Feminist Writer Joan Kennedy Taylor Passes

Joan Kennedy Taylor was one of the matriarchs of the modern "individualist feminist" movement. Along with similarly minded feminists like Wendy McElroy and Sharon Presley, Taylor argued that American feminism began in the 19th century as a "classical liberal" movement that sought to strike down the chains of government that held women back.

Even today, she says, women will find maximum opportunity and equality by emphasizing individual rights and the free market, rather than government laws and programs.

While her views put her at odds with many "mainstream" feminists, Taylor says she prefers to work to build alliances rather than accentuate differences. "New Deal feminists may put more faith in government solutions than would libertarians or classical liberals," she said in an online discussion (May 7, 1999). "But I think it makes sense to keep the bridges to what is good about the liberal tradition, so that one can call upon our common heritage in the Enlightenment and the American constitutional tradition of individual rights."

Taylor has written about individualism and feminism since the early 1970s. She is the author of Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Rediscovered (1992), What to Do When You Don't Want to Call the Cops: A Non-Adversarial Approach to Sexual Harassment (1999), and the pamphlet, Women's Issues: Feminism, Classical Liberalism, and the Future (1993).

Her articles and essays have been published in Success magazine, Reason, the Stanford Law and Policy Review, Free Inquiry, the American Enterprise, and The Washington Times. She served as an editor for The Libertarian Review and The Freeman.

Taylor is a founding member, past vice president, and member of the board of directors of Feminists for Free Expression, an organization that works to protect First Amendment rights. She was also a national coordinator for the Association of Libertarian Feminists.