This is a must see post by Timothy Sandefur that dovetails nicely with several of the subjects we've been discussing lately, particularly feminism and postmodern thinking. His post is a response to this piece of postmodern nonsense from someone named DF Moore, which purports to be a postmodernist response to libertarianism. It is subtitled How Libertarianism is a Masculine Belief. In short, Mr. Moore argues that libertarianism, with its focus on the primacy of reason and belief in an objective reality, ignores the subjective, touchy-feely things that women like so much and thus is "masculinist". My reaction upon reading this is, with friends like these women hardly need enemies. Talk about condescending, how about the idea that rational thought is somehow a masculine domain, while subjective emotionalism is the domain of women? Mr. Sandefur blisters Moore's ridiculous screed. Here's the money paragraphs:
Moore’s thesis is “supported” by the assertion that for the libertarian—or, to be accurate, for the Objectivist—“Objective facts...are placed in a superior position to subjective experiences; Reason maintains a superiority over emotion; self-interest is ethically maintained as superior to altruism or group-interest; and capitalism is considered superior to communalism. It would be needlessly lengthy to recount the reasons why these are measures of masculine superiority over the feminine, but I will recount some, well, subjective knowledge as to why it is.” (first emphasis added). In brief, Mr. Moore’s argument is: women are sweet cuddly little bags of emotion, not mean old rational thinkers, and libertarianism is based on mean old rational thinking, so it’s masculine. Or, to put it more mildly, women don’t worry their pretty little heads over things like economics and political science and Aristotle’s moral philosophy. “[W]ithin our society,” writes Moore, “emotion is associated with women and reason with men.” Note the passive voice. In reality, it is Mr. Moore who assumes that women just care about the children, and the pretty little birdies, and the sugar and spice and all things nice. These, says Moore, are the “places that are traditionally considered the homestead of women.” But Objectivists just care about “objective facts,” so that proves that Objectivism is somehow essentially masculine.Objectivists believe that all people have the right to live their own lives, pursue happiness, and make a place for themselves in this world, and we are quite confident that people, including women, have the capacity to do so. We believe that women are rational beings and therefore are created equal, with the equal right to the ownership of themselves. Mr. Moore, by contrast, believes that women are “dependent, emotional, cooperative.”
He also points to a number of female libertarians who would obviously counter Moore's silly ideas about women as arational creatures who eschew competition and self-interest in favor of less weighty pursuits.