Transcription of talk delivered at Brown University.



I believe most universities are cheating students when they teach them what they call "feminism." What is being taught -- and often imposed through policies like speech codes -- is just one school of feminism, one ideology within a far broader and richer tradition. In the next 40 minutes, I'll be presenting another perspective...a dissenting view.



The dominant voice of feminism today is what has been called "gender feminism" -- a controversial term. This is the sort of feminism espoused by NOW, the National Organization for Women. And one of the myths that NOW-style feminists have been able to successfully sell is that anyone who disagrees with their approach on almost any issue, from sexual harassment to child custody, from affirmative action to domestic violence to abortion...anyone who disagrees is anti-feminist and, perhaps, even anti-woman.



That accusation is absolutely false.



The truth is that 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, prolife to prochoice. And when you think about it, the diversity of opinion makes sense. After all, if feminism is the belief that women should be liberated as individuals and equal to men, then it is only natural for there to be disagreement and discussion as to 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 lives.



And, when you look back at the less publicized tidbits of feminist history, you see that liberated women have always disagreed on the specifics of important issues... For example, altho' modern feminism is critical of the religious rights, the roots of feminism in America are significantly religious, drawing strongly from the Quaker tradition. When Elizabeth Cady Stanton championed the Woman's Bible that condemned Christianity's view of women, she was widely rebuffed by feminists of her day. For example, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton both spoke out against abortion...



Moving on to modern times, consider the issue of prostitution. The Prostitutes' Rights Movement first appeared in the US in the early '70s through the organization known as COYOTE, an acronym for 'Call Off Your Tired Old Ethics'. The spokeswomen called themselves "liberated whores" and crusaded under the slogan "A woman's body, a woman's right." How did feminism react?



In 1973, NOW endorsed the decriminalization of prostitution. Ti Atkins, a popular feminist of the day, expressed a common sentiment in calling the prostitute a "truly liberated woman." Ms magazine lauded COYOTE and its founder Margo St. James. As late as 1979, prostitutes and mainstream feminists were actively co-operating. For example, COYOTE aligned with NOW in what was called a Kiss and Tell campaign to further the ERA effort. A 1979 issue of COYOTE Howls, the organization's newsletter, declared:



"COYOTE has called on all prostitutes to join the international "Kiss and Tell" campaign to convince legislators that it is in their best interest to support...issues of importance to women. The organizers of the campaign are urging that the names of legislators who have consistently voted against those issues, yet are regular patrons of prostitutes, be turned over to feminist organizations for their use."



Contrast this with the late '80s: prostitute activists and feminist were in enemy camps, with feminists viewing the prostitute as the penultimate victim of patriarchy -- white male culture.



So whenever someone talks about the positions -- the points of theory -- that are supposed to define feminism, I always ask...which feminism or feminists are we talking about? If the issue is abortion...Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wouldn't agree with today's pro-choice advocates. If the issue is prostitution...NOW feminists from '73 wouldn't agree with the present NOW membership.



There is no one feminism, there is no dogmatic position on issues. What feminism is...and should be...is an ongoing dialogue -- among women...and men! -- on issues of special interest to women. And that dialogue, as long as it is civil, is healthy. Dissent is a vital aspect of what keeps theory alive and true. Dogma is its death.



Tonight, I'm presenting a dissenting view: individualist feminism, or ifeminism -- a deep and rich school within the movement of which you have probably heard next to nothing.



The ideas to which you have been exposed are -- almost without question -- gender feminism. Those ideas are diametrically opposed to ifeminism. And these two schools of feminism -- gender and individualism -- form the two extremes of theory that define the feminist movement itself. In order to illustrate this, I want to back up for a moment and ask of feminism the most fundamental question you can ask of anything: what is it? What is feminism?



Earlier I described feminism as personal liberation and equality with men. Let me give a more formal definition. Feminism is the doctrine that says "women are, and should be treated as, the equals of men." It is the political movement that focuses on women and objects to inequality between the sexes.



