Well, I had intended to keep my mouth shut on this for a while, but …
There are many feminists on the internets that despise ‘individualists’.
The criticism seems to fall along the lines of: “Individualists think that people are responsible for their own actions, that each person is in charge of their own life, such that if a person’s life is bad, it’s their own fault. Since we know that people can rarely help their circumstances, and that most of the time a person’s suffering is NOT their own fault at all, individualists are selfish, privileged people who don’t understand how the world works.”
I don’t know what other people mean by individualism, but I can’t help but think that only a fool – or worse – would believe that brand of individualism. When I say that i am an individualist, I’m not saying that people are responsible for their own fates, but that they should be. It is obvious that most people are not.
For me, this is what feminism is about, to a large extent. Women should be able to control their own lives, their own bodies, be able to choose their own relationships. Women deserve the be treated as individuals in their own right – not as property, or as a homogeneous group, or as the embodiment of all evil*. I cannot imagine feminism without this concept.
That is what I mean by individualism. Others are welcome disagree.
*I’ve been reading Women Hating by Andrea Dworkin, thus the evil – highly recommended, by the way, if you haven’t already.
(Jump back to the first part of this series)