 Welcome to Free Thoughts from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. I'm Aaron Ross Powell, editor of Libertarianism.org and a research fellow here at the Cato Institute. And I'm Trevor Burrus, a research fellow at the Cato Institute Center for Constitutional Studies. Our guest today is Elizabeth Nolan-Brown, staff editor at Reason.com and a contributor to Libertarianism.org. Libertarianism often seems like a boys' club. One poll says that two-thirds of self-identified libertarians are men, which is actually precisely the number we've got in this room right now. Why do you think that is? Hi. First of all, I'm happy to be here talking with you guys about this today. I obviously have my, I have pet reasons why that I think that that is, but I mean there's no actual, there's no real data on it. I think one of the things that's kind of cool though is that if you look at the younger libertarians, especially involved in like campus groups or in students for liberty in the post-collegiate groups, the ratio seems to be a lot more women heavy. There seems to be a lot more equal between men and women. And so I think it's a, I think it's a philosophy that's starting to appeal to more women. Is there anything about what we used to do maybe before that kept women off, broadly speaking we as libertarians before any of us were probably doing this in the 70s where we particularly are bad, do you think? I don't mean, I don't know. If you talk to some of the, I'm involved with the association of libertarian feminists and if you talk to some of the women, the older women there who have been around the movement for a while, they will talk about it being kind of a boys club and kind of exclusionary. I think more so than anything that male libertarians do, it's just that there's sometimes been a lack of representation of certain issues that are important to women. So certain areas that may be good entry points to libertarianism for women just haven't really been out there and meanwhile a lot of people come to libertarianism through like an economics class or a political science class or law and those are still fields that men are more heavily represented in or more going into. So that maybe just means a lot more men are exposed, have traditionally been exposed to libertarian ideals than women have been. What would some of those good avenues for women to come to libertarianism be? Well, I mean I think the focusing on reproductive freedom issues is a good start which includes things like abortion access but also includes over the counter birth control, includes things like surrogacy issues, it's actually a whole lot of issues surrounding birth and pregnancy and the way that that's treated and the things that pregnant women can be compelled to do that a lot of the libertarian women I know are very active in and then that's an issue that a lot of liberal feminists are also active in or just general feminists are active in. So I think that's one area where you can capture, you could maybe get women interested. Is there a difference between the way that libertarians would approach those issues and the liberal democrats would because obviously it seems like women would be drawn mostly to the liberal democrats over say the republicans on those issues but what would attract them to libertarianism per se over the democrats? I think it depends on the issues, on things like birth issues, on things on not having the state be able to order a pregnant woman into treatment for eight months because someone reported her drinking or something like that and I think in the parenting issues I don't think that there is much of a difference. So I think a lot of times women especially younger women that are feminist minded just gravitate naturally towards democrats and liberals because they think they're not republicans obviously, they're not social conservatives so they don't want that and they might have libertarian sympathies and other totally unrelated issues but they just don't see that as a viable option until you start talking to them about how you can be a libertarian and also care about, you know, we care about these things too and that there's, you know, we can be active in these sort of issues as well. Yeah, it helps if you don't spend all your time talking about monetary policy which is great it is, doesn't actually appeal to that many people in general but I was kind of thinking of three reasons that I've heard discussed a lot for why there are relatively fewer women libertarians. One is that we're, men are particularly bad at talking to women for certain reasons which I think is sometimes true depending on the kind of men that libertarianism attracts. Does that ever strike you as a possible reason? I mean that's kind of one of the classic ones you hear but again I don't experience that as much and I don't think that necessarily among the younger generations that is true. I think that stereotype about the kind of, you know, dorky libertarian guy who can't interact in social situations is also maybe more of a relic of when it was more fringe ideology and now that it is attracting a wider audience you see really all sorts of, you know, men and women that are interested in it. And another one that I often hear is actually kind of based on, this is probably the most controversial, some sort of congenital cognitive element. You've heard some people make these arguments that there's something about women's brains possibly that make them less emotional. They're too emotional, not rational enough, that sort of thing. And