by Wendy McElroy

Women are, and should be treated as, the equals of men. For many, the foregoing sentiment forms the core of feminist theory and policy but, historically, there has been substantial disagreement within the feminist movement over the meaning of the term 'equality'. Does it mean equality under existing laws? Or, equality under laws that are more just than existing ones? Does it mean a socio-economic equality that requires the law to grant privileges to women such as those embodied in affirmative action? Or cultural equality that accords women the same social status that men enjoy rather than merely the same legal status?

Throughout most of the 19th century, the mainstream of American feminism defined 'equality' as equal treatment with men under existing laws, and equal representation within existing institutions. For example, the cry of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association -- which, after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, became the League of Women Voters -- was not one of revolution: they wanted to include women in the existing process through which the State was constituted. As such, the mainstream of 19th century American feminist aimed at reform, not revolution.

The more radical feminists of the day protested that the existing laws and institutions -- in short, the political system itself -- caused the injustice toward women and, as such, it could not be reformed. The system needed to be entirely replaced before women's rights could be secured. In her work Anarchist Women, the contemporary historian Margaret S. Marsh wrote of the more radical feminists, who fell outside the mainstream framework, "They believed that if women truly intended to be equal, their first step must be a declaration of economic, psychological, and sexual independence from men and from male-dominated institutions, beginning with marriage."

In simplistic terms -- and in such a limited timeframe, it is not possible to be anything but simplistic -- the two basic traditions of this more revolutionary feminism were socialist feminism, from which contemporary radical feminism draws heavily, and individualist feminism, which is sometimes called libertarian feminism. An ideology I share.

Ideological Differences

These two traditions dramatically differed then, and they differ now in how they approach equality. To socialist feminists, 'equality' is a socioeconomic term. Women can be equal with men only after private property and the economic relationships it encouraged -- that is, capitalism and the family structure in which men dominated -- women can be equal only after these are eliminated. Equality was also a cultural goal. The 19th century parallel to the 20th century rebellion against 'white male culture' is to be found in the social purity crusades that characterized the last 1800s. The purity crusades revolved around various issues as pure food, prostitution, and temperance. Feminists -- socialist and individualist -- gravitated toward them.

To individualist-feminists, equality was achieved when the individual rights of women were fully acknowledged under laws that protected the person and property of men and women. It made no reference to women being economically or socially equal, only to equal treatment under just laws. Equality meant that the self-ownership of women was legally respected. Now, 'self-ownership' was the term favored by 19th century individualist feminists. It referred to the the moral jurisdiction that every human being has over his or her own body and over the products of his or her own labor, as embodied in private property. Self-ownership not only embraced private property but also natural rights theory that stressed individual rights rather than class ones.

Individualist feminists were as deeply concerned with social issues -- such as prostitution and temperance -- as socialist feminists but they refused to impose social purity upon individuals. Self-ownership meant that any adult had the right to choose any lifestyle that did not involve aggressing against another human being. It meant, 'a woman's body, a woman's right', even if that woman chose to be a prostitute, or chose to drink gin at 9:00 in the morning. At the heart of the difference between socialists and individualists in this regard was a compet- ing view of the proper role of law in society. The socialist feminists were willing to use law to enforce virtue; individualist feminists believed that the only proper function of law was to protect person and property -- that is, to prevent violence. Virtue must be left to the conscience of the individuals involved.

The individualist attitude did not spring from indifference to social problems, like prostitution. Quite the contrary. For example, the Individualist feminist, Gertrude B. Kelly worked as a medical doctor with women in New Jersey tenement houses who had been forced into prostitution by poverty. As a result, she became a determined labor activist, demanding the elimination of legal barriers that shackled women from competing in the workplace. Her first article in the prominent individualist anarchist periodical Liberty dealt with prostitution and, there, she stated that the inability of women to make an adequate living caused prostitution. She wrote: "We find all sorts of schemes for making men moral and women religious, but no scheme which proposes to give woman the fruits of her labor."

