation for the erotic and loving
relations between men. As one late-twentieth-century critic suggests, a reader
could very easily find his or her "moral attitudes" regarding sex transformed by
the vicarious experience of B erkman's own change of thought. Swept along
by his revealing autobiographical work, the reader experiences the process by
which the author " moves from a cold and abstract idealism to a warm and sym
pathetic identification, even to an unembarrassed and untroubled acceptance of
the reality of homosexual love." IB This analysis mirrors that made by Hutchins
Hapgood, who wrote in his preface that reading Prison Memoirs "tends to com
plicate the present simplicity of our moral attitudes. It tends to make us more
mature."19
Berkman and those who worked on Mother Earth were well aware of his
memoir's importance as a work of sexual p olitics, and in their promotion,
they presented Berkman's treatment of same-sex relations in prison as a ma
jor theme of the book. They sent letters to Mother Earth's subscribers seeking
prepublication orders for B erkman's book, and clearly indicated that the sex
life of prisoners was among the topics that Berkman dealt with. Advertise
ments for Prison Memoirs in Mother Earth also highlighted the "homosexual"
(the term used by the advertisements) content of the work. And following the
book's p ublication, Berkman delivered lectures on homosexuality that drew
upon the material in his memoirs . These lectures served to advertise the book
and to elabo rate on the sociological and p olitical implications of the subj ect
matter. Berkman's lectures both presented the erotic life of prisoners to a broad
audience and c ontained a defense of the right of individuals to love whomever
they wish. Prison Memoirs was marketed and presented as a significant contribu
tion to the understanding of the social and moral place of same-sex desire in a
number of different ways. In promoting the book, Berkman and his colleagues
foregrounded its sexual politics.
Contemporary reviewers noted Berkman's "frankness of utterance" in re
gards to his treatment of homosexuality. "No detail of prison life is lost on
Berkman's mind," a reviewer for Current Literature wrote in D ecember 1 9 1 2 .
"He dramatizes i n particular, the abnormality o f the prison situation. H e shows
us what happens when men are separated from women, when sex-instincts are
repressed." The reviewers themselves, however, were less than "frank," choosing
to omit any explicit discussion of homosexuality, all the while hinting at its
1 04 F R E E COMRAOES
presence. The reviewer for The Coming Nation told readers only that Berkman's
book includes descriptions of "the hideous personal degradations fostered by
the prison atmo:;phere."2o
Prison Memoirs was also reviewed in perio dicals outside the Left, including
the San Francisco Bulletin, which played at the edges of what could and could
not b e named in public discourse:
The b o o k ha:; o n e great fault which may g o far t o hurt its effect. True to his
tenets, Berkman has excluded nothing from his account. There are things
done in prisons which a writer must be content to pass over lightly; many
which he must absolutely omit if his book is to be universally read. These
things Berkman has told in detail. 2
1
By not naming those "things done in prison which a writer must be content
to pass over lightly" the Bulletin's reviewer was carefully observing the rules of
decorum to which Berkman refused to adhere. Of course, by indicating that
the book was filled with these forbidden facts the reviewer was, if anything,
heightening their salience. The unspoken jumps from the page. This is the same
kind of resonant silence that commentators often used in treating the Oscar
Wilde trial and o ther s exual scandals of the p eriod.
A number of reviewers attacked Berkman 's book because it dealt openly
with homosexuality. Berkman, like many au t ho r s k eenly followed the critical
.
readings of his work, and collected some of these negative reviews . Typical of
these criticisms are the words of one reviewer, who categorized Prison lvlemoirs
as " a book by a degenerate." This reviewer found Berkman's work to be "in
decent . . . both a glorification of assassination and an apology, even justification,
of unmentionable crimes." Shocked by the frank nature of Berkman's text,
the reviewer declared, "Mr. Comstock had b etter look into this work." This
critic, like others who wrote for what Berkman characterized as the "bourgeois
press," was not explicit in his discussion of the sexual content of the book, but
the words used to describe it-"unmentionable crime," "degenerate," " inde
cent"-more than hinted at why Anthony Comstock, the best-known sex
ual purity advocate of the period, should take interest in the book. Berkman
characterized the negative reviews he collected as coming from the p ens of
" intellectual Mrs. Grundys," meaning that they were social purity activistsY
With this implication, Berkman communicated that it was the sexual content
of his work, not his role in one of the United State 's most spectacular and
well-known assassination attempts that was central to the negative reviews he
received. His critics found the sexual p olitics of Prison Memoirs as obj ectionable
as the book's anarchist p olitics . What the critics did not understand is that these
two features of the book's politics were integrally related.
Though attacks on the sexual politics of Berkman's book were not uncom
mon, a number of readers appreciated the humanistic tolerance with which
Berkman treated sexual relations between inmates. His depictions of same-sex
relations in prison drew a particularly passionate response from homosexual
readers. Among the most .devoted champions of Berkman's work was E dward
Carpenter.When Goldman visited Carpenter following her expulsion from the
United States, she found that Carpenter and his lover George Merrill expressed
a great deal of interest in Berkman 's memoirs. Carpenter insisted that she tell
him about Alexander Berkman. He felt, Goldman wrote in her autobiography,
that the memoirs were "a profound study of man's inhumanity and prison psy
chology."23 Carpenter bought the book shortly after its publication and "found
it full of interest and suggestion," and not satisfied with a single reading, C ar
penter " return [ed] to it again and again."24 In a letter to B erkman, Goldman
was rather blunt about why she believed Carpenter and Merrill showed such
interest. "I am sure," she wrote to Berkman, "their interest is mainly because
of the homo part in your book."25 Though crudely put, Goldman's analysis
was correct. Like a number of his readers, C arpenter was drawn to Berkman's
p olitically charged examination of same-sex desires and behaviors among pris
oners .
Given that reviews indicated sexuality had a central place in his narrative,
Berkman's readers must have been surprised to learn how naive the author was
about h omosexuality when he first entered prison. Berkman gives his readers
the impression that he had never heard of or even imagined the p ossibility that
members of the same sex could be erotically attracted to each other. The extent
of Berkman's blindness regarding homosexuality is almost comical. In a chapter
entitled "The Yegg," Berkman, who was twenty-one when he arrived in j ail,
describes an older man's attempt to convince him to become his "kid." This is
the first time that B erkman is forced to confront what was, until then, a topic
hidden in prison slang and innuendo opaque to him.26 While working side-by
side in one of the prison's workshops, the older man, known as Boston Red or
Red, regales Berkman with tales of his life on the road as a "yegg," or tramp.
Part of that life was the sexual pleasure that tramps took in their "kids ." Red, no
stranger to prison walls, drops hints about his relationship with "kids," notably
a teenager named Billie, in an attempt to seduce Berkman. Unfortunately for
Red, Berkman had not the faintest clue that he was the obj ect of Red's sexual
interest.27
1 06 F R E E COMRADES
Growing frustrated with Berkman's naivete, Red becomes increasingly di

rect. He tells Berkman that he intends to " assume benevolent guardianship over
you ; over you and your morals, yes sir, for you 're my kid now, see?" B erkman's
reaction-puzzlement over what Red means-spurs the "yegg" on. Red tries
to " chaperone" Berkman in what he calls "moonology . . . the truly Christian
science of loving your neighbor, provided that he be a nice little b oy." Berkman
still does not understand the drift of the conversation and replies by asking,
"How can you love a boy? " Red, expanding a bit on the lingo of prison sex, at
last comes to the point, stating, "A punk's a boy that'll . . . give himself to a man .
Now we'se talkin' plain." A "punk," in other words, is the submissive sexual
p artner of an older tramp or a prison inmate.
Finally understanding, Berkman reacts violently, accusing Red of advocat
ing " terrible practices." Even more maddening to the older man, Berkman says,
"I don't really believe it, Red" and asks are there "no women on the road?"
Red, shocked at Berkman's ignorance and moral outrage, accuses the anarchist
of acting like a " holy sky-pilot," or a minister. Red insists that once the young
man " delved into the esoteric mysteries of moonology" and "tasted the mellif
luous fruit on the forbidden tree" he would change his opinions. When B erk
man brushes him aside, Red, rej ected, tells him that "you'll know better before
your time's up, me virtuous sonny."28 It is possible that B erkman p ortrayed
himself as naive in order to show the reader the emotional imp a c t of his en
trance into the sexual life of American prisons . By staging his encounter with
homosexuality in prison as something abrupt that he had no previous knowl
edge of, Berkman communicates to his audience the experience of life behind
bars in a way that mere sociological description could not achieve.
Berkman concludes his description of this exchange with Red by recount
ing his feelings of incredulity and shock at what he had been told:
His cynical attitude toward women and sex morality has roused in me a spirit
of antagonism. The panegyrics of boy-love are deeply offensive to my instincts .
The very thou ght of the unnatural practices revolts and disgusts me. But I
find solace in the reflection that "Red's" insinuations are pure fabrication; no
credence is to be given them. Man, a reasonable being, could not fall to such
depths; he coul::i not b e guilty of such unspeakably vicious practices. Even the
lowest outcast must not be credited with such perversion, such depravity . . .
[Red] is a queer fellow; he is merely teasing me. These things are not credible;
indeed, I don't believe they are p ossible. And even if they were, no human
being would be capable of such iniquity 29
At this p oint in his narrative Berkman sounds very much like Dwight, O 'Hare,
and other reformers, who condemned sexual relations among prisoners.
Though Berkman did not make the argument that the kinds of relatio nships
pursued by men such as Red were a product of prison life, he nonetheless de
nounced them as being part of the hierarchical and brutal nature of the prison
system, This is a result of Berkman being asked to play the role of a passive sex
ual partner to an older man, clearly this was not a role that Berkman was will
ing to entertain. The horror that he displays in his reaction to Red was likely
heightened and fueled by the fear of domination that haunted him in prison.
As a prisoner, Berkman was already rendered subj ect to the will of other men.
Already seething with rage and overwhelming feelings of impotence at having
failed in his attempt to kill Frick, the thought of being made a "kid" brought
Berkman to the edge of violence.
Throughout his narrative Berkman condemns Red and other men who
pursued relationships with younger, vulnerable partners . According to Berk
man, some prisoners were so intent on their p ursuit of sex that they were
known as "kid men."30 In addition to recounting his interaction with Red, for
example, Berkman describes an inmate named "Wild Bill," a "self-confessed
invert," who is well known for his pursuit of"kids."31 Inasmuch as they aggres
sively pursue homosexual pleasure, Red and Wild Bill very much resemble the
fairies described by Chauncey. Red, for example, tells Berkman that he prefers
" kids" to women. "Women," Red states, " are no go od. I wouldn't look at 'em
when I can have my [kid] ."32 Wild Bill and Red actively pursue other inmates.
A fellow prisoner recounts how Wild Bill "had been hanging around the kids
from the stocking shop ; he has been after 'Fatty B obby' for quite a while, and
he's forever p estering ' Lady Sally: and Young Davis, too." At one point in Prison
Memoirs Wild Bill is " c aught in the act" behind a shed in the prison yard with
Fatty B obby.33 It should be noted that "kids" were not necessarily as young as
the term implies . A "Kid" was a passive sexual partner of an older prisoner who
was often, though not always, an adolescent or a young b oy. It is unclear how
old Fatty B obby and Lady Sally are, though we are told that Young D avis is
nineteen years 01d.34
Berkman's anarchism played a role in how he viewed the sexual relation
ships of men in prison. As a result, he could not accept the subordinate, coerced
status of "kid" for himself or for any other inmate, but this put him in conflict
with the value system of many of his fellow prisoners . According to Chauncey,
most inmates were indifferent to the behavior of men like Wild Bill. Having a
kid was a sign of power. "The fact that a man engaged in sexual relations with
a:nother male" led him to lose little status among other prisoners; if anything,
he gained stature in many men's eyes because of his ability to coerce or at
tract a punk.35 Unlike the majority of his fellow prisoners, Berkman was not a
108 FREE COMRADES
product of the rough bachelor subcultures. The domination and hierarchy that
characterized so much of prison life, including the relations between " kids" and
" kid men," were anathema to Berkman's anarchist principles. This is not to say
that B erkman condemned all age-structured same-sex relationships; at several
points in his memoirs he offers p ositive examples of such pairs. What Berkman
found so profoundly problematic about the behavior of men like Wild Bill
and Boston Reel was that they treated their "kids" as marked inferiors. It was
not homosexual relations that he obj ected to, but sexual exploitation. And, it
should be noted, he was particularly horrified when it was suggested that he
should place himself in the role of a "kid."
The portrayal of "kid men" in Prison Memoirs significantly complicates our
current understanding of how sexuality, gender, age, and identity interplayed
at the turn of the century. The identity of the "kid man" indicates that the
prison populatioil1 recognized a social role for the "active homosexual ." George
Chauncey argues that such an identity did not exist; only passive partners were
marked by sexual difference. "Most prisoners," he writes, "like the prison au
thorities, seem to have regarded the wolves as little different fro m other men;
their sexual b ehavior may have represented a moral failure, but it did not dis
tinguish them from other men as the fairy's gender status did."36 But the notion
of a " kid man" se ems to contradict this. Like fairies, "kid men" were marked by
their sexual desires; they were known for seeking out sex with other males . But
neither B oston Red, nor Wild Bill-whose very name conj ures up one of the
great masculine icons of the period-are described as feminine. This is not to
say that gender-which overlapped with, and was reinforced by, differences in
age-was not a primary language through which prison sexual relations were
symbolically organized. The youths Wild Bill and Red pursued, such as "Lady
·
S ally," are clearly feminized. "Kid men," however, are presented as masculine
and aggressive, and in this, do not differ from the stereotypical portrayal of
manhood. They--the wolves-are identified by their erotic interest in other
males, a difference that distinguishes them from other men. Chauncey may be
right that " the lin e between the wolf and the normal man, like that between
the culture of the prison and the culture of the streets, was a fine one," but it
was a line that Berkman and the prisoners whose language he mirrored in his
memoir found meaningful. 37
Had B erkman gone no further in his investigation of the moral and social
status of homosexuality in prison his writings would have been no different
than Dwight or O ' Hare's . But that he did go farther, differentiates Berkman 's
text from those of so many other writers. For, in addition to portraying the
sexual brutalities of prison life, Berkman also explores the existence of loving,
mutually supportive relationships among prisoners . H e demonstrates the ways

that prison love-what he, at one point in his narrative, calls "love's dungeon
flower"-could feed the spirit and body of the men who lived inside. Erotic
desire between men, in other words, is, at least in some of its manifestations,
directly c ounterpoised to the values of the prison system that Berkman so
p owerfully c ondemns. It is these human p ortraits that transftxed readers like
Carpenter and others who were hungry for p ositive public representations of
their own private desires. I n a culture that systematically denied the value of
warm, loving, and empowering homosexual relationships, the representation
of such relatio nships was a powerful act. Because of the importance that these
relationships had for Berkman's reading public it is worth examining them in
some detail.
By far the most remarkable account of love among prisoners provided by
Berkman in his memoirs are those that describe his own affection for a number
of young men. The ftrst of Berkman's romantic friends is named Johnny Davis.
Davis is a young man of noticeable physical b eauty-Red comments on his
attractiveness and Wild Bill "pestered" him c onstantly. Berkman too acknowl
edges D avis' b eauty. B erkman titled the chapter where he describes his rela
tionship with Davis, "Love's Dungeon Flower," a reference both to the nature
of the two men's feelings for each other and to Davis' radiance comp ared to the
drab interior of the prison.
Davis and Berkman met while they worked in the prison hosiery depart
ment, but the two men's relationship did not move beyond simple camarade
rie until both men were locked up in adj oining cells in solitary confinement.
Berkman was placed in solitary for allegedly " destroying State property, hav
ing possession of a knife, and uttering a threat against the Warden." Davis was
there because he had stabbed a man named "Dutch Adams," who, like Wild
Bill, was attempting to initiate a sexual relationship with him. Foiled in his
efforts, Adams resorted to spreading rumors that he "used" Davis. Afraid that
his " mother might hear about it," Davis, tells Berkman that " he couldn't stand
it" and so stabbed Adams .3R D avis' actions indicate the degree to which shame
and dishonor could be attached to b eing a "kid." Confined to a lonely cell and
unaware if Adams was alive or dead, Davis dwelt on the possibility of his being
hanged for murder.
Berkman's attempt to calm D avis and reassure him that all was not lost is the
means by which their relationship evolves and deepens . He tried to convince
Davis that Adams might not die and argued that the circumstances of his case
might work in the young man's favor. Berkman reminds Davis of "the Warden's
aversio n to giving publicity to the sex practices in the prison, and rernind[s]
110 FREE COMRAOES
the boy of the Captain's official denial of th eir exi stence." Davis is relieved by
these words and responds to Berkman's kindness. As their conversation unfolds,
B erkman notes "with a glow of pleasure," that there is a "note of tenderness in
[Davis'] voice." The two grow closer. Davis is soon using'Berkman's nickname
"Sashenka"-an affectionate diminutive of Alexander-and convinces Berk
man to call him " Felipe," the name of "a poor castaway Cuban youth," whom
the young man haq read about. Berkman, like so many other prisoners, is not
immune to Davis' charms. As they drift off to sleep, Berkman pictures "the boy
before me, with his delicate face, and sensitive, girlish lips." The feminization of
Davis, the imagery of lips, and the focus o n the young man's physical beauty
signals Berkman's growing attraction to the youth and foreshadows what comes
next in the narrative.
On the following day, the two b egin speaking again, and the erotic ele
ment of their relationship "flowers." Davis asks Berkman whether he is in his
thoughts and Berkman replies, "Yes, kiddie, you are." Davis reveals that he too
has been thinking of him. After exacting a promise that Berkman won't laugh
at him, he confesses the depth of his feelings . "I was thinking," Davis shyly
admits, " I was thinking, Sashenka-if you were here with me-- I would like
to kiss you ." Far from being horrified, Berkman responds with deep pleasure :
" A n unaccountable sense of j oy," he writes, " glows i n my heart, and I muse
in silence." Davis , alarmed by his friend's quiet, asks, "What's the matter. . . are
you angry with me?" Berkman reassures Davis that he is not angry-quite the
contrary. "No Felipe, you foolish little boy," writes Berkman, "I feel just as you
do." That very evening, Davis is taken from solitary, and as he passes Berkman's
cell he whispers, "'Hope I ' ll see you soon, Sashenka." Berkman, "lonesome at
the boy's departure," sinks into sadness. 39
Unfortunately, Berkman was never able to receive his kiss . Davis died shortly
after his release from solitary. Berkman, unaware of his friend's death, fantasizes
about helping to gain freedom for his Davis . Once out of the prison, mused
Berkman, "I shall strain every effort for my little friend Felip e; I must secure his
release. How happy the boy will be to j oin me in liberty! "") Berkman hoped to
give Davis the gifi: of freedom, but death intervened. The resulting mixture of
stillborn desire and loss haunts Berkman, and for some time, he obsesses about
Davis. Although he corresponds regularly with several young female admirers,
Berkman dwells on his dead friend. One correspondent sends him a picture of
herself, but Berkm an confesses to his readers that, her "roguish eyes and sweet
lips exert but a passing impression upon me. My thoughts turn to Johnny, my
young friend in the convict grave."41 Though one of Berkman's fellow inmates
with whom he shared his correspondence developed "a violent passion for the
"LOVE'S DUNGEON FLOWER" 111
pretty face [of Berkman's female admirer] ," Berkman ignores the lure of his
admirer's image and nurses his feelings for Davis.
Berkman's relationship with Davis is difficult to evaluate as it falls some
where along the spectrum of friendship and erotic relations. There was a strong
emotional element to the pair's relationship, as well as a physical-if only imag
ined-component to the relationship. The extent of their intimacy is unclear,
though I would argue on the basis of b oth historic and contemporary defini
tions, the two men's relationship had a strong element of homoeroticism. As far
as we know, the two men did not have sex, but they did p articipate in an erotic
fantasy. Berkman felt drawn to Davis' " delicate face, and sensitive, girlish lips"
and he thrilled at the thought of kissing the youth. D avis, for his part, seemed
all too aware of his own charms-physical and otherwise-and was quite will
ing to use them on Berkman . The language exchanged between the two is
erotically charged. Berkman feminized Davis and referred to him as " kiddie," a
word freighted with s exual connotations in their surroundings , and both Davis
and Berkman used terms of endearment with each other. All of these ele
II1ents-a kiss, terms of endearment, pining, and feelings of abandonment-are
common enough in same-sex friendship of the period, but the intensity of
feeling b etween the two men-of a sort usually missing in the cold cells of
the prison-is depicted as uncommonly p owerful. That element of p assionate
intensity gives the story of " Sashenka" and " Felipe " a p owerful place within
Prison Memoirs.42
Davis was not the only man that Berkman developed a strong attachment to
while in prison. He also introduces his reader to an inmate he refers to as "my
young friend Russel!." Russell, who was "barely nineteen," possesses a " smil
ing face," "boundless self-assurance," and "indomitable Will ."43 The description
of the relationship b etween the two men is quite moving, and speaks to the
intense feelings that Berkman had for some of his fellow prisoners. Contem
porary readers were impressed with the depth of feeling that Berkman con
veyed. To illustrate, in his piece on Berkman's memoirs, B ayard B oyesen wrote
that "the incidents connected with the story of young Russell" are among the
"most beautiful p assages in the book."""
Similar to Davis , Berkman's relationship with Russell is ignited when the
young man is put in solitary. The youth manages to communicate with Berk
man through notes, but the strain of the separatio n and the harassment of the
guards take its toll on Russell , who begins to "look p ale and haggard." Berk
man's anxieties grow, as does his fondness for the boy:
With intense thankfulness I think of Russell . . . A strange longing for his

companionship possesses me. In the gnawing loneliness, his face floats before
112 FREE COMRADES
me, casting che spell of a friendly presence, his strong features softened by
sorrow, his eyes grown large with the same sweet sadness of " Little Felipe." A
peculiar tenderness steals into my thoughts of the boy; I look forward eagerly
to his notes. Impatiently I scan the faces in the passing line, wistful for the
sight of the youth, and my heart beats faster at his fleeting smile. 45
Berkman comes to think of Russell in much the same way he did Davis. He
feminizes Russell; his transformation into a second "Little Felipe" is accom
panied by a "softening" of his features and his eyes grow large and luminous.
Berkman's mood rises and falls at the sight of Russell. Just as with Davis, Berk
man imagines the p o ssibility of the two sharing freedom. His strongest feelings
for his young friends are forged in the crucible of solitary. The " gnawing loneli
ness" of solitary added a sp ecial force to his feelings for Davis and Russell. That
Berkman was physically separated from the young men may also have created a
psychological space within which his homoerotic fantasies-free of the actual

possibility of consummation-could develop.
Unfortunately, the p arallels between Russell and Davis extend even to their
early deaths . Russell, suffering from "a chill," is placed in the prison hospital.
Desperate for news about his friend, Berkman feigns " severe pains in the bow
els, to afford Frank, the doctor's assistant, an opportunity to pause at my cell ."
Berkman asks about Russell and is told that the youth is paralyzed, the victim
of a mistake on the part of another of the doctor's assistants. Told that he will
surely die, Russell b emoans his fate and sends Berkman piteous notes. Berkman
purposefully wounds himself so that he will be sent to the infirmary. Once
there, he steals to Russell's bedside. Unfortunately, little can be done. Russell
falls asleep and Berkman "silently . . . touch [esJ his dry lips" and departs. Whether
this "touch" is a kiss or whether Berkman lightly stroked Russell's lips with his
fingers we cannot know. D enied further visitation, Frank later tells Berkman
of Russell's death. " His last thought," Frank reports, "was of you ." Berkman
adds a dramatic d,�tail: Frank tells him that at the moment of his death, Russell
cries out, "Good Bye, Aleck." Berkman's account of Russell's death, and the
agonized portrayal of his reaction to the loss of his friend, bespeaks the strength
and tenor of em01:ion that tied the two men together. 4G
Berkman struggled to depict and understand the nature of his relationships
with Davis and Russell. He attempts to define and defend the possibility of
mutual, freely-chosen, loving relations between men in an environment that
was by its very nature, adverse to such relationships. Berkman clearly disap
proved of the coercive nature of the "kid love" that everywhere flourished
around him-his initial reaction to Red's overtures and his disapproving re
marks about "kid men" and " kid business" illustrate this . But the friendships
"LOVE'S OUNGEON FLOWER" 113
Berkman developed were, in many ways, similar to those he was so critical o f.

H e was clearly infatuated. D avis' offer of a kiss sent Berkman into rapture and
there is a hint that Berkman kissed Russell as the young man lay dying. Else
where in his text however, Berkman denies that he felt any "physical passion"
for his young friends, but this is true only if one accepts the most limited and
arid definition of the term "physical passion." Berkman does, however, admit
that he loved Russell "with all my heart" and his sadness at his death reflects a
similar depth of feeling.47 Berkman works hard to acknowledge the extent of
his feelings for his passionate friends, while differentiating his relationship with
D avis and Russell from those that "kid men" pursued.
Berkman resolves the emotional and definitional problems posed by his
relationship with the two young men by introducing into his narrative a moral
and ethical dialogue on the subj ect of homosexuality. In a chapter entitled
" Passing the Love of Woman," he presents a discussion with a friend of his,
George, on the subj ect of homosexuality. The title of the chapter references the
relationship ofJonathan and D avid, two Biblic al figures said to love each other
with a love "passing the love of women ." This relationship was a c ommon ref
erence point for nineteenth-century discussions of homo social and homoerotic
relations between men. 48 It's an odd choice of reference for an avowed atheist,
but one that serves as a useful frame in which to explore same-sex relations.
George is presented as an eminently knowledgeable, authoritative, respectable
person with whom Berkman speaks about a subj ect that is omnipresent in
prison. In this chapter, Berkman places the subj ect of homosexuality under
explicit scrutiny. This is, in fact, the only chapter in which Berkman uses the
word " homosexuality," as opposed to " kid love" or " kid business." " Passing the
Love of Women" is Berkman's effort to settle the question of how the reader
is supposed to understand and differentiate between the coercive homosexual
ity practiced by Wild Bill and the loving relationships that Berkman had with
Russell and D avis. This chapter is a dramatic treatment of a topic that Berkman
struggled with both in his literary art and in his life.
While it is quite p ossible that Berkman had talks with his fellow inmates
on the subj ect of homosexuality, it is likely that George is a literary creation.
George is a rhetorical device created to put forth a reasoned discussion of sex
in prison. Certain facts hint at this. For example, George is said to have been
raised in the " C atholic tradition" and to have a great-grandfather who "was
among the signers of the D eclaration." This is an unlikely pedigree since only
one Catholic was among the signers. George also happens to be a physician;
he is first identified in Prison Memoirs by his nickname "Doctor George." That
a descendant of an old American family, of wealth and professional standing,
114 FREE COMRADES
came to b e locked up for " sixteen years for alleged complicity in . . . a bank rob
b ery . . . during which [a] cashier was killed" is hard to believe. 49 George is a very
unlikely inmate" but a very comp atible foil for a dialogue on the ethical, social,
and cultural status of same-sex love.
George's politics---s exual and otherwise-mirror Berkman's . Unlike nearly
all of Berkman's other fellow inmates, George has considerable sympathy for
anarchism. George can "pass the idle hours conversing over subj ects of mu
tual interest, discussing social theories and problems of the day." Though he is
not an anarchist, George is interested in the "American lecture tour of Peter
Kropotkin" and considers himself a " Democrat of the Jeffersonian type," a de
scription that sounds remarkably like Benj amin Tucker's notion of anarchists as
" unterrified Jeffersonians." George is also familiar with the discourse of sexol
ogy. Though prior to his imprisonment "he had not come in personal contact
with cases of homosexuality," George 's medical training allows him to speak
with some authority on the subj ect. The use of the clinical term "homosexual
ity" signals George's knowledge and provides legitimacy to the discussion. A
layperson would not be as useful a participant in a dialogue meant to establish
the morality of a subj ect most often treated as a medical and psychological
condition. In G eorge, a liberal scientist, B erkman finds the perfect person with
whom he can converse on a touchy subj ect.
I n " Passing the Love of Women," George seeks B erkman 's advic e about
his love for a young prisoner named " Floyd." He tells Berkman that he first
noticed Floyd as he passed in a hallway. "He had been in only a short time,"
George recounts, " and he was rosy-cheeked, with a smooth face and sweet
lips-he reminded me of a girl I used to court before I was married." Floyd,
according to George was "small and couldn't defend himself," and found in
George a protector and provider. George took particular interest in Floyd's
health, assisting him with " stomach troubles" and securing for him "fruit and
things," rare treats in prison.
The feelings the older man felt for the youth increased over time and be
came increasingly erotic in nature. " For two years," George tells Berkman, " I
loved him without the least taint of sex desire." But over time, George's feelings
deepened:
by degrees the psychic stage began to manifest all the expressions of love
b etween the opposite sexes. I remember the first time he kissed me . . . He put
both hands between the bars, and pressed his lips to mine. Aleck, I tell you ,
never in my life had I experienced such bliss as at that moment . . . He told me
he was very fim d of me. From then on we became lovers. I used to neglect my
work, and risk great danger to get a chance to kiss and embrace him. I grew
terribly jealous, too, though I had no cause. I p assed through every phase of a
passionate love.50
George's feelings for Floyd are very much like those of Berkman's for " Fe
lipe " a n d Russell. In both cases, the friendship is structured b y a significant
age difference, the youth is feminized in the eyes of the older man, the older
man is concerned with the general welfare of the beloved, and the attraction
and emotional bond are mutual (or at least the older man experienced them
as such) . And in both cases the relationships b etween the younger and ol der
prisoner are unsettling.
In telling George's story, Berkman is retelling his own . George is a lit
erary device that allows Berkman to explore the' nature of same-sex desire.
Of course, the significant difference b etween George's relations with Floyd
and Berkman's relationship with his young friends is that George admits that
his love "manifest[ed] all the expressions of love between the opposite sexes ."
Berkman n ever reveals whether h e had a p hysical relationship with another
man while he was in prison.
George is unsure how to understand his experience of attraction to another
male; he struggles with the meaning of his love for Floyd. George tells Berk
man that he wants to " speak frankly" on a subj ect about which "very little
is known . . . much less understood." The strain of the attempt is obvious. The
"veins on [George'sl forehead protrude, as if he is undergoing a severe mental
struggle." George insists that he approached Floyd with pure intentions and
wants B erkman to know he is different than the other inmates. "Don't mis
understand me," George tells Berkman, " it wasn't that I wanted a 'kid.' I swear
to you , the other youths had no attraction for me whatsoever." 51 Floyd was
a "bright and intelligent youth" of "fine character," and George's interest in
him was , he insisted, not merely physical. H e "got him interested in literature,
and advised him What to read, for he didn't kn ow what to do with his time."
In other words, George is not a ruthless " kid man," like Red or Wild Bill.
And George, unlike Red, does not explicitly prefer the company of " kids" to
that of women-in fact, George is happily married. " Throughout [George's]
long confinement," Berkman tells us, "his wife had faithfully stood by him, her
unfailing courage and devotion sustaining him in the hours of darkness and
desp air." 52
George insists that he was not merely interested in "sexual gratification,"
that his motivations were of a finer caliber. He carefully distinguishes his feel
ings for Floyd from the typ e of feelings that "kid men" had for their partners.
George's animus, however, is directed against the youthful partners, not the
116 FREE COMRAOES
older men. Berkman relates that George was "very bitter against the prison ele
ment variously known as ' the girls,' ' S allies,' and 'punks,' who for gain traffic in
sexual gratificat;.on." According to George, these youth " are worse than street
p rostitutes." Though he described Floyd as looking like a girl, the contrast be
tween the flagrant behaviors of the " Sallies" and Floyd's respectable demeanor
was a way to exorcise .the taint of effeminacy from the two prisoner's love for
each other. Floyd may have been pretty enough to attract George 's attention
but he was not a "street prostitute." The condemnation of this sort of language
functions as a way to distinguish what Floyd and George shared from effemi
nacy and prostitution. George needed to reassure himself that his relationship
with Floyd was something nobler than a sexual transaction, a trade of sex for
goods and protedion. He wants to put considerable distance between himself
and the dangerous and devalued figures of the "sallies" and the "kid men."53
George was disturbed by the physical nature of his relationship with Floyd.
He tells Berkman that, despite the "passionate nature " of his love, he "felt a
touch of the old disgust at the thought of actual sex contact." Perhaps Red,
who expressed a rougher, working-class sexual ethos, was untroubled by sex
with his " kids," but George was of a different class and cast. Kissing and em
braces were inno,:ent enough, but genital contact, "seemed to me a desecration
of the b oy." Even though Floyd "said he loved me enough to do even that for
me," George told Berkman, " I couldn't b r i n g my s elf to do it; I loved the lad
too much for it."This was not mere lust, George insisted, "it was real, true love."
Despite Floyd's apparent willingness to have sex, George denies that he had
sexual intercourse with his beloved. The relationship ended when Floyd was
transferred to another cellblock. George was bereft: "I would be the happiest
man," he told B erkman, "if r could only touch his hand again, or get one more
kiss ."
B erkman's presentation of George's relationship with Floyd as an intimate
one, yet limited in physical expression, echoes that of other sex radicals who
struggled to represent same-sex love free of reference to crime or sin. Like
George, men such as Edward Carpenter and John Addington Symonds insisted
that love between men was not merely sodomy, but an especially intense form
of friendship. Sex took second place in their descriptions of same-sex love. For
example, in one of his essays on "homogenic love," Carpenter downplayed the
sexual nature of same-sex love :
Without denying that sexual intimacies do exist; and while freely admitting
that in great cities, there are to be found associated with this form of
attachment pro�;titution and other evils comparable with the evils associated
with the ordinary sex-attachment; we may yet say that it would b e a great
error to suppose that homogenic love takes as a rule the extreme form vulgarly
supposed; and that it would also be a great error to overlook the fact that in a
large number of instances the relation is not distinctly sexual at all, though it
may be said to be physical in the sense of embrace and endearment. 54
Carpenter's description of same-sex love was a n artful attempt t o get around

the moral stigma that was attached to the genital expression of homosexual
desire. Like George, who rails against the " sallies" and " girls" and the "punks,"
who trade sex for food and other favors, Carpenter distances his vision of
same-sex love from prostitution and effeminacy. Playing down the sexual, Car
p enter presented same-sex love as an intense spiritual and emotional bond,
as a masculine friendship. Berkman's chapter describing his conversation with
George functions in exactly the same way; he describes George's relationship
with Floyd as something other than mere "kid business ." Throughout his narra
tive, Berkman downplays the erotic element of those same-sex relationships
like those he had with D avis and Russell-which he would like to present as
noble and good.
Having finished telling the story of his love for Floyd, George looks to
Berkman for his opinion. It's a moment fraught with tension. "You-you're
laughing," George exclaims . There is "a touch of anxiety in his voice," as he
was concerned that Berkman would interpret his b ehavior as "viciousness."
Most prisoners, George tells his friend, " take everything here in such a filthy
sense." But Berkman reassures his friend that he understands p erfectly and is
more than sympathetic. "I think it is a wonderful thing; and George-I had felt
the same horror and disgust at these things, as you did. But now I think quite
differently about them." Like George, Berkman had come into prison with
a strong distaste for homosexuality, but as Red had predicted, he had come
to see things differently. The reason for this change of heart is that B erkman
shared George's experience of love for a fellow prisoner. "I had a friend here,"
B erkman admits, " His name was Russell . . . I felt no physical passion toward
him, but I think I loved him with all my heart:' Berkman does not mention
" Felipe," his first "kiddie," but the reader would, of c ourse, know of this rela
tionship. Berkman finishes his talk with George by telling him that his anxiety
is misplaced. " George," Berkman reassures his friend and his readers, "I think it
a very beautiful emotion . Just as beautiful as love for a woman."55 This positive
affirmation of George's relationship with Floyd concludes Berkman's chapter
on the social and cultural value of homosexuality.
As his date of release approached Berkman turned away from the relation
ships he had formed in prison. He wrote that, "Thoughts of women eclipse
118 FREE C O M RAOES
the memory of the prison affections," but Berkman's interest in the nature
and ethics of "prison affections" continued. 56 This was demonstrated in that his
first act was to insist on depicting his prison experience of same-sex sexual
ity and affection in his memoirs. I n Goldman's autobiography, she rep orts that
one of the publishers who considered the manuscript "insisted on eliminat
ing the chapters rela�ing to homosexuality in prison," but Berkman refused to
b owdlerize his text.57 With the help of friends like Lincoln Steffens and others
who provided flnancial support, the Mother Earth Publishing Association was
able to bring o ut Prison Memoirs. Goldman solicited support in the form of
advanced subscriptions and c ontributions from Mother Earth readers in a letter
that highlighted the sexual content of Berkman's work, including the treatment
of the "Physical, Mental, and Moral Effects" of life behind bars and " The Stress
of Sex" and " Homosexuality." Prison Memoirs, Goldman wrote, "promises to be
one the of the most valuable and original contributions to the psycho-revo
lutionary literature of the world."58 The framing of
Prison A1emoirs as a "psy
chological " work-one advertisement in Mother Earth called it . a " contribution
to socio-psychological literature"-is key, given the central importance that
Berkman gives medicine and psychology, as in the personification of George
and his attempt to grapple with the ethics of homosexuality. 59
Berkman further signals his interest in the politics of homosexuality by
framing his text with Oscar Wilde 's work. As a preface to his prison memoirs,
Berkman chose an excerpt from Wilde's poem The Ballad if Reading Gaol. It is
the perfect accompaniment for the book, since both works condemn the pris
on system. The Mother E arth Publishing Association also realized that the two
men's work fit well together. In the back of the first edition of Prison Memoirs,
Wilde's poem and his essay The Soul if Man under Socialism were offered for sale
by mail order. Even before Berkman's prison memoirs were published, Wilde's
prison writings were b eing touted in the pages of Mother Earth. An excerpt
from Wilde 's essay,
De Profundis, which speaks to experience of imprisonment,
appeared in one of the first issues of the j ournal. In De Profundis, Wilde ex
presses his hope that ifhe is able to make of his prison years "only one beautiful
work of art I shall be able to rob malice of its venom, and cowardice of its sneer,
and to pluck out the tongue of scorn by the rootS."6() The Ballad of Reading Gaol
and Berkman 's Prison Memoirs are j ust such works . Both texts transform the fate
of the condemned into movi ng and p olitically radical works of art.
Berkman was not the only one who linked Wilde with the inj ustice of the
prison system. In a letter to Hirschfeld, Emma Goldman condemned the cruel
way that Wilde had been treated. She wrote, " [Wilde's sentencing] struck me
as an act ·of cruel i nj ustice and repulsive hypo crisy ; " an unjust act by an unjust
society. Goldman specifically linked Wilde's mistreatment with t h e oppression

