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Store: An Independent Institute Book
Co-publisher: Ivan R. Dee
7 Tables
© 2002 |
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LIBERTY FOR WOMEN
Freedom and Feminism in the Twenty-First Century
Edited by
Wendy McElroy
Foreword by
Wendy Kaminer
The movement for women’s rights arose in the early 19th century as an off-shoot of abolitionism, the anti-slavery movement that declared each human being to be a self-owner. As with other abolitionists, the early feminists were individualists who drew inspiration from the Declaration of Independence and its principles of individual rights and responsibility.
With this vision of individualist feminism, Liberty for Women boldly explores a wide range of issues that confront the modern woman, including self-defense, economic well-being and employment, sex and abortion, the family, technology, and much more. This new feminism asserts the rights of consenting adults to their own sexuality, opposes censorship, and defends every woman’s right to self-defense. It champions competitive markets as the vehicle for women’s economic rights and prosperity. Acknowledging the dangers of technology, the book celebrates its possibilities and defends reproductive rights. And yet, it also defends the validity of choosing traditional values (e.g., to be a “stay-at-home mom”) for those who find satisfaction in doing so.
Liberty for Women is an eye-opening book that vividly charts a new feminism for the 21st century in a highly lucid, provocative, and inspiring way. “Choice” is the key, and every woman’s choices and expressions of self-ownership must be equally and legally respected, from housewives to CEOs. Only then can a meaningful debate arise over which choices may be the best ones for women to make freely.
Detailed Summary |
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Ivan R. Dee, Publishers
Table of Contents
Foreword
Wendy Kaminer
Section I. FOUNDATIONS
Chapter 1: Introduction
Wendy McElroy
Chapter 2: Individualist Feminism in the 21st Century
Camille Paglia
Chapter 3: Liberty and Feminism
Richard A. Epstein
Section II. WOMEN AND SEX
Chapter 4: Women and Pornography
Nadine Strossen
Chapter 5: For Their Own Good
Norma Jean Almodovar
Chapter 6: Whether from Reason or Prejudice
Martha C. Nussbaum
Section III. WOMEN AND THE FAMILY
Chapter 7: Chairing the Department: A Matriarchal Paradigm
Mimi Gladstein
Chapter 8: Fetal Rights
Ellen Frankel Paul
Chapter 9: Abortion and Liberty
Alexander Tabarrok
Section IV. WOMEN AND WORK
Chapter 10: Groping Toward Sanity
Cathy Young
Chapter 11: Comparable Worth
Ellen Frankel Paul
Chapter 12: Affirmative Action
Wendy McElroy
Section V. WOMEN AND VIOLENCE
Chapter 13: Women and Violent Crime
Rita Simon
Chapter 14: Disarming Women: Comparing “Gun Control” to Self-Defense as Protection for Victims of Domestic Abuse and Violent Crime
Richard W. Stevens, Hugo Teufel III, and Matthew Y. Biscan
Section VI. WOMEN AND TECHNOLOGY
Chapter 15: Breeder Reactionaries: The War on New Reproductive Technologies
Wendy McElroy
Chapter 16: I Am in Mourning
Lois Copeland
Chapter 17: The Official Plan to Eliminate the Midwife, 1899-1999
Faith Gibson
Chapter 18: The 3rd WWWave—Who We Are, What We See
Janis Cortese
Index
Praise for Liberty for Women “This provocative book powerfully demonstrates that feminism is neither monolithic nor homogeneous. The interesting and thoughtful opinions represented here deserve broad dissemination. I hope LIBERTY FOR WOMEN becomes a must-read in every women’s studies program in America, and for anyone who is interested in issues of equality and sexual politics.”
—CHRISTIE HEFNER, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Playboy Enterprises, Inc.
“Mainstream feminism long ago ran into a variety of false trails and blind alleys . . . . LIBERTY FOR WOMEN offers just the sort of intellectual barbs so sorely needed to jolt a near corpse back into life.”