Individualist-feminists cared deeply, but they did not believe in governmental solutions to social problems. They would not use force to impose a code of morality. Thus, when individualist feminists joined social purity campaigns, such as temperance, they advocated voluntary and not legislated abstinence. Needless to say, this was out-of-step with the mainstream and socialist approach to the social purity campaigns which generally attempted to impose 'virtue'-- to impose morally proper behaviour upon society through the force of law Rather like the current feminist campaign against pornography.

Other profound ideological differences exists between the socialist and individualist feminism traditions.

Consider the concept of 'justice', which intimately relates to the concept of equality. Socialist feminism advocates socio-economic equality and its approach to justice is ends-oriented -- it defines justice in terms of a specific social condition. That is, socialist feminism provides a specific blueprint of which social and economic arrangements constitute a just society. A just society is one without white male culture or capitalism. Justice is an end-state, a point at which society embodies explicit economic, political and cultural arrangements. When women arrive at such an end-state, they can say "we are there, this is justice."

By contrast, individualist feminists insist that the freely chosen action of peaceful individuals must be respected. this concept of justice is means-oriented: that is, justice refers to methodology and not to a specific social or economic arrangement. As long as a given social state results from the voluntary interactions of everyone involved, then Whatever arrangements result are just. Justice, therefore, refers not to a specific end-state, such as socioeconomic equality, but to the process by which the end-state is achieved. Whatever is voluntary is 'just', or, at least, it is as close to justice as a non-utopian society can come.

For example, a college that discriminates against women and one that enforces a strict quota policy that favors women could exist side-by-side. As long as both were privately funded and no force was used, the arrangement would be just and the law could not properly interfere.

Discriminating against women might be immoral, as many peaceful actions may be -- lying to friends, adultery, selling drugs -- all these peaceful actions may be immoral. And individualist feminists might well attempt to change the first college's policy. If they did so, however, they would use education, protest, picketing, boycott, moral suasion -- the whole slate of persuasive strategies. What they could use -- at least, not without violating their own principles -- they could not use force in order to restrict the college's peaceful choice to not associate with women. Freedom of association requires the right to discriminate.

Socialist feminists were and are not similarly restricted in using the force of law. They use the State -- even the patriarchal State, that penultimate enemy of women -- to enforce their version of a just society. And this makes sense. After all, the socialist ideal of justice can be established by the force of State. A specific economic arrangement can be imposed upon society, whereas the individualist ideal -- a voluntary society -- cannot be created by force.

Yet another fundamental difference between the two traditions resides in the concept of class. According to socialist feminism, gender is the political characteristic that defines a class. Men share not only similar biologies, but also political interests which are maintained through the institution of patriarchy: that is, through white male culture and male economics...also known as capitalism. The interests of men are necessarily in conflict with the interests of women. In her book Feminism Unmodified, Catherine MacKinnon considers gender as a 'class' to be her primary theme. "The first theme is the analysis that the social relation between the sexes is organized so that men may dominate and women must submit and this relation is sexual -- in fact, is sex. Men in particular, if not men alone, sexualize inequality, especially the inequality of the sexes."

To individualist feminists the political characteristic that determines the class to which an individual belongs is his or her relationship to the use of force in society. There are two basic classes: the criminal or political class which acquires wealth and power through force, including legislation; and, the economic class which acquires wealth and power through voluntary exchange with others. The political class is at war with the economic one. For feminism, the important thing is that each class contains both men and women who, as individuals, can change their class affiliations at will.

This last point has profound implications. Since socialist feminism bases class affiliation on biology, the classes are stable with men and women inevitable enemies. In individualist feminism, the classes are fluid with individual men and women in no necessary conflict with each other. This one factor alone may explain why the individualist tradition and history contains as many prominent male figures as female ones, and why gender attacks on men tend to be rare. When an individualist feminist says "Women are, and should be treated as, the equals of men", there is a recognition of the logical corollary, "Men are, and should be treated as, the equals of women."

