The Fountainhead

Let me begin with this, the thrust of this brief essay is to criticize feminism as an ideology, not women as individuals. Confusing the two is one of feminism’s favorite tricks.

Feminism is bad because it is not a movement for liberty. It is a movement for power, and specifically for state power deployed on behalf of one politically defined group.

Let us begin with first principles.

Liberty rests on individual rights, not group rights. Each person owns himself (or herself), controls his body, his labor, and his property. The moment you abandon the individual and begin reasoning in terms of collectives—“women,” “men,” “classes,” “victims”—you have already stepped onto the road to statism. Feminism does precisely this. It treats women not as individuals with diverse values and goals, but as a political class locked in permanent conflict with another class called “men.”

This is not liberty. This is Marxism with different nouns.

Feminism asserts that society is structured by a vast, invisible conspiracy called “patriarchy,” which conveniently explains every failure, disappointment, or inequality without requiring evidence of coercion. But economics—and ethics—concern action and force. Where is the aggression? Where is the gun? If two adults freely choose different paths and achieve different outcomes, there is no injustice to correct.

Feminism rejects this. It equates inequality of outcome with oppression and demands that the State intervene to “fix” it. And how does the State fix things? Through taxation, regulation, quotas, censorship, and legal privileges—in short, through coercion.

So feminism’s core error is this: It substitutes political redistribution for voluntary choice.

Consider the family. Feminism treats the family not as a voluntary association formed for mutual benefit, but as a site of power struggle. Marriage becomes exploitation. Motherhood becomes unpaid labor. Masculinity becomes suspect. The result is not liberation, but alienation, declining birth rates, fractured families, and the transfer of intimate human relations into the hands of bureaucrats and courts.

This is no accident. Feminism thrives on dissolving private bonds because strong families reduce dependence on the State. When people rely on one another, they rely less on politicians.

Feminism also claims to oppose violence, yet it enthusiastically supports the most violent institution in society—the State—so long as it wears the correct moral costume. Speech must be regulated. Employment must be engineered. Education must be indoctrinated. Due process must be relaxed. Men must be treated not as individuals, but as presumptive aggressors.

Ask yourself this: what kind of “equality” requires special courts, special laws, special language rules, and special punishments?

The answer is not equality at all. It is privilege enforced by power.

Now here is the deepest problem of all.
Feminism teaches women that freedom consists not in self-ownership, responsibility, and voluntary exchange, but in entitlement—the belief that outcomes must be guaranteed and discomfort eliminated by authority. This is not empowering. It infantilizes. It replaces independence with grievance and strength with perpetual victimhood.

A society that maintains liberty at its krux needs no feminism. It needs equal rights under the law, no more and no less. The right to contract. The right to own property. The right to speak. The right to be left alone.

Feminism rejects being left alone. It demands to supervise.

So I will end with this: any movement that pits the sexes against one another, dissolves personal responsibility into group grievance, and expands the power of the State cannot be a friend of liberty, no matter how noble its slogans.

Freedom does not require feminism. Feminism requires coercion.

And coercion, no matter how fashionable, is always the enemy.

– P. Christopher Shelton