"Women are the equals of men." As simple as that statement sounds, we're already in trouble. Because what does "equality" mean? How is the term being used? For example, does it refer to equality under existing laws and equal representation within existing institutions...which requires only that current society be reformed to become gender blind? Or is the definition of equality more revolutionary? Does it require existing laws and institutions to be swept away and replaced so that society becomes different in a fundamental sense?



The manner in which the word "equality" is defined is a litmus test by which various schools of feminism can be distinguished -- one from the other.



Throughout most of the 19th and 20th centuries, mainstream American feminism defined "equality" as equal treatment under existing law and equal representation in existing institutions. That's what the drive for suffrage was about in the 19th century: that's what the ERA was about in the 20th century. The goal was not revolution -- it was reform. Mainstream feminism said, "treat us equally under existing law. Give us equal representation within existing institutions."



Those feminists who were more revolutionary protested that existing laws and institutions were the source of injustice to women and, as such, could not be reformed. The system -- or large parts of it -- had to swept away and rebuilt according to a new vision.



And, in simplistic terms, the two most revolutionary traditions were socialist feminism -- from which contemporary gender feminism draws heavily -- and individualist feminism of which current ifeminism is a continuation. These two traditions said that equality required revolution but they differed dramatically about what direction that revolution should take.



To socialist feminists, equality was a socio-economic goal. Women could be equal only by eliminating capitalism and other institutions that were said to favor men, such as the traditional family and the church. They said, "don't reform capitalism to include women in its injustice: sweep capitalism away and start with a new economic slate." As socialist feminism evolved through the 19th into the late 20th century, it became what the key theorist of the '70s and '80s Catherine MacKinnon called "post-Marxist feminism." But the goals remained basically the same. A legal restructuring of society to ensure an even distribution of power and wealth.



The revolution envisioned by individualist feminists was (and is) quite different. To them, equality was achieved when the human rights, the individual rights of women and men were treated equally under laws that protected person and property. It said nothing about equal distribution. Only about equal protection of rights.



Let me give you an example that concretizes the difference... According to gender feminism, you have a right to regulate businesses in order to ensure the proper distribution of wealth and power: that is, you have the right to ensure that they do not hire, fire, or promote on the basis of gender. As an individualist feminism, how anyone -- including employers -- peacefully use their own property is none of my business. They have a right to hire, fire, and promote anyone they choose for whatever reason they choose. And I defend that right because I want to claim it myself: I want my property and person -- my peaceful choices -- to be protected by law.



Where does ifeminism's emphasis on individual rights come from? It comes from its very roots.



In the 19th century, ifeminism...in fact feminism itself...arose from the radical anti-slavery movement in the 1830s -- that declared every human being, white or black, to be a self-owner. That is, everyone simply by being human had a right to his own person and the products of his person -- that is, labor and property. Otherwise stated...humanity was the primary characteristic from which human beings derived the right to freedom. Secondary characteristics -- such as gender, race, religion, or hair color -- were just that...secondary. Every human being had the same primary right to protection of person and property: self ownership.



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.



In short, the original ifeminists sought to destroy the institution of slavery and to rewrite the law from scratch so that it made no distinction between, black or white, man or woman. It spoke only of human beings. That was their revolutionary vision.



What does all this mean in modern terms? I began by saying that gender feminism and ifeminism define the two extremes of the movement. It defines them in terms of ideas, attitudes and the method of operating in society.



In a short time, there is no way to give you a real sense of how dramatically these two revolutionary traditions differ. Instead what I'm going to do is to contrast -- briefly -- one or two of the key concepts. I've talked about "equality", not I want to explore the concept of "class."



There are men, there are women, they are separate classes...or so the theory goes.



But, first, I want to return to fundamentals and ask: what is a class? A class is nothing more than an arbitrary grouping of entities that share common characteristics -- the arbitrary part is that the person doing the grouping does so for his or her own purposes. For example, a researcher studying drug addiction may break society, or his research subjects, into classes of drug using and non-drug using people.



