To read the beginning of the Feminist Manifesto, one could close one's eyes and believe oneself to be in the middle of the Women's March, or at the very least, burning bra after bra as the sexual revolution inspired women everywhere to demand equality and change. The surprise and horror of it is, though, that The Feminist Manifesto was actually written in 1914, by a British-born ex-pat living in Italy, who was enraged that women were oh so calmly accepting their lot in life, which as far as she could see was subordinate to the point of servile, and needed changing immediately.
Loy was a woman before her time, a Bohemian who was drawn to those whose lifestyle and outlook on life was as unapologetically unconventional as hers was. She was a poet, and her work was admired by T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein. She was also an artist, actress and a designer of glass lamps - any outlet for her creativity, which was seemingly limitless, was explored. Yet despite this plethora of different talents, it is The Feminist Manifesto for which she is best known.
It is not a long work - it can be read in just a few minutes - but its impact was immense due in large part to the highly radical ideas contained within it. It's confident, strident tone also makes it stand out from other pieces of its time. Loy is speaking to feminists in the manifesto, rather than traditional women who happily bought in to the existing patriarchal society, and from the first line issues them with a challenge - if they want to see change they have to be the change. She calls the current state of the feminist movement wholly inadequate, and demands that full and whole change is achieved, not just the addition of new rights for women scattered here and there. Most feminists of the time were concentrating solely on the issue of votes for women, but this is not enough for Loy, who wants full and complete change right away. She also states that "men and women are enemies".
Despite her stance on feminism, Loy has some concerning views on eugenics and seems to see women classified into two groups of people - the smart ones, who are superior, and those of less intelligence, who are inferior. The duty of any superior woman is to procreate because it is incumbent on them to populate the world with future generations of the intellectually elite. To today's reader this sounds like unabashed fascism, but at the time, the belief that the genetic elite should have children, for the good of future generations, and that the uneducated should not, was less political and more a run-of-the-mill belief. Despite her demands for equality for women, Loy showed that even in her feminist opinion some women were more equal than others.
Loy is not a figure who brings all corners of society together - in fact she is extremely divisive, because her viewpoint emphasizes differences, rather than similarities, between women, and therefore dilutes the fight in terms of bringing all women together with the intention of bringing about real change.
Following The Feminist Manifesto, Loy moved first to New York, and then to Paris, where she concentrated on the the design and production of lampshades, and also on writing, although the novel, based on her friendship with German painter Richard Oetze, was not actually published until 1991.