I often say, you know, that if that is true at any level, you know, it would be that boys are four times more likely to have autism, which that might explain it by itself but it also seems kind of like a bad explanation. Well, I mean I know that there is some research that men in general are more interested in fringe ideologies across the board and maybe the autism thing has a role to play there or whatever but for whatever reason that men are more likely but I think also that, again, it's just somewhat a matter of exposure and as you see libertarians start to appeal to broader interests and be more widespread then you're going to see all personality types to it. So I think if that was a thing then it's not, I don't think that there's anything inherent in libertarianism that makes it not appeal to women. And I think when you look at data on the gender breakdowns on a lot of issues, there's no strong gender imbalance in how men and women think about a lot of the social issues that we think of as, or the issues we think of as being important to libertarianism. Then the third one is also pretty controversial but you've heard more social concern to say things like this but that women are more beholden to the welfare state and Sandra Fluke would obviously be like an example who was resolutely criticized as being someone asking for more things from the state. Does that reason strike you as plausible? I think again that it's something that might be true but not a given. I think that the way that feminism has played out in the past few decades or and the way that outreach to women in politics, especially from the Democrats has played out has sort of emphasized a state role in helping women. And for the average person who's not spending a ton of time thinking about political ideology, you just kind of do react to these incentives to the culture around you and it seems like, okay, this is a party that wants to help women. But I think once you, when people are more interested and when you start talking to people about how, just about libertarian ways to help women too and why we are actually interested in helping people and not just like maximizing profits or things, then you can kind of change that view that they have to be supporting liberals if they want to be supporting women. So how do libertarians help women? I mean, in terms of what are you talking about? In any way, how does libertarianism help women? The difficulty here, I think, is some of the things that you mentioned, like so use access to birth control, access to reproductive freedom type of issues, have a very obvious state intervention element to this, correct? So that seems to be the first obvious question. The answer is, well, the state needs to make sure that there's access to these things and then the second one would be to have some other non-state things. So how can some of these issues, how do libertarians view some of these issues as access to reproductive care? I think there's a lot of issues where a libertarian ideology or philosophy really dovetails nicely with what would be the best policies for women, which are removing all sorts of regulatory restrictions to reproductive care, including access to birth control and by making it available over the counter, including abortion clinics that aren't regulated so heavily that they have to close down and things like that. I mean, that's a really obvious area where libertarian dislike of the state being involved in over-regulating things is naturally part of sort of a problem and agenda. Let me ask you about something that we've been asked before about the abortion issue. Every now and then we'll put out to our audience on Facebook and Twitter what questions do you have about libertarianism and we'll do an episode answering them. And a question that pops up pretty frequently is, do you have to be pro-choice to be a libertarian? And we know that there's, I mean, there's a sizable number of women who are not pro-choice. So is there some, do you have to be pro-choice to be a libertarian? Is that kind of if a woman's listening to this or a man, someone who is, say, pro-life, listening to this, are we saying, nope, you can't, you know, this isn't for you? No, I mean, and I think that you'd find a lot of disagreement about the issue of abortion within the libertarian movement and it's not split down to underlines. I don't think it's more like more women are more pro-choice than men or vice versa. I've actually been trying to get some answers about this on Facebook just this week because a discussion sort of cropped up and a lot of the libertarian men that responded were saying that they were personally pro-choice even if they were not necessarily, you know, morally in favor of abortion. They didn't think it was, it should be, you know, illegal. And I think that's a position that you find among libertarians a lot. But I think one of the things, but I think there are a lot of libertarians who are men and women who are unabashedly pro-choice including, you know, myself and a lot of my colleagues at Reason. And I think, and a lot of the people that I'm involved with in the Association of Libertarian Feminists and I think one of the things is we often shy away from talking about reproductive issues because it's like, well, that is an area where libertarians disagree a lot. Best just leave it alone. And I think that, I mean, that's something I want to change. And I think that's something that some of the women that I talk to want to change too. But the difficulty there, of course, is that there