of homosexuals, and championed him, as she told Hirschfeld, because "As an
anarchist my place has ever been with the p ersecuted."61 L ike B erkman , Gold
man also used Wilde's work in her own writings on prison and the criminal
j ustice system. In an essay attacking the prison system, Goldman cited a section
of The Ballad of Reading Gaol which describes j ails as sources of"poisonous air,"
which throttles those who were forced to breath it.62
Other anarchists also cited this particular p o em when discussing prisons .
When Marie Ganz was in Queens County Jail, for example, she read 71lC Ballad
of Reading Gaol to her fellow inmates. According to Ganz, the prisoners listened
" intently to every word, until they burst into tears ."63 Wilde's witness was a
powerful document that made its mark on anarchist prison writing.
In naming Wilde as a literary and p olitical inspiration, however, Berkman
was choosing sides in a debate over sexuality-a debate that was most clearly
symbolized by Wilde's trial and imprisonment for a sex crime that linked im
prisonment, homosexuality, and political dissidence. It did not escap e Berkman
that in writing The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Wilde was condemning . the legal
system that sent him to prison for homosexual acts. InPrison Memoirs qf an An
archist, Berkman frames Wilde's imprisonment as a p olitical act. In the chapter
" Passing the Love of Woman;' he writes that George "speaks with profound
sympathy of the brilliant English man-of-Ietters . . . driven to prison and to
death because his sex life did not conform to the accep t ed standards ." George
exonerates Wilde of any wrongdoing, shifting the blame onto " the world of
cant and stupidity.""' This defense of Wilde, articulated within the chapter in
his prison memoirs that is most concerned with exploring the ethics of same
sex love, makes explicit what is implied by Berkman's choosing The Ballad of
Reading Gaol as a p reface to his own work. That choice-aligning himself with
Wilde as a literary companion-was a resonant act with a broad series of im
plications.
The clearest indication that B erkman continued his interest in the ques
tion of the moral and social status of homosexuality is the fact that he gave a
series of lectures on the subj ect after Prison Memoirs was published. Berkman,
like Goldman and other anarchists, made frequent use of lectures in their pro
paganda work. Berkman developed and delivered a talk called, " Homosexuality
and Sex Life in Prison," which drew upon his observations and experience in
prison . Unfortunately, there are no known surviving transcripts of this or any
other of Berkman's public presentations on homosexuality, but two reports of
such lectures appear in the pages of Mother Earth. This particular lecture was
an appeal for tolerance and better understanding of the diverse expressions of
1 20 FREE COMRADES
erotic desire and was apparently a popular sp eech-a further example of the
everyday observation that sex sells . In the words of Reb Raney, one of Mother
Earth's correspondents who heard Berkman speak in San Francisco in 1 9 1 5 ,
"the interest o f the human family in the chief source of our earthly commo
tion seems never to recede from the boiling pitch."65 No doubt the popularity
of sex as a lecture topic was one of the reasons Berkman chose to speak on
the subj ect of "prison affe ctions." The money earned on one night could help
underwrite weeks of more prosaic work. But that was not his reason-if fund
raising had been the only consideration, Berkman could have chosen to speak
o n any aspect of sexuality. He spoke on same-sex eroticism.
Berkman's homosexual p olitics reflected his pragmatic view of the ethics
of s exual desire. In his lectures he contended, "you can't suppress the unsup
pressible," and that to make a crime out of erotic desire was-and he knew
this from p ersonal experience in prison-cruel and bound to fail. You cannot
regulate the fun damental human need for emotional and physical affection.
This p osition reflected basic anarchist doctrine, as well as Berkman 's experi
ence b ehind bars . He began his days in prison believing in the aberrant nature
of homosexual sex, but by the end of his sentence, he had come to a less rigid
view of human nature. According to one audience member, Berkman's "han
dling of the sex question exhibits a breadth and comprehension I have never
seen surpassed." By insisting on the complexity of human sexual expression,
Berkman " show[ed] that the b etter we understand a problem the less liable we
are to tangle the $kein by grasping at a single thread.""" Just as he did in Prison
Memoirs, in his lectures Berkman insisted on respecting the complexities of the
human heart.
Berkman's treatment of the topic of homosexuality in his lectures reflected
his p olitical ideals. He advocated a tolerant disregard for the sexual habits of
others, a position consistent with the principles of anarchism. He was apparent
ly an effective sp e aker: Billie McCullough, who attended a series of Berkman's
lectures in Los Angeles in 1 9 1 5 , was deeply influenced by what she heard.
"He instinctively gives you credit for having common sense," McCullough
wrote, " and therein is the effectiveness of his work." By framing radical notions
in commonplace garb, Berkman succeeded in moving his audience members.
McCullough, for example, found her views transformed by Berkman's presen
tatio n : ' ' I 've read Ellis and a few others along these lines," she reported, "but had
remained a narrow-minded prude, classifYing all Homosexualists as degener
ates." But having heard Berkman speak on the subj ect McCullough declared
that she now had a " clearer vision" of a subj ect she had previously considered
as a p sychological and moral disorder. So powerful was Berkman 's argument in

favor of sexual liberalism that she felt his "lecture should become a classic."67
Any p ossibility that " Homosexuality and Sex Life in Prison" would indeed
become a classic was cut short by Berkman's imprisonment in 1 9 1 8 on the
charge of conspiring against the selective draft law following the United States'
entry into World War 1 . Arrested in New York, Berkman was sentenced to two
years in Atlanta Federal Prison. Though far shorter than his earlier imprison
ment, Berkman's stay in Atlanta was harsh. He spent seven months in solitary
for denouncing the beatings administered to his fellow inmates. B erkman was
unbowed. As he had done in the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, Berk
man attempted to expose the rank and cruel conditions in Atlanta. After his
release, Berkman published an open letter to the Atlanta prison warden, Mr.
Zerbst, in which he protested the " criminal neglect of sick prisoners . . . the un
wholesome food . . . the favoritism of men with 'pull: the discrimination against
political prisoners, the corrupt system of' stool pigeons,' the fake trials at which
the work of one drunken guard outweighs that of a dozen soldiers, p oliti
cal prisoners, and other inmates of character and integrity, whose sole crime
consisted in the expression of an unpopular opinion during the war." Berkman
even protested the low pay of the prison guards ! "The struggle for existence,"
noted B erkman, denies the guards and their dependents a decent living and
"makes the guards surly, cranky, and quarrelsome" and prone to "vent their
misery and ill-humor upon the unfortunates in their power."
In Atlanta's prison, Berkman again confronted "kid business," and once again
he railed against it. In his letter to the warden, B erkman warned, "I have not
yet even hinted at the existence and the actual encouragement of homosexual
practices . . . . I have not started yet, Mr. Zerbst, but I will, and that very soon."68
[Italics in original. ] Given his advo cacy of sexual liberalism and his claims that
love between men could be a "wonderful thing," it is somewhat j arring to
note that, in the letter, Berkman described homosexuality as an " aberration ."
But Berkman was not referring to consensual relations between men; he was
denouncing the sexual exploitation of inmates, a practice that was apparently
tolerated and even encouraged by Zerbst and the prison guards . Berkman had
made similar charges in Prison A1emoirs. He always made quite clear distinctions
between the ethical nature of sexual acts that were freely entered into and
those that were coerced. D espite his threats, Berkman was unable to take on
Zerbst and the federal prison system. Upon his release Berkman was deported,
and he never returned to the United States.
But Berkman's departure from the US did not bring an end to his political
activism, including his interest in sexual politics. In the mid- 1 920s, B erkman
122 FREE COMRADES
and Goldman sought to have Prison lvlemoirs reissued in England, and they ap
p roached Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis about writing a preface for the
new British edition. The decision to potentially include Carpenter and Ellis
was not casually arrived at. Both had written on the subj ect of prison reform,
as B erkman and Goldman well knew. In one of her essays on prisons, Goldman
cited works by both Ellis and Carpenter to support her c o ntention that "nine
crimes out of ten could b e traced, directly or indirectly, to our economic and
social inequities , to our system of remorseless exploitation and robbery."69 Most
importantly, the two men, and in particular Carpenter, had expressed sympathy
for the anarchists. C arpenter had even played a role in assisting a number of
E nglish anarchis ts, known as the Walsall Anarchists , who were imprisoned in
April 1 892 for conspiracy to make a bomb.70 But by the time the two men
were approached with the idea of writing a preface for Berkman's book, the
greatest claim to fame that either man had was their resp ective writing on
sexuality. And more to the point, both men were associated with the scientific
study of homose xuality and with efforts to ameliorate the lives of homosexuals.
A preface by either C arpenter or Ellis would highlight those sections of the
Prison Memoirs that dealt with sex behind bars .
Ellis declined the offer, but Carpenter-whose interest in Berkman's book

was longstanding-readily accepted. By writing a preface to Berkman's mem
oirs, Carpenter could address a number of issues that he cared deeply about.
His critique of prison and the legal system were quite similar to the anarchists ' .
He denounced prisons a s " an epitome o f folly and wickedness" i n which "the
state is seen, like an evil stepmother, beating its own children, whom it has
reared in p overty and ignorance."7! This is echoed in Berkman's writing that
prisons were "but· an intensified replica of the world b eyond, the larger prison
locked with the levers of Greed, guarded by the spawn ofHunger."72 Of course,
C arpenter was also intrigued by Berkman's politics of homosexuality.
Historian Jeffrey Weeks argues that Carpenter's interest in prisons and
the p olitics of sexuality were connected. By writing about those who society
scorns and punishes , C arpenter was protesting his own status as an outsider. " I n
t h e p o sition of modern-day c riminals ," Weeks writes, " Carpenter saw a model
for his own p osition as a homosexual, as an outlaw of society."7' It is possible
that this kind of metonymic equivalence o f "the prisoner" with " the homo
sexual" was part of what motivated B erkman's relatively sympathetic treatment
of same-sex relati ons b ehind bars . Since those who committed homosexual
acts were by definition outlaws, and anarchists had a decided bias for those who
stood outside the law, it follows, that defending homosexuality was an act of
defiance against the law and those who enforced it-the state.
While his own prison reformism was an important reason for Carpenter's
decision to write a preface for Prison Memoirs, by the time he was asked to
write it, he was much better known as a sex radical than a prison reformer. In
the early years of the twentieth century, Carpenter had published a number of
works, such as Love's Coming ofAge and Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folks,
which dealt explicitly with homosexuality. In 1 9 1 4, he assisted in the founding
of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (later renamed the Brit
ish Sexological Society, or B S S) , becoming the group 's first president. The BSS
aimed to provide a forum "for the consideration of problems and questions
connected with sexual psychology, from their m edical, j uridical, and sociologi
cal aspects." To that end, the group sponsored lectures and published pamphlets
on same-sex desire. According to Weeks, "public education o n homosexuality
was a maj o r theme from the beginnings of the society." Agreeing to write an
introduction to Berkman's book fit in perfectly with Carpenter's work with
the BSS and that group 's stated desire to throw light on " sexual psychology,
from their medical, j uridical, and sociological aspects."74
Goldman convinced Carpenter to write a p reface to Prison Memoirs by ar
guing that doing so would give him the opportunity to highlight the sexual
politics of Berkman's book:
I know of no one in England orA[merica] who is so fit to introduce B erkman's

work on his prison experience and all that went with those dreadful fourteen
years than you . You who have so ably pleaded against prisons, you who have
understood the suffering and hopelessness of the victims of our cruel social
fabric. And there is also your deep human understanding of the men and
women who in their sex psychology divert from the so-called normal and
who are branded by our social and ethical stupidity as degenerate. Indeed,
there is no other great figure in this wide land who could and would do justice
to the work of Alexander Berkman and the subj ects he treats therein 75
Goldman's p raise of Carpenter's reform work culminates with her lauding of

his defense of those "men and women who in their sex psychology divert from
the so-called normal." This is not an attempt at flattery, but it reflects the fact
that, by the 1 920s, Carpenter's reputation had been strongly colored by his
writings on sex. Goldman and Berkman were quite aware of Carpenter's repu
tation and were willing to trade on the sexual aspect of Prison Memoirs in order
to promote the book. Anarchist tracts may not have been good business in the
1 920s, but b ooks on sexuality were best sellers. As Goldman herself told Berk
man, "Economic subj ects do not draw, only current events . . . or sex."76 But the
decision to choose Carpenter was not entirely based on market considerations.
Prison I'vlemoirs WaS a significant work of s exual politics, and asking Carpenter to
1 24 FREE COMRADES
write a p reface that highlighted an aspect of Berkman's book that many, Car
p enter among them, found comp elling was an important political decision.
Carpenter's preface, which appeared in 1 926, was a modest contribution,
hardly one p age in length. He was older and had difficulty working at his
former pace. Though he employed a less forceful voice than that of the young
Hutchins Hapgood, who wrote the introduction for the first edition of Prison
Memoirs, C arpenter shared Hapgo od's enthusiasm for the value of the book. He
did not expect every reader to " embrace Alexander Berkman's theories, nor
yet to approve the act which brought upon him twenty-one years among the
living dead," but Carpenter was sure that anyo ne who picked up Prison Mem
oirs would b e impressed b y the " deep psychological perceptions and t h e fine
literary quality of the work." Carpenter makes no direct mention of the sexual
c o ntent of Berkman's book, but hints at the range of human emotions and
b ehaviors treate d therein. " There are in the book," wrote Carpenter, "cameos
describing how friendships may be and are formed and sustained even in the
midst of the most depressing and dispiriting conditions." These gems cut from
prison rock reveal, according to Carpenter, a beauty that one would not expect
to find b ehind the walls of a j ail. In addition to providing a "vivid picture of
the sufferings of those detained in American prisons," Carpenter felt that Berk
man " makes on,: realize how the human spirit-unquenchable in its search
for love-is ever p ressing outward and onward in a kind of creative activity."
The c reative activity extends to the inmates' struggles to find companionship
behind bars. The English edition's dust j acket echoes Carpenter's c oy language,
promising readers that Berkman's book describes, "life as it is lived inside pris
ons . . . nothing is left out."77
As well as the addition of Carpenter's preface, Berkman once again includ
ed an excerpt of Oscar Wilde's The Ballad oj Reading Gaol-the same one that
appeared in the first American edition-to frame his work. Carpenter's oblique
referenc e to the sexual content of Prison Memoirs was echoed and amplified by
the inclusion of\;\Tilde's poem on the page opposite. The two men represented
different aspects of the social position of homosexuals within society: the victim
and the rebel. Wilde was the symbol of the tragic consequences of state regula
tion of erotic desire and expression-the anarchist sex radicals had long used
him as a key figure in the politics of homosexuality. Carpenter was a much less
tragic figure. Oscar Wilde and Edward Carpenter's names would have brought
to mind homosexual desire and the politics engendered by that desire.
The number of copies of the English edition of Prison Memoirs that circu
lated in the United States is unknown . There was a second American edition
published in 1 920, though it did not have Carpenter's preface. But a reader
does not need Carpenter's guidance to understand that Prison Memoirs is one of
the most impo rtant p olitical texts of the early-twentieth century, which treats
same-sex desire. Few other books of the period are as nuanced or sophisticated
in their approach to the question of homosexuality. Prison Memoirs oj an Anar
chist is not an apologia for same-sex love. Berkman's text is a complex inves
tigation of the question of same-sex love in a brutal environment. Unlike the
maj ority of writing by prison reformers and those who have themselves spent
time in prison, B erkman does not use homosexuality as a club with which to
beat the prison system. While he does not hesitate to condemn the often brutal
nature of prison's social and sexual relations. he does not stop there. In addition
to acknowledging and c ondemning the exploitation of "kids" in prison, Berk
man portrays consensual, supportive relationships between members of the
same sex. These relationships included those Berkman had with other prison
ers-relationships which helped Berkman survive his many years in j ail . Prison
Memoirs is a key political text in the body of works that the anarchists produced
on the subj ect of prisons and on the ethical, social, and cultural place of same
sex desire in American society.
I V I NG
MY
LI F E
E M MA G O L D M A N
Y OUUU O N E
I · O J·
" . _ TOI I . .. L ' 1 & D · ... .Jl . O "
C H A PTER FIVE:
"' U R N I N G S ,' ' LES B I A N S,' A N D OTH E R STRAN G E TO P I C S''' :
S EXO L O G Y AN D TH E P O LITI CS O F H O M O S EXUALITY
IN 1 902 ,jOHN WILLIAM Lloyd expressed his hop e that he would "live to see
the day when we shall have an American (better still an International) Insti
tute and Society of S exology, composed of our greatest scientists, philosophers,
physicians, and men and women of finest character studying sex as fearlessly as
geology, discussing it as calmly as the 'Higher Criticism,' and publishing it far
and wide in a paper which no Church nor State can gag." ! Like geologists or
-'
readers of esoteric texts, this gathering of "men and women of finest character"
c-
o
<= would untangle the layers of desire and identity, providing a road map to the
::.::
<i complicated inner world of sexual desires. Lloyd hoped his group of scientists ,
<i
:.§'" learned scholars, and doctors would study sex free from the threat of state
....
�'" censorship and theological inj unction. Though produced by professionals, the
:� knowledge emanating from this learned council would be provided to a broad

--'
b audience in an easily available publication. The " International Institute and So-
:� ;>.. ciety of Sex" would constitute a vital organ of a free society run in accordance
� � with the principles of anarchism . 2
� � Lloyd was not alone among the anarchists in wishing to see the topic of
I i sex receive more " scientific" attention. Like the myriad psychiatrists , sociolo
.� � gists, doctors and others who contributed to the field of sexology, anarchist sex
j) .s radicals published articles, delivered lectures, and distributed literature dealing
128 FREE COMRADES
with a broad variety of sexual topics. In doing so, they hoped to bring clarity to
a subj ect they felt was too little understo od.
Emma Goldman, one of the most famous-not to say infamous-sex radi
cals of the early-twentieth century, was particularly interested in sexology and
the politics of sexuality. She was, however, seriously disappointed in the qual
ity of most of the work she encountered. "Nowhere," she observed, " does one
meet such density, such stupidity, as in the questions pertaining to love and sex."
Goldman exp ended considerable time and resources fighting this "puritani
cal mock modesty."3 She felt compelled to speak on the politics of personal
life. "Nothing s hort of an open, frank, and intelligent discussion," she wrote,
"will purifY the air from the hysterical, sentimental rubbish that is shrouding
these vital subj e cts, vital to individual as well as social well-being."4 Many of
Goldman's colleagues shared her view that the "puritanical mock modesty " of
American culture could b e dangerous. Hulda Potter-Loomis warned that " re
strained or restr icted sexual desire has been the cause of insanity in thousand
of cases."5 The anarchist sex radicals fought to counter what they felt were ill
conceived, uninformed, and dangerous ideas about the nature of sexual desire
and its role in shaping individual psychology.
American anarchist sex radicals favored European sexologists over their lo
cal counterparts. To some extent this reflects the fact that European sexologists
were far more productive than the Americans , a s there was simply more and
better-known work b eing written in Europe-especially in England and Ger
many." But the anarchists' preference for European scholarship was also influ
enced by their p olitical values. When it came to the question of sex, the anar
chists felt that th,� United States was , as one contributor to Mother Earth wrote,
" a provincial and hypocritical nation."! This was particularly true in regards to
the question of homosexuality, and the anarchist sex radicals were deeply influ
enced by the work that European sexologists produced on the subject of same
sex love and desire. Goldman claimed, for example, that it was the "works of
Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, Carpenter, and many others which made me see
the crime against Oscar Wilde."� She and other anarchists drew on the work of
European sexologists in their attempt to define the ethical , social, and cultural
place of same-sex desire.
The c onnections between the anarchist sex radicals and Europ ean sexolo
gists went beyond mere familiarity with published texts . Anarchists sought out
and communicated with the scientists they admired. And a number of sex
ologists were interested in the work of the anarchist sex radicals . In 1 9 1 3 , for
example, Lloyd visited England where he met Carpenter and Ellis. In a letter
to a friend Lloyd told of his visit, which included a trip with Carpenter's lover,
·'URNINGS: 'LESBIANS: AND OTHER STRANGE TOPICS'· 129
George Merrill, "to the ' Pub,"'9 Unfortunately, Lloyd offers little detail on the
nature of his adventures with Carpenter and Merrill, but he was more forth
c oming about his visit with Ellis . "I told him who I was," Lloyd later recalled,
" and remarked that I did not suppose he remembered me, but I had once
exchanged a letter with him, and that I c ame from America." Lloyd was flat
tered when Ellis proclaimed " O h yes! I remember all about you ," and quickly
retrieved two of Lloyd's works from a bookshelf, as well as "some clippings
about me." Though c ertainly pleased by Ellis' warmth, Lloyd claimed not to be
surprised that the Englishman should give him such an enthusiastic welcome.
Their friendship was "not so strange," Lloyd thought, "for we were both sex
ologists (1 . . . an amateur, he . . . a master) ." l0 I n Lloyd's mind, he and his fellow
anarchist sex radicals were members in goo d standing of the " International
Institute of Society and S exology." All were struggling to deal with the increas
ingly salient problems of sexuality and its place in modern life.
The anarchist sex radicals were drawn to those sexologists and psycholo
gists whose work seemed to them to be useful correctives to contemporary
prej udices and moral rules. When, for example, Goldman heard Sigmund Freud
speak at Clark University in 1 909, she felt that " his simplicity and earnestness
and the brilliance of his mind combined to give one the feeling of being led
out of a dark c ellar into broad daylight. For the first time I grasped the full sig
nificance of sex repression and its effects on human thought and action." 1 1 The
anarchist sex radicals read much of the sexological literature, as Goldman did
Freud, as a roadmap out of " a dark cellar." Goldman told Magnus Hirschfeld
that his works "have helped me much in shedding light on the very complex
question of sex psychology, and in humanizing the attitude of people who
came to hear me." 12 Lloyd praised Ellis' work in very similar terms. He thanked
Ellis for " redeeming the study of sex from shame and reproach, and elevating
it to its proper place as among the most fundamentally essential sciences." 1 3
Bolton Hall, a friend of Emma Goldman, echoed Lloyd's words, writing of El- .
lis that "when nobody else believed in telling the truth about sex, when it was
as much to proclaim oneself an outcast to say that sex was clean and beautiful
when rightly used, he dared to say and said it in such a way that he was heard
and made it easy, at long last, for us to speak." 1 4 The anarchists read the sexolo
gist's writings as useful analytic and p olitical tools in their attempts to challenge
society's sexual rules and regulations.
The anarchists' linkage of sexology and radical sexual p olitics may strike
some as odd. Much has been written on the negative impact of sexology on
the lives of those marked by sexual difference : its deforming and false claims
of obj ectivity, its imposition of warped subj ectivities on powerless people, and
its complicity with the legal and cultural oppression of sexual difference. In
her intellectual biography of Emma Goldman, for example, B onnie Haaland
is critical of Goldman for adopting the vocabulary of the sexologists, which
c ontributed to the "pathologization of sexuality by classifying sexual behaviors
as perversions, inversions, etc." 15 Haaland is not alone in seeing sexology as a
tool of oppression. " The sexologists," according to Lillian Faderman and Bri
gitte Erikson, " emphasized . . . the unusual , i . e . , abnormal nature " of same-sex
love. 16 Jonathan Ned Katz is also strongly critical of the sexologists, particularly
the medical establishment: "The treatment of Lesbians and Gays by psychia
trists and psychologists:' he writes, "constitutes one of the more lethal forms
of homosexual oppression." 1 7 How then to explain Lloyd's call for a sexologi
cal society run according to anarchist principles? It would seem impossible, to
p araphrase Audre Lourde, that the anarchists could have used the master's tools
to bring down the master's house.
The portrayal of sexology above, as presented by Haaland, Katz, and others
is overly negative. Sexology was a complex set of texts, practices, and influences
that was wielded by cultural and p olitical players in contradictory ways. It was
not a monolithic institution that spoke power to the powerless . The study of
same-sex desire and b ehavior, writes Vernon Rosario, has been used "in order
to legitimize opposing p olitical aims: the normalization and defense of homo
sexuality, or its pathologization and condemnation." 1 8 The field of sexology
which was the purview of a broad array of scientific, humanistic, and liter
ary scholars of both professional and amateur standing-was deeply contested.
While some sexologists worked hand in hand with regulatory institutions, oth
ers worked to undermine the ideas that enabled and legitimated the policing of
human desire. A number of leading sexologists, such as Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
and Edward Carpenter, were themselves homosexuals whose scholarship was
part of a larger political proj ect. Readers of the works of Carpenter, Ulrichs,
and their peers, as well as the hundreds of men and women who collabo
rated with the sexologists by submitting their life stories for study believed, in
the words of Vernon Rosario, "that obj ective science would dispel centuries
of moral and legal prej udice against homosexuals ." 19 Though the critiques of
sexology presented by Faderman and others have merit, they are one-sided
and overly negative. Sexology was , in many instances, a powerful challenge to
the crudest forms of social, cultural, and legal oppression. Anarchist sex radicals,
though not uncritical of sexology, shared the vision of the practitioners of the
new science of sex. Sexology was a multivalent discourse that can only be ana
lyzed in light of how it was used, by whom, and to what end.
··URNINGS: 'LESBIANS: AND OTHER STRANGE TOPICS'· 131
Anarchist sex radicals helped to circulate sexological texts in the United

States. To illustrate : in the late 1 880s and 1 890s, Benj amin Tucker made avail
able literature and social criticism that dealt with questions of sexuality through
his publications and his New York City bookstore. This was, in p art, because
risque literature sold well and helped underwrite the works on banking and
land reform that Tucker so loved, but he also sought to make available knowl
edge about sex that he felt was in keeping with his basic political principles.
In the early 1 890s, Tucker created the "Sociological Index," a clipping servic e
that featured "the most important articles . . . that appear in t h e periodical press
of the world." The Index was advertised in Liberty and readers could order ar
ticles listed in the Index for a fee. One of the sections in the Sociological Index
was " S ex ." Here one could find articles entitled " Progress of National Divorce
Reforms ," " German Prudery," and " Girl Student Life in Zurich." Other sec
tions of the index, such as "Ethics" and "Belles-Lettres," also carried articles on
the subj ect of sexuality. Most were from English-language publications, but the
contents of the foreign p ress were also made available. Tucker, a Francophile,
was especially keen o n making available the works of French authors .
In addition to providing the Sociological Index to its readers, Liberty also
advertised books for sale that treated the topic of homosexuality. Interested
readers now need not visit Tucker's bookstore in order to have access to what
was often called "advanced" literature. Among the b ooks Tucker made available
was the first English edition of Kraffi-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis: With Espe
cial Riference to Contrary Sexual Instinct. This book, essentially a collection of an
notated sexual biographies, played a critical role in the consolidation of medical
discourse of sexuality and sexual identity. For many p eople whose erotic and
emotional life focused on members of their own sex, Krafft-Ebing's book func
tioned as a mirror with which they could see themselves. The very logic of the
work-which highlights variation and personal history-militates against the
idea that sexual mores can conform to hard and fast rules . Though it has had
quite a number of critics, Psychopathia Sexualis was, in its time, a reformist tract.
According to historian Harry Oosterhuis, "some of [Kraffi-Ebing's] colleagues
suspected him of too much sympathy toward sexual deviants." Other critics
charged him with disseminating " homosexual propaganda," and many believed
that his pleas for decriminalization went way too far."20 By making works such
as this available to a broad audience, Tucker was deliberately helping to spread
and reinforce new ways of thinking about sexual identity and b ehavior.
At times , Tucker's dissemination of sexological literature took an even more
direct route. In 1 889, Liberty, edited by Tucker, published an essay by Edward
Carpenter entitled " C ustom." This essay, which first appeared in the English
132 fREE COMRADES
j ournal ,
Fortnightly Review and was later collected in Carpenter's Civilization:
Its Causes and Cure, is a critique of the role of " custom" in determining tastes,
behaviors, and morals. In it, Carpenter employs a comparative analysis that
demonstrates that social and cultural values are products of social forces and not
ordained by divine rules or regulated by the laws of nature. Once we systemati
cally examine the " customs in which we were bred," Carpenter argues, " they
turn out to be only the practices of a small narrow class or caste; or they prove
to be c onfined to a very limited locality, and must be left behind when we set
out o n our travels ; or they belong to the tenets of a feeble religious sect; or
they are j ust the products of one age in history and no other."21 The seemingly
timeless, ancient, and sanctified rules of culture are, Carpenter argues, historical
constructs reflecting particular class , regional, or religious interests . They should
not, therefore, c arry the binding imperatives that we ascribe to them. In other
words , the ideas and values of the world in which Carpenter lived were subj ect
to revision .
Though " Custom" does n o t explicitly treat homosexuality, i t foreshadows
the arguments that Carpenter would make in his essays on " homogenic love"
and "sexual inversion." "Custom" argues that beliefs about what is right and
wrong in matters of sex are subj ect to geographical , temporal, and cultural
variation. When we examine " the subj ect or morals," Carpenter notes, we find
that they "also are customs-divergent to the last degree among different races,
at different time" or in different localities; customs for which it is often difficult
to find any ground in reason or the 'fitness of things."' Though moral codes are
arbitrary they are nonetheless vigilantly p oliced. "The severest penalties," Car
p enter observes, " the most stringent public opinion, biting deep down into the
individual conscience, enforce the various codes of various times and places;
yet they all c ontradict each other." The enlightened person, Carpenter goes on
to say, should seek to shrug off the dead weight of history. In order to be able
to appreciate the fullness of life we must open ourselves to new habits, actions,
and tastes. The liberated woman or man of the future will, " eat grain one day
and beef then another. . . go with clothes or without clothes . . . inhabit a hut or
a p alace indifferently." And this embrace of difference will extend to sex. Car
p enter hoped that in the future p eople "will use the various forms of sex-rela
tionship without p rej udice . . . . And the inhabitants of one city or country will
not be all alike."2= Tucker found Carpenter's praise of diversity and tolerance to
be an excellent addition to the valuable work on sexuality and psychology that
he made available to his readers .
Though Tucker was familiar with the work of Carpenter, Kratft-Ebing, and
Ellis, he himself dId not employ sexological vocabulary. Nowhere in his writing
"'URNINGS: 'LESBIANS: AND OTHER STRANGE TOPICS'" 133
on sex does he identity someone as a homosexual, invert, i ntermediate type,

homogenic lover, or for that matter, a heterosexual. In his defense of Wilde,
for example, Tucker never identifies him as a homosexual, nor does he speak
of sexual identity or community. In great part this is due to Tucker's insistence
on the p rimacy of the individual . In his political discourse, Tucker always spoke
of the right of individuals to meet their needs and desires in free association
with other individuals . H e tended to use gender neutral, non-specific language
when doing so. Tucker's sexual politics were couched in the language of choice,
rights, and limits, a more abstract line of reasoning that was not rooted in iden
tity. As long as a p erson was willing to bear the full weight of his or her actions,
Tucker would defend their right to act as they wished. He defended those who
engaged in "vice;' for example, because people had a right to act according to
their own dictates so long as they did not harm others . Tucker's political per
spectives were informed by his wide reading in psychological and sociological
discourse, but he did not adopt the language and rhetoric of sexologists when
framing his sexual p olitics.
Among the anarchist sex radicals, Goldman was the most voracious con
sumer and distributor of sexology. She was an enthusiastic p articipant in de
bates over sex; read sexological literature; attended lectures by psychologists, so
ciologists, and other professionals; and befriended the spokespeople of the new
science. This is not to say that Goldman always agreed with what she heard
and read. She could be a sharp critic, and once wrote to Ben Reitman that Dr.
Stanley Hall's 1 9 1 2 lecture on "Moral Prophylaxis " was " awful." Hall was the
leading American psychologist of the day, best known for his book Adolescence:
Its Psychology and Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sex, Crime, Religion and
Educa tion . While she appreciated that Hall " emphasized the importance of sex,"
giving it " almost as much credence to it as I ," she was troubled that the lecture
was introduced by a minister, and that Hall argued, "We need sex instruction to
preserve Christianity, morality, and religion ."23 This linking of religion, sexual
morals and regulation was anathema to Goldman. She resp ected the work that
Hall had done in the field of psychology, but she "felt sorry for the American
p eople who were accepting such infantile stuff as authoritative information."24
Unfortunately for Americans, Hall's presentation was representative of current
sexual thinking among . the country's professionals . Like her own colleagues,
Goldman was rather disappointed in American sexologists, and rarely cited
them, other than to refute their work.
Emma Goldman had a decided preference for European sexologists, par
ticularly Carpenter, Ellis, and Magnus Hirschfeld, all of whom she viewed as
social critics and dissidents. Goldman especially agreed with their liberal views
1 34 FREE C O M RADES
on homosexuality. She wrote to Ellis that she acquired his book, Sexual Inver
sion, in 1 899 shortly after its publication, and considered it one of her "greatest
treasures." Sexual Inversion (actually coauthored by John Addington Symonds,
whose name was removed after his death because his estate obj ected to his
being associated with the work) , was one of the first English-language publica
tions to address same-sex relations. Ellis was notably more favorable towards
the subj ects of his study than many of his contemporaries, in the words ofVern
Bullough, he "struggled to avoid any language of pathology" and "attempted to
emphasize the achievement of homosexuals."25 Goldman responded favorably
to Ellis' approach. " I followed your work," she told him, "read nearly all I could
get hold of and introduced them to the mass of people I was able to reach
through my lec ture work."2h Goldman identified Ellis and his ideological kin
as part of a larger movement for social j ustice, one with which she identified
and helped foster. By helping to make Sexual Inversion better known Goldman
felt that she was aiding in the amelioration of the social and ethical status of the
men and women Ellis wrote about. Goldman may have been especially drawn
to Ellis' work because his study on homosexuality was-indirectly-linked
with anarc hism.
When it fim appeared in England, Ellis ' Sexual Inversion was published by
the same press as the one used by the Legitimation League, an anarchist sex
reform group that advocated free love unions and ending the social ostracism
of illegitimate children and their mothers. The Legitimation League operated a
bookstore and published a j ournal titled, The Adult. The police, convinced that
the Legitimation League was intent of destroying English morals, monitored
the group 's activities and the appearance of Ellis' work offered the police an
opportunity ' to attack them. In 1 898, an undercover police agent purchased
a c opy of Sexual Inversion from George B edborough, the editor of The Adult
who was working at the Legitimation League's bookstore. In Ellis ' words, the
police hoped to " crush the Legitimation League and The A dult by identifYing
them with my Sexual Inversion, obviously, from their point of view, an ' ob
scene' book."27 Ellis learned of Bedborough 's arrest on the charge of selling
Sexual Inversion-which was described by the police as "a certain lewd, wicked,
bawdy, and scandalous libel"-from a telegram sent by American anarchist, Lil
lian Harman, who had been elected president of the Legitimation League in
1 897 . Though the League was severely affected by the police actions , Ellis was
undeterred and continued to conduct and publish his research. This complex
intertwining of Ellis and the E nglish anarchists may well have inclined Gold
man to identifY his views and politics with her mvn. 2R
·'URNINGS: 'LESBIANS: AND OTHER STRANGE TOPICS'" 135
Goldman saw the work of those she identified as progressive sexologists as

blending seamlessly with the larger goals of anarchism. Like them, she b elieved
that the scientific study of human nature was an indispensable step in the march
towards freedom. Goldman went so far as to call Carpenter and Ellis anarchists .
This was not a novel interpretation of Carpenter, whose name had been associ
ated with anarchism by Lloyd and Tucker previously. Carpenter cultivated his
kinship with the anarchists, assisting Peter Kropotkin with the research for his
book, Fields, Factories and Workshops and contributing a very flattering greeting
to a special issue of Mother Earth, celebrating the life and work of Kropotkin.
Ellis, despite his tangled history with the Legitimation League, was less quick to
ally himself with the anarchists. When told of Goldman's opinion of him, Ellis
demurred. But his refusal of being labeled anarchist did not dissuade Goldman.
" I am amused," she wrote her friend Joseph Ishill, " at Ellis's statement that he
is not an Anarchist because he does not belong to an organization." Goldman
praised Ellis' "philosophical outlook" which she believed was "infinitely big
ger and more important than that of many people who go under the name of
Anarchists."29 Ellis was an anarchist in spirit, if not in name.
Through her interest in the work of sexologists , G oldman was exposed
to contemporary medical and psychological ideas on homosexuality. In 1 89 5 ,
G oldman was in Vienna to pursue training as a nurse with a special emphasis
on obstetrics and gynecology, when she heard a lecture on homosexuality. This
lecture, delivered by "Professor Bruhl," made a significant impact on her, as it
was apparently the first time that she had heard same-sex love b eing treated in
a scientific manner. I nitially, though, Goldman found the doctor's talk " mystifY
ing." In his presentation, Bruhl "talked of'Urnings ; ' Lesbians; and other strange
topics." This was Goldman's introduction to the emerging sexological termi
nology on homosexuality, and in the decades that followed, she would become
quite familiar with these new terms. At the time, though, they were novel.
The audience members, many of whom signified their sexual identity by their
gender inversion, also fascinated Goldman. The audience members, Goldman
recalled "were strange," c onsisting of "feminine-looking men with coquettish
manners and women distinctly masculine, with deep voices." Bruhl's lecture
introduced G oldman to the emergent and increasingly p owerful medical and
psychological language of sexual difference. By observing her fellow audience
members, Goldman also learned about the semiotics of sexual identification
that "urnings" and "lesbians" crafted for themselves.3o
Sexological literature had a great impact on how G oldman conceptualized
the politics of homosexuality. She absorbed the sexologist's worldview, speak
ing of homosexuals as a distinct category of humanity: an identity that had
1 36 F R E E C O M RADES
psychological, social, and cultural manifestations. She employed the language of

s exology-"homosexuals," "inverts," "intermediate types," and "homo-sexual
ists"-in her writing and lectures. The use of inconsistent terms reflects the
fact that there was no single dominant framework or set of ideas that Goldman
embraced. When it came to the literature on sex, Goldman was a promiscuous
reader. However, one cannot discount the importance of the larger political
and social analysis that Goldman brought to any social question. The discourses
that shaped Goldman's sense of sexuality reflected both the specialized medical
and psychological discourse of sexology and the broader currents of thought
and politics within which Goldman operated. Goldman was drawn to those
s exologists whose work best fit in with her basic political ideals. She was ac
customed to thinking of oppressed groups: the working-class, women, ethnic
minorities. Hutc hins Hapgood said of Goldman that she "always associated
anybo dy in any way frowned upon by middle-class society, no matter whether
they should b e frowne d upon or not, with the general victims of an unjust or
der."3 1 Goldman, who was never so alive as when defending the downtrodden,
was predisposed to see homosexuals as an oppressed social group; they were
another set of " outcasts" that needed a championY
Like Tucker, Goldman and her associates helped circulate the sexologi
cal literature they admired in the United States . Goldman's own writings
and lectures on l ove and sexuality make frequent references to the work of
Edward Carpenter, Havelock Ellis, and Magnus Hirschfeld, helping to intro
duce this work to her audiences . Carpenter, Ellis, and other sexologists' books
were sold on Go ldman's lecture tours and were offered as premiums to those
who subscribed to Mother Earth. In 1 9 1 2 , for example, subscribers who sent in
$5 . 00 would receive "Berkman's ' Prison M emoirs; Proudhon's 'What is Prop
erty,' F rank Harris' 'The Bomb: Kropotkin's ' Russian Literature; and Edward
Carpenter's 'Love 's Coming of Age."'33 Both Carpenter's book and Berkman 's
memoirs include substantial material on same-sex eroticism. Those who sub
scribed to Mother Earth would therefore be provided with a relatively rich
library of literature treating homosexuality. In addition, many issues of Mother
Earth carried advertisements that ofFered "important books on sex" and " anar
chist and sex litera ture" for sale. Readers of the November 1 9 1 5 issue of Iv/other
Earth could order August Forel's book The Sexual Question: A Scientij1c, Psycho
logical, Hygienic and Sociological Study of the Sex Question, a work that, accord
ing to the ad copy, addressed "Homosexuality . . . and other important phases of
sex."3 4 Goldman's journal and her lecture tours were important channels for
the dissemination of sexological literature.
'''URNINGS: 'LESBIANS: AND OTHER STRANGE TOPICS'" 137
In additio n to advertising the work of sexologists, Mother Earth published

