Anonymous

Manifesto of Nihilist Women

1883

Retrieved on June 29, 2012 from http://michaelshreve.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/manifesto-of-nihilist-women/

Manifesto of Nihilist Women, Le Drapeau Noir [The Black Flag], n. 4, September 2 1883, Lyon.
Translated from the French by Michael Shreve

Let men have their fun blabbering on and on about the Revolution—They’re free to do it! The nihilist women are tired of all this procrastination and are determined to act. Thinking about annihilating the bourgeoisie, they are ready to sacrifice everything to hasten the realization of this undertaking. In the inextinguishable hatred that is devouring us, they will call up whatever strength is necessary to overcome all obstacles.

But since this grandiose project cannot be carried out in one day, they will take their time, preferring for now to use poison and once in a while, to achieve their goal more easily, with a few bad seeds.

The nihilist women will make up for their lack of scientific knowledge and laboratory practice by mixing in the food of their exploiters small doses of deadly substances that are available to the poor and easy to handle for the most ignorant and inexperienced women.

From hundreds of ingredients with incontestable results, we can cite: lead acetate, which you can get in a few days if you leave lead shot sitting around or leave a piece of lead in vinegar; pieces of rotten meat; hemlock, which is so often mistaken for parsley and which grows everywhere on the side of the road and on the backsides of ditches.

At least we will give back to our despicable oppressors some of the evil that they give us every day. We will not smile and support the tyranny knowing that our enemies’ lives are at our mercy… They want to be the masters! Let them suffer the consequences.

In the three years that the league has been around, hundreds of bourgeois families have already paid the fatal price, gnawed away by a mysterious illness that medicine cannot explain or heal.

To work, then, all you women who are fed up with suffering and who are looking for a remedy to your misery. Imitate the nihilist women!