Women’s History Month: Honoring Slavery Abolitionist and Feminist Poet and Novelist, Amelia Alderson Opie

Amelia Alderson Opie, portrait by her husband John Opie, 1798.  Public domain.

We are very pleased to be able to contribute to the celebration of Women’s History Month by offering our readers a facsimile reproduction of 19th century British anti-slavery activist, feminist poet and novelist Amelia Alderson Opie‘s 1826 children’s book “The Black Man’s Lament: Or, How To Make Sugar“.

Amelia Alderson was born on 12 November 1769 in the midst of one of the greatest revolutionary eras in world history.  An only daughter of a Norwich physician and a mother who taught her to respect people of all walks of life and social classes; by 1804 she had become a successful writer and had published a novel in which her anti-slavery sentiments were expressed.   She was fortunate to have lived at a time when courageous women were asserting their rights more and more forcefully, and some men were beginning to accept intelligent women into their intellectual gatherings; she became friends with many of the most brilliant thinkers, writers and actors of her age, including the legendary actress and “undisputed Queen of Drury Lane” Sarah Siddons, Siddons’ brother and fellow brilliant actor John Philip Kemble, author and radical political scientist William Godwin and his wife, pioneering feminist writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft.  Both Alderson and Wollstonecraft were associated with the Blue Stockings Society, an early association organized by leading women of the mid-1700s that admitted men into their company to discuss literature and the arts (discussion of politics was deprecated at their gatherings).  This salon attracted such luminaries of that time as salon hostess Elizabeth Montagu,  and the genius linguist, poet, writer, translator and astronomer (among a few of her accomplishments) Elizabeth Carter.

In 1798 Alderson married the portrait painter John Opie, whose brilliant work brought him commissions to paint many of the most illustrious men and women of their time and enabled them to participate in the highest levels of philosophical discussions of the era.

Another of Alderson Opie’s close friends, Joseph John Gurney, fellow abolitionist and staunch anti-slavery leader of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) convinced her to join them in 1825.  Working with fellow anti-slavery activist and archaeology enthusiast Anna Gurney, Opie co-founded a branch of the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Norwich, England.  In 1840, Opie was one of the few female participants included in the group portrait of that year’s meeting of the World Anti-Slavery Convention, held in London.

Amelia Alderson Opie portrayed in the front ranks of women attending the  World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in June of 1840 (outlined in red, center right).  To her immediate right is Anne Isabella Noel Byron (Lady Byron, Lord Byron’s wife); to her left is abolitionist Mary Anne Rawson.  Co-founder of the British anti-slavery movement Thomas Clarkson is addressing the meeting; his daughter-in-law Mary Clarkson is seated to his right. Seated almost directly in front of Opie is the charge d’affaires of revolutionary Haiti in London and Paris, Jean-Baptiste Symphor Linstant de Pradine.  Source: National Picture Gallery, London.

In 1833, Opie’s Norwich Ladies Anti-Slavery Society presented a petition to Parliament calling for the abolition of slavery which contained some “187,000 female signatures”;  According to a report in pioneering American abolitionist Benjamin Lundy‘s “Genius of Universal Emancipation” (Vol. 12, Whole Number 287, September, 1833), it took four men to lay this enormous petition on the table in the House of Commons.  “At the head of it stood the name of the celebrated Amelia Opie…”

Opie’s husband had died in 1807; she lived an active life until her death on 2 December 1853 at Norwich, having spent her later years visiting and receiving her many friends between London and Norwich and corresponding with writers from around the world.

—IWPCHI

 

 

 

 

 

 

EXCLUSIVE: Translation of French womens’ collective’s rebuttal to excesses of the #metoo movement

We republish here our (rather poor) machine translation (supplemented (?) by our own additions) of the recent declaration of French women, led by Catherine Deneuve, in opposition to the reactionary aspects of the anti-sexual-harassment #metoo movement launched in the US in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

This article originally appeared in the French newspaper “Le Monde” [http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2018/01/09/nous-defendons-une-liberte-d-importuner-indispensable-a-la-liberte-sexuelle_5239134_3232.html].  Our translation was done primarily by the Microsoft/Bing Translator and was then improved (we hope) by our own additional interpretations of the meanings of difficult-to-translate French vernacular.  Our additions are in brackets.

