I helped miss Liberty edit an article on the history of right-libertarian feminism for her channel. It’s very pleasant to switch to a related agenda from time to time, especially since my understanding of the technical details here is quite superficial.

Of course, I’m amused by the abundance of feminitives, but I fully admit that from my side it might look like “right, a lady in trousers looks very strange and almost indecent”.

Still, you were wrong to vote so actively against inviting her to my channel as a columnist: content appears quite rarely on her own channel, but for an author’s column, such frequency would have been just right. But since you supported the separation, then subscribe to each channel individually.

Right-libertarian feminism is often confused with individualist feminism, which emerged much earlier and in many ways laid the foundation for right-libertarian feminism. This should be kept in mind when searching for information about the history of feminism.

At the dawn of anarcho-individualism and individualist feminism, the American Ezra Heywood (1829–1893) made a huge contribution to their formation. He published the magazine “The Word,” in which he featured one of the most famous suffragettes of the time, Victoria Woodhull, wrote about the importance of extending voting rights to women, denounced the slave-like oppression of housewives and female social stigmas, and preached free love. It was for the latter that he was locked up, as his attacks on the institution of marriage were seen as obscenity. This caused mass protests, and President Hayes was forced to sign his pardon. By our standards, Heywood was quite the leftist: he spoke against private property and for rent regulation, against class inequality and for the right to seize unused private lands. However, all early feminists were leftists; nevertheless, their core ideas—that a woman is free to choose the conditions in which she lives and works, free to choose her type of family or not to have a family at all, that she, like men, owes nothing to anyone and must be free from state arbitrary power—are fully shared by modern right-libertarian feminism.

Right-libertarian feminism is a product of the second wave of feminism. Taking much from individualist feminism, it emerged alongside the Libertarian Party of the USA. The party appeared in 1971 as a result of mass indignation over Nixon’s reforms (price and wage freezes, removing the dollar’s link to gold). In 1972, for the first time in US history, the Libertarian Party nominated Theodora B. Nathan, who promoted a libertarian feminist agenda, as a vice-presidential candidate. Tony Nathan was a party activist almost until the end of her life, regularly ran for the Senate and the House of Representatives from the party, and passed away in 2014 at the age of 91. She founded the “Association of Libertarian Feminists,” which began criticizing the third wave of feminism—a leftist and statist movement—earlier than others. Nathan criticized activists for demanding state intervention in private life and labor relations, failing to see the state as a much more serious problem.

Back then, in the 70s and 80s, no one perceived right-libertarian feminism as something surprising or contradictory. Until the left hijacked the agenda, feminism was a natural and organic part of the general libertarian discourse. Now, however, the word “right” is associated with racism and other conservative beliefs, and therefore feminism is considered by many to be absolutely incompatible with libertarian ideology.

Tony Nathan was not the only founder of libertarian feminism. At least two others can be mentioned: Wendy McElroy (a Canadian Zalina Marshenkulova on steroids, defender of porn and sex freedom, supporter of Rothbardian ancap, founder of “The Voluntaryist” magazine) and Christina Hoff Sommers (who has been fighting against the left so actively since the 80s that she is more often called an anti-feminist, although she simply advocates for full equality and against state regulations, showing how reforms pushed by left-feminists harm women).

It was a great surprise to me to learn how powerful the roots of right-libertarian feminism were half a century ago, and how this movement has almost vanished today. I have the feeling that this is related to the specifics of the political agenda in the USA. On one side, there are Republicans, who combine a desire to reduce the state with fierce conservatism and patriarchal values. On the other side, Democrats, with their reverence for freedom of expression, but simultaneously with blatant statism. Libertarians, who tried to take the best from both sides, found themselves in an unstable position, and as a result, split in two. Today, among American libertarians, there are many complete freaks, as well as a very pronounced paleoconservative wing. And now Professor Hoppe lumps gays, feminists, and communists into one pile, stating that they have a low time preference and therefore have a decivilizing effect on society and should be physically removed.

Thus, in the USA, the feminist discourse was almost entirely left to the leftists, who turned the movement for equality into a caricature of itself. But now, when libertarianism is on the rise, can we make libertarian feminism great again? Yes, we can.