“T o know our history is

to begin to see how to take

Lunaria Press
Spring 2010 Catalogue
up the struggle again.”

LP
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The following two zines are sister texts. Written by the same people only
a year apart, they are two parts of one story. The first one, Witches, Mid-
wives and Nurses explains how the American medical profession came to
be dominated by rich, white men, while Complaints and Disorders ad-
dresses the effects of this domination.

B
Witches, Midwives and Nurses
Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English
ased out of Tacoma, Washington,
This pamphlet represents a beginning of the research which will have we are here to provide the histories of wom-
to be done to recapture our history as health workers. It is a fragmen-
en with stories that have inspired us through
tary account, assembled from sources which were usually sketchy and
often biased, by women who are in no sense “professional” historians. We
out our experiences in obtaining our own
confined ourselves to western history, since the institutions we confront individual freedom. With no interest in the
today are the products of western civilization. We are far from being able victimization or passivity our society per-
to represent a complete chronological history. Instead, we looked at two petuates in the hearts of women, we bring
separate, important phases in the male takeover of health care: the sup- you stories of militant groups organized by
pression of witches in medieval Europe, and the rise of the male medical women, and the writings of signficant indi-
profession in 19th century America. viduals who’s names brought fear to some
and strength to others. We also emphasize
on the transitions of the medical industry
Complaints and Disorders pertaining to women’s health; we are watch-
Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English ing the deterioration of knowledge and
agency over our own bodies. However in-
Our motivation to write this pamphlet comes out of our own experi-
terpreted, discussion of content is strongly
ences as women, as health care consumers, and as activists in the women’s
health movement. In writing this, we have tried to see beyond our own
encouraged. Stay fierce.
experiences (and anger) and to understand medical sexism as a social
force helping to shape the options and social roles of all women. Our
approach is largely historical. In the first sections of this pamphlet we
attempt to describe medicine’s contribution to the sexist ideology and
sexual oppression in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
(approximately 1865 to 1920). We chose to begin with this period be-
cause it witnessed a pronounced shift from a religious to a bio-medical
rationale for sexism, as well as the formation of the medical profession as
we know it – a male elite with a legal monopoly over medicine practice.
We feel that this period provides a perspective essential for understanding
our relation to the modern medical system. In the last two sections we
attempt to apply that perspective to our present situation and the issues
that concern us today.
Resistance to Difference
Helene Bowen Raddeker
In imperial Japan sexual equality had many champions, though defini-
tions of what constituted equality varied markedly. The following dis-
cussion concerns three women who were among the most radical of its
advocates: Kanno Suga (1881-1911), Itō Noe (1895-1923) and Kaneko
Fumiko (1903-1926). All three, it will be noted, died young. Not one of
them, moreover, died from natural causes but, rather, at or in the hands
of the State. This may come as no surprise since all were anarchists or
(in the case of Fumiko) strongly influenced by anarchism; as we shall see
below, two of the three were even self-confessed traitors who believed in
political violence as a necessary strategy. These three women did not fall
foul of state power due specifically to their advocacy of sexual equality,
yet this was an intrinsic part of the political standpoints and identities
they embraced. If it had not been for their resistance to hierarchical no-
tions of male-female difference and their demands for equal recognition
and treatment by society, their fates may have been different. The self-
denial and self-effacement traditionally expected of women was, for each
of them, not an option, for it ruled out the possibility of a true subject-
hood and destiny of her own choosing.
Among the Women of the ETA
Eileen MacDonald
Originally the first chapter of MacDonald’s book Shoot the Women First,
this zine is based mainly on interviews with several women involved in
militant struggles within the Basque seperatist movement during the
late 1980s. macDonald’s focus was not so much on the movement itself
but on the role of women within armed struggle. These women had
quite a bit to say about the image of armed struggle being man’s work,
and the notion that women are weaker, and therefore, less capable of
militancy. Their stories are amazing tales of passion and of hardship,
and really shows the personal side of guerilla war and its consequences.
This Is Not A Love Story
The Revolutionary Cells (RZ) made their first appearance on Novem-
ber 16th, 1973 with an attack against ITT in West Berlin to point out
the participation of this multinational corporation in Pinochet’s military
putsch in Chile.In 1976, numerous wimmin broke with the RZ and
formed their own splinter group and from 1977 onwards, the militant
feminist ant patriarchal urban guerrilla group Rote Zora (Red Zora)
acted autonomously and independently, though some wimmin still par-
ticipated in the Revolutionary Cells, which had by then shifted its focus
to acts of clandestine sabotage in support of the larger anti-nuclear move-
ment in Germany.
This pamphlet contains an interview with members of the Red Zora and
a brief look into Direct Action and the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade.
Atamansha
Malcolm Archibald
The Ukrainian anarchist Maria Nikiforova played a prominent role in
the Russian Revolutions of 1917 and the subsequent Civil War as an or-
ganizer, military commander, and terrorist. A revolutionary from the age
of 16, she was on trial for her life on four separate occasions under three
different regimes and was sentenced to death twice. Her exploits became
the stuff of folklore. But she was ‘blacklisted’ by official historians and her
story was lost for generations.
The Principles of Anarchism & To Tramps
Lucy Parsons
These two pieces were written by one of America’s original insurrection-
ary anarchists, Lucy Parsons. Lucy is a powerful writer, who demands the
attention and action of her listeners. The first of the texts is Lucy’s telling
of her estrangement with the concept of government and an explanation
of anarchism. The second is a shorter piece, full of anger and fervor. It
calls out to the “tramps: the unemployed, disinherited, and miserable” to
take individual action against those who have taken from them.