articles by sexologists and non-anarchist sex radicals . In 1 907, the j ournal car
ried an article by D r. H elene Stocker entitled "The Newer Ethics." Stocker
was a German feminist who supported divorce law reform, the free circulatio n
of information about c ontraception, a n d access t o legal abortion, and s h e was
also a member of Magnus Hirschfeld's Scientific-Humanitarian Committee,
the German gay rights group. "The Newer Ethics" is an examination of the
"sex question" in light of the work of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
While Stocker does not directly address the question of homosexuality in her
essay, she argues-in a manner remarkably similar to Carpenter-that in mat
ters oflove people should "not bow slavishly to custom." According to Stocker,
Nietzsche's work "teaches the beauty and purity of love, which for hundreds of
years has been branded as vicious by the unhealthy imagination of the church."
People, Stocker argued, should pursue their passions free of guilt. The new
ethics, she wrote, "strikes at the root of the old and conhlsed notions, which
identify 'morality' with the fear of conventional standards, [and] 'virtue' with
'abstaining from sexual intercourse."'35 Though she did not identify as an anar
chist herself, the views she expressed in " The Newer Ethics" were in concert
with those of the anarchist sex radicals .
Several of Goldman's colleagues shared her interest in sexology, homosexu
ality, and the p olitics of sexuality. Ben Reitman, Goldman's lover during the
years she was most actively interested in the politics of homosexuality, is es
pecially important in this regard. According to Candace Falk, "Ben had always
been fascinated with and sympathetic to homosexuality."36 He was exposed to
the phenomenon at a young age. When he was twelve, Reitman began to ride
the railways, mixing with the men and boys who traveled from city to city,
seeking employment. This largely male world was characterized by a rough
sexual culture in which homosexual behavior was not uncommon.37 This ear
ly experience of the sexual subculture of casual laborers, tramps , and hobos
seemed to have marked Reitman; he retained a lifelong interest in the life he
had as a youth . I n the late 1 930s, for example, Reitman published a book, Sister
C!f the Road: The Autobiography of Box- Car Bertha as Told to Ben Reitman, which
listed "well-marked homosexualists" as one of the categories of women who
took to the road.3H When Reitman became a physician, he continued to move
in social worlds where homosexual behavior was common. He lived his life at
the margins . of resp ectable society. Reitman's biographer writes that " under
world types and down-and-outs gravitated to Ben's office, as did prostitutes,
pimps, dope addicts, and sexual p erverts."39 Given their mutual interest in ho-
138 FREE COMRADES
mosexuality and sexology, it is likely that Reitman shared his personal observa
tions and knowledge with Goldman.
Goldman's most notable interventions in the politics of homosexuality
were her lectures. Lectures were one of the key tools used by both anarchists
and sexologists III their attempts to spread their ideas. Goldman was a power
ful speaker whose stage presence, according to Christine Stansell, was "by all
accounts mesmerizing." 40 Though portrayed as a rabble-rouser in the popular
press, much of Goldman's power as a speaker resulted from her willingness to
treat controversial subj ects-like sex-dispassionately. This is not to say that
she was not an entertaining speaker. When Goldman lectured on the subj ect
of " S ex" at Harry Kemp's college in Kansas the "hall was j ammed to the doors
by a curiosity-moved crowd." Those who came for a show were no doubt dis
app ointed, as she did not treat the subject of her talk in a sensational fashion .
According t o Kemp, Goldman "began b y assuming that she was not talking to
idiots and cretins, but to men and women of mature minds," but when one of
the professors j umped to his feet to denounce Goldman's too frank manner of
speech, she responded by poking fun at the outraged moral guardian. In a fit of
temper the professor shouted at the top of his lungs: "Shame on you, woman!
Have you no shame?" The professor's outraged outburst set off the gathered
students who Kemp writes, "howled with indescribable joy." Goldman shared
in their mirth and "laughed till the tears streamed down her face." Accord
ing to Kemp, for "the four days she remained [on campus] her lectures were
crowded." 41
Goldman dehvered most of her lectures on homosexuality in 1 9 1 5 and
1 9 1 6 . There is no clear reason why these years should be the high water mark
for her interest in the politics of homosexuality, but perhaps the heightened
radicalism of the First World War-years created a context in which she felt she
could speak out on controversial topics. Well before America entered the war
in 1 9 1 7 , the p olitical climate of the United States was inflamed by the confla
gration consuming Europe. The nation was torn by debates over intervention,
pacifism, and the p olitics of empire. In this hot house atmosphere Goldman
addressed a wide variety of topics including homosexuality. One could draw
an analogy with the late 1 960s and early 1 970s when the politics of the Viet
nam War, the rise of the New Left, the turn towards Black Power and radical
variants of Feminism, movements that were related in complex ways, created a
cultural and political context in which gays and lesbians were radicalized. 4 2
This was the height of her lecturing on same-sex love, but she certainly
addressed the topic in lectures prior to 1 9 1 5 . In 1 90 1 , for example, the j ournal
Free Society published a report of a lecture she gave in Chicago that touched on
N'URNINGS; 'LESBIANS; AND OTHER STRANGE TOPICS'· 1 39
the moral and ethical place of same-sex love. In her talk, Goldman "contended
that any act entered into by two individuals voluntarily was not vice. What is
usually hastily condemned as vice by thoughtless individuals, such as homo
sexuality, masturbation, etc . , should b e c onsidered from a scientific standpoint,
and not in a moralizing way."43 Goldman 's argument in 1 90 1 -that consensual
relations and b ehaviors that cause no harm to others should in no way be
regulated-was the basic message of all her presentations on the subj ect of ho
mosexuality. She thought of this analysis-informed as it was by her readings
in sexology-as a scientific, rather than moralistic, viewpoint. By the second
decade of the twentieth century, however, Goldman's lectures offered more
than a simple defense of homosexuality. She began to speak as an authority on
the subj ect; G oldman's lectures were exercises in sexological education. Her
sociological and psychological p erspectives on homosexuality were reflected
in the content of her talks, and it was from this perspective that Goldman ad
dressed the topic of homosexuality in her lectures in the years immediately
befo re the war,
Like the sexologists she admired, Goldman derived much of her informa
tion on same-sex atTection from her own observation and social analysis . She
acknowledged that she learned much of what she knew about homosexuality
from her friends and acquaintances . In 1 9 1 5 , she wrote a friend encouraging
her to attend her lecture on the " Intermediate Sex . . . because I am speaking
about it from entirely a different angle than Ellis , Forel, Carpenter and others,
and that mainly b ecause of the material I have gathered during the last half
dozen years through my p ersonal contact with the intermediate, which has
lead me to gather the most interesting material."44 Goldman's p ersonal relations
with "intermediate types"-a term Carpenter used to describe homosexuals
enriched her understanding of sexuality and may well have provided her with
the impetus to expand upon a theme which previously had been one of several
topics that she treated in her lectures.
Goldman's lectures were often the means by which she met the "intermedi
ate types" she befriended. I n 1 9 1 4, G oldman met Margaret Anderson who had
come to hear her speak. Sexual radicalism was a key element of Goldrnan 's ap
peal to Anderson. Goldman, according to Anderson, "whose name was enough
in those days to produce a shudder" was "considered a monster, an exponent
of free love and bombs."45 For Anderson, who had set herself on the path of
b ohemian rebellion, there was an aura of danger around Goldman that was part
of her fascination. Anderso n introduced Goldman to her lover, Harriet Dean,
with whom she published The Little Review, a j o ur nal of art and culture. Gold
man described the two as a classic butch-femme couple, though she did not
use the term. According to Goldman, Dean "was athletic, masculine-looking,

reserved, and self-conscious. Margaret, on the contrary, was feminine in the
extreme, constantly bubbling over with enthusiasm."46
Dean and Anderson were drawn into Goldman's political efforts and the
controversy that they produced. The two women helped arrange Goldman's
lectures in Chicago, selling tickets for the lecture out of the offices of
TIle Little
Review. D ean's family, who lived in the city, was mortified. They offered to pay
for the printing cost associated with Goldman's lectures if she would agree to
refrain from speaking on free love. Anarchism, it would seem, was an accept
able topic of conversation, but free love was out of bounds. The D ean family
seemed not to have appreciated the fact that free love and anarchism were, for
many, the same thing. Surprisingly, it seems that the family did not obj ect to
G oldman's intention to lecture on the subj ect of the " Intermediate Sex." It i.s
p ossible that they were unaware of the lecture or could not understand what
the subj ect of the talk was from the title of the speech. Or perhaps they did not
p erceive Dean and Anderson's relationship to be sexual in nature, or perhaps
saw it as a variant of the Boston Marriage that was quite common among pro
fessional women of the era. It is also possible, though unlikely given the horror
with which they reacted to the idea of the family name being associated with
free love, that they understood that Dean and Anderson were lovers, but were
indifferent. Whatever the case, Goldman refused to change her lecture topics,
and Dean and Anderson stood by her.
Anderson and Dean gravitated towards anarchism because it promised psy
chological, social, and sexual freedom. "Anarchism," exclaimed Anderson, "was
the ideal expression for my ideas of freedom and j ustice." In short order, the
pages of The Little Review were filled with praise of anarchism, and Goldman
was invited to c ontribute. She returned the favor, advising the readers of Mother
Earth, " to subscribe to Margaret C. Anderson's magazine." Goldman viewed
D ean and Anderson as fellow radicals who were melding art and activism in
an attempt to create new social relations. She praised TIle Little Review as a
" magazine devote d to art, music, poetry, literature, and the drama," one which
approached these subj ects "not tl:'Om the point of view of l'art pour /'art, but for
the sake of sounding the keynote of rebellion in creative endeavor."47 Anderson
and Dean's unconventional sex life was part of their rebellion. " Strongly indi
vidualized," Goldman observed, "they had broken the shackles of their middle
class homes to fine! release from family bondage and bourgeois tradition."48
It is impossible to know how many of Goldman's admirers were gay men
o r lesbians, but Dean and Anderson were hardly the only homosexuals who
were drawn to her. Emma Goldman also received support from a N�w Jersey
'''URNINGS: 'LESBIANS: AND OTHER STRANGE TOPICS'· 141
man named Alden Freeman, a wealthy man who lived in East Orange, New
Jers�y In 1 90 9 , he shocked his neighbors by offering his estate to Goldman
when other lecture venues were closed to her. Goldman delivered her talk to
a large and excited audience. For Freeman this was an act with deep p ersonal
resonance. According to Will Durant, at the time a friend of both Freeman and
Goldman, "Freeman . . . signalized his freedom from tradition by having Emma
Goldman lecture on the modern drama in the barn of his home." According
to Durant, the reaso n for Freeman's surprising hospitality was that he was a
" homosexual, ill at ease in the heterosexual society that gathered about him."
As a homosexual, Freeman felt alienated so he " sympathized with . . . rebels and
contributed to their proj ects ."49 There was an intimate relationship, Durant
suggests, between Freeman's feelings of sexual difference and his interest and
support of anarchism. Following Goldman's "barn" lecture Freeman provided
financial support to Goldman and kept in touch with her even after her exile
from the United States.
Others seemed to have felt as Freeman did. There is a fascinating story of
the influence that Goldman's lectures had Alberta Lucille Hart. Though born a
woman in 1 892, Hart chose to live life as a man. Anarchism played a role in this
dramatic process of personal transformation. Hart struggled with his identity
and his relationships. In 1 9 1 6 , " [Hart] heard many lectures by Emma Gold
man and became much interested in anarchism."50 The lectures and subsequent
investigations into anarchism gave added impetus for Hart's decision to live
his life as he saw fit. He eventually moved to a new city where he married a
woman and pursued a career as a physician. This was the kind of act of indi
vidualism that G oldman's ideas spoke to. Her unyielding defense of the right
of the individual appealed to Hart at a critical point in his life. Because of her
willingness to speak on behalf of homosexuals and others considered devi
ant, Goldman seemed to have held a special appeal to those men and women
whose sexual desires or gender identity led them to feel " ill at ease" in the
society they lived in.
The most interesting relationship b etween Goldman and one of her admir
ers is the case of Almeda Sperry. The two met after Goldman spoke on the pol
itics of prostitution. A working-class woman who lived in the industrial town
of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, Sperry had both male and female lovers, her
politics as unconventional as her sex life. I nspired by Goldman, Sperry flung
herself into the anarchist movement. For a number of years she worked tire
lessly, helping Goldman in her efforts to broadcast anarchist ideas. In 1 9 1 2, for
example, she worked to secure a lecture hall for Goldman in New Kensington
and wrote to her friend, "You 've got to come, Emmy, for the people need you
1 42 FREE COMRADES
awfully."51 Sperry enthusiastically distributed anarchist literature : " I am going to

get a list of all the radical p eople in this valley," Sperry wrote Goldman, " and I
mean to visit them all! I want to make my place the headquarters for Anarchist
literature in the Allegheny Valley and I Will ."52
As her interest in anarchism grew, so too did Sperry's feelings for Goldman.
This proved to be a p oint of c onflict between the two women-Sperry wanted
to move the relationship deeper while Goldman resisted. Sperry was as enthu
siastic in her pursuit of Goldman as she was in distributing anarchist literature.
I n one particularly telling letter Sperry wrote that Goldman had appeared to
her in a dream. The imagery of the dream is strongly erotic:
You were a rose, a great yellow rose with a pink center-but t h e petals were
folded one upon the other so tightly. I prayed to them to yield to me and
held the rose close to my lips so that my warm breath might persuade them
to open. Slowly, slowly they opened, revealing great beauty-but the pink
virginal center of the flower would not unfold until the tears gushed from
my eyes wh en it opened suddenly revealing in its center a crystal drop-dew. I
sucked the dew and bit out the heart of the flower. The petals dropped to the
ground one by one. I crushed them with my heel and their odor wafted after
me as I walked a\\iay.
The violent eroticism of Sperry's dream-a mixture of desire and hostility-is

characteristic of her exchanges with Goldman. Sperry seems to have been an
gry that Goldman did not share her passionate desire. This is not to say that
Goldman was entirely cold to Sperry�he did hug and kiss her, but the mean
ing of her actions is unclear. While there is some indication that, in the words
of Blanche Wiesen Cook, Goldman may have " experimented" with Sperry,
most likely Goldman's understanding of the meaning of this physical contact
was different from Sperry's . 53 As Jonathan Ned Katz writes, "the letters indicate
that Goldman returned Sperry's affection, though with less passion and des
p erate need than Sperry felt."'· The tone of the latter's letters-their insistent,
baroque quality-·bespeaks a good deal of erotic frustration . Sperry wanted to
deepen her physical contact with Goldman but Goldman resisted. The tortured
imagery of Sperry's dream reveals how she experienced Goldman's refusal of
her advances.
I n spite of her feelings of ambivalence toward her, Sperry fascinated Gold
man . Goldman introduced her to her friends, including Hutchins Hapgood and
Ben Reitman (who certainly interpreted Goldman's interest in Sperry as being
sexual in nature) . Reitman, whose sexual adventurism was infamous , proposed
to Sperry that she j oin him and Hapgood in a threesome. Sperry, not a little
bit disgusted by Reitman's proposal , refused. Alice Wexler argues that Reitman
·'URNINGS; 'LESBIANS; AND OTHER STRANGE TOPICS'· 143
was motivated, at least in part, by his attraction to Hapgood, a strikingly hand

some man .55 Wexler argues, that he was as interested in getting into bed with
Hapgood as he was with Sperry. Goldman denied having a sexual attraction to
Sperry, but she was clearly enthusiastic about her new friend, describing her
to c olleague Nunia Seldes as " the most interesting of American women I have
met." Goldman even considered publishing Sperry's l�tters, which she found
"wonderfully interesting" and " a great human document."56 Sperry was well
aware of the sociological nature of Goldman's interest in her. In a letter, she
wrote of Goldman-using a third-person c onstruction that matched form to
content-"Perhaps she is just studying me--all my personalities for the good
of her cause-studying this peculiar product of our civilization."57 Sperry was
quite perceptive. G oldman was studying her; Sperry was one of those "in
termediate types" who supplied Goldman with "interesting material" for her
lectures. 58
Goldman delivered her lectures on the topic of same-sex eroticism to a
broad audience. Unlike most presentations by physicians and other profession
als, Goldman's talks were open to the public and held in accessible venues.
Occasionally, there were other public lectures o n hom'osexuality, such as those
given by E dith Ellis, the wife of Havelock Ellis, who visited Chicago in 1 9 1 5 ,
but they were rare. Lecturers like Ellis usually spoke only i n maj or cities, and
their tours were limited in scope and reach. Goldman's lectures were advertised
in Mother Earth and the non-anarchist press, and she spoke in large and small
cities across the nation, addressing audiences in New York; Chicago ; St. Louis,
Washington, D. c. ; Portland; Denver; Lincoln, Nebraska; B utte, Montana; San
Francisc o ; San Diego ; and others. She spoke in a wide variety of venues: from
local labor halls to Carnegie Hall. Goldman estimated that 50,000 to 75,000
people a year heard her speak. Though not every listener came to her presen
tations on homosexuality, the numbers of people who heard Goldman speak
on the topic of same-sex love were significantly higher than any other of her
c ontemporaries. 59
Goldman's lectures on homosexuality drew large and responsive crowds.
On the night of a presentation in Chicago in 1 9 1 5 , Goldman feared the worst
as the evening "was visited by a perfect cloudburst," an event known to ruin
many a p ublic gathering. Nonetheless, she has happy to rep ort that "a large and
representative audience braved the storm" to hear her speak. 60 I n that same
year, ':Anna Wo' reported iIi Mother Earth on one of the Goldman's lectures on
"homo-sexuality" that she gave in Washington, D. c. Goldman, writes Anna W ,
is a " sympathizer and true friend of the socially outcast:' who "in the face of
strenuous general opposition to the discussion of a subj ect long enshrouded in
mystery and persistently tabooed by all other public speakers . . . delivered a most
illuminating lecture on homo-sexuality." According to Anna W a " dignified,
tense, and eager audience crowded the hall to its fullest capacity." Consumed
by curiosity audience members actively sought information from Goldman.
" The frankness and celerity with which they questioned and discussed were
evidences of the genuine and deep interest her treatment of the subj ect had
aroused."61 Goldman was clearly responding to a thirst for public discourse on
the topic.
Goldman wa s more forceful than other speakers in her exploration of the
social, ethical, and cultural place of same-sex desire. Margaret Anderson, for ex
ample, thought Edith Ellis paled as a speaker in comparison to Goldman . Ellis'
speech did not go " quite the whole distance" and, comparing Ellis to Goldman,
Anderson argued that Ellis' stage presence did not "loom as large as some of her
more ' destructive' contemporaries ." The reference to Goldman's " destructive"
p ower is a playful j ab at her unmerited reputation as a bomber, and her well
merited reputation as an " explosive" speaker. Ellis, on the other hand, failed to
grasp the nettle. Though she cited Carpenter's work, Ellis did not discuss "Car
penter's social eHorts in behalf of the homosexualist." Instead of engaging in a
direct p olitical confrontation, Ellis merely p ointed to the fact that not all ho
mosexuals were to be found in insane asylums; some occupied thrones or were
famous artists. But Anderson was unimpressed, " It is not enough ," she insisted,
"to repeat that Shakespeare and Michael Angelo and Alexander the Great and
Rosa Bonheur and Sappho were intermediaries." Ellis, unlike Goldman did
not ask the key q uestion: " how is the science of the future to meet this issues?"
According to Anderson, Ellis underestimated her audience and failed to " talk
plainly." Having beard Goldman speak on the subject, Anderson lamented that
Ellis could not have emulated her more " destructive" contemporary. " I can't
help comparing [Ellis] ," Anderson wrote, "with another woman whose lecture
on such a subj ect would be big, brave, beautiful . . . Emma Goldman could never
fail in this way."'" Goldman's political passions and her engagement with the
" science of the future " led her to be more direct and confrontational in her
discussion of matt ers others treated with kid gloves.
It is difficult to know what effect Goldman's words had on her audience
members. How many came b ecause they were searching for answers about their
own feelings? Did they find those answers? The examples of Anderson, Sperry,
Hart, and Freeman would seem to indicate that they did find Goldman's talks
useful. But what of those who perhaps had not given homosexuality much
thought prior to hearing Goldman speak? Did they attend the lectures for a
lark? Were some of her audience members engaging in a form of sexual slum-
"'URNINGS; 'LESBIANS; AND OTHER STRANGE TOPICS'" 1 45
ming? And what was the result of their having heard the lectures? Anna W was
convinced that the lectures were transformative. She wrote, "I do not hesitate
to declare that every p erson who came to the lecture possessing contempt and
disgust for homo-sexualists and who upheld the attitude of the authorities that
those given to this particular form of sex expression should be hounded down
and persecuted, went away with a broad and sympathetic understanding of
the question and a conviction that in matters of personal life, freedom should
reign."63 It is easy to dismiss Anna W's enthusiasm as that of a partisan, but it
is quite possible that for many, Goldman's lectures were important influences
in shaping their opinions on matters of morals and social tolerance. For some,
Goldman's lectures may well have been the first time that they heard a mat
ter of visceral importance to their lives aired without reference to Sodom and
Gomorrah, the insane asylum, or the legal code.
As in the case of Almeda Sperry and Margaret Anderson, audience mern
bers often sought out Goldman following her lectures. And she was receptive.
In her biography, Goldman wrote of the " men and women who used to come
to see me after my lectures on homosexuality . . , who confided in me their an
guish and their isolation." Striking a somewhat dramatic and protective tone,
Goldman noted that they "were often of finer grain than those who had cast
them out." Her audience members seem to have taken an active role in seek
ing out information about themselves; this no doubt explained their presence
at Goldman's lecture. "Most of them," according to Goldman, " had reached an
adequate understanding of their differentiation only after years of struggle to
stifle what they had considered a disease and a shameful affliction." Goldman
felt that anarchism had a special message to those who spoke with her about
their deep psychological struggles. "Anarchism," G oldman believed, "was not a
mere theory for a distant future; it was a living influence to free us from inhibi
tions, internal no less than external ."64
Goldman's message of tolerance and understanding was a perfect fiJil to
the bitter denunciations of moralists . In her autobiography, Goldman recorded
the impact her lecture had on one of her listeners: According to Goldman, the
young woman who spoke with her at the end of the evening's discourse "was
only one of the many who sought me out." The young woman shared with
Goldman the story of her struggles:
She confessed to me that in the twenty-five years of her life she had never
known a day when the nearness of a man, her O\vn father and brothers even,
did not make her ill . The more she had tried to respond to sexual approach, the
more repugnant men became to her. She had hated herself, she said, because
she could not love her father and her brothers as she loved her mother. She
suffered excruciating remorse but her revulsion only increased. At the point
1 46 FREE COMRADES
of eighteen she had accepted an offer of marriage in the hope that a long
engagement ITlight help her grow accustomed to a man and cure her of her
"disease." It turned out to be a ghastly failure that nearly drove her insane.
She could not face the marriage and she dared not confide in her fiance or
friends. She h ad never met anyone. she told me, who suffered from a similar
affliction, nor had she ever read books dealing with the subject. My lecture
had set her free; I had given her back her self-respect 65
The young woman's inchoate understanding of homosexuality is striking. As

a member of a respectable, middle-class family, which no doubt sheltered their
children, Goldman's listener apparently was not familiar with women and men
who lived queer lives. Nor had she come across sexological literature, news
accounts, or fiction that described her " disease." The young woman had never
met someone who openly deviated from the gender and sexual norms of her
family's social milieu, but clearly medicine and psychological health-or " dis
ease," in this case----was the framework through which she understood her
self. How this yo ung woman came to this understanding is unclear since, she
told Goldman "she had never read b ooks dealing with the subj ect." She may
never have directly confronted texts that framed sexual desire as a question of
"health" or " disease," but she adopted the persp ective nonetheless. Goldman 's
use of sexological discourse may have been liberating to the young woman, as
it offered an alternative, though still familiar way, of envisioning her desire free
of negative bias.
Goldman did not encounter much official resistance to her presentations
on homosexuality. There exists only one known attempt to censor her that was,
at least in part, a result of the fact that she was speaking out on same-sex love.
According to Goldman, her 1 9 1 5 tour "met with no police interference until
we reached Portland, Oregon, although the subj ects I treated were anything but
tame : anti-war topics, the fight for Caplan and Schmidt, freedom in love, birth
c ontrol, and the problem most tabooed in polite society, homosexuality." 66 The
Portland p olice arrested Goldman as she was about to deliver a lecture on birth
c ontrol, on the grounds that distributing information about contraceptives was
illegaL Ben Reitman, who organized the tour, was also arrested. The judge who
heard the case released the prisoners-since the lecture had been halted, no
information had b een distributed. This tactical error on the part of Portland's
moral arbiters allowed the j udiciary to extricate all involved from what might
have proved to be a most sensitive public proceeding.
The evening prior to her arrest Goldman had delivered a talk on homosex
uality, and that she was likely to deliver her talk again was , in part, responsible
for her troubles. Though she was arrested before speaking on birth control,
"'URNINGS; 'LESBIANS: AND OTHER STRANGE TOPICS'· 1 47
that fact that she had previously spoken on homosexuality was an important
reason for her being censored. Goldman's arrest was precipitated l?y the actions
of Josephine DeVore Johnson, the daughter of a local minister and the widow
of a judge. Johnso n wrote a letter to Portland's mayor in which she specifically
mentions Goldman's lecture, " The Intermediate Sex (A Study in Homosexual
ity) ," as part of the offense against public morality that threatened their fair city.
Goldman's " advocacy," wrote Johnson, "is a new and startling note, and one
that cannot b e struck in this city without questions being asked as to how it
is p ermitted." Johnson was particularly upset because admission to Goldman's
lecture was open to the public. Portland's C ollegiate Socialist Club was even
promoting the lecture series and planned on providing "intellectual people"
with complimentary tickets. Johnson was worried as " there are some young
boys who attend Miss Goldman's lectures" and more might be expected to
come and see her speak in the future. Johnson's portrayal of the lecture suggests
that the audience was a dangerous mixture of intellectuals, anarchists, youth,
and sexual deviants. Goldman's " unspeakable suggestions," pleaded Johnson ,
must n o t be allowed to sully the innocence of Portland's youthY Her insis
tence that the mayor act to protect Portland is an illustration of the complex
ways in which homosexuality was both silenced and made the subj ect of de
bate and discussion-in letters, official actions, and other sites-at the turn of
the c entury.
It is not true, as Johnson claimed, that Goldman was striking "a new and
startling note" to Portland's public life. Goldman's arrest was the tlnal echo
of one of the turn of the c entury's most notorious local sex scandals. The is
sue of homosexuality erupted into public light in Portland three years be
fore Goldman came to town, when, in November 1 9 1 2, the police raided the
Portland YMCA and arrested more than twenty men on charges of sexual in
decency. These men implicated others-eventually tlfty men in all . A panic
spread through the city as some men fled arrest and others were horritled to
learn that a supp osed bastion of good morals was a den of perversity. Accord
ing to John Gustav-W rathall, "this scandal not o nly implicated members of
the YMCA's traditional c onstituency-middle-class, male Protestants of 'high
moral standards'-but it vividly brought to public attention the existence of a
lively cruising scene on YMCA premises, and the existence of a gay subculture
not only in Portland but in virtually every maj or city in America ."68 Peter B oag
writes that the 1 9 1 2 Portland YMCA scandal was " the greatest of the era's
and region's same-sex vice scandals ."69 The YMCA participated in the purge of
its members by cooperating with the police, expelling suspect members,' and
holding a community meeting to address the public's concerns. While YMCA
officials sought to contain the scandal, the Portland News "sarcastically char
acterized men involved in the scandal as 'nice, charitable, boy-loving men."'70
This was the c ontext in which Johnson, Portland's mayor, and Goldman battled
for the city's soul. Without the YMCA scandal, Portland's authorities may well
have never acted to silence Goldman. The barely healed wounds of the 1 9 1 2
scandal were inflamed by Goldman's open treatment of a subj ect that Johnson
and the city's mayor wanted to return to obscurity.
Mother Earth wasted little time in publishing " A Portrait of Portland:' a
scathing expose of Goldman's arrest. The essay's author, George Edwards, lam
poons the false modesty of the town's moral custodians when it comes to
the question of homosexuality. He also reminds his reader that the outrage
Portland's leader:; displayed was an act, a display of false modesty. "No thinking
person," Edwards wrote, "minded very much the facts which came to light a
year or two ago regarding the prevalence of homosexuality in that city. They
knew that every city includes homosexuals in proportion to its size, and that
their natural congregating places are the Y M . C.A.'s." The author assumes that
iWother Earth's readers are among those " thinking people" who are familiar with
the sexual geography of America's cities. And like Goldman, Edwards assumes
that there exists a distinct population-proportionate in size to the general
populatio n-that can be identified as homosexual. In other words, homosexu
als live in cities and occupy an identifiable social space. This was, of course, the
great " discovery" of the sexologists, a finding trump eted in medical j ournals
and psychological literature of the period. The readers of Mother Earth and
those who attended lectures by Goldman and other anarchist sex radicals were
kept abreast of th ese developments in the social and sexual sciences. The lan
guage and analysis employed by Edwards is indicative of the extent to which
the terms and co ncepts of sexological discourse had permeated the anarchist
movement.
In his attack on the Portland authorities, Edwards makes use of a gendered
language of "pruc' ery" and "modernity," coding the latter as male and the for
mer as female. He contrasts Goldman's modern, sexological perspective to those
of Portland's authorities who "like the old time 'ladies' were properly shocked
when anybo dy mentioned their legs ." Rather than face the facts, Portland's
" old time 'ladies' . . . pretended that [they had] no such members ." Those who
came to Goldman's lecture expecting to hear of salacious goings-on at the local
YMCA were disappointed. "The lecture," Edwards reported, "proved perfectly
respectable, although requiring a little closer concentration to facts and logic
than Madame Portland was used to bestowing on any discourse."71 Goldman
spoke in the measured voice of the expert on human sexual behavior, not at
··URNINGS; 'LESBIANS; AND OTHER STRANGE TOPICS'· 1 49
the hot pitch of the pornographer. Though anarchists were often p ortrayed as
bomb-throwing lunatics in the p opular press, they were, in fact, more o ften
on stage than behind a barricade. Like the sexologists they admired, the an
archist sex radicals sought to bring what they thought of as the cold, rational
light of science to bear on a topic that others preferred to keep hidden from
view. In spite of the fact that she was fueled by her p olitical passions, Gold
man approached the subj ect of homosexuality from a dispassionate perspective.
This is not to say that Goldman's lectures did not spark controversy, indeed,
Mrs. Johnson's response is j ust one indicator of the extent to which talk about
homosexuality, even of the most reserved sort, led to strong reactions among
those who felt their most deeply held moral values to be at risk.
One of Goldman's last interventions in sexology and the politics of homo
sexuality occurred in the early years of her exile. I n 1 923, she wrote Magnus
Hirschfeld to protest an article that appeared in his j o urnal ,Ja hrbuche fur sexuelle
ZwischetlStufen (The Yearbook for I ntermediate S exual Types) . The article, writ
ten by D r. Karl von Levetzow, argues that Louise Michel, a hero of the Paris
Commune and a well-known French anarchist, was a homosexual. Goldman,
though careful to state that she had "no prej udice whatever, or the least antipa
thy to homosexuals," absolutely denied Levetzow's interpretation of Michel's
life.72 Hirschfeld, on the other hand, shared Levetzow's views. " I was shocked,"
Goldman wrote Havelock Ellis, "when I saw the photographs of that marvel
ous woman among the collection of homosexuals in Dr. Hirschfeld's house. I
was shocked not because of any squeamishness on the subj ect, but because I
knew Louise Michel to be £'lr removed from the tendencies ascribed to her."73
Goldman clung to the legend of Michel as the "Red Virgin." On its surface this
nickname simply refers to the fact that Michel never married, but it also signals
a narrative of self-refusal and enforced simplicity, the story of a woman who
spent her life in struggle on behalf of the oppressed. In Goldman's eyes , Michel
was a model of devotion who had given up all physical pleasures on the altar of
the revolution. For Goldman, Michel was neither a lesbian nor a heterosexual,
she was an anarchist Joan of Arc.
Levetzow painted a very different portrait of Michel . He positioned sexual
and gender deviance, rather than political c ommitment and admirable selfless
ness at the heart of her personality. In his essay, Levetzow argues that Michel
was a classic example of a "sexual invert." "A more virile character than hers,"
Levetzow concluded, " c annot be found even among the most masculine of
men." As a child, the doctor observes, Michel had indulged in tomboyish be
havior, going so far as to play with toads, bats, and frogs. He pointed to Michel's
physical appearanc e as proof of her lesbianism. Michel was , the doctor thought,
1 50 FREE COMRADES
masculine in regard, possessing. " flat lips," "bushy eyebrows," and a moustache
"that would awaken the envy of a high school student." Levetzow thought
her unattractive·-Michel had lips that did "not invite to be kissed"-and in
terpreted this as a sign of Michel's inverted sexual nature.74 In addition to the
somatic and childhood signs of inversion, Michel spent her entire life in the
masculine pursuits of politics. Michel's anarchist b eliefs , in other words, were
the result of her sexual nature. Only a sexual invert would live a life that so
contradicted the imperatives of her biological sex.
Goldman's forceful repudiation of Levetzow's work must be seen as a con
tinuation of an already established debate about Michel's sexuality. Michel had
been accused (and in this context accused is the correct term) of having "tastes
against nature" well before Levetzow wrote his essay. Perhaps the charge was
inevitable given the facts of Michel's life. As Marie Mullaney has argued, "Pio
neering women who stepped outside conventional social roles were branded
as sexually variant simply because of their public activism or p olitical commit
ment."7S Rumor�: about Michel's relationships with other women b egan to sur
fac e following her imprisonment in France's prison colony of New Caledonia.
In prison, Michel forged a tight relationship with a fellow inmate named Nata
lie Lemel. After Michel's return to France, suspicion was cast on her friendship
with another colleague, Paule Minck. All three women were revolutionaries
who led unconventio nal lives. The charge of l esbianism brought against them
was directly related to their gender and their political activism. Michel was
quite conscious of the fact that she was accused of being a sexual deviant.
She wrote in her memoirs, "If a woman is courageous . . . or grasps some bit of
knowledge early, men claim she is only a 'pathological' case."76
Goldman may also have been quick to attack Levetzow b ecause she too
faced hostile comments that focused on her sexuality and gender identity. In
the late 1 920s, for example, she wrote a friend, joking that since she was fo nd of
Berkman's girlfriend "the next rumor that will go around . . . will be that I am a
Lesbian and trying to get her away from him for mysel£1 "77 Like Michel, Gold
man was described as masculine in appearance and behavior. Harry Kemp went
so £.r as to compare G oldman to Theodore Roosevelt, something that neither
she nor the President would have appreciated. Harry Kemp wrote that, " [Gold
man] made me think of a battleship going into action."7H Will Durant described
her as "a strongly built and masculine woman ." Other men echoed his descrip
tion. When Durant asked a group o f men attending one of Goldman 's lectures,
" What do you think of her?" one responded by calling her "an old hen." An
other agreed, but added, "she's more like a rooster." These remarks served to be
little Goldman, and she resented them . Durant conceded that were he to have
"'URNINGS: 'LESBIANS: AND OTHER STRANGE TOPICS'" 1 51
spoken directly to Goldman "she would have told me, in her sarcastic way, that
a woman may have other purposes and functions in life than to please a man."79
In her critique of Levetzow, Goldman lived up to Durant's prediction. She
accused Levetzow of seeing "in women only the charmer of men, the bearer
of children, and in a more vulgar sense, the general cook and bottlewasher of
the household." The vigor of Goldman's response to Levetzow's article was, to
some degree, a response to the many men who took Michel's and Goldman's
bravery and intellect as signs of sexual and gender deviance.
It is easy to see in Goldman's resp onse to Levetzow's essay a sign that she
felt, in the words of Blanche Wiesen Cook, " a profound ambivalence about
lesbianism as a lifestyle." Perhaps Goldman's zeal in attacking Levetzow in
dicates an ambivalence, but one can take this argument too far, and Cook
does acknowledge that Goldman was not " homophobic."80 The full extent of
Goldman's thoughts on the subj ect have to be considered in coming to a j udg
ment. Through the course of her life Goldruan argued that in matters of love
all desires, inasmuch as they are freely chosen, are deserving of social toleration.
She expressed her personal views in a letter to a friend who expressed some
distaste for homosexuality. " One need b e no prude," Goldman wrote, "to feel
diffident about phases of sex tendencies one is not familiar with ." But such
feelings were no basis for discrimination. Goldman herself saw "absolutely no
difference in the tendency itself" and reassured her friend that " homosexuality
has nothing whatever to do with depravity."81 Goldman 's sexual politics would
not find much favor in the context of today's polarized sex wars; it neither
satisfies those who c ondemn sexual difference as a sign of cultural decadence,
nor those who seek to celebrate gay pride. Goldman's position on the social,
ethical, and cultural place of homosexuality was very much a product of the
anarchist movement in which she played so critical a role.
I n formulating her sexual p olitics, Goldman-like other anarchist sex radi
cals-drew on the work of Ellis, Carpenter, Hirschfeld, and various other sex
ologists . They did not do so uncritically. Anarchist sex radicals favored those
sexologists who they felt best reflected their own values, and they were unwill
ing to c ontest the findings of the men and women they admired. As we see
with Goldman's critiques of Hirschfeld and Levetzow, anarchist sex radicals
were willing to challenge sexology and sought to shape it. Through their pub
lications, public lectures, and personal relations, the anarchists acted as conduits
for new ideas about human nature and sex. They saw themselves as participants
in a transatlantic debate about the moral, ethical , and social place of homo
sexuality-equal members in an imagined " International Institute and Society
of Sexology." Through their work, anarchists contriButed to the remaking of
cultural and political representations of homosexuality and to ideas about what

role same-sex desire had in the making of the public and the private self.
people Who ,
18 com!'!only
ra.n&e , I am more than. e ve r impre saed '.1 t.h

. , ,
�. '
'. . • .. a'r]?: th. splrl t Wh1 ch
.�...rour rJi��"� to &1 my 'Ie
....,��b.ment o:f Louise M1 chel

:; " - I :" .J .' • •:
80S
. u"f4 t.hat you have fine !l ense of ju stioe Whi ch aeeke a

, .
- � .�.. the truth . I thank you for
. " - .'�'
�ln
'"'� 1�.cl have tl\!�en .�,'J.ins t 19no rance and hypo cri sy tn , behal!
and hUl!1an ism.
Before I deal wl th
It is not prejudice agains t homOsexual i ty or the
'whlch prompt"! me to po int ou t the erro�;.the

If Lou i s e )ll chel had ever demons trate�l tr�lt. ·
.
knl!W and loved her , I should
from the "s tigma" , I mn,Y , indeed , cons ider 1t a . 1'....II, ,"" "'I: ,
111'8 sexually dtr1'erent1ate�n a world 80 bereft

'. ' the hOlllo sexual , or 80 1 9norant of the me�h&
�
tl1e 1lh Ole £l:am t of , s ex . Bu t I certainly do
or le s s capable of tln·".'��":f��t
-.. .
;
- - .'
!ihould I 601l81der lt necessa tf •. .

