announcing my new online salon

Hello,

Hello!...

My name is Jeanine Ring, and I am a transgender girl and a "small l"
libertarian living in San Francisco. A member of this list suggested
I join this list to announce iamy new online group, which is a social
forum for libertarians who oppose not only state coercion but also
social structures of repression and conformity. I am libertarian with
some distance from a movement that all too often denies the existence
of social oppression, and I am forming a group for those who think
otherwise. I am hoping that those, particularly GLBT libertarians,
who have experienced the free *social* air here in San Francisco will
feel as I do that there is more to liberty than anti-statism, and I
welcome anyone interested to check out my Salon at http://groups.
yahoo.com/group/Salon_Total_Freedom/ .

* * * * * * * * *

I have recently started an online Salon as a venue for a cultural
libertarianism; a politics of freedom that opposes not only state
coercion but also structures of authority that seek to constrain
individual lives. I have decided to create Salon Total Freedom as a
gathering house for those who oppose not only statism but also
traditions of sexual repression, patriarchy, and authoritarian
religion as enemies of human happiness and the Promethean spirit.

Just as too many progressives desire to use the state to overcome the
social evils of the present, so too unfortunately do many libertarians
turn a blind eye to the authoritarian mores permeating our culture,
and some, such as Charles Murray and Hans Hermann Hoppe, actively
support social controls as an alternative to political coercion.

Salon Total Freedom, imagined after the exile salons of the
Enlightenment, is formed in answer to these false alternatives. I
desire a place for individuals who respect neither heirarchy nor
conformity, and who wish to explore the social as well as political
dimensions of liberty. I refuse to concede social liberation to a
statist left or political liberty to a repressive right, and I believe
there are many others who share my perspective.

To that end, I have decided to host Salon Total Freedom as a
libertarian space for "alternative cultures and spiritualities,
feminist libertarians, gays and lesbians, and those mostly on the
edge." Being transgendered and less than respectable myself, I decided
to do the free market thing and set up shop on the next corner after
some bad experiences with libertarians of conservative cultural bent.

If you believe that the independent mind denies the special authority
of tradition, religion, convention, and parentage as it does the
similar claims of the state; if you believe feminism and sexual
liberation to be kindred spirits to a free market- please join us!
Even if you can only occasionally partcipate or opt not to recieve
daily messages, joining this Salon is a step towards making visible a
colorful libertarianism too long marginalized within the freedom
movement.

This can change. Freedom has more to offer than a return to the 1950s
or the Victorian age. Social structures that channel lives and desire
based on birth and sex are contrary to the spirit of Enlightenment
individualism from which libertarianism springs. Those who wish a
society bred of conformity and convention may be libertarians in
politics, but they are authoritarians in spirit. A free society
embodies the individual's desire for happiness achieved through
rational understanding. Those who maintain class sytems, patriarchy,
or established heterosexism harm freedom as much as "our enemy, the
state"

Libertarianism needs flesh as well as a skeleton. The Freedom Movement
needs to be able to borrow a progressive template and announce; "this
is what freedom looks like". Or should.

I hope to welcome you at Salon Total Freedom, and
please feel free to forward this invitation to others of similar mind.

To join, visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Salon_Total_Freedom/

In Liberty and Liberation,

Jeanine Ring, Salonmistress
salonmistress_jeanine@...