This week, Voltairine de Cleyre is the idolized radical feminist, a woman who shrank from the limelight, but nonetheless was one of the most important activists and writers of her day.

An American by birth, de Cleyre lived in a convent through her adolescence. Instead of becoming a nun like her poverty-stricken family intended, she became a radical atheist, escaping the convent by hiking 17 miles and swimming Lake Michigan.  After this dramatic escape, de Cleyre, due in part to her abolitionist roots, in part to her poverty, and in part to her own spirit became an important figure in the "free thought" movement.  Influenced by this movement, she created her own, feminist concept of anarchism.  She did not, as other anarchists, believe in the destruction of property rights, but she did believe a collectivist society was possible, even with a competitive population.  Unlike other anarchists, though, she also saw that the main issue was the economy, and until anarchists figured out a way to beat capitalism through any means necessary, (she was a great advocate for direct action,) they would continue to fail.
After having her child taken away from her as a consequence of refusing to live with the father, she began working even more tirelessly for women's rights, agreeing with Goldman and Wollstonecraft that normalized women's roles in marriage and society make them subordinate. (Nurture over nature!) Her relationship with Goldman, though, was tenuous and competitive personally, and highly respectful academically.  Both wrote papers in defense of one another, but de Cleyre claimed that Goldman was a "communist," while de Cleyre believed in the purest form of anarchism.
During the inter-war period, a time when Western countries were building their armies and preparing for World War I through cruelty and colonization, de Cleyre spoke out against militarization,  claiming, ""all peaceful persons should withdraw their support from the army, and require that all who wish to make war do so at their own cost and risk; that neither pay nor pensions are to be provided for those who choose to make man-killing a trade."  Sound familiar?
Probably the best writer and speaker of the movement, de Cleyre is not as well-remembered as Goldman partially because her life ended early, in her early 50s, and illness rendered her inarticulate toward the end of her life. Though she was depressive, she also survived an assassination attempt in 1902, and fought through taking her own life. For being staunchly anti-war, pro-women, and pro-collectivist, de Cleyre is a real riot grrrl, and her writings are a testament to her talent and tenacity.

Voltairine de Cleyre quotes
Let every woman ask herself, why am I the slave of Man? Why is my brain said not to be the equal of his brain? Why is my work not paid equally with his? Why must my body be controlled by my husband? Why may he take my labor in the household, giving me in exchange what he deems fit? Why may he take my children from me? Will them away while yet unborn? Let every woman ask.
I am an Anarchist, simply, without economic labels attached
Socialism and Communism both demand a degree of joint effort and administration which would beget more regulation than is wholly consistent with ideal Anarchism; Individualism and Mutualism, resting upon property, involve a development of the private policeman not at all compatible with my notion of freedom.
I never expect men to give us liberty. No, women, we are not worth it until we take it.
First, then, God, being all-just, wishes to do justice; being all-wise, knows what justice is; being all-powerful, can do justice. Why then injustice? Either your God can do justice and won't or doesn't know what justice is, or he cannot do it. The immediate reply is: "What appears to be injustice in our eyes, in the sight of omniscience may be justice. God's ways are not our ways."
Oh, but if he is the all-wise pattern, they should be; what is good enough for God ought to be good enough for man; but what is too mean for man won't do in a God.
"For it must needs that offences come, but woe to him through whom the offence cometh." The crimes of the future are the harvests sown of the ruling classes of the present. Woe to the tyrant who shall cause the offense!
Sometimes I dream of this social change. I get a streak of faith in Evolution, and the good in man. I paint a gradual slipping out of the now, to that beautiful then, where there are neither kings, presidents, landlords, national bankers, stockbrokers, railroad magnates, patentright monopolists, or tax and title collectors; where there are no over-stocked markets or hungry children, idle counters and naked creatures, splendor and misery, waste and need. I am told this is farfetched idealism, to paint this happy, povertyless, crimeless, diseaseless world; I have been told I "ought to be behind the bars" for it.
Who thinks a dog is impure or obscene because its body is not covered with suffocating and annoying clothes? What would you think of the meanness of a man who would put a skirt upon his, horse and compel it to walk or run with such a thing impeding its limbs? Why, the "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" would arrest him, take the beast from him, and he would be sent to a lunatic asylum for treatment on the score of an impure mind. And yet, gentlemen, you expect your wives, the creatures you say you respect and love, to wear the longest skirts and the highest necked clothing, in order to conceal the obscene human body. There is no society for the prevention of cruelty to women.