)(io�el ,
Letter from Emma Goldman to M a g n u s H i rs c hfeld. J a n u a ry 1 923 ( c o u rtesy of the Kate Sha rpley Library).
C HAPTER S IX:
ANARCH I ST S EXUAL PO LITI CS I N TH E P O ST-WO RLD
WAR I P ER I O D
THE FIRST WORLD WAR, the Russian Revolution and the Red Scare that
'"
it sparked nearly destroyed the anarchist movement in the United States. The
,5
o sexual politics that flourished within the pre-war anarchist movement was a ca
>
<I!
sualty of this terrible winnowing. Movement publications such as Mother Earth
�
8 and The Blast were shut down, and leading spokespersons were arrested. The
g,
E
� end of the war gave the anarchists little relief. The rise of the Communist Party
OJ
g � profoundly reshaped the culture of the Left, and led to the marginalization of
� � the anarchists and their expansive political agenda. The CP was dismissive and
� � hostile towards anarchism, and anarchists actually found themselves spending
o§
CJ -o
oj energy and resources defending themselves against communist attacks . CP ac-
&] � tivists did not believe that sexual politics were worthy of great attention, and
-5 S following Stalin's rise, the sexual politics of the American CP became largely
� � indistinguishable from the mainstream society in which it operated. Although
� � anarchist sex radicals continued to try and break into public discourse, they
8
"'
.� were
.0
stymied by the fact that they no longer had access to publications and
.� ..3 the same number of lecture halls . By the end of the 1 920s, the anarchist sexual
� � politics of the pre-World War I era was largely forgotten.
tJ1 a
;i .� But anarchism did not disappear. Anarchism was a current in the artistic
� j and social life of cities like Chicago and San Francisco. Small groups of activists
&] � persisted in advocating the ideas of libertarian socialism, including the right of
1 54 FREE COMRADES
individuals to c h o ose erotic and emotional relationships free from the interfer
ence of others . Anarchists continued to present lectures, publish pamphlets, and
argue for the equal treatment of same-sex love. Activists also worked to keep
alive the work of their predecessors. The ideas of the pre-war anarchist sex
radicals were transmitted in ways that eluded detection, and took forms that
were unexpected.
The ideas of the pre-war anarchists were an important influence on sexual
and cultural radicals and b ohemians. The movement of the pre-war years did
not reconstitute itself, but the ideas that the movement's leading ideologues
crafted continued to find an audience. People like Kenneth Rexroth, Elsa Gid
low, Jan Gay, and others were influenced by the ideas of the pre-World War I
anarchist sex radicals. These figures, in turn, shaped American culture. In indi
rect and complex ways, the sexual politics of Tucker, Goldman , Berkman, and
Lloyd have had an impact on the lives of individuals that has not been suffi
ciently appreciated.
The anarchist movement in the United States was a casualty of the fight
over whether or not the c ountry should support the Allied Powers against the
Germans and their supporters . Those who favored America's entry into World
War I mobilized the police powers of the state to crush those who opposed
U. S. involvement. In 1 9 1 7 , the year the America began to draft and send troops
to war, Congress passed the Espionage Act which stated that "any person . . .
who shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny,
or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall
willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States . . .
shall be punished by a fine of not more than $ 1 0 , 000 or imprisonment for
not more than twenty years or both." l Shortly thereafter Congress passed the
Alien I mmigrant Act making the deportation of foreign-born radicals possible.
In May of 1 9 1 8 , the Congress passed the Sedition Act, which made it illegal
to use " unpatriotic or disloyal language."2 Anarchists, who with a few notable
exceptions (Tucker and Kropotkin among them) were against America's entry
into the war, were targeted. In October 1 9 1 8 , for example, Congress passed the
Anti-Anarchist Act, authorizing the deportation of alien anarchists .J According
to Eric Foner, "Even more extreme repression took place at the hands of state
governments . . . thirty-three states outlawed the possession or display of . . . black
flags ," a symbol of the anarchist movement." Federal, state, and local agents now
had the p ower to attack those whom they deemed a threat to the nation. As
Randolph Bourne observed, "With the shock of war . . . the State comes into its
own ."5
ANARCHIST SEXUAL POLITICS IN THE POST-WORLD WAR I PERIOD 1 55
The fate of Berkman and Goldman is emblematic of the fate that many
anarchists in the movement faced. B ecause of their staunch antiwar activism,
they were singled out for special attention. The police did not have to look
hard to find the evidence they needed to convict: O n May 9 , 1 9 1 6 Berkman
and Goldman helped to establish the No Conscription League. The League's
membership issued a statement that said, "that the mjlitarization of America
is an evil that far outweighs, in its anti-social and anti-libertarian effects, any
good that may come from America's participation in the war." Issuing a direct
challenge to the Federal government, the League promised to " resist conscrip
tion by every means in our p ower, and . . . sustain those who, for similar reasons,
refuse to be conscripted.6
For their statements, Berkman and Goldman were arrested and convicted
of working to undermine the war effort. Harry Weinberger appealed to the
Supreme Court of the United States on b ehalf of the two , arguing that the de
fendants were convicted for expressing their views on a matter of public policy,
a right explicitly protected in the First Amendment to the Constitution. The
Court did not accept Weinberger's petition; the government was in no mood
to tolerate a broad interpretation of individual rights . The climate was hard
and unyielding. On the eve of the paper's suppression, Leonard Abbott wrote
in Mother Earth that " regimentation, uniformity [and] absolute obedience to
authority . . . the acknowledged military standards " were the don,inant values
of the time.7 Using their newly established p owers , the authorities shut down
anarchist publications and arrested individuals who opposed US involvement
in the war. Berkman and Goldman and other less well-known anarchists were
sent to prison, awaiting the end of the war for their release.
But the end of the war did not end the repression of radicals in the United
States. This was due, in part, to the fact that during the war, Lenin and the Bol
sheviks succeeded in establishing a communist state in Russia. There were also
unsuccessful' attempts to found "Red Republics" in Germany and elsewhere
in Europe. The founding of the Soviet Union and the wave of revolutionary
activity that swept post-war Europe terrified conservatives on both sides of the
Atlantic. Many Americans thought that the revolutionary forces were gather
ing at the door. A wave of bombings including a spectacular explosion on Wall
Street seemed to usher in a radical assault. A virulent panic swept the country.
In 1 9 1 9 , the American Legion, sworn to uphold Americanism and defeat
Bolshevism, held its first convention. The federal government also acted. The
US Attorney General , A . Mitchell Palmer, rounded up and imprisoned foreign
born radicals in a series of police actions that came to be known as the Palmer
Raids. A number of anarchists, including Goldman and Berkman were among
those seized. The US then decided to deport the arrestees to Russia-then the
Soviet Union-the nation from which many had immigrated. Native-born
radicals were spared this indignity: as anarchist Charles T. Sprading wrote Gold
man in 1 927, "I was saved by being born right, of both the proper stock, and in
the right country."H But despite having eluded deportation, Sprading was not
unscathed. He and other radicals were cut off from their fellow activists, and
the movement within which they operated was greatly reduced.
Though they were unwilling immigrants, Goldman and Berkman ap
proached the co untry of their birth with great hopes . Many Anarchists, like
most on the Left, celebrated the founding of the Soviet Union. Russian an
archists played a key part in helping to overthrow both the Tsar and also the
Kerenskii government that followed the abolition ofTsarist rule.9 The Bolshe
viks cultivated anarchist support by appropriating their political slogans, in
cluding, "The factories to the workers, the land to the peasants ." Though the
new government took actions that troubled many anarchists , they were largely
dismissed as revo lutionary growing pains . Before her deportation, for example,
Goldman defended the Bolsheviks who, she said, "were human, like the rest of
us, and likely to make mistakes." l 0 Within months of her arrival in the Soviet
Union, however, Goldman's illusions were shattered. She witnessed the merci
less p ersecution of the anarchists by the T cheka, Lenin's secret police. B erkman,
whose revolutionary zeal was hotter than Goldman's, was less willing to give
up his hope. Eventually, though, he too came to see that the Bolsheviks were
intent on total domination. In short order, the Bolsheviks purged the anarchists,
among the first of many political and social dissidents that the Soviet's ruth
lessly repressed. "The Soviet government, with an iron broom," boasted Leon
Trotsky, "rid Russia of anarchism." 11 Convinced, in the words of Berkman, that
"the Revolution in Russia had become a mirage, a dangerous deception," he
and Goldman decided to leave the country. 12
Berkman and Goldman went into exile with their hopes crushed and a
bleak political future before them. Most of those on the Left, including old
allies, were enrapmred by the nascent Soviet state and they had little use for
the jeremiads of the anarchists. While the communists, in the words of histo
rian Laurence Veysey, " could claim affiliation with the most hopeful large-scale
revolutionary movement anywhere on the world horizon," the anarchists ap
peared to be a defeated lot. 13 Everywhere, the anarchists faced fierce attacks
by c ommunists who accused them of being irrelevant and anti-revolutionary.
Former comrades . like the artist Robert Minor, who once designed covers for
Mother Earth, switched allegiances. Eric Morton, an American friend of Gold
man, told her that Minor, "is a real religious communist now and is develop-
ing considerable religious intolerance, referring to those who differ from his
sacred doctrines as fake revolutionaries ." [Italics in original.] Mortoll informed
Goldman that his daughter, who was active on the Left, had heard much about
her-ail of it bad. " Good religious communists use you as a sort of bogey
man."!4 Goldman felt betrayed. She wrote the writer, Theodore Dreiser, that
"the Russian debacle and the war have shifted all values, most of all the values
of integrity and fearlessness . The very people who posed as my friends are now
among my bitterest enemies."!S The Russian Revolution utterly transformed
the culture of the Left in the United States, marginalizing anarchist radicals and
the ideas they had championed. American radicals were fascinated by the elan
of the Soviet leadership and had little patience for those who warned of the
dangers of Leninism.
The extent of the anarchists' marginalization is exemplified by Goldman's
struggles to maintain her voice. Although she was prevented from returning
to America for any extended period of time, she did manage to arrange a US
speaking tour in 1 93 4 . The tour was restricted to ninety days, and she was per
mitted to speak only on the subjects of literature and drama. The authorities
believed that, by restricting Goldman's topics, they would avoid anything con
troversial. This did not, however, restrict Goldman from addressing the subj ect
of homosexuality. In a lecture on American drama, Goldman praised the play
The Children's Hour, as well as Radcliff Hall's novel The T#ll �f Loneliness, both
of which portray lesbian relations. Hall's novel is, in fact, one of the best-known
literary representations of lesbianism of the twentieth century. Its publication
was accompanied by a sharp debate over whether or not the portrayal of ho
mosexual relationships was, by their very nature, obscene. In addition to prais
ing Hall's book, Goldman thought The Children 's Hour was "beautifully written
and beautifully produced." 1 6
B u t few people heard Goldman speak during h e r short 1 934 American
tour. She no longer made headlines and the brevity of her stay precluded any
sustained outreach. At this point, Goldman's politics were nearly illegible to her
contemporaries. As Marian J. Morton writes, " Goldman's opposition to both
capitalism and communism put her nowhere on the political spectrum." 1 7 nlC
Nation, well aware that the center of the American Left lay in the Communist
Party and its offshoots, put it quite bluntly: "Today the Anarchists are a scat
tered handful of survivors, and the extreme lett is divided among the various
communist groups . . . Einma Goldman is not a symbol of freedom in a world of
tyrants; she is merely a wrong-headed old woman."!8
The changing climate of radicalism in the post-war years was a critical
element in the decline of anarchism. What strength anarchism enjoyed before
1 58 FREE COMRADES
World War I was nurtured by the utopian , pre-Leninist socialism that some
have called the "Lyrical Left." Anarchist sexual politics were well received with
in the Lyrical Left-and, in fact, shaped the temper of the times . People like
Randolph Bourne who mixed together the personal and the political in a blaze
of cultural production exemplified the Lyrical Left. Like many of his contem
poraries Bourne championed " artists , philosophers, geniuses, tramps, criminals,
eccentrics, aliens, freelovers and freethinkers " and all those who "violate any
of the three sacred taboos of property, sex, and the State." 19 With the outbreak
of the war, however, B ourne turned pessimistic, as the titles of his essays an
nounced the " Twilight of the I dols" and the triumph of "The Disillusionment."
B ourne's premature death in 1 9 1 8 can be said to symbolize the end of a partic
ular moment in the history of the US. The carnage of battle and the triumph of
Leninism split apart the Lyrical Left. In his study of New York intellectual life,
Thomas Bender argues that after the war, "the sort of innocent, non-doctri
naire eclectic ' revolution' " associated with people like Bourne "was no longer
possible."20 The anarchists were an important component of the Lyrical Left; its
passing boded poorly for the fate of the movement. The sexual politics that had
been such an important part of the anarchist movement and the Lyrical Left
were traumatically foreshortened.
A number of anarchist fellow travelers abandoned their old alliances, some
in quite p ublic forums . Will Durant, for example, published a number of works
in the twenties in which he made light of his former Ferrer Center associates.
In Philosophy and the Social Problem, he acknowledged that while he "loved" the
anarchist "for the fervor of his hope and the beauty of his dream," he felt that
" the anarchist fails miserably in the face of interrogation." Given that thousands
of Russian anarchists were, in fact, facing the brutal interrogations of the Soviet
Union's secret police, D urant's words are truly ironic. Though he once admired
them, Durant now b elieved that the anarchists had little to offer serious politi
c al thinkers . The spirit of the age was in blood and iron, not free love and lib
ertarian conviviali ty. Order, not liberty, was the key to understanding political
thought. " Freedom itself is a problem," Durant maintained, " not a solution." I n
a classic example of a backhanded compliment, he concluded, " O nly children
and geniuses can be truly anarchistic." 2 1 Hurt by Durant's criticisms, Goldman
wrote an American friend to denounce her one-time comrade: "I had no faith
in him from the very beginning," she wrote. "I had a feeling that he will use the
movement as a ste pping stone to fame and material success."2!
D urant was not an isolated case either. After having been targeted by the
government for printing allegedly seditious materials during WWI , Margaret
Anderson also drifted away from her former friends, and eschewed political
ANARCHIST SEXUAL POLITICS IN THE POST·WORLO WAR I PERIOD 1 59
topics. In the twenties, she dropped discussions of anarchism and turned instead
towards literary modernism. Like Durant, Anderson characterized her enthusi
asm for anarchism as a youthful, immature flirtation. She said that, " I n the' natu
ral course of events I had naturally turned away from anarchism."23 This rej ec
tion of anarchism did not necessarily end her problems with the government
however, as she was later arrested for publishing selections of James Joyce 's
Ulysses-a work that was c onsidered obscene. Anderson's change of heart an
gered her old comrades. Leonard Abbott commented that she, " represented the
tragedy of the anarchist movement in America."24 Goldman was disappointed,
admitting that her former c omrade's commitment to anarchism was a passing
phase and was " not actuated by any sense of social injustice."25 By placing their
hopes for social transformation in the hands of what they came to see as fair
weather friends, the anarchists believed they had made a fatal mistake.
Pre-war sex radicals who had been aligned with the anarchists also dis
tanced themselves from their former colleagues. Birth control activist Margaret
Sanger, for example, felt that her earlier association with the anarchists "was a
formidable albatross from which she was determined to cut loose."26 Before the
war, Sanger worked with Goldman and the anarchists who were among her
most fervent champions. Goldman sold c opies of Sanger's publication while
on tour and helped publicize the struggles that her comrade had with the au
thorities. But in the years after the war the political base of the birth control
movement changed, and Sanger moved to app eal to the new base. According
to historian Nancy Cott, post-war birth control advocates "were . . . more social
and p olitically conservative than . . . [the activists of] the 1 9 1 0s and more nu
merous."27 The increasing conservativism of the movement and its growth were
directly related. In order to grow birth control's c onstituency, Sanger redefined
herself as a health care activist offering helpful advic e on how to improve life,
and not as a sex radical bent on transforming society. Sanger obscured her ties
to the anarchist movement in order to make birth c ontrol palatable to a main
stream public.
The separation of Sanger's sex radicalism from the political context in
which it emerged in the pre-war years was a telling development. The anar
chists saw sexual liberation as only one element of "a total reconstruction of
woman's role, a reconstruction which also included the abolition of the nuclear
family, economic independence, and psychological self-sufficiency."28 Included
in their larger vision of social and cultural change, was the defense of homo
sexuality that people like Goldman, Lloyd, and Tucker articulated before World
War 1. Sanger and other sex activists were willing to jettison this broad agenda
in order to win public acceptance for the narrowly defined right of birth con-
trol. To a great extent, their efforts were successful. Birth control , though it
remained controversial, was no longer associated with free love and revolution.
Many advocates for birth control built alliances with eugenicists and supported
forced sterilization laws . In the 1 920s, to paraphrase William O 'Neill, it was
possible to be a sex radical and a p olitical conservative.29 The anarchists were all
too aware of thiS development. In 1 927, Goldman told a Canadian newspaper
"I am almost ashamed to champion [birth control] now that the staid House
of Lords in Great Britain has taken it up ! ")0 The defense of homosexuality that
anarchist sex radicals had included in their sexual politics was not, however,
shared by the House of Lords or the US Congress. Birth control may have had
its advocates, but the more ambitious claims tor individual sexual rights were
a casualty of the limited range of cultural and radical politics in the 1 920s. The
scope of sexual politics in the United States was narrowed significantly once it
lost the presence of its most radical advocates.
The breakdown of the anarchist movement was accelerated by the col
lapse of the communication networks that the anarchists had been so devoted
to building. Some of this eating away at the base of the movement, particu
larly among the individualist anarchists, had come before the \var. The first
generation of native-born anarchists passed away in the late-nineteenth and
early-twentieth centuries-like Ezra Heywood who died in 1 893. According
to Martin Blatt, Heywood's death devastated his partner, Angela who was also
a leading figure in the movement. Angela " c onfronted the difficult challenge
of supporting herself and her four children because Heywood had left virtually
nothing in terms of tangible assets ."3! Much of the literature that the pre-war
anarchist movement produced was no longer available. In 1 908, a devastat
ing fire destroyed Tucker's bookstore and printing press, destroying the lead
ing producer and distributor of individualist anarchist thought. Disheartened,
Tucker moved to the south of France shortly after the fire, where he lived
with his free-love companion and daughter until his death in 1 939. Though he
intended to keep publishing Liberty from overseas, the publication was never
successfully revived.
Although he effectively c eased working in the United States , Tucker did
attempt to keep engaged. From 1 9 1 3 to 1 9 1 4 , for example, he contributed
articles to Dora Marsden's The New Freewoman, an English j ournal that es
poused the ideas of the radical individualist ideas of Max Stirner. According
to Bruce Clark, The New Freewoman "explicitly connected sexual emancipa
tion, evolutionary progress, and libertarian politics, along lines similar to Emma
Goldman's concurrent anarcho-feminist campaign ."32 The precursor to The
New Freewoman, The Freewoman, was condemned as "immoral" for, among oth-
ANARCHIST SEXUAL POLITICS IN THE POST·WORLD WAR I PERIOD 1 61
er things, carrying articles on lesbianism. Tucker, however, did not address the
topic of homosexuality in his c ontributions to The New Freewoman.
Tucker's final contribution to the field of sexual p olitics was indirect and
came via his friendship with John Henry Mackay. Born in 1 864 in Scotland,
Mackay was raised in Germany and lived most of his life there. H e and Tucker
met in 1 88 9 , likely introduced by their mutual friend, the German-American
anarchist, Robert Reitzel, during one of Tucker's visits to Europe. I n 1 893,
Mackay came to the United States, and for part of that tour, Tucker j oined him
in his travels, reporting to friends that they were enj oying "fine times."33 The
two were together again in 1 900 during th e Paris Exposition. When Tucker
moved to Europe in 1 908, he and Mackay were frequent guests in each other's
homes. The nearly 200 letters and postcards that Mackay sent Tucker have been
gathered in a c ollection entitled "Dear Tucker," which was compiled and an
notated by the historian Hubert Kennedy. Unfortunately, Tucker's letters to
Mackay are lost.
Tucker and Mackay were p olitical and p hilosophical allies. Mackay was re
ferred to in the pages of Liberty as Tucker's "greatest convert."34 In 1 89 1 , Tucker
translated Mackay's novel, The Anarchists: A Picture if Civilization at the Close if
the Nineteenth Century from German and published it. The novel, which is set
in London and features thinly veiled depictions of many of the well-known
p ersonalities of the Left, is a defense of individualist anarchism. In the preface
to his novel, Mackay praised Tucker's work. " Oft in the lonely hours of my
struggles," he wrote, he was able to turn to Tucker "to illuminate the night."35
Tucker distributed Mackay's novel and poetry, the first English translations of
which appeared in Liberty. O n the other side of the Atlantic, Mackay helped
spread Tucker's work in Germany, translating and publishing his " S tate S ocial
ism and Anarchism" in 1 89 5 . He would later publish Tucker's "Are Anarchists
Murderers?" Tucker wanted to translate and publish Mackay's biography of the
German philosopher Max Stirner, which appeared in German in 1 89 8 , but was
unable to b ecause of the fire that destroyed his press and b ookstore 1 90 8 . The
plates, illustrations, and all existing c opies of Mackay's work were lost-a blow
that Mackay described as "a blow to our cause, which even the new work of
many years will probably never succeed in overcoming."36 The two men were
ideological compatriots whose mutual support and influence was critical to the
unfolding of their thought and work.
The ties between Tucker and Mackay, both social and political , are important
because they enabled Mackay to develop his own sexual politics . The political
tradition of individualist anarchism that the two men shared provided Mackay
with the means to conceptualize his personal struggle as a p olitical one. Ac-
162 FREE COMRADES
cording to Kewledy, Mackay was sexually drawn to adolescent male youths .3i
Mackay first came to acknowledge and understand his desires in 1 886 after
reading KrafIt-Ebing's Psychopathia Se:xualis. After reading the work, Mackay
"kept silent no longer within himself," but he did not, apparently, yet feel able
to give p ublic voice to his feelings .3H It was not until the early-twentieth cen
tury, decades after Mackay first emerged as an anarchist activist, that he began
to publish work on sexuality. Stirner's radical critique of morals, and an under
standing of sexual p olitics that was nurtured by his relationship with Tucker,
provided Mackay with the wherewithal to begin to speak publicly, however
tentatively. Anarchism provided the ideological tools with which Mackay con
c eived of and articulated his sexual politics. According to Kennedy, Mackay
came to understand that "the question of this love . . . [is) a social question: the
fight for the individual for his freedom against whatever kind of oppression." 3�
In 1 905, Mackay, using the pseudonym Sagitta, began to circulate his
thoughts on wha he called " the nameless love." Anarchism, especially the vari
ants championed by Tucker, was a critical ingredient in the development of the
defense of intergenerational same-sex eroticism that Mackay developed at the
turn of the century. Mackay first presented his work-in the form of poetry
in Dey Eigene (The Self-Owner) , a journal whose philosophy was influenced
by Stirner:1O Der Eigene provided Mackay with an intellectually and culturally
supportive vehicle to make his views public, but he would eventually c ome to
regret his association with Dey Eigene. The j ournal's elitist, misogynistic strain
of sexual politics clashed with Mackay's more egalitarian thinking. Despite his
break with Dey Eigene, Mackay continued to champion Stirner and anarchism.
Mackay's use of a pseudonym was well considered. In 1 908, the German
police seized all available copies of Sagitta's writings and threatened the pub
lisher with a prison term should he continue to circulate the work. Though
Mackay came under suspicion and the police searched his house, his identity
as S agitta was not revealed. D espite these setbacks, Mackay continued to ad
vocate for the liberalization of laws and social attitudes that governed rela
tions between men and male youths until his death in 1 93 3 , just as the Nazis
were c onsolidatin g their power. Mackay was pessimistic about his chances to
change public opinion on the question of intergenerational homosexual rela
tions. Shortly bef()re his death he published an essay entitled " The History of
a Fight for the Nameless Love," in which he wrote that "I have fought a fight,
a fight in which I am beaten." Against the background of Hitler's thundering
denunciations of degeneration and sexual deviance, Mackay felt that the world
was entering "a long night, whose end no one sees and whose da\vn none of us
ANARCHIST SEXUAL POLITICS IN THE POST-WORLD WAR I PERIOD 163
will experience.41 As a final act in his political campaign, Mackay stipulated that
his identity as Sagitta be made public following his death.
During.what clearly were difficult years, Mackay turned to Tucker for con
solatio n and support. Tucker seems to have been unaware of Mackay's sex
ual tastes before the publication of Sagitta's work. Though Mackay was well
known for his love poetry-poems in which the gender of the beloved was left
undefined-there is no evidence that Tucker and Mackay had discussed ho
mosexuality. Tucker was not p ersonally enthusiastic about this development in
his friend's life, evidenced by the title page of his copies of the Sagitta writings
where he wrote, " my subscription to this work shall not be taken as evidence
of my sympathy with its contents."42 Tucker clearly was put off by Mackay's
sexual tastes, but did not break off relations with him. The two men continued
to c orrespond and Tucker assisted his friend financially by purchasing copies of
the "Books of Nameless Love." By supporting his friend emotionally, and by
helping-albeit modestly-to underwrite the publication of his work, Tucker
directly enabled Mackay's sexual politics . And Tucker did so despite his own
p ersonal ambivalence about the relations that Mackay was so keen to defend.
Tucker's friendship with Mackay was deeply felt. Rather than tactfully ig
nore the subj ect of Mackay's personal life, Tucker sought out his friend's views.
In 1 9 1 1 , Mackay wrote Tucker that " I see out of your letter-much to my sur
prise-that you want to hear from me more and more particular details of this
question, I will be only too glad to give them to you , to show you , that this love
is precisely a love like your love, sexual of course, but not only sexual, and not a
vice or an illness or a crime."43 The " surprise" that Mackay expresses may well
have reflected the fact that, even among his circle of friends, f�w were willing
to treat with him in the full complexity of his humanity. Acknowledging the
importance of their friendship, Mackay dedicated his book The Freedomseeker,
the sequel to The A narchist, to Tucker, describing his friend as "a man who in a
long and incomparable life, notable for its c ourage, energy, and staying power,
has done more for the cause of Freedom than any other living man." In a let
ter accomp anying the book, Mackay asked Tucker to " take the book as a small
tribute of gratitude for so much you have given to me."44
Whatever their p ersonal differences, Tucker provided his friend with social
and p olitical support until Mackay's death. That support was critical to Mack
ay's formulatio n of his sexual politics and his ability to make his views pub
lic-albeit under a pseudonym. Tucker's views on Mackay's sexual p oliti cs were
no different from those he expressed when he argued against the change in the
age-of-consent laws in the United States, discussed above (in the chapter titled,
"The Wilde Ones") . To excommunicate Mackay would have been to betray
1 64 FREE COMRADES
a double standard. Certainly heterosexual relationships that mirrored the age

disparity of the relations that Mackay advocated were not uncommon in the
period when he was writing. Alexander Berkman, for example, was for a time
" romantically involved" with fifteen-year-old, Becky Edolshon .45 What, apart ·
from gender, was the difference between the partners of Mackay and Berkman?
In both cases, Tucker considered the young women and men in question to
b e mature enough to make decisions for themselves; they were old enough to
make honest mistakes. Since Mackay was defending consensual relationships,
Tucker felt it no business of his or the state to intervene. Quite the opposite,
in fact: Mackay's right to pursue consensual relationships should b e defended
no matter what one's personal view of the nature of those relations. Tucker
was clearly amhvalent-to say the very least-about Mackay's sexual choices,
but he was not the least ambivalent in his feeling that Mackay had the right to
defend himself against his detractors .
Tucker's few contributions to The New Frecwoman and his supp ort of
Mackay did not register in the United States-his absence was noted. In 1 926,
Clarence Swartz reprinted a collection of Tucker's articles from Liberty for the
American market, and did so because, as he said in the preface, " For a number
of years practically all of the literature of Individualist Anarchism has been out
of print."4!, Despite Swartz's efforts, there was little real change in the situation.
Writing to his friend Joseph Ishill, William C . Owen lamented that, " our very
best books . . . go out of circulation."47
Like Swartz, Ishill-a publisher working in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey
was among those who labored to keep works of interest to anarchists in print.
I shill's Oriole Press had provided a venue for anarchist sexual politics, includ
ing discussions of homosexuality. In 1 929, Oriole Press produced a collection
of essays celebratmg the work of Havelock Ellis . Several of the essays included
praise Ellis' work on the subj ect of homosexuality. Pierre Ramus remembered
the impact that Ellis' book on "sexual inversion" had on him: "Almost twenty
six years ago, Fred Burry, a Canadian fighter for freedom following in the
footsteps ofWalt 'lX'hitman, loaned us in Toronto a secretly circulating [copy of
Sexual Inversion] which in his native England was proscribed by prudery and
hypo crisy and still is for the most part." Ellis' work seemed doubly special be
cause, Ramus recalled, a friend of his "informed us that Havelock Ellis was also
an admirer of Kropotkin."4H As in the pre-war days, the contributors to Ishill's
volume on Ellis cited the work of sexologists, anarchists , and poets in their
work. Ramus' mention of the admiration Ellis supposedly had for Kropotkin is
ironic given Krop o tkin's skepticism of Ellis ' work. As noted above, Kropotkin
advised a number of his c omrades to avoid visiting Ellis for fear that they might
become swept up in the sexological proj ect. Whatever their merits, the books
put out by Oriole Press had a very small circulation. The Ellis collection was
limited to SOO copies.
Though the East C oast had been the c enter of anarchism in the first two
decades of the twentieth c entury, in the p ost-war period, Los Angeles emerged
as a center of the diminished English-language anarchist movement. There, a
small band of activists formed The Libertarian League, which despite its name
was closer to the pre-World War I anarchists than the post-World War II Lib
ertarians . The League, which distributed anarchist literature and p ublished the
short-lived magazine, The Libertarian, continued the work of their pre-war
comrades. In a 1 925 letter to anarchist Jo Labadie, Clarence Swartz, the League's
treasurer, wrote, "I have not receded an inch from my oId position , and I think I
am still standing on the same foundation that Tucker and the others built for us
years ago."49 The League, whose advisory board included William Allen White
and H. L. Mencken, fought for its vision despite limited resources. In his letter
to Labadie, Swartz wrote, "While the magazine had to dim for lack of support,
the Libertarian League is alive and functioning." In addition to trying to keep
old flames alive, the League faced new battles, as Swartz told Labadie, "We are
now entering the fight against Bryant and the Fundamentalists in their attack
on Prof. Scopes in Tennessee."so The 1 920s were not a friendly climate for the
work of Swartz and his colleagues.
The ethical, social, and cultural place of homosexuality were among the
topics the League addressed. In making their case for sexual liberalism, League
members cited many of the same sources as the pre-war anarchists and used
many of their same arguments . In 1 932, for example, the League underwrote
the publication of a short study of Edward Carpenter. Thomas B ell, the author
of the study, praised Carpenter as "the greatest of modern British Anarchists ." In
th.e essay B ell discusses Carpenter's writing on " homo-sexuality" in a favorable
manner adding, "though Carpenter never in so many words, so far as I know,
said that he himself was of that temperament it was pretty well understood that
he was ."51 S everal of his friends , including Upton Sinclair, urged B ell to turn
his essay into a book, but he found that publishers were uninterested. " They
did not want it, as it is written for Anarchists and not for the general public,"
B ell told a friend.52 Books identified as "for Anarchists" could no longer find
p ublishers, and despite Ishill and the League's efforts, there were no anarchist
publishing groups able to bring a project like B ell's to market. While Tucker's
edition of Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Berkman's Prison Memoirs of
an Anarchist were reviewed by mainstream j ournalists, B ell found it difficult to
have his work even considered by p ublishers .
In addition to publishing p amphlets, the League sponsored lectures on the

subj ect of homosexuality. In the late 1 920s, Bell spoke to the League's member
ship on the topic ofWilde's life and work. The response to the lecture was very
enthusiastic, but not necessarily completely satisfactory to B ell . He found that
his audience wanted to hear all about Wilde's personal life but not about his
p olitics. Bell wrote Ishill that although the talk "was supposed to be on [Wilde]
as an Anarchist . . . it was made too evident to me that they also were very keen
to hear about him as a Man . I had to tell them over and over again the dramatic
story of his later years, of the tragedy of his trial and how it came about."53 The
success of his lecture led Bell, who had been Oscar Wilde 's secretary for a brief
period, to write a study of Wilde. His analysis very much reflected the pre
World War I anarchist's understanding ofWilde as a political and sexual radical .
In the essay he wrote about "Wilde's bold social ideals " and he treats "Wilde's
homosexuality . .. . frankly and fearlessly." Reflecting the interests of his audience,
B ell went out of his way to make sure that the disgraced poet's "sexual philoso
phy is given fairly and fully without whitewash ."54 Bell hoped to get his study
in to broader circulation, but he died in a car crash and did not live to see his
manuscript in print.
The League's connection to the politics of the pre-war anarchist movement
was more than ideological. John William Lloyd was on the Libertarian League's
advisory board, [hough according to Swartz, "he had backslid some," meaning
that Lloyd was less than orthodox in his anarchism. 55 Lloyd moved to Califor
nia in the early 1 920s and continued to write, but he was isolated, describing
himself as a "literary hermit."56 Lloyd ensconced himself in a tiny house that he
had he built on a hill in the countryside outside of Los Angeles. Abba Gordin,
who lived with him for nearly a year, described a typical day of his life. "Lloyd,"
Gordin wrote, " takes care of his trees, fig-trees, apricots , and vines, waters his
flowers and plants, and sings and writes, and studies and works and hopes-and
out of his window of his cabin his 'Workshop of Dreams,' and the transom of
his soul, looks an d sees the high mountains, covered with snow of ages and wis
dom, and he is s elf-reliant, and as hopeful, and as serene and as sure and as tune
ful as they, who have seen the beginnings of all beginnings and know the end
of all ends."57 The dreamy, spiritual tone of Lloyd's life, as described by Gordon ,
is reflected in Lloyd's writing (From Terrace-Hill Overlooking: Poems <if Intuition,
Perception, and Prophecy, for example) , which, increasingly, turned to mysticism
in the post-war years.58 One of the last laudatory mentions of Lloyd's work
appeared in 1 945 , in Message <if the East, a Vedantist publication. The author of
the essay, a woman known as " Sister Daya," wrote that Lloyd was a "wise man"
whose "legacy of mystic philosophy is too little known."59
Lloyd did publish articles and essays on sexuality post-World War I, and
he was encouraging to others who were writing on the subj ect. He was, for
example, among those who encouraged Thomas B ell to expand his essay on
Carpenter into a book. It appears that Lloyd wrote less on the topic of ho
mosexuality in the years following the war. One of Lloyd's few mentions of
same-sex love during this period-he uses the term " homosexuality" -occurs
in a pamphlet published privately in 1 93 1 entitled, " The Karezza Method Or
Magnetation: The Art of C onnubial Love." Karezza, a term first used by Alice
B. Stockham, a late-nineteenth-century sex reformer, is essentially sex without
male ejaculation. Karezza is similar to the ideas about male sexual behavior
that John Humphrey Noyes advocated at his commune at Onieda.60 In his
pamphlet, Lloyd goes to great length discussing the putative benefits that both
men and women can enj oy through the practice of karezza. One of the greatest
b enefits outlined was that women's sexual desires would, by virtue of the fact
that c oitus would be extended, have a better chance of being satisfied. It is in
this context that Lloyd makes mention of same-sex love. In an aside on the na
ture of sexual desire and its expressions, he argues, "that some women are more
masculine than the average man, and vic e versa." The various combinations
that occur from the mixture of feminine and masculine forces in individuals
" accounts for much of the phenomena of homosexuality."61 Homosexuals are,
in this construction, men who share certain features of women or women who
share c ertain features of men. Lloyd does not seem to be referring to visible at
tributes-whether a person expresses outward signs of the opposite biological
sex-but to the nature of the inner sex drive.
Like many of his colleagues, Lloyd found it increasingly difficult to find
publishers for his work, despite the fact that friends such as Havelock Ellis con
tinued to champion his writing in England and in conversations with Ameri
can friends. Ellis wrote Joseph Ishill that, though Lloyd " has warm admirers
on this side," he was too little appreciated in the United States, and Ellis was
frustrated that "publishers . . . are shy" of Lloyd's writings. 62 In 1 929, however,
Ellis succeeded in persuading George Allen and Unwin, Edward Carpenter's
publisher, to bring out Lloyd's Eneres or the Questions if Reksa. Ellis wrote a
preface to the book which says that, " Lloyd b elongs to the class of'prophets,' as
in England Edward Carpenter who had a high regard for Lloyd-the class of
people, that is to say, who have a 'message' to their fellow-man."'63 The meta
phor of "prophecy" was apt. The themes and style of Lloyd's book are those of
a work of spiritual inquiry. The title, Lloyd explains for his reader, is a refer
ence to the structure of the text which he constructed as a dialogue between
an inquisitive youth and an older man: "Eneres (pronounced E-ner-es, accent
1 68 FREE C O M RAOES
of the second syllable) , the Serene-the Old Man-is myself, and Reksa-the
Asker-is likewise myself."M
Though Encres contains a brief chapter on sex, Lloyd makes no mention of
homosexuality i n it. Ellis does, however, mention that Lloyd had written a text
entitled The Larger Love, which he lamented "remains for the present unpub
lished-it is considered unsuitable for a still too prudish generation-though
until it is published the full scope of Lloyd's outlook in relation to his own time
will not have been made clear."65 According to D. A. Sachs, The Larger Love dealt
with homosexu ality in chapters entitled " The Explanation of Sexual Perver
sions," ' Justice to the S exual Invert," and "The God-Like are Androgyne." Ellis
implies that the contents of Lloyd's work made it unacceptable to publishers,
but Lloyd's work about the "larger love" was published in anarchist j ournals be
fore the war. It was not the "still too prudish" nature of the public that limited
Lloyd's ability to publish, rather it was the fact that Lloyd could no longer draw
on the resources and audience of the pre-World War I anarchist movement.
One of Lloyd's last publications on the subj ect of the politics of sexuality
appears in Sex In Civilization, a collection of articles coedited by V F. Cal
verton in 1 929. One of the most prominent sex radicals of the twenties, V F.
C alverton wrote and edited a number of important texts on sexuality. Though
identified with the C onmm n ist Party, Calverton was not representative of the
CP's sexual politics. His views , acc ording t o historian Leonard Wilcox, were
"permeated with assumptions about personal growth and cultural revolution
inherited from the 1 9 1 Os ' 'Lyrical left."'66 It is not surprising then that Calver
ton would invite Lloyd to c ontribute to his anthology. In his essay for Sex and
Civilization, entitled " Sex Jealousy and Civilization," Lloyd essentially reiterates
the free love ideas he developed in the anarchist movement, but he makes no
mention of his fi)rmer or current political affinities . Neither "anarchism" nor
"libertarianism" appear in the index of Sex and Civilization-nor does Lloyd
deal with homosexuality in his essay. In fact, Calverton's volume contains only
brief and decidedly ambivalent discussions of same-sex eroticism. Lloyd did
not seem eager to highlight the continuity, however diluted, his contribution
to Calverton's book shared with the sexual politics of the pre-war anarchists .
Sex and Civilization may have been a daring book for its day, but its themes and
tone are no more daring than what app eared in Lucifer the Light-Bearer and Lib
erty in the 1 890s, in The Free Comrade in 1 902, or in Mother Earth in the years
shortly before the war.
The leading figures of the post-World War I Lett were, with few exceptions,
not eager to explore the politics of personal life. Leninism, which dominated
Leftist political di:;course, " rej ected many of the feminist and sex-radical tradi-
ANARCHIST SEXUAL POLITICS IN THE POST-WORLD WAR I PERIOD 169
tions" of the pre-war left.67 The C ommunist Party was-especially when com
pared to the pre-war anarchists-a redoubt of heteronormative attitudes . I n the
early twenties, there was, for a time, a popular perc eption that the revolution in
.
the USSR would usher in a wave of sexual liberation and women's emancipa
tion. B ooks with titles like The Romance of New Russia, published in 1 924 by
Magdeleine Marx (no relation to Karl Marx) , portrayed the Soviets as pioneers
of sexual freedom.6s But despite the high hopes of Ms. Marx and others, the
Soviet state was not a libidinal paradise. In the American Cp, sexual p olitics
were looked upon as a mere diversion from more serious matters. To illustrate :
Malcolm C owley, a C P intellectual, writing in the New Republic, chastised Cal
verton for indulging in supposedly petty pursuits, calling him one of " the sex
boys, in their balloon of rhetoric . . . sailing far above the physical reality of their
subject."o9 Calverton, in C owley's eyes, was guilty of prioritizing the cultural
superstructure over the economic base, a political heresy that was not permit
ted.
Though " a growing intolerance of the sex issue among orthodox Leftists"
was already evident in the 1 920s, the Stalinization of the American CP was a
deathblow to the p ossibility that it could sponsor a radical sex politics.70 The
anarchists were sharply critical of this development, and in a short play pub
lished in 1 936 in the anarchist j ournal Vtm<(Juard, David Lawrence lampooned
the CP's sexual politics . Lawrence's satire, entitled "In a S oviet Village : A Mo
rality Play," features a cast of characters including " Ivan, the Chairman of the
Village Soviet," "A S prinkling of Chekists and Red Army Men," "A Chorus
of Komsomols," and "A Poet from the Dneiprostroy Union of Super-Stakha
novite Penmen." (The term Stakhanovite refers to the movement inspired by
the legendary productivity of Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov, who was lauded
by the Soviet authorities for the feat of mining 1 02 tons of coal in less than 6
hours . ) In the play, the poet who "won the praise of Comrade Stalin, a medal,
and a grant of money for producing triplets," declaims lines like : "Women's
place is in the kitchen/Its time she stopped promiscuous bitchin' . The emanci
pated woman is a fright/Become a copulating Stakhanovite." The not so subtle
attacks on the Soviet emphasis on production-sexual and otherwise-high
lighted the reductive, heteronormative, and profoundly antifeminist sexual p ol
itic of Stalin and his admirers. Sexuality was seen as a productive tool of the
state, not a venue for personal pleasure or expression.Women especially were to
c ease their "bitchin ' " and set to work producing workers for Stalin.
The play features a phonograph that announces the latest party line to the
assembled villagers. On this day, the radio trumpets an Orwellian sexual com
mand:
1 70 FREE COMRADES
The family is the basis of the Socialist Society. Sexual freedom is anarchy.
Long live Stalinism . Lenin had only one wife . . . who are you to have more?
Permanent marriage not permanent revolution. Who are we to interfere with
the laws of Go . . . er, dialectical m ate r iali sm.C!
Lawrence presents the Soviets as theocrats, as eager as any prelate to judge sin
ners and advise chastity or marriage for their charges. He slams their regressive
gender p olitics and implies that the productivist ideology of Stalinist Russia
extends even to the bedroom, where it seems good citizens are expected to
reproduce according to five-year plans . The readers of vanguard no doubt also
appreciated the insider j okes about the CP sprinkled throughout the play. For
example, Stalin's ideological battle with Trotsky, who advocated p ermanent
revolution and became a bitter critic of Stalin, is lampooned in the phrase "per
manent marriage not permanent revolution." Lawrence also self-consciously
c ontrasts anarch ist sexual p olitics to those of the Cp, making a tongue in cheek
reference to "sexual freedom" as " anarchy."
Unlike the anarchist sex radicals, the CP took a dim view of homosexuality.
When homosexuality did appear in the pages of CP publications it was most
often as an occasion for satire. I n 1 94 1 , Mike Quin, a leading party figure in
San Francisco, wrote a story for the People 's World, the CP's Pacific Coast daily
newspaper, which portrays Rudolph Hess, Hitler, Churchill, and Roosevelt as
stereotypical pansies.72 Quin presents his story in the form of a conversation
b etween two " c ommon men," Mr. O 'Brien and Mr. Murphy. O 'Brien tells
Murphy that Hess, a Nazi who parachuted into Scotland in the hopes of nego
tiating an end to war with the English, was "trying to land on a pansy bed" and
smelled of "perfume when they picked him up." According to O 'Brien, Hess
was well received by the English elite. " The upper classes," he tells Murphy, " are
never mad at each other in a war . . . . The millionaires all stick together, war or
no war." The evidence of the British elites' complicity with Hess is visible in
the fact that both Hess and his elite English friends have "toe nails . . . painted
red." Pictured as a gang of mad queens, class elites are portrayed as being part of
a worldwide conspiracy to dominate the common man. Soon, Murphy tells his
friend, Hess will j ourney to the US where "most of the upper-class finks wind
up." Quin uses his story to suggest that working-class people everywhere need
to come together against their common enemy, the upper classes . He warns his
readers that there will be a battle of " red ideas against red toe-nails"-a clash, in
other words , between honest working folks and decadent upp er class pansies .73
Quin's queer baiting is typical of the tactics communists used to smear fas
cist-and, in this case, liberal democratic-leaders and movements .74 Of course,
ANARCHIST SEXUAL POLITICS IN THE POST·WORLD WAR I PERIOD 1 71
the temptation to use such tactics was not limited to those in the Cp, but
Quin's diatribe is nonetheless revealing of the sexual politics of the editors of
the People 's World.
Paradoxically, as the Left was turning towards a more conservative p olitics
of sexuality, the American public was feeling freer to experiment and test the
bounds of the crumbling Victorian sexual system. The anarchists found it hard
to build an audience for radical sexual politics in a decade in which sexual
liberalism and social freedom seemed to be on th e rise. When Goldman came
to visit C anada in the late 1 920s, for example, she found herself asked about
"flappers" and companionate marriages. Whereas in the pre-war years newspa
p ers regularly denounced the anarchists as free love radicals, Goldman's ideas
no longer seemed to raise the hackles of the p ress. The Toronto Daily Star re
ported "Miss Goldman found the women of today far advanced over those of
a generation ago,"75 and went on to claim that G oldman's ideas regarding com
p anionate marriage had merit. "Companionate marriage," the paper declared,
"would give young people a chance to find out if they were really mates ."
And since Goldman also advocated " easy divorce" there would be no dan
ger of mismatched youngsters being imprisoned by the bonds of matrimony.76
Though this is a misrepresentation of Goldman's free-love p olitics, it illustrates
how ideas that were once radical could be assimilated into current debates and
ideas . In fact, Goldman was reported as being b ehind almost every cultural shift
of the era. In an article entitled "If you Like Jazz you're Classed as Anarchist,"
the Toronto Star Weekly recorded Goldman as characterizing j azz as " anarchis
tic, the very spirit of youth, essentially a revolt against outworn traditions and
restrictions."77 This analysis reduced anarchism to a playful pose and ignored
Goldman's more profound critiques of economic and social relations.
But the sexual liberalism of the twenties, commented on by contemporaries
and scholars alike, was an empty victory for the anarchists . People were more
than happy to accept what seemed to the anarchists as dangerously watered
down compromises. If all j azz fans were anarchists, then what exactly did being
an anarchist mean b eyond enjoying mild forms of social rebellion and cultural
novelty? And if " flappers" are the penultimate expression of liberated woman
hood what need was there for further critiques of the gender system? Anar
chism, as presented in the Canadian press' interpretation of Goldman's ideas, is
a willful, "youthful" butting against the strictures of tradition for the purposes
of amusement. The p olitical in the anarchist critiques of sexuality and gender
relations had been utterly evacuated from the understanding of what Goldman,
Lloyd, Tucker, and Berkman were trying to accomplish. In the twenties, radical
critiques were watered down by banalities, and the p olitics articulated by the
1 72 FREE COMRADES
anarchist sex radicals were softened and sold. " Ideas that had been avant-garde
in the pre-war years," writes historian Leslie Fishbein, "became the cliches of
the p ost-war years ."'H
The anarchists were frustrated by the shallowness of what passed as sexual
emancipation. Berkman wrote to Goldman about his mystification regarding
the lifestyle associated with the "so called 'modern girl ,' especially the Ameri
can girl : "
They have b ecome " emancipated" from the old inhibitions, but they have not
replaced them by any really earnest idea or deeper feeling. It is just a kind of
superficial sexuality without rhyme or reason. More sensuality than anything
else. At the bottom of it is an inner emptiness, sexual and otherwise . . , and . . .
men . . . look upon these types of girls very lightly, even scornfully, except that
they want to use them . . . they cannot really grow into a deeper affection for
them, for there is a hidden lack of respect and understanding. They consider
them light and j ust good enough to spend a little time with 79
Berkman viewed the emancipation of " the modern girl" as a sham, and the
actions of modern men as reprehensible. What was missing was a political con
text with which to understand and guide sexual liberation. Goldman shared
Berkman's disillusionment. As she told the Toronto Daily Star, "People refuse to
see . . . that sex is the greatest force and the most beautiful thing in the world if
its p owers are rightly harnessed and directed. Where love is missing everything
is missing."80 By love, Goldman did not mean mere romantic longing. She was
referring to the principles of free love and advocating relationships that were
equitable, liberating, and empowering. In contrast, the freedoms enj oyed by the
flapper did not challenge the p ower relations between men and women. The
feminist basis of anarchist sexual politics was the critical missing element.
Viewed from the perspective of the politics of homosexuality, B erkman and
Goldman 's attack on the too easy thrills of the twenties has considerable merit.
As Linda Gordon has p ointed out " the sexual revolution" of the post-war peri
od "was not a general loosening of sexual taboos but only of those on nonmar
ital heterosexual a ctivity." 81 In fact, historian Gary Kinsman suggests that the
sexual revolution of the twenties was a seedbed of homophobia. 82 As the rules
governing heterosexual dating were liberalized, homosexuality was increasingly
a focus of surveillance. Advice literature, for example, " singled out ' homosexu
ality' as a distinct category of sexual deviance . . . a pathological symptom of an
individual's failure to achieve a normal state of heterosexuality."b1 This dialectic
of liberalization and surveillance may help account for the popularity of the
p ansy p erformance. As George Chauncey documented, the twenties witnessed
a "pansy craze"--a fascination with male homosexuality as represented by the
ANARCHIST SEXUAL POUTICS IN THE POST-WORLD WAR I PERIOD 1 73
comical, extremely fey figure of the pansy.84 The pansy performer may have
been widely celebrated, but he garnered little respect. The performance essen
tially involved a s ophisticated audience of heterosexual couples on dates, laugh
ing at the figure of a ridiculously over-the-top gay male figure. In staging this
display of erotic and gender deviance, the pansy was illustrating the boundaries
of proper conduct for his audience. 85
Though there were more venues where gay men and lesbians c ould pursue
their erotic and emotional needs, the expansion of that social freedom was
paralleled by a contraction of the politics of homosexuality. The increase in
the number of identifiable gay and lesbian venues may actually have released
some of the pres�ure for sexual liberation that had fueled the anarchist critiques
of anti-sodomy laws and other oppressive measures. Historian James Steakley,
speaking of Germany, argued that the relative decline in homosexual politics in
the twenties can b e explained, at least in part, by the fact that "it was far easier
to luxuriate in the concrete utopia of the urban subculture than to struggle
for an emancipation, which was apparently only formal and legalistic."86 There
were similar developments in the United S tates . Prohibition forced clubs and
bars into the criminal netherworld, thereby creating new opportunities for
marginalized groups to gather. Speakeasies, much more so than public taverns,
tolerated and even encouraged a gay and lesbian clientele.
But the increase in gay and lesbian venues had limited immediate impact on
social and cultural values. Greenwich Village, for example, developed a reputa
tion as a gay-friendly enclave, but according to Lillian Faderman the reality was
less robust than the reputation. She argues that though the "Villagers prided
themselves on b eing 'bohemian,' " their sex radicalism-dominated by hetero
sexual men-was tepid and uneven. "Although lesbianism was allowed to ex
ist more openly there than it could have in most places in the United States,"
Faderman argues, " even in Greenwich Village sexual love between women was
treated with ambivalence."87 Though gay men and lesbians found a place in the
Village, without a clearly articulated p olitical critique of sexual norms it was
difficult to challenge the " ambivalence" that permeated even the most liberal
of social worlds.
There were some p olitical activists who fought for the rights of gay men
and lesbians in the inter-war decades, but they p ossessed neither the resources
nor the p olitical sophistication of the pre-war anarchist sex radicals. In 1 92 5 ,
t h e US 's first gay rights organization, t h e Society for Human Rights, was es
tablished in Chicago by a small group of activists. Henry Gerber, the SHR's
leader, modeled the organization on Hirschfeld's Scientific-Humanitarian
Committee. Although radical in its sexual p olitics, the SHR was a thoroughly
1 74 FREE COMRADES
law-abiding organization. Seeking to minimize controversy, the SHR pledged