So...classes can be defined by almost any factor salient to the definer. Hair color, sexual orientation, deodorant use... For radical feminists, gender is the salient factor.



And there is nothing inherently wrong about that choice. Many fields use biology as a dividing line. For example, medicine often separates the sexes in order to apply different medical treatments and techniques. Women are examined for cervical cancer and men for prostate problems. But medicine does not claim that the basic biological interests of men and women as human beings conflict. Medicine recognizes that the two sexes share a basic biology that requires the same approach of nutrition, exercise and common sense lifestyle choices. In short, although the biologies of the sexes may be classified differently for the purposes of the definer, there is no attempt to say that the two biologies are not fundamentally the same -- that men and women are not the same species, with the same requirements for oxygen, Vitamin C and so forth.



By contrast, gender feminism advocates a theory of fundamental class conflict based on gender. It claims -- FIRST -- that males not only share a biological identity but also a political and social one. SECOND -- that these political and social interests necessary conflict with those of women. Thus, what many of us would consider a basic human right which should be shared equally by both genders -- such as freedom of speech -- becomes a tool by which men oppress women. Therefore speech must be controlled so that it does not oppress women. And we have college speech codes, anti-harassment codes for speech in the workplace, hate speech laws to control language outside academia and the business place.



How did the idea that men and women -- as classes -- are in fundamental conflict come about? The concept of class conflict is widely associated with Karl Marx, who popularized it -- among other things -- as a tool to predict the political interests and social behavior of individuals. In other words, once the class affiliation of an individual was known, his or her behavior became predictable. To Marx, the salient feature defining a person's class was his relationship to the means of production: was he a capitalist or a worker?



Gender feminism adapted this theory. In fact, Catherine MacKinnon refers to gender feminism as "post-Marxist." By this, she means that gender feminism embraces the general context of Marxism but does not believe economic status is what determines a class. Gender is the salient factor. Are you male or female? Being 'male' becomes so significant that it predicts and determines how the individuals within that class will behave. Being male...regardless of who you are as an individuals....defines what is in your self-interest because "maleness" -- your class affiliation -- overrides your individuality. Thus, gender feminists can level accusations of "rapist" at men because even non-violent men are beneficiaries of 'the rape culture' which has been established by patriarchy -- white male culture. Men, as a class, have constructed institutions that oppress women as a class. Thus, to prevent the oppression of women, it is necessary to deconstruct those institutions, such as the free market and the traditional family.



By contrast, individualist feminism looks at men and women and sees -- first and foremost -- individual human beings with a common, shared humanity. And, just as men and women share basic biological needs, we share the same basic political needs: the same rights and responsibilities. The most basic human right is to the peaceful enjoyment of our own bodies and of our own property. The most basic human responsibility is to respect the peaceful decisions other people make with their bodies and their property. At bare minimum, to legally tolerate -- if not respect -- to legally tolerate the choices of others.



In other words....the highest political good for both men and women doesn't come from their sexuality. It derives from their being human beings. Although men and women can be sorted into separate classes for all sorts of reasons -- from medicine to marketing strategy -- their basic rights and responsibilities cannot be sorted in that manner. Because those rights and responsibilities preceded any consideration of sexuality just as they precede any consideration of skin color.



Laws protecting those rights -- or enforcing those responsibilities -- should make no distinction between men and women. By this definition of feminism -- individualist feminism -- the burning priority today is to remove from the law all privileges and disadvantages that are based on sex. This includes privileges for women such as affirmative action. The law must become gender-blind and see only the individuals standing before it.



Now...the concept of 'class' is only one of many areas of intellectual warfare between gender and ifeminism. And before moving away from theory and into the realm of history...let me touch briefly upon one more concept -- the idea of "justice." And I'll go through this very quickly, knowing that we can discuss it later...



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 in which the socio-economic and cultural equality of women is fully expressed. 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.



