Reclaiming
the
MainstreamIndividualist Feminism Rediscovered
Joan Kennedy Taylor
"An important contribution to the movement for individual rights, including women's rights. I really enjoyed Reclaiming the Mainstream and agree wholeheartedly with its message about the label 'feminist' for an indivudal-rights-oriented approach."
- Nadine Strossen, president
American Civil Liberties Union"I have been a feminist for a long time, but over the past few years I have felt more and more as though I am without a home. Reclaiming the Mainstream has made me aware that I have roots, and that they are solidly planted in an individualist movement that goes back many years. It is those who run to government for the solution to all ills who are homeless; they have tried to take over a movement which does not belong to them. Reclaiming the Mainstream is a superb presentation and analysis."
- Barbara Branden, author
The Passion of Ayn Rand"This thoughtful and well-written book interweaves an illuminating account of legal and historical developments with acute observations on the changing realities of women's lives. Eminently rational and deeply personal, Reclaiming the Mainstream invites conversation, debate, and contemplation about what it is to be "feminist" in late twentieth-century America. It encourages exploration of differences in the search for common ground."
- Barbara Abrash, independant film producer
At a time when some feminist critics are saying that the feminist movement has been too individualistic and too market oriented, Joan Kennedy Taylor contends that feminists should cherish and celebrate their tradition of individualism and equal rights. Reclaiming the Mainstream points out that the most enduring voices in the women's movement - the voices that each successive generation of feminists rediscovers with a shock of recognition - Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller, John Stuart Mill, Charlotte Perkins Gilman - have spoken out against government privileges and special protection for women so that their individual differences might flourish.
This book argues that modern feminism grew out of the nineteenth-century Woman Movement, which, like much late nineteenth-century thinking, became a battleground between individualist and collectivist ideas. When individualist ideals predominated in this movement - ideals of independance, social mobility, even sexual freedom - it gained wide adherence. But when the movement supported collectivist ideas of social reform, it became more marginal and sectarian. It was a focus on the individual woman's rights and happiness that reinvented feminist movements twice in our history, in the decades from 1910 to the New Deal and then again in the late 1960s. Reclaiming the Mainstream examines this history, gives an overview of the contemporary scene, and analyzes the campaign to pass and ratify an equal rights amendement- and its failure.
Reclaiming the Mainstream also discusses contemporary policy issues that affect women: affirmative action and comparable worth; rape, battering, sexual harassment, and incest; the many facets of sexual and reproductive choice; and the attempts to unify feminist and nonfeminist women against pornography or in support of social feminist issues.
On all these topics, Taylor offers a new and surprising indivualist feminist analysis that asks feminists to make their philosophy more consistent and more affective. She calls attention to the continuing voices within the feminist tradition that encourages women to reclaim their strength, their faith in their own abilities, and the community feeling of the seventies to find nongovernmental solutions to the problems women face in managing work, family life, and relationships.
Joan Kennedy Taylor (New York, N.Y.), a feminist since the early 1970s, is the National Coordinator of the Association for Libertarian Feminists. She has been a magazine editor and a commentator on a synidcated radio programme in the USA. She is also coauthor with Lee M. Shulman of When to See a Psychologist and has contributed to many books and periodicals.
271 pages