that it stood "fi)r law and order; it is in harmony with any and all general laws
insofar as they protect the rights of others , and does in no manner recommend
any acts in violation of present laws nor advocate any matter inimical to the
public welfare." 68 Unfortunately, this pledge of allegiance did little to safeguard
the group 's members . The SHR managed to put out two issues of its j ournal,
Friendship and Freedom, before repo rters for the Ch icago Examiner exposed its
activities, leadin g to the arrest of most of the membership. Henry Gerber was
also fired from his j ob at the Post Office. The SHR's members, isolated and
without recourse, were unable to reconstitute the organization. Not until the
post-World War I I homophile movement would organizations similar to the
SHR b e establis hed.
D espite the changing political and social climate of the twenties and the de
cades that followed, the ideas and influence of the pre-war anarchist sex radicals
continued to be felt. Anarchists and those influenced by the pre-war anarchists
had a presence in some of the gay-friendly bohemian clubs of the post-war
era. In the early 1 920s, for example, Kenneth Rexroth worked at The Green
Mask, a Chicago club run by June Wiener, a "friend of Emma Goldman" who
" came from an old Jewish Anarchist family." Wiener's girlfriend, Beryl Bolton,
also worked at the club. Rexroth's own political history was shot through with
anarchist influen ce; his grandfather considered himself an anarchist, and in his
youth, Rexroth'�; p arent's took him to cafes like Polly's Restaurant, which was
frequented by members of Emma Goldman's circle. Rexroth was steeped in
the history and mythology of the movement. His father, tor example, made
sure that the young Rexroth knew about Alexander B erkman's fourteen-year
prison ordeal. 89
The atmosphere of The Green Mask combined literary and political mod
ernism with sexual and gender liberalism. The club hosted poetry readings and
lectures by Sherwood Anderson and the lawyer Clarence Darrow and housed,
in Rexroth's words , " a small permanent family of oddities," including " a her
maphrodite violinist" ; " [the] great female impersonators Bert Savoy, Julian
Eltinge . . . [and] Carole Normand, ' The Creole Fashion Plate,' known to her
friends as 'The Queer Old Chafing Dish ' ' ' ; " [a] little Mexican fairy known
as Theda B ara, and her knife-toting pal, who weighed about four hundred
p o unds, the Slim Princess" ; as well as "a very light, freckled-faced Negro . . .
who claimed to be the illegitimate son of a British admiral and a Haitian prin
cess." This faux aristocrat "had dyed red hair, ultraconservative clothes in the
height of fashion., and wore an egg-shaped eyeglass without ribbon or rim."90
The mix of high and low culture and the truly wild social scene fostered by
ANARCHIST SEXUAL POLITICS IN THE POST·WORLO WAR I PERIOD 1 75
the club was , at least in part, a product of the political background of the club's
owner.
Rexroth also visited a more sober club-in all senses of the word-called
the Gray Cottage, located next door to a b ookshop run by a Dutch man who
had bfen one of the leaders of the Rotterdam Commune, the Gray Cottage
was owned by Ruth Norlander and Eve Adams, who "wore men's clothes and
for years traveled about the country selling ]\;[other Earth, TIle Masses, and other
radical literary magazines." Mother Earth had been suppressed during World War
I , but the magazine's message continued to resonate. According to Rexroth,
both women "were convinced libertarians and part of the movement." Their
club "was a great deal more intellectual and radical than the Green Mask."
Though the Gray Cottage was " the most bohemian of the bohemian tea
rooms of the Chicago North Side," it attracted a less spectacular crowd than
the Green Mask. Norlander and Adam's cafe " attracted few customers from
show business . . . and none of the tough homosexuals who came into the Green
Mask." The Gray Cottage's customers "were cast more upon the pattern of Ed
ward Carpenter . . . than lady prizefighters and drag queens and cheap burlesque
girls."91 At the Gray Cottage, the ideology of libertarian socialism was fore
grounded, while at the Green Mask anarchism expressed itself in the creation
of a social space free from society's norms and rules.
It is not surprising that the Green Mask and the Gray Cottage were lo
cated in Chicago, c onsidering Rexroth's claims that among the writers, artists,
and activists he associated with in Chicago at the time, "Most people called
themselves anarchists."92 The city was home to the Free Society group, which
according to anarchist historian Sam D olgoff was " the most active anarchist
propaganda group in the country."93 Rexroth frequented the Dill Pickle, a
club located near "Bughouse Square, where every variety of radical sect . . . was
preached from a row of soapboxes every night in the week when it wasn't
storming." The "political radicals among [the Bughouse Square speakers] hung
out at the Dill Pickle and constituted the inner core of club membership."94
There is no direct evidence that the founders of the Society for Human Rights
were connected to anarchist circles but the general mood of Chicago's gay
scene was shot through with anarchist ideas and p ersonalities.
The sexual politics of the pre-war anarchists was a persistent influence in
the social worlds Rexroth moved in. The Dill Pickle and Bughouse Square
were places where sex was openly discussed, though more often than not in a
ribald tone. One of the Dill Pickle's leading characters, for example, "had an
amazing talent for getting really important scholars to talk for him-under
a lewd title, such as "Should the Brownian Movement Best Be Approached
1 76 FREE COMRAOES
from the Rear? ' '''" Browning was a slang term for anal sex. Rexroth also knew
"a little man with tousled yellow curls" who " had been a famous war resister
but by the tim e I knew him he had only one subj ect on the soapbox . . . the
pleasures of oral sex, and its answers to the Problems of Malthus and Marx."96
D espite their creative engagement with Marx, the denizens of the Dill Pickle
and the Bug Chlb were not representative of the local CP-dominated socialist
scene. According to Rexroth, the "Anarchist and IWW freelance soapboxers"
he enj oyed listening to were "completely disillusioned with the organized radi
cal movement."97
Chicago was also the home of Goldman 's old lover and tour manager, Ben
Reitman. Like Rexroth, Reitman was a m ember of the Dill Pickle and a figure
in Chicago's demimonde. Though no longer an anarchist, Reitman remained
interested in the subj ect of sexuality and radical politics and was a frequent visi
tor to anarchist meetings . In 1 93 1 , he reprised his old role, helping to sell anar
chist literature at a gathering held in honor of Kropotkin. Reitman devoted a
considerable amount of time to working with those on the margins of society
and, according to Dolgoff, had a well-deserved reputation as "a distinguished
physician, specializing in venereal and allied diseases." In addition to his medical
practice, Reitman was the director of the Chicago School for Social Pathology.
D olgofI was impressed with the fact that Reitman "was deeply concerned with
the plight of the 'misfits,' the prostitutes , the homeless, the hobos, the tramps,
the derelicts, the 'dregs of society,' who, when I knew him, crowded the flop
houses and dingy saloons of the skidrow on West Madison Street."�H
Reitman showed a continuing fascination with the life of gay men and les
bians. In 1 93 7 , he helped "Box Car B ertha" write Sister of the Road, a book that
told the story of Bertha's "fifteen years of wandering, a hobo, traveling from
one end of the coulltry to the other."99 At the end of B ertha's narrative Reit
man added an app endix intended to answer the question "what makes sisters
of the road?" Among the reasons Reitman gave are '�sex irregulariti es." He be
lieved, he told Goldman in a letter, that "homosexual women . . . make up a large
proportio n of the hitch-hiking, intellectual women of the day." !Ou These same
women, according to Reitman, had an affinity for radical politics. The sisters
of the road included "anarchist communists of the Emma Goldman . Alexander
Berkman, Peter Kropotkin types," as well as " In dividualist anarchists of the Max
Stierner [sic] , Tucker, and Frederick Nietzsche types." l O! His findings should be
taken with a grai n of salt, as Reitman's work tells us far 1110 re about Chicago 's
bohemian world of sexual and radical politics than about the life of female
hoboes in the 1 920s and 1 930s. Reitman extrapolated from the world he knew,
ANARCHIST SEXUAL POLITICS IN THE POST·WORLO WAR I PERIOD 177
one where homosexuality and anarchism existed in overlapping social circles,

and placed that experience on the larger world.
Reitman's daughter, Jan Gay, was also interested in the ethical, social and
cultural place of homosexuality. She believed that science was the golden road
to sexual freedom, and she had a " commitment to science as a significant av
enue to social reform." 102 Just as Goldman and Lloyd had in their day, Gay
sought out and worked with the European sexologists she admired-in par
ticular the German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. B eginning in the 1 920s, Gay
interviewed hundreds of lesbians in Europe and America using techniques and
strategies she learned from Hirschfeld. Her mentor clearly thought highly of
her, for Reitman wrote Goldman that his daughter was "writing a book with
Prof. Magnus Hirschfeld, [entitled] "Women without Men." 1 03 Unfortunately,
it appears the book was never completed.
When she returned to the United States, Gay continued her studies in
sexology. In the mid- 1 930s, Gay played a key role in founding the C ommit
tee for the Study of Sex Variants, an American organization led by Robert
Latou Dickinson. Eventually Gay's findings were incorporated into George
W Henry's Sex variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns, publish e d in 1 94 1 . But
the publication of Sex variants was not the triumph for Gay that it should have
been. Apart from a few minor acknowledgements, Henry made no mention
of Gay's work. D ej ected and feeling b etrayed, Gay stopped her research on
homosexuality. 1 0 4
Gay's work on homosexuality was greatly influenced by the p re-war anar
chists. She and her father were in contact well into her adulthood, and through
him, Gay was connected to the legacy of anarchist sex radicalism of which he
was a part. Gay was likely brought into contact with Hirschfeld, the greatest
influence in her intellectual development, through the efforts of the pre-war
anarchist sex radicals. In the same year that Reitman wrote Goldman about his
daughter, Goldman received a letter from Gay to which she responded warmly.
" I was interested and delighted," Goldman writes Gay, "to hear that you had
met my good friend, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, and glad to see that you are about
to do a book with him. I daresay it will prove to b e of value." 1 OS The fact that
Gay kept both her father and Goldman abreast of her work with Hirschfeld
reflects the fact that she understoo d that her relationship with Hirschfeld owed
something to the relationship he had with her father and her father's col
leagues.
Gay was not the only lesbian intellectual of her era whose life and work was
shaped by the political legacy of libertarian socialism. Anarchism also played a
critical role in the life of poet, Elsa Gidlow. Born in 1 89 8 , Gidlow spent a con-
1 78 FREE COMRADES
siderable part of her life in a struggle to "get a room of my own" and "find my
kind of people." 1 06 In 1 923, she published On a Gray Thread, the first volume
of explicitly lesbian poetry in North America. In 1 926, Gidlow moved to the
San Francisco B ay Area where she lived until her death in 1 986. During her
time in the Bay Area, Gidlow was an active member of the lesbian co mmu nity
and of the region's diverse artistic and p olitical worlds . Anarchism was a subtle
current within the overlapping social milieus that Gidlow moved. She counted
among her friends, Kenneth Rexroth-who himself had moved to the Bay
Area-with whom she formed a "friendship based on resp ect for one another's
poetry, political orientation, and sexual orientation." l07 The libertarian values
of the worlds of radical art, anarchism, and the sexual culture of the Bay Area
were interwoven . S ometimes this could be expressed in silly, but telling ways.
For example, the Bay Area poet Jack Spicer and his lover John Ryan once re
ferred to themselves as the " Interplanetary Services of the Martian Anarchy." l OR
The name of this fabulous society of two, plays on the freedom or "anarchy"
that the Bay Area's social and artistic world afforded Spicer, Ryan, Gidlow, and
Rexroth.
Gidlow's en gagement with anarchism came, ironically, in the immediate
aftermath ofWWI and the Russian Revolution. As thousands were streaming
out of the movement-either because they were drawn to communism or
their dreams of social revolution were shattered-Gidlow embraced the ideals
of the pre-war anarchists . The war seemed to be particularly troubling for Gid
low and her friends: " Our fledgling adult consciousness," she wrote, "was lit for
the start by war's murderous phosphorescence. Every value we had absorbed
became suspect." The revolution in Russia did not seduce Gidlow; while many
saw Lenin as a harbinger of heaven on earth , Gidlow looked askance at those
who argued that "a new Russian dictatorship must be countenanced and the
'liquidation' (a disinfected new term) of individuals justified."Troubled, Gidlow
looked for answas-and found th em-in the intellectual tradition of libertar
ian socialism. "Emma Goldman," she would later recall , "had dawned on my
horizon ." In the very year that the Buford set sail , Gidlow told her friends, " I
believe I a m a n anarchist." 1 09
While her embrace of Goldman's legacy was heartfelt, Gidlow's anarchism
was significantly different from that of the pre-war movement. Though she
b elieved that "society must be radically transformed, not for any one group
or class, but for .111 of us," in practice, Gidlow's anarchism reflected her desire
for personal liberation. 1 1 0 Her commitment to anarchism was rooted in her
p ersonal experience, not in an engagement with the kinds of issues-gradual
reform versus revolution, the merits of vari ous methods of propaganda, and
individual versus collective ownership of the means of production-that exer

cised her predecessors. In her memoirs she admitted, "neither I nor my com
panions were ready to take to the streets, soap boxes, or brave j ail." Gidlow and
her friends " could not see salvation in any brand of p olitics." A forlorn crew
adrift in a sea, their " abiding faith was in art, in the fruits of the spirit, in p er
sonal integrity and responsibility to one another." 1 l ! This was an inward-look
ing anarchism, one that served as a guide for interpersonal relationships, not
revolutionary social change. To b e sure, Goldman and the pre-war anarchists
put great stress on the p olitics of personal life, but they did so in the context
of a mass movement with broad economic and social goals. But by the time
Gidlow encountered anarchism, the movement-with the exception of a few
smail, active groups-was greatly reduced. Gidlow's libertarianism was a p ow
erful, yet attenuated variant, of its pre-war mother.
Gidlow's profession of anarchism was intimately related to her sense of per
sonal rebellion. In 1 92 8 , she mused in the pages of her j o urnal on the relation
ship between her politics, her place in society, and her personality:
Another ghost of memory: I wonder what has become of that good little
hunchback, Frank Genest, who once called me-poor little shy, silent me at
eighteen!-an "enemy of society ' " I hardly knew what "society" was : hardly
knew it existed. Perhaps that was enough to make me its enemy in his eyes.
My natural " anarchism" was perhaps evident. I don't think I ever had any
particular feeling of enmity towards society, even when I found out what it
was . Simply, I always knew I was alone; knew I always should be; took it for
granted in fact; knew that I must act out of my own need and vision, ignoring
authority. Does that make me an anarchist?' !2
It would be hard to imagine Berkman or Tucker writing about anarchism in

the way that Gidlow does here. Eschewing anarchist critiques of society, Gid
low adopts the pose of the outsider, someone who " always knew I was alone;
knew I always should be." She makes no reference to economic inj ustice, strat
egies for propaganda either by word or deed, or the need to challenge state
p ower. In fact, Gidlow exhibits some disc omfort with identifying herself as
an anarchist. Her use of quotation marks around the word anarchism signals
a certain distance, indicating to the reader that she does not mean anarchism,
an ideology of fundamental social and political change, but " anarchism," the
natural expression of a youthful, rebellious spirit. Gidlow's anarchism was quite
different than the one that flourished in the context a broad, international and
active movement in the decades prior to the First World War.
Gidlow's anarchism, her gender and sexual p olitics, and her identity as a
poet reinforced each o ther. As a lesbian and an artist, she felt doubly alienated
1 80 FREE COMRADES
from the society in which she lived. Gidlow turned to the legacy of Goldman
to create new forms of expression with which to understand and appreciate
herself as a woman whose emotional and sexual life was built around her rela
tionships with other women. Her willingness to defY convention was, in part,
a pro duct of her understanding the need for individuals to be free to construct
their own rules of personal and social conduct. This was magnified by her self
image as an artist, an individual who was able to see that " drabness, tedium,
inj ustices were not the whole of life." 1 13 For Gidlow, both artists and lesbians
were in conflict with the world in which they lived. They were anarchists by
default. She felt that "perhaps the artist, the lesbian artist in particular, always
will have to survive within the interstices of the chicaneries and despotism
of any power structure." 1 14 The norms and rules of that society were, she be
lieved, explicitly hostile to her desires and work. Anarchism challenged power
structures and empowered individuals . It was , in short, particularly suited to
Gidlow's intertwined identity as a radical, a poet, a lesbian, and a feminist.
Gidlow understood anarchism as a doctrine of individual empowerment,
not as the ideological product of a mass movement. This is the critical dif
ference between hers and Emma Goldman's anarchism. The activists of the
pre-war movement addressed questions of sexuality in the course of pursuing
broad social change. Gidlow was interested in anarchism because it allowed her
to explore and expand the boundaries of her life. This take on anarchism was
shared by many who gravitated to it in the post-World War I decades. These
men and women, writes Sam D olgoff, "did not conceive anarchism as an orga
nized social revolutionary movement with a mass base and a definite ideology,
but as a bohemian 'lifestyle.' " Dolgoff was disturbed by this development that
he b elieved, "meant regression to a form of organization not much above local
groups and an intimate circle of friends ." 1 1 5 But what Dolgoff lamented was
precisely what Gidlow and others sought-a refuge from what they perceived
to be a hostile, unpalatable world. The work of Goldman, Berkman, Tucker, and
other anarchist s ex radicals served as a valuable resource for people who-in
the spirit, if not in the form of their anarchist predecessors-continued to insist
o n the right of all women and men to live their life according to their own
lights.
the baths suck
but . . .
the st ate doesn 't
--
u. ..- _.
C O N C LU S I O N :
ANAR C H I S M , STO N EWALL, AN D TH E TRAN S FO RMATI O N
O F TH E PO LITI CS O F H O M O S EXUALITY
c'
o
� � IN THE LAST THIRD of the twentieth century anarchism, was rediscovered

� � by a new generation of activists, bohemians, and alienated youth, and was most
:;; � visible on college campuses. Near the end of 1 960s, a friend of George Wood
� .<::
.§ .fr cock, a leading figure of the anarchist revival, told him that his students had
ci .u:
.� .� seemingly all become anarchists. When the professor asked the 1 60 students in
� � his Contemporary Ideologies class to identify themselves "ninety of them chose
� . � anarchism in preference to democratic socialism (which came in next with
� J:j twenty-three votes) , liberalism, Communism, and conservatism." Of course,
� �' this was a biased group, they were in a class taught by Woodcock's friend, some
� � one who we can assume was fairly open to discussions of anarchism .Woodcock
� S, notes that the student's enthusiasm was shared by many of their teachers. " Since
� ] 1 960 more serious and dispassionate studies of anarchism have appeared than
� <ii, during the previous sixty years of the century." 1 Goldman, especially, has been
>-
� � the subj ect of this wave of scholarly interest. There have been a number of
o
� � Goldman biographies published since 1 960, and The Emma Goldman Papers
� � Proj ect has undertaken the systematic collection of texts documenting her life
.� . � and work.
� � There are, however, important differences between anarchism at the turn of
� � the century and the anarchism of the late-twentieth century. "The anarchists
.f � of the 1 960s," Woodcock argues, "were not the historic ana�chist movement
182 FREE COMRADES
resurrected; they were something quite different, a new manifestation of the

idea."2 At the turn of the century, anarchists could identify themselves with a
worldwide, mass movement. Tucker, Lloyd, Goldman, Berkman, Abbott, and
their comrades b elieved in, and struggled for, a social revolution that would
transform every aspect of life. Today's anarchists, like Rexroth , Gidlow, and the
denizens of the Green Mask, were more likely to be relatively isolated indi
viduals or members of small groups. For the most part, today's anarchists have
given up on the idea that a revolution-in the traditional sense of the word-is
p ossibl e, much less that it is imminent. Contemporary anarchists have not re
constituted the level of organization, scale, and mission that the pre-World War
I anarchists had. I nstead, many focus on building a counter-culture within the
body of the present social order.
The political culture of the two periods-the context in which the respec
tive anarchist movements operate-is also quite different. At the turn of the
twentieth century, the Left was a vital and visible force within American soci
ety. Socialists governed cities, ran candidates, and shaped public discourse to a
far greater degree than in today's America. The anarchists were not, of course,
thrilled with th e idea of elected socialist representatives, but they benefited
from the fact that radical alternatives were taken seriously. During the years
when Tucker, Lloyd, Goldman , and Berkman were active, the Left constituted a
significant force in American p olitical culture. Hundreds of thousan ds ofAmer
icans subscribed to socialist publications, voted for socialist candidates, claimed
membership in socialist organizations-including anarchist groups-and so
cialism was a powerful force in organized labor. Although the Left enj oyed a
burst of life in the late 1 9605 and early 1 970s, it has not regained the place it
had in American society at the turn of the century. The anti-Vietnam War and
Civil Rights movements of the last third of the century were influenced by
Left activists, bu : unlike the earlier p eriod of political activism, they did not
take the form of a mass movement rooted in the American working class .
Contemporary anarchism, like its predecessor, is not monolithic ; it is fraught
with ideological and stylistic differences. Many of today's anarchists tend to
stress the spontaneous, the eclectic, the temporary, and the irratio nal. Hakim
B ey, for example, has called for anarchists to fashion "a practical kind of'mysti
cal anarchism,' . . . ;1 democratization of shamanism, intoxicated and serene."3 Bey
is best known for advocating the concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone
(TAZ) , a space within which spontaneous expressions of desire and play can
take place. The TAZ is not meant to be a beachhead from which revolution
ary plans can be formulated and enacted. Bey compares TAZs to the libratory
p ower of an insurrectionary moment, and argues that the revolution is almost
ANARCHISM, STONEWALL, AND THE TRANSFORMATIO N OF THE POUTICS OF HOMOSEXUALITY 1 83
always a call to bring back hierarchy, order, and authority. To be sure, there are
anarchists, Murray B ookchin being the most notable example, who vigorously
oppose B ey's vision of anarchism.
Murray B ookchin identified himself with " an idealistic, often theoretically
coherent Left that militantly emphasized its internationalism, its rationality in
its treatment of reality, its democratic spirit, and its vigorous revolutionary aspi
rations."" Note, however, that B ookchin spoke of this Left in the past tense; the
title of the essay in which he discussed his ideological beliefs is entitled " The
Left That Was : A Personal Reflection." Bookchin i s refers to t h e culture of the
Left that flourished at the turn of the c entury before the Russian Revolu
tion-a Left t� at no longer really exists, and in his view, is in danger of egen?
erating into mere p etulant egotism.
Bookchin's critique generated an intense debate between, what Bob Black
dubbed the " traditionalistic anarchists-leftist, workerist, organizationalist, and
moralist-and an even more diverse (and an ever more numerous) contingent
of anarchists who have in one way or another departed from orthodoxy, at least
in Bookchin's eyes." Black attacked B ookchin as a self-appointed scold who
was unable to fully divest himself of the influences of Marxism. S I n some ways,
the b attle between Black and Bookchin-taken as representative of poles with
in anarchist thought-repeated the endemic battles between communist- and
individualist anarchists. But the rupture between the c amps b espeaks a deep
cultural and ideological division that is unique to the present and not merely
a rehashing of old arguments. I do not mean to take sides in this debate, rather
I wish to point out that the culture, ideas, social basis, rhetoric, and style of
anarchism that exists today is quite different than that which flourished in the
United States in the decades prior to WWl . B o okchin may have been wrong
in his critique of contemporary anarchism, but he was right to note that the
rhetoric and goals of today's anarchists differs markedly from that of the turn
of-the-century anarchists who were largely united in their belief in the value
of reason, progress, and universal applicability of social goals and concepts .
The sexual and gender p olitics of the turn-of-the-century anarchists i s one
of the reasons that they have found admirers since the late 1 960s. Alix Kates
Shulman, for example, found a ready audience for the discussions of Goldman's
sexual politics that she began producing in the early 1 970s. Shulman, who ad
mired Goldman's defiance of "the sexual hypo crisy of Puritanism; ' found her
political commitments to women's liberation mirrored in the libertarian ideals
of the anarchists. "Anarchism by definition," she wrote, " and radical feminism
as it has evolved, are both fundamentally and deeply anti-hierarchical and anti
authoritarian."6 Shulman would go on to publish a biography of Goldman and
edit a collection of G oldman's own writings which had fallen out of print. 7 Of
course, Goldman's notoriety extended well b eyond radical circles. Like Che
Guevera, whose likeness adorns t-shirts sold in malls, Goldman's radicalism has
been significantly blunted by the omnivorous appetite of the market place; she
is in danger of becoming yet another radical-chic commodity.�
G oldman is by far the most republished turn-of-the-century anarchist, but
she is not the o nly person whose work found new readers. Lloyd's pamphlet
on Karezza, or male continence, was republished in California in 1 973 and
again, in French , in Montreal in 2000 . This is not to say that this new audi
ence was always aware of the ideological roots of the works they were reading.
Lloyd's work proved particularly appealing to those readers who identified his
work as an example of Eastern religious and philosophic traditions. The Ca
nadian pamphlet identifies Lloyd's work as an example of " Occidental tantric "
thought, and was p ublished by Ganesha Press, the name of which refers to a
Hindu god.9
Gay liberationists, radical feminists, and lesbian feminists (not exclusive cat
egories by any means) were all drawn to the work of the turn-of-the-centuries'
anarchist sex-radicals . The texts of the pre-WWI anarchist sex radicals found
new readers among contemporary sex radicals. For example, Jonathan Ned
Katz's groundbreaking collection of primary documents entitled Gay American
History, published in 1 976, included excerpts from Goldman's autobiography,
Sperry's letters to Goldman, and selections from Berkman 's Prison Memoirs. An
archists occasionally find themselves featured in the gay press, like the 1 990
inaugural issue of The Slant, a periodical serving Marin County in the San
Francisco Bay Area, which featured a quote by Edward Carpenter, who is iden
tified as a " gay English anarchist." 1 0 The gay press provides a venue for some
of the early work on the sexual p olitics of the anarchists . For example, in 1 98 1 ,
Hubert Kennedy p ublished an article o n John Henry Mackay in TIle Alternate,
a monthly publication which described itself as " the news magazine for today's
Gay America" and which, in addition to publishing feature articles, boasted ex
tensive personal ads . l 1 And Gayme, a publication that, like Mackay did, defends
intergellerational relations b etween men and youths, reprinted an excerpt from
Hakim B ey's TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy in 1 994.
The brief description of the excerpt that appears in Gayme 's table of contents
states that B ey argues that " revolution may be in disrepute . . . but people on the
erotic and political fringe can still insurrect." 1 2 Bey might contest whether or
not revolution is in disrepute, but for the editors of Gayme, the larger scope of
Bey's politics are a bit beside the point. What is important is that Bey's ideas are
useful to "p eople on the erotic and political fringe."
ANARCHISM, STONEWAU, AND THE TRANSFORMATIO N OF THE POLITICS OF HOMOSEXUALITY 1 85
The rediscovery of some of the anarchists' p olitics by LGBT activists did

not signal a renaissance of the turn-of-the-century anarchist movement. Katz's
book is not an anarchist anthology; it is a gay liberation anthology. The ideas
of the anarchists were attractive to gay liberationists and lesbian feminists to
the extent that they reflected the libertarian sexual p olitics of those p articular
movements, but the larger p olitical goals of the anarchists are not p articular
ly attractive to c ontemporary gay and lesbian political activists. Though there
were and are anarchists active in both gay liberation and lesbian feminist groups
the maj ority of men and women active in LGBT activism do not rej ect Ameri
can traditions of representative democracy or capitalism. For example, when,
in 1 989, the Stonewall Gay Democratic Club chose " Absolute S overeignty of
the Human Body" as its theme for the annual LGBT Pride Parade one could
easily hear a strong echo of the language of individualist anarchism. 13 Afterall,
Josiah Warren, a key figure in the development of the movement, was famed for
extolling "the sovereignty of the individual," and surely Warren would approve
of the Stonewall Gay Democrats championing "the right of consenting adults"
and their stated desire to brandish the "banner of individual freedom." 1 4 But,
of course, the Stonewall Gay Democrats were affiliated with the D emocratic
Party; they were most assuredly not anarchists no matter how much they might
sound like them. The p ull of the contemporary gay and lesbian movement's
liberal p olitical culture acts to tame whatever revolutionary impulse remains in
the anarchist texts and ideas that still circulate in the movement.
This is not to discount the imp ortant, and as yet under-appreciated ways,
that turn-of-the-century anarchists' work has shaped contemporary gay and
lesbian p olitics and culture. Elsa Gidlow, for example, was an important figure
in the post-WWII B ay Area's lesbian community, and her work was, at least in
part, inspired by the ideas of the anarchists she read in her youth. Her willing
ness to rebel against dominant social values and her insistence on the rights of
individuals to fulfill their desires and needs reflects the spirit of Goldman that
so influenced her in her youth. In the pre-Stonewall era, Gidlow Was a sup
porter of the Daughters · of Bilitis, the first American lesbian rights organiza
tion. In the 1 9705, she published a number of important lesbian feminist works
including Sapphic Songs and Ask No Man Pardon: The Philosophical Significance
oj Being Lesbian. Gidlow made her home, Druid Heights, into a center of the
women's community and a retreat for artists and writers. "Women," Gidlow
wrote, "often came to me at Druid Heights to share their dilemmas, especially
those they have as lesbians in a culture that excludes them and [that has] family
p atterns they cannot fit into." 15
But here again the connections between Gidlow's politics and those of
Goldman and her comrades are complicated. Though the inspiration for es
tablishing Druid Heights had roots in Gidlow's larger p olitical ideas, the retreat
was not an anarchist center. Though Gidlow discusses the influence anarchism
had on her life in her autobiography, her memoir is not an anarchist text com
pared to Goldman's autobiography, Living My Life, or Berkman's Prison Memoirs
of an Anarchist. Anarchism was part of Gidlow's p olitical inheritance, but as the
lesbian feminist community grew, the ideas generated by its leading ideolo
gists-Gidlow b eing one of them-began to displace the bohemian anarchism
of her youth. Like Gidlow, though, many lesbian feminists and gay liberationists
embraced a broad p olitics that addressed q u estions of economic j ustice, as well
as social equality for homosexuals, but the modern homosexual rights move
ment is largely ;l single-issue interest group operating within the context of
American liberal democracy. Today's sex radicals may know Goldman for her
claim-an apocryphal one--that "It's not my revolution if I can't dance;' but
they are less likely to b e familiar with her impassioned critiques of capitalism.
The anarchists were radicals who dealt with issues of sexuality as part of their
larger revolutiomry goals. With few exceptions, today's gay and lesbian activists
seek inclusion within the boundaries of American culture, rather than the fun
damental restructuring of that culture. They may find inspiratio n in the spirit of
freedom expressed by the anarchists but they are not revolutionaries .
The difference between the contemporary LGBT rights movement and the
sexual politics of turn-of-the-century anarchist movement is most glaringly
illustrate d in the place of marriage in the respective movements. The anarchist
homosexual poli tics discussed in this book were grounded in a critique of
marriage. The claim that neither representatives of the state nor other regula
tory agents should have any authority over the relationship or sexual choices
of "sovereign individuals" was the fundamental core of anarchist sexual politics.
And that claim was forged within the context of a critique of marriage. When
Oscar Wilde was arrested, the anarchists rose to his defense because they had
already come to understand that state regulation of relationships-whether be
tween members of the opposite or same sex-was a problem. Anarchist politics
of homosexuality grew out of a rejection of marriage.
Given this hiswry, it is ironic that the right to marry-to enter into state
and church sancti oned, legally binding unions-has recently become a lead
ing cause for the LGBT movement. In his book, vVhy Marriage?: The History
Shaping Todar 's Debate Over Cay Equality, historian George Chauncey writes
that the debate over same-sex marriage is "fully engaged" and constitutes "a
decisive moment for our generation." l " Championed by LGBT activists and
ANARCHISM, STONEWALL, AND THE TRANSFORMATIO N OF THE POLITICS OF H O M OSEXUALITY 1 87
denounced by cultural conservatives, the battle over whether or not gay men
and lesbians can marry is b eing fought in newspaper headlines , court dockets,
and state initiatives. It is true that not all LGBT activists see the battle for same
sex marriage as a positive development: historian John D 'Emilio, in a recently
published article entitled, " The Marriage Fight is Setting Us Back," laments
that, with their impulse towards " de-center[ing] and de-institutionaliz [ing]
marriage," the sexual p olitics of gay liberation, lesbian feminist, and queer ac
·
tivists has been forgotten in the rush to the altar. He notes that the fight for
gay marriage, which has been marked by the passage of constitutional bans
of same-sex marriage, has actually "created a vast body of new antigay law." 1 7
D 'E mili o 's voice i s , for the moment, a decisively marginalized one. The push
for marriage looks to remain " fully engaged" for the foreseeable future.
It is easy to imagine that Tucker, B erkman, and Lloyd might look poorly
on the quest for gay marriage. Mter all , those who wish to see same-sex mar
riage put on equal footing with opposite-sex marriage do not hesitate to make
use of the tools of the state to pursue and enforce their position. It is less clear
how the turn-of-the-century anarchists would view the contemporary LGBT
movement. Most likely they would see it as limited; they wanted to create a
whole new world, not reform and amend law and social attitudes. G oldman,
for example, was critical of single-issue style homosexual politics. She despaired
of what she saw as " one predominant tendency among homosexuals: . . . their
attempt to claim every outstanding personality for their creed." This was, Gold
man believed, a classic case of overcompensation in the face of oppression. " It
may be psychologically conditioned in all p ersecuted people to cling for sup
port to the exceptional types of every period," she wrote, but "while seemingly
a b enign impulse, this tendency to c elebrate one's own " could lead to p arochi
alism. "Persecution breeds sectarianism; this in return makes people limited in
their scope, and very often unfair in their appraisement of others." 1 8 Goldman
expressed the same idea somewhat less diplomatically in 1 924 when she wrote
Havelock Ellis that she c ould not tolerate the " narrowness" of many of the
lesbians she met; they were a " crazy lot" whose fixation on the c onditions of
their own oppression to the exclusion of all other matters grated on her. 19 It is
safe to say that Goldman's reaction to the Louise Michel case, and her frustra
tion with the " narrowness" of the lesbians she met while in exile was shaped
by the fact that she herself was frustrated in her political goals. Goldman's life
in exile was a nearly c ontinuous exp erience of frustration, which she may well
have been venting on the very "victims of oppression" that she championed.
But nonetheless, Goldman's critique reflects the different p olitical goals and
ideas of the anarchist sex radicals and those activists who pursue single-issue
sexual politics .
Ultimately, it does n o t matter i f the anarchists were the direct forbearers
of the contemp 9 rary LGBT rights movement, or whether they would align
themselves with those who support gay marriage. To truly understand and ap
preciate the live, and work of Tucker, Goldman, Lloyd, Abbott, Berkman, and
their comrades they need to be seen within the context of their own time. In
p o st-Stonewall America, it is hard to appreciate the originality and bravery of
the anarchist sex radicals . In their day, they were nearly alone in their defence of
p eople's right to express their erotic feelings free from the threat of arrest and
social ostracism. When Oscar Wilde was thrown in prison for " crimes against
nature," the anarchists rose to his defense, while others cheered his fall. They re
fused to let his voice be silenced, and they worked to ensure that others did not
share his cruel fate. In the decades that followed, anarchist sex radicals lectured,
wrote, and argued about the fundamental political and moral questions raised
by the Wilde trial. Almost alone among their contemporaries, the anarchist sex
radicals addressed the issue of homosexuality within the context of their larger
political goals : no mainstream politician did so; no major independent intellec
tual did so; no leading American scientific figure did so; and no social critic saw
the question of the social, ethical , and cultural place of same-sex love as worthy
of their time and energy. The work of the anarchist sex radicals was unique and
valuable. It is time we acknowledge and honor their accomplishments .
N OTES
Introduction (pages 1-12)