Now...I have gone fairly deep into theory here, for a very specific reason. I have written a book with the subtitle "A Woman's Right to Pornography", and I give talks criticizing current sexual harassment laws. I want you to understand that Individualist feminism is not merely a contrarian position on issues like affirmative action. It is a comprehensive, integrated system of beliefs concerning women's relationship to society. It has a deep rich history that significantly impacted the status of women in the 19th century. It embraces a large body of literature -- novels, political tracts, poetry, diaries, speeches -- and it involves a distinctive historical interpretation of events such as the Industrial Revolution, which it views as being overwhelmingly beneficial to women.

The richness of this tradition is not surprising when you realize that the very roots of American feminism were profoundly individualistic.

The Individualistic Roots of Feminism

As an organized force, American feminism is often dated -- and, I believe, correctly so -- from the radical anti-slavery movement, known as Abolitionism, that arose in the early 1830s and coalesced around the libertarian William Lloyd Garrison. Although there were many courageous figures who advanced the status of women prior to this period -- women such as Anne Hutchinson and Francis Wright -- they spoke out as individuals rather than as members of a self-conscious organization dedicated to women's rights.

Abolitionism demanded the immediate cessation of slavery on the grounds that every human being was a self-owner; every human being had a moral jurisdiction over his or her own body. Gradually, abolitionist women began to apply the principle of self- ownership not only to the slaves, but to themselves. The historian, Aileen S. Kraditor, wrote in her book Up From the Pedestal:
"A few women in the abolitionist movement in the 1830s ... found their religiously inspired work for the slave impeded by prejudices against public activity by women. They and many others began to ponder the parallels between women's status and the Negro's status, and to notice that white men usually applied the principles of natural rights and the ideology of individualism only to themselves."

The abolitionist feminist Abbie Kelley was a case in point when she observed: "We have good cause to be grateful to the slave, for the benefit we have received to ourselves, in working for him. In striving to strike his irons off, we found most surely that we were manacled ourselves."

Unfortunately for American individualism in all its manifestations -- not merely individualist feminists -- the Civil War erupted. If 'War is the health of state', as the 19th century classical liberal Randolph Bourne claimed, then was is also the death of individualism. To the tips of its roots, the tradition is an anti-Statist, and war inevitably involves an increase in State power that never seems to roll back to prewar levels when peace has been declared. The Civil War expanded state powers to include conscription, censorship, suspension of habeas corpus, political imprisonment, legal tender laws, and dramatically increased taxes and tariffs. Individualism waned.

The Civil War also changed the face of feminism. Before the war the movement had been *tending* toward political activity, especially toward the demand for suffrage. While attending the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Conference in London, England, Elizabeth Cady Stanton had been embittered by the dismissive treatment women had received there from the less- enlightened English male radicals. Garrison had been so outraged that he withdrew from the main floor to sit instead in the curtained off section to which the women had been ostracized.

In concert with the Quaker abolitionist Lucretia Mott, Stanton planned the pivotal 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. At this Convention, a women's suffrage resolution was introduced: "Resolved, that it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise." The resolution met strong resistance from Mott and from the other 'old guard' of abolitionist feminists who were deeply opposed to using government to solve problems. The suffrage resolution barely passed by one vote, although every other resolution received unanimous acclaim.

After the Civil War, feminists again cried out for suf- frage. At the behest of the abolitionist men, beside whom they had stood for so many years, feminists put aside their own inter- ests and fought instead for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend- ments. They hoped for women to be included within the wording of these documents. What happened? The Fourteenth Amendment linked a state's basis for representation in the Congress to its protection of the right of male inhabitants to vote -- at least, the right of males over 21 who were not untaxed Indians. The Fifteenth Amendment declared that the right to vote could not be abridged because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude": no mention was made of sex.

Women felt betrayed. In the History of Woman Suffrage Susan B. Anthony wrote, "We repudiated man's counsels forever." Perhaps this was the beginning of the emotional backlash against men which some believe characterizes contemporary feminism.

Mainstream feminism now concentrated on suffrage. Individualist feminists, who opposed political solutions, tended to express themselves within a variety of other social causes where they functioned as radical a voice for women rights. The most important cause in which individualist feminists participated was Free Love -- a movement that had no connection whatsoever to licentious behavior. It simply declared that *all* peaceful sexual choices, such as marriage and birth control, were to be left entirely to the adults involved, with no government interference.

