Liberal Feminism and Intersectional Self-Ownership

Abstract

The thesis of this piece is to reconcile feminism with a libertarian set of rights under a Rawlsian framework. The foundational work is taken from Anne Cudd’s ‘Feminism and Libertarian Self-Ownership’ where she criticizes the traditional model for the libertarian set of rights because the atomistic self-owner is guilty of being androcentric. Cudd, offers a relational self-owner of rights that is ontologically connected rather than separate, as to better represent feminist perspectives of the individual. I critique Cudd because her set of rights and representation of the self-owner is built on an assumption that inherently essentializes what woman should want from a libertarian set of rights. I introduce the intersectional and multiplicitous self-owner that integrates the complexity of social groups an individual belongs to. In this way, I offer a feminist libertarian set of rights that allows a woman to be who she is in totality, even if she were androcentric. Finally, I seek to solidify this account through offering and responding to prominent and foreseeable criticisms.