don't be a feminist essays on genuine justice

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Don't Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice Paperback – Sept. 5 2022

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• Print length 248 pages
• Language English
• Publication date Sept. 5 2022
• Dimensions 12.7 x 1.42 x 20.32 cm
• ISBN-13 979-8846166653
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Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BD3DFMMH
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (Sept. 5 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 248 pages
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8846166653
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 336 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.7 x 1.42 x 20.32 cm
• #647 in Financial Economic Conditions
• #703 in Economic Conditions (Books)
• #1,957 in Popular Economics (Books)

About the author

Bryan douglas caplan.

I'm Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and New York Times bestselling author. I’ve written *The Myth of the Rational Voter*, named "the best political book of the year" by the New York Times, *Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids*, *The Case Against Education*, and *Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration* – co-authored with Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal’s Zach Weinersmith. My latest project, *Poverty: Who To Blame*, is now well underway.

I blog for EconLog. I've published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Newsweek, Atlantic, American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Law and Economics, and Intelligence, and appeared on ABC, BBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN.

An openly nerdy man who loves role-playing games and graphic novels, I live in Oakton, Virginia, with my wife and four kids.

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The new Bryan Caplan book

The title has attracted a lot of attention and controversy, it is Don’t be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice , description here .  Bryan writes a letter to his daughter, telling her not to be a feminist.

To counter Bryan, many people are trying to cite the “official” definition of feminism, which runs something like :

feminism , the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes.

Who could not believe in that?  But here is a case where the official definition (which comes in varying versions) is off base.  Many people do not consider themselves feminists but would endorse those conclusions or come close to endorsing those conclusions entirely (I’m not sure what “social” equality for the sexes is supposed to mean.)  Or can’t you be a pretty radical fighter for women’s rights, without necessarily believing full equality (of which kind?) is possible?  What if you thought women shouldn’t be drafted into the military for combat?  Would that disqualify you?  Could Mary Wollstonecraft qualify on that basis?  Yet Wikipedia presents her as the founder of feminism.

Bryan’s preferred definition of feminism is:

feminism: the view that society generally treats men more fairly than women

That also seems off base to me.  If you were a feminist, but all of a sudden society does something quite unfair to men (drafts them to fight an unjust and dangerous war?), does that mean you might have to stop calling yourself a feminist?  Somehow the definition ought to be more weighted toward the status of women and remedies for women, rather than treating men and women symmetrically.  It seems weird to get people thinking about all of the injustices faced by men.

I don’t go around calling myself a feminist.  There is too much in “the other people who call themselves feminists” that I don’t agree with.  And it seems to me too aggregative a notion, and furthermore an attempt to win an argument by putting forward a definition that other people will be afraid to countermand.  Nonetheless here is a view I do agree with:

There is an important emancipatory perspective, one that would improve the lives of many women, and it consists of a better understanding of how social institutions to date have disadvantaged women, and a series of proposals for improvement.  Furthermore large numbers of men still do not understand the import of such a perspective, one reason for that being they have never lived the lives of women.

Unlike Bryan’s definition, this puts the treatment of women at the center of the issue.  And unlike some of the mainstream definitions, it does not focus on the issue of equality, which I think will be difficult to meet or even define.  Do we have to let men play in women’s tennis?  In women’s chess tournaments?  Whether yes or no, I don’t think the definition of feminism should hinge on those questions.

If you want to call that above description of mine feminism, fine, but I am finding that word spoils more debates and discussions than it improves.  I won’t be using it.  By the way, John Stuart Mill’s On the Subjection of Women remains one of the very best books ever written, on any topic, and indeed I have drawn my views from Mill.  Everyone should read it.  He never used the word feminist either.

I also would stress that my definition does not rule out emancipatory perspectives for men or other gender categories, or for that matter other non-gender categories, quite the contrary.  Freedom and opportunity are at the center of my conception, and that means for everybody, which allows for a nice kind of symmetry.

In the meantime, I will read Bryan’s book once it comes out Monday.  I’ve seen its component pieces already in Bryan’s other writings, I just am not sure which ones are in the book.