is also a, whether it's good or bad, I'm not going to evaluate, but a cogent libertarian argument for pro-life in terms of protection of rights. So if we need to get more libertarians on board with pro-choice, that might be difficult in and of itself if that's a way to sell things along the way. I don't even think it's necessarily a matter of getting more libertarians to, you know, change their beliefs and become pro-choice if they're not. Because, I mean, we're not, you know, we're not in the business of, you know, trying to elect politicians who are going to do this or whatever. I mean, I think it's more just an issue of, if you are a pro-choice libertarian, being able to talk about those issues and being able to advocate your position on these issues and put it out there without feeling like you should just avoid the topic because it is divisive. I mean, it's going to remain divisive, I think. And my goal isn't to try and, like, win. I mean, if you do kind of win some people over, they're cool. But if not, I mean, that's not the underlying issue, I don't think. It seems that another issue that we've kind of mentioned a little bit, but in terms of women's issues, something you've written a lot about is also sex work and how state regulations or prohibitions of sex work uniquely affect women in certain ways. And this is something where the libertarian way is kind of a third way compared to what you hear from the left and right. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I write about sex work and sex worker rights and decriminalizing prostitution a lot. And I think this is a really good area where, I think especially among older feminists, you used to see a lot of, you know, that were very anti-prostitution, but since, I don't know, the 90s or so, there's been a very strong, you know, pro-sex worker rights, pro, you know, that that's a valid choice that people make. And even if you don't necessarily support it morally or think it should exist, even that the state coming in and criminalizing it and getting the police involved and all that just creates more problems and makes it more dangerous and harms the welfare of everyone involved. So I think that that is a position that a lot of mainstream liberal feminists would even agree with today, but there's just not a lot of people talking about that. So the libertarian position of, you know, of being naturally skeptical of police and of, you know, law enforcement and criminalizing things is a good way to come about that. Let me ask about this because it's a position that is certainly not widely held that we should legalize prostitution. And it's also one that's, I mean, fairly shocking to a lot of people and they think, of course we shouldn't because it's exploitive to women, you know. You legalize this and more women are going to be forced into it and it radically degrades their quality of life and it's dangerous. So, I mean, what's the answer to those people who are coming at it? Not from a, this is a moral wrong, we need to ban it, but a, you know, this is a deeply harmful thing that we need to try to stop. Right, which is where I think a lot of people come from and I think that can be a really sort of seductive first viewpoint too for young women who are kind of coming at the issue, especially when you have a lot of people involved in sort of industries that are saving sex workers from sex trafficking, which sounds like a good thing, and obviously can be. But you have a lot of people where it's kind of become an industry so they're promoting the most sort of salacious stories to make the issue seem bigger than it is and one way they do that is sort of by defining all people who are working and all sex workers, all people who are working in prostitution as sex trafficking victims when they make up these stats. So, it sort of sounds like it's this huge problem and then when you actually sort of look at how they define things it actually turns out, you know, they're sort of totally denying that a lot of people actually do this by choice and there might be some coercion involved or not. But, you know, since I've started writing about sex workers I've come to know like a lot more sex workers and sex work activists especially online and they're very active in wanting to promote the idea that they do this by choice and this is a valid option and that sex work is work and that even, you know, whatever your qualms about it by criminalizing it you're only hurting the people that are, you know, actually involved in the industry and the people that they're claiming to help. But there's a commodification element here because we're, for some feminists I would say more on the left where we're creating markets in women we're creating a market for sex traffic. It's kind of like child labor just sort of things that should not be sold type of issue which you can hear from the left too and then of course the idea that as soon as you get into it on the sale side, on the choice side you're now trafficking in illicit wear so why don't we just ban, I mean we do this a lot but we don't allow sales of organs for example so we just ban it because it's commodifying something that shouldn't be commodified. But I think it's kind of best to look at it kind of like we look at the drug trade which I think a lot of people will understand with the drug trade that maybe you don't want people doing certain drugs but especially that criminalizing them just ends up and putting them on the block market just ends up leading to more violence and ends up leading to a lot of police