Emma Goldman

Goldman thought the suffrage campaign was a distraction. Her essays "Woman Suffrage" and "The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation" (1910s) argued that the vote would not free women any more than it had freed men, and that real liberation meant freedom from marriage, the church and the state, including access to birth control, for which she was jailed. She is the best counterweight to every entry here that puts its faith in law and representation.