1 On Bentham and Fourier, see T# Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook if Gay and
Lesbiarl Politics, eds. Mark Blasius and Shane Phelan (NewYork: Routledge, 1 997) , 1 5-
33 and Saskia Poldervaart, "Theories About Sex and Sexuality in Utopian Socialism,"
in Gay Men and Sexual History of the Political Left, eds. Gert Hekma, Harry Oosterhuis,
and James Steakley (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1 995) , 4 1-67 .
2 See Barry D. Adam, The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement (Boston: Twayne, 1 987) ;
Phyllis Grosskurth, The TMiiful Victorian : A Biography ofJohn Addington Symonds (New
York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1 964) ; John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, The Ear
ly Homosexual Rights Movement, 1 8 64- 1 93 5 (New York: Times Change Press, 1 974) ;
James Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany (New York: Arno
Press, 1 975) ; Jeffrey Weeks and Sheila Rowbotham, Socialism and the New Life: The
'Personal and Sexual Politics if Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis (London: Pluto Press,
1 977) ; Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth
Century to the Present (London: Quartet Books, 1 990) and Sex, Politics, and Society: The
Regulation if Society Since 1 800, second edition (London : Longman, 1 989) ; Lesbians in
Germany, 1 8905- 1 9205, eds. Lillian Faderman and Brigitte Eriksson (Tallahassee, FL:
Naiad Press, 1 990) ; and Charlotte Wolff, Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in
Sexology (London: Quartet Books, 1 986)
3 See Peter Boag, Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific
Northwest (Berkeley: University of Cilifornia Press, 2003) ; John C. Burnham, "Early
References to Homosexual Communities in American Medical Writings." MedicalAs
peets of Human Sexuality 7, no. 8 (August 1 973) , 34, 40-4 1 , 46-49; George Chauncey,
Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male TMirld, 1 890- 1 940
1 90 FREE COMRADES
(New York: Basic Books, 1 994) ; John D'Emilio, "Capitalism and Gay Identity," in The
Lesbiall atld Gay Studies Reader, eds. Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David
M. Halperin (New York: Routledge, 1 993) , 467-476; John D'Emilio and Estelle B.
Freedman, llltimate Matters: A History of Sexuality ill America (New York: Harper and
Row, 1 988) ; Martin Duberman, About Time: Explorillg the Gay Past (New York: Merid
ian, 1991); Lisa Duggan, Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and Americall Modernity (Dur
ham, NC: Duke University Press, 2(00) ; Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay Americall History:
Lesbialls and Gay Men ill the U S.A (New York: Thomas Crowell, 1 976) ; Jonathan Ned
Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary (New York: Harper and Row, 1 983);
Jonathan Ned Katz, LoFe Stories: Sex Between l'vlen Before Homosexuality (Chicago: Uni
versity of Chicago Press, 20( 1 ) ; Steven Maynard, "Through a Hole in the Lavatory
Wall: Hommexual Subcultures, Police Surveillance, and the Dialectics of Discovery in
Toronto, 1 890-1930;'Journal if the History of Sexuality 5, no. 2 (October 1 994) , 207-
242; Lawrence Murphy, "Defining the Crime Against Nature: Sodomy in the United
States Appea.:!s Courts, 1 8 1 0-1 940," Journal of Homosexuality 19, no. 1 (1 990) , 49--66;
Michael D. Quinn, Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteertth Celltury Americans: A AIormon
Example (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1 996) ; Siobhan Somerville, Queering
the Color Line: Race and the IIlFention of Homosexuality in American Culture (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2000) ; and Jennifer Terry, An American Obsession: Science,
]\!fedicine, and Homosexuality in Alodern Society (Chicago : University of Chicago Press,
1 999) .
4 John Lauritsen, "Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson (Xavier Mayne) ( 1 868-1 942) in
BefiJYe Stoneuull: ActiFists for Gay and Lesbian Rights ill Historical Context, ed. Vern L.
Bullough (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2002) , 35-40 .
5 Earl Lind, The Female Impersonators (New York: The Medico-Legal Journal, 1922) ,
151.
6 Ibid . , 1 64, 1 46.
7 Chauncey, Gay New York, 43.
8 Katz, Gay A merican History, 366. More recently, Katz seems to take Lind's claims more
seriously. See Katz, Love Stories, 297-307. I think that Katz's more skeptical initial ap
praisal is correct.
9 Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The
History of a Leibian Community (New York: Routledge, 1 993) , 1 86.
10 Quoted i n Yearbookfor Sexual Intermediate Types (Berlin: Scientific Humanitarian Com
mittee, 1 923) .
11 Emma Goldman, "Anarchism: What it Really Stands For," in Anarchism and Other Es
says (New York: Dover, 1 969 [ 1 9 1 7]), 62.
12 Quoted 111 William O. Reichert, Partisans if Freedom: A Study in Americall Anarchism
(Bowling Grecn: Bowling Green University Press, 1976) , 4 1 7 .
13 Margaret Marsh, A narchist Women: 1 8 70- 1 920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1981), 3.
14 James Joll, The Anarchists (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1 964) , 1 62.
15 Emma Goldman, letter to Hirschfeld, January 1 923.
16 Richard Cleminson has published a number of essays on the politics of homosexuality
in the Spanish anarchist movement in the 1 930s and edited a collection of articles on
homosexuality from Revista Blanca. See Richard Cleminson, Alwrc/zism, Ideology, and
Same-Sex Desire (London: Kate Sharpley Library, 1 995); Richard Cleminson, "Male
Inverts and Homosexuals: Sex Discourse in the Anarchist Revista Blanca" in Gay }Hen
NOTES 191
and the Sexual History 4 the Political Left, 259-272; and Anarquismo y Homosexualidad:
A ntologia de Articulos de la Revisfa Blanca, Generadon Consciente, Estudios e Iniciales, ed.
Richard Cleminson (Madrid: Ediciones Libertarias, 1 995) . Hubert Kennedy has done
a great deal of work on German anarchist, John Henry Mackay, who, writing under
the pseudonym Sagitta, produced a number of defenses of intergenerational same-sex
love in the early-twentieth century. See Hubert Kennedy, Anarchist of Love: The Secret
Life ifJohn Henry Mackay (New York: Mackay Society, 1 983) and Dear Tucker: The Let
ters �fJohn Henry Mackay to Benjamin R. Tucker, ed. Hubert Kennedy (San Francisco:
Peremptory Publications, 1 9 9 1 ) . See also Walter Fahnders, "Anarchism and Homosex
uality in Wilhelmine Germany: Senna Hoy, Erich Miihsam, John Henry Mackay," in
Gay Me/! and the Sexual History �f the Political Left, 1 1 7-153. There is no monographic
study of anarchism and the politics of homosexuality for Europe or any single Euro
pean nation.
17 Candace Falk, Love, Anarchy and Emma Goldman (New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1 9 84) ; Alice Wexler, Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1 984) ; and Bonnie Haaland, Emma Goldman: Sexuality and the Impurity if the
State (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1 993) . See also Blanche Wiesen Cook, "Female
Support Networks and Political Activism: Lillian Wald, Crystal Eastman, Emma Gold
man." Chrysalis 3 ( 1 977) , 43-6 1 . Cook and Haaland do grapple with these questions,
though to different ends. Cook's study is short, while Haaland's work is longer, largely
historiographical, and interpretive and it does not rely on si!,wficant archival research.
Though I disagree with Haaland on a number of points, I have nonetheless found her
book to be very useful. Marsh's study of anarchist women also has material on anar
chism and the politics of homosexuality.
18 Quoted i n Everett Marshall, Complete Life of William McKinley and the Story of HisAs
sassination (Chicago: Historical Press, 1 90 1 ) , 76 . Marshall's book contains an interview
with Goldman.
Chapter 1 (pages 13-41)

1 Ann Uhry Abrams, "The Ferrer Center: New York's Unique Meeting of Anarchism
and the Arts," New York History, July 1 978, 3 1 1 . Abrams does not discuss Durant's lec
tures at any length.
2 Will Durant and Ariel Durant, A Dual Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1 977) , 38.
3 Will Durant, Transition: A Sentimental Story of One Minei and One Era, (Garden City:
Garden City Publishing, 1 927) , 1 68 .
4 Will and Ariel Durant, A Dual Autobiocl!raphy, 39.
5 The only clearly erotic relationship that Durant speaks of in his biography is his love
for and marriage to a young Ferrer Center student named Ida Kaufman. Kaufman,
who Durant affectionately called "Puck," a name given her by schoolmates, followed
Durant to Columbia after he left the Ferrer Center for the halls of academia. Kauul1an
changed her name to Ariel Durant and co-authored many ofWill Durant's historical
texts.
6 Katz, Gay and Lesbian Almanac, 1 6 .
7 Durant, 7rallSition, 1 67 .
8 Ibid.
9 Emma Goldman quoted in S. D. , "Farewell," Free Society, 13 August, 1 899, 2. This ar
ticle provides excerpts of Goldman's speeches.
1 92 FREE COMRADES
10 Dr. Georg Merzbach, "We Have Won a Great Battle," i n Katz, Gay American History,
38 1-382.
11 Emma Goldman quoted in S. D. , " Farewell," Free Society, 1 3 August 1899, 2.
12 Marsh, Anarchist Women, 69-70.
1.3 Richard Sonn, Anarchism (New York: Twayne, 1 992) , 46.
14 Peter Kropotkin, "Anarchism," in Kropotkin 's Revolutionary Pamphlets, ed. Roger Bald
win (New Y<)rk: Benjamin Blom, 1968) , 284-285 .
15 Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks, W'hy Socialism Failed in the United States: It
Didn 't Happen Here (NewYork: W W Norton, 2000) , 22.
16 Ibid., 23.
17 J . E Finn, "AP of L Leaders and the Question o f Politics i n the Early 1 8905," American
Studies, 7:3, 243. See also Frank H. Brooks, " Ideology, Strategy and Organization," 59.
18 Margaret Marsh, Anarchist lfilmen, 90.
19 Ibid., 77.
20 Hal D. Sears, The Sex Radicals: Free Love in High Victorian America (Lawrence, Kansas:
The Regents Press of Kansas, 1 977) , 22.
21 " Rapports du Congres Antiparlementaire International de 1900" in Les Temps Nou-
veaux Supplement Literaire (November 1 900) , n.p. Translations are my own.
22 Sonn, Anarchl'sm, 1 1 .
23 Marsh, Anarchist Women, 10.
24 Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, The American Communist Movement: Storming
Heaven Itself (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1 992) , 7 .
25 Daniel Pick, Faces of Degenemtion:A European Disorder, c. 1 848- 1 9 1 8 (New York: Cam
bridge University Press, 1 989) , 1 3 1 . Pick's work focuses on Europe. but similar ideas
were common on both sides of the Atlantic.
26 Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1 984) , 40 1 .
It should also b e mentioned that the Haymarket Tragedy inspired many prominent
individuals to join the anarchist ranks, Emma Goldman,Voltairine de Cleyre, and Ri
cardo Flores I\1ag6n, among them.
27 Theodore Roosevelt, " First Annual Address," in TIle State of the Union ft,Jessa};es of the
Presidents, 1 790- 1 966, volume 2, 1 861-1904, cd. Fred L. Israel (New York: Chelsea
House, 1 966) , 201 6, 2017, 2024.
28 Marsh, 8.
29 Quoted in Richard Drinnon, Rebel in Paradise:A Biography �f Emma Goldman (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1 96 1 ) , 323 .
30 Emma Goldm lll , "En Route," Alother Earth, December 1 908, 353.
31 Hutchins Hapgood, A Victorian in the Modern World (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and
Company, 1 939) , 202.
32 Floyd Dell, HIt'man as World Builders: Studies ill Modern Femillism (Chicago : Forbes and
Company, 1 9 1 3) , 58.
33 Floyd Dell, Intellectual vagabondage; An Apology for the Intelligentsia (New York: George
H. D oran, 1 926), 1 58-1 59.
34 David Kennedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1 970) , 1 2-13. Kennedy's comment is true in terms of the Eng
lish-language anarchists examined in this study. His remarks are less apt when describ
ing the non-English language movement and foreign movements.
35 Isabel Meredith, A Girl Among the Anarchists, Introduction by Jennifer Shaddock (Lin
coln, Neb. : University of Nebraska Press, 1 992) , 1 8 .
NOTES 1 93
36 Ibid. , 56.
37 Emma Goldman t o B e n L . Reitman, 28 August 1 9 1 2, Emma Goldman Papers:A Micro
film Edition. 20,0000 documents in 69 Reels. Candace Falk, Ronald J. Zboray, et al. ,
eds. (Alexandria: Chadwyck-Healey, Inc., 1 99 1 ) , reel 6 .
38 Mabel Dodge Luhan, Movers a n d Shakers (Albuquerque: University o f New Mexico
Press, 1985 [1 936]), 59.
39 Hapgood, A Victorian in the Modern World, 20 1 .
40 Quoted in Barbara Strachey, Remarkable Relations: The Story (if the Pearsall Smith Family
(London:Victor Gollancz, 1 9 8 1 ) , 207.
41 See Angus McLaren, " Sex and Socialism: The Opposition o f the French Left t o Birth
Control in the Nineteenth Century;' Joumal of the History of Ideas, July-September
1 976, 485; and David Bergman, Gaiety Transfigured: Gay Self-Representation in American
Literature (Madison: University ofWisconsin Press, 1 9 9 1 ) , 1 43 .
42 Frederic Trautmann, The Voice if Terror: A Biography ifJohann Most (Westport, Conn . :
Greenwood Press, 1 980) , 92. Despite being an important and colorful figure in Amer
ican anarchism, Most has not received the level of historical attention that one would
expect.
43 Will Durant, "An Afternoon With Kropotkin." Unpublished manuscript, Joseph Ishill
Papers.
44 Hubert Kennedy, 'Johann Baptist von Schweitzer: The Queer Marx Loved to Hate;'
in Gay Men and the Sexual History if the Political Left, 90.
45 Harry Kelly, "Anarchism: A Plea for the Impersonal," Mother Earth, February 1 908,
559.
46 See Anarchy I: A n Anthology of Emma Goldman 's Mother Earth, for a sample of the kinds
of essays that appeared regularly in Goldman's journal.
47 Emma Goldman to F. Heiner, 1 -8 June 1 934, Emma Goldman Papers, reel 3 1 .
48 Emma Goldman, Living My Life, 555.
49 On Parker, see the introductory notes to the article in Anarchy: An Anthology if Emma
Goldman 's Mother Earth, ed. Peter Glassgold, (Washington, n c . : Counterpoint, 200 1 ) ,
124.
50 R.A.P. , "Feminism in America," Mother Earth, February 1 9 1 5, 392-394.
51 Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 1 8 7(}- 1 920 (Urbana: University of Il
linois Press, 1 9 8 1 ) , 249.
52 L. Glen Seretan, "Daniel DeLeon and the Woman Question," in Flawed Liberation:
Socialism and Feminism, ed. Sally M. Miller (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1 9 8 1 ) , 6.
53 Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Dehs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana: University of Chicago
Press, 1 982) , 229.
54 Emma Goldman, "En Route," Mother Earth, December 1 908, 353.
55 Beqjamin R. Tucker, State Socialism and Anarchism, ed. James J. Martin (Colorado
Springs: R. Myles, 1 972) , 21-22.
56 loc. cit.
57 loc. cit.
58 Laurence Veysey, The Communal Experience: Anarchist and Mystical Countercultures in
America (New York: Harper and Row, 1 973) , 430.
59 C. L. James, "Sex Radicalism," The Demonstrator, 5 April 1 905, 3.
60 William Thurston Brown, The Evolution of Sexual Morality (Portland: The Modern
School, n.d.), 1 1 .
61 James S. Denson, "Sexual and Economic Reform-A Question of Precedence," Free

Society, 24 April 1 898. n.p.
62 Ego, "Relation of the Sexes," T71e Alarm, 24 November 1 888. n.p.
63 Quoted in Jesse F. B attan, '' 'The Word Made Flesh' : Language, Authority and Sexual
Desire in Late-Nineteenth Century America," in American Sexual Politics: Sex Gender,
and Race Since the Civil War, eds. John Fout and Maura Shaw Tantillo (Chicago: Chi
cago University Press, 1 993) , 1 1 3.
64 John William Lloyd, Psalms of the Race Root (n.p. , n.d.) , 1-4.
65 loco cit.
66 Michael Monahan, T71e Papyrus: A Magazine of Individuality, March 1 905, 1 5 .
67 Chauncey, Gay New York, 33.
68 Quoted in Howard P. Chudacoff, T71e Age of the Bachelor: Creating an American Subcul-
ture (Princeton, NJ. : Princeton University Press, 1 999) , 1 83 .
69 Marilyn Yalom, A History of the Wife (New York: Harper Collins, 200 1 ) , 286.
70 Glenda Riley, Divorce: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford, 1 99 1 ) , 1 1 5.
71 Emma Goldman, "Marriage and Love," in Anarchism mId Other Essays, 228.
72 Quoted in Paul Avrich, An American Anarchist: T71e Life of Voltairine de Cleyrc (Princ
eton, NJ. : Princeton University Press, 1 978) , 1 60.
73 Voltairine de Cleyre, " Sex Slavery," in Women Without Superstitioll: "No Gods-No Mas
ters, " T71e Collected Writings of WcJmen Freethinkers !!f the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centu
ries, ed. Annie Laurie Gaylor (Madison: Freedom From Religion Foundation, 1 997) ,
363.
74 John William Lloyd, T71e Free Com ra de, April 1 9 1 1 , 1 1 7.
75 Quoted in S. D. , "Farewell," Free Society, 1 3 August 1 899, 2.
76 Marsh, Anarchist Women, 9 1 .
77 Will Durant J nd Ariel Durant, A Dual Autobiography, 46.
78 Victoria Woodhull, "The Principles of Social Freedom," in T71e Victoria Woodhull Read
er, ed. by Madeline B. Stern (Weston, Mass . : M& S Press, 1 974) , 23-24.
79 In fact, with few exceptions, the non-libertarian left did not deal with the subject of
homosexuality until the 1 970s, when they were forced to confront the new sexual
politics of the post-Stonewall period. The Communist Party and many of the various
Trotskyite and Maoist sects failed to articulate a defense of same-sex relations. Well
into the1 970s, the Cp, Revolutionary Communist Party, and other Marxist-Leninist
groups were openly hostile to gay men and women. See David Thorstad, "Homo
sexuality and the American Left: The Impact of Stonewall," in Gay 11:Jcn and the Sexual
History of the Political Left, 3 1 9-349.
80 James Steakley, " Iconography of a Scandal: Political Cartoons and the Eulenburg Af
fair in Wilhelrnin Germany," in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian
Past, eds. Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey (New York: New
American Library, 1 989) , 223.
81 Ibid., 239.
82 "A German Muckraker," Wilshire's, January 1 908, 1 1 .
83 "Observations and Comments," Mother Earth, November 1 907, 366.
84 lac. cit.
85 Hal Sears, The Sex Radicals: Free Love in Victorian AlIlerica (Lawrence: The Regents Press
of Kansas) , 226 ,
86 Lois Waisbrooker, My Century Plant (Topeka, Kansas: Independent Publishing Com
pany, 1 896) , 1 L Waisbrooker was born in 1 820; the shift in the anarchist position on
N OTES 1 95
homosexuality that occured at the turn of the century was, to some extent, a genera
tional one.
87 Moses Harman, Diggingfor Bedrock (Valley Falls, Kansas: Lucifer Publishing Company,
1 890) , 1 68 .
88 C. L. James, "Anarchism: T h e Discussion of Its Principles Continued," Th e A larm, 8
August 1 88 5 , 3 .
89 "Only B ooks that Teach Anarchy are Sold in this Sixth Avenue Shop," New York Herald,
April 1 2 , 1 908, 6 .
90 Irving C . Rosse, " Homosexuality in Washington, D. c." in Katz, Gay American History,
42.
Chapter Two (pages 43-68)

Goldman, Living My Life, 269. Barry Pateman suggests that Goldman may have exag
gerated her efforts on Wilde's behalf in this passage. It may well be that she amplified
her record, but the essential truth of her claim remains: she defended Wilde when it
was not popular to do so.
2 Quoted in John Ehrenberg, Proudhon and His Age (New Jersey: Humanities Press,
1 996) , 1 09.
3 Benj amin R. Tucker, "The Criminal Jailers of Oscar Wilde," Liberty, 1 5 June 1 895, 4.
4 See Sears, The Sex Radicals: Free Love in Victorian A merica, 8 1 -96.
5 Ibid. , 1 HH 1 1 .
6 See Martin Henry Blatt, Free Love and A narchism : TIle Biography of Ezra Heywood (Ur
bam.: University of Illinois Press, 1 989) .
7 Emma Goldman, "Anarchism: What It Really Stands For," Anarchism and Other Essays
(New York: Dover, 1 969 [ 1 9 1 7] ) , 5 5 .
8 "Roosevelt is not Friend of Labor," The Oregonian, June 3, 1 907
9 . "Mild Comedy at the Tabor; Virile Talk at Woman's Club: Emma Goldman," Denver
Post, 22 April 1 9 1 2 .
10 Emma Goldman to Ben Capes, 23 June 1 92 5 , Emma Goldman Papers, reel 1 5.
11 Alexander B erkman, What is Communist Anarchism (New York: Dover Publication,
1 972 [ 1 929]) 59-60.
12 See Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy, 353.
13 Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism (London : Freedom Press, 1 996 [ 1 935] ) ,
213
14 Quoted in Karl Beckson, Londoll in the 1 890s : A Cultural History (New York: Norton,
1 992) , 20.
15 See Beckson, 3-3 1 . And Mark Bevir, "The Rise of Ethical Anarchism in Britain,
1 885-1 900," Historical Research (June 1 996) : 1 43-1 65.
16 While a number o f very good studies have examined the relationship between artists
and anarchism in Europe-particularly Paris-very few studies of the American cul
tural landscape have done so. An exception to this, is the excellent book, Henry E May,
The End ofAmerican Innoce/1ce: A Study of the First Years of Our Own Time, 1 9 1 2- 1 9 1 7
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1 992 [ 1 959] ) .
17 Who authored Catechism is J matter of some historical debate. Paul Avrich argues that
it was largely the work of Nechaev, although certainly Bakunin had a great influence
on the work. On the relationship between the two men see Paul Avrich, Anarchist
Portraits (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1 988), 32-52.
18 Sergei Nechaev, Catechism of the Revolutionist (London : Aldgate Press, 1 989) , 4.
19 E . H. Carr, Michaei Baklmin (New York:Vintage, 1 (6 1 ) , 392.

20 George Wo o dcock : Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and A10vements (New York:
Penguin, 1 986) , 1 43 .
21 Hubert Kennedy, "Johann Baptist von Schweitzer: The Queer Marx Loved to Hate,"
in Gay Men ,md the Sexual History of the Political Left, 86-89. My discussion ofBakunin
and Nechaev's relationship is heavily indebted to Kennedy.
22 Eileen Boris. A rt and Labor: Ruskin, Morris, and the Craftsman Ideal in America (Philadel
phia: Temple University Press, 1 986) , xi.
23 Ban,�or Main" Commercial, October 4, 1 882, quoted in Rose Snider "Oscar Wilde's
Progress Down East," New England Quarterly, XIII ( 1 940) : 1 1 .
24 Oscar Wilde quoted in Jeffrey Escoffier, "Oscar Wilde's Politics: The Homosexual as
Artist as Socialist," The Gay Alternative, 10 ( 1 975) , 6.
25 George Woodcock, " Introduction" Oscar Wilde, The Soul oflvIa n under Socialism (Lon
don: Porcupine Press, n.d.), vii-viii.
26 Christopher Hitchens, "Oscar Wilde's Socialism" Dissent (Fall, 1 995) : 5 1 6.
27 Oscar Wilde, The Soul oj Man under Socialism, reprinted in George Woodcock, Oscar
Wilde: The Double Image (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1 989) , 257-258.
28 Emma Goldman to Ben Capes, June 23, 1 925, Emma Goldman Papers, reel 1 5 .
29 Benjamin R . Tucker, "On Picket Duty," Liberty, April 4, 1 89 1 , 1 .
30 Terence V. Powderly, "Editorial," Journal of the Knights of Labor quoted in Benj amin R.
Tucker, illstead oj a Book: By a Man Too Busy to Write Olle (New York: Benjamin R..
Tucker, 1 893) , 37.
31 S e e Terence V. Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 1 859 t o 1 889 (Philadelphia, 1 890) , 27 1-
288.
32 "A Criticism and Reply," Liberty, December 26, 1 885, 1 .
33 On the DeseH News see Quinn, Same-Sex Dynam ics Amung Nineteenth- Century Ameri
cans, 3 1 4-3 1 5 .
34 Benjamin Tuc ker, "On Picket Duty," Liberty, April 20, 1 895, 1 .
35 See Thomas Beer, The Ala uve Decade: American Life at the end of the Nineteenth Century
(New York: Alfred Knopf, 1 926) , 1 26-129. Beer thanks "Mr. Charles Cleary Nolan
for the use of ,1is . . . Wildiana and his monstrous collections of American religious elo
quence." (Beer, 267) .
36 Richard Ellman, Oscar Wilde (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1 988) , 458.
37 Quoted in "The Oscar Wilde Revival," Currmt Literature, November 1 906, 52 1 .
38 Elsa Barker, "Oscar Wilde," Current Literature, July 1 907, 1 06 .
39 On the Alice Ward / Freda Mitchell case, see Duggan, Sapphic Slashers.
40 Havelock Ellis. Studies in the Psychology 0( Sex: volume II: Sexual Inversion (Philadelphia:
F. A. Davis Company, 1 928) , 352. See also Ed Cohen, Talk on the Wilde Side: Towards a
GC�1Calogy of a Discourse on Male Sexuality (New York: Routledge, 1 993) , 98-99.
41 On personal correspondence, see Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, TI,e PaUier and PassiolJ
af M. Carey Thomas (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1 994) , 286-287; and Cohen, Talk on the
Wilde Side, 98. On "The Sins of Oscar Wilde" see Ellman, Oscar Wilde, 575.
42 Cohen, Talk 011 the Wilde Side, 1 .
43 Goldman, Livir!g My Life, 269.
44 Tucker, "On Picket Duty," Liberty, 20 April 1 895, 1 .
45 Octave Mirabeau, "Oscar Wilde's Imprisonment," Liberty, 13 July 1 895, 6-7 .
N OTES 197
46 Richard Sonn, Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin de Siecle France (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1 989) , 1 76. See also Alexander Varias, Paris and the Anarchists: Aes
thetes and Subversives During the Fin de Siecle (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1 996) .
47 Sears, The Sex Radicals, 226-227.
48 Tucker, "The Criminal Jailers of Oscar Wilde," 4-5 .
49 loco cit.
50 Chauncey, Gay New York, 43, 84-85, 88-96, 1 40-1 4 1 .
51 Tucker, "The Criminal Jailers o f Oscar Wilde," 4-5 .
52 On the Footes, see Blatt, Free Loue and Anarchism, and Sears, The Sex Radicals.
53 E. B. Foote Jr. , " Liberty Run Wilde," Liberty, 1 3 July 1 895, 6.
54 Cohen, Talk on the Wilde Side, 1 98.
55 Quoted i n Hidden Heritage: History and the Gay Imagination: An Anthology, ed. Bryne
Fone (New York: Avocation Press, 1 980) , 1 97 .
56 Tucker, " A 'Liberal' Comstock," Liberty, 1 3 July 1 895, 2-3.
57 James F. Morton Jr. , "The Many Roads to Liberty," The Agitator, 1 5 February 1 9 1 1 .
58 Robert E . Riegel, " Changing American Attitudes Toward Prostitution," Journal of the
History of Ideas Ouly-September 1 968) , 45 1 .
59 Tucker, Instead of a Book, 1 6 1 .
60 Linda R. Hirshman and Jane E. Lanson, Hard Bargains: The Politics '!f Sex (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1 998) , 1 3 1 .
61 Tucker, " A 'Liberal' Comstock," 2-3.
62 The Firebrand, 21 August 1 89 5 .
63 Ellman, Oscar Wilde, 532.
64 Oscar Wilde, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," in Oscar Wilde, The Soul '!f Man and
Prison Writings, ed. Isobel Murray (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1 990) , 1 70.
65 Tucker, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," Liberty, March 1 899, 5 .
66 loco cit.
67 Quoted in B e ckson, London in the 1 8905, 229.
68 Tucker, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," 5 .
69 Benj amin Tucker t o Henry Bool, May 2 1 , 1 899, Ishill Collection.
70 Oscar Wilde, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," The Literary World, 1 9 August 1 899, 268.
71 See "The Critics on Oscar Wilde's Poem," Liberty, May 1 899, 4, 5 , 8 .
72 Chauncey, Gay New York, 1 0 .
73 "The Ennobling Influence of Sorrow (From Oscar Wilde's 'De Profundis' ) ," Mother
Earth, July 1 906, 1 3 .
74 Goldman, "The Unjust Treatment o f Homosexuals," i n Katz, Gay A merican History,
379.
75 Goldman, "The Tragedy at Buffalo," Mother Earth, October 1 906, 1 1 .
76 John William Lloyd, The Dwellers in the vale Sunrise (Westwood, Mass: Ariel Press,
1 904) , 4.
77 Ibid . , 20.
78 Ibid . , 1 65-1 75. See also Veysey, Communal Experience, 27.
79 Veysey, Communal Experience, 20.
80 See Robert K. Martin, "Knights-Errant and Gothic Seducers : The Representation of
Male Friendship in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America," in Hidden From History: Re
claiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, eds . Martin Dub erman, Martha Vicinus, and George
Chauncey Jr. (New York: Meridian, 1 989) . Native Americans, whom Lloyd saw as the
apotheosis of the "natural man," fascinated him. "The American aborigine," he wrote,
1 98 FREE COMRADES
"was the noblest savage of his time, if not all time." Lloyd believed that I ndian society
was a prime example of anarchist ideas put into practice. "Here," he wrote, "we fmd
a remarkable condition of individual liberty and responsibility, equality, fraternity, and
solidarity." (Liberty, 23 November 1 889, 6.) In the early 1 900s, Lloyd traveled to the
Southwest-·"at the invitation of my gentle and warm-hearted Pima friend, Edward
Herbert Weston"-and wrote a study, entitled Aw-aw Tam Indian Nights, in which he
chronicled the "mystic and legendary tales" of the "simple, kindly, hospitable people"
he lived with. See John William Lloyd, Aw-aw-tam Indian Nights; Being the Myths and
Legends of the Pimas ofArizona (Westfield, NJ : The Lloyd Group, 1 ( 1 1 ) .
81 James Gifford, Daynejord 's Library:American Homosexual Writitlg, 1 900-- 1 9 1 3 (Amherst:
University oCMassachusetts Press, 1 995) , 1 2- 1 3 .
82 Rose Florence Freeman, "Oscar Wilde," The Free Spirit, Vol. I , Issue I , 1 9 1 9, 1 8-20.
83 Ben Reitman, "Vengeance," Alother Earth , July 1 9 1 6 , 529.
84 "The Prisoners," Free Society, August 25, 1 90 1 , 1 .
Chapter Three (pages 69-95)

Richard Drinnon, Rebel in Paradise: A Biography of Emma Goldman (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1 9 6 1 ) , 1 60.
Leonard Abbott in The Centenary �r Walt VVhitma n 's "Leaves if Grass," Selected Excerpts
From the Writings of various Authors, ed. Joseph Ishill (Berkeley Heights , N.J. : Oriole
Press, 1 955) , 55.
3 Emma Goldman, "On the Road," Mother Earth, April, 1 907, 65. On the history of
Mother Earth, see Peter Glassgold, "Introduction: The Life and Death of Mother Earth,"
in Anarchy: AI1 Anthology of Emma Goldman 's Alother Earth, ed. Peter Glassgold (Wash
ington, D. c . : Counterpoint, 20( 1 ) , xv-xxxvi .
4 Leonard Abbott in The een t m a ry ,1Walt H/hitman 's Lea ves rif Grass, " 55.
"
5 W F.B . , "Literature : Review of Milia Tupper Maynard's Walt Whitman," Free Society,
March 8, 1 903 , 3.
6 William Thurston Brown, Walt VVhitman: Poet if the Human Whole (Portland: The
Modern School, n.d.) , 27.
7 Katz, Love Stories, 249.
8 Leonard Abbott, ''The Anarchist Side ofWalt Whitman," The Rvad To Freedom, March,
1 926, 2.
9 John Addington Symonds, Sexual Inversion : A Classic Study if Homosexuality (New
York: Bell Publishing Company, 1 984 [1 896] ) , 1 83. See also John Addington Symonds,
Walt VVhitman:A Study (London: John C. Nimmo, 1 893) .
10 E dward Carpenter i n Th e Centenary ifTlf,alt vVhitman 5 "Leaves if Grass, " 30.
11 Katz, Love Stories, 257-27 1 .
12 Walt Whitman, " A Woman Waits For Me," The Complete Poetry alld Prose if Walt Whit
man: Two Volumes in One with an introduction by Malcolm Cowley (Garden City:
Garden City Books, 1 948) , 1 24.
13 Quoted in Byr ne R. S. Fone, A Road to Stonewall, 1 750-- 1 969: Male Homosexuality and
Homophobia in English and American Literature (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1 995),
43 .
14 Benj amin Tucker i n The Centenary '1Walt VVhitman's "Leal'es if Grass, " 66-74.
15 Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories, 6 .
16 Ibid. , 335.
NOTES 1 99
17 F o r a discussion of the periodization of this change, s e e Steven Seidman, Romantic

Longings: Love in America, 1 83 0- 1 980 (New York: Routledge, 1 9 9 1 ) , 1 09-1 1 7 . See
also "Introduction;' In Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, eds.
Martin Baum! Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey Jr. (NewYork: New
American Library, 1 989) , 5 .
18 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men : English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1 985), 202. Sedgwick focuses on English read
ers ofWhitman, among them John Addington Symonds and Edward Carpenter.
19 Benj amin Tucker, " Obscenity and the State," Liberty, 27 May 1 882, 2.
20 Benjamin Tucker, "On Picket Duty," Liberty, October 28, 1 882, 1 .
21 Walt Whitman: Th e Correspondence: Volume I V: 1 88fr 1 889, ed. Edwin Havilland Miller
(New York: New York University Press, 1 969) , 372.
22 Quoted in Tucker in The Centenary qfWalt Whitman's "Leaves qf Grass, " 73.
23 John William Lloyd, "Mount Walt Whitman," Egoism, May 1 892, 1 .
24 John William Lloyd, "A Poet of Nature;' Liberty, May 7, 1 892, 3
25 C. H. Cheyse, "Dawn Thought," Discontent, April 10, 1 90 1 , 1 .
26 Lloyd, The Free Comrade, October 1 902, 6 .
27 Ibid., 5 .
28 Ibid. , 3 .
29 Edward Carpenter, [olaus: An Anthology qf Friendship (New York: Pagan Press, 1 982
[1902]), 1 88 .
30 Edward Carpenter, Towards Democracy (London: Gay Men's Press, 1 985 [1 885]) , 4 1 5 .
31 Havelock Ellis, My Life (London: Neville Spearman, 1 967) , 1 63 .
32 John William Lloyd, The Free Comrade, October 1 9 10, 46.
33 Katz, Gay American History, 364.
34 John William Lloyd, The Free Comrade, October 1 902, 6-7 .
35 Carpenter, [olaus, 1 88-1 89.
36 John William Lloyd, The Free Comrade, October 1 902, 7.
37 Ibid . , 6-7 .
38 Earl Lind, Autobiography <?f an Androgyne (New York: Me dico-Legal Journal, 1 9 1 8) ,
2 1 2-21 3 . On the figure of the fairy, s e e George Chauncey, Gay New York. In his laud
able attempt to emphasize the resistance and inventiveness of the men he studied,
Chauncey acknowledges, but downplays, the violence fairies dealt with on a near
daily basis. How, for example, did tradespeople, landlords, and employers outside the
sex and entertainment businesses treat fairies? Also absent from Chauncey's study is
any exploration of the religion's role in shaping the view of same-sex sexuality. There
is admittedly little information on such matters, but absence of negative reports hardly
supports the contention there was relatively little prejudice. The very sources that
seem to indicate a relative tolerance of fairies among the working class are also filled
with examples of incredible violence and hatred.
39 Lind, Autobiography qf an Androgyne, 1 17.
40 Alan Sinfield, The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde, and the Queer Moment (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1 994), 1 1 0.
42 Chushichi Tsuzuki, Edward Carpenter, 1 844- 1 929: Prophet of Human Fellowship (Cam
bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1 980) , 1 1 5 .
43 John William Lloyd, The Free Comrade, September 1 90 1 , 7.
44 Lloyd, The Free Comrade, August 1 902, 6.
200 FREE COMRADES
45 Lloyd, The Free Comrade, May 1 902, 6.

