The Suffragette-to-Fascist Pipeline

May 25, 2021 6:32 AM

Lesbian Fascists on TERF Island explores the how (and muses on the why) a number of prominent UK suffragettes became (and, in one case, founded) British Fascism in the 1930s. Then she asks what that means for UK feminism. The author, Asa Seresin, is a PhD student at Penn.

People Discussed:
Rotha Lintorn-Orman
Mary Sophia Allen
Mary Richardson (part 2)

Bonus lesbian fascist with a gender-complicated life Violette Morris (link to Bad Gays podcast periviously)

posted by GenjiandProust (26 comments total)

Quick editorial note: talking about these figures is difficult, because none of them (with the possible exception of Morris) were particularly open about their sexuality or gender identity, so their precise identities are murky. Additionally, while UK suffragettes transitioned to Fascism in the 30s, the UK suffagettes were not, as a whole, fascist. Lastly, it's annoying that most of the information seems to come from a few books.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:38 AM on May 25, 2021 [12 favorites]

A fascinating glimpse at a hidden history. I'm not sure Seresin completely makes the case for the fascist impulse continuing unbroken into modern TERF and SWERF thinking, but it is a blog post rather than a full history where a clearer evidentiary trail could be shown. As it is, it's a really interesting read though!
posted by prismatic7 at 7:04 AM on May 25, 2021 [4 favorites]

Part of what I’m trying to show is that the nonconsensual imposition of the category of womanhood—which seems to have been unwanted in at least some of these figures’ lives—appears to have been one of the driving forces behind their turn toward fascist ideology.

This is 100% true and I still see it today. Not just in lesbians, but also in trans and nonbinary AFABs, bisexual women, etc. Being relegated to womanhood is a traumatic experience for a lot of AFAB people. I don't agree with the author's ideas regarding "militant prudishness", or that the destruction of the painting was an act of misogynistic violence. I know the history and current political climate surrounding the objectification of womanhood and women's own hand in that is fraught.
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:13 AM on May 25, 2021 [11 favorites]

This is a fascinating post. Embarassingly, I feel like a not-small amount of my knowledge of pre-war UK fascism comes via the Mitford sisters, so I already (and unfairly) have a weird association with outspoken young women of the era and Nazi leanings.

Looking at pictures of these people, I wondered if the aesthetics of fascism might have allowed for greater freedom to be gender non-conforming in public, comparatively speaking, especially for those without the self-assuredness and relative material privilege of, say, a Radclyffe Hall . Not to suggest that any of them embraced fascism as a philosophy as a merely way to avoid performing femininity (or even that there weren't equivalent opportunities to wear a uniform on the Left--as stated above my history is not extensive enough to comment) but I did wonder.
posted by thivaia at 8:27 AM on May 25, 2021 [7 favorites]

Looking at pictures of these people,

Considering how Lintorn-Orman seems to have avidly sough opportunities to dress in masculine clothing, maybe? Seresin characterizes Lintorn-Orman as "a person whose existence was so restricted and whose choices were so misguided that one of the few places they felt able to express their gender identity was a Fascist Children’s Club Christmas party."

While not immensely wealthy, all of these figures were at least comfortable; I am not sure how, say, a working-class gender-nonconforming AFAB person would have made out in their circles.

Now that I think of it, Mary Sophia Allen stands out a bit as someone whose three autobiographies stress her womanhood in the titles, so?
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:39 AM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

What I'd love to know more about is w why they gravitated towards fascism instead of communism. There's a mention in the post about one of the women coming back from being an ambulance driver in WW1 and hating communism, but no real expansion as to why. My best understanding of the propaganda is that communism espoused gender equality (even if in practice this was hardly followed through with) while fascism preached placing women back in their "traditional" place in home and hearth. There is a long history of women joining movements that seek to oppress them, but as far as I am aware, not one of women seeking liberation joining whole heartedly (as opposed to making common cause, as with the TERFs and the religious right) joining these movements. Is there a history I just don't know about, or is this something of an exception to the normal scheme of things, and if so, why?
posted by Hactar at 8:57 AM on May 25, 2021 [12 favorites]

Hactar - that's a good point. Communism had more space for gender non-conformity than Fascism. But maybe western knowledge/images of that come from later (like World War II)? I don't know what the imagery of communism was like in the west in the 1920s and 30s.
posted by jb at 9:37 AM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

Communism had more space for gender non-conformity than Fascism.

