In Defense of Individual Rights

11 min readJan 18, 2018

As some of you may have noticed by now I don’t do things to make myself popular, precisely because I’m an artist, and a true artist is not concerned with being liked, even if as a human being that is still what you crave and go after. But a true artist creates in service of the truth, the truth about the human condition. Once you lose that as an artist, and you start to compromise, you cannot be an artist anymore, not in any meaningful way anyway.

And so here are my surely controversial views on capitalism in brief.

I’m finding it harder and harder to express my thoughts on capitalism in such a young, (I say this as a Western European,) and emotional country as the US. Emotional, as in unthinking, and without a long and deep history of intellectualism, philosophy, and even art.

This is in no way a critique the fight for economic equality, which I believe in and defend exactly, but through different views, but a critique on this country’s inability to solve problems through rational thinking skills, and to resort to “quick fix” emotional solutions instead.

I believe in racial and economic equality, but I believe in different methods to achieve these things, I am not talking about “surface” methods. I just have a different belief system altogether, which is not compatible with any religion, and is instead scientific and philosophical in nature. I am of the understanding that true capitalism is based on the concept of individual rights, and that the upholding of individual rights affirms racial equality exactly, as well as gender equality, because one is not to be judged on physicality but by the contents of one’s mind, and moreover one’s ability and need to be rational. I believe economic inequality is not caused by capitalism but simply by human greed. To be sure, economic equality does not mean equal income for all, but equal pay based on equal labor and skills, in my understanding.

I have a very different view on capitalism than most of my American friends, which stems from Western Europe’s long history of religious oppression, specifically Catholicism, and which resulted in an 80 year war for independence for my home country the Netherlands, from Spain and their Catholic rule.

(And long history, by European definition, is measured in centuries, not decades or certainly not presidential cycles. I am from the Netherlands, which used to be Protestant, the word protest stemming from this long fight against Catholicism, and which is officially secular as there is complete separation of State and Church. The Dutch and Dutch influenced Pilgrims tried to implement a lot of these Dutch Constitutional values into the creation of the United States but only with mixed results, since losing their 5 of the original 13 colonies to the English, whose Puritan influence ultimately determined US politics. Yes, the Dutch owned colonies of course, and had a big influence in the creation of New Amsterdam, which later became New York. The road of progress towards individual freedom was never an even one and came with a lot of horrible contradictions initially.)

I’ve never quite understood why the US, (regular American citizens rather, not specifically the elite few controlling the country’s resources,) attacks capitalism as if it is an actual belief system or political system, which it isn’t, (and especially now we are dealing with an administration currently that borders on fascism, and which a lot of regular people apparently mistake for capitalism.) Capitalism, the monetary system, got corrupted by greed, (and I usually liken it to sex getting corrupted by rape, and I recognize the common denominator between rape and greed to be the same, the need for power.)

The actual belief system behind capitalism is individual rights, the right to own one’s mind and body, and the contents of one’s mind and body, and is tied into the belief in objective truth, as in metaphysical reality, and rationality, the belief in and ability to process evidence-based scientific truth. (In reality capitalism is the very opposite of fascism.)

To do away with capitalism because a lot of greedy people use thievery and ill will against others, is in my mind similar as to do away with sex because some or many people don’t believe in, or understand the notion of, consent. The freedom that is supposed to come with capitalism only works if it is matched by a great sense of responsibility. (The rights of one person end where the rights of another person begin is the motto of individual rights.)

Great freedom comes with great responsibility because it requires one’s own mind to self-regulate one’s actions, that is to act on moral judgment at all times, and to be consistent in one’s morals, to not hold contradictory views that are morally incompatible with each other, and for many this is too great a responsibility to bear.

It also requires a deep thinking mindset, and ultimately an atheist, scientific mindset, (as in both non-religious and non-spiritual, as well as non-agnostic,) which is not really the norm for a lot of Americans. It requires complete separation of state and church, as well as as separation of state and economics, with the government’s sole function being the protecting of constitutional rights, which are supposed to be individual rights.