46 B ryne R. S . Fone, A Road to Stonewall: Male Homosexuality and Homophobia in English
and A merican Literature, 1 750- 1 9 69 (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1 995) , 95.
47 Lloyd, The Pree Comrade, October 1 902, 3 .
48 Stanley Pie,�son, "Edward Carpenter: Prophet of a Socialist Millennium," Victorian
Studies (March 1 970) , 306.
50 Charles B. 'VVillard, Whitman 'I American Fame: The Growth of His Reputation in America
After 1 892 (Providence, R . I . : Drown University, 1 950) , 32. See also Harold Blodgett,
Walt Whitman in Englatld (New York City: Russell and Russell, 1 973) .
51 John William Lloyd, "The Overlook," Ariel, March 1 907, 7 .
52 On the U.S. and England, s e e Willard and Blodgett. On Canada, see Gary Kinsman,
The Regulati,)n of Desire: Homo and Hetero Sexualities, revised edition (Montreal: Black
Rose Books , 1 996) , 1 23-1 24.
53 William James, The varieties �f Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, Green and
Co. , 1 902) , 85.
54 Oscar Lovell Trigg, The Changing Order: A Study of Democracy (Chicago : Charles H.
Kerr & Company, 1 905) , 267.
55 John Willian: Lloyd, The Free Comrade, July 1 9 1 1 , 1 57-1 58.
56 Quoted in Clara Barrus, Whitman and Burroughs: Comrades (Port Washington, NY:
Kennikat Press, 1 968 [ 1 9 3 1 ]) , 3 1 3 .
57 Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana, Ill . : University of Illinois
Press, 1 982) , 38 .
.
58 Malcolm Cowley, " Introduction," The Complete Poetry and Prose oflMllt Whitman, 1 0 .
59 William 0 Reichert, "Edward C. Carpenter's Socialism in Retrospective," Our Gen
eration (Fall/Winter, 1 987-88) , 1 87 .
60 Quoted in Chushichi Tsuzuki, Edward Carpenter, 1 844-- 1 929: Prophet of Human Fellow
ship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 980) , 97-9S.
61 Will S . Monme, "Walt Whitman and Other American Friends o f Edward Carpenter,"
in Edward Carpenter: In Appreciation, ed. Gilbert Beith (London: George Allen & Un
win, 1 93 1 ) , 1 52 .
62 Leonard Abbott, "J. William Lloyd: Brother of Carpenter and Thoreau," The Comrade,
July 1 902, 225.
63 Leonard Abbott, "Edward Carpenter, A Radical Genius," The Road to f'reedom, Sep
tember 1 93 1 , 7.
64 Leonard Abbott, "Edward Carpenter: A Recollection and a Tribute," The Free Spirit,
May 1 9 1 9, 39.
65 Paul Avrich, The A10dem School (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1 980) , 1 72.
66 Leonard Abbott, The Free Comrade, July 1 9 1 0, 1 1 .
67 John William Lloyd, "The Overlook," Ariel, January 1 909, 23.
68 Ibid . , 2 5 .
69 Ibid. , 2 7 .
70 Marsh, A narchIst I%men, 1 7 2 .
71 John William Lloyd, "The Overlook," Arie/, January 1 909, 27-28.
72 John William Lloyd, The Free Comrade, September-October 1 9 1 1 , 1 75-1 77.
73 See " Literary Notes," The Agitator, 15 July 1 9 1 1 .
74 George Sylvester Viereck, "The Ethical Dominant in American Poetry," Current Litera
ture, September 1 9 1 1 , 323-324.
NOTES 201
75 loc. cit. It is possible that, in the original B erlin lecture, of which Lloyd may have had
some knowledge,Viereck used the term "homosexuality" when discussing Whitman.
76 Elmer Gertz, Odyssey if a Barbarian: The Biography of George Sylvester Viereck (Pro
metheus Books, 1 978) , 34.
77 George S.viereck, My Flesh and Blood: A Lyrical Autobiography with Indiscreet Annotations
(New York: Liveright, 1 93 1 ) , 58.
78 Gertz, 34-3 5 .
79 See James Steakley, The Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany (New York:
Arno Press, 1 975) .
80 Veysey, Commlmal Experience, 89, n. 22. Veysey had access to papers held by Abbott's
son, William Morris Abbott.
81 Gertz, Odyssey �f a Barbarian 5 5-59, 83.
82 George S.Viereck, "The Ballad of the Golden Boy" in The Candle and the Flame (New
York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1 9 1 2) , 25-28. See also "Marginalia," in The Candle
and the Flame, 1 08 .
83 M. D. O 'Brien, "Socialism and Infamy: the Homogenic or Comrade Love Exposed:
An Open Letter in Plain Words for a Socialist Prophet," in Nineteenth-Century Writings
on Homosexuality: A Sourcebook, ed. Chris White (London: Roudedge, 1 999) , 23.
84 David Goldstein and Martha Moore Avery, Socialism: The Nation of Fatherless Children
(Boston: Thomas J. Flynn and Company, 1 9 1 1 ) . 1 64-165. Like many critics of the Left,
the authors blend together members of the Socialist Party. utopians, and anarchists in
one huge free-love conspiracy.
85 David Reynolds, Willt Whitman 's America: A Cultural Biography (New York: Knopf,
1 995) , 1 98.
86 Jose Marti, "Walt Whitman," in Marti on the U S.A . , selected and translated by Luis A.
Baralt (Carbondale, Ill . : Southern Illinois University Press, 1 966) , 1 0 .
87 "Whitman and War," The Chap Book, 1 5 February 1 898, 290. See also Fone, A Road To
Stonewall, 1 82-1 89.
88 Walter Grunzweig, "Whitman in the German-Speaking Countries," in IVillt Whitman
and the World, eds. Gay Wilson Allen and Ed Folsom (Iowa City, Iowa: University of
Iowa Press, 1 995), 1 65 .
89 "The Feminine Soul in Whitman," Current Literature,July 1 906, 53-56. The author of
this article is not identified, but it must have been Viereck, who read German and was
quite interested in sexology. The author of the Current Literature article clearly had an
understanding of German and was also familiar with the work of Ellis, John Adding
ton Symonds, Ulrich, Hirschfeld, and other sexologists.
90 Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to
the Present (London: Quartet Books, 1 990) , 8 1 .
91 loco cit.
92 Emma Goldman to Ben Capes, 1 2 November 1 927, Emma Goldman Papers, reel 1 9 .
93 Earl Lind, The Female-Impersonators, 36.
94 Henry O'Higgins, Alias Walt Whitman (Newark: The Carteret Book Club, 1 930) , 39,
35. This short work is a reprint of the Harper's article.
9S Emma Goldman to Evelyn Scott, 21 December 1 927, in Nowhere at Home: Lettersfrom
Exile if Emma Goldmarl and A lexander Berkmall, eds. Richard and Anna Maria Drinnon
(New York: Schocken Books, 1 975) , 1 4 1 .
96 loc. cit.
97 loc. cit.
202 FREE COMRADES
Chapter Four (pages 97-125)

1 Ben Reitman, "Speech Delivered at Lenox Hall after His Release from Prison," Mother
Earth, Aug m t 1 9 1 6, 583.
2 Ibid. , 5 8 1
3 loco cit.
4 Ibid., 583.
5 loc. cit.
6 Louis Dwigllt, "The Sin of Sod om is the Vice of Prisoners," in Katz, Gay American His-
tor),, 27-28.
7 Kate Richards O'Hare, "Prison Lesbianism," in Katz, Gay American History, 69.
8 Katz, Gay American History, 578, n. 69.
9 Emma Golclman, "The Unjust Treatment of Homosexuals," in Katz, Gay American
History, 379.
10 Goldman, Living My Life, 667 . See also Haaland, Emma Goldman, 1 74-1 76.
11 Leonard Abbott, "An Intellectual Giant," Mother Earth, December, 1 9 1 2 , 328.
12 Peter Kropotkin, In Russian and French Prisons (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1 99 1
[ 1 906] ) , 335--336.
.
13 Quoted i n "\Vhat the Critics Say," Mother Earth, March 1 9 1 3 , n.p .
14 B ayard Boyesen, "Prison Memoirs," Mother Earth, February 1 9 1 3 , 424.
15 Alex Kershaw, Jack London: A Life (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1 997) . Kershaw sug
gests that London had a sexual relationship with another prisoner during his jail stay
(36-38.)
16 Hutchins Hapgood, "As Introductory," in Alexander Berkman's Prison ;Hemoirs of an
Anarchist (New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association 1 9 1 2 ) , ix-xi.
17 Berkman, Prison lVlemoirs, 263.
18 John William Ward, "Violence, Anarchy, and Alexander Berkman," New York Review of
Books (November, 5 1 970) , 27.
19 Hutchins Hapgood, "As Introductory," X .
20 "Two Indictments of Our Prison System," Curretlt Literature, December 1 9 1 2 , 673.
21 Quoted in "What the Critics Say," Mother Earth, March 1 9 1 3 . n.p.
22 Alexander Berkman, "October 1 9th, 1 9 1 2 ," Alexander Berkman Archive, Internation
al Institute of Social History.
23 Emma Goldman, Livin,fl My Life, 979-980.
24 Edward Carpenter, " Introduction," Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist
(Lolldon: The C. W Daniel Company, 1 926) , n.p.
25 Emma Goldman to Alexander Berkman, 28 May 1 925, Emma Goldman Papers, reel
15.
26 See, tor example, Berkman's relationship with Wingie. Wingie's interest in Berkman
has a physical component, but Berkman remains ignorant of this. At one point, Wingie
gives Berkman's "cheek a tender pat," and Berkman steps back, "with the instinctive
dislike of a man's caress." Berkman's phrase seems to indicate that he believes that
physical touch between men is "instinctively" uncomfortable. Unlike Red, however,
Wingie does r: ot push the matter; he is embarrassed by his clumsy attempt at seduc
tion. He tells Berkman, with "a faint flush stealing over his prison pallor," that he was
only " trying" b im. Berkman, clearly clueless, wonders what all this could mean. "What
could he have meant," he writes, "by 'trying' me?" See Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 1 44-
145.
27 Ibid . , 1 60-1 65 .
NOTES 203
28 Ibid . , . 1 69-1 7 1 .
29 . Ibid. , 1 73.
30 Ibid., 325.
31 Ibid. , 243.
32 Ibid. , 1 7 3 .
33 Ibid., 2 5 7 .
34 S e e Boag, Same-Sex Affairs.
35 Chauncey, Gay New York, 9 5 .
36 loc. cit.
37 loco cit.
38 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an A narchist, 3 1 6, 3 1 9 .
39 Ibid . , 32 1-4.
40 Ibid., 343.
41 Ibid., 350.
42 See Blanche Weisen Cook, "The Historical Denial of Lesbianism." Radical History Re-
view 20 (Spring-Summer 1 979) : 60--6 5 .
43 Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 403.
44 Boyesen, "Prison Memoirs," 423.
45 Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 401 -402.
46 Ibid., 403-408.
47 Ibid . , 440.
48 On David and Jonathan see Quinn, Same-Sex Dynamics and Nineteenth- Century Ameri-
cans, 1 1 2-1 1 3 .
49 Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 430-434.
50 Ibid., 437-439.
51 Ibid., 438.
52 Ibid. , 429.
53 Ibid., 433 .
54 Edward Carpenter, Homogenic Love and its Place in a Free Society, (London: Redundancy
Press, 1 980 [1 895]) , 1 4-1 5 .
56 Ibid., 478.
57 Goldman, Living My Life, 484.
58 E mma Goldman to unknown , 25 September 1 9 1 1 , Emma Goldman Papers, reel 1 7.
59 See advertisement in Mother Earth, January 1 9 1 1 , n . p.
60 Oscar Wilde, "The Ennobling Influence of Sorrow," Mother Earth, July 1 906, 1 4 .
61 Goldman, "The Unj ust Treatment o f Homosexuals," i n Katz, Gay American History,
379.
62 Goldman, "Prisons," in A narchism and Other Essays, 1 1 1 .
63 Marie Ganz, Rebels: Into Anarchy and Out Again (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Com
pany, 1 9 1 9) , 224. Ganz would quickly renounce her former colleagues, an ideological
journey chronicled in her memoir.
65 Reb Raney, "Alexander Berkman in San Francisco," Mother Earth, June 1 9 1 5 , 1 52.
66 loco cit.
67 Billie McCullough, "Alexander Berkman in Los Angeles," Mother Earth, May 1 9 1 5 ,
1 13.
204 FREE COMRADES
68 Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, A Fragment of the Prison Experience �f Emma
Goldman �nd Alexander Berkman (New York: Stella Comyn, 1 9 1 9) , 20.
69 Goldman, "Prison," 1 1 6 .
70 S e e David Nicoll, Life in English Prisons: Mysteries of Scotland Yard (London: Kate Sharp-
ley Library, 1 992) , 22.
71 Quoted i n Tsuzuki, Edward Carpenter, 1 1 4.
72 Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 225
73 Jeffrey Weeks, Comillg Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to
the Present (London: Quartet Books. 1 990) , 7 1 .
74 Ibid., 1 3 1 - 1 .32.
75 Emma Goldman to Edward Carpenter, 29 October 1 925, Emma Goldman Papers, reel
15.
76 Emma Goldman to Alexander Berkman, May 1 5- 1 6 , 1 927, Emma Goldman Papers, reel
lR.
77 Edward Carpenter, " Introduction," i n Berkman, Prison Memoirs, n.p.
Chapter Five (pages 1 27-1 52)

1 John William Lloyd, TIle Free Comrade, August 1 902, 5-6.
2 Marsh writes that "Lloyd thought of himself as a social scientist seeking the means by
which society could be made both virtuous and free." Marsh, A/larchist iMJmen, 82.
3 Emma Goldman, "En Route," Mother Earth, December 1 908, 353.
4 Emma Goldman, "What I Believe," in Red Emma Speaks, 57.
5 Hulda Potter-Loomis, Social Freedom: The Important Factor in Human Evolutiorl (Chi
cago : M. Har man, n.d.) . 6-7 . See Veysey, Communal Experience, 29.
6 On the relative underdevelopment of American sexological work as compared to Eu
ropean sexology, see Bert Hansen, "American Physicians "Discovery' of Homosexuals :
1 8RO-1 900: /\ New Diagnosis in a Changing Society," in Framing Disease: Studies in
Cultural History, eds. Charles E. Rosenberg and Janet Goldin (Rutgers, New Jersey:
Rutgers University Press, 1 992) .
7 " Observation.> and Comments," Mother Earth, August 1 9 1 1 , 1 66.
8 Emma Goldman to Magnus Hirschfeld, January 1 923, Emma Goldman Papers, reel 1 3 .
9 John William Lloyd to Joseph Ishill, March 30, 1 922, Ishill Collection.
10 John William Lloyd, "Havelock Ellis: The Listener," unpublished manuscript, Ishill
Collection.
11 Emma Goldman, Living My Life, 1 73.
12 Emma Goldm an to Magnus Hirschfeld, January 1 923, Emma Goldman Papers, reel 1 3 .
13 John William Lloyd, "Havelock Ellis: The Most Satisfactory Great Man I Ever Met,"
in Havelock Ehis:An Appreciation, ed. Joseph Ishill (Berkeley Heights, N.J. : Oriole Press,
1 929) , 167.
14 Bolton Hall, "Havelock Ellis: A Most Radical and a Most Courageous Pioneer:' in
Havelock Ellis:.4n "4ppreciation, 202-203.
15 Haaland, Emm � Goldman, 1 65 .
16 Lillian Faderman and Brigitte Erikson, "Introduction," Lesbians i n Germany: 1 890s-
1 920s (Tallahaisee, FL. : Naiad Press, 1 990) , x-xi. See also Sheila Jeffries, The Spinster
and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1 880- 1 93 0 (London: Pandora, 1 985) .
17 Katz, Gay A me.rican History, 1 29 .
18 Vernon A. Rmario, "Homosexual Bio-Histories: Genetic Nostalgias and the Quest
for Paternity," in Science and Homosexualities, ed.Vernon A. Rosario (New York: Rout-
NOTES 205
ledge, 1 997) , 3 . See also Henry L. Minton, Departil1gfrom Deviance: A History of Homo
sexual Rights and Emancipatory Science in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2002) .
19 Vernol} A . Rosario, "The Science o f Sexual Liberation," The Gay and Lesbian Review:
Worldwide (November-December, 2002) , 37-38.
20 Harry Oosterhuis, Step Children of Nature: Krqfft-Ebing, Psychiatry and the Making of
Sexual Identity (University of Chicago Press, 2000) , 1 86.
21 Edward Carpenter, "Custom," Liberty, 2 February 1 889, 7 .
22 loc. cit.
23 Emma Goldman to Ben Reitman, 13 July 1 9 1 2 , Emma Goldman Papers, reel 6.
25 Vern Bullough, Science in the Bedroom: A History of Sex Research (New York: Basic
Books, 1 994) , 8 1 .
26 Emma Goldman to Havelock Ellis, 27 December 1 924, Emma Goldman Papers, reel
14.
27 Havelock Ellis, My Life, 300
28 On the Legitimation League and Ellis see Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The
Regulation of Sexuality Since 1 800, second edition (London: Longman, 1 989) , 1 80-
181.
29 Emma Goldman to Joseph Ishill, 23 July 1 92 8 , Emma Goldman Papers, reel 20.
30 Goldman, Living My Life, 1 7 3 .
31 Hapgood, A Victorian i n the Modern UiJrld, 466.
32 Bonnie Haaland agrees that sexology was influential in shaping Goldman's sexual pol
itics, but sees this influence as pernicious. This damage takes the form, Haaland argues,
of false consciousness. "While Goldman obviously felt she had been liberated by the
sexologists, as witnessed by her willingness to talk openly about sexual matters, she
was at the same time, contributing to the sexologists' pathologization of sexuality by
classifying sexual behaviors as perversions, inversions, etc." In other words, Goldman
was merely repeating the misrepresentations of the sexologists. (Haaland, Emma Gold
man, 1 65.)
33 Emma Goldman to Joseph Ishill, 3 1 December 1 9 1 2 , Emma Goldman Papers, reel 6.
34 See advertisement, "The Sexual Question by August Forel," Mother Earth, November
1915.
35 Helene Stocker, "The Newer Ethics," Mother Earth, March 1 907, 1 7-23 .
36 Falk, Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman, 423-424.
37 See Boag, Same-Sex Affairs and Chauncey, Gay New York.
38 Ben Reitman, Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Box-Car Bertha as Told to Ben Reit
man (New York: Sheridan House, 1 937) , 283.
39 Roger A. Bruns, The Damndest Radical: The Life and World �f Ben Reitman, Chicago 's
Celebrated Social Reformer, Hobo King, and Whorehouse Physician (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1 987) , 1 6 .
40 Christine Stansell, American Alodems: Bohemiall New York and the Creation of a New Cen
tury (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 200 1 ) , 1 32.
41 Harry Kemp, Tramping on Life: 011 Autobiographical Narrative (Garden City, NJ: Garden
City Publishing Company, 1 922) , 286-287.
42 See Martin Duberman, Stonewall (New York: Dutton, 1 993) ; and Terence Kissack,
" Freaking Fag Revolutionaries: New York's Gay Liberation Front, 1 969-1 971 ;' Radi
cal History Review 62 ( 1 995) , 1 04-1 34.
206 FREE COMRAOES
43 Abe Isaak j:e. , "Report from Chicago : Emma Goldman," Free Society, 9 June 1 90 1 , 3.
44 Emma Goldman to Ellen A. Kennan, 6 May 1 9 1 5 , Emma Goldman Papers, reel 9.
45 Margaret Anderson, AIy Thirty l-ears ' War: The Autobiography, Beginnings and Battles to
1 93 0 (New York: Covici Friede) , 55.
46 Goldman, Living My Life, 5 3 1 .
47 Emma Goldman, Mother Earth, October 1 9 1 4, 253,
48 Goldman, Living AIy Life, 5 3 1 .
49 Will and Ariel Durant, A Dual Autobiography, 37.
50 Dr. J Allen Gilbert, " Homosexuality and Its Treatment," in Gay lLesbian Almanac: A
New Dowmcntary, ed, Jonathan Ned Katz (New York: Harper and Row, 1 983) , 272.
51 Almeda Sperry t o Emma Goldman, 1 November 1 9 1 2, Emma Goldman Papers, reel 6 .
52 Almeda Spe rry to Emma Goldman, 18 October 1 9 1 2 , Emma Goldman Papers, reel 6.
53 Cook, "Female Support Networks and Political Activism," 57. See also Haaland, Emma
Goldmall, I72-174.
54 Katz, Gay American History, 523.
55 Wexler, Emma Goldman, 309, n. 35. See also Stansell, American AIoderns, 296-297.
56 Emma Gold man to Nunia Seldes, 4 October 1 9 1 2 , Emma Goldman Papers, reel 6.
57 Almeda Sperry to Emma Goldman, 2 1 -22 October 1 9 1 2, Emma Goldman Papers, reel
6.
58 Emma Goldman to Ellen A. Kennan, 6 May 1 9 1 5 , Emma Goldman Papers, reel 9 .
59 ' Peter Glassgold, " Introduction: The Life and Death o f Motller Earth," i n Anarchy " an
Anthology of Emma Goldman 's Mother Earth, cd. Peter Glassgold (Washington n c :
Counterpoin t , 20ll1 ) , xxvi.
60 Emma Goldman, "Agitation En Voyage," Mother Earth, June 1 9 1 5 , 1 5 5 .
61 Anna W. , "Emma Goldman i n Washington," Mother Earth, May 1 9 1 6, 5 1 7 .
62 Margaret Anderson quoted in Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almmlac, 363-366.
63 Anna W, "Emma Goldman in Washington," Mother Earth, May 1 9 1 6, 5 1 7 .
65 loc, cit.
66 Ibid., 555.
67 Josephine DeVore Johnson to William H. Warren, S August 1 9 1 5 , Emma Goldman Pa
pers, reel 56.
(, 8 John Donald Gustav-Wrathall, Take the Yt)Unc� Stranger IJY the Halld: Same-Sex Relations
and tile YMCA (Chicago : Chicago University Press, 1 998) , 1 6 1 .
69 Boag, Same-Sex Affiirs, 3. Boag's is the most extensive study of the scandal and of ho-
mosexuality in the turn-of-the-century Northwest.
70 Wrathall, Take the Young Stranger by the Hand, 1 6 5 .
71 George Edwards, "A Portrait of Portland," Mother Earth, November 1 9 1 5 , 3 1 2-3 1 3 .
72 Goldman, The Urtiust Treatment of Homosexuals," in Katz, Gay American History,
376.
73 Emma Goldrrcan to Havelock Ellis, 27 December 1 924, Emma Goldman Papers, reel
14.
74 Quoted i n Marie Mullaney, "Sexual Politics in the Career and Legend of Louise Mi
chel," Signs (Winter 1 990) , 3 1 0-3 1 1 .
75 Ibid. , 300.
76 Ibid., 322. Haaland argues that Goldman and Michel were sexually attracted to each
other, that they were "lovers." (Goldman, Living My Life, 1 66-1 68) . See Haaland, Emma
Goldman, 1 68 .
NOTES 207
77 Emma Goldman to Emily Holmes Coleman, December 16, 1 928, Emma Goldman
Papers, reel 28.
78 Kemp, Tramping Through Life, 285.
79 Will Durant, Transitions, 1 5 1-152.
80 Cook, " Female Support Networks and Political Activism," 56. See also Mullaney,
" Sexual Politics in the Career and Legend of Louise Michel," 3 1 2-3 1 3 ; and Haaland,
Emma Goldman, 1 64-1 77 .
81 Enuna Goldman to Thomas Lavers, 27 January 1 928, Emma Goldman Papers, reel 1 9 .
Chapter Six (pages 153-180)

1 Quoted in Kathleen Kennedy, Disloyal Mothers and Scurrilous Citizerls: Women and Sub
version During World War I (Bloorrlington: Indiana University Press, 1 999) , xiii.
2 David Rabban, Free Speech in its Forgotten Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 200 1 ) , 267.
3 Falk, 288.
4 Eric Foner, The Story ifAmerican Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 1 999) , 1 7 8 .
5 Randolph Bourne, 'The State," in The Radical Will: Randolph Bourne, Selected Writings:
1 9 1 1- 1 9 1 8, ed. By Olaf Hansen (New York: Urizen Books, 1 977) , 356.
6 "No Conscription! Statement of the No Conscription League," in Life of an A narchist:
The Alexander Berkman Reader, ed. Gene Fellner (New York: Four Walls Eight Win
dows, 1 992) 1 55-1 56 .
7 Leonard D. Abbott, "The War Hysteria and Our Protest," Mother Earth, August 1 9 1 7 ,
204.
8 Charles T. Sprading to El1ll1a1 Goldman, August 6, 1 927, Emma Goldman Papers, reel
18.
9 On the complex relationship between the Bolsheviks and the anarchists, see Paul Avr-
ich, The Russian Anarchists (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1 967) .
10 Goldman, Living My Life, 698 .
11 Quoted in Joll, The Anarchists, 1 9 1 .
12 Berkman, "The Russian Tragedy," i n Life if an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader,
244.
13 Veysey, Communal Experience, 1 66 .
14 Eric Morton t o El1ll1a1 Goldman, February 3, 1 92 5 i n Nowhere at Home, 42.
15 Emma Goldman to Theodore Dreiser, September 29, 1 926, Emma Goldman Papers,
reel 1 6 .
16 "Drama Developing New Social Trend," Th e Montreal Gazette, March 6, 1 93 5 .
17 Marian J . Morton, Emma Goldmarz arzd the Americarz Left: Nowhere at Home (New York:
Twayne Publishers, 1 992) , 1 3 8 .
18 Ibid. , 1 38 .
19 Randolph Bourne, " Old Tyrannies," i n Th e Radical Will, 1 72 .
20 Thomas Bender, New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City, from
1 750 to the Beginrzings of Our Owrz Time (New York: Knopf, 1 987) , 245-246.
21 Will Durant, Philosophy and the Social Problem (New York: The World Publishing, 1 927) ,
208-209. Durant's book is dedicated to Alden Freedman.
22 Emma Goldman to Joseph Ishill, December 29, 1 927, Emma Goldman Papers, reel 1 9 .
23 Quoted i n Marsh, Anarchist Women, 42. Marsh's discussion of Anderson shaped my
own interpretation of the post-war fate of anarchist sexual politics.
24 Anderson, My Thirty Years IMIr, 1 90.
208 FREE COMRADES
25 Goldman. Living ;\{y Life, 53 1 ,

26 Burns, The Damndest Radical, 1 73.
27 Nancy Cott, The Growth if Modern Feminism, (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1 987) , 9 1 .
28 Marsh, Anarchist Women, 94.
29 O 'Neill writes that in the 1 920s, it became "possible to take a radical stand on sex and
a conservative one on women's social role." See William O'Neill, Everyone was Brave:
The Rise and Fall of Feminism in America (New York: Quadrangle, 1 9(9) , 3 1 2 .
30 "Emma Gol dman Pays Visit t o Hamilton," Th e Spectator, May 1 0, 1 927.
31 Martin Henry Blatt, Free Love and Anarchism : TIle Biography if Ezra Heywood (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1 989), 1 73.
32 Bruce Clark, Dora Marsden and Early Feminism: Gender, Individualism, Science (Ann Ar
bor: University of Michigan Press, 1 996) , 69. See also S. E. Parker, "The New Free
woman: Dora Marsden and Benjamin R. Tucker," in Benjamin R. Tucker and the Cham
pions if Liberty: A Centemary AntholoJ?Y, eds. Michael E. Coughlin, Charles H. Hamil
ton, and Mark A. Sullian (St. Paul: Michael E. Coughlin and Mark Sullivan Publishers,
1 986) 1 49-1 57.
33 B.R.T. to Jos eph Labadie, August 1 2 , 1 893. Joseph Ishill papers, Harvard.
34 John Williarrc Lloyd, "The Story of Auban," Liberty, August 6, 1 892, 4.
35 John Henry Mackay, TIle Alzarchists: A Picture ,if Civilization at the Close if the Nineteenth
Century (Boston, Mass: Benjamin R. Tucker, 1 89 1 ) , ix.
36 John Henry Mackay, Max Stirner: His Life and Work, translated by Hubert Kennedy
(Concord, C/\: Peremptory Publications, 2005) xii .
37 Mackay, according to historian Hubert Kennedy, was attracted to adolescents aged
fourteen to seventeen. See Hubert Kennedy, Anarchist if Love: The Secret Life ofJohn
Henry Mackay (New York: Mackay Society, 1 983) , 25.
38 Quoted in H ubert Kennedy, Anarchist of Love, S .
39 Ibid., 2 2 . Kcr.nedy states that it was Mackay's "acceptance o f the philosophy o f indi
vidualism tha : allowed him to fully accept himself as a boy-lover."
40 See Homosexuality and IVla/e Bmlding in Pre-Nazi Germany, eds. Harry Oosterhuis and
Hubert Kennedy (Harrington Park Press, 1 9 9 1 ) . It is unclear what kind of circula
tion-if any Dcr Eigcne had ill the United States. Interestingly, a photo of a youth
--
from San Francisco appeared in a 1 906 edition of the journal. See "photo by Dr. A
Wilhemi" in Manner von hinten, Band 1 : Photographie, 1 90IJ- 1 920 (Berlin: Janssen Ver
lag, 1 994) , 9.
41 John Henry Mackay, Fenny Skaller and other Prose vVritings from the Books <if the Nameless
Love, translated Hubert Kennedy (Amsterdam: Southernwood Press, 1 988) , 1 34.
42 Thomas A. Riley, Germany 's Poet-Anarchist:John Henry Mackay (NY: Revisionist Press,
1 972) , I l l .
43 Mackay to Tucker, February 4, 1 9 1 1 , in Dear Tucker: The Letters ofJohn Henry Mackay
to Benjamin R. Tucker, ed. Hubert Kennedy (San Francisco: Peremptory Publications,
1 99 1 ) , 44.
44 Ibid., Mackay to Tucker, 5 November 1 920, 73.
45 Alice Wexler, Emma Goldman in America (Beacon, 1 984) , 1 3 5 .
46 Clarence Swartz, "Preface," in Benjamin Tucker, Individual Liherty, ed. Clarence L.
Swartz (Newl:ork:Vanguard Press, 1 926) , v.
47 William C. Owen to Joseph Ishill, December 30, 1 923, Ishill Collection.
NOTES 209
48 Pierre Ramus, "Havelock Ellis: The Greatest Investigator of the Mysteries of Sex;' in
Havelock Ellis: An Appreciation, 261-262.
49 Clarence Swartz to Joseph Labadie, June 8, 1 925, Labadie Collection.
50 loco cit. John T. Scopes, a biology teacher, was being prosecuted by the state of Ten
nessee for teaching Darwinism, which was contrary to accepted biblical accounts of
human creation.
51 Thomas H . Bell, Edward Carpenter: 1he English Tolstoi (Los Angeles: The Libertarian
Group, 1 932) 3, 1 5 . The pamphlet was publ.i shed following a Testimonial Dinner held
in Bell's honor by "all the local Libertarian organizations," and was intended to honor
"Thomas H. Bell's fifty years of social activity, all but the first three or four devoted to
the Libertarian Movement."
52 Thomas Henry Bell to Joseph Ishill, July 29, 1 930, Ishill Collection.
53 Thomas Henry Bell to Joseph Ishill, August 1 4, 1 930, Ishill Collection.
54 Cassius V Cook, "Synopsis: Thomas H. Bell, Author, Oscar Wilde without Whitewash"
(Los Angeles: Rocker Publication Committee, n.d.) , 7. This pamphlet was intended to
solicit funds to help pay for the publication of Bell's book on Wilde. A copy can be
found in the Ishill Collection.
55 Clarence Swartz to Joseph Labadie, June 8, 1 925, Labadie Collection.
56 Biographical Notes, "John William Lloyd," in Sex in Civilization, Eds. V E Calverton
and S. D. Schmalhausen (NewYork: AMS Press, 1 976 [1 929]) , 687.
57 Abba Gordin, "]. William Lloyd," The Road to Freedom, April 1 932, 33. This is the sec
ond of a two-part article,. the first of which appears in the March 1 932 issue of The
Road to Freedom.
58 John William Lloyd, From Hill- Terrace Outlooking: Poems of Intuition, Perception, and
Prophecy (Los Angeles: Samuel Stebb, 1 939) .
59 Quoted in Veysey, Communal Experience, 33.
60 See Lawrence Foster, "Free Love and Feminism: John Humphrey Noyes and the
Oneida Community." Journal of the Early Republic 1 (Summer 1 9 8 1 ) : 1 65-1 83 .
61 John William Lloyd, "The Karezza Method or Magnetation: The Art o f Connubial
Love" (privately published, 1 9 3 1 ) .
62 The Unpublished Letters of Havelock Ellis to Joseph Ishill, ed. Joseph Ishill (Berkeley
Heights, N.].: Oriole Press, 1 954) , 68, 82.
63 Havelock Ellis, " Introduction," in John William Lloyd, Eneres or the Questions of Reksa
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1 929) , 1 1 .
64 John William Lloyd, "A Foreword," Eneres, n.p.
65 Ellis, " Introduction," Eneres, 1 7 .
66 Leonard Wilcox, "Sex Boys in a Balloon:V E Calverton and the Abortive Sexual Rev
olution," Jou rn al ofA merican Studies 23 (1 989) , 9.
67 Linda Gordon, K1Jman5 Body, Womans Right (NY, 1 977), 209-2 1 0 . See also, Mari Jo
Buhle, " Free Love," in The Encyclopedia of the Left: Second Edition, eds. Mari Jo Buhle,
Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1 998) , 24; Buhle,
Women and American Socialism, 323; and Constance Coiner, Better Red: The Writings and
Resistance ofTillie Olsen and Meridel Le Sueur (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) .
68 Magdeleine Marx, The Romance of New Russia (New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1 924) .
69 Quoted in Wilcox, " Sex Boys in a Balloon: V. E Calverton and the Abortive Sexual
Revolution," 2 1 .
70 Ibid . , 20. See also Laura Engelstein, "Soviet Policy Towards Male Homosexuality: Its
Origins and Historical Roots;' in Gay Men and the Sexual History of the Political Left,
210 FREE COMRADES
1 5 5- 1 7 8 and Patrick Pollard, "Gide in the U. S.S.R.: Some Observations on Com

radeship," in Gay Men and the Sexual History of the Political Left, 1 79-1 9 5 .
71 David Lawrence, "In a Soviet Village: A Morality Play," Vanguard, Aug/Sept. 1 936, 7-
8.
72 Quin wrote his satirical essay in the months between the Nazi-Soviet pact and the
German invasion of the USSR, a period when the CP turned against its Popular
Front allies. During the Popular Front, which lasted from 1 935 to 1 939, the Com
munist party allied itself with a broad array of progressive forces, going so far as to
support President Roosevelt in his reelection bid. In 1 939, Stalin signed a peace treaty
with Hitler and j oined with Germany in attacking Poland. He called upon Western
European and American communists to return to a policy of revolutionary ultraism.
This shocking development led many liberals and non-communist socialists to resign
from Popular Front organizations and vow to never again work with communists. The
abrupt disavDwal of the Popular Front illustrates how the "Co nmlUnist party's position
in American life . . . was always hostage to Soviet foreign policy." (Klehr and Haynes,
The American Communist Movement, 92.) Quin's text is a quintessential product of the
short-lived Nazi-Soviet pact, but its mobilization of homophobia as a political tool
was reflectiv� of the culture and sexual politics of the CP.
73 Mike Quin, "A Pansy Parachuter," in On The Drumhead: A Selection from the Writing of
Mike Quill: A Memorial Volume, ed. Harry Carlisle (San Francisco: Pacific Publishing
Foundation, n.d.), 1 1 8-1 1 9 . Alan Berube's work on the San Francisco-based Marine
Cooks and Stewards Union, a union that had a significant CP presence, is a striking
exception to this pattern. In their fight to gain control of the union, CP organizers
openly appealed to the gay men working onboard ships. However, it is unclear that
the CP's overall view of the subj ect-the party line advocated across the country-on
homosexualicy was affected by this p a rti c ula r battle. Quin, after all, was a leading figure
in San Francisco's CP. While the activities of the rank and file are important to docu- �
ment, the CP "was not merely a collection of people who shared membership in a so
cial organization. It was a Leninist party with certain goals, visions, and plans, however
perfectly or imperfectly these were realized or carried out by the membership." (Klehr
and Haynes, The American Commlmist Movemmt, 5.) In other words, it matters what
the party line was because the CP was an organization that enforced a uniformity of
belief and action. Any evaluation of the merits or demerits of the CP on a given issue
must take this into consideration. If the CP came to power, what would have been
their policy on homosexuality? I would argue that the sentiments expressed in Quin's
story would c ave been the governing principles for policy. Having said that, the rela
tionship between the CP and the politics of homosexuality are complex. For example,
Harry Hay, one of the founders of the gay rights group, the Mattachine Society, was
radicalized by his experience in the CP. However, Hay had to leave the CP in order to
pursue his sexual politics. It would have been impossible for Hay to do otherwise, as
the CP had a policy of actively discouraging the membership of gay men and women
who would not remain silent about their private lives.
74 See Lauritsen and Thorstadt, The Early Homosexual Rights Movemellt, 6 1 -62; Andrew
Hewitt, Political Inversioll: Homosexuality, Fascism, alld the Modemist Imaginary (Stanford:
Stanford Uniwrsity Press, 1 996) ; and Harry Oosterhuis, "The Jews' of the Antifascist
Left: Homosexuality and Socialist Resistance to Nazism," in Gay lv/m and the Sexual
History of the Political Left, 227-257.
NOTES 21 1
75 "Emma Goldman, in Canada, Puts O.K on Flapper," The Toronto Daily Star, November
6, 1926.
76 "E mma Goldman Advocates Companionate Marriage, The Toronto Daily Star, Feb ru
ary 9, 1 927.
77 "If you Like Jazz You're Classed as Anarchist;' The Toronto Star weekly, December 19,
1 926.
78 Leslie Fishbein, Rebels in Bohemia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1 982) ,
206.
79 Alexander Berkman to Emma Goldman, August 1 929, in Nowhere at Home, 1 6 1 .
80 "E mma Goldman Advocates Companionate Marriage, The Toronto Daily Star, Feb ru-
ary 9, 1 927
81 Gordon, Woman s Bodies, Wilman s Rig ht, 392.
82 Kinsman, The Regulation oj Desire, 69-7 1 .
83 Steven Seidman, Romantic Longings: Laue in America, 1 83 0- 1 980 (New York: Rout
ledge, 1 9 9 1 ) , 88-89.
84 Chauncey, Gay New York, 301-329.
85 This dynamic is very much like that described by the historians of "whiteness." See
Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Roudedge, 1 995) ; and David
Rodiger, The Wages if Whitelless and the Making oj the American Wilrking Class, revised
edition (London: Verso, 1 999) .
86 Steakley, The Homosexual Emancip ation Movement in Germany, 8 1-82 .
87 Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilig ht Lovers: A History if Lesbian L ife i n Twentieth-
Century America (New York: Penguin, 1 9 9 1 ) 82.
88 "Charter: Society for Human Rights, Inc.," in Katz, Gay American History, 387.
89 See Linda Hamalian, A Life oj Kenneth Rexroth (New York: Norton, 1 9 9 1 ) , 3-5 .
90 Kenneth Rexroth, An Autobiographical Novel (New York: Doubleday, 1 966) 1 62-1 67
91 Ibid., 260.
92 Ib id. , 1 69 .
93 Sam Dolgoff, Fragments:A Memoir (Cambridge: Refract Publications, 1 986), 39.
94 Rexroth, A n Autobiographical Novel, 1 37 .
95 Ibid. , 1 36 .
96 Ibid., 1 40 .
97 Ibid. , 1 3 8 .
98 Dolgoff, Fragments, 5 1-52.
99 Reitman, "Preface," Sister if the Road, n.p.
1 00 Ben Reitman to E mma Goldman, March 1 1 , 1 934, Emma Goldman Papers, reel 30.
101 Reitman, Sister if the Road, 3 1 0.
1 02 Minton, Departing From Deviance, 46.
1 03 Ben Reitman to Emma Goldman, February 9, 1 93 1 , Emma Goldman Papers, reel 23.
1 04 Gay did, however, continue work on sexuality. In 1 932, she published On Going Na-
ked, a study of nudism that was banned in a number of states. The book was the basis
for a film, This Naked World, which was released in 1 93 5 .
1 05 Emma Goldman to Jan Gay, February 1 3 , 1 93 1 , Emma Goldman Papers, reel 23. Gold
man refers to Gay by her birth name, " Helen."
1 06 Elsa Gidlow, Elsa: I Come With My Songs (San Francisco: Booklegger Press, 1 986) , 66.
See Kinsman, 65, 1 24.
1 07 Hamalian, A Life of Kenlleth Rexroth, 47.
212 FREE COMRAOES
1 08 Lewis Ellinghman and Kevin Killian, Poct Be Like Go,i.jack Spicer and the San Francisco
Renaissance (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1 998) , 57.
1 09 Gidlow, Elsa, 8 1 -82.
1 10 Ibid., 300.
111 Ibid., 82.
112 Elsa Gidlow, December 26, 1 928, unpublished journal, 66-67. Archives of the Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society of Northern California, Elsa Gidlow
Collection.
1 13 Gidlow, Els"�, 67.
1 14 Ibid., 30 1 .
1 15 Dolgoff, Fra,?mems, 93.
Conclusion (pages 1 8 1-188)

