Individualist feminism (sometimes also grouped with libertarian feminism or ifeminism) is a term for feminist ideas which seek to celebrate or protect the individualwoman.[1]
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).[2][3][4].
The Association of Libertarian Feminists, founded in 1973 by Tonie Nathan, former vice-presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, is one of a number of different kinds of individualist feminist organizations.[5] It takes a strong anti-government and pro-choice stand.[6][7] Other libertarian feminist organizations include Mothers for Liberty, the Mother's Institute, and the Ladies of Liberty Alliance.[8][9]Organizations such as the Women's Freedom Network are less avowedly libertarian.
Wendy McElroy and Christina Hoff Sommers define individualist feminism in opposition to what they call political or gender feminism.[10][11][verification needed] 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.[12][13]Other scholars note that individualist feminism has a long history that is somewhat different in tone that currently advocated by McElroy and Sommers.[14]
^Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Rediscovered (Prometheus, 1992) and What to Do When You Don't Want to Call the Cops: A Non-Adversarial Approach to Sexual Harassment by Joan Kennedy Taylor (New York University Press, 1999)
^The Washington Post "Sommers's book is a work of neither dispassionate social science nor reflective scholarship; it is a conservative polemic. Sommers focuses... on the feminists and cultural liberals against whom she has a long-standing animus... This intemperate book is a hindrance to such conversation."
^Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Rediscovered (Prometheus, 1992 by Joan Kennedy Taylor (New York University Press, 1999)
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