Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

LightNews

Zoe Baker

@anarchozoe.bsky.social

5.7K followers 0 following 380 posts

Historian of political thought. Trans woman (she/her). Author of Means and Ends: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States. For all my work see https://linktr.ee/zoebaker

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · Dec 6

My history book about the revolutionary strategy of anarchism is now on the anarchist library and available for free in a file format of your choosing. If you have the money please buy a copy from AK press and support radical publishing.

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/zoe-...

Zoe Baker Means and Ends The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States 2023 Cover design by John Yates | www.stealworks.com //...

theanarchistlibrary.org

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 13h

I have once again written a 15,000 word essay by mistake. It debunks five myths about historical anarchist views on democracy and collective decision making. 5,000 words are just on what Malatesta thought about voting in anarchist orgs. Should be finished by the end of the month.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 1d

Source: archive.org/details/in.e...

The Goodman Of Paris : George Routledge Amp Sons, Ltd. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Book Source: Digital Library of India Item 2015.166239dc.date.accessioned: 2015-07-07T00:19:12Zdc.date.available:...

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 1d

She should love and obey her husband like a dog who "always has his heart and his eye upon his master; even if his master whip him and throw stones at him, the dog followeth, wagging his tail and lying down before his master to appease him".

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 1d

Marriage guides in Europe have often just been men telling women that the ideal marriage is an abusive relationship eg the 14th century merchant who informs his teen wife that she should always obey her husband, never do anything he had forbidden her to do, and never answer back or contradict him.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 4d

I know. I'm saying I think Engels might, in addition to this, be subtweeting anarchists by saying we both advocate this thing in the same words. Not sure if this was clear enough.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 4d

It's from Fictitious Splits in the International.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 4d

Re-read the 1868 programme of the Alliance by Bakunin, which both Marx and Engels read. It claimed that "all the political and authoritarian States of today must scale down their functions to the simple administration of the public services" and "merge into the universal union of free Associations".

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 4d

In 1877 Engels claimed that with the abolition of the state "the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things". This is typically framed as a Saint Simon reference. I also think it might be a nod to anarchist ideas from the first international that he was likely familiar with.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 4d

Source: quoted in Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution (Freedom Press, 1975), p24.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 4d

The Spanish federation's 1872 manifesto says: "all authoritarian powers will disappear, converting themselves into simple administrators of the collective interests" and "Anarchy, or the abolition of governments, that is to say their conversion into the simple administrators of collective interests

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 4d

In 1877 Engels claimed that with the abolition of the state "the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things". This is typically framed as a Saint Simon reference. I also think it might be a nod to anarchist ideas from the first international that he was likely familiar with.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 7d

One of my fav history books is now on the anarchist library. Strongly recommend reading it.

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/keny...

Immigrants against the State

Kenyon Zimmer Immigrants against the State Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America 2015 Series: Working Class in American History

theanarchistlibrary.org

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 8d

Source: Diana E. Wright, “Female Crime and State Punishment in Early Modern Japan,” Journal of Women’s History 16, no. 3 (2004), 22-23.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 8d

She proceeded to ignore this and continued to dress as a man. In 1837 Take was found guilty by the high court of disguising herself as a low ranking male warrior. The court banished her to an island, which was a punishment deemed second to the death penalty. She was only 24.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 8d

Due to engaging in petty crime she was publicly reprimanded for theft, vagrancy, and violating gender norms on multiple occasions. Eventually, in 1832, she was taken before the Edo High Court and found guilty. Her punishments included being explicitly forbidden from wearing men’s clothes.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 8d

During the early 19th century a Japanese woman named Take ran away from her job as a maid, started wearing men’s clothes, and sought work as a man under the male name Takejirô. She not only adopted the physical appearance and mannerisms of a man, but also joined a gang of young men.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 11d

Source: Philip Stubbes, Anatomy of the Abuses in England in Shakspere's Youth (N. Truber and Co, 1877-79), p73.

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...

upload.wikimedia.org

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 11d

In 1583 the puritan Philip Stubbes claimed that women who cross dress as men would change their sex and become men if given the opportunity. For context the weird looking f is actually an s.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 12d

Source: Jean E. Howard, “Crossdressing, The Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England,” Shakespeare Quarterly 39, no. 4 (1988), p420.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 12d

Between 1565 and 1605 many of the women arrested for cross-dressing were accussed of being sex workers eg in 1575 Dorothy Clayton (spinster) was judged to have gone "about the City apparelled in man's atire. She has abused her body with sundry persons and lived an incontinent life".

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 12d

In 1587 a man named William Harrison wrote an attack on women wearing men's clothes or dressing masc in England. He reported that, “I have met with some of these trulls in London so disguised that it hath passed my skill to discern whether they were men or women”. Trulls meant sex worker.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 12d

I mean scientific method in the broad sense of the term eg social scientists who analyze events that have already happened aren't running experiments. Nor did I say that science is the only source of knowledge. Just the best method to acquire knowledge of the external world.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 14d

I think that leftist social theory should be grounded in at least the beliefs that: (1) a mind independent world exists and we can develop knowledge of it; (2) the scientific method is the best currently available means to do this; (3) humans are an animal within a web of life.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 15d

Cases like this were well known at the time eg Montaigne claims to have met "a man named Germain" who was known as "a girl called Marie until the age of 22. He had grown a big beard by then and was old and single. His member had appeared, he said, when he was just trying to jump".

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 15d

I did some brief investigation into the 17th century word transfeminate, which meant "to turn from woman to man, or from one sex to another". So far looks like it was used to refer to people who were raised as one sex but then were found to actually be another, most likely due to being intersex.

Zoe Baker @anarchozoe.bsky.social · 17d

King James I of England sounded like an anime villain:

source: J. P. Kenyon, ed., The Stuart Constitution 1603-1688: Documents and Commentary, 2nd Edition (Cambridge University Press, 1986), p12.

"Kings are justly called gods for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth, for if you will consider the attributes to God you shall see how they agree in the person of a king. God hath power to create or destroy, make or unmake, at his pleasure; to give life or send death, tojudge all and to be judged not accountable to none; to raise low things and to make high things low at his pleasure; and to God are both soul and body due. And the like power have kings: they make and unmake their subjects; they have power of raising, and casting down; of life, and of death, judges over all their subjects, and in all causes, and yet accountable to none but God only. They have power
to exalt low things, and abase high things, and make of their subjects like men at the chess — a pawn to take a bishop or a knight — and cry up or down any of their subjects, as they do their money. And to the king is due both the affection of the soul and the service of the body of his subjects."