Our first meeting is December 1 at 8 p.m. EST. We’ll also meet​ at the same time on Sunday, December 8th and on ​Sunday, December 15th​.

There are a lot of great essays in this book and while we hope you read all of them, we decided that rather than try and discuss all of them in our short time together, we’ll focus on a few essays at each meeting, organized around loose themes.

Reading Agenda

December 1: Vixens or Victims? >> Foreward by Selena the Stripper | Introduction by Natalie West | “Victim-Defendant: Women of Color Complicating Stories About Human Trafficking” by Christa Marie Sacco | “When She Says Women, She Does Not Mean Me” by Lorelei Lee | “The Belly of the Beast” by Lola Davina

December 8: Cops, Consent, Violence >> “The New Orleans Police Raid That Launched a Dancer Resistance” by Melissa Gira Grant | “Context for ‘Undercover Agents’” by Vanessa Carlisle & “Undercover Agents” by Norma Jean Almodovar | “Hustling Survival” by Brit Schulte, Judy Szurgot and Alisha Walker | “Wounds and Ways Through: A Personal Chronology of December 17” by Audacia Ray

December 15: Porn, Power, Stigma >> “Your Mother Is a Whore: On Sex Work & Motherhood” by Jessie Sage | “Demystifying Porn, for Pornographers” by Lina Bembe | “From Victim to Activist: The Road to Ethical Porn” by Hello Rooster | “The Invisibles” by Ignacio G. Hutía Xeiti Rivera | “Going from Homeless Trans Youth to Holistic Caregiver” by Ceyenne Doroshow with Zackary Drucker

Hope to see you on December 1!

Meeting 1: Chapters 1 & 2 (“What Is Libertarianism?” And “Three Eras of Libertarian Thought”)
Meeting 2: Chapters 3 & 4 (“Land, Labor, and Ownership: The Right of Private Property” and “Demystifying the State: Libertarian Anarchism”)
Meeting 3: Chapters 5 & 6 (“Big Business and Free Markets” and “Poverty and Spontaneous Order”)
Meeting 4: Chapters 7 & 8 (“Racial Justice and Individualism” and “Global Justice and Nonintervention”)

Hope to see you at the first meeting on October 6! Register here to join in. We meet from 8-9 p.m. EST via Zoom.

It's a book that's sure to provoke some lively discussions—after all, what proper "liberty movement" type doesn't love love arguing about what defines libertarian philosophy? (And what progressive or conservative doesn't love telling us exactly what's wrong with libertarianism?). So we hope you'll join us, whatever your particular political or philosophical persuasion.

Our first meeting is October 6 at 8 p.m. (EST) and meets via Zoom.

You can register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYlcO6vrz4pH9KTlnSkUcEhYQa9irhPwBzD

You can also sign up for our club on the Bookclubs platform to join in ancillary discussions about the book, get reminders about upcoming meetings, and vote on future book club selections.

Here's more about The Individualists, from the publisher (Princeton University Press):

Libertarianism emerged in the mid-nineteenth century with an unwavering commitment to progressive causes, from women’s rights and the fight against slavery to anti-colonialism and Irish emancipation. Today, this movement founded on the principle of individual liberty finds itself divided by both progressive and reactionary elements vying to claim it as their own. The Individualists is the untold story of a political doctrine continually reshaped by fierce internal tensions, bold and eccentric personalities, and shifting political circumstances.

Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi trace the history of libertarianism from its origins as a radical progressive ideology in the 1850s to its crisis of identity today. They examine the doctrine’s evolution through six defining themes: private property, skepticism of authority, free markets, individualism, spontaneous order, and individual liberty. They show how the movement took a turn toward conservativism during the Cold War, when the dangers of communism at home and abroad came to dominate libertarian thinking. Zwolinski and Tomasi reveal a history that is wider, more diverse, and more contentious than many of us realize.

A groundbreaking work of scholarship, The Individualists uncovers the neglected roots of a movement that has championed the poor and marginalized since its founding, but whose talk of equal liberty has often been bent to serve the interests of the rich and powerful.

Our October book club selection is The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism by Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi. We’ll meet via Zoom on Sunday nights in October, starting October 6.

For our last book club of the year, in December, we’ll be discussing We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival: Essays on Sex Work and Survival.

We’re really excited about both books and look forward to discussing them with you!

We’ll send out reminders closer to when these book clubs take place, but just wanted to send out a little note now in case anyone wants to get an early start on reading.

Cheers,

Liz & Kat

Our first book club of the summer starts in 2 weeks! Join us to discuss bell hooks: The Last Interview and Other Conversations. It features six interviews with influential feminist author, educator, and activist bell hooks, from her 1989 conversation with sociologist Yvonne Zylan to her 2017 interview with journalist Abigail Bereola.