We agree substantially that the direction in which the #metoo movement is heading is fundamentally reactionary and seeks to do away with the rights of the accused while simultaneously mandating that every investigation into a sexual assault allegation should “start by believing” the accuser.  This medieval concept of “justice” has already claimed the careers and even the lives of several people who have been convicted in the press on the basis of mere accusations of having committed “sexual assault”.  There are also moves afoot by facile politicians to capitalize on the #metoo hysteria by promulgating reactionary laws that will raise the age of consent – to 18 or 20! – and to broaden the definition of “rape” to include all kinds of what have long been considered to be mere sexual misdemeanors.  Also their is a movement afoot to make unsolicited comments to women an illegal act!  Truly, the USA is becoming the world’s largest open insane asylum; and the malicious tentacles of its anti-sex witch-hunters are crossing borders and influencing similar movements around the world.  The French women who published this declaration are responding to not just the US #metoo movement but to attacks on the rights of artists and writers being launched by right-wing politicians in France who are seeking to advance their careers on this wave of anti-sex puritanism sweeping the globe.

Sexual harassment and sexual violence is all too real – and it is far too serious to be trifled with by cheap political hacks of the left and right who seek to further their careers by launching a campaign to straightjacket normal human sexual behavior under the pretense of defending women from sexual assault.  While the new determination of women to aggressively fight sexual harassment in the workplace and on the streets is a very positive development, this goal can not be successfully pursued by criminalizing normal human sexual behavior, even if that behavior can be often annoying and obnoxious.  Criminalizing such things as clumsy street pick-up attempts or “unwanted touching” as “sexual assaults” or “sexual harassment” will make life more miserable for everyone and will only fill our already overcrowded prisons with more innocent people.  Normal human sexual behavior, though often awkward, messy and obnoxious, must never be criminalized.  We agree with the French women’s collective and their declaration: “We defend the freedom to annoy, indispensable to sexual freedom”!

— IWPCHI

Note: If we find a better translation, we’ll print it here; if you find one please send it to us.

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“We defend a freedom of annoyance, indispensable to sexual freedom”

Rape is a crime. But the insistent or clumsy [pick-up move] is not a misdemeanor, nor gallantry a macho aggression.

In the aftermath of the Weinstein case, there was a legitimate awareness of sexual violence against women, particularly in the professional context, where some men abused their power. It was necessary. But this liberation turns today [in]to its opposite: if one wishes to be intimate one must speak the right way; those who annoy us must be silenced; and those who refuse to bow to such injunctions are regarded as treacherous accomplices!

But it is pure puritanism to borrow, in the name of a so-called general good, the arguments of the protection of women and their emancipation to better chain them to the status of eternal victims, poor little things under the influence of phallocratic demons, like [in] the good old days of witchcraft.

Denunciations and indictments

In fact, #metoo has brought [to] the press and social networks a campaign of public denunciations and indictments of individuals who, without being given the opportunity to answer or defend themselves, have been placed exactly on the same plane as sexual aggressors. This hasty justice already has its victims, men sanctioned in the exercise of their profession, forced to resign, etc., when their only wrong was to have touched a knee, tried to steal a kiss, talked about “intimate” things at a business dinner or to have sent messages with sexual [connotations] to a woman in whom the attraction was not reciprocal.

This fever to send the “pigs” to the slaughterhouse, far from helping women to empower themselves, actually serves the interests of the enemies of sexual freedom: religious extremists, the worst reactionaries and those who believe, in the name of a substantially Victorian value and the morality that goes with it, that women are “[special]” beings, children with adult faces, [needing] to be protected.

