Emma Goldman: Sexuality and the Impurity of the State

This book focuses on the ideas of Emma Goldman as they relate to the centrality of sexuality and reproduction. These ideas, on the liberatory potential of women's sexuality -- birth control, voluntary motherhood, homosexual rights and the aggressive nature of marriage, religion and the State -- are relevant to the current feminist debates on sexuality's pleasures, rather than its dangers, and as such, equates women's freedom with sexual freedom. Goldman's ideas are significant for contemporary feminism and social reform because of their relevance to the 'difference' versus 'equality' debates. Rejecting a truncated view of womanhood in which women are single, childless professionals sacrificing their emotional and sexual expression in service to the State, Goldman affirmed women's specificity while, at the same time, sought women's freedom to develop their full human potential.