—ALEXANDER COCKBURN, columnist, The Nation and Los Angeles Times
“LIBERTY FOR WOMEN is likely to provoke both left-wing feminists and right-wing traditionalists. It is lively and provocative and adds immensely to the debate on the role of women in contemporary life.”
—LINDA L. CHAVEZ, President, Center for Equal Opportunity, and former Director, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
“This outstanding collection of social commentaries and political analyses that make up LIBERTY FOR WOMEN reflects the most significant and controversial topics in contemporary gender politics, addressed by some of the best independent minds addressing these issues today. It offers a crash course in progressive positions on women’s rights and roles that have not gotten the attention they deserve in women’s studies courses. The text’s comprehensiveness and accessibility leave no excuse for perpetuation of this gross curricular oversight.”
—SUSAN SARNOFF, Professor of Social Work, Ohio University
“There is an unwritten rule among many feminists: Only women on the political left have the right to interpret the lives of women. This unique and important, new book breaks that rule and provides an excellent forum for civil libertarian thinkers. LIBERTY FOR WOMEN is a matchless book on the most important issues facing women now and in the future.”
—CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute; author, Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women
“LIBERTY FOR WOMEN is a marvelous, incisive, and much-needed book demonstrating that unorthodox feminists are alive and well outside the rigid confines of women’s studies programs. This intelligent and challenging book has an important role to play in both classroom and public policy discussions.”
—DAPHNE PATAI, Professor, University of Massachusetts; author, Professing Feminism, Women’s Words : The Feminist Practice of Oral History, Brazilian Women Speak: Contemporary Life Stories, and Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism
“The divisions between libertarian and liberal feminists are not neat or especially consistent (the ideological divides are more readily summarized). Some women champion free markets but not free speech. Some (like me) favor free speech but not free markets. Some, from both camps, want to decriminalize prostitution, while others believe in prohibiting it. Differences like these—the complexities of women’s lib—invigorate this important book, LIBERTY FOR WOMEN. Few feminists will agree with every contribution to it; the contributors probably disagree fairly often with each other. But they share a love of liberty that the feminist movement should have the courage to embrace.”
—WENDY KAMINER, Senior Editor, The American Prospect; Contributing Editor, The Atlantic Monthly; commentator, National Public Radio; author, Fearful Freedom: Women’s Flight from Equality and Women Volunteering
“Women are human beings, and should therefore have the same rights and freedom as all other human beings: This was the fundamental insight of the early generations of feminist pioneers. . . . LIBERTY FOR WOMEN is a thought-provoking anthology of freedom-feminist writings. . . . The book is devoted to sketching out an alternative, viewing freedom as the solution to, rather than the cause of, women’s problems. . . . This book is a valuable contribution to the cause of freedom, and of feminism properly understood.”
—NATIONAL REVIEW
“Wendy McElroy knows a lot about the struggle of women to remove legal obstacles to their freedom. . . . In LIBERTY FOR WOMEN, she has assembled a number of carefully chosen papers by authors from widely varied backgrounds, ranging from law professors and economists to a former call girl and a midwife. . . . LIBERTY FOR WOMEN is an important book. It points that ‘all human beings have the same interest in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All human beings share the same natural rights just as they share a basic biology.’ Yet there are some issue that hold special interest to women. . . . As editor Wendy McElroy says, she considers ‘voluntary cooperation as the proper basis of society’ and ‘defends every choice between consenting adults.’”
—LIBERTY
“The women’s movement has always had to fight against outsiders’ visions of it as an ideological monolith—LIBERTY FOR WOMEN serves proudly as exhibit kajillion and one. LIBERTY FOR WOMEN’s best chapters are those with the narrowest focus: On pornography, prostitution, gun ownership, abortion, and midwifery, authors make their cases strongly for as little government interference as possible. . . . While these chapters will surely raise the ire of those who disagree, they are well researched, thoughtful, and capable of sparking intelligent debate on all sides of the issues.”
—BITCH
“Thank you for bringing to light more of the history of women fighting for choice. Even though I am a pro-choice activist, I found some very interesting things in LIBERTY FOR WOMEN that even I didn’t know. The new information you bring to light is important for people on both sides of this sensitive debate to read. I hope they will.”
