Re: not buying it
I think two issues need to be separated here.
There’s a philosophical issue as to whether or not class analysis of any sort involves premises that qualify as “collectivist” in some way that should make them objectionable to libertarians.
There’s an empirical issue as to whether or not there is, in fact, a class system of male supremacy over women in the culture and society being discussed.
It’s important to note that these are two different issues. Of course, if (1) goes against class analysis, then there’s no point in going on to (2). But it doesn’t go the other way; whether you answer (2) positively or negatively, (1) remains open; there are a lot of class analyses in the boat with feminist analysis based on claimed hierarchies other than sex (e.g. economic class, race, sexuality). Historically radical individualists such as Spencer, Tucker, Spooner, de Cleyre, etc. have been willing to apply class analysis in more or less all of these cases. You might argue that conditions have changed since the 19th and early 20th century in relevant ways, and that class analysis that was once factually well-justified no longer is. O.K.; I’d disagree, and we can argue about that, but if that is the response, then you have already conceded the ground on (1) by admitting that there are historical cases in which this sort of class analysis is legitimate and useful.
“As a man, if I commit a rape, or batter anyone for that matter, I will be prosecuted and imprisoned.”
This shows a considerable faith in the reliability of the criminal justice system that I don’t happen to share. In point of fact I know that it’s false, if intended as a universal claim or even a statistical generality: the vast majority of rapes, for example, go unreported and unpunished. (I, for one, personally know men who raped or otherwise assaulted friends of mine and walk the streets today.) Given how rape survivors have been and still are typically treated when they make allegations public—and, for that matter, given what I, as a libertarian, know about the workings of government law-enforcement—I don’t find this at all surprising.
I don’t find the fact that violence against women is nominally illegal in the United States—as opposed to, say, some parts of Pakistan, or Afghanistan under the Taliban, or modern Europe and America up to the mid-19th century—tremendously reassuring. This only refutes the feminist class analysis if the only means by which a class system can be created and enforced is through State power. But why believe that? Lynch law in the post-Reconstruction South was nominally illegal too—it was conspiracy to commit murder—but I would not know what to make of a claim that that fact made lynch law irrelevant to the class relations between black and white Southerners. How much does nominal illegality mean when widespread, frequent violence can usually be practiced with impunity and with a considerable weight of cultural hostility towards the victim and sympathy for the attacker?
“If you really want to combat a system of male supremacy, then, sounds like you should devote your energy to pushing for liberalization of the Arab world.”
There may be many things that feminists, in the United States and abroad, could be charged with, but I don’t think that too little awareness or political commotion around the cause of women in the Arab world, East Africa, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. is one of them.
I asked: “do you think that there are any prevalent libertarian complaints against radical feminism that are based on misunderstandings (whether through ignorance or misreading) of what radical feminists have historically said and done? And if you do, how prevalent do you find them to be?”
Aeon responded: “I haven’t made an exhaustive study of this specific question, but my general sense is that most libertarian criticisms of radical feminsim, incl. those made by libertarian feminists, is that radical feminism errs by being, well, illiberal. But hang on, when you ask about libertarian criticisms, are you referring to cranky letters in Liberty Magazine, or to real work by libertarian academic philosophers and political theorists? My guess would be that the former may well be prone to misunderstandings and caricature, but so what? The latter is surely not.”
Fair question; although I am interested in the “cranky letters to Liberty” (and “crude remarks at conventions”) genre—since some of my interest on this point has to do with actual libertarian and feminist practice, and the attitudes and actions of the rank and file are relevant here—my main question was about academic libertarian theorists. For myself, I can think of several examples of serious misunderstanding of radical feminist claims—sometimes apparently from lack of acquaintence with the material, and sometimes apparently from misunderstanding material in spite of familiarity with it.
Here are some examples:
Murray Rothbard’s 1970 tirade against WL, in which, among other things, he clearly mischaracterizes feminist arguments on pay equity and apparently misreads Robin Morgan as a lesbian separatist, among other things, in the course of an obnoxious polemic that ends up describing the “quintessence” of the WL movement as “a bitter, extremely neurotic if not psychotic, man-hating lesbianism.”
The popularity, amongst libertarian academics, of the claim that Andrea Dworkin and/or Catharine MacKinnon claims that all sex is rape, a claim that neither one ever made and which they have repeatedly denied when asked.
Wendy McElroy’s claim, in Liberty for Women, that class categories in radical feminism are not fluid because they are fixed by biology rather than the use of force.
The popularity, in some libertarian circles, of Christina Hoff Sommers’ distinction between “equity feminism” and “gender feminism,” a pair of opposed categories that—so far as I can tell—actually track no historical tendency of thought and no shared premise whatsoever. (I don’t know what “gender feminism” is supposed to actually be, but I do know that if you put Kim Gandy, Andrea Dworkin, and Mary Daly into the same political boat, you are surely misunderstanding something.)
More examples could be mentioned at length, but a number of these are discussed in the essay, so maybe it will be best to just post the URI when it goes up momentarily, and ask for comments on what is said there.
Anticopyright.