abuse and ends up leading to people in jail that maybe shouldn't be, that could just be, you know, so I think when you, people see that with drugs and I think it's sort of the same thing with prostitution even if you, I mean obviously we want to stop sex trafficking but part of the reason that's hard is because all prostitution even the people that are willingly engaging in it has to be sort of clandestine and underground because it's all illegal so if that was legal then it'd be much easier actually to root out the illegal, the people who are doing things illegally and actually, you know, trafficking people into this against their consent. Because that would be still illegal but you don't sex trafficking of course would still be illegal, you know, like forcing anyone into the sex trade, you know, trafficking, you know, selling underage people would still obviously be illegal and I think it'd be easier to find and punish those people if you weren't criminalizing, you know, adults that were consensually paying to have sex with one another. But I was thinking more on the lines of critics of marketplaces in general like sweatshops like the problem here is these people feel like they have to do this and there's something non-voluntary about the choice and the conditions that they're in which is a much more left coming from the left type of person. And obviously I disagree with that and most libertarians would but again I'm not necessarily interested in convincing those people that they're wrong in that in that view, I mean, I think that there is no convincing some people in that and they're going to think that no matter what and so I want to, you know, say that okay fine, like try to end this as a practice but in the meantime as a means of harm reduction, you know, making it illegal makes life more dangerous, makes life conditions more dangerous, makes life more exploitative for the people who they think are forced into this industry. So at least, you know, removing the state sort of barrier there. You keep saying, you know, maybe we can we don't necessarily see this as correct in a moral sense or we don't need to, you know, endorse the behavior but the making it illegal is worse makes things worse and we could take that step without going to the additional step of endorsement and that's the issue that I see a lot of people questioning about certain aspects, certain you know, sub-sex within libertarianism that there's this they see this idea that by making things legal by say, you know, ending the war on drugs or ending illegal prostitution that we are endorsing it that this represents kind of a stamp of approval on these behaviors and at the same time you see some people who identify as libertarian kind of taking that position too and saying yes, like we ought not to judge it's not just that we shouldn't the state shouldn't prohibit these behaviors taking drugs having sex for money whatever else but that we as a society should embrace them, should not look down upon them should not judge them harshly and that potentially turns off some people including women especially from a conservative perspective is that a legitimate critique of libertarianism or certain aspects of libertarianism is that is it true is that something that they kind of have to the conservatives and everyone else has to get over and we need to just embrace these other lifestyles I mean I think you definitely have some of that within libertarianism I think you definitely have some of that on the left too and I don't think it's something you can say we need to move away from because there will always be some people that are going to feel like that and that's fine that's one position to have on this I mean I try not to emphasize that sort of issue I think that from a practical standpoint and from the standpoint of trying to attract more people to a wider audience to libertarianism that sort of emphasizing the practical benefits and especially the harm reduction benefits of some of these things over the sort of like libertine like everybody should you know have the choice to do what they want with their bodies or whatever I mean it's just another way to go about it I don't think one is more right than wrong I think it depends on what your purpose is I think Erin's question is good though because we have seen this thing of the everything that's prohibited should actually be made first legal and then secondly not criticized and this is somewhat of a new thing with this of the quote-unquote slut-shaming type of idea shaming people for being polyamorous or a lot of things that libertarians seem more likely to endorse or young libertarians this seems to be characteristic of which seems to be highly related to kind of more left-wing impulses about power rather than just government maybe but one of the areas where this also seems to me to relate is food policy and nutrition and things like that and libertarians are obviously very involved against the government sort of banning various foods because they're unhealthy or we don't because they don't want them to eat them and I'm like a total nutrition nerd and I really believe in healthy eating and I really think that a lot of the things that people have the impulse to ban I think people shouldn't eat these things I think people should pay attention to calorie counts and all these things but I don't want to use the government force to make these changes I think you can promote certain norms without requiring the government to step in and that's sort of the same thing when it comes to the sort