General
Individualist feminists attempt to change legal systems in order to eliminate class privileges and gender privileges and to ensure that individuals have equal rights, including an equal claim under the law to their own persons and property. Individualist feminism encourages women to take full responsibility for their own lives. It also opposes any government interference into the choices adults make with their own bodies because, it contends, such interference creates a coercive hierarchy (such as patriarchy).
Individualist feminism was cast to appeal to "younger women ... of a more conservative generation" and includes concepts from Rene Denfeld and Naomi Wolf, essentially that "feminism should no longer be about communal solutions to communal problems but individual solutions to individual problems", and concepts from Wendy McElroy.
The Association of Libertarian Feminists, founded in 1973 by Tonie Nathan, the Libertarian Party's Vice Presidential nominee in 1972, is one of a number of different kinds of individualist feminist organizations. It takes a strong anti-government and pro-choice stand. Other libertarian feminist organizations include Mothers for Liberty, the Mother's Institute, and the Ladies of Liberty Alliance.
Wendy McElroy and Christina Hoff Sommers define individualist feminism in opposition to what they call political or gender feminism. Some scholars and critics have commented that the label "feminist" is often used cynically in this context, as a way to co-opt general feminism rather than actually be part of feminism. Other scholars note that individualist feminism has a long history that is somewhat different in tone that currently advocated by McElroy and Sommers.
Read more about this topic: Individualist Feminism
Famous quotes containing the word general:
“We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
“It has been the struggle between privileged men who have managed to get hold of the levers of power and the people in general with their vague and changing aspirations for equality, for justice, for some kind of gentler brotherhood and peace, which has kept that balance of forces we call our system of government in equilibrium.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)