The main Free Love periodical for individualist feminists was the provocatively entitled, Lucifer the Light Bearer (1883- 1907) edited by Moses Harman. In the late 1800s, this periodical was one of the few forums to openly promote birth control as a valid choice for women. Its main ally in doing so was The Word (1872-1893), a libertarian periodical edited by Ezra Heywood.

Harman insisted that woman's self-ownership be fully acknowledged in marriage and other sexual arrangements. Unfortunately, in living his principles, Harman ran counter to the Comstock laws, passed in 1873, which prohibited the mailing of obscene matter but did not define what constituted obscenity. It was defined through enforcement. On February 23, 1887, most of the staff of Lucifer was arrested for having published three letters. One letter had described the plight of a woman whose husband had forced sex upon her even though she was recovering from an operation. It is the earliest analysis I have found of forced sex within marriage being rape, and the earliest call for the law to recognize it as such.

The staff was indicated on 270 counts of obscenity, although only Harman was imprisoned in the end. For decades thereafter, Moses fought the Comstock laws. His last imprisonment coming in 1906 when he spent a year at hard labor, often breaking rocks for eight hours a day in the Illinois snow. Harman was 75 at the time.

Although it is natural to assume that 19th century feminists applauded Harman's courage in standing up for women's rights, this was not the general response. Mainstream feminists often supported statutes that restricted birth control information, considering such material to be obscene. One of the pledges of the women candidates in the Kansas election of 1889, for example, was to shut down Harman's periodical, which issued from their state. In his book The Sex Radicals, the contemporary historian Hal D. Sears observed, "Conventional feminists bowed before the statute." However, the individualist feminists, he continues, "on libertarian principles, broke this law in order to raise the questions of government censorship and individual self- ownership." The earliest voices to call women's freedom in sexual matters were individualist ones.

I purposefully chose a man as my first example of an individualist feminist, even though I could have easily chosen a woman. For example, I could have chosen Lillian Harman, Moses' daughter. When the U.S. Deputy Marshall came to arrest the staff of Lucifer, which included Lillian, the 16 year old was nowhere to be found. That was because she had already been imprisoned for her non-state, non-church marriage a few months. The charge was unlawfully and feloniously living with a man as his wife without being married according to statute.

I chose Moses Harman instead of Lillian to re-enforce an earlier point -- namely, the distinction between how individualist and socialist feminists define class. Unlike socialists feminists, Individualists do not consider biology to be the defining characteristic. They use more of a ruling class theory -- that is, they ask 'what is your relationship to the use of force in society?' Any man or woman who uses force, even with the intention of furthering feminist goals, is an enemy of women's rights. Why?

Remember that the key concept of individualist feminism is 'self-ownership' -- the moral jurisdiction that every human being has over his or her own body and the products of his or her labor (property). The goal of individualist feminism is to have everyone's self-ownership claim respected equally. Women deserve no privileges. Merely the same protection that every human being has a right to expect. Considering this ideological starting point, it is not difficult to understand why individualist feminism does not regard men as the enemy and has historically embraced sympa- thetic men as full and valued feminists.

Indeed, one of the reasons feminist history has ignored many individualist feminists may be due to the fact that some of the most prominent ones are men. To the extent such men have received attention at all, they have been categorized as 'sex radicals', 'anarchists', or assigned some other affiliation than 'feminist'. And this is another reason I chose Moses Harman as my first example. Arguably Moses Harman is the most prominent 19th century male individualist feminist and, because of his immense impact on the sexual rights of women, he has received attention, most prominently in Hal D. Sears excellent book The Sexua Radicals.

And, for anyone who thinks I may be exaggerating Harman's importance, let me give just one example of his prominence in passing. In 1905, on the front page of the New York Times, George Bernard Shaw stated, "...a journal has been confiscated and its editor imprisoned in American for urging the a married women should be protected from domestic molestation when childbearing." Two years later, in 1907, Shaw informed London journalists why he never visited America. He explained, "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. No, thank you; no trips to America for me."