This is a tall order for such a new country, and such a big country at that, as the US, and might require centuries of hardship, as it did for secular Western Europe. (And we of course might not have centuries available anymore with the reality of climate change hovering over us like the ultimate emergency state.)

The belief in individual rights, (in this country often associated with conservative beliefs,) is behind some of the things most progressives take for granted or have actively fought for, for instance; reproductive rights, (including of course abortion rights but also the right to not have children at all and feel perfectly normal about that,) same-sex marriage, (or more broadly the right to marry someone based on love, not family obligation or religious obligation or any other obligation that benefits a group, rather than the individuals getting married,) and even the right to be an artist, (that is, the right to not be motivated by money but inspiration, and yet recognizing one does not have to produce art for other people’s entertainment or for free.) The belief in individual rights demands both gender and racial equality, for it demands people to be judged and valued based on their minds, not their bodies, including reproductive organs and skin color.

Understanding capitalism in this light removes a lot of the negative things associated with capitalism, like corporatism, (corporations are nothing more than a bunch of individuals doing business as a group, and so corporations should never be confused with an individual, even if run by one singular individual,) or consumerism, (which has everything to do with buying a bunch of stuff and nothing to do with producing stuff, and of course consumerism would technically die out the moment people stop buying a bunch of stuff irresponsibly.)

There is of course a lot more to it but to denounce capitalism, based on the US’ oversimplified understanding of it, is to hand one’s freedom over to the state, the government, or to an elite few who influence that government. To say capitalism is outdated or has run its’ course is to have misapplied the principles of capitalism from day one and to have never taken the time to understand it completely and thoroughly.

It is to say sex is outdated or has run its’ course because it has claimed so many rape victims. Sex done right should not claim rape victims, just as capitalism done right should not claim economic victims. Again, a tall order, for the US in particular, and maybe never to be accomplished, but I will never give up on individual rights over it, because the principle is correct.

To give up on the idea of individual rights is literally to give up on the right to own your mind and body, and inevitably as a result for your mind and body to be owned by another entity, usually played off by society as “the greater good,” and often pressured by “emergency states” (the family, or the idea of family, or something vague and uncontrollable as “the economy,” or even something as legitimately urgent as climate change,) that require you to not be selfish, and relinquish your individual rights to a group, a family, a tribe or political party, an authority figure, politically, or even a significant other, and last but not least a religion, (and especially in the days of the European rule, the kings and queens and landowners.)

Funnily enough it has often been people of privilege who have denounced this belief system, usually heterosexual white men, of a progressive nature, who either don’t like the control I take over my own life and therefore the control they sense they cannot have over me, (because even progressive men feel the need to control women,) or they simply have it so easy that they don’t need individual rights, because the political and legal system they live under was specifically designed to support them in getting ahead, and they therefore simply cannot understand the notion of defending one’s sense of self in light of group erasure and ultimately annihilation.

Those amongst us who are actual minorities will have to eventually face that without individual rights we are the first ones to die.

The very reason I always advocate for Individual Rights, (the right to own one’s mind and body and the contents thereof,) is because the individual is the biggest minority of all, and rights should never be withheld or voted away just because the individual does not belong to a majority group.

And a perfect example of this are LGBTQ people exactly, who never make up the majority, (as far as we know anyway,) and must be guaranteed equal rights protection under the law all the same.

The US Constitution was in fact written with the Individual Rights Principle in mind.

The concept of individual rights was designed on the notion of the need for the biggest minority, literally the individual, someone’s whose identity or beliefs are not necessarily backed by others, (and whose needs are not to be in the service of others,) to have a fair chance at survival and life of a certain dignified quality, based on that principle exactly and not the principle of the majority rule.

(In this regard I often feel like the real life equivalent of the character Winston Smith in George Orwell’s classic novel defending individual rights, ‘1984.’ Winston Smith, as protagonist, is of course an alter ego of Orwell.)

This argument for individual rights is therefore especially applicable to women who do not wish to have children, to people in severe pain and who wish to stop living before they completely deteriorate, and also very specifically to the LGBTQ community, who are always a minority group, not just in identity, like racial minorities or gender minorities, who can still have a lot of group members, (black and brown people are racial minorities who are in groups actually larger than racially white people, but still controlled by a white favoring legal system, or women who are the gender minority but make up %52 of the world’s population, and are still subjugated to the physical force of men.)

If not only your identity is not the ruling identity, in terms of numbers of people or a political and legal system backing you up, like in the case of LGBTQ people, this idea of having rights based on a principle becomes particularly urgent.

It is for this reason that legal cases of transgender people, (who are in the vast minority, as an identity and in numbers,) being singled out for discrimination are often handled by the biggest and most important law group in the US, the ACLU, whose very own belief system is rooted in individual rights, and so a perfect organization to handle such cases.

So lastly I want to add that it is specifically my identity, my inter-sectioning identities at that, as a trans-masculine, gender nonconforming lesbian, with a female body and no desire to transition, and bi-racial, and a Dutch immigrant in the US, (whose legal status was taken away over my identity exactly, through DOMA specifically, after having moved to the US legally on a 5-year Student Visa, to study film in Los Angeles, through enrollment in a college’s Film Program, in 1992, at age 19,) that led me to study and embrace the concept of individual rights, (and which also brought me back to the belief system of the Pilgrims who studied Dutch politics in my hometown of Leiden for 11 years before embarking on the Mayflower.)

I have found, in all my years of being discriminated legally and socially, that all the artistic inspiration I had, from within and from role models, couldn’t quite save me anymore and I needed something very concrete and practical to save my mind in the face of the amount of adversity I experienced.

If it wasn’t for my staunch belief in individual rights I think I might have succumbed to depression by now, or total confusion, doubt, fear, etc. So it is therefore that I continue to strengthen my belief in, and understanding of, individual rights, and specifically as a real minority whose very life depends on it.

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My name is Gabriella Bregman, I am a Hollywood-based Writer, Filmmaker and Producer, currently in production of a Feature Documentary about LGBTQ US-Immigration Exclusion-Policy, including my personal story of US immigration discrimination during DOMA, (Defense Of Marriage Act, of 1996–2015,) titled ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights,’ through my film production company Bregman Films.

The 2001 John Cassavetes Film Retrospective ‘Gena and John: A Cassavetes Retrospective’ at the Laemmle Theatres in Los Angeles is a Bregman Films Production.

I am also the Founder of a Nonprofit Film Organization Queer Female Filmmakers Los Angeles — A Media Site & LA Film Mixers (2018.)

In 2018 I am publishing my story and essays in a book, titled ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights & Other Essays.’

I identify as a Gender Nonconforming Lesbian, “non-op” Trans-Masculine, and Bi-Racial, from the Netherlands, Los Angeles-based.

My pronouns are: they/them/theirs.

Please check out my other articles on LGBTQ- and Immigration Issues, the State of Women and LGBTQ People in Film, and Lesbian/Queer Film as well as Queer Female Sexuality and Gender Identity at medium.com/@gabriellabregman

A few titles:

Resume/FILM BIO: Gabriella Bregman (2018) (2018)

2018 Update on Documentary ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights’ (2018)

A Note on the State of Women in Film (2016)

A Few Notes On LGBTQ Filmmaking (2017)

Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 1 of 5) (2018)

John Cassavetes Film Retrospective (2001) (2018)

On ‘Moonlight’ and the Subject of Positive Representation (2017)

My 2018 Oscar Pick for Best Picture (2018)

In Defense of Rationality (2018)

In Defense of Individual Rights (2018)

Immigration Law Explained: The Irony of a Simultaneously Capped (temporary work visas) and Uncapped (family law marriage) Visa Immigration System (2014)