A prolific writer (she authored more than 30 books!), hooks died in 2021. The interviews collected here cover gender, race, love, sex, self-actualization, intersectionality, feminist theory, and much more, making them a great introduction to hooks’ philosophy and a rich source for discussion-provoking ideas.

Our June book club meets from 8-9 p.m. EST on June 9, June 16, and June 23. Meetings take place via Zoom.

You can RSVP and get more details by signing up for the Feminists for Liberty book club here.

Join us Sunday to discuss Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood. This 2022 book by Jessica Grose is our April book club selection, so we’ll be meeting (virtually) on Sundays throughout April to discuss it. Meetings start at 8 p.m. EST.

We encourage people to join regardless of their gender or whether or not they have kids. We even encourage you to join if you haven’t started the book yet (though of course we prefer if you read it!).

This is a casual club, no one’s going to quiz you, and a diverse group makes for livelier and more fun discussions.

To participate, sign up for the Feminists for Liberty Book Club on the book clubs platform or simply sign in to the Zoom meeting at 8 p.m. EST on Sunday. At this week’s meeting, we’ll be focusing on chapters 1 and 2.

Hope to see you there!

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Our April book club selection is Jessica Grose's Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood. Here's the publisher's description of the book:

Close your eyes and picture the perfect mother. She is usually blonde and thin. Her roots are never showing and she installed that gleaming kitchen backsplash herself (watch her TikTok for DIY tips). She seamlessly melds work, wellness and home; and during the depths of the pandemic, she also ran remote school and woke up at 5 a.m. to meditate.

You may read this and think it’s bananas; you have probably internalized much of it.

Journalist Jessica Grose sure had. After she failed to meet every one of her own expectations for her first pregnancy, she devoted her career to revealing how morally bankrupt so many of these ideas and pressures are. Now, in Screaming on the Inside, Grose weaves together her personal journey with scientific, historical, and contemporary reporting to be the voice for American parents she wishes she’d had a decade ago.

The truth is that parenting cannot follow a recipe; there’s no foolproof set of rules that will result in a perfectly adjusted child. Every parent has different values, and we will have different ideas about how to pass those values along to our children. What successful parenting has in common, regardless of culture or community, is close observation of the kind of unique humans our children are. In thoughtful and revelatory chapters about pregnancy, identity, work, social media, and the crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic, Grose explains how we got to this moment, why the current state of expectations on mothers is wholly unsustainable, and how we can move towards something better.

We'll be meeting (virtually) to discuss it on Sunday nights throughout April.

Meetings run from 8-9 p.m. EST, via Zoom, starting on April 7th.

We encourage people to join regardless of their gender or whether or not they have kids. Different perspectives lead to more interesting discussions!

To participate, sign up for the Feminists for Liberty Book Club on the book clubs platform.

P.S. You can get a hardcover copy of the book on Amazon right now for just $10.99.

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The rise of hybrid work environments has brought so many amazing opportunities for parents: increased flexibility in scheduling, more options when choosing where to live, and access to alternative education options like remote learning and homeschooling. With this newfound flexibility comes a newfound set of challenges for parents, especially those who find themselves working full-time jobs while also being the primary caregiver. After all, if your work is accessible anywhere, you should be to—right?

How can parents keep up? And how can management support parents through these changes while supporting a healthy work-life balance?

The key, as is often the case, is clear communication.

I’m a working mom. I’m the head of events for a medium-sized think tank in Washington, D.C., and I’m happy to say that its office culture is a dream for a working parent. My employer offers me the ability to work from home as often as I’d like, along with flexible hours, unlimited vacation, and every other Friday off. With all that slack, some HR reps might wonder how anything gets done—but it does.

That's because both employees and managers are clear about expectations and boundaries. It's such a simple, yet effective, way to maintain a healthy employee-manager relationship.

A good manager will allow you to set boundaries around your time and your needs.

Author Brene Brown put it well in a 2018 post on her website:

"Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. I first heard this saying two decades ago in a 12-step meeting…and didn’t even think about it again until I saw the data about how most of us avoid clarity because we tell ourselves that we’re being kind, when what we’re actually doing is being unkind and unfair.

Feeding people half-truths or bullshit to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind.

Not getting clear with a colleague about your expectations because it feels too hard, yet holding them accountable or blaming them for not delivering is unkind.

Talking about people rather than to them is unkind."

For a working parent, it's important to be clear about your needs as an employee and as a parent. Your manager can’t read your mind, and won’t know that a 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. work day fits better with your infant’s nap schedule or the school bus than a 9-to-5 schedule does—unless you tell them! If you're clear about your needs, they might still say no. But they might also say yes—which won't even be a possibility if you're not clear in the first place.

