For those of you still wondering about Futurism and Women, the article is a literary review of various books on the period that shows how attitudes changed over time, how Marinetti was driven, how futurism was a powerful artistic force that men and women would join and that Marinetti did support women in his publication efforts, and changed his tune, and the Great War led to a lot of gains for women, and then it got lost again, and there was a lot of frustration, women left futurism… The bitter fruit of that fascist seed is not discussed. The feminist position is shown to be more nuanced but still not great.

To support all that, let me quote the closing paragraphs by Günther Berghaus:

« Futurism was largely given shape by the personality of its founder F. T. Marinetti. He had extremely contradictory attitudes to women, and his views were not necessarily shared by other Futurists. This is why there never existed an orthodox Futurist position on the women's question. A handful of women emerged in its midst with original ideas and great creativity; but their influence in the movement was rather limited. These women of talent and intellectual acumen joined the Futurist movement for pragmatic reasons, because at this point, Futurism was the most progressive, unorthodox, and liberal-minded organization on the Italian scene. Like Marinetti, they felt disdain for most of the female population in their country. They wanted to become culturally literate like the pre-eminent male artists of the period. They were individualists and elitists and had little sympathy for the passeist majority of the country, be they men or women.

Lack of will and/or inability to extract themselves from the surrounding misogynist culture prevented male Futurists from forging a coherent programme that gave women an emancipated role in their vision of a future world. A few exceptionally gifted and resilient women introduced some feminist demands into the Futurist agenda. But their image of the donna futurista never became adopted as a model for the Tuturistically refashioned universe'. »