Now, men are summoned to [rack] their brains and to find, in the depths of their retrospective consciousness, an “inappropriate behaviour” that they might have had […] ten, twenty or thirty years ago, and of which they should repent. The public confession, the incursion of self-proclaimed prosecutors into the private sphere, is setting up a totalitarian climate of society.

The cleansing wave does not seem to know any limits. There, a nude of Egon Schiele is censored on a poster; Here there are calls for the removal of a painting of Balthus from a museum on the grounds that it would be an apology of paedophilia; In the confusion of the man and of the work, one asks for the ban of the retrospective on Roman Polanski at the film library and we get the postponement of that devoted to Jean-Claude Brisseau. One academic judges the film Blow-Up, by Michelangelo Antonioni, “misogynist” and “unacceptable”. In the light of this revisionism, John Ford (The Prisoner of the desert) and even Nicolas Poussin (the abduction of the Sabines) are not far away.

Already, some publishers are asking some of us to make our male characters less “sexist”, to talk about sexuality and love with less of an imbalance or to make sure that the “traumas suffered by the female characters” are rendered More obvious! On the brink of the ridiculous, a proposed bill in Sweden wants to impose a consent expressly notified to any candidate for sexual intercourse! One more effort and two adults who will want to have sex together must first check through an “app” of their phone a document in which the practices they accept and those they refuse will be duly listed.

Indispensable Freedom to offend

The philosopher Ruwen Ogien defended a freedom to offend indispensable to artistic creation. Similarly, we are defending a freedom of annoyance, indispensable to sexual freedom. We are now sufficiently warned to admit that sexual impulse is by nature offensive and Savage, but we are also sufficiently perceptive to not confuse an awkward pass and sexual assault.

Above all, we are aware that the human person is not a monolith: A woman can, on the same day, lead a professional team and enjoy being the sexual object of a man, without being a “slut” or a vile accomplice of patriarchy. She can ensure that her salary is equal to that of a man, but does not feel traumatized forever by a [lecher] in the subway, even if this is considered a misdemeanor. [She] can even consider it as the expression of a great sexual misery, even as a non-event.

As women, we do not recognize ourselves in this feminism which, beyond the denunciation of abuse of power, takes the appearance of a hatred of men and [male] sexuality. We believe that the freedom to say no to a sexual proposition does not [exist] without the freedom to annoy. And we consider that it is necessary to be able to respond to this freedom of annoyance other than by locking ourselves in the role of prey.

For those of us who have chosen to have children, we feel that it makes more sense to raise our daughters so that they are sufficiently informed and aware to be able to live their lives fully without being intimidated or [racked with guilt].

Accidents that may affect a woman’s body do not necessarily [impugn] her dignity and must not […] necessarily make her a perpetual victim. Because we are not reducible to our bodies. Our inner freedom is inviolable. And this freedom that we cherish is not without risk or without responsibility.

The editors of this text are: Sarah Chiche (writer, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst), Catherine Millet (art critic, writer), Catherine Robbe-Grillet (actress and writer), Peggy Sastre (author, journalist and translator), Abnousse Shalmani (writer and journalist).

[Co-signers to this declaration]: Kathy Alliou (curator), Marie-Laure Bernadac (honorary general curator), Stéphanie Blake (author of children’s books), Ingrid Caven (actress and singer), Catherine Deneuve (actress), Gloria Friedmann ( visual artist), Cécile Guilbert (writer), Brigitte Jaques-Wajeman (director), Claudine Junien (geneticist), Brigitte Lahaie (actress and radio presenter), Elisabeth Lévy (Director of the writing of the Causer), Joëlle Losfeld ( Editor), Sophie de Menthon (President of the Mouvement ETHIC), Marie Sellier (author, president of the Society of the people of letters).

[Full list of signers of the declaration:]  Les-signataires-de-La-tribune (PDF)

 

 

 

DEFEND NORTH KOREA! DPRK Slams U.S. Human Rights Record, Citing Racism, Slavery, Child Abuse

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, known in the US as simply “North Korea”) slammed the US’ human rights record recently, calling out the US Government for its blatant hypocrisy regarding human rights in the US and wherever the US military has launched attacks against countries around the world.

