Anarchist thinkers of the left, not only conservatives, could oppose women’s liberation

Evidence

On the whole, the reform movement that develops in the nineteenth century seeks justice in equality, and is thus generally favorable to feminism. There is one notable exception: Proudhon. Undoubtedly because of his peasant roots, he reacts violently against Saint-Simonian mysticism; he supports small property owners and at the same time believes in confining woman to the home. “Housewife or courtesan” is the dilemma he locks her in. Until then, attacks against women had been led by conservatives, bitterly combating socialism as well: Le Charivari was one of the inexhaustible sources of jokes; it is Proudhon who breaks the alliance between feminism and socialism; he protests against the socialist women’s banquet presided over by Leroux, and he fulminates against Jeanne Deroin. In his work Justice, he posits that woman should be dependent on man; man alone counts as a social individual; a couple is not a partnership, which would suppose equality, but a union; woman is inferior to man first because her physical force is only two-thirds that of the male, then because she is intellectually and morally inferior to the same degree: she is worth 2 × 2 × 2 against 3 × 3 × 3 or 8/27 of the stronger sex. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 257

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in how egalitarian movements internally construct the Other — parallels the ‘women and workers both have oppression in common’ tension in the next paragraph. — connects to: French radicals opposed women’s suffrage out of fear women would vote conservatively — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 278
• QUESTION: Proudhon’s peasant-rooted antifeminism — how does class origin shape attitudes toward gender? Worth chasing whether Beauvoir develops this.