Please Note: Permission to reprint is not given. This speech, delivered at the International Society for Individual Liberty's 2004 New Zealand conference in Rotorua, is written in an informal manner that reflects an oral presentation and should not be reprinted as though it were a text presentation.
Wendy McElroy

     Good afternoon and welcome to a talk on feminism...a political tradition that is often viewed as an enemy of individual liberty.

     If you hold that view, I hope to change your mind.

     During the next 45 minutes or so I will give you a sense of how feminism arose, and how it fits into the classical liberal tradition. I'll touch on the definition of key terms like equality and justice...and, then, I'll dive into the reasons for optimism...the reasons to believe that the gender war may be ending.

     To begin with, where does feminism come from? ... which is also ideologically speaking where I come from.

     I'm an individualist feminist – a school within the feminist tradition that has rich and deep roots, roots that extend back to the late 18th century and the classical liberal writer Mary Wollstonecraft whose most famous work Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is widely viewed as the first great feminist treatise. In it, she advocated identical rights for men and women.

     The intellectual context in which Wollstonecraft wrote was the Scottish Enlightenment – a social revolution that celebrated reason as the core of human identity. It was a politically optimistic movement that viewed all human beings as having an equal right to their persons and property, especially against invasion by the state. Wollstonecraft, like her contemporaries and associates – men like Thomas Paine and William Godwin, who became her husband – was primarily concerned with the rights of individuals:

     What was an individual right? How should they be applied? How did they influence the institutions of society like the family?

     I think it is significant that before Wollstonecraft wrote Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men. The Rights of Woman wasn't written because she believed the two sexes had different rights that required separate treatment, but because she believed men and women had identical rights which were being treated differently.

     The specific context of Rights of Woman: it was written was as a response to Rousseau's immensely influential book Emile, which laid out Rousseau's vision of how boys should be educated. In the process, Rousseau created a character, a female associate for Emile named Sophie and, in the process, slighted the education of women...to say the least.

     I bring up the order in which Wollstonecraft's works were published because I think it is significant; I think it illustrates the function of feminism within a classical liberal context.

     One of the magnificent impacts that classical liberalism has had upon history is its role in broadening, in expanding the application of a principle that the British philosopher John Locke called "property in one's own person," so that it applies to all human beings in all circumstances.

     Personally, I prefer the 19th century American term for the same concept which was used by the anti-slavery movement: that term was "self ownership." Self ownership was/is the moral jurisdiction that every human – simply by being human – has over his or her own body, a jurisdiction that makes it morally wrong for anyone to invade your person by telling you what to think, what to say...or by controlling your peaceful behaviour in any manner. And as an extension of your right of self-ownership, you also have a claim to the products of your labor – in short, private property.

     When antislavery activists used the term self-owners, however, it was a matter of political reality that it applied de facto – only to males, to whites, and arguably to landowners. Although the principle was broad and universal, it was narrowly applied.

     It is no coincidence that feminism in America arose from the 19th century anti-slavery movement called abolitionism, which actively welcomed women to write and lecture, to politically campaign against slavery. In fighting for the rights of slaves, abolitionist women began to ask themselves a question: they asked, "do we not have these rights as well?" The abolitionist Abbie Kelley observed, "we have good cause to be grateful to the slave...in striving to strike his irons off, we found most surely that we were manacled ourselves." What manacled them were laws that discriminated against women in a manner strikingly similar to how they discriminated against blacks. The women fought to remove laws, not to institute privilege. Simply to remove barriers.

     And so the history of feminism is inextricably bound up in the classical liberal ideal of expanding the application of human rights to all people regardless of their skin color, sex, or any other secondary characteristic.

     Needless to say, the broadening of individual rights is not the way feminism is generally viewed today.

     The dominant voice of feminism today is what, in North America, is called "gender feminism". This is the school of feminism that views men and women – not as individuals with identical rights and the same political interests, such as freedom of speech and property rights but collectively as separate classes with antagonistic political interests: male culture oppresses women, the free market exploits women...and so on. Laws are introduced to correct the gender oppression and exploitation, laws such as affirmative action, laws against sexual harassment, and policies that impose speech codes at universities where women are protected from freedom of speech.

     I know the foregoing description is the image that many of you have of feminism. But it is a false image, or, at least, a very narrow one.