Initially. Stalin, however, outlawed male homosexuality in 1933. Dan Healey has written on the subject.
posted by BWA at 10:00 AM on May 25, 2021 [6 favorites]

Now that I think of it, Mary Sophia Allen stands out a bit as someone whose three autobiographies stress her womanhood in the titles, so?

Authors don’t typically have the final word on their titles (unless they were self published?)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:04 AM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

Why Former Suffragettes Flocked to British Fascism
posted by No Robots at 10:06 AM on May 25, 2021 [8 favorites]

Stalin was indistinguishable from a fascist in many ways. See also: the suppression of constructivism and “formalism” in art in favour of a heroic realism of a sort favoured by dictators, the wedding-cake classicism embraced in architecture during his reign, the rehabilitation of the Russian Orthodox Church as a national religion.
posted by acb at 10:09 AM on May 25, 2021 [5 favorites]

What I'd love to know more about is w why they gravitated towards fascism instead of communism.

Because they came from money?
posted by y2karl at 10:19 AM on May 25, 2021 [26 favorites]

Initially. Stalin, however, outlawed male homosexuality in 1933. Dan Healey has written on the subject.

Oh, I'm sorry: I was thinking specifically of non-conformity for people assigned female at birth, as women were encouraged to move into traditionally male-dominated roles, wear more gender-neutral clothing (e.g. "I am Seagull" - a painting from the Chinese Cultural Revolution). I've never seen any similar flexibility for people assigned male at birth.
posted by jb at 10:21 AM on May 25, 2021 [8 favorites]

From No Robots link: "Several of suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst’s colleagues regarded her movement as a forerunner of the interwar dictatorships because of its insistence on total obedience to the Leader."

I had not realized that Pankhurst was so controlling. That's interesting. The article does skip that Lintorn-Orman's group the British Fascisti (later British Fascists) was in direct competition to Mosley's British Union of Fascists (which it predated).
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:15 AM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

This is a super interesting topic I knew nothing about before.

I know there's a lot of theory about this I haven't read, but the whole sexual appeal of fascism has to be at play here - the uniforms, the sadism, the worship of power.

From No Robot's link I get the sense part of why the fascists did well with UK feminists was they were 1) well resourced (had money) 2) effective organizers (put people to work doing stuff, flexible enough to incorporate people of different class, ideological, and indeed gender backgrounds) and 3) they cannily allowed women to participate. This must have filled a void where militant women in search of a movement could slot in easily.

In the end the driving force toward fascism for many was antisemitism. Fascist leaders cannily exploited and amplified racist ideology and welcomed all into their big tent of hatred.
posted by latkes at 11:42 AM on May 25, 2021 [11 favorites]

I seem to remember reading that suffrage campaigners in the US teamed up with the KKK to promote Prohibition. Not fascism, but a really bad idea.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:59 AM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

In the end the driving force toward fascism for many was antisemitism.

It's easy to forget just how effortlessly common antisemitism was in the early 20th century, even among "enlightened" or progressive people. Woolf's diaries are rife with it, as I recall. A couple of years ago I read May Sinclair's Mary Olivier : a Life, a novel which I thoroughly enjoyed, until the very last page, which was marred by an entirely cliched, entirely gratuitous, antisemitic slur.

Because they came from money?