By contrast, the ifeminist 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. The methodology is "anything that is peaceful," "society by contract," "the non-initation of force," voluntaryism. In other words, any outcome to which all the people involved have consented is, by definition, just. The only end-state ifeminism envisions is the protection of person and property -- that is, the removal of force and fraud from how society operates. Whatever society resulted from the free and peaceful choices of individuals is a just society. If that society were socialist, fine. If it were capitalism, fine. Perhaps it would express both ideals...just as the rural area I live in has a typical small town with shops and commerce right next to a large Amish community.



If you are having trouble with this concept of justice being ends-oriented or mean-oriented try applying it to marriage instead of to society. Gender feminism has specific answers to "what is marriage?" -- it must include gay couples, it should be 50/50 in terms of responsibilities, the traditional family is flawed because it is a prop of patriarchy, etc. By contrast, ifeminism says that any arrangement to which the people involved freely agree is a "proper" marriage. The specific arrangement is not important; the method by which it is reached IS.



This doesn't mean that everything peaceful or voluntary is moral. For example, a voluntary society may have strains of racism. I am anti-racist. I married into an Hispanic family and feel very strongly about anyone slandering, arbitrarily refusing to hire or otherwise demeaning members of my family. I have been known to yell and scream in the face of people who do so. And anyone who refuses to hire my niece or nephew because of their race can take my contract and tear it in two. In short, I would use every peaceful means at my disposal to change the vicious behavior of whoever discriminates and make them pay as high a price as I know how.



What I wouldn't do is use force -- either directly or in the form of government -- to make people treat my family differently. Why? Because the freedom of association means that other people have the right not to associate with me or mine for any reason they see fit, including race or gender. They have a right to not invite me into their homes and to not hire me. And I have no right to use force to override their judgment...however wrong I believe that judgment to be. And the compelling reason is...that I want my family to be able to shut the door and not invite those people into our homes.



And, so, the conflicting concepts of justice between gender and individualist feminism highlight, in turn, a key difference in their approach to social problems: namely, gender feminists are willing to use the State. This difference is not surprising when you realize that the radical feminist ideal of justice *can* by established by the use of force, by the State. Gender feminists aim at particular end states. And you can, for example, impose a specific economic arrangement on society. You can impose affirmative action and arrest or otherwise penalize people for so-called "wrong" hiring practices. (Of course, at the same time they use the State, gender feminists condemn it as patriarchal and irreparably harmful to women -- but they can deal with that contradiction themselves. Not my problem.)



Ifeminism doesn't have the option of using State 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 ifeminism is talking about, over and over again. Choice.



Ifeminism seeks private solutions to social problems. And recognizes the right to pull a gun on another human being only in self-defense against a real attack on person or property. Again...Choice. In the final analysis, this is the core of what ifeminism is about. Respect for each and every individual's decisions about her or his own body. And protection of her or his peaceful choices.



Theory can be a dry thing. And individualist feminism isn't dry. It is not just a network of theory or a set of positions of issues -- such as affirmative action. It is an entire vision, with a unique history and a unique interpretation of historical events, such as the Industrial Revolution...with its own poets and literature, with heroines and heroes in causes such as birth control...it is a rich tradition and I want to give you a taste of that richness. So let me dip back into history....



I mentioned abolitionism as the original wellspring of American feminism -- at least, of feminism as an organized force. I want to speed forward in history, past the Civil War, to the last few decades of the 19th century and read you a letter from an ordinary woman.

I want you to imagine it is 1889. You are a woman who has just risked her life in a self-induced abortion wrote to the libertarian periodical, Lucifer the Light Bearer, pleading:



"I know I am dreadful wicked, but I am sure to be in the condition from which I risked my life to be free, and I cannot stand it...Would you know of any appliance that will prevent conception? If there is anything reliable, you will save my life by telling me of it."



The woman wrote to Lucifer -- published and edited by Moses Harman -- because, in the late 1800s, it was one of the few forums openly promoting birth control. Moses Harman insisted that woman's self-ownership fully acknowledged in all sexual arrangements. Accordingly, his periodical also argued that forced sex within marriage is rape...