     One of the myths that gender feminists have successfully sold is the notion that anyone – even a woman – who disagrees with their approach on almost any issue – from child custody to pornography, from domestic violence to abortion – anyone who disagrees is a non-feminist, an anti-feminist and, perhaps, even anti-woman.

     That accusation is absolutely false.

     The truth is: there are and there always have been many schools of thought within the feminist tradition: from socialist to individualist, liberal to radical, Christian to atheist, pro-life to pro-choice. And, when you think about it, the diversity of opinion makes sense. After all, if feminism is the belief that women should be liberated and equal to men, then it is only natural for there to be disagreement and discussion on what complex concepts like "liberation" and "equality" mean.

     In fact, it would be amazing if all the women who cared about liberation and equality came to exactly the same conclusions as to what those abstract and controversial terms meant in their differing lives. And, when you look back at the less publicized aspects of feminist history, you see that liberated women have always disagreed on the specifics of important issues... For example, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton – sometimes viewed as the joint mothers of the American feminism – both Anthony and Stanton spoke out against abortion. They were both what we would call pro-life. [For those who are curious, do an internet search under their names and refine it for the term "abortion".] And yet gender feminists still acknowledge them as predecessors; they just ignore the inconvenient pro-life stuff.

     So whenever someone talks to me about the issues, the points of theory that are supposed to define feminism, I always ask, "which school of feminism are we talking about? Which feminists?” If the issue is abortion, then Anthony and Stanton wouldn't agree with today's pro-choice advocates.

     If the point of theory is that women should receive privilege or special protection under the law rather than equal treatment, then most feminists before 1950 – and many contemporary ones, like me – would absolutely disagree.

     So, given that there is so much diversity within the feminist tradition, it is reasonable to ask, "what is feminism? What are the core themes or principles that glue it together as a tradition not only through history but also through contemporary issues?" What allows Andrea Dworkin, Germaine Greer, Madonna and me to all call ourselves feminists?

     Earlier I described feminism as personal liberation and equality with men. Let me offer a more formal definition. Feminism is the tradition that focuses on women, on the relationship between the sexes and says "women are, and should be treated as, the equals of men."

     And, if you want a quick way to distinguish between the schools of thought within the feminist tradition, ask the question, "how is equality being defined?” Because as simple as the statement sounds -- "women are, and should be treated as, the equals of men' it opens another can of worms...because what is equality? How is it being defined?

     Does equality refer to equal representation within existing institutions – a definition that requires us to reform existing institutions. For example, should political arenas such as parliament or other government bodies be required to introduce quotas – a mandatory proportional representation of women – so that an equality of results is achieved?

     Does equality refer to socio-economic equity, to a redistribution of the wealth and power in society that requires the dismantling or, at least, the crippling – of existing institutions like the free market and individual rights in order to allow the government to socially engineer a fundamentally different society. A so-called "just" society. (I'll be talking about the concept of “justice” in a few minutes.)

     Or is my definition of equality being applied: that is, equality is achieved when the human rights, the individual rights of women and men are treated equally under laws that protect the person and property of every individual. Note: that definition doesn't speak to equal distribution or results. Only to equal protection of person and property.

     Let me give you a concrete example of the difference these definitions of equality make in the real world. In pursuit of their definition of equality, gender feminists believe they have a right to regulate your private business in order to ensure that the proper distribution of wealth and power occurs: that is, they have the right to walk through your front door – in the form of laws and policies – and tell you who to hire, fire and promote so that you do not use your own property improperly. Improperly by their definition, that is, which means discriminating on the basis of gender. Though, if you discriminate in favor of women, I'm sure that would be okay.

     As an individualist feminist, my definition of equality doesn't tell anyone – including employers what they can do with their own property. That's none of my business. You have a right to hire, fire, and promote anyone you choose for whatever reason you choose – including the fact that you don't like minorities or don't think women are competent. I defend that right because I want to claim that right myself: I want my property and my right to associate or not associate with anyone for any reason to be protected by law.

     By the way, the discrimination issue is particularly important to me because of my family situation. McElroy is my maiden name; my married name is Rodriguez. I married into a Cuban family, which includes blacks. So when a business has a policy of "no minorities," it's trashing my family – my nieces and nephew, my husband. And I take that personally. If I can, I will hurt any employer who hurts my family. I will do so by removing business, by shaming him or her through publicity, by holding a picket sign up in front of a storefront window. What I won't do is to use the law to attack that employer's fundamental right to associate with whomever he wishes on his own property.