There's that. And they were white. And beyond that, there was a belief among many Europeans and Americans (and probably beyond, too) that fascism was a way of salvaging / returning some kind of sacrality to history, the aestheticization of politics, as the Benjamin quote goes. It's also easy to forget how many of the famous Modernists flirted with fascism, or were sympathetic to fascism, or were fascists, right up to WWII, and some beyond.
posted by a Rrose by any other name at 12:35 PM on May 25, 2021 [16 favorites]

I wonder too if there isn't an entree into fascism at this time because so many white suffragists of that era went swiftly into being pro-eugenics after being pro-birth control.
posted by RedEmma at 1:55 PM on May 25, 2021 [13 favorites]

they cannily allowed women to participate. This must have filled a void where militant women in search of a movement could slot in easily.

As others have pointed out, though, Communism, at least initially, offered similar opportunities.

I think Rrose has the main reasons. This author hasn't really made the through-line evident to me.
posted by praemunire at 2:03 PM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

What I'd love to know more about is w why they gravitated towards fascism instead of communism.

Fascism has the advantage that it appeals to nationalistic impulses. Communism values class solidarity, but people who want to be upwardly mobile are willing to abandon their class. Much fewer are willing to abandon their nationality.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 4:20 PM on May 25, 2021 [4 favorites]

Charisma seems to be fascistic in and of itself.
posted by jamjam at 5:53 PM on May 25, 2021 [3 favorites]

What I'd love to know more about is w why they gravitated towards fascism instead of communism.

Fewer syllables. Extremism via linguistic drift.
posted by lock robster at 10:17 PM on May 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

We received extensive lessons about the suffragettes in History (where there was no mention of any of them being either lesbians or fascists).

This was also true of my UK single-sex education in the early 2000s, and something I remarked on when sharing this article with my best remaining friend from that era, even though our teacher was herself queer. I distinctly remember being taught about Mary Richardson slashing the Rokeby Venus, but there was nothing about the way that was taught that implied anything other than that she was a straight/cis/femme woman. And given the sheer amount of space that the syllabus gave both to women's suffrage and to fascism, it definitely feels like an oversight in retrospect that the pipeline from one to the other in the UK wasn't even mentioned.
posted by terretu at 11:22 PM on May 25, 2021 [5 favorites]

After the start of WW2 it became a dirty secret, but a large fraction of the British upper classes were sympathetic to Fascism.

I'm not sure if there was a particular "pipeline" or if it was just that a similar fraction of upper class feminists were fascist compared to the rest of the upper classes.

No Robots excellent link points out that in the British variant of fascism their policy platform seems like it wasn't overtly anti-feminist.

Despite this, the BUF couched much of its propaganda in distinctly feminist terms, and the movement claimed to offer a “true feminism” by way of disparaging the other parties; some members argued that equality of the sexes was part of its attraction for them. In contrast to its continental counterparts, the movement was at pains to assert that fascism did not imply the return of women to a life of domesticity. As Alexander Raven Thompson and Anne Brock-Griggs explained, the corporate state would give women greater privileges than they enjoyed under democracy by ensuring proper representation for them as housewives. Additionally, the corporate system would raise their status as workers by ensuring that they enjoyed equal pay, by increasing remuneration in low-paid occupations, and by abolishing the marriage bar restricting the employment of married women. The rationale for all this lay not in promoting women’s individual rights but in serving the interests of the state by making full use of women’s skills.

posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:17 AM on May 26, 2021 [5 favorites]

I didn't see this anywhere in the article, but I'm curious how many working class suffragettes followed their leaders into the fascist movement?
posted by Space Kat at 1:45 PM on May 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

I don't know about suffragettes in particular but No Robot's link (to an excerpt from a book on fascism in Britain) says, "newly available oral evidence and unpublished memoirs by surviving Blackshirts leave little room for traditional assumptions about the class and gender composition of the BUF. In industrial towns, members were drawn from unemployed men and women, factory hands, and textile mill workers; and they came from a Labour family background as often as from a Conservative one."
posted by latkes at 10:09 PM on May 26, 2021 [2 favorites]