#title Let’s love? No. Let’s fight! #author La Voz de la Mujer #date 1896 #source Retrieved on March 12, 2025 from https://www.marxists.org/espanol/gherra/1896/amemos-luchemos.htm #lang en #pubdate 2025-03-12T19:23:49 #topics marriage, free love, feminism #notes Article by Argentine anarchist and feminist activist Pepita Gherra in issue 2 of La Voz de la Mujer on January 31, 1896. What’s the matter, tender and innocent child? Why does the blush cover your cheeks? Why are you agitated and ashamed? What’s the matter? What are you suffering? Ah! Don’t say it, no, don’t say it, I’ve already understood your situation, the sorrow that afflicts you. I know why your eyes are sometimes a torrent of tears instead of being a source of light. I also know why your cheeks suddenly turn a bright crimson. Yes, child, you love! And that’s why you’re ashamed and so sad? Ah! Have they told you that it’s a sin to tell the object of your love that you love them? Do you think it’s true that you should pretend, be a hypocrite? Do you think your love dishonors you? Do you think you don’t have the right to feel love until it’s confessed to you? Don’t believe it, child, no, they’ve deceived you, they cruelly mocked your candid innocence. Yes, they have deceived you, because your love, far from being a crime, is quite the opposite. To love is to live! To love is the law of existence! Love then, child, love with all the strength of your youthful and tender heart! Love! Love, and with your love sweeten your existence and all that surrounds it. Love and be loved. To love and be loved is to be happy! Why do you hesitate, then? What’s stopping you? Love, child, for existence smiles upon you. Fix your gaze on the gaze of him who, without knowing it, magnetizes you; surround his neck with your ivory, round arms, imprison him in them and to the rhythmic beat of the undulation of your virginal breast that promises a sea of magical delights, murmur softly, very softly, in his ear: I love you!... tell him and you will see how he falls at your feet, crazy, crazy and alienated with love and pleasure! * * * …But no, girl, don’t tell him, don’t tell him, because he’ll think you’re crazy, you hear? Crazy! And he’ll tell his friends on the street, in the workshop, at home, in the gin, and then woe betide you! Girl, woe betide you! Where will you go that the little girl doesn’t follow you? Hide your love then, hide it like a disgusting scourge, hide it like it’s a crime! Seek in masturbation a palliative for your voluptuous desires. Do everything, everything except love until you’re loved, you know? Because we are not beings who can and should feel until we’re allowed to, just as a cigarette doesn’t ask to be smoked and waits for its owner to want to use it. Don’t tell him, please, child, don’t tell him, because if you do tell him and he accepts the first fruits of your body, gentle and slender like the graceful palm tree of the desert oasis, what will you do when the stupidity of your parents and relatives insults and mocks you, because they will believe that your love fills them with ignominy, scorned and insulted by this society; mocked by your former companions, who in their ignorance will also believe that the greatest and noblest of feelings is a fault: Love! What will you do then, helpless and alone among the immense number of beings who will surround you? Where will you go, when, frozen stiff or fainting from the heat, you find yourself alone, very alone, without bread for yourself, without milk for your child in your arms? To beg? Will you throw him out into a pasture? Will you throw him into one of those houses called Foundlings? Will you sell your body, which, even slender, they will covet? Ah! No, child, don’t do that, child, for you don’t know with what ferocious fury, with what cruel cruelty, a society filled with virtuous and elegant ladies, with religious and most pious matrons, women who are perhaps wives, daughters, or mothers of those very people who will buy your body and cover it with slime, corrupting and nauseating slime that runs in small streams beneath the aristocratic tailcoats and the elegant attire of such and such ladies! Oh, if you were to sell your body to have bread, you would see those matrons, those same ones who have a husband and ten lovers for themselves, those same ones who, in the secluded and luxurious paternal chambers of the stately mansion, give themselves over with rabid and erotic fury to the noble and elevated practice of masturbation, mocking you and, with inhuman frenzy, trying to throw onto your body a little of the abundant pus they have in theirs! Do not love then, child, no, be hypocritical, groveling, and vile; accept the first one who comes along; what does it matter if he repels you? You can always do what the great matrons do: one husband for your bed and ten lovers everywhere. But first, child, listen: If, like us, you are strong of spirit and serene of heart, come with us, leave the darkness, and let us go where the bright glow of the dawning light announces the new day. Don’t you see it shining in the distance? Do you see what stands out from the shadows? Do you see how it radiates a diamond-like light all around? Look at it! Look at it! It’s already approaching with giant strides. Do you know it? It’s Anarchy. Yes; it’s she who brings us peace and liberty, equality and happiness for all. Don’t be afraid, no, because you see that in her left hand a torch sparkles and her right hand brandishes a dagger. If she carries one, it’s because she must make her way through the darkness, and because in it nest the raven, the rook, and the vampire, that is, religion, law, and power; the bourgeoisie, in short! * * * Young people, girls, women in general, of today’s society! If you don’t want to become prostitutes, slaves without the will to think or feel, don’t get married! You women, what are we? Something! What are we considered? Nothing! You, who think you will find love and tenderness in the home, know that you will find nothing but a master, a lord, a king, a tyrant. Love cannot be eternal, immutable, and fixed; so if it has an end, what remains of that impious institution that lasts as long as life? What will remain of your marriage when love ends? Boredom, tedium, naturally going towards prostitution. Yes, natural law compels us to love continually; it doesn’t compel us equally to love the same object, no, and then, why remain subject to this or that man for our entire lives? Thousands of cases are seen in which an unhappy woman flees the marital home, I don’t want to know for what reason, whatever the reason; the fact is that the husband goes to the authorities, and they force the wife to return to the man she detests and hates. A shepherd wouldn’t do more with a sheep or a goat! I’m not saying that in the present society a woman can have the degree of freedom we long for, but I am saying that in our future and near future society, where nothing will be lacking, where no one will suffer hunger or misery, there we will want completely free love. That is to say, that the union ends when love ends, and that if I, because I feel like it, do not want to be subject to any man, I should not be despised, because, fulfilling and satisfying natural law and my own desire, I may have a lover and raise two, four, or as many children as I want. In today’s society, I don’t do it, because I don’t want to be any man’s maid, and my salary isn’t enough to support myself, much less my children. I believe that if I had them, I would be forced to flee from being the wife of one or ten others. On the other hand, don’t think that criticism matters to me; I’m not one of those shameless enough to want to be ashamed. That’s why I never plan to get involved with anyone, nor (if it comes to that) to smother the fruit of my love or momentary union in my bowels to preserve the black honor. Let that be left to the “distinguished” girl so-and-so who goes (in winter) to restore her considerable health to the residence of such-and-such, and who a few months later—oh wonder!—returns healthy and free of the wicked illness that afflicted her. This is why, dear comrades, I say and think that I would like to have the false anarchists who criticize your initiative to proclaim free love by my side, so that when my guts are torn out and my last breath is near, I can spit in their faces, covered in bloody slime, this phrase: QUEERS! Whatever you want. Onward with “The Voice of Women” and with free love. Long live Anarchy!