     And one of the reasons I won't use the law is because I want my nieces and nephew to have an equal right to slam their front doors in his face.

     I want to address a concept that I foreshadowed a few minutes ago: justice.

     I said I would protest any business that treated my family as second class citizens. Clearly, I was expressing a sense of moral outrage. The politically relevant question, however, is "has a political injustice occurred?" And to answer that you have to have a sense of what political justice is.

     I'm going to take what I hope is a fairly uncontroversial first step toward a definition – one that comes from classical philosophy. That is, justice consists of rendering to someone that which he or she is due, that which is deserved.

     I think both gender and individualist feminists would agree with that definition and disagree on the particulars of what is deserved. One way to contrast the gender and individualist feminist approach to justice and I think an interesting way is methodological.

     Gender feminism approaches justice as an end state; by which I mean it provides a specific picture of what constitutes a just society. A just society would be one without patriarchy or capitalism, a society in which the socio-economic and cultural equality of women is fully expressed. Equal representation across the board. Equal wealth and power. In other words, justice is a specific end state; a specific society that embodies well-defined economic, political and cultural arrangements. For example, it says employers shall pay men and women equally, pornography and prostitution do not exist, sexual comments in the workplace are verboten and, so, do not exist. That's part of the blueprint; that's part of a just society.

     By contrast, individualist feminism wipes the blueprint clean because it has no vision of an end state. The individualist feminist approach to justice is means-oriented, not ends-oriented: that is, the concept of justice refers to the method by which society operates and not to any particular type of society that results. The method can be expressed in various ways – "anything that is peaceful," "society by contract," "the non-initiation of force," voluntaryism.

     In other words, if all the people who are involved in a situation, who have a right to say 'yes' or 'no' to that situation have consented to it, then whatever results from the interaction is politically just.

     There is only one sense in which individualist feminism envisions an end state ... and that is, in the end, every person has consented. Exactly what social arrangement they've consented to isn't clear and it doesn't need to be. For example, I live in rural Ontario. Some of my neighbors are Mennonites. I would hate to live according to the rules that Mennonite women adopt. They would have to gag and bind me to make me live according to the precepts of that society. Yet, as far as I know, anyone who disagrees can leave and only those who agree participate. Which means that their society is a just one. One in which I couldn't live but onto which I have no business imposing my views.

     To state this principle of a means-oriented society in another way: when you remove force and fraud from society, whatever results from the free and peaceful choices of the individuals constituting that society is "politically just."

     The conflicting concepts of justice the concepts offered by gender and individualist feminism – highlight, in turn, a crucial difference in their approach to social problems: namely, gender feminists are willing to use the state. They are willing to use force – which is what the state or law ultimately is – the point of gun ... they are willing to use the state to realize justice. Individualist feminists are not.

     This difference in approach is not surprising when you realize that the gender feminist ideal of justice *can* by established by force. The individualist one cannot. Gender feminists aim at a particular end state. And you can impose a specific economic arrangement on society. You can, for example, impose affirmative action and arrest or otherwise penalize people for so-called "wrong" hiring practices.

     By contrast, individualist feminism doesn't have the option of using force. You cannot use force to impose a voluntary society: it is a contradiction in terms. You cannot put a gun to a person's head and say, "you are now free to choose." Freedom of choice involves taking the gun away. And, in the final analysis, this is what individualist feminism is talking about, over and over again. Choice. Private solutions to social problems. And the recognition that you pull a gun on another human being only in self-defense against a real attack on person or property.

     I want to move on from theory to some real world issues that I'm dealing with as an activist in North America. But first, as a prelude and, perhaps as an appropriate tone for an ending speech, I want to insert a word of optimism about the future of liberty – at least from the perspective of the causes in which I am working.

     I listened to Jim Peron compare the situation in the United States with Germany in 1939, and his words went right through me. I can't argue with a single word he said. I have been involved in libertarian/objectivist movements for over thirty years now and I have never seen anything like the discouragement, pessimism, the heartbreak that I see in friends and colleagues as they view the disappearance of civil liberties in the United States almost overnight. And almost without protest.

     I remember reading of the thriving classical liberal movement that existed in England before world war I – a movement that was utterly destroyed by the war that crushed the very spirit of liberty. There is a famous quote from the British foreign secretary and classical liberal Sir Edward Grey. Grey said, "the lights" – by which he meant liberty – "the lights are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."