Writing back on 28 February, the Korean Central News Agency (the official DPRK news website) accused the US of being the “world’s worst human rights abuser”, citing the US’ long record of racism and traffic in human flesh which “began with black slave trade”.

“Last year the U.S. released a ‘report on world’s human traffic in 2016’ in which it slandered 188 countries and regions, blaming them for failing to combat flesh traffic. Not content with this, the U.S. went the lengths of mapping out a list of such countries.
“There is no such country as the U.S. where human existence and security are not guaranteed and even the elementary rights of human beings are being violated blatantly.
“The U.S. is a cesspool of crimes and a veritable hell where grisly human rights abuses and bloody man-killing are rampant. It came into being through bloody man-killing and exists by dint of human rights abuses.

“The U.S. is only the country where children without their protectors are thrown behind bars for an indefinite period. About 70 000 children met such fate in 2014 only.
“It is shameless for such country to talk about international law and standards and pull up most of the countries in the world over their ‘human rights situation.'”

The full text of the KCNA article is reprinted below.

The complete political disorientation of the Kim Jong-Il-led DPRK leadership is shown in this article by their uncritical citation of a statement from the viciously anti-woman, anticommunist and antigay Iranian government regarding the US human rights record.  For alleged communists to needlessly make common cause with one of the most hideously backward and anti-worker regimes on the face of the planet merely in order to “buttress” a political attack against the USA’s human rights record is absurd.  It is a fine example of how once a “revolutionary socialist” leadership abandons the fundamental principles of revolutionary Marxist/Leninist/Trotskyist internationalism in favor of the utopian programme of “building socialism in one country” their ability to even distinguish friend from foe is completely lost.

While we do not agree with the Stalinist politics of the North Korean DPRK leadership, which long ago abandoned the fundamental tenets of Marxism/Leninism by repudiating the idea of building  revolutionary socialist political parties around the world dedicated to the global overthrow of the capitalist system in favor the utopian idea of building socialism in half a country, we defend the Stalinized North Korean workers state – despite its obvious and major flaws – as an important and historic conquest of the workers of Korea and of the world.  As Trotsky pointed out: if revolutionary socialist and anarchist workers refuse to defend existing victories of the working class they will never be able to conquer new ones.  Heroic North Korea stands today as the last nation in the world where the capitalist classes have been completely kicked out and are unable to exploit a single North Korean worker!  This is precisely why the United States and its capitalist allies in the UN hate North Korea and want to see it destroyed.  We desire to help build the political leadership necessary to launch a Trotskyist workers socialist political revolution inside the DPRK to replace the hereditary Kim Il Sungist/Stalinist bureaucracy with a true proletarian democracy that fights to defend socialism in North Korea, while simultaneously fighting against capitalist restoration in all the other Maoist/Stalinist degenerated workers states, from China to Cuba.

There has historically always been a strong internationalist current in the Korean communist movement, which was fully expressed by the heroic exiled Korean communist worker-leaders of the 1930s who provided crucial leadership for the Chinese working class in the workers movement of China back when Korea was occupied by the Japanese.  Today as the disgusting fake-communist Chinese “Communist Party” leadership slowly restores capitalism to China, stuffing its leaders’ pockets with money and sending the children of the fake-Communist Party leaders to study capitalist business practices in places like Harvard Business School, they stoop so low as to threaten to refuse to defend their brave sisters and brothers in North Korea from US attacks!  Overthrowing what is left of the gains of the Chinese Revolution is the Number One priority of US imperialism; the US seeks to split China away from North Korea by bribing the top Chinese “Communist Party” leaders with cold, hard cash.  The workers of China must oust the betrayers in the fake-“Chinese Communist Party” leadership and replace these cat’s paws of world capitalism with a revolutionary socialist leadership dedicated to defending and extending the historic gains of the Chinese workers and peasants socialist revolution! The restoration of capitalism in China – like the restoration of capitalism in the countries of the former USSR – will be a huge disaster for the workers and peasants of China and of the whole world! The capitalist world has barely recovered from its last great global crisis and is now staggering towards its next great economic collapse.  There is no future for the workers of the world under capitalism other than a future of endless wars, more poverty and more environmental and human degradation!  Every TRUE communist knows this fact down to the marrow of their bones!  A “communist party” that seeks “peaceful coexistence” with a capitalist world that must overthrow every gain of the working class in order to survive is not a “communist party” at all but is in fact a nest of conspiring counterrevolutionaries poised to betray the working class in exchange for the biggest bribes they can get from the capitalists!  The pro-capitalist leadership of the Chinese “Communist Party” must be arrested and thrown in jail – overthrown – by the workers of China in a pro-socialist Trotskyist political revolution before those fake-Communists sell China to the highest bidder!  China must DEFEND THE DPRK FROM EVERY ATTACK LAUNCHED AGAINST IT BY US IMPERIALISM!  The US and its capitalist allies are not potential “friends” of the Chinese working class but are their mortal enemies and future hangmen!

