Libertarian Feminism: Can This Marriage Be Saved? essay

Economics Political Theory
1

what are your thoughts on this essay.

i think it makes some interesting comparisons.

here is the last paragraph of the article

Libertarianism and feminism are, then, two traditions—and, at their best, two radical traditions—with much in common, and much to offer one another. We applaud the efforts of those who have sought to bring them back together; but too often, in our judgment, such efforts have proceeded on the assumption that the libertarian tradition has everything to teach the feminist tradition and nothing to learn from it. Feminists have no reason to embrace a union on such unequal terms. Happily, they need not. If libertarian feminists have resisted some of the central insights of the feminist tradition, it is in large part because they have feared that acknowledging those insights would mean abandoning some of the central insights of the libertarian tradition. But what the example of the 19th century libertarian feminists should show us—and should help to illuminate (to both libertarians and feminists) in the history of Second Wave feminism—is that the libertarian critique of state power and the feminist critique of patriarchy are complementary, not contradictory. The desire to bring together libertarianism and feminism need not, and should not, involve calling on either movement to surrender its identity for the sake of decorum. This marriage can be saved: as it should be, a marriage of self-confident, strong-willed, compassionate equals.

2

My thoughts (literally):

Give it up Chuck. Stop pandering the vote. Give them the right to abortion and quit it with this across-the-aisle ‘radical tradition’ garbage. The Left isn’t fooled by it. We’re not fooled by it. You sound like a marriage counsellor. It sounds thin.

If anything it’s time to scale back women’s ‘rights’ which have now become positive rights. Rights to the income, children and property of a separated spouse, to vacations of privilege off work, to affirmative action, to special histories of one’s gender, to the income of taxpayers for one’s abortions.

Libertarians ought not to pander, we ought not to squirm onto the mainstage in a pool of the placenta of victimology. We ought to win on our own messages: free markets, peace and individual liberty

3

Individual liberty? PATRIOT Act took a dump all over that, what did the people do? Nothing. How about NDAA? Nothing.

Free market? Oh haven’t you heard, the free market is the source of all evil, it’s responsible for everything from the common cold to poor people.

4

What’s your point?

5

is there not victomology in talking about the abuse of power from the state and lack of consent of the governed?

compare and contrasting free market and individual liberty to alturnatives is a way to promote free market and individual liberty.

6

Victimology as in, the pet causes of the left

7

Most people don’t care about individual liberty and the free market. Winning on those values is about as likely as snow in the Bahamas.

8

So you’re proposing the adoption of other values because they’re more likely to win?

9

what in that article would be a pet cause of the left? i thought libertarian was a mix of right and left? both economic and social liberty.

10

what in that article would be a pet cause of the left?

The lavishing upon certain classes (in the case of second wave feminism; women) of government privileges paid for by others. That’s a pet cause of the left that libertarianism can never brook.

11

i did not get that he was recommending government privileges paid for by others in the article, can you quote where he makes such a recommendation?

12

The left has corrupted the concept of rights into positive rights.

The feminists have done no different. They will have to give up some of their plums in a libertarian world, and are unlikely to be overly happy with this. But it would be consistent with their doctrine of equality. But equality they’ve corrupted into egalitarianism too, and historical egalitarianism at that, where some of them would say 50 centuries of patriarchy can only be cured by 50 centuries of matriarchy.

Libertarians do not accept this, do not accept tyranny as a cure for tyranny.

In a libertarian world, women would lose a few things. They’d lose an ally of great power in the state. Marriages would no longer be under state power. Marriages would become true contracts, without the masses voting as an ally to force contractual clauses on men women marry. There would be no automatic no-fault divorce, no automatic assumption of children going to the mother, no automatic splitting of finances, no forced child-support, etc., etc.

These things would have to be bargained for either before a marriage as part of the marriage contract, during the marriage as part of an amended contract, or during divorce proceedings. And in a libertarian world, men are likely to be better off in many of those clashes, because the current system is often biased against men.

A blind justice system would probably be truly unbiased towards women, unlike the current system. Or so many have said about our current system.

I sometimes wonder if men who currently have what they feel to be very unfair judgments against them might be very interested in escaping to a seastead and switching to bitcoin which would make it nigh impossible for authorities to take child-support from their paychecks.

I don’t think that’s necessarily honorable on the part of someone who would do that (women could do that too, it’s just a rarer judgment), but it’s something I imagine will indeed happen. It would be mitigated by the wives sending bounty-hunters in to collect moneys, or perhaps pursuing arbitrative judgments within a libertarian legal environ against that person, leading to a renegotiation perhaps.

13

Feminism is taking on the cultural aspect as libertarianism is taking on the political aspect. Politics can be concrete, when you get into cultural aspects then it’s different. It can be hard to take on the cultural without getting into something subjective. That being said I think one reason libertarianism hasn’t gone forward into feminism is 1) white, male, Christian libertarians who can’t even adopt abortion as a legitimate right - let alone understand patriarchy, and 2) those on the libertarian side have not actually dived into feminism - their understanding is from 3rd party sources, not direct, or that from other political spheres.

I think this also brings up why a majority of people into libertarianism are white males. We can talk about econ theory all day on wage rates, but how (and why) should this appeal to a woman who’s talking about wage inequality? The aspects are different, cultural and political, but libertarianism somehow can’t fuse them together on the side of feminism.

The views can be different, if the archetype of the patriarch is projected into the market (where a lot of sexism dwells) then the state will be used, if the archetype of the patriarch is projected to the state, then it’ll change to an aspect of individual vs the state. For that to happen there cannot be a dividing line between feminist and libertarian politics.