Another great way to maintain some sanity while balancing family and work is to share the “mental load” of parenting with a partner, if you have one. That means acting as a team to accomplish what needs to get done in the household, from scheduling doctor’s appointments and paying bills to picking up groceries and cleaning toilets.

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Domestic labor is still labor, and in an equitable relationship both partners take an active role in keeping the house running. This doesn’t mean that the work will always be split exactly 50/50, but it does mean that the balance feels fair for both partners and the workload doesn’t fall primarily onto one person. Trusting your partner with their share of the mental load can keep you at your most productive at work instead of worrying about what isn’t getting done at home. For more on sharing the mental load, check out Fair Play by Eve Rodsky, a system for how to divide up household tasks fairly, based on your needs.

(On a related note, self-care and mindfulness are also important tools for preventing burnout. I’d always encourage therapy, as well as talking to your doctor about managing your mental health just like your physical health. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to quality mental health care, but there are budget-friendly resources available. For example, I’ve recently discovered Movement Genius—a website started by actress Alyson Stoner—as a helpful stress and anxiety resource.)

Lastly, please make sure to make full use of the benefits and resources offered by your employer, if you’re fortunate enough to work somewhere with those kinds of services. For example, some employers offer free counseling, childcare reimbursement, and flexible scheduling.

Check in with your manager or HR—those opportunities are meant for your use.

The same principle goes for managers who want to support working parents and promote employees' work-life balance: Clear is kind.

Your employee doesn’t know where you’re most flexible or willing to accommodate their schedule until you tell them. Trust and flexibility are key in a hybrid work environment, and your willingness to support your staff will make or break their experience at your organization. Glassdoor reviews don’t usually talk about how great staff retreats or birthday gifts are—they reflect the flexibility, empathy, and support of direct management. When you trust your staff to get their jobs done, your staff feel empowered to do so. Allowing parents to flex their hours lets us know that you understand the work will get done. Scheduling emails exists for this reason!

On the other side of that coin, managers mustn't confuse accommodation for infantilization. You shouldn’t deny opportunities to an employee who is a parent just because you think they’d be inconvenienced. Even if your intent is to be considerate, you might end up denying your employee a challenge or opportunity that they would excel in. Passing up a parent for a work trip or role because you assume that they wouldn’t (or couldn’t) arrange childcare or travel can make your employee feel like they’re missing out because of their family situation. Try letting them know the opportunity is there and you’re willing to support them either way.

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A good manager knows the value of advocating for resources for their staff. Your employees can’t self-care themselves out of a severely lacking vacation policy or poor insurance coverage. To keep good team members around, make sure they’re taken care of. Managers and organizations with libertarian principles can especially appreciate this idea. Instead of relying on government mandates to set the baseline for a fair and enjoyable workplace, we can create that environment voluntarily!

Actively encourage staff to use vacation time and utilize flexible work options (my employer actually requires me to take two weeks off every August!). Otherwise, they may worry that they'll be secretly penalized for taking advantage of these options.

Lastly, let’s touch on equality: Time and time again, I see articles, workshops, and seminars about “how to balance family and your career”– but they’re invariably aimed at women. There just isn’t a comparable support system out there for men. It’s been well-documented that even in households where both parents are employed full-time, women are still consistently doing a majority of childcare and household chores.

Telling women that they hold some special responsibility to balance work and home life (while their husbands don’t) isn’t empowering to anyone—it just upholds the same outdated stereotypes and increases burnout within families. If this sounds unusual, look into “deprogramming” the part of your brain that may be holding onto traditional ideas about gender roles, especially the idea that women are the primary caretaker by default. Dads are just as important as moms, and they should have just as much flexibility in the workplace to care for their children! Managers shouldn't presume that only women need flexible work arrangements to care for their families.

It looks like remote work is here to stay for many people and that’s probably a good thing. There’s no silver bullet that will magically give you a perfect work-life balance—this stuff is complicated!—but it goes a long way when both employers and employees are clear about expectations and managers open-minded about work hours and arrangements.

— Addyson Garner is a think tank event coordinator & mother living in the Washington, D.C. area

This piece comes from the first issue of the Feminists for Liberty zine, which we released last June. We’re currently seeking (paid) contributors for our next issue — more details here.

We’re also in the midst of rolling out content from that first issue online. Here are some other pieces we recently published from it:

• Review of Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism

• Review of Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Rediscovered

• Sex Work, Feminism, and the Creation of the Carceral State

• 5 Things I Discovered While Traveling the World as a Libertarian Feminist

Our plan with each zine is to sell it first as a complete (print or PDF) edition, to help us raise money to pay outside contributors. (You can still buy a print copy if you like!) Then, eventually, we’ll publish some individual pieces on our website and through this Substack newsletter.

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If you aren’t in the mood to get fired up, steer clear of Leigh Goodmark’s new book, Imperfect Victims. Goodmark takes a deep look at how the U.S. criminal justice system mistreats victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and other crimes more prevalent against women.