Likewise, we call for the DPRK to return to the road of Lenin and Trotsky and away from the death trap of the counterrevolutionary Stalinist and Maoist programme of abandoning internationalist Marxism in favor of building socialism in one country.  The Korean workers revolution led by the great revolutionary leader Kim Il-Sung has sacrificed to much in the cause of the workers and peasants of the world to be sqandered away by the politically disoriented Stalinist epigones of the “Juche Idea” – which is nothing but a Korean version of the counterrevolutionary Stalinist doctrine of “building socialism in one country” that led directly to the Stalinists’ betrayal of the workers of the USSR. DPRK workers: return to the road of revolutionary Marxist/Leninist/Trotskyist internationalism!

The workers of the US and the entire capitalist world must defend our sister and brother workers in North Korea from the continuous death threats issued by US imperialism and its UN/EU/NATO allies.  US: Hands Off North Korea and China!  US OUT OF THE KOREAN PENINSULA NOW!

-IWPCHI

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True Colors of U.S. as World’s Worst Human Rights Abuser

Pyongyang, February 28 (KCNA) — The U.S. has come under fire by the international community for its human rights abuses revealed one after another.
Quoting the results of the recent survey made by Polaris, the national human traffic survey institution, UPI disclosed that the flesh traffic increased 35.7 percent in the U.S. last year over that in the previous year.
It said that more than 7 572 cases of flesh traffic were reported in California, Texas, Florida, etc., terming them “a form of modern-day slave system.”
Seyed Ali Khamenei, leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, referred to the fact that a five-year-old boy was detained with his hands manacled in the U.S. some time ago, saying that this shows the present “human rights situation in the U.S.”
All facts go to clearly show before the world once again the true colors of the U.S. as the worst human rights abuser.
Last year the U.S. released a “report on world’s human traffic in 2016” in which it slandered 188 countries and regions, blaming them for failing to combat flesh traffic. Not content with this, the U.S. went the lengths of mapping out a list of such countries.
There is no such country as the U.S. where human existence and security are not guaranteed and even the elementary rights of human beings are being violated blatantly.
The U.S. is a cesspool of crimes and a veritable hell where grisly human rights abuses and bloody man-killing are rampant. It came into being through bloody man-killing and exists by dint of human rights abuses.
It has a history of the most cursed and disgraceful flesh traffic in the world.
Its history began with black slave trade and is still known as the world’s worst country in flesh traffic. 100 000 to 500 000 fall victim to the flesh traffic for slave labor every year and 100 000 children are forced into prostitution annually.
The U.S. is only the country where children without their protectors are thrown behind bars for an indefinite period. About 70 000 children met such fate in 2014 only.
It is shameless for such country to talk about international law and standards and pull up most of the countries in the world over their “human rights situation.”
The U.S. is loudmouthed about “defence of human rights” and “equality for all” world-wide but it can never cover up its true colors as the world’s worst human rights abuser.
The U.S. “human rights” campaign will never work on any country. -0-