By the way, I wonder if Bryan’s views on gender are fully consistent with his views on poverty.  He advocates marrying, staying married, etc., that whole formula thing.  But if men are treated so badly in society, maybe in many cases there just aren’t enough marriageable men to go around?  What are the women (and the men) to do then?

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Thinking about "Social Justice" Like an Economist | Bryan Caplan & Richard Hanania

Bryan Caplan joins the podcast to talk about his new book Don’t Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice . The lead essay is written as a letter to his daughter in the hopes that she will reject an ideology that is wrong on the facts and psychologically damaging. Richard asks whether Bryan grants too much to feminists in the first place by treating the relevant issue as whether society treats men better than women.

The book also contains criticism of the political right’s nationalism and immigration restrictionism. Richard asks about some common objections to open immigration, including increased crime and a lowering of national IQ. They close by talking about Bryan’s foray into stand-up comedy, and some of his other hobbies.

Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube .

Ready for more?

Don’t Be A Feminist

George Mason University Professor of Economics and New York Times bestselling author Bryan Caplan chats with Trey Elling about DON’T BE A FEMINIST: ESSAYS ON GENUINE JUSTICE . Topics include:

• Feminism (0:22)
• Orwellian ‘othering’ (13:49)
• Public school classes are too touchy-feely (18:41)
• Happiness (22:39)

Stand-Up Economist newsletter

My review of Bryan Caplan's book, "Don't Be an Environmentalist"

My first substack post.

Eight years ago, my fellow economist Bryan Caplan apparently convinced himself that there was a good chance that climate science was a joke, and he convinced himself so convincingly that he then convinced himself to make a bet with me about it.

We are now a bit more than halfway through our 15-year betting period, and—surprise!— I’m crushing him .  So, while I’m waiting for Bryan’s check to arrive (and while he's spending his time " auditing " a book by some fellow who claims that "climate scientists lack the causal understanding of climate to make meaningful predictions" but who probably doesn't want to put his money down on Bryan's side of our bet!), I figured I would take a few minutes to review Bryan's book, Don’t Be an Environmentalist: Essays on Intergenerational Justice .

Stand-Up Economist newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Now, I should admit that I haven’t actually read Bryan’s book. That’s probably par for the course in many book reviews, but when it comes to Bryan’s book I have a really good excuse, namely that Bryan hasn’t written it yet!

His most recent book is actually called Don’t Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice  and, well, I haven’t read that one either.

But I did read his post about the book, and it’s easy enough to extrapolate the three-point approach outlined in his post to environmental issues, so here goes my review of Don’t Be an Environmentalist .

Many people would say that an “environmentalist” is someone who cares about clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment. As Don’t Be an Environmentalist cleverly points out, however, polls show that just about everybody  cares about clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment. Only a fraction of those people describe themselves as environmentalists... so that can’t be what environmentalism is really about.

So what is environmentalism really about? I’ll give you three guesses, but if you know anything about Bryan then you should only need one. The answer, according to Don’t Be an Environmentalist , is simple: it’s about socialism . Bernie Sanders, the Green New Deal, the whole nine meters. (Hah! Another metric system joke !)

From here the book races merrily downstream to its inevitable conclusion. Bryan deftly synthesizes the voluminous research showing that socialism negatively impacts economic growth rates, and then argues that when it comes to intergenerational equity, well, as Robert Lucas put it, “Once you start thinking about growth, it’s hard to think about anything else.” (Presumably Lucas never tried thinking about socialism!) And that, in short is why you shouldn't be an environmentalist.

Bryan’s approach in his books—redefine a term, and then attack it—is so powerful that it’s practically Orwellian. Read Don’t Be an Environmentalist and you too may be tempted to squander the legacy of Julian Simon by betting against climate science. Read Don’t Be a Feminist and you too may start to see all the ways that men are mistreated in movies like Legally Blonde . (Recall that Professor Callahan has the hots for the Reese Witherspoon character... so she gets a prestigious internship! Too bad Dorky David Kidney isn’t so lucky.)

Speaking of Don’t Be a Feminist , Bryan’s approach in the title essay is to write a letter to his daughter, so I figured I would also post some thoughts for her (and for Bryan's other children).