This might mean using material witness warrants and contempt charges to compel testimony against abusers (“in some cases, victims are held in the same prisons as those arrested for crimes against them,” notes Goodmark). It might mean charging teenagers as sex traffickers for doing the bidding of a violent pimp, or handing out harsh sentences to mothers who fail to prevent a partner’s abuse of their kids.

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From felony murder statutes (which “enable prosecutors to extend culpability for murders to the abused partners of the people who actually commit those murders”) to no-drop prosecution policies (“committing prosecutors to pursuing any case of intimate partner violence where sufficient evidence existed”), Goodmark details the myriad tools prosecutors use to criminalize survivors of abuse, exploitation, and mistreatment. A lot of these policies were pushed by feminists as a means to help women. They have backfired spectacularly.

Goodmark’s ultimate solution: abolition feminism, which “imagines a world where the solution to social problems, including violence, is not police, punishment, and prison” and moves “away from a mindset that equates punishment with justice.” Abolitionism calls for abolishing prisons as well as “the tools the state uses to exercise punitive control (police, electronic surveillance, probation, parole) and those that substitute for prisons (child welfare systems, mental health facilities, civil commitment).”

But Goodmark also offers more incremental and less radical ideas for criminal justice reform and for helping criminalized victims. Whether or not you agree fully with the ideas of abolition feminism, Imperfect Victims is essential reading for anyone interested in how our current system fails female survivors of violence and exploitation and what steps we can take to remedy this.

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This review comes from the first issue of the Feminists for Liberty zine, which we released last June. We’re currently seeking (paid) contributors for our next issue — more details here.

We’re also in the midst of rolling out content from that first issue online. Here are some other pieces we recently published from it:

• Review of Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Rediscovered

• Sex Work, Feminism, and the Creation of the Carceral State

• 5 Things I Discovered While Traveling the World as a Libertarian Feminist

Our plan with each zine is to sell it first as a complete (print or PDF) edition, to help us raise money to pay outside contributors. (You can still buy a print copy if you like!) Then, eventually, we’ll publish some individual pieces on our website and through this Substack newsletter.

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For a couple of years now, I’ve been traveling the world as a digital nomad and solo female traveler: 4 continents, 15 countries, and 29 different cities; countless hours spent in terminals on layovers, surrounded by various languages; and endless words and hand gestures exchanged with locals. The one thing in common? The fight for women’s rights continues everywhere.

It is shocking to see how many similar struggles women face around the world. They may come with different flavors in different contexts, but in the end, the root issue is the same: Women in every corner of the globe crave more freedom.

Here are the 5 things I’ve discovered, so far, while traveling the world as a libertarian feminist…

#1 The Importance of Cultural Context

The concept of libertarian feminism and women’s rights can look very different in different cultures and societies. It is important to consider cultural context and local history when discussing and advocating for women’s rights—even though the core struggles are often the same.

I was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and spent most of my teenage years living in a small town near the capital city. Traditionally, Latin American societies have been patriarchal and hierarchical, with women expected to conform to strict gender roles and prioritize family and domestic responsibilities.

My mom, a free-spirited feminist, raised my brother and me on her own. Our home has always been a freedom-friendly space, so I was lucky not to have to conform to the outdated social norms that many others did. My family was very progressive, teaching me about freedom and financial independence from a young age, and forming the roots of my lifelong love for liberty.

Later on in my life, I started hosting women’s circles to bring emotional and mental support to my community in Colombia. This experience showed me that, even though we all came from the same country (and even city!), we faced completely different realities. And, yet, we could still support each other, even if that just meant listening and offering a safe space for women to express themselves and ask for help if they needed it.

Women’s circles are a great example of a powerful tool for better understanding the unique cultural context and environment of every individual. And, these spaces can lead to something even more powerful in the fight for women’s rights.

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#2 The Power of Grassroots Activism

Grassroots activism refers to actions taken by individuals or community-based organizations to address social or political issues at the local level. It can be a powerful force for change in advancing women’s rights because the shift comes from the individuals on a local level.

(Feminists for Liberty, with its amazing support network for feminist activists, is a great example of grassroots activism.)

As a libertarian, I understand the importance of empowering individuals to seek the life they desire, creating powerful connections that can benefit women’s freedom everywhere.

Over the years, I have met and learned from many women’s rights activists around the world who are working at the community level to make a positive difference in their societies. Many of these activists got their start through women’s circles or groups, much like I did (so, if you’re looking to help women in your community and become a women’s rights activist, this is a great way to start!)

One particular experience that positively impacted me was meeting an amazing fellow activist at a Liberty International World Conference in Mongolia. She was from India and a Muslim. I was shocked by how she was able to be equally devoted to her faith and spiritual practices, as well as the causes she championed in her country. She showed me the power of grassroots activism and taught me that, though every community is unique, the ways in which we can grow can be very similar.

