On April 23, we hosted 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.
In our panel—”Against Collectivist Feminism,” featuring Walter Olson, Cathy Reisenwitz, & Elizabeth Nolan Brown—we discussed Reclaiming the Mainstream, Taylor’s life, and how her work and the feminist battles of the ’90s still resonate in 2023.