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This article ( www.alf.org/alfnews/alf70.shtml )by the late Joan Kennedy Taylor (you can read a touching tribute to her here: ( joankennedytaylorblog.blogspot.com/ ) speaks forcefully and clearly to many of the words Starchild has here spoken.
"Women are not totally different from men, but they are not just imitation men, either. We are all human beings, but different groups within humanity have different problems. We don’t ignore the political dilemmas brought to our attention by artists, by businessmen, by farmers, or by journalists, just because they may not apply to everyone in the spectrum. Why should those brought by women be ignored?"
"Instead of building on this moment of outreach, too often today’s libertarian messengers either completely ignore or are vocal in their scorn of "women’s issues," and often appear to be hostile even to the raising of certain concerns that involve women, not just governmental solutions to them."
I think Taylor's most crucial point for today is this and here: Women have, for obvious and enormously complex historical reasons, a significantly different set of concerns, foci, and life-worlds than men. And if libertarians with to find any connection with women- *you* must come to them; *they* will not come to you, nor should they endure the insulting presumption, alienation, and indignities involved in the assumption that they should do so. So long as the implicit, voiced, or shouted expectation is that women should not relate peculiarly to women's concerns, libertarians have no excuse or complaining that their movement is seen as a bastion of arrogant, privileged men.
And Starchild, as an activist, you just might take the point seriously that libertarian failure to appeal to women is a political disaster. Bite the bullet: as long as libertarianism speaks in the tones of antifeminism, its chance of significant appeal to half of American culture and voters is: slight to zero.
"The answer I would give to Al Swain’s question is that, to recruit more women, libertarians have to focus on what is good in the goals of feminism, rather than those elements with which they disagree. Perhaps they think that by bashing feminism, they will attract "their kind of woman." On the contrary, by doing this they often alienate even women who are not intimately involved in the feminist movement, because they come across as bashing the legitimate aspirations of women. Women who might be libertarian still won’t respond positively to what looks like prejudice."
Amen to that, sister.
"Women are not totally different from men, but they are not just imitation men, either. We are all human beings, but different groups within humanity have different problems. We don’t ignore the political dilemmas brought to our attention by artists, by businessmen, by farmers, or by journalists, just because they may not apply to everyone in the spectrum. Why should those brought by women be ignored?"
"Instead of building on this moment of outreach, too often today’s libertarian messengers either completely ignore or are vocal in their scorn of "women’s issues," and often appear to be hostile even to the raising of certain concerns that involve women, not just governmental solutions to them."
I think Taylor's most crucial point for today is this and here: Women have, for obvious and enormously complex historical reasons, a significantly different set of concerns, foci, and life-worlds than men. And if libertarians with to find any connection with women- *you* must come to them; *they* will not come to you, nor should they endure the insulting presumption, alienation, and indignities involved in the assumption that they should do so. So long as the implicit, voiced, or shouted expectation is that women should not relate peculiarly to women's concerns, libertarians have no excuse or complaining that their movement is seen as a bastion of arrogant, privileged men.
And Starchild, as an activist, you just might take the point seriously that libertarian failure to appeal to women is a political disaster. Bite the bullet: as long as libertarianism speaks in the tones of antifeminism, its chance of significant appeal to half of American culture and voters is: slight to zero.
"The answer I would give to Al Swain’s question is that, to recruit more women, libertarians have to focus on what is good in the goals of feminism, rather than those elements with which they disagree. Perhaps they think that by bashing feminism, they will attract "their kind of woman." On the contrary, by doing this they often alienate even women who are not intimately involved in the feminist movement, because they come across as bashing the legitimate aspirations of women. Women who might be libertarian still won’t respond positively to what looks like prejudice."
Amen to that, sister.
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