Sharing time with her helped me better comprehend the ways my activism could support hers—sometimes that support could be as simple as reposting her story on my social media channels and vice versa. We also exchanged valuable knowledge for growing our respective audiences, such as best practices for how to grow our communities with online events.

Something that stuck with me over the years is the importance of finding local organizations or chapters through which to volunteer. On the road, platforms like Workaway, Trusted House Sitters, and local Facebook Groups have proven great resources for finding local opportunities to make change.

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#3 Societal Expectations Are A Shapeshifter

Women are often pressured to conform to traditional gender roles, which can limit their opportunities and make it difficult for them to reach their full potential. This can include expectations around caregiving, domestic work, and dress codes. And, sadly, they seem to exist everywhere: throughout my travels, I have seen the societal expectations I witnessed in my home country manifest themselves in various forms in different countries around the world.

These societal expectations are sometimes so subtle that they can be almost imperceptible. They go beyond financial or educational barriers and seem to be engraved in the minds of both women and men. Traveling has forced me to challenge my assumptions and beliefs as well as to deconstruct why I do the things I do.

One tangible way this has manifested for me is with my clothing choices. While on the road, I began to notice what I was wearing compared to what my male friends were wearing. I felt a constant pressure to always look “pretty”—even if I was uncomfortable or if my outfit wasn’t practical for my travels

I gathered the courage to start putting my comfort first—and yet those around me continued to try to enforce societal norms about “acceptable” female appearance. For example, one time, when I was working as a logistics assistant at an international event, one of the collaborators (a European woman) explicitly gave me directions on how to dress more appropriately. Meanwhile, my male counterpart who was wearing something similar (a t-shirt and sneakers) was given no such instructions.

At gatherings with friends from various different cultures, regardless of the country I was in, I started to realize that my female friends were frequently the ones taking care of everyone else and cleaning up after their partners. Often, handling a child was up to the women only. This was frequently justified with the idea that “men are just not good at these tasks.”

Other societal expectations I’ve encountered have to do with tourism: For example, certain men prefer to travel to certain areas because the women there are stereotyped as more “docile,” a behavior I’ve come to refer to as exploitation tourism.

Women’s freedom is built every day through our actions and those of the people around us. It is far too easy to unquestioningly and unknowingly reinforce certain ideas and attitudes that hold women back. Exposure to different cultures and experiences can help push back on traditional gender roles and attitudes and inspire both local and nonlocal women to pursue greater equality and opportunities.

I challenge you to take notice of why you act a certain way, why you choose to dress a certain way, what roles you assume in mixed sex settings, etc. Do your choices come from a genuine feeling of care and love, personal fulfillment and desire—or do they come from certain expectations that have been thrust upon you because of your gender?

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#4 Women Lack Significant Representation in Government & Politics

During my travels, I have seen firsthand how underrepresented women are in many countries’ governments and in politics overall. This lack of representation can make it difficult for women’s voices to be heard and for their needs to be met.

No matter the country, no matter the language, every time I meet with fellow female activists, they always point out that there are not enough women in politics. Some of the key factors contributing to women’s underrepresentation in politics include gender stereotypes and attitudes, lack of institutional support, and overall political culture. All of these come from the same root cause: a crisis in leadership. Leaders in political institutions are not making enough efforts to create spaces where women can be heard and taken into consideration.

I’ve witnessed this same issue in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Many of the laws around the world are made by men, including many of the laws that negatively impact women’s liberty specifically, affecting entire generations and countries.

#5 Reproductive Rights Are Shaky at Best

This is the saddest lesson I’ve learned on my travels. Women’s ability to control our own bodies and make decisions about our reproductive health is fundamental to our autonomy and equality. And, yet, women’s access to safe and legal abortion, birth control, and maternal healthcare are under constant threat in many countries around the world.

I am horrified by the number of women around the world still cannot access birth control over-the-counter, the hundreds of thousands who go on to die during labor each year, and the countless number of women who have had traumatic medical experiences related to their sex or gender—if they even have access to a gynecologist or similar medical professional at all. As a solo female traveler this hits differently: you always know that your safety might not be guaranteed, even on the smallest things.

I was in the U.S. when the Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the Constitutional right to abortion that had been upheld for decades. It was a gloomy day to see the country that is supposed to be the beacon of freedom for the world fail women on such an important issue. That was the day I became aware that our rights as women are never to be taken for granted and that the fight goes beyond our home countries.

Overall, traveling the world as a libertarian feminist has given me a deeper understanding of the complexities of women’s rights and the various ways in which these concerns intersect with different issues, whether political or cultural. It has also reinforced the importance of considering cultural context and the role of government and grassroots activism in advancing freedom for everyone, no matter their gender.