Moses Harman was imprisoned for advocating birth control, a woman's rights within marriage, and forced sex within marriage being considered as rape. Yet Harman is not identified as an individual feminist. If he were not male, I believe his status within feminism would surpass that of Margaret Sanger. I believe that is the status he deserves.

What of the women who were individualist feminists?

Some of the women have been miscategorized or, at least, categorized in a misleading manner. The most extensive overview of these women has occurred in Margaret S. Marsh's book Anarchist Women 1870-1920. Although I highly recommend the work, I think Marsh commits a basic error in analysing what she calls the 'anarchist feminists'. Marsh writes:

"Anarchist-feminism, an ideology created and elaborated during the last third of the nineteenth century, developed directly from the cornerstone of anarchist philosophy: the primacy of complete personal liberty over all else. Although the factions within the movement disputed endlessly and vehemently about the proper methods for attaining such freedom, they all agreed on its fundamental importance."

I want to make two points here. First, even if it is true -- and I am not sure it is -- but even if it is true that anarchist feminists agreed on the "primacy of personal liberty", that statement tells us no more than my earlier definition of feminism as men and women being equal. Different traditions of feminism define equality in contraditory manners. The same is true of the concept "personal liberty".......which is actually two concepts, requiring a sense of what is 'personal' (as opposed to political) and what is 'liberty.'

I want to focus on the concept of 'liberty' in order to provide you with a sense of the deep ideological division that is lost by lumping individualist women with socialist ones under the one label of 'anarchist feminists.' 'What is liberty? Each tradition defines violence or aggression -- the opposite of liberty -- in fundamentally different ways. To the individualist feminist, aggression is defined with reference to property titles. To such a feminist, the ultimate reason that it is wrong to use force against a woman is because it violates her self- ownership, it denies her title to her own body.

The same is true of aggression aimed at more conventional property. It is wrong to snatch a woman's money from her because, first, that money is the product of her labor, and second, she has not rendered consent. So, the definition of aggression within individualist femnism rests on two concepts: title and consent. Whose property is it and does the owner agree to what is going on? That is, did she say "yes" or "no."

Not so with socialist feminism, which includes the concept of economic coercion; for example, if a woman explicitly consents to work at an extremely low wage, but does so only because she would starve otherwise, the socialist feminist would argue that consent has not occurred. The economic situation created by capitalism is the equivalent of a gun pointed at the head of the woman.

I don't want to explore any more theory, so I'll end the analysis here. The foregoing was meant only to remind you of the deep ideological schism between how individualists and socialists approach concepts such as justice, equality, consent, and liber- ty. And, when these two traditions are grouped together under one label, the individualists tend to be silenced because their voices are in minority. It is the lot of the minority not to be heard.

Moreover, without an understanding of the ideology of individualist feminism it is easy to pass over the figures in this tradition as being muddled, or hopelessly inconsistent. Let me give you a real life example -- Gertrude B. Kelly, whom I mentioned earlier. And as I describe her positions and beliefs, try to imagine how you would classify Kelly if you encountered her in a feminist textbook or classroom.

As a feminist activist in the last decades of the 19th century, Gertrude Kelly -- as I said -- was a medical doctor whose patients included prostitutes and tenement women. She was Secretary of the Newark Liberal League and a frequent contributor to anarchist periodicals, including the prominent periodical Liberty, whose editor Benjamin Tucker wrote: "Gertrude B. Kelly,...by her articles in Liberty, has placed herself at a single bound among the finest writers of this or any other coun- try..." As an Irish immigrant who had been involved in the Irish No Rent movement, she brought with her from Ireland a hatred of rent, interest, 'landlordism' -- in the language of her times -- and the other trappings of capitalism, which were considered to be -- again in 19th century terminology -- 'usury'.

In her article on prostitution in Liberty, Kelly had expressed two themes that were common to her analysis of poverty and of women: First, women have been oppressed by the cultural stereotypes that dominated society. Second, charity organizations and 'the rich' were hypocritical in their attitudes and behavior toward the poor. She particularly ridiculed the philanthropic groups so popular in her day in which working "...girls are given lessons in embroidery, art, science, etc., and are incidentally told of the evils of trade-unions, the immorality of strikes, and of the necessity of being 'satisfied with the condition to which it has pleased God to call them.'

