Voltairine de Cleyre II

Nobody asked but …

I spent the whole week-end  being depressed after hearing (at Scribd.com) Voltairine de Cleyre‘s essay entitled, Sex Slavery.  One might say that VDC views this particular glass as neither half-empty nor half-full.  She may have felt that as long as there was one abuse, then that was (and still is) a tragedy.  But surely, no empathetic or logical reader doubts that there have been vastly more than one instance.

In any event,  Ms. de Cleyre’s essay caused me to re-examine myself, my life, and my principles.  I will not change my principles, but I will add new ones.  For as a voluntaryist, I bear responsibility for the ills that may befall my associates, and as a learning human being I have been too shallow perhaps in some aspects of my evolution.  I have the highest regard for women, but there have been times when my memetic self has been deceived by information that I should have suspected more.  I have had racist and sexist thoughts, promoted to me by ignorant and perhaps evil intentions.  I bear responsibility for not questioning these inputs more thoroughly.

In fact, I have never known personally an individual I could hate.  I have known too many who were terribly damaged beforehand, individuals who did not recover from abuse of a permanently damaging sort.  I have tried to apply the non-aggression principle to all.

— Kilgore Forelle

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