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