I don’t see how my views on economics or social welfare or global imperialism or brand of chocolate affects my status as a feminist in any way. They might inform solutions I propose, but they really have nothing to do with feminism directly.

Either you believe women deserve equal protection under the law or you don’t. Either you believe male privilege is a problem, or you don’t. But I don’t see what it has to do with the price of tea in China.

Great series of articles, Ampersand! I’ve enjoyed the comment threads, too. Good stuff. I hope many more read it.

At the same time, markets require a lot of cooperation, too, and without it we wouldn’t have the markets we have today. It’s as if we have simplified the way we view governments and markets and as if we look at them through purely emotional or even religious lenses, rather than actually analyzing what we have in reality. We mostly have mongrels of the two in reality, and the only thing that makes the final government different is that it can enforce payment of taxes much more than any other kind of organization.

Americans, especially, have inherited a view of the government as oppressive, which it can be, of course. Many Europeans have inherited the view of the government as the place where our common affairs are handled, and the two views are very different. Both are obviously simplifications of reality, but clearly it’s hard to discuss the issues when we have different emotional reactions to the very words we use.

All this is to explain why I don’t find that feminism and socialism and any relationships between the two is so very easy to debate. We tend to mean very different things with many of the terms. But I do believe that a totally unregulated “free” market economy will give us something that is very dictatorial, full of crime, with few very rich people and lots of very poor people. Such countries exist today, but not in this part of the world.

And Sara, thanks for explaining your term of feminism.

Robert, I have not read List’s actual works. Skousen talks about his ideas briefly in “The Making of Modern Economics”, however. I don’t want to judge List prematurely since I haven’t read his books, but I am interested in hearing what he has to see. From what I know, he basically makes the infant-industry protection argument. Skousen says, “In the long run, List agreed that free trade is the best global system once nations are fairly equal in development.” I think a case can be made for that. But then the counter-argument is that free trade helps them develop. But then look at how that is exploiting people right now… I am open to List’s ideas for that reason.

And let’s not forget the strong links among feminism, labor, and progressivism in the early twentieth century. Somebody like Pauline Newman could teach some contemporary “feminists” quite a lot.

Some folks who would refuse the feminist label probably are also refusing to accept the idea of equality, but I can’t say I encounter those people all that much. More often, I would suspect, it’s because they don’t accept the particular vision of equality that is associated, fairly or not, with feminism, or, alternatively, they don’t accept the particular set of political positions that are associated with feminism. But usually it’s not because they think of themselves as anti-equality (obviously, whether or not they are, in fact, anti-equality is a separate issue).

Anyway, I think conservatives have let themselves get too hung-up on labels, too. They can’t decide whether they want to insist that they can be feminists, too, or instead keep using “feminist”? as a dirty word. I fell into the first camp for a while, but it was seriously liberating when I decided I didn’t really care any more (okay, I still care a little bit - being called anti-feminist ticks me off, but I don’t feel the need to be recognized as “feminist”).

When I first started reading your blog - back when you did want to be called a feminist - I think that calling your viewpoint anti-feminist was fair (even if it ticked you off).

However, your views - or at least, those views you emphasize in your writings - have changed over the years. I’d no longer identify you as an anti-feminist. Ironcially, as you’ve moderated your views on being called a feminist, you’ve also (it seems to me) become more balanced and less anti- in your view of feminism.

If you’re any sort of feminist at all, odds are strong that you’re a “gender feminist.” I really don’t think it’s a meaningful catagory, though, for reasons explained in this post (and the two previous posts in the series).

Most Americans are Keynesians who believe in managed capitalism.

Yup, I agree. However, despite your earlier claim that “most [repulicans] think they are, but they are confused,” managed capitalism is still a form of capitalism. And I agree with you regarding Adam Smith as well, of course.

Robert wrote:

Given the appalling state of economics education these days, I doubt many people accurately identify their economic values. My side of the aisle is no exception to that trend.

And neither are you. The “only hard-core libertarians are capitalism, everyone else is something else” position is ideology, not textbook economics.

