Ezra Hervey Heywood (; September 29, 1829 – May 22, 1893), known as Ezra Hervey Hoar before 1848, was an American

individualist anarchist Individualist anarchism or anarcho-individualism is a collection of anarchist currents that generally emphasize the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Individuali ...

, slavery

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world. The first country to fully outlaw slavery was Kingdom of France, France in 1315, but it was later used ...

, and advocate of equal rights for women.

Activism

Heywood co-founded the New England Labor Reform League in 1869 with individualist anarchist William Batchelder Greene. The league advocated for the "abolition of class laws and false customs, whereby legitimate enterprise is defrauded by speculative monopoly." and favored " ee contracts, free money, free markets, free transit, and free land". In May, 1872 Heywood, a supporter of

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...

and

free love Free love is a social movement that accepts all forms of love. The movement's initial goal was to separate the State (polity), state from sexual and romantic matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It stated that such issues we ...

activist Victoria Woodhull's free speech rights, began editing individualist anarchist magazine '' The Word'' from his home in Princeton, Massachusetts.The Free Love Movement and Radical Individualism
by

Wendy McElroy Wendy McElroy (born 1951) is a Canadian individualist feminist and voluntaryist writer. McElroy is the editor of the website ifeminists.net. McElroy is the author of the book ''Rape Culture Hysteria'', in which she contends that rape cul ...

. He was tried in 1878 for mailing "obscene material", his pamphlet ''Cupid's Yokes: or, The Binding Forces of Conjugal Life: An Essay to Consider Some Moral and Physiological Phases of Love and Marriage, Wherein is Asserted the Natural Right and Necessity of Sexual Self-Government'', which attacked traditional notions of marriageat the instigation of postal inspector

Anthony Comstock Anthony Comstock (; March7, 1844 – September21, 1915) was an American anti-vice activist, United States Postal Inspector, and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), who was dedicated to upholding Christian mo ...

, who also had ''Truth Seeker'' editor D. M. Bennett arrested. Convicted of violating the 1873

Comstock Act The Comstock Act of 1873 is a series of current provisions in federal law that generally criminalize the involvement of the United States Postal Service, its officers, or a common carrier in conveying obscene matter, crime-inciting matter, or ce ...

, Heywood was sentenced to two years' hard labor at the Norfolk County Jail. Heywood used his own notation, Y.L. (Year of Love), in replacement A. D."Heywood, Ezra H." in ''The New Encyclopedia of UNBELIEF'' (Amherst, N. Y.: Prometheus Books, 2007)
p. 389

Personal life

Heywood met his wife Angela Heywood through her work in the abolitionist movement. They had four children together named Psyche, Angelo, Vesta, and Hermes.

Works

''Uncivil Liberty: An Essay to Show the Injustice and Impolicy of Ruling Woman Without Her Consent'' (1873) by Ezra Heywood
– one of the first individualist feminist essays, by Ezra Heywood (with an introduction by James J. Martin)
''Cupid's Yokes: or, The Binding Forces of Conjugal Life: An Essay to Consider some Moral and Physiological Phases of Love and Marriage'' by Ezra Heywood
– a free-love essay defending the natural right of "sexual self-government" as opposed to marriage

References

External links

contains a large section called ''Ezra Heywood, Pamphleteer''

by Martin Blatt
A biography of Heywood on the anniversary of a protest at his arrest

A chronology of Emma Goldman's life and the anarchist movement
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heywood, Ezra 1829 births 1893 deaths 19th-century American male writers 19th-century American non-fiction writers 19th-century prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government Activists from Massachusetts American abolitionists American anarchist writers American anti-capitalists American feminist writers American male essayists American male feminists American male non-fiction writers American political writers American suffragists American prisoners and detainees Anarcha-feminists Free love advocates Individualist anarchists Individualist feminists People convicted under the Comstock laws People from Princeton, Massachusetts People pardoned by Rutherford B. Hayes Sex-positive feminists

Activism

Personal life

Works

See also

References

Further reading

External links