BIOGRAPHY Feminism Individualist Anarchism Miscellaneous

August 2001

Wendy McElroy is the author of XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography [11K excerpt] (St. Martin's Press,1995), Sexual Correctness: The Gender-Feminist Attack on Women, [23K excerpt] (McFarland, 1996), The Reasonable Woman: A Guide to Intellectual Survival [30K Excerpt] (Prometheus Books, 1998), and Queen Silver: The Godless Girl (Prometheus Books, 2000), and Individualist Feminism of the Nineteenth Century [37K excerpt] (McFarland, 2001).  Her most recent book is a new anthology, Liberty for Women, (Ivan R. Dee, 2002). Her book on prostitution, Le Gambe Della Liberta, has just been published in Italian by the publisher Leonardo Facco.  The books are available through the publishers, or through online stores such as Amazon Books.

She is the editor of Freedom, Feminism and the State (1st ed., Cato, 1983; 2nd ed., Holmes & Meier, 1991), which provides a historical overview of individualist feminism in America. A portion of the Preface is provided to render a better sense of this tradition and where it fits in with the more general feminist movement. Individualist Feminism: Part One, and Individualist Feminism: Part Two

McElroy has also compiled Index to Liberty: 1881-1908, a comprehensive index to Benjamin Tucker's 19th century periodical, which can be accessed through the Memory Hole Website -- under the category of individualist anarchism. Bibliographic Essay to Individualist Feminism is also located on this site. Her recent work, The Debates of Liberty [41K excerpt], is expected to be issued by Lexington Books (Rowman and Littlefield).

She is a weekly columnist for FoxNews.com, writing under the title "The ifeminist" -- a column that is widely reposted on the Internet.  She is the editor of the feminist website ifeminists.com which grows by approximately 10% each month.  McElroy is also a research fellow at the Independent Institute, and contributing editor to Ideas on Liberty (formerly The Freeman), The New Libertarian, Free Inquiry, and Liberty magazines.  Her writing has appeared in such diverse periodicals as National Review, Marie Claire, and Penthouse.

For over a decade, McElroy was a series editor for Knowledge Products.  She has written and edited many documentary scripts for audio cassette, some of which were narrated by Walter Cronkite, George C. Scott, and Harry Reasoner.
 

From 1983 to 1988, McElroy's feminism became more activist-oriented. For example, when L.A. County considered passing a MacKinnon style anti-pornography ordinance, she was one of two people to go on record at the first hearing as opposing the measure. At the invitation of the ACLU, flew to Madison, Wisconsin to debate MacKinnon on the ordinances; Ms. MacKinnon canceled giving ten minutes notice.

During this period, most of her feminist writing appeared in newspapers, newsletters -- such as The Voluntaryist, which she edited on occasion -- and other small periodicals. McElroy also appeared in scholarly journals, such as Literature of Liberty from the Institute for Humane Studies, and was anthologized in several publications, including Equal Opportunities from the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, England. These diverse publications reflect her conviction that feminists must publish in both the popular and scholarly world to be taken seriously.

Next her research and writing concentrated on the rights and realities of sex workers. Although she has never been a sex worker, she has lived on the streets and knows the hard choices many women have to face to stay alive She became a contributing editor and a contributor to Liberty magazine. Her articles in Liberty are frequently reprinted, including in the anthology Free Speech (Greenhaven Press, 1994) and Date Rape (Greenhaven, 1998).

In September, 1995, St. Martin's Press published XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography -- now in paperback -- which was a finalist for the Mencken Awards. A more scholarly work Sexual Correctness: The Gender-Feminist Attack on Women issued from McFarland and Company in September 1996. The Reasonable Woman: A Guide to Intellectual Survival appeared In April, 1998 from Prometheus Books. Queen Silver: The Godless Girl, a biography of an early 20th-century feminist and atheist, was published in 2000, also from Prometheus.  Individualist Feminists of the Nineteenth Century was published this year (2001) from McFarland.

Finally, completing the circle, a new anthology of individualist feminism -- Liberty for Women -- was released in 2002 from Ivan R. Dee, Publisher (division of Rowman and Littlefield).

Her most recent venture has been as editor of the popular individualist-feminist web portal, www.ifeminists.com, for which she compiles a weekly newsletter and writes a weekly column.  Her columns appear weekly on FoxNews.com.

A member of the Association of Libertarian Feminists and of the Feminist for Free Expression Speaker's Bureau, she is available for lectures. Most recently she appeared at Europe: The Last Leviathan? in Milan, Italy, and with Kathleen Barry at Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia.  Other lectures include the Hamline Historical Society in Minnesota, and Union College in Schenectady. Wendy has appeared on numerous television programs, including a spot for XXX on CNN, and on numerous radio programs, including an hour long interview on National Public Radio which is available on this site.
 

As one of the three founding members of the Voluntaryist, she acted as an editor of the newsletter and regular contributor to it in early years. Her pamphlet Demystifying the State is available separately or in book form in Neither Bullets Nor Ballots: Essays on Voluntaryism through the Voluntaryist.  Most recently she collaborated with fellow voluntaryist Carl Watner on Dissenting Electorate: Those Who Refuse to Vote and the Legitimacy of Their Opposition (McFarland, 2001).
 

As an aspiring science fiction writer, her work has most recently appeared in the anthology Free Space, edited by Brad Linaweaver and Edward E. Kramer (Tor, 1997).

On an even lighter note, she is the author of several Bagatorials -- a unique propagandizing experiment by which a major grocery store chain printed original essays on politics, etc. on the sides of their paper grocery bags, and distributed them by the hundreds of thousands. Some of her Bagatorials can be found in the book Bagatorials (Simon & Schuster, 1994)