|  Joan
Kennedy Taylor was one of the matriarchs of the "individualist
feminist" movement. She also played an important role in the development
of the modern libertarian movement, and was an associate, mentor, and
friend to many prominent libertarians, including Ayn Rand, Charles Murray,
and Roy A. Childs, Jr.
Born in 1926, Taylor came from an artistic family; her mother was an
actress and poet, while her father was a music critic and composer.
After attending Barnard College, Taylor dabbled in acting and then worked
in the publishing field. In the late 1950s, she read the unpublished
manuscript of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Her fan letter to
the Russian-born author led to a decades-long friendship. In 1964, she
helped launch the Metropolitan Young Republican Club of New York and
supported Barry Goldwater for president. In 1965, she transformed the
club's newsletter into the monthly libertarian magazine Persuasion,
which she published until 1968.
After a stint writing musical theater, Taylor returned to libertarianism.
From 1977 to 1981, she was associate editor of The Libertarian Review,
working with editor Roy A. Childs, Jr. In the early 1980s, she took
a job as publications director for the Manhattan Institute. There, she
encouraged Charles Murray to turn an article on the shortcomings of
government welfare into a book. The result, Losing Ground,
was one of the most influential books of the 1980s and a national bestseller.
In the mid-1980s, she edited The Freeman for the Foundation
for Economic Education. For almost a decade, she also served as a regular
commentator on the Cato Institute's syndicated radio program Byline.
Starting in the early 1970s, Talyor became interested in feminism, and
helped define and create the "individualist feminist" movement.
Along with similarly minded feminists like Wendy McElroy and Sharon
Presley, Taylor long 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. She asserted that
women can find maximum opportunity and equality by emphasizing individual
rights and the free market -- rather than by lobbying for more government
laws and programs.
While those views put her at odds with many mainstream feminists, Taylor
said she preferred 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's contribution to "individualist feminist" literature
included the books, 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 Sexual Harassment: a Non-Adversarial Approach (2002). She
also published articles and essays in Success magazine, Reason,
the Stanford Law and Policy Review, Free Inquiry, the American
Enterprise, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Times.
From 1989 to 2005, Taylor was the national coordinator for the Association
of Libertarian Feminists. She was also a founding member, past vice
president, and on the board of directors of Feminists for Free Expression,
an organization that works to protect First Amendment rights.
Taylor died on October 29, 2005 in New York City from cancer and kidney
failure.
--
Bill Winter
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Quotable
"I
qualify my feminism by saying that I am an individualist feminist...
Communitarian feminists, who believe that individuals derive their identity
from the social group to which they belong, may question the absolute
nature of individual rights. But my experience has been that most contemporary
feminists have a deep allegiance to individualism and to finding ways
to secure the individual's rights and happiness..." -- Joan
Kennedy Taylor (May 7, 1999)
Libertarians
Remember Joan Kennedy Taylor
"For
more than twenty years, ever since the death of Ayn Rand in 1982, Joan
Kennedy Taylor was the leading woman intellectual in the libertarian
movement." -- Jeff Riggenbach (LewRockwell.com)
"[Taylor led] a life of extraordinary intellectual achievement."
-- Charles Murray (Reason.com)
She was a wise, insightful, and gracious woman who had strongly held
convictions, and was nonetheless capable of civilized and respectful
disagreement -- an increasingly rare quality in public life today. She
will be missed." -- Columnist Cathy Young (CathyYoung.blogspot.com)
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