Women represent a little over 50% of the total population on this planet. Yet, there’s a long way for societies around the world to go in order for us to feel safe, secure, and represented.

Libertarian men, what are you doing to support the women in your life? How are you ensuring that liberty is truly accessible for women, as well as for men?

To my fellow libertarian women, keep fighting and keep up hope: the more we raise our voices, the more battles we win. And each battle won for women’s rights anywhere will help women reap its benefits everywhere.

— Maria Alejandra Londoño is a business consultant for worldwide retreats and online events

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Kaytlin Bailey’s terrific piece on “Sex Work, Feminism, & the Creation of the Carceral State” is now up on our website, after first appearing in the Feminists for Liberty zine last summer. “Sex workers have both epitomized and defied the historic restrictions on women’s entrepreneurial spirit,” she writes

For much of our history, prostitution was one of the few paths available to entrepreneurial women who weren’t born into wealth. And today, prostitution funds more students, artists, and entrepreneurs than all of the available grants combined. But prostitution has become a symbol of exploitation and the ongoing criminalization of prostitution has derailed the lives of countless women.

Bailey—the Founder & Executive Director of Old Pros and the writer/performer of the one woman show Whore’s Eye View—takes readers through a brief history of efforts to control sex workers (and, by extension, independent women of all sorts) throughout the past century or so in America. Again and again, efforts to “save” women from sex work have wound up making their lives worse, while simultaneously expanding the reach of police into private lives.

“The police remain sex worker’s primary predators, literally hunting them with taxpayer dollars in the name of patriarchal protection,” writes Bailey.

You can read the whole thing here.

See last week’s newsletter for more info on our zine, Reclaim, as well as a call for pitches for our next issue.

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Read — and write for?—our zine

The first issue of Reclaim, Feminists for Liberty zine, is now online. You can check out the whole thing in PDF form here.

We’ll be rolling out individual articles on our website over the next few weeks, starting with Cathy Reisenwitz’s review of Reclaiming the Mainstream—a 1992 book by author, activist, and public intellectual Joan Kennedy Taylor, who helped launch the Association of Libertarian Feminists and Feminists for Free Expression in the late 20th century. (Reclaiming the Mainstream was the subject of our very first Feminist’s for Liberty book club, last year, and you can watch a panel discussion about the book—featuring Reisenwitz, Taylor’s pal Walter Olson, and us—here.)

“Taylor writes with a stunning fairness,” writes Reisenwitz. “She could easily have written a polemic on why everyone should adopt an individualist feminism. … But instead she wrote an evenhanded, inclusive, short history of feminism which simply demonstrates through copious examples the ways individualist feminists made their mark on the debates of the day.”

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We’re starting to put together our second issue of Reclaim and are looking for contributors. We’re seeking 1) short (350-words or less) reviews of cultural items (books, TV shows, podcasts, newsletters, films, albums, etc), 2) short (450 words or less) newsy pieces or op-eds on current events (trends; legislation; lawsuits; etc.), 3) personal essays (roughly 800 to 1,000 words), and 4) reported feature articles (roughly 1,000-2,500 words).

All contributors are paid (in general, $20-$60 for shorter news or review items; $100 for personal essays; and $150 – $250 for features).

We are especially interested in pieces that approach gender issues, education, parenting, sex and sexuality, pregnancy, abortion, women’s health, economic freedom, free speech, and criminal justice from a libertarian feminist angle.

To pitch us an idea or get more information, email feministsforliberty@gmail.com.

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Our next book club starts on Sunday

We’re reading Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley. More info here. Sign up to participate here.

Our meetings for this book club will take place via zoom on Sundays throughout February at 8 pm EST.

We’ve got six book clubs planned for 2024—see the full schedule here.

Find us at the Students for Liberty conference

Feminists for Liberty will have a booth at LibertyCon, the Students for Liberty conference that takes place this upcoming weekend in Washington, D.C. F4L cofounder Kat Murti will be speaking on several panels, including “Don't Steal, the Government Hates Competition: How We Can End Civil Asset Forfeiture” (Saturday, 10 a.m.) , “Why Do Civilized Societies Still Have A Death Penalty?” (Saturday, 10:40 a.m.), and “Liberty's Dilemma: Fusionism, Culture Wars, and Conflicting Principles” (Saturday, 4 p.m.)

If you’re there, be sure to check out Kat’s panels and others from some amazing lady libertarian speakers, including Deirdre McCloskey’s “(True) Liberalism Caused the Great Enrichment” (Friday, 9 p.m.) , Jessica Melugin on the “Section 230 and the Defense of Free Speech” panel (Saturday, 11:20 a.m.), Katherine Mangu-Ward on the “Challenges of Journalism: Finding Truth In A Sea Of Opinion and Misinformation” panel (Saturday, 5:05 p.m.), Stephanie Slade’s “Against Game of Thrones Politics” (Saturday, 4 p.m.), and Shoshana Weissmann, Jo Jorgensen, and Emma Camp on the “Occupational Licensing: Begging the Government to Let You Do Your Job” panel (Sunday, 11 a.m.)