14

Libertarian demographics are still a problem though. White, male, and fairly upscale financially. Why should this be?

Can we ever be a mass movement–not if that trend still continues. Still, American democracy largely followed the same trend. As did, I’m sure, socialism’s spread around the world.

Perhaps the movement is still young. We are, after all, only a decade or so out from Rothbard’s death, and within his lifetime libertarianism had virtually died out, was refounded and began to grow at last. 1900’s, the dark decades.

I think, given time, we may be able to convert large numbers of modern liberals to libertarianism. Many of them would be libertarians already except they haven’t been exposed to libertarian ideas and ideals–but they would if and when they encounter them. I suspect this would be true for at least a good 15% of liberals. Probably the same or more of conservative republicans.

That’s what makes the education solution so tantalizing, but the opportunity cost to reach these people would be enormous. And their personal cost to actually read and develop these ideas to turn themselves into libertarians would be pretty big too. These 15% are people who would change in time if they encountered the ideas, but that doesn’t mean these people are the type likely to consume ideas in the first place.

Both left and right are rather intellectually insular in that way. Nary a word is ever mentioned about Rothbard, much less Mises, on the right. I know that for fact.

Even Larry Elder, who I’ve listened to for years, with a 3 hour radio show, himself an avowed libertarian, has never mentioned Rothbard in my hearing even once, neither Mises or other significant names. Not that I can recall anyway.

But, highly visible events that challenge these people’s assumption could have the effect of forcing them to encounter libertarian ideas head-on without instant reactionary dismissal. Primarily by this I mean the establishment of a libertarian society running and proving libertarian ideas and ideals as workable and realistic solutions–seasteads and the like.

Too easily we’re dismissed as naive, our ideas unworkable, impossible, utopian. If we can show in concrete terms a working and prosperous society–that will be a shock to the system heard round the world, and people -will- have that excuse ripped from their rationalization system, and will be left mouths-agape, wide-eyed, staring, and babbling, and that might cause a crisis of confidence in existing statist tyrannies.

Man, I can’t wait to see the look on people’s faces :slight_smile:

15

i think the government as patriarchy comparison comes in here.

a couple scenarios for familie stucture

1.male (patirarchy) takes care of the family finance and give female allowence which rewards submission and punishes defiance, and does not want devorce

  1. female and male ( legal equality) each have separate finance and pool some together as a team, and if they decide to break it off they they each retain automony

both those can be libertarian, but i think 2 represents something more feminist libertarian as each has kept more autonomy. someone with no finance will not have the same power at the bargaining table as someone independance. i think the patriarchy route of option one says that option 2 destroys the family and both male and female are worse off in number 2 and they ought to choose 1 for the good of both of them.

i do think the state wants to take controll of the finances , rewards submission, punishes defiance, and does not want sucession, with the statists saying the possibility for sucession is bad for the union and a relationship of citizen submision to the rule of the state is good for both.

16

i did not get that he was recommending government privileges paid for by others in the article, can you quote where he makes such a recommendation?

The place where he suggested a ‘marriage’ between libertarianism and feminism? Now granted, he seems to be mostly talking about 19th century feminism (which was anti-state) but in your cutout of his article he seems to mention second-wave as a worthy ally as well. From which my objection follows.

17

Give it up Chuck. Stop pandering the vote. Give them the right to abortion and quit it with this across-the-aisle ‘radical tradition’ garbage. The Left isn’t fooled by it. We’re not fooled by it. You sound like a marriage counsellor. It sounds thin.

Wouldn’t that be a violation of the NAP principle?

18

I think anybody whose sole interest is in the RESULT obtained by political action is going to have a hard time absorbing and appreciating libertarianism.

My opinion about feminists is they are totally and 100% fine with getting equality in all areas via state action. Even if this invites the government into every corner of their lives. The extra privileges they can get out of the arrangement are welcome, too.

Women already have equality before the law. What they want now is equality or supremacy in social settings and when faced with the choice of focusing on convincing others of their views or simply aggressing in order to get it done, they find the latter is easier.

19

It depends whether feminists want to use the state to get what they want. At the same time the state’s limiting what they can and cannot do (abortion), so democracy is a double edged sword, just point it out. I know “anarchists” who voted for Obama because of free birth control (just typing that out made my head hurt), but I pointed out to my girlfriend “If they supply it, they choose it, and who it’s coming from is lobbying for that, they don’t care about the consumer or choice, just what they can make money off of, they are getting paid directly for supplying it” and it brings up another point. Most people are skeptical of Big Pharma, and Big Pharma is lobbying for one thing or another, people get uneasy.

But my girlfriend doesn’t use birth control anymore so whatever…

I’ve been following Association of Libertarian Feminists on Facebook for some time now and they post a lot of good stuff.

20

I find it ironic that libertarians are very quick to dismiss Johnson’s analysis as “reaching across the aisle” yet are much more sympathetic towards Hoppe when he does the exact same thing in the opposite direction. At the same time, if you visit left-libertarian blogs or forums, you will see quite the opposite - a knee jerk reaction against Hoppe and a thoughtful and civil treatment of Johnson. If one is going to be suspicious of feminist values because of statist actions of many feminists, then one should be equally suspicious of conservative values because of the statist actions of many conservatives, and vice versa.

I believe both sides are fundamentally right: there are various socio-cultural commitments that not only compliment the libertarian political philosophy, but which cannot be rejected without conflicting with the core libertarian beliefs. The big question is the extent to which those values are traditionally conservative or traditionally liberal. I personally think that Hoppe is right when it comes to the importance of the family unit vis a vis the state, but I think that the left is correct in recognizing the potential for abuse such that the family can often maintain the same sort of rights violations as the state vis a vis the individual.