Dear child of Bryan:

Many people don’t seem to care all that much about anything outside of a pretty small circle of family, friends, and maybe a football team. What I like about your father is that he does show extra concern for something else: he cares about ideas . We might even redefine an existing word---something your father loves to do!---and call him an idealist .

Unfortunately, his supply of interesting ideas is sometimes swamped by his desire for attention, and in those moments he becomes a troll. That’s what happened with Don’t Be a Feminist , and I fear that it’s happening again with Don’t Be an Environmentalist .

Now, a commonsense definition of an environmentalist is someone who shows extra concern for the environment, just like a feminist is someone who shows extra concern for girls and women, just like a child welfare advocate is someone who shows extra concern for children.

By contrast, Bryan’s definitional approach is wackadoodle. In  Don’t Be a Feminist , he asserts that a feminist is someone who thinks society is “less fair” to women than to men, which suggests—for example—that a child welfare advocate must be someone who thinks that society is “less fair” to children than to grown-ups (whatever than means). If he didn’t come right out in Don’t Be an Environmentalist and define environmentalists to be socialists, my guess would be that he’d define them as people who think that society is “less fair” to penguins than to people (again, whatever that means).

Heaven knows what will happen if, in his push against conventional wisdom ,  he gets around to looking into whether society is or is not “less fair” to Jews than to gentiles. Perhaps his next  next  book will be called Don’t Worry about Anti-Semitism .

Part of what’s disappointing here is that an idealist like your father should have more respect for ideas. Trolls take up time and attention that could be better devoted elsewhere.

But there’s a deeper source of disappointment here, namely that he should have more respect for people who care about the environment, or more generally for people who care about things beyond family, friends, and football. Such people deserve to be celebrated, even if the subject of their attention is something as small as—oh, I don’t know— public choice theory . They are trying to make the world a better place.

I hope you turn out to be one of those people, but in any case I wish you the best of luck. Feel free to reach out to me anytime, and if our paths cross after my bet with your father ends in 2030, well, lunch is on me!

PS. If you like this post, please consider joining or supporting Clean The Darn Air , the clean-air-and-climate ballot measure effort I’m part of in Utah. This state has some pretty lousy local air pollution problems, so our proposal is to put $100m a year into local clean air programs, eliminate the state sales tax on grocery store food, and pay for it all with a modest tax on the fossil fuels that are the main source of local air pollution and global climate change. “Tax pollution instead of potatoes, and use the money that’s left over to Clean The Darn Air!”

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Don't Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice Edición Kindle

• Número de páginas 228 páginas
• Idioma Inglés
• Notas adhesivas En Kindle Scribe
• Fecha de publicación 4 Septiembre 2022
• Tamaño del archivo 934 KB
• Page Flip Activado
• Word Wise Activado
• Tipografía mejorada Activado
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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BD3C8KJM
• Fecha de publicación ‏ : ‎ 4 Septiembre 2022
• Idioma ‏ : ‎ Inglés
• Tamaño del archivo ‏ : ‎ 934 KB
• Uso simultáneo de dispositivos ‏ : ‎ Sin límite
• Texto a voz ‏ : ‎ Activado
• Lector de pantalla: ‏ : ‎ Respaldados
• Tipografía mejorada ‏ : ‎ Activado
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ No activado
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Activado
• Notas adhesivas ‏ : ‎ En Kindle Scribe
• Número de páginas ‏ : ‎ 228 páginas
• nº523 en Condiciones Económicas (Tienda Kindle)
• nº812 en Economía Política
• nº1,563 en Condiciones para Negocios Internacionales

Sobre el autor

Bryan douglas caplan.

I'm Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and New York Times bestselling author. I’ve written *The Myth of the Rational Voter*, named "the best political book of the year" by the New York Times, *Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids*, *The Case Against Education*, and *Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration* – co-authored with Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal’s Zach Weinersmith. My latest project, *Poverty: Who To Blame*, is now well underway.

I blog for EconLog. I've published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Newsweek, Atlantic, American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Law and Economics, and Intelligence, and appeared on ABC, BBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN.

An openly nerdy man who loves role-playing games and graphic novels, I live in Oakton, Virginia, with my wife and four kids.

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