The full conference schedule is here.

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The movie Winner, co-written by Kerry Howley, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last weekend. The movie tells the tale of Reality Leigh Winner, an NSA translator who leaked a report about Russian interference in the 2016 election and wound up sentenced to more than five years in federal prison for it. Deadline called it "an eye-opening portrait of an accidental anarchist."

"By no means as controversial as previous whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Julian Assange — all she did really was photocopy a piece of paper and send it to a fringe-left website — Reality Winner somehow became a punching bag for the American government," writes Deadline's Damon Wise.

Winner is also at the center of Howley's 2023 book Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs, which is Feminists for Liberty's first book club pick of 2024. Our Bottoms Up book club session starts on February 4th.

"Howley got to know Winner and her family, depicting a young woman who 'took ideas in their fullness, ignorant of their social context, and therefore radically open to argument.' Winner worked as a translator for the drone program while teaching yoga and worrying about global warming," notes a New York Times review of the book from last year. "'She was not on a team,' Howley writes. The book suggests it was this — the fact that nothing Winner did was easily amenable to the narrative of a particular side — that eventually did her in."

The book—subtitle "A Journey Through the Deep State"—also goes beyond Winner, focusing on "privacy and its absence; about hiding and leaking and secrets and betrayal," as the Times put it. "But she also writes about the strange experience of living, and how it gets flattened and codified into data that can be turned into portraits of static, permanent beings — creatures who would be unrecognizable to ourselves."

Want to join us this February in reading and discussing Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs? Sign up for the Feminists for Liberty book club on the book clubs app to get notified about our (virtual) meetings and participate.

We launched the Feminists for Liberty book club last year—and had so much fun that we're going to double the number of sessions and books this year!

Here's the book club reading roster for 2024:

February: Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley

April: Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood by Jessica Grose

June: bell hooks: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations

August: The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind by Melissa S. Kearney

October: The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism by John Tomasi and Matt Zwolinski

December: We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival

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The Feminists for Liberty Book Club meets virtually on Sunday evenings at 8 p.m., operating on a one-month-on followed by one-month-off schedule. Our next club meeting is on February 4th.

In 2024, our club will read 6 books (with members free to participate in as many or as few different book sessions as they like). For each book, the club will hold 3 or 4 Zoom meetings of an hour each, sometimes followed by a panel featuring book authors and/or book club participants.

To participate in the Feminists for Liberty book club (and vote on upcoming reading selections), sign up for our club on Bookclubs.com.

We’re reading Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey and Art Carden. It’s a distillation of McCloskey’s massive Bourgeois Era trilogy (The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity, and Bourgeois Equality).

“In this lively volume, McCloskey and the economist and journalist Carden bring together the trilogy’s key ideas and its most provocative arguments,” notes the book’s publisher (The University of Chicago Press):

The rise of the west, and now the rest, is the story of the rise of ordinary people to a dignity and liberty inspiring them to have a go. The outcome was an explosion of innovation after 1800, and a rise of real income by an astounding 3,000 percent.  The Great Enrichment, well beyond the conventional Industrial Revolution, did not, McCloskey and Carden show, come from the usual suspects, capital accumulation or class struggle.  It came from the idea of economic liberty in Holland and the Anglosphere, then Sweden and Japan, then Italy and  Israel and China and India, an idea that bids fair in the next few generations to raise up the wretched of the earth.  The original shift to liberalism arose from 1517 to 1789 from theological and political revolutions in northwest Europe, upending ancient hierarchies.  McCloskey and Carden contend further that liberalism and “innovism” made us better humans as well as richer ones.  Not matter but ideas.  Not corruption but improvement.

Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich draws in entertaining fashion on history, economics, literature, philosophy, and popular culture, from growth theory to the Simpsons. It is the perfect introduction for a broad audience to McCloskey's influential explanation of how we got rich. At a time when confidence in the economic system is under challenge, the book mounts an optimistic and persuasive defense of liberal innovism, and of the modern world it has wrought.

Intrigued? Join the Feminists for Liberty Book Club on Bookclubs to get information about our Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make Your Rich club and future book club sessions.

You can buy a copy of the book on Amazon, via Bookshop.org, from Barnes and Noble, or directly from The University of Chicago Press.

What we’re reading:

Leave Me Alone And I’ll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey and Art Carden 

When we meet:

Every Sunday in November at 7:30 p.m. EST via Zoom 

How to participate:

Join the Feminists for Liberty Book Club on Bookclubs.com to find out how to join meetings, message with us and other members, and get updates on this and future book clubs. 