     And, yet, as I said ... I wish to say a good word for optimism.

     When I look at the world writ large, I despair. If I dwell on Iraq or the Middle East, I feel like walking away from political activism because they are overwhelming. And so, what I do instead is to concentrate on the issues and causes I can affect. I concentrate on grassroot movements – in which individual voices can make an incredible difference. Where individuals can exert incredible power. And grassroot movements are springing up and spreading like wildfire across North America. They are movements that begin with isolated individuals who become so dissatisfied with something that deeply affects their lives – maybe the public school system, maybe minimum sentencing laws that have been applied to their son or daughter – that they say "no." People who have never said "no" to authority before, stand up and refuse to sit down. They usually begin by saying "no" on a local level, to a local school board, at a town meeting or to a district court. But if the injustice they're complaining about is widespread, the voices multiply quickly...and they collectively become a powerful political force. Perhaps the most powerful political force there is: the voice of the people.

     I am not advocating democracy or majority rule, here. All I am saying is that populist causes – causes that profoundly touch the daily lives of common people – are the ones that ultimately shape society. They are the ones that lead to real reform and sometimes to social revolution, hopefully in the nonviolence sense.

     What are some of these grassroot causes? One of them is home schooling by which parents remove their children from state schools and privately educate them, often at home. In essence, these parents are in a peaceful mutiny against the quality and content of government education. A federal survey conservatively estimated that 850,000 American children were homeschooled in 1999; other studies put the figure as high as 1.5 million children. According to the Heartland Institute, for the last decade and a half homeschooling has grown at a rate of 15 to 20 percent a year.

     One reason some parents remove their children from state control is the increasingly poor quality of the education provided. In the last several years, for example, California schools have poured money and PR into improving their standards. And, yet, according to Education Week, in 2001, 55% of California 9th graders flunked the new state exit test which was supposed to become mandatory for high school graduation by 2005. And the test is not difficult to pass. A pass requires a minimum score of 60% in reading and 55% in mathematics."

     The iconoclastic feminist Christina Hoff Sommers explained one reason for the decline in educational standards and achievement. Her book entitled, The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men, builds a strong case against public school programs that have been designed by gender equity experts. Those programs aim at embedding political correctness into the education system so that you produce politically correct rather than literate and numerate children. But they also – as the title indicates – discriminate against boys through programs that are designed to encourage girls.

     "Encouraging girls" ... that sounds noble. But the flip side is that boys are often ignored or discouraged. A 2003 study entitled "The Growing Gender Gaps in College Enrollment and Degree Attainment in the U.S. and Their Potential Economic and Social Consequences," was conducted by economist Andrew Sum. The study revealed that, in 2003, over 56 percent of college students were women. It concluded, "in every major age and race-ethnic group, women across the nation now enroll in college, persist in college, and graduate from college at considerably higher rates than men."

     When you add in not merely preference for women but a double preference for minority you get figures like – and, again, according to the sum study – "in 1999-2000, for every 100 degrees awarded to black men, black women were awarded 188 associate degrees, 192 bachelor degrees, and 221 master’s degrees."

     There is nothing noble about a social program that benefits one child at the expense of another. Imagine you are a mother who is being told that your daughter will be guided through tax-funded achievement programs, receive a variety of scholarships, etc. But the cost is that your son will be ignored and offered no advantages. Indeed, he will be disadvantaged. Any mother worthy of that title would say no.

     I want to spin off the idea of how gender feminism has effected men by giving you a very sketchy sense of the grassroot movement with which I've been most involved and that is the Men's Rights Movement in the U.S.

     One of the impacts gender feminism has had in virtually ever society in which it has operated for any time is to embed a bias in favor of women into institutions. Moreover, new industries have been established as part of embedding that bias.

     By institutions, in this context I mean the laws and policies, the structures and rules of society that have become standard operating procedure. From affirmative action to the issuing of restraining orders to women almost on demand, from the presumption that divorcing mothers should receive primary or sole custody to anti-male bias in awarding scholarships to university.

     By industries I mean very much what another iconoclastic feminist Daphne Patai described in her book Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism (1998). There Patai described what she called the Sexual Harassment Industry, which consists of writers, professors, sensitivity or diversity trainers, consultants, scholars, lawyers, psychologists, bureaucrats such as those in the EEOC, expert witnesses, and all other professionals who profit from the issue of sexual harassment. For example, Patai describes how her school, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst paid $1,250 to $1,800 per day per trainer for a course on sexual harassment prevention. The university paid an additional $10,000 for expenses such as travel, hotels and meals. That is for just one short course in one department in a far larger sexual harassment program at one university.

     In short, issues such as affirmative action and sexual harassment have created industries that have a vested interest in maintaining themselves and never solving the perceived problem.

     The Men's Rights Movement consists of men who are standing up and objecting to the anti-male biases that have been institutionalized into society and have become profitable industries. The movement consists of men who are standing up and saying – very much as feminists did in the '60s – "we want equality, we want justice to be gender blind."

     The aspect of the Men's Rights Movement – the subcategory, if you will – that has become a flash point is Father's Rights. There are many issues or concerns that are subsumed by the umbrella of father's rights – and I can't do any more than briefly touch on one of them, leaving others for the Q & A. That one issue is the right of a responsible divorced father to have reasonable access to his children. What is reasonable? The father's rights movement is fighting for what is called a Rebuttable Presumption of Joint Custody. Which means that in contested divorces where no voluntary custody arrangement can be reached, the legal default position, the legal presumption should be that both parents share custody on an equal basis. The word Rebuttable indicates that either parent could acquire sole custody by demonstrating to a court that the other is unfit, perhaps because of a history of violence.

     I said I was optimistic.

     At this point, in North American culture I am seeing a seachange in attitudes toward the issues being raised by the Men's Rights Movement, especially concerning anti-boy bias in schools and anti-father bias in family courts. I am also seeing a gradual but a sure erosion of the policies and industries that support anti-male bias. Again, I only have time to give one example of change before closing.

     That example concerns false accusations. In the past decade or so, it has been virtually unheard for women who file false accusations against men to be prosecuted or penalized, even if the accusation is under oath.

     Consider, for example, a precedent setting case that was just adjudicated on June 30th by the Second District Court of Appeal of California. The higher court overturned a paternity judgment against a man named Manuel Navarro because DNA testing revealed that he could not possibly be the father. Nevertheless, the state continued to garnish his wages for child support. It is quite common in the United States for men whose DNA proves their non-paternity to still have to pay simply because a woman named them as father and the named man did not file a protest within 30 days. Often the man named doesn't even receive notice because the court order is simply left with a third party at his presumed address. Los Angles County in which Navarro lived is notorious for this.

     My point here is not so much the Superior Court decision in favor of the non-father – tho' that's a first in America, as far as I know. My point is that nothing will happen to the woman who signed a false declaration swearing that he was the father.

     In California, when an unwed mother applies for welfare, the department of child support services routinely requires her to name the father(s) of her children. The mother signs a declaration under penalty of perjury. Nevertheless, in a public interview the Assistant Director of those Child Support Services Leora Gerhenzon has candidly stated that in the history of her department she cannot remember one time that a mother who had sworn falsely was penalized. Indeed, until the Navarro case, even a falsely sworn declaration still yielded the mother the financial benefit of continuing child support.

     My optimism is because this too is changing. In the last few months, there have several high profile court cases in which women who have sworn false statements, made false accusations have been sanctioned by the court. And the accused men have been compensated in some fashion. Again, this is precedent setting.

     I've just spent the last 10 minutes talking about the status of boys in education and men's rights, which is odd for a feminist presentation. But appropriate for one on individualist feminism, for two reasons:

     I began by saying that one of the roles feminism played in the classical liberal movement was in the expansion of human rights to apply equally to all individuals. The culmination of feminism the point at which I would stop calling myself a feminist and use the term 'humanist' instead is the point at which equal recognition is achieved.

     Today, the dominant form of feminism is reversing the process of expanding human rights to include every individual, and instead demanding that a class of individuals – men – be excluded. Instead of eliminating secondary characteristics like sex as politically important, those characteristics are defining how people are treated by law. Instead of universal rights, gender feminism is returning us to a society of class privilege. And any feminist who believes in equality has to stand up and defend whichever gender is being excluded. Today, it is overwhelmingly men who are being excluded. And so to return to equality, real feminists are put in the strange position of defending men's rights.

     But, in case people think there are no issues of women's rights left to defend, let me hurry onto an issue where women's rights need defending...and badly.

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