of sexual issues and you probably should because that's the other thing too about this is that we a normal society is not going to happen of course the people who are advocating not shaming or criticizing or judging people's decisions as like a sex worker for example are advocating their own sort of norms of the way they think society should function which might be important in this face of non-prohibition we might need more shaming rather than less on certain things I think in libertarianism or any political group there's sort of a there's a tendency to want to conflate like norms and political objectives and we should be separating them a lot more I think you don't necessarily have to subscribe to certain norms to believe that the government shouldn't be banning things or whatever and I think that's a general the move here I see is coming mostly out of basically post-modern thought it means that the air and I have studied together the idea of looking at the look, the shaming, the people who turn away as being its own sort of oppression and a lot of people have now gone to school doing English degrees having done this stuff so now we're looking at power more than just the state in its own way and that's another example of how we got into in terms of prostitution one way when they tried to combat this was the John shaming, the focusing on the purchasers, which is interesting in and of itself, that being oppressive the purchasing of the prostitute was the oppressive act that's sort of one big strain of thought and with people who want prohibition of prostitution is that it's inherently exploitative and that's why we should criminalize buying sex but not selling it that's sort of supposed to be the new compassionate way to think about it this conflation of we've got norms on the one hand that may or may not be correct but if they are correct they need to be enforced in some way and then the conflation of that need for societal norms with the state seems to be the, I mean we've brought this up a lot on the podcast going back to our very first one on the difference between society and state this seems to be one of kind of, it's shocking that it isn't insight that people don't seem to grasp it as much but it seems to be one of the insights of libertarianism is that these things aren't the same thing and that there's a world of difference between saying we are going to look down upon you for this behavior or we're going to encourage you to do something different or we're gonna, I mean outright ostracize you or not want you around you know take it to this really high level but that there's an extraordinary difference between that and the move that so many on the left and right seem willing to make of taking even the most minor you know we don't think you should have a large soda with your lunch and turning that into a permission for the state to use violence against you just we're taking all of our norms and injecting really awful violence into them and it's shocking that we just we can't seem to recognize that and so we end up in these situations where I don't like this person doing this thing with this other person so I want to hold a gun to their face to make them stop right and one of my hopes is that there are a lot of women who identify with some of the you know goals or projects of mainstream feminism right now in that some of these different things should be you know promoted that we shouldn't be letting that people shouldn't be spreading pictures of their exes naked online or that street harassment is bad or whatever you know that we should you know teach young people about sexual consent but without you know like you said without stepping in and bringing the power of the state to enforce those norms and I think that there probably are a lot of people out there who would want to you know be involved in who would agree with libertarians on that but who just don't see libertarianism as a philosophy that embraces those issues at all so when you talk about some of the young people and then bringing in all these different things it's cool I don't discourage I think there's a lot of people who will also say there's no room for libertarian to talk about these sort of ancillary issues and you know building norms and you know non-state oppressiveness but I think talking about it is fine and it's really kind of a credit to the younger libertarians that they are embracing this sort of stuff that it is broadening interest in the movement it's just important to draw lines about what is kind of a political goal what is inherent to libertarianism and what is just something that we can bring a libertarian viewpoint which is kind of how I look at feminism is like I can bring a libertarian viewpoint to feminism or I can bring a feminist viewpoint to libertarianism but they're not you know inherently connected but I think at the same time you've got this situation where because we're embedded in the society that so often doesn't distinguish the norm issue from the state and law and violence issue that yes the that there's it can turn off the feminists from libertarianism because they are they want to see the state take action but at the same time you said that you know there are libertarians who say we shouldn't talk about these ancillary issues and I think they're I think they're largely wrong but I think that in their defense when you are spending all of your time in a society where the political conversation almost always takes the form of this sort of thing should meet with disapproval therefore law against it you're kind of primed to see any discussion about disapproval or approval as a proxy for a conversation about whether we should have state laws or not and so when you talk about you know street harassment if libertarian states and we shouldn't you know women being harassed on the street probably isn't okay there's a sense when like what if you're talking about that then what you mean is we need to have cops out there locking guys up I mean I think that's one of the issues where it's kind of important it's just it's an area where libertarians can inject themselves into the conversation so when that's the thing that feminists were all talking about and then I saw some of the you know the younger libertarian women I know who have their blogs thoughts on liberty one of them you know writing about it and stepping in and saying like here's a reason why you might want to think about not criminalizing this and here are alternatives and the fact that they they mean they could just ignore it because that's not an issue but you know because they addressed it then it is presenting that issue that hey we acknowledge this is a thing that we also think is bad and we would also like to you know offer an alternative way to look at it and I think I mean that's just one issue but I think in a lot of areas there's there's a good way that libertarian libertarian feminists can insert themselves into the conversation just in presenting and trying to break that idea that there is just there's one way to if something's bad then criminalize it and then that's the way to look at things I mean I think it's one of my goals is to try to insert the libertarian view into that conversation and one of the by capitalizing when people are already talking about you know oh yeah one of the things that you've written about too which is all this on the same topic about complaining state laws with norms or things that shouldn't be laws is of course censorship and in particular we've seen it with like the recent UK porn censorship laws and things like that which but which is again this weird confluence of the censorship coming from the left and some of them being self-described feminists and also coming from the prudishness of the right together and working together so talk a little bit about those laws and what they do. Yeah I mean I think it's actually shocking how much you see people sort of embracing a desire to sort of ban offensive speech ban hate speech ban which you know is defined as anything that's sort of you know racist or sexist or homophobic or transphobic and it's there's a tendency to kind of be like well maybe we're just sort of like blowing this up because you hear about these extraordinary cases from colleges or whatever but I don't know I think everyone I talk to is just like wow I'm really starting to think that this isn't just a thing of the media sort of blowing this up but there really is a sort of change on college campuses and amongst like younger thought that this is a legit and it's not it's yeah it's on the left it's on the right it's sort of across the board Do you have any idea why that is I mean it's certainly when I was in school and I mean Trevor and I were did our undergraduate work at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado which is Berkeley of that I mean yeah it's not it's not exactly like the most libertarian place you could find in the country but I don't recall much of this kind of we got to stop the microaggressions and we have to you know ban all this stuff and no one can be offended it just didn't seem in the air so I'm assuming that this is more of a recent phenomenon and if so why what's wrong with kids today I totally just see you know like what made a cut but a thin air theory here is that I mean you have a lot of people who didn't see and then you know I was very young but I still kind of know a little bit about the 90s college atmosphere with the political correctness in the atmosphere of speech codes on college campuses and Oberlin tried to do or not Oberlin and you know tried to do this sort of affirmative consent thing that we're seeing now I think you see a lot of that coming back from people who didn't not only didn't live through it the first time but have no or so far moved for it that they don't remember the excesses of it and how it went too far and kind of became a laughing stock and backfired and you also have people who have only you know kind of had a democrat and power and have seen sort of gay marriage I mean since 2004 since you know all the gay marriage decisions and we had Bush and it kind of seemed like you know if you were on the side of those liberal social values then you were losing and all of a sudden it's been on the upswing and so we have young people who've only seen it and they think things are only gonna get you know Obama was elected and things are only gonna get better so it's like it's a lot of hubris involved in thinking okay now we're on the right side of history and now like we know what's correct and we'll just ban these things and it'll be fine because you know we're never gonna be on the wrong side again but I mean that's one of my next time you're out of power it will be used against you well you already see I mean then you already see cops campaigning to get themselves protected by hate speech laws really that actually happened yeah and they've been charged under hate crime for anti cop sentiment and by the NYPD for someone spring NYPD sucks maybe they're charged with a hate crime yeah yeah and then there's some they're trying to get under federal hate speech laws I think as cop does a protected class too so you see that if you like create that can if you create these laws for the state to use then obviously people are gonna use them in all sorts of ways and you're not gonna approve of all of them and that's the reason not to do it well everyone becomes a member of a group in a certain way and then it's and then it's about protecting your group via laws I know that the solution now to your group whatever it is cops redheads which is a particularly oppressed class I must say yes but one does not deserve respect libertarians whatever your group is you just got to get that put into the law so now it's illegal to criticize you because there's something uniquely bad about criticizing you which I think is a again another thing we haven't really touched on about maybe some other reason that feminism in his historically at least since the 70's I'll say although of course three of the big founding members libertarians or of course women I ran Rose Wilder Lane and Isabella Patterson but but in with the wave of feminism one of the reasons that possibly it tends to the left is because it's it likes interest group politics it views women as an interest group and is there anything about that that libertarians can address I think in terms of women being an interest group as opposed to just another rights another individual's rights just like men so therefore we're all equal as opposed to looking at for special privileges I think the only thing is that you know what what you said the latter part of what you said is obviously true that we should look at people as different special interest groups and you know and there's a desire among libertarians to not do that and to just you know look at you know women and men or whoever all together and how it affects them but that doesn't mean that some issues that affect women more aren't proper areas of concern for libertarians like you know reproductive issues or or like sex work you know and I think that because these aren't necessarily women being a special interest group they're just they're groups that everyone should care about because their interest is of their instances of the state using coercion and you know they're they're so they're things that men and women can come together on without the give them as special women's interest groups so I think there'd be a danger to think of them like that just people caring about rights and yeah and responsibility and it's sort of broadening the scope of yeah things that traditionally maybe the libertarians have been but I don't think there's any reason they haven't been other than they just sort of haven't been they haven't been enough people to push them in there but on this topic of groups and oppressed groups I mean it is the case that historically women as a group have been fairly oppressed and in many parts of the world still are to a horrific degree and so on the questions of like censorship of say pornography if they're if they're correct the people who want to censor are correct that it's degrading to women in some way or the making prostitution illegal for similar reasons is there an argument to be made that because the because women were so oppressed for so long that we can't just kind of step away and enter a kind of libertarian paradise of everyone gets to do whatever they want as long as they don't violate rights because the scales have been so far tipped and so what we need is government to enter the picture and ban these kinds of behaviors that are still operating to keep women down and that maybe maybe someday when things I mean this is the argument for affirmative action in college admissions too that maybe someday when things have evened out more then we can lift these these restrictions lift these laws lift these censor sacks and let things go but until things are fair it's you'd still be hurting women even in this free society I mean I think you'll have people make that argument I think you won't have libertarians make that argument I don't know I think that's another area where libertarian feminists would differ from a lot of mainstream feminists but again I think that that attitude is not as ingrained in sort of pro-women issues your feminist politics as you would think it's just sort of maybe maybe historically that was more true and maybe that's been in sort of a message that liberal feminists have capitalized on but I don't think that well I think that one the one really good example that's been in the news relatively recently last couple years is the gender pay gap and that's something that a lot of people say this pay gap exists due to a history of oppression and whether it's teachers not calling on girls enough the kind of things we hear about and all those things added up to the point that women are assertive and they're not they're not earning enough money so this is something where the state needs to intervene what is that what would the libertarian sort of feminist say to that I think that's a that's a good area to point out ways that that sort of thing could backfire because there are you know I mean one of the critique the critique from from either gender standpoint on this is just that you know that sort of thing will actually create you know market incentives that will actually harm women in the long run kind of like some of the anti discrimination statutes and things like that and so when you can find reasons why I mean I'm not saying like look for reasons why this is harming women but I think you know there's a legitimate reason there's a legitimate tendency for libertarian women to look at that and say okay but how is this actually going to play out and when there are those unintended consequences pointing them out as an important function of you know being a part of that kind of conversation so it seems that possibly maybe slowly we're getting we libertarians are getting better at talking about many of these issues and possibly that that's one of the things we'd be looking forward if we're going to change what young people are coming up what what sort of things are behaving is there anything in particular that we should be focusing on that's that's being left out I mean one of one of the things I think we've one of the things we've been talking about a reason is you know transgender issues and I think that's going to be a part of the conversation that we've kind of been not writing a lot on and we're trying to kind of think about issues there and where there might be a libertarian perspective on some of those and because I think that's an issue that's really important to young to millennials can you expand on that a bit like how would what sorts of transgender issues no I can't really actually work that's what we're kind of trying to figure out is like where in this conversation is is there I mean maybe there's not but is there a you know kind of libertarian are there libertarian areas to consider here well it seems because it is something that's very much you know trans trans activism and stuff is very much it's you know it's gone from kind of an offshoot of LGBT rights to sort of its own sort of thing and it's kind of worth looking at is is there any are there different issues to consider and the one that always comes up is of course bathrooms and and again that's the kind of third way because transgendered people have rights just like everyone and so actually here's one of the first articles I wrote for reason was about bathrooms and why there aren't more general neutral bathrooms because we were just talking about that and I was looking at it and turns out that like a lot of states have laws on the books that require if you have two bathrooms that they can't be gender neutral that you have to have one for a man and one for a woman DC actually requires that they both be gender neutral but most places are kind of actually preventing this so I think you have a lot of people who come at that issue are just like places have gender neutral bathrooms and like one of the reasons is because there's these crazy old state laws on the books that prevent it so like that's just kind of you know one small area where a libertarian could look at you know an issue like that and be like oh maybe here's where we can interject you know a different perspective but is that something that we should oppose in the sense of or what would libertarian position be on this because I can see one of the reasons for this being that at a predominantly male place where women might occasionally let's say a gay bar where women might show up occasionally they may decide to just have one male bathroom which makes the women very uncomfortable to go into the male bathroom so that the state comes in and mandates both bathrooms what our solution would be don't do it at all or no I mean yeah I mean what I was saying is we should just get out I mean first of all I think that a lot of places do want to have because a lot of business saying they would have gender neutral bathrooms because it does make more sense so in the places that doesn't know they won't and it won't matter if you should make them just think the state should also remove the barriers from people yeah people organizing their bathrooms however they want I think again yeah the position on this is just again one of the compelling things about the libertarian position is since we believe individuals have rights as being individuals it can have us be on the forefront of things like LGBT issues and transgendered issues for that for that exact reason because well yeah I mean reason magazine has been writing about you know gay rights and gay marriage being pro-gay marriage when way before you know either the mainstream parties were so they have a long history of doing that and I think that's kind of cool that's one issue where that's an example so in a general sense how have we figured out what libertarian feminism looks like what is the approach what does it have to offer I think that it's just a way of approaching feminist issues without state coercion it's a way of it's a way of looking at feminist issues through a libertarian mindset and vice versa looking at libertarian issues through a feminist mindset and I think that with both those things together I mean I think there's a lot of natural overlap between them and when you come at issues with both of them you're inevitably going to wind up in places that are kind of underrepresented right now in our landscape which is very much you know focused on left right divide and that with feminism always being connected with a sort of more big government approach to things but I think it doesn't have to be and that's one of one of the goals of libertarian feminist is to try and point that out Thank you for listening to Free Thoughts if you have any questions or comments about today's show you can find us on twitter at Free Thoughts Pod that's Free Thoughts P-O-D www.libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute is produced by Evan Banks To learn more about libertarianism visit us on the web at www.libertarianism.org