Introducing the first issue of Feminists for Liberty's new zine! 

Reclaim Vol. 1, Issue 1 was released June 30 and features writing by Kaytlin Bailey, Addyson Garner, Cathy Reisenwitz, Liz Nolan Brown, and Maria Alejandra Londoño, along with notable quotes from a whole bevy of contemporary and historic libertarian feminists. 

In this issue, you'll find reviews, personal essays, a deeply researched feature, book recommendations, a summer playlist, a historical feminist text, and more, covering topics that range from work-life balance and traveling the world as a libertarian feminist to sex work, abortion, "momfluencers," gender roles, birth control, classical liberalism, and criminal justice reform. 

Get a digital copy for $10 or a print copy* for $20. 

Your purchase not only gets you a pretty cool compendium of libertarian feminist writing and thought, it supports us putting out future issues (and continuing to pay contributors). 

For now, you can only buy Reclaim via Paypal. (We’re working on some other options for the future). To purchase via Paypal, scan this QR code below or click here.

If purchasing a digital copy, please add in the note section an email address where we can send it.

If purchasing a print copy, please add in the note section your mailing address and email address. 

Thanks so much for helping us spread the values & voices of libertarian feminism 💛

*We can only ship print copies within the United States

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Just a quick reminder that our next book club launches today. This time, we’re reading Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.

At our first meeting, we’ll be discussing chapters one and two. (If you haven't read the book but would still like to join us and see what the book club is all about, we’d still love to have you.)

To join in, sign up via the Bookclub platform: https://bookclubs.com/feminists-for-liberty-book-club/join

Our meetings take place via Zoom every other Sunday from 7:30 - 8:30 p.m. EST in May & June.

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We’ll be reading and discussing the book as part of the Feminists for Liberty book club.

Want to join us? You can sign up here.

Meetings will take place via Zoom every other Sunday from 7:30 – 8:30 p.m. EST, beginning on Sunday, May 7 and wrapping up on June 18. See below for the full meeting schedule. (If you can’t attend all four meetings, please don’t let that stop you from joining in for some.) Meetings will be relaxed, informal discussions of the book and the ideas it brings up.

MEETING SCHEDULE

Meeting 1: Sunday May 07, 2023 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm

• Discussion: Chapters 1 & 2

Meeting 2: Sunday May 21, 2023 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm

• Discussion: Chapters 3 & 4

Meeting 3: Sunday Jun 04, 2023 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm

• Discussion: Chapters 5 & 6

Meeting 4: Sunday June 18, 2023 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm

Join in by signing up for our book club on the Bookclubs platform. We’ll use the platform to Zoom links for upcoming meetings and to send updates to members. (Members can also use the Bookclubs platform to chat among themselves, ask questions, and vote on upcoming Feminists for Liberty Book Club reads.)

Join us for a chat about Joan Kennedy Taylor & the battle for feminism’s soul — past, present, & future.

From the Victorian era to the hippie era, the 1990s to today, feminists have fought over the role of the state and the importance of individualism in achieving feminist goals. Joan Kennedy Taylor detailed this dichotomy in her 1992 book Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Rediscovered — a book that reads surprisingly like it could have been written today.

We’ll be discussing the book, Taylor’s life, and how her work and the feminist battles of the ’90s still resonate in 2023.

When: April 23, 7-8 p.m.

Where: Your computer

Register: tinyurl.com/F4L-JKT

Panelists: Walter Olson, Cathy Reisenwitz, & Elizabeth Nolan Brown
Moderated by: Kat Murti

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Join our next book club, starting in May

We just wrapped up our first book club and our looking forward to the next one, launching in May. For the last one, we discussed Joan Kennedy Taylor’s Reclaiming the Mainstream, a (somewhat) historical text and a firmly libertarian feminist one.

For the next book club, we’re trying something a little different, by discussing a contemporary work—and one in which libertarian feminists might find much to disagree.

… Or maybe not? The issues that author Louise Perry raises in The Case Against the Sexual Revolution are sure to be divisive, even among libertarians. We’re hoping that makes for some lively (but civil!) discussion.

Join in by signing up for our book club on the Bookclubs platform. We’ll use the platform to post information about upcoming meetings and send updates to members. (Members can also use the Bookclubs platform to chat among themselves, ask questions, and vote on upcoming Feminists for Liberty Book Club reads.)

Meetings will be held via Zoom and take place every other Sunday at 7:30 p.m. EST.

Meetings for our Case Against the Sexual Revolution book club session will take place May 7, May 21, June 4 and June 18. (Feel free to join even if you can’t make every meeting.) Meetings will be relaxed, informal discussions of the book and the ideas it brings up.

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