George Woo dcock , " Anarchism Revisited," in Anarchism and Anarchists (Kingston, On
tario: Quarrv Press, 1 992) , 44.
2 Ibid., 45. See also Martin Duberman, "Anarchism Left and Right," Partisan Review,
(Fall, 1 966) , 6 1 5 ; David E. Apter, "The Old Anarchism and the New-Some Com
ments," Govcrmnmt and Opposition, (Autumn, 1 970) , 403 ; and Paul Goodman, " The
Black Flag of Anarchism," New York Times Magazine, (July 14, 1 968) , W -22.Veysey, on
the other hand, argues that there exists "a more continuous underground tradition"
that ties the Old and tbe New anarchism together (Veysey, 40-4 1 ) .
3 Hakim Bey, TA . z. : The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchism, Poetic Terror
ism (New York: Autonomedia, 1 99 1 ) , 63.
4 Murray Bookchin, Social Anarchism or LIfestyle Allarchism : An Unbridgeable Chasm (San
Francisco: AK Press, 1 995) , 66.
5 Bob Black, Anarchy 4fier Leftism (Columbia, MO: C.A.L. Press, 1 997) , 1 2 .
6 Alix Kates Shulman, "Emm.a Goldman's Feminism: A Reappraisal," in Red Emma
Speaks, 1 7 . See Alix Kates Shulman, 10 the Barricades: The Anarchist Life of Emma Gold
man (New Yo rk: Ty Crowell Co. , 1 97 1 ) .
7 Ibid. , 1 6 .
8 See Oz Frankie, "Whatever Happened to 'Red Emma'? Emma Goldman from Alien
Rebel to American Icon," 'Dle journal ofAmerican History (December 1 996) : 903-942.
" See John William Lloyd, The Karezza ;\1ethod; or Magnetation (Hollywood: Phoenix
Press, 1 973) and John William Lloyd, Karezza, L'Art de L'Amour: La Voie de L'Extase
Sexuelle: Un Ttmtrisme Occidental (Montreal: Editions Ganesha, 2000) .veysey noted that
in the twenties and thirties Lloyd found readers among adherents of Eastern religious
traditiom.
10 The Slant, February 1 990, 5.
11 Hubert Kenn,�dy, "John Henry Mackay: Anarchist of Love:' The Alternate (March
1 98 1 ) : 27-3 1 .
12 Hakim Bey, "Temporary Autonomous Zones," Gayme (September 1 994) : 26-28.
13 Richmond Young, " Stonewall Demo Club," Letters to the Editor, Sentinel, June 22,
1 989.
14 loc. cit.
15 Gidlow, Elsa, 301 .
16 George Chauncey, vVhy Marriage?: TIle History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equal
ity (New York: Basic Books, 2004) , 3.
NOTES 213
17 John D 'Emilio, " The Marriage Fight is Setting Us Back," The Gay and Lesbian Review,
November-December, 2006, 1 0-1 1 .
18 Emma Goldman "The Unj ust Treatment of Homosexuals:' in Katz, Gay American His
tory, 377.
19 Emma Goldman to Havelock Ellis, 2 7 December 1 924, Emma Goldman Papers, reel
14.
S E LECTE D B I B LI O G RA P H Y
MANUSCRIPT SOURCE S :
Helena B o r n Papers, Tamiment Library, New York University.
Elsa Gidlow Papers, Archives of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgellder Historical Society,
San Francisco.
Joseph Ishill Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University
Labadie Collection, Hatcher Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Benj amin R. Tucke r Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library,
Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
PERIODICALS :
The A dult, London, England ( 1 897-1 899) .
The Alarm. Chicago and New York ( 1 884-1 889) .
Ariel, New York (n . d . ) .
The Blast, San Franci sco and New York ( 1 9 1 6-1 9 1 7 ) .
The Clarion, New York ( 1 932-1 934) .
The Coming Era, D allas ( 1 898) .
The Comrade, New Y::Jrk ( 1 9 0 1 - 1 905) .
Current Literature, New York ( 1 888-1 9 1 2) .
Th e Demonstrator, Ho me, Washington ( 1 903-1 908) .
The Eagle and the Serp mt, London and Chicago ( 1 898-1 902, 1 927) .
Ego, Clinton, Iowa ( 1 92 1 - 1 923) .
Egoism, San Francisco and Oakland ( 1 8 9 1 - 1 897) .
The Egoist, Clinton, Iowa ( 1 923-1 924) .
Fair Play, Valley Falls, Kansas and Sioux City, Iowa ( 1 888-1 908) .
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 21 5
Free Society, San Francisco; Chicago; and New York ( 1 897-1 904) .
TIle Firebrand, Portland, Oregon ( 1 895-1 897) .
The Free Comrade, Wellesley, Massachusetts ( 1 900-1 902, 1 9 1 0- 1 9 1 2 ) .
The Free Spirit, New York ( 1 9 1 9-1 92 1 ) .
I, Wellesley, Massachusetts ( 1 898-1900) .
VEn Dehors, Orleans, France ( 1 922-1 939) .
Liberty, Boston and New York ( 1 8 8 1 - 1 908) .
TIu Literary World, London ( 1 868-1 9 1 9) .
Lucifer the Light-Bearer,ValIey Falls, Kansas; Topeka, Kansas; and Chicago ( 1 883-1 907) .
Man !, San Francisco ( 1 933-1 940) .
The 2Hodem School, New York and Stelton, New Jersey ( 1 9 1 2-1 922) .
Mother Earth, New York ( 1 906-1 9 1 7) .
The Papyrus, New York (n.d.)
The Radical Review, New Bedford, Massachusetts ( 1 877-1 878) .
The Road to Freedom, Stelton, New Jersey, and New York ( 1 924-1 932) .
The Spectator, Hamilton, Canada (n.d.).
TIle Storml, New York ( 1 976-1 988) .
The Torch, London, England ( 1 891-1 895) .
Vtmguard, New York ( 1 932-1 939) .
Wilshire\ Los Angeles (1 900-1 9 1 5) .
vVhy ', Tacoma,Washington ( 1 9 1 3-1 9 1 4) .
Why?, New York ( 1 942-1 947) .
The Word, Princeton and Cambridge, Massachusetts ( 1 872-1 893) .
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Weeks, Jeffrey. Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britainfrom the Nineteenth
Centu ry to the Present. rev. ed. London: Quartet Books, 1 990.
--- . Sex, Politics, {:'rid Society: TIle Regulation of Sexuality Since 1 800. 2nd ed. New
York: Longman, 1 98 9 .
--- . Sexuality. London: Tavistock Publications, 1 98 6 .
--- . Sexuality and Its Discontents: Meanings, ;\;[yths, and Modern Sexualities.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1 98 5 .
Weigand, Kate. Red Feminism :American Communism aIld the Afaking ofWomen s
Liberation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 200 1 .
Weinstein, James. The Decline ofAmerican Sodalism, 1 9 1 2- 1 925. New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1 967 .
Wexler, Alice. Emma Goldman: A n Intimate Life. N ew York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
--- . Emma Goldman in A merica. Boston: Beacon Press, 1 984.
White, Kevin, The First Sexual Revolution: The Emergence of Male Heterosexuality in
Modem America. New York: New York University Press, 1 993.
Wilcox, Leonard. " Sex Boys in a Balion: V. F. Calverton and the Abortive Sexual
Revolution ." Joumal ofAmerican Studies 23 ( 1 989) : 7-3 1 .
--- . V. F. Calverton: Radical i n the American Grain. Philadelphia: Temple
Willard, Charles B. Whitman s American Fame: The Growth of His Reputation in
America After 1 892. Providence, R . I . : Brown University, 1 950
Woodcock, George. Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Afovcments. New
York: World Publishing Company, 1 962.
---. Anarchism and Anarchists. Kingston, Ontario : Quarry Press, 1 992.
--- . Oscar Wilde: The Double Image. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1 989.
Yalom, Marilyn. A History of the Wife. NewYork: Harper Collins, 200 1 .
suppression of 8 , 23, 46, 47, 1 34 , 1 53 ,
I N D EX
1 54-1 5 5 , 1 55
A Margaret Anderson 22, 48, 1 39- 1 40, 1 44 ,
1 58
Leonard Abbott 3 1 5 69 7 1-72 82 87 ,
' Sherwood Anderson 1 74
) 5
89, 92, 1 0( , 1 5 , 1 5 9 , 1 8 . Se 2 � Anti-Anarchist Act of 1 9 1 8 1 54
also The Free Comrade
anti-Vietnam War Movement 1 82
image 7 1
Ariel 83. See also Walt Whitman; See
Paul Adam 54
also Whitmanite Societies and
Eve Adams 1 7 5
publications
The A lbany Press 62
August Forel 1 36
Alexander the Great 1 44
The Sexual Question: A Scientifo;. Psychologi
Alien Immigrant A.ct 1 54
cal, Hygifll ic and Sociological Study of
The A lternate 1 84
the Sex Question 1 36
John Peter Altgeld 22
author's terminology
American Federation of Labor 20
anarchism, socialism, and communism
American Law Review 24
8-9
American Legion 1 5 5
same-sex sexuality/relationships 9-1 0
anarchists, anarchist movement 8. See
Th e Autobiography of an Androgyne. See Earl
also Emma Goldman; See also Alex
Lind
ander Berkman; See also Benjamin
Martha Moore Avery 89
R . Tucker
Paul Avrich 23, 83
and sexuality, free love 1 7- 1 8 20-2 1
24, 26, 27, 30, 34-35 , 4 , 72 , 84 6 : B
1 28 , 1 29 , 1 20 7 , 1 49 , 1 5 1
Mikhail Bakunin 48-49 , 50
assimilation o f anarchist sexual politics
Elsa Barker 53
1 7 1 , 1 84
August Bebel 36
on marriage 1 7 , 1 8 , 2 1 , 30, 33-34,
James Beck 24
3 5 , 1 86
George Bedborough. See Legitimation
challenges in the face of Bolshevism
League
1 56-1 58
Thomas Bell 1 65
communist anarchism vs. individualist
Thomas Bender 1 58
anarchism 1 9
Karoly Maria Benkert 1 5
constituency 1 9-23, 39
Jeremy Bentham 1
defense and questioning of homosexu
Mary Berenson 25
ality 6, 7 , 1 5 , 28 , 36-37 , 3 7 , 38,
Alexander Berkman 3, 5 , 1 4, 28, 4 1 , 67,
40-4 1 , 44, 45, 99-1 00, 1 8 8
1 00, 1 80 , 1 82, 202 . Sec also Prison
shift in attitudes :,n 1 890s 38-40 4 1 ,
' Memoirs of an Anarchist
4 5 , 1 94
differing orientation towards 6
deportation 1 6 5
imprisonment 1 0 1 , 1 2 1
distancing fTom by former comrades
0 11 anarchism 1 9
1 59-1 60
o n sexuality 38, 1 1 9 , 1 20
ideas and goals 4-5 , 7 , 8 , 1 7 , 1 8, 44, 47,
on sexual "emancipation" of the 1 9205
4 9 , 1 83
1 72
influence of 22, 1 7 5
on sexuality in prison 1 00, 1 02- 1 1 9
late 20th Century resurgence 1 8 1 - 1 8 7
Eduard Bertz 90, 93
post-War shift from revolutionary poli-
Alan Berube 2 1 0
tics to interpersonal relationships
Annie Besant 4 8
1 78- 1 7 9
Hakim Bey 1 82-1 83
Temporary Autonomous Zone 1 8 2 The Catechism rif the Revolutionist 48-49,
TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, 1 95 . See also Mikhail Bakunin; See
Ontological Anarchy 1 84 also Sergei Nechaev
Bob Black 1 83 Cercle H ermaphroditos 2-3 . See also Earl
The Blast 6 7 , 1 53 Lind
Martin Blatt 1 60 The Chap Book 90
Peter Boag 1 47 George Chauncey 3 , 3 9 , 62, 1 07, 1 72, 1 8 6
Beryl B olton 1 74 Wh y Marriage?: The History Shaping
Rosa Bonheur 1 44 Today 's Debate Over Gay Equality
Murray Bookchin 1 83 1 86
"The Left that Was : A Personal Reflec- C. H. Cheyese 7 5
tion" 1 83 C h e Guevera 1 84
Boston Marriage 1 40 Chicago, 1 920s radical and sexual milieu
Randolph Bourne 1 54, 1 5 8 1 73-1 77
Bayard Boyesen 1 0 1 , 1 1 1 Chicago Examiner 1 74
British Medical Journal 92 Chicago School for Social Pathology 1 76
British Society for the Study of Sex Psy- Winston Churchill 1 70
chology 1 23 Church Reformer 56
William Thurston Brown 3 1 , 70 Civil Rights Movement 1 82
Professor Bruhl 135 Bruce Clark 1 60
SS Buford 1 78 Clark University 1 29
Bughouse Square 1 75-1 7 6 Ed Cohen 5 8
Mari J o Buhle 2 9 Collegiate Socialist Club 1 47
Vern Bullough 1 3 4 The Coming Nation 1 0 1 , 1 04
Committee for the Study of Sex Variants
c 1 77
V. F. Calverton 1 68 , 1 69 communism
Ben Capes 93 B olshevik Party 1 55 , 1 5 6
Edward Carpenter 1 , 3 , 4, 1 1 , 39 , 48, suppression o f anarchists 1 56

75-79, 83 , 84 , 88 , 8 9 , 9 1 , 1 1 6 , 1 22, Communist Party 8, 9 , 1 2 , 1 53 , 1 70, 2 1 0
1 2 8 , 1 30, 1 3 1 , 1 3 6 , 1 39 , 1 5 1 , 1 7 5 , disregard/hostility towards sexual poli
1 84 tics 1 68-1 70, 2 1 0
" Custom" 1 3 1 - 1 3 2 hostility towards homosexuals 1 94
An Unknown People 76, 77 Soviet Union 1 5 5
Civilization: Its Causes and Cure 1 32 The Comrade 8 2 , 89
Homogenic Love, arid Its Place in a Free Anthony Comstock 27, 1 04
Society 76, 77 Comstock Act 44, 60
The Intermediate Sex 88-90, 92 Blanche Wiesen Cook 1 42, 1 5 1
Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folks Current Literature 86, 87, 90, 9 1 , 1 03 , 2 0 1
1 23 L e o n Czolgosz 23, 63-64
Iolaus: An Anthology of Friendship 77 Czar Alexander II 49
image of 7 8
D
Love 's Coming iifAge 83, 8 8 , 89, 1 23 , 1 3 6
o n Berkman 1 05 , 1 2 2 John D 'Emilio 1 87
o n Whitman 70, 72 Daily Chronicle 56
public attacks on Carpenter's politics Clarence D arrow 1 7 4
89-90 Daughters of Bilitis 1 85
Towards Democracy 70, 80, 8 1 , 82, 83 Madeline D. Davis 3
E . H . Carr 49 Leonardo Da Vinci 8 8
Harriet Dean 1 39-1 40 The Firebrand 60, 72
Eugene V D ebs 29, 82 First International 49
decline of the left in the late 20th Century Leslie Fishbein 1 72
1 82 Eric Foner 1 54
D aniel DeLeon 29 Dr. E. B. Foote Jr. 57-62, 63, 89
Floyd Dell 24, 48 E . B. Foote Sr. 5 7 , 60
Democratic Party 1 85 Ford Maddox Ford 25
James S. Denson 3 1 August Fore! 1 39
Denver Post 47 Fortni,iZhtly Review 1 32
Der arme Teufel 27 Charles Fourier 1
Der Eigene 1 62 , 208 Alden Freeman 1 4 , 1 4 1 , 1 44
The Desert News 52 Rose Florence Freeman 65
Voltairine de Cleyre 2 1 , 34 The Free Comrade 7 5 , 77, 82-83, 84, 8 5 ,
Robert Latou Dickinson 1 77 8 6 , 1 68 . See also John William
Die Zukunji 36 Lloyd; See also Leonard Abbott
Dill Pickle 1 75-1 7 6 image of 6')
Sam D olgoff 1 7 5 , 1 76 , 1 80 Free Society 66, 70, 1 3 8
Lord Alfred Douglas 58 Free Society Group 1 75
Theodore Dreiser 1 57 The Free Spirit 65
Druid Heights 1 85 Sigmund Freud 1 29
Ariel Durant 1 9 1 Henry Clay Frick 1 0 1
Will Durant 1 3- l i , 2 5 , 26, 1 4 1 , 1 50, 1 5 8
The Dwellers i n the �ale Sunrise 64. See G
also John Wllliam Lloyd Ganesha Press 1 84
Louis Dwight 99, 1 06 , 1 08 Mari, Ganz 1 1 ')
James Garfield 40
E
Mary Garrett 54
Crystal Eastman 35 Jan Gay 1 2 , 1 54 , 1 77
Max Eastman 35 Gayme 1 84
George Edwards 148 Frank Genest 1 79
Edith Ellis 1 , 1 43 George Allen and Unwin, publishers 1 67
Havelock Ellis 4, 26, 39, 53, 7 6 , 1 20 , 1 22 , H enry Gerber 1 73
1 28 , 1 33-1 35 , 1 36 , -139, 1 49, 1 5 1 , Elmer Gertz 87, 88
1 64 , 1 67- 1 68 , 1 87-1 8 8 Elsa Gidlow 1 2 , 1 54 , 1 77-1 79, 1 82 , 1 85
Sexual lnversioll 1 34-1 35 Ask No Man Pardon : The Philosophical
Richard Ellman 6 1 Significance of Being Lesbian 1 8 5
Julian Eltinge 1 74 image of 1 53
Ralph W11do Emerson 88 On a Gray Thread 1 78
Emma Goldman Pap'ors Proj ect 1 8 1 Sapphic Songs 1 85
Brigitte Erikson 1 30 James Gifford 65
Espionage Act ')'), 1 5 4 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 35
Selective Dratt Law 99 A Girl Among the Anarchists 25
Eulenburg Affair 35-38 E nm1a Goldman 3-4, 5 , 6, 7 , 1 1 , 1 4 , 1 5 ,
1 7 , 25, 26, 4 1 , 44, 63, 69, 1 05 , 1 23,
F 1 7 8-1 79, 1 8 1- 1 90, 1 86 , 206.
See
Lillian Faderman 1 30 , 1 73 also lvfother Earth; See also Living
Candace Falk 1 37 My Life
Ferrer Center 1 3- 1 7 , 2 5 , 28 deportation 1 56
J. F Finn 20 imprisonment 99
letter to Hirschfeld 1 1 8, 1 49 Angela Heywood 26, 32, 1 60
image of 1 52 Ezra Heywood 26, 32, 46
on anarchism, anarchist movement 5 , 9 , death of 1 60
1 9 , 2 1 , 29, 1 4 5 image of 32
on Edward Carpenter 1 23 Magnus Hirschfeld 1 , 4, 6 , 7 , 1 6 , 39, 63,
on Oscar Wilde 43, 50, 63, 1 95 87, 90, 99, 1 1 8 , 1 29 , 1 36 , 1 49 , 1 5 1 ,
on sexuality, sexology 1 7 , 2 4 , 34, 38, 177
43-44, 93, 1 28, 1 33-1 49 , 1 72 , Jahrbuche fur scxuelle Zwischenstujen 90
1 87-1 88 , 205 Adolf Hitler 1 70
on Whitman 7 1-72 , 9 1 , 9 4 Homestead Steelmill Strike 1 0 1
speaking tours, lectures 1 1 , 20, 34, 47, homophobia 3 , 1 72
50, 92, 1 34 , 1 36 , 1 3 8 , 1 57 , 1 9 1 homosexuality, homosexuals 1 6 , 27, 33,
David Goldstein 89 38, 39, 46, 5 3 , 7 1 , 73
Samuel Gompers 20 as a regulated, persecuted minority 6 ,
Abba Gordin 1 66 40, 44, 4 5 , 79, 89, 1 29 , 1 34 , 1 47
Linda Gordon 1 72 contemporary 4, 1 85 , 1 86
The Gray Cottage 1 7 5 decline in the politics of homosexuality
The Green Mask 1 74-1 75 , 1 82 in the 1 920s 1 7 1 - 1 7 3
RuhlS Griswold 72 early lifestyles in US 2-3
Charles J. Guiteau 40 gay marriage 1 86-1 87
John Gustav-Wrathall 1 47 gender inversion 7 8 , 8 5 , 1 3 5 , 1 64
James Gibbons Huneker 48
H
I
Bonnie Haaland 1 30
Radcliff Hall 1 57 Selwyn Image 5 6-57
Bolton Hall 1 29 TIle Intersexes 2
Dr. Stanley Hall 1 33 Joseph Ishill 1 3 5 , 1 64 , 1 67
Alice Hamilton 22
Hutchins Hapgood 22, 24-2 5 , 1 02 , 1 24 , J
1 36 , 1 42 Jack the Ripper 5 8
Maximilian Harden 36 C. L. James 3 1 , 3 8 , 5 5
Lillian Harman 46, 60, 1 34 . See also Lucifor William James 22
the Lig ht-Bearer Jim Crow laws 6 4
Moses Hannan 26, 38, 46. See also Lucifer Josephine DeVore Johnson 1 47
the Light-Bearer James Joli 6
Harper's A1agazine 93 Jose Marti 90
Frank Harris 22
The Bomb 136 K
Alberta Lucille Hart 1 4 1 , 1 44 karezza 1 67. 184
Sadakichi Hartmann 48 Jonathan Ned Katz 2 , 70, 7 3 , 77, 1 30 , 1 42,
Harvey O 'Higgins 93 1 84
Harry Hay 2 1 0 Gay American History 1 84 , 1 8 5
Haymarket Tragedy 22-23, 47, 1 92 Harry Kelly 27
Rev. Stewart D. Headlam 5 6
Harry Kemp 1 38 , 1 50
Robert Henri 22, 4 8
Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy 3
George W Henry 1 7 7 Hubert Kennedy 49, 1 62 , 1 84
Sex Variants: A Study rif Homosexual Pat Gary Kinsman 1 72
terns 1 77 Knights of Labor 5 1
Rudolph Hess 1 70 Kratft-Ebing 33, 5 8 , 8 7 , 90. See also Psy-
chopathia Sexualis "Mount Walt Whitman" 75
Peter Kropotkin 1 8 , 26, 47, 49, 50, 64, 80, "Not the Lover Who Loves But Me" 80
1 00-1 0 1 , 1 3 5 , 1 64 on Carpenter 77, 79, 82, 88-89
Ficlds, Factories and Workshops 135 on Whitman 7 5-76 , 83-87 , 9 1 -95
In Russian and French Prisons 1 00 denunciation of 85
on sexuality 1 00-1 0 1 personal sexual ethos 84
"Sex Jealousy and Civilization" from Sex
L and Civilization 1 68
L'Ermitagc 48 Songs �f the Unlblind Cupid, image of 76
Jo Labadie 1 65 Cesare Lomobroso 23
Labouchere Act 44 Jack London 22, 1 0 1
Lafayette Park 40, 4 1 Lord Douglass 52
David Lawrence 1 69 Audre Lourde 1 30

Legitimation League 1 34- 1 35 Lucifer the Light-Bearer 3 9 , 44, 46, 54, 57,
The A dult 1 34 1 68 . See also Lillian Harman; See
Natalie Lemel 1 50 also Moses Harman

V.L Lenin 1 55 , 1 7 8 image of 46
Dr. Karl von Levetzow 1 49-1 5 1 Mabel Dodge Luhan 25
Robert L c Gallienne 8 8 Lyrical Left 1 58 , 1 68
The Libertarian Lea gue 1 65-1 67
M
The Libertarian 1 65
Liberty 8 , 2 1 , 39, 44 , 5 1 -52, 5 3 , 7 3 , 74, John Henry Mackay 1 6 1 , 1 84 , 208
1 3 1 , 1 6 1 , 1 68. See also Benj amin attraction to adolescent boys 1 62 , 208
R . Tucker 77Je Freedomseeker 1 63
image of 43-44 relationship with Tucker 1 6 1 - 1 6 2
Liberty and Property Defense League 89 Sagitta (pseudonym) 1 62- 1 63
" Socialism and Infamy : The Homogenic The Anarchists: A Picture of Civilization at
or Comrade Love Exposed: An the Close if the Nineteenth Century
Open Letter in Plain Words for a 161
Socialist Prophet" 89 Thomas Malthus 1 76
Earl Lind 2-3, 7 8 , 93 Manchester Labour Press 76, 88
77Je Autobiography of an Androgyne 78 Marine Cooks and Stewards Union 2 1 0
Seymour Martin Lipset 20 Gary Marks 20
The Literary World 62 Dora Marsden 1 60
The Little Review 1 39-1 40 Margaret Marsh 5 , 1 7 , 2 1 , 22, 23, 34,
Liuing My Life 4 3 , 94 , 1 1 8 , 1 84 , 1 86 84-88
image of 1 27 Eleanor Marx 48
John William Lloyd 3-4, 1 1 , 1 9 , 32, 34, 3 9 , Karl Marx 48, 1 76
4 1 , 5 1-52, 64-65 , 7 1 -72, 7 5-90, Magdeleine Marx 1 69
92, 1 27 , 1 28- 1 29, 1 66-1 68 , 1 82 , 77Je Romance of New Russia 1 69
See ,11.10 The Dwellers vf
1 84 , 1 9 7 . Marxism 1 83
the Vide Sunrise; See also 77Je Free The A1asses 175
Comrade: See also karezza Mattachine Society 2 1 0
Eneres or the Questions oj'Reksa 1 67 Billie McCullough 1 20
From Terrace-Hill Overlooking: Poems af In William McKinley 23, 63-64
tuition, Perception, and Prophecy 1 66 Medical Society ofVirginia 40
" The Karezza Method Or Magnetation: H . L. Mencken 1 65
The Art of Connubial Love " 1 67 Isabel Meredith 2 5 . See also Helen and
The Larger Love 1 6 8 Olivia Rosetti
George Merrill 105, 129 William Douglass O'Conner 74
Dr. Georg Merzbach 1 6-17 Richard ). Oglesby 48
Message �f the East 1 66 Harry Oosterhuis 1 3 1
Louise Michel 1 49, 1 87-1 88, 206 Th e Open Road. See Mother Earth
Michelangelo 58. See also Legitimation The Oriole Press 1 64
League James R. Osgood 72
Paule Minck 1 50 William C. Owen 164
Robert Minor 67, 1 56
Octave Mirabeau 54 p
Albert Moll 87 A. Mitchell Palmer 1 5 5
Michael Monahan 33 Palmer Raids 155
Tom Mooney 67 Paresis Hall 2, 33
'William Morris 48, 80, 83, 88 Paris Exposition of 1 900 161
Eric Morton 1 56 Robert Allerton Parker 28
James F. Morton 2 1 People's World 1 70
Marian ). Morton 1 57 anti-gay editorial bias 1 70
Johann Most 26, 27, 1 93 The Philadelp hia Inquirer 62
Mother Earth 8, 27-28, 36-37, 39, 44, 57, Philipp Eulenburg. See Eulenburg Affair
63, 66, 69, 1 00 , 1 03, 1 1 8, 1 1 9, 1 36, Stanley Pierson 80
1 43, 1 48, 1 53, 1 68, 1 75 Pittsburgh Press 62
image of 1 Plato 58
Mother Earth Publishing Association 63, Popular Front 2 1 0
1 18 Portland News 148
Marie Mullaney 1 50 The Portland Oregonian 62
Hulda Potter-Loomis 1 28
N
Terence V. Powderly 5 1
The Nation 1 57 Preparedness Day bombing 67
Sergei Nechaev 48-49 Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson 2
Nero 53 Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist 1 1 , 97-1 24,
The New Freewoman 1 60, 1 64 1 0 1 , 1 36, 1 65, 1 84, 1 86, 202
New Republic 1 69 image of 97
New York Herald 39 reviews of 1 03-104
New York Society of Medical Jurispru- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon 26, 44-45
dence 1 7 What is Property? 1 36
Th e New York Sun 62 Psychopathia Sexualis 33, 57, 90, 1 3 1 , 1 62.
New York Times Saturday Review 53 See also Krafft-Ebing
Friedrich Nietzsche 1 37
Max Nordau 9 1 Q
Ruth Norlander 175 Mike Quin 1 70
Carole Normand 1 74
John Humphrey Noyes 1 67 R
No Conscription League 1 55 Marc Andre Raffalovich 9 1
Pierre Ramus 1 64
o
Reb Raney 1 20
Eugene O'Neill 22 Ben Reitman 1 8, 66, 97-98, 1 00, 137,
Dr. Richard O'Neill 46 1 42, 1 76-1 77
M. D. O'Brien 89 Sister qf the Road 176
Kate Richard O 'Hare 99, 1 06, 1 08 Robert Reitzel 27
William O'Neill 1 60 Kenneth Rexroth 12, 1 54, 1 74-1 75, 1 78,
1 82 William Shakespeare 58, 1 44
early anarchist influences 1 7 4 George Bernard Shaw 2 5 , 48
Robert Riegel 60 Percy I3ysshe Shelley 83
Theodore Roosevelt 23-24, 3 1 , 33, 1 50, Alix Kates Shulman 1 83
1 70 Upton Sinclair 1 6 5
Vernon Rosario 1 30 TIle Slant 1 84
Dante Gabriel Rmsetti 2 5 J. T. Small 5 4
D r . Irving Rosse 40 Socialism: TIle Nation of Fatherless Children
Helen and Olivia Rossetti 25 89
William Rossetti 48 socialists 29-30
Rotterdam Commune 175 Fabian Socialists 56
Anna Ri.iling 1 German Socialist Party 36
Russian Revolutio n 1 53 , 1 83 Socialist Party 9, 29, 3 1 , 35, 8 1 , 83, 99,
John Ryan 1 7 8 1 0 1 , 1 82
Society for Human Rights 1 73-1 7 4
s Friendship a n d Freedom 1 74
D.A. Sachs 1 68 Richard Sonn 1 8 , 22
Sagitta. See John Henry Mackay Almeda Sperry 1 4 1 - 1 42 , 1 44 , 1 84
Nick Salvatore 29, 82 Jack Spicer 1 7 8
Margaret Sanger 22, 1 5 9 Charles T. Sprading 1 5 6
San Francisco Bulletin 1 04 Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov 1 69
Sappho 1 44 Joseph Stalin 1 53 , 1 69 , 2 1 0
B ert Savoy 1 7 4 Christine Stansell 1 38
Dr. Eugene Schmidt 43-44, 44, 63 James Steakley 173
Olive Schreiner 48 Lincoln Steffens 1 1 8

Scientific-Humanita rian Committee 1 , Oliver Stevens 72-73
2 , 3 , 8 7 , 1 37. 1 7 3 . See also Magnus Max Stirner 1 60 , 1 62
Hirschfeld Dr. Helene Stocker 1 , 1 37
Hal S ears 2 1 , 37 Alice B. Stockham 1 67
Eve KosofSky Sedgwick 73 Stonewall Gay Democratic Club 1 85
Sedition Act of 1 9 1 8 8 , 1 54 Clarence Swartz 1 64 , ] 65 , 1 66-1 68
Nunia Seldes 1 43 John Addington Symonds 1 , 70, 7 2 , 7 9 ,
L. Glen Seretan 29 8 1 , 9 1 , 1 1 6 , 1 34-1 3 5
sexology 1 5 , 39, 87, 98, 1 28 , 1 29-1 3 1 ,
T
1 7 7 , 20 1 . Sec also Magnus
Hirschfeld, E dward Carpenter, terminology. See also author's terminology;
Georg Merzbach; See also termi See also sexology
nology homosexual terminology 72, 7 8 , 8 5 , 8 7 ,
terminology 1 5 , 76-77 , 1 30-1 3 1 , 93, 1 03, 1 62 , 1 72-1 73 , 1 99
1 32-1 33 , 1 3 5-1 36, 1 39 , 1 49 sexual terminology 2 , 62, 9 8 , 1 7 6
sex radicals 3 , 4, 72, 1 28 .Sec also John M . Carey Thomas 5 3
William Lloyd; See also Emma Henry David Thoreau 88
Goldman; Sec also Alexander TIle Ii.1rch. See also Helen and Olivia
B erkman; See also Leonard Abbott; Rosetti
See also Benjamin R. Tucker; See Toronto Daily Star 1 7 1 , 172
also Moses and Lillian Harman; See Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 5 4
also Ezra and Angela Heywood transgender 1 4 1
contact betwe<cn American and Euro Horace Traubel 74
pean counterp arts 4 Oscar Lovell Trigg 8 1
The Changing Order: A Study of Democ Calamus poems 70, 72, 8 1 , 90, 94
racy 8 1 "The Children ofAdam" 72
Leon Trotsky 1 56, 1 70 Drumtaps 93
Benj amin R. Tucker 3 , 6 , 1 0 , 26, 29, 4 1 , homosexual appreciation for 70
45, 49, 1 1 4, 1 3 1 , 1 80, 1 82 . See Leaves of Grass 70, 72, 7 5 , 8 1 , 83, 93
also Liberty public discourse around Whitman's sexu-
"State Socialism and Anarchism" essay ality 85-95
29, 1 6 1 Whitmanite Societies and publications
image o f 30 80-8 1 , 82
fire of 1 908 1 60, 1 6 1 Ariel 83, 84
image o f 5 1 June Wiener 1 74
o n anarchism 1 9 Leonard Wilcox 1 6 8
o n Oscar Wilde 50-5 1 , 5 5-57 Oscar Wilde 44, 64-65, 1 1 8, 1 86, 1 88
on sexuality 2 1 , 29-30, 3 8 , 59, 1 60-1 63, anarchist appreciation and support for
1 63 1 0 , 47, 52, 54, 65-67
on Whitman 7 1-73 , 74 appreciation for anarchism 48
relationship with John Henry Mackay "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" 6 1r63,
1 6 1-1 63 66, 1 1 8-1 1 9
Sociological Index 131 De Profundis 63, 1 1 8
Reginald Turner 6 1 An Ideal Husband 53
The Importance l!f Being Earnest 53
u The Picture of Dorian Gray 52, 54
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs 1 , 7 , 87, 1 3 0 Salome 54
Ulysses 1 59 " Sonnet to Liberty" 5 1-52
Soul of Man Under Socialism 50-5 1 , 57,
v 6 1 , 63, 64-65, 67, 1 1 8
trial of 1 895 6, 1 0 , 1 5 , 30, 4 1 , 43, 44, 5 1 ,
vanguard 1 69
52, 53, 1 04, 1 1 9
Laurence Veysey 3 1 , 65--66, 87
A Womart oi No Importance 53
George Sylvester Viereck 86-88 , 90, 201
Charles B. Willard 8 0
Elinor, The Autobiography of a Degener
Wilshire's 36
ate 87
George Woodcock 1 2 , 49, 50, 1 8 1 - 1 90
Nineveh: and Other Poems 87
Victoria Woodhull 35
Louis Viereck 87
The �Vord 32. See also Lillian Hannan; See
w also Moses Harman
Lois Waisbrooker 37-3 8 , 39 y
E dwin. C. Walker 46
YMCA ( 1 9 1 2 Scandal) 1 47
Wall Street B ombing, 1 920 1 55
Walsall Anarchists 1 22
z
Alice Ward / Freda Mitchell case 53
Josiah Warren 8 8 , 1 85 Fred Zerbst 1 2 1
Jeffrey Weeks 92, 1 22, 1 23 Emile Zola 25
Harry Weinberger 1 5 5
Alice Wexler 1 42
William Allen White 1 65
Walt Whitman 1 0 , 46, 69-78, 79, 8 3
anarchist appreciation for and discussion
of 70, 70-7 1
association with anarchism 74

Kissack - Free Comrades - Anarchism and Homosexuality in The United States, 1895-1917

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FREE COMRADES

ANARCHISM AND HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1895 -1917

© 2008 Terence Kissack

Library of Congress Control Number: 20()693352H

PIillted in Canada on acid tree, recycled paper with union labor.

Cover by Chris W right (www.seldomwright.com)

T his book began as my dissertation in United States History which I com­

ANARCHISM AND THE POLITICS OF HOMOSEXUALITY

IN THE LATE-NINETEENTH A ND early-twentieth centuries, activists living

would be transformed. Work, love, friendship, consumption, art, literature, pat­

Various anarchist sex activists outlined different positions on the question

larger political discourse of anarchism-they wrote as anarchists, not as homo­

was coined in the late-nineteenth century, as a neutral descriptive term. I only

politics did so with reference to heterosexuality. But by the early-twentieth

We do know that Durant drew upon the nascent science of sexology in

fear of punishment, or by obedience towards individuals or metaphysical enti­

table--the native·-born anarchists were linguistically separated from the newer

revolution . And the cutting psychological theories the anarchists consistently

Peter Kropotkin, though hardly as vehement as Proudhon or Most, shared

Johann Most. Though this is a somewhat large generalization and therefore

Whatever their shortcomings, anarchist sex radicals' views distinguished

sexuality, like all other aspects of life, should be

acknowledge and defend the right of any man

to the time when every individual, whether man

each shall have an independent home of his or . -.

be as varied as are individual inclinations and Anarchism, p u b l i s h e d i n 1 895 by W.

Although Tucker's language-- " relations between the sexes"-assumes a het­

called into play to help on progressive industrial movement." 6 1 An anonymous

chist movement.63 But her desire to speak plainly

relationships unsanctioned by church or state, which either party could leave

was precipitated by a series of scandalous revelations by Maximilian Harden,

professions-devoted so much time and effort to exploring the social, moral,

century, homosexuality had become a focus of surveillance and regulation by

THE WILDE ONES: OSCAR WILDE AND ANARCHIST

their own partners, free from state interference or social condemnation.

To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated

in the topic of homosexuality. The anarchist defense of Wilde was a part of a

tures by Eleanor Marx, Edward Carpenter, William Rossetti, William Morris,

craftsman-like dedication and pleasure in work, onto the conditions found in

of understanding either what Oscar Wilde says or what Anarchism means."29 In

Though Tucker uses Powderly's words , this

vigorous, and unsophisticated young men of \vhom to make victims for

documented anecdote-to make the case that homosexuality is intrinsically

Given his views regarding state regulation of sexuality, it is not surprising to

scribes her experience of encountering Wilde's work as a young girl. Wilde's

FR E E COM RAD ES: W H I TMAN AND TH E S H I FTING

B motive ofWhitman's best-known and most characteristic p oetry is revolution­

� tion, and solidarity reflected Goldman's understanding ofWhitman as a herald

Though Tucker makes no mention of the homoerotic elements of Whit­

Lloyd responded to Carpenter's representation of homosexuality as a deep and

birthplace of democracy. Lloyd was drawn by Car­

nealogy for homogenic love. He hoped to show,

tender, insistent, compassionate, comprehending, cheering, consoling, exalting,

and politics. 52 William James, a skeptical observer of this phenomenon, wrote

politics-which very much relied on a blurry distinction between " comrade­

terms that betrayed Whitman's "homosexual motive." Instead, Lloyd spoke as a

she c ertainly spoke of Whitman as an erotic figure. For example, in 1 9 1 7 she

IN THE SUMMER OF 1 9 1 6 , Ben Reitman, Emma Goldman's lover, was

� § of-the-century America's hierarchical, undemo cratic, and brutal social order.

T his book began as my dissertation in United States History which I com

would be transformed. Work, love, friendship, consumption, art, literature, pat

larger political discourse of anarchism-they wrote as anarchists, not as homo

fear of punishment, or by obedience towards individuals or metaphysical enti

Although Tucker's language-- " relations between the sexes"-assumes a het

B motive ofWhitman's best-known and most characteristic p oetry is revolution

Though Tucker makes no mention of the homoerotic elements of Whit

birthplace of democracy. Lloyd was drawn by Car

politics-which very much relied on a blurry distinction between " comrade

Growing frustrated with Berkman's naivete, Red becomes increasingly di

was motivated, at least in part, by his attraction to Hapgood, a strikingly hand

.�...rour rJi��"� to &1 my 'Ie

....,��b.ment o:f Louise M1 chel

a double standard. Certainly heterosexual relationships that mirrored the age

individual versus collective ownership of the means of production-that exer

1 5 5- 1 7 8 and Patrick Pollard, "Gide in the U. S.S.R.: Some Observations on Com