So far, the foregoing sounds like the writings of an intelligent, of a politically and emotionally sensitive socialist feminist. But now you stumble across another article by Kelly entitled "State Aid to Science." It is a transcript of a speech that Dr. Kelly delivered to the New York Women's Medical College in which she argued against the College soliciting or accepting any government funds. Basically, the lecture addressed two themes. In Kelly's own words, "first, that progress in science is lessened, and ultimately destroyed, by state interference; and, secondly, that even if, through state aid, progress in science could be promoted, the promotion would be at too great an expense of the best interests of the race."

She claimed it was impossible for government to promote knowledge: "It seems to be generally forgotten by those who favor state aid to science that aid so given is not and cannot be aid to Science, but to particular doctrine or dogmas, and that, where this aid is given, it requires almost a revolution to introduce a new idea." She claimed that an arrangement of government patronage creates "a great many big idle queens at the expense of the workers".

In other words, Kelly argued against what is considered to be a standard 19th and 20th century feminist position -- namely, that government should act to open the doors of professions that were traditionally biased toward men and against women. Such governmental encouragement, of course, usually involved subsidy either in the form of money or legislation.

Now consider...in the presence of both articles...How would you evaluate Gertrude Kelly? Into which established category of feminism would you place her? When she does not seem to fit well under any established label, do you question whether the labels are inadequate, or do you consider her heresies to be inconsistencies in her system of belief?

Well, Kelly *was* consistent. She was consistent to 19th century individualist feminist principles. Like most individualist feminists of her day, Kelly viewed capitalism as the major cause of poverty. Yet she rejected any government solution to social problems. And the solution she *did* offer for capitalism sounds bizarre to modern ears. Kelly considered the free market to be the cure. To understand this position, you must appreciate her definition of capitalism. She considered capitalism to be an alliance between business and government in which government guaranteed special privileges to the rich. To break this alliance, it was necessary to break the power of government for, in Kelly's words, "...all the laws have no other object than to perpetrate injustice, to support at any price the monopolists in their plunder."

All government laws were to be fought -- again -- with peaceful means, for, as Kelly wrote, "You cannot shoot down or blow up an economic system, but you can destroy it by ceasing to support it, as soon as you understand where its evils lie."

The specific evils to be destroyed were restricted bargaining, protectionist tariffs and government created monopolies. The solutions were free banking, free trade and open competition...in short, the free market.

Without the category of individualist feminism, how would you make sense of such a woman? I don't think you would. I don't think feminism has. And -- as a result -- such women have been virtually written out of feminist history. I asked you to imagine how you would react to Kelly if you encountered her in a feminist textbook...the fact is you won't.

Pick up a standard feminist reference work like the heft three volume biographical dictionary entitled "Notable American Women" issued by Harvard University Press. You won't find Gertrude B. Kelly. Nor will you find Lillian Harman. Nor Angela Heywood -- a moving force behind the periodical The Word, an lifelong labor activist, also a target of the Comstock laws, and the author of the earliest defense I've ever found of abortion on the ground of "a woman's body, a woman's right." Nor will you find Sarah Holmes -- a remarkable women who operated for decades as a one-woman clearing house for introducing European radicalism in American culture. Fluent in several languages, she translated the best of feminist and anarchist thought from France, Germany, and Russia, and published them at her own expense. I could go on and on.

Feminism is impoverished by the absence of these women, by the absence of individualist feminism.. From my perspective, the ideology of contemporary feminism has come to resemble a dogma and dissenting women are being defined out of the movement. Feminists who defend pornography, question affirmative action, or disagree with the definition of sexual harassment as a civil rights violation are viewed as the enemy. Yet women questioning and disagreeing was the very spark that created a feminist movement.

Passionate and respectful debate is part of what attracts the best minds of a generation -- both male and female -- to any cause or movement. Dogma and ad hominem attacks are part of what repels them. The feminist movement needs to embrace and explore every one of its ideological traditions in order to grow and flourish into a new century.