Individualist feminism


Individualist feminism, sometimes also grouped with libertarian feminism, is feminist ideas which emphasize individualism.

General

Individualist feminists attempt to change legal systems 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. One central theme of individualist feminism revolves around the Free Love Movement, which indicates that a woman's sexual choices should be made by her and her alone, rather than by government regulations.
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 and especially Joan Kennedy Taylor.
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 the Ladies of Liberty Alliance, Feminists for Liberty, and the defunct Mother's Institute, which included Mothers for Liberty.
Wendy McElroy and Christina Hoff Sommers define individualist feminism in opposition to what they call political or gender feminism.

People