The Aëthnic Union was a British radical feminist organisation founded in London around 1911 by the lawyer and writer Thomas Baty, who also used the name Irene Clyde. It opposed binary divisions between masculine and feminine social roles and was associated with pacifism, egalitarianism and gender neutrality. Its members included Eva Gore-Booth, Esther Roper, Jessey Wade and Dorothy Cornish. The Union held meetings and discussion groups, and has been described by T. Maait Pepperell as a forerunner of ideas later published in the feminist journal Urania.
History In 1908, Baty, who has been described in scholarship as a transgender figure, began corresponding with the London Society for Women's Suffrage. Baty founded the Aëthnic Union in London in 1911. The name "Aëthnic" was taken from the Greek "ethnos", meaning a race of people.
The Union's members included Gore-Booth, a poet and suffragist, together with Roper, Wade and Cornish. Their work in women's suffrage, animal welfare and education overlapped with the Union's interests. Maait Pepperell describes the Union as a forum for discussion of non-binary gender and social relationships, and as a precursor to some of the ideas later expressed in Urania.
The Union rejected the division of humanity into masculine and feminine ideals and argued that people should not be confined by prescribed gender roles. In material preserved by the London School of Economics, the Union stated: "Society has split perfection into two, and imposes on the individual spirit conformity to one of two warped ideals: the stern masculine and the trivial feminine."
In a 1912 advertorial for the organisation in The Freewoman, Baty wrote:
Members of the Union published articles and organised discussions. According to Maait Pepperell, internal disagreements over class and political strategy limited the Union's influence.
The Union met on the last Thursday of January, March, May, July, September and November. Sources describe it as active for about three years. By 1916, Baty had moved to Japan, and the group's work had shifted towards the production of Urania, which carried many of its ideas about gender.
See also Feminism in the United Kingdom Timeline of LGBTQ history in the British Isles
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