Mill’s Radical Liberal Feminism

Abstract

Mill’s liberal feminism is genuinely radical thought. As Martha Nussbaum has argued, he anticipates the central insights of today’s radical feminisms without their crippling defects. He consistently extends the liberal philosophical critique of unreasonable hierarchies into the domain of gender; he rejects the traditional public-private dichotomy associated with patriarchy and defends equal justice and rights for all; he dismisses as baseless claims that men and women have different inherent natures and that each gender has its own “normal” sexual lifestyle; and he recognizes that men and women need to cultivate their feelings and emotions as well as their reason and intellect to become well-developed human beings in possession of an admirable moral character. Even so, Nussbaum and other leading feminists have underestimated how deeply radical his liberal feminist thought is. Radical rights of sexual liberty together with freedom from imposed gender identities are among the clear practical implications of his doctrine of individual liberty as outlined in On Liberty. He and his wife Harriet cannot properly be seen as conformists who remain committed to traditional marriage and display conventional attitudes to the division of labor. They are rather committed to an ideal marriage of equals in which the partners enjoy complete liberty to determine and alter their respective roles and functions as they please while fulfilling their obligations to make due provision for their children.