I would consider myself about 70% free-market and 70% feminist. I’m not as hard-core on the feminism stuff as, say, Barry, and I’m not persuaded either way about evolutionary psychology-type arguments about natural male and female prospensities in mating, relationshps, etc, that so many feminists are confidently opposed to, and I’m also not really all that uncomfortable about cultural gender-role enforcing media (for example, I thought briefly about Sally’s “nagging supportive girlfriend” role and Jack Skellington’s “brash, arrogant man” role in “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” then though, “y’know, this isn’t worth worrying about.”) Overall, though, I think it’s pretty clear that sexism is still a fairly big problem in our society. (if men and women had an equal chance of getting elected to the Senate, then the probability that only 13 of them would be women would be 5.6*10^-15, not very likely) I certainly don’t accept the arguments of the likes of Hayek or Nozick who think that free markets are a high moral principle, and we are morally compelled to have them even if they make us all worse off. However, I think that in most cercumstances, the market handles things better than the state. That isn’t to say that markets are perfect, but that unless there are special circumstances, the imperfections of markets are usually smaller than the imperfections of states. Note the “unlesss there are special circumstances:” I hold state interventions guilty until proven innocent, but my category for “innocent” is pretty large. It includes both the classical market failures (correcting public goods, externalities, etc) and equity concerns like income and wealth distribution.

Most Americans are Keynesians who believe in managed capitalism. The difference is that Dems want to manage it to be pro-worker, and Repubs want to manage it to be pro-big-business. :)

Adam Smith was no friend of big business. He believed in “enlightened” capitalism. We tend to forget the enlightened part and buy products made from sweatshop/slave labor. And that’s why I just don’t think GW Bush is really pro-life.

Given the appalling state of economics education these days, I doubt many people accurately identify their economic values. My side of the aisle is no exception to that trend.

I consider myself a free-market feminist. I’m pretty radical in both ways (feminist and free-market advocate). I often agree with “gender feminist” ideology (at least I think so… I too am confused about the definition of that term) but I believe the best way to change things is through the exchange of ideas. Until I read the essay by Long & Johnson, I thought I was the only one who felt that way. Yes, libertarians can be radical feminists!

I’m also an economics major. I don’t think all conservatives are capitalists. Most of them think they are, but they are confused. Both Frederick Hayek and Milton Friedman call themselves “liberal”. Other econ nerds like me will enjoy Hayek’s “Why I Am Not a Conservative”. Read it at http://hem.passagen.se/nicb/cons.htm.

Oh, in the pretending sense. Gotcha. :)

Now do I think all traditional lifestyles are valid? NO. Domestic violence aimed against adults or children is always bad, and is usually performed by men against women and children. And yet this has been regarded as the traditional prerogative of husbands and fathers, so long as certain lines weren’t crossed. Twenty-five years ago, those lines used to be 1. for children, severe injury or death. Rape simply wasn’t talked about. 2. for wives, severe injury or death. There was no legal entity of rape within marriage, since marriage was presumed to give full consent to 100% of acts for 100% of the time. The lines are moving in a more humane direction thanks to the hard work of feminist domestic violence advocates.

There are traditionalist lifestyles that I disapprove of strongly on feminist bases, but which are not strictly illegal. The sorts of marriages where wives are isolated from family, forbidden to go anywhere without the husband’s permission on implicit threat of violence. These pre-violence homes may or may not have additional religious/cultic rationales for the coercion. These aren’t the subject of the law at that instant - but these share many of the characteristics of domestic violence households.

The nice middle manager who treats his stay-at-home wife and kids well, does not control their contacts with the outside world, does not brainwash them, and provides reliable financial support - that’s fine, and not my concern - as long as they do me the honor of not nosey parkering me and mine.

A majority of traditionalists do not hold the live-and-let-live philosophy in the case of the validity of gay and lesbian relationships. The last election showed this. A majority of traditionalists object to premarital sex, and to abortion in the abstract, though they do come to the clinics themselves in need. A large minority object to contraception and divorce in the abstract, though they use those options at need.

The conflict between libertarianism and feminism (and racial civil rights, and gay civil rights) comes in the attempt to implement change. If the economic institutions are overwhelmingly white, male, conservative, there is great opportunity for** rational** collusion to keep the wages of women and minorities depressed, to keep management jobs solely for hetero white males of a certain social background, to red-line certain areas based on predominant racial composition or certain applicants based on race or gender(no loans, no ability to become entrepreneurs!), to engage in the sort of cronyism and nepotism that ensures that contracts keep coming back to the same few people. If you are in power, you don’t want to open up opportunities to potential competition. This is entirely rational economic behavior for the people in power, who may be able to cut a deal for their personal women via the same cronyism. So, while libertarians may believe in the depths of their hearts that women and gays/lesbians/bi/trans and racial minorities deserve equal pay for equal work, equal chances to compete, etc - they don’t have a clue about how to implement equality in the face of entrenched dominant-group self-interest. That’s why most libertarians tend to be white men without physical handicaps. If gay, I would guess they are “masculine looking and acting” (in the personals ad cliche) and in employment sectors or parts of the country where gayness is not a huge issue.