—ANN E. W. STONE, Co-founder, National Women’s History Museum
“LIBERTY FOR WOMEN is a collection of 18 essays on such diverse topics as employment, affirmative action, health care, and violence. Rather than being pure forward thinking, however, these writers step back to a fork in the road of feminism to take the way less traveled. Packaged therefore as a return to roots and beginning from a rubric of the greatest good for the greatest number and basic human rights/civil rights, LIBERTY FOR WOMEN is both a defense of normalcy—for example, the right to choose to be a housewife (or prostitute) as long as that choice is not coerced—and a strenuous argument against the hegemony of second-wave or ‘radical’ feminism. Nowhere is the work more powerful when decrying the excesses of feminist hard-liners who have often failed to advance women’s rights and, by redefining tools of repression (e.g., censorship) as ‘protecting women,’ have actually caused inexcusable losses.”
—BAY GUARDIAN
“LIBERTY FOR WOMEN is a superb and stunning assemblage of clear-eyed feminist thinkers. They have staked out the intellectual free-center that clears an avenue between the radical authoritarians of the far left who want to regiment a collectivist conformity and those of the far right who aim to impose a rigid 1950’s consciousness.”
—SALLY SATEL, W. H. Brady Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; author, PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine
“LIBERTY FOR WOMEN shows how feminism has evolved from simplistic ideological doctrine to a more relevant and sophisticated analysis of the choices open to women at the dawn of the 21st century. Leading intellectuals offer cogent insights about major issues of concern to women. The volume can also be a useful guideline for women facing similar issues in other countries. I strongly recommend the book to everyone who is interested in a more fundamental approach to feminism.”
—GUITY NASHAT, Professor of History, University of Illinois at Chicago; author, Women in the Middle East: Restoring Women to History, Middle Eastern History, and The Economics of Life: How Real-World Issues Affect Our Everyday Lives (with Gary Becker)
“LIBERTY FOR WOMEN brilliantly explains ‘individualist feminism,’ based on liberty and equal opportunity, as opposed to ‘gender feminism,’ which rests on preferences and group privileges. This fascinating book rehabilitates feminism as a political movement, making it attractive again to the many women who have dismissed its excesses. This book shows that feminism is for everyone who believes in the significance of free choice. With verve and daring, the authors explore the surprising policy implications of true feminism.”
—JUDITH S. KLEINFELD, Director of Northern Studies and Professor of Psychology, University of Alaska
“Kudos to Wendy McElroy for demonstrating with contemporary authors in LIBERTY FOR WOMEN that individualist feminism is robustly alive today. This book and its disparate authors reminds us that a love of liberty underlies America’s most viable and enduring political passions, whether identified as ‘left’ or ‘right.’”
—JOAN KENNEDY TAYLOR, author, Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Rediscovered, Sexual Harassment, and What to Do When You Don’t Want to Call the Cops
“LIBERTY FOR WOMEN is the book that’s been missing from university curricula all these years. We always knew there was more to feminist thought than what was on offer. The book’s authors remind us of the root cause of the women’s movement: more individual choice.”
—AMITY SHLAES, Senior Columnist, Financial Times, author, The Greedy Hand
“Any book endorsed by both Playboy’s Christie Hefner and The Nation’s Alexander Cockburn is likely to raise eyebrows. The provocative essays gathered by editor McElroy do just that. The writers of these essays identify themselves as ‘individualist feminists’—a term some readers will find unfamiliar, but one which best approximates a kind of gender neutral libertarianism. These essayists embrace the mantra of ‘freedom of choice’ in its broadest sense, drawing intriguing—and often shocking—intellectual connections between the right to bear arms, the pro-choice movement, women’s pornography, prostitutes’ legal rights and capitalism. The most powerful pieces are those that directly contest the entrenched orthodoxies of essentialist feminism. This book offers much food for feminist thought.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Although the radical and gender feminists have dominated women’s politics in recent years, other types of feminists exist, and Wendy McElroy has gathered some of their writing in LIBERTY FOR WOMEN. . . . These ‘individualist feminists’ deviate from their radical and gender counterparts by refusing to relegate women to a class apart from men. Going further still, they impugn the beliefs that big government—or protests against patriarchy and the free market— can adequately address women’s problems. Instead, the individualist feminists argue that natural law ‘grounded in or based upon fact’ should be employed in addressing these topics, giving the same individual rights and freedoms to everyone. . . . Their work is worth noticing, for it represents a step back from the abyss of radical feminism.”
