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Title: Freedom, Feminism, and the State by Wendy McElroy, Lewis Perry ISBN: 0-945999-68-2 Publisher: Independent Institute Pub. Date: February, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $49.95

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Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent Introduction to Early Feminist Literature
Comment: "Freedom, Feminism, and the State" offers a history of early feminist writings and how they influence feminist scholars today. Author Wendy McElroy draws a distinction between early feminists who supported the principles of the American Revolution and later scholars who favor a more activist government. In the book, she demonstrates that the feminist movement began as a quest to rid women of governmental infringement upon their individual rights, but gradually evolved into apologetics for a more intrusive state.

McElroy defines feminism as the principle that every person - female and male - has moral jurisdiction over her own body. Laws that infringe upon this principle are unjust. When such laws are enacted on the basis of sex, then - and only then - do women become a political class who must respond. As a result, McElroy states that "As a political class, feminism is a response to the legal discrimination women have suffered from the state."

Contributor Rosalie Nichols points out that women's rights are the objective natural rights that belong to them based upon their status as rational beings. These include their rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Because women exist independently of men, their rights exist independently of men. Thus, the goal of the early feminist movement was to secure and guarantee women's objective natural rights.

McElroy asserts that throughout most of history, feminism has stood for this ideal. Early feminists believed that equality between the sexes meant equal treatment before the law and its institutions. Their goal was to be a part of society - not to remake it. They believed that women's freedom was a political concept - securing protections from unjust intrusions by the state. However, over time, some feminist scholars came to believe that existing laws and institutions were the source of women's problems, not the solution. They viewed equality as an economic concept rather than a political one. They are responsible for converting the feminist movement into what it is today.

McElroy draws a distinction between what she considers to be non-political, historical feminist literature and modern feminist literature that deals with politics. Like most scholarship from the Revolutionary and Civil War eras, historical feminist writings were highly individualistic in nature and called for women to stand up for their independence and liberation. Today's political material mostly calls for governments to impose regulatory regimes to solve women's problems.

McElroy begins her discussion of historical feminist literature by tracing its roots to the abolitionist movement. As many women were key contributors to efforts to free slaves, they became conscious of their own lack of rights and began to demand similar respect. However, many abolitionist men refused to support their cause. Even worse - some of them attempted to stifle it out of fear that it would undermine support for the campaign to end slavery. This led many early feminists to become suspicious of men and to strike out on their own.

Feminism advanced before the Civil War because it adopted abolitionist William Garrison's viewpoint of how institutions evolve. Garrison believed that revolutions must alter people's ideas about particular institutions before those institutions can be reformed. Combined with their belief that individuals should act according to their own conscious and be held accountable for their own actions, early feminists were prepared to change people's minds regarding women's status in society.

However, after the Civil War - and the exponential intrusion that the government made in the economic sphere in its wake - the feminist movement began to focus more on enfranchisement of women as its overriding goal. Unfortunately, this led some feminist scholars to sympathize with misguided popular crusades - such as eugenics and social purity reform - to achieve this goal.

McElroy provides a number of key essays to show how individualist feminist ideas evolved over time. Contributor Angela Grimke praises 19th Century women for not allowing men to fool them into thinking that society should have separate moral codes for women and men. Contributor Voltairine de Cleyre, another Civil-War era activist, laments women's (and men's) complacency toward the growth of their government after the War of 1812.

The highlight of the book is Lillian Harman's essay on the problems of contemporary marriage. She begins by discussing how society harms women in their efforts to build friendships with men: "Every expression of friendship which she gives is practically held to be an implied contract to further steps. A coldness and reserve in the attitude of men and women toward each other is the natural result of this condition - a reserve which is broken only by the impelling force of strong and unreasoning passion. This passion compels people to do that which they believe to be wrong, and so long as they believe it to be wrong, it is wrong for them. The result is that when the imperious passion is satisfied, remorse takes its place, and shame and misery ensue." Harman asserts that what both men and women need is the freedom to interact on their own terms: "I consider uniformity in mode of sexual relations as undesirable and impracticable as enforced uniformity in anything else...I do not want to spend my life converting the world to my method of existence. I want the world to have reason of its own, and use it."

"Freedom, Feminism, and the State" is an excellent introduction to the early women's movement. Individuals who read this book before reading other works by McElroy and her colleagues Christina Hoff Sommers, Joan Kennedy Taylor, and Cathy Young will better understand how these authors structure their arguments and why. More importantly, the book demonstrates that women have achieved extraordinary successes by protecting their interests from state infringement. As more and more contemporary feminists begin to understand this, these extraordinary gains will continue.