The Sex Question

“La Frondeuse” zine, Issues 3 & 4

The Black and Red Feminism zine has been reborn as La Frondeuse [The Troublemaker, or The Anti-Authoritarian.] The name is borrowed from one of Séverine’s collections. Issue 3 features works by Louise Michel, Paule Mink […]

translations

Paule Mink, “The Right of Abortion” (1891)

Numerous, very sensational trials for the crime of suppression of children have taken place from the month of August 1891, to the same month in 1892, during one whole year, which we could call the year of abortions. In all the countries of Europe, in Russia, German, England, and France, and everywhere women have been prosecuted, and trials have been brought on these serious grounds. In Russian Poland, twelve women were arrested, and twenty were condemned in London, and in France we have had various legal actions for these heinous acts in Paris, Lyon, Béziers, and Villeneuve-les-Avignon — where the mayor, an imitator of Fourroux, aborted his dear constituents whom he had put at risk — and then that appalling affair in Clichy, in which 53 defendants were brought to the benches of infamy […]

fiction

Paule Mink, “Poor Old Man” (1894)

Panting, along the gray road, which lost itself in the distance in a damp autumn fog, an old man walked, doubled over. Feet bare in worn-out shoes, trousers ragged and dirty, dressed in a thin shirt of blue cloth which covered him without protecting him from the bitter north wind that blew, a cheap cap pulled down over his eyes, an empty beggar’s bag on his back, and in his hand a gnarled stick which he supported his tottering only with great difficulty: his whole aspect inspired a distressing sadness. […]

Black and Red Feminism

Paule Mink, “Broken Arm” (1895)

Picked up in the street, one morning, between a pile of rubbish and some rubble from demolition, abandoned like a small cat someone wants to be rid of, he was carried to the alms-house, and then placed among some farmers who raised him, giving him bread, in exchange, when he got to be a little bigger, for a labor that was very hard for a child, but who never had for him either affection or caresses. […]