—THE WEEKLY STANDARD
“LIBERTY FOR WOMEN, edited by Wendy McElroy, advocates individualist feminism, which sees women as adult individuals in charge of their own destinies. . . . The writers in LIBERTY FOR WOMEN argue rationally for their point of view, marshaling supporting evidence. The new generation of young women is confident, competent, and self-sufficient They have no intention of being victims. They are feminists.”
—SAN JOSE MERCURY-NEWS
“LIBERTY FOR WOMEN provides voices for the ‘third wave’ of feminism, with thoughtful essays on a variety of topics to bring feminism into the 21st century. LIBERTY FOR WOMEN expresses ideas from what they see as the third wave of individualist feminism, that sees individual freedom and choice as being pivotal to feminist interests. They believe that laws enacted to ‘protect’ women as a special class are typically used against them. The book covers a number of different aspects of feminist issues, including fetal protection laws, abortion, affirmative action, and reproduction technologies. This is a though-provoking book that should be a part of any women’s studies curricula, and should be required reading for anyone interested in the law and how it affects women.”
—SEX IN REVIEW
“LIBERTY FOR WOMEN attempts to steer the next generation toward a libertarian feminism more fitting for the new century. Certainly the ideas espoused in LIBERTY FOR WOMEN have a more buoyant, contemporary feel than the jargon-bound and turgid movement the book sets out to challenge. In fact, the ifeminist—tough, independent-minded, and determined to be as comfortable with a dirty joke or a sidearm as a Texas cowboy— has more of a beef with the sisterhood than with the patriarchy. . . . LIBERTY FOR WOMEN does offer a much-needed critique of the tradition of centrally planned equality that continues to dominate the thinking both of contemporary academic feminists and in the major women’s organizations. . . . LIBERTY FOR WOMEN offers a useful critique of the unintended consequences of the centralized planning embraced by NOW and women’s studies departments.”
—THE PUBLIC INTEREST
“LIBERTY FOR WOMEN is an eye-opening book that vividly charts a new feminism for the 21st century in a highly lucid, provocative and inspiring way. The book offers a vision of contemporary feminism that goes beyond the dominant attitudes of today’s feminist orthodoxy. The provocative writings base their arguments on individual rights and personal responsibility, stirring echoes of the ideological roots of the women’s rights movement. The contributors offer surprising views on a wide range of issues that confront the modern woman, including self-defense, sexual freedom, economic well-being and employment, the promise of technology, and the place of the traditional values, including the family.”
—LIBIDO: The Journal of Sex and Sensibility About the Editor Wendy McElroy is a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute. Her other books include The Independent Institute volume, Freedom, Feminism and the State; plus Sexual Correctness; The Reasonable Woman: A Guide to Intellectual Survival; Dissenting Electorate: Those Who Refuse to Vote and the Legitimacy of Their Opposition; XXX: A Woman’s Right to Pornography; Queen Silver: The Godless Girl; and Liberty 1881-1908: A Comprehensive Index. Ms. McElroy was Series Editor for Knowledge Products’ popular audio-tape series, The World of Philosophy, The World’s Political Hot Spots, The United States at War, and The United States Constitution, and she authored the scripts for Vindication of the Rights of Woman and The Liberator, Civil Disobedience, and Discourse on Voluntary Servitude in the Audio Classics Series. A weekly columnist for FOX News.com, she is a contributing editor to several periodicals, the author of numerous articles in various magazines and scholarly journals, and the editor of the popular feminism site, IFeminists.com.
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