Masculinity in Early Feminist Philosophy

Abstract

In this chapter we turn to early Western feminist political philosophy, with particular attention to Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Taylor, and John Stuart Mill, to see what sort of visions for men and masculinity can be found there. Since Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Taylor’s “The Enfranchisement of Women” (1851), and Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869), liberal political philosophy has been a fertile ground for feminism. These texts in particular offer powerful critiques of traditional femininity and distinctive defenses of sexual equality. This is not to say Wollstonecraft, Taylor, and Mill have nothing to say about masculinity or men’s relationship to sexual equality; the harmful effects of patriarchy on both women and men are central to their positions. Yet these foundational texts offer limited positive visions for men and masculinity, with a kind of partial androgyny on the one side and universal masculinity on the other.