Gender and sexuality

Gender and sexuality are categories that are both socially and institutionally defined and maintained, regulate and are regulated and restrict autonomy. Conceptually, therefore, anarchism’s anti-authoritarian and autonomous ethos ought to, and often has, extended to gender hierarchy and domination and sexual normativity, considering how freedom is restricted by these phenomena. Anarchists have made unique contributions to analysis of these phenomena and resistance to them that will be explored in this chapter, both applying anarchist principles to gender and sexuality in wider society and applying feminist and queer perspectives to anarchism. These include critique and analysis of the hierarchical components of gender including the public/private hierarchy; greater emphasis on the ‘personal’ terrain of politics; focus on how identity can be part of coercion and control; gendered analysis of the state1; prefiguration of alternative modes of living and relating including freedom from gender hierarchy and sexual freedom; and approaches to organising that do not collapse back into the hierarchies of gender. However, the diversity of perspectives and approaches to anarchism have often shaped how this has been conceptualised, and the extent to which gender and sexuality have been a focus in anarchism.