What Is Feminism, Really?

Julian Sanchez linked to an interesting post on (lefty) Ampersand about feminism and why conservatives and libertarians cannot, by definition, be feminists.

Julian goes into why Ampersand's presupposition that in order to be in favor of something you must support laws imposing it is rediculous. Good work like always. Hooray.

Ampersand discusses why lefty political thought MUST be adhered to in order to be considered a true feminist. His comment section is filled with lively debate on the basic definition of feminism. Is it simply the "radical notion that women are people" or total adherance to the principles of wealth redistribution, affirmative action, equal pay for equal work, et al.? The idea among the lefties is that conservative and libertarian feminists (Independent Women's Forum, ifeminists, Christina Hoff Summers) co-opt the term feminism when they claim to promote equality for the sexes, but in reality support the white man hegemony. Because they don't think that women and men are unequal they cannot be considered feminist.

I usually avoid gender politics because it bores me and because I tend to have the feeling that to spend time talking about gender is to accord it more importance than it actually has. This is why I don't care about IWF and ifeminists even though I tend to agree with them.

The other reason why I don't pay much attention to right-leaning feminist groups is because I agree with the lefties: conservatives and libertarians aren't feminists.

One of the reasons I think the feminists are so upset is because to most apolitical women and girls 'feminist' is a slur. Most women consider the movