Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Rediscovered.

• Author: Cohen, Julie

Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Rediscovered. Joan Kennedy Taylor. Prometheus, $24.95. It's not easy finding a woman who's proud to call herself a feminist these days. On college campuses, survey after survey shows, feminism has a bad reputation among the generation of women who've benefited most from it; Taylor notes disparagingly in her introduction that even her own friends and colleagues (presumably middle-aged intellectuals) shy away from the label. And yet, at a time when abortion rights are under siege and professional and domestic demands on women are on the rise, the need for a broad feminist movement is as great as it's ever been. So how can those of us still willing to go by the f-word make ourselves and our movement more palatable to the American mainstream? Shave," quips my friend Lauren (who doesn't).

Taylor's reply is longer. She argues that feminism should return to what she considers its roots: a commitment to securing individual rights for all women-and nothing more. The feminist's political imperative, as she sees it, is to oppose government interference in business or personal life, whether that interference bars women from male privileges, "protects" them in their role as mothers, or compensates them for past injustices. If the state is oppressive as Big Brother, she argues, Big Sister would be no less a threat.

Despite the cutesy chapter headings ("A Funny Thing Happened to Us on the Way to the ERA," "Inside Every Socialist is an Individualist Trying to Get Out"), this is a pretty dense book. In the early sections, Taylor argues convincingly that most prominent early feminist thinkers (Mary Wollestonecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Susan B. Anthony) adhered to an essentially libertarian philosophy, focusing on abolishing laws that denied women their rights to life, liberty, and happiness. Of course, this was only natural in an era when common law prohibited a married woman from owning property, signing contracts, voting, or escaping a brutal husband. But Taylor believes the libertarian (she calls it "individualist") impulse remains the most valuable aspect of modern feminism, and the most likely to "galvanize women into the feminist camp."

She opposes affirmative action, saying it would end up quota-ing women out of certain jobs or making their qualifications suspect if they are hired. She's against government-enforced coeducation or forced mixing of single-sex organizations because she wants women...