In doing so, Harman ran counter to the Comstock Act (1873), which prohibited the mailing of obscene matter which included birth control information and discussion of graphically sexual issues like rape. A witchhunt ensued.



In 1887, the staff of Lucifer was arrested for the publication of three letters and indicted on 270 counts of obscenity. One letter had described the plight of a woman whose husband forced sex upon her even though it tore the stitches from a recent operation. It is a very early analysis of forced sex within marriage constituting rape.



(Interestingly, when the authorities came to arrest Harman in 1887, his 16-year old daughter Lillian was not present. She was in jail herself, having been arrested for engaging in a private marriage -- that is, a marriage that consisted of a private contract, without Church or State involvement. At that ceremony, Moses had refused to give his daughter away, stating that she was the owner of her person.)



The Harman episode is not a tale of individualist feminism because he championed birth control. A number of traditions did that. Harman was an individualist feminist because of the ideology and methodology he used. He based his arguments on women's self-ownership and extended the principle of self-ownership to all arrangements, sexual and economic of all people, male and female. He refused to use the State in personal relationships because he considered it -- at least as it existed around him -- to be the institutionalization of force in society. It did not protect people's persons and property; it controlled them, and this he opposed. He opposed laws that restricted peaceful behavior so vigorously that his legal battles against the Comstock laws continued from 1887 through to 1906. His last imprisonment was for a year at hard labor, often breaking rocks for eight hours a day in the Illinois snow. He was 75 years old at the time.



Harman was not an obscure figure. He was acknowledged both by Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman as a pioneer without whom their work in birth control would not have been possible. In 1905, on the front page of the New York Times, George Bernard Shaw stated, "...a journal has been confiscated -- meaning Lucifer -- and its editor imprisoned in American for urging that a married women should be protected from domestic molestation when childbearing." Two years later, in 1907, Shaw explained to London journalists why he never visited America. "The reason I do not go to America is that I am afraid of being arrested...like Mr. Moses Harman...If the brigands can...seize a man of Mr. Harman's advanced age, and imprison him for a year under conditions which amount to an indirect attempt to kill him, simply because he shares the opinion expressed in my Man and theSuperman that 'marriage is the most licentious of human instiuttions,' what chance should I have of escaping."



Moses Harman was prominent figure in the life-and-death fight for women's sexual freedom.



Where in the cannons of feminist orthodoxy is this man celebrated? His status should equal or surpass that of Margaret Sanger. Where is the nod of gratitude and acknowledgement to Lillian Harman? Nowhere. Where is the biography of Gertrude B. Kelly, a political activist and medical doctor who specialized in caring for poor tenement women? Where do you read about J. Flora and Josephine S. Tilton -- two sisters who toured the Northeastern states and Canada, going into factories to pass out birth control literature to working people...and being arrested for their efforts? It cannot be that these figures are too obscure to even mention in passing in a footnote.



Because Ezra Heywood is not mentioned...and he is far from obscure. Heywood was arrested in 1877 for distributing a birth control pamphlet entitled Cupid's Yokes -- which argued for abstinence, by the way. In protest, a petition for his release received over 70,000 signatures -- the largest number of signatures in U.S. history to that date. Six months after his imprisonment, Heywood received a full pardon from President Hayes. Where is feminism's tribute to Ezra Heywood? Where is its tribute to Angela Heywood, his partner in life, who wrote the first defense of woman's right to reproductive control I've ever seen that was based explicitly on "a woman's body, a woman's right." She agitated for women's rights, wrote and published, led high-profile organization like the New England Reform League for decades.



Look in standard reference works, like the biographical dictionary called "Notable American Women" prepared under the auspices of Radcliffe College...you won't find her name. Nor the names of the other women...or dozens and dozens...probably hundreds who suffered to secure rights and dignity for women.



Feminism deserves better...you deserve better than dogma. Feminism needs to have fresh air blow through its moribund corridors; it needs new ideas and vigorous debate; it needs to respect the voices of women...esepcially the voices of women who disagree because THAT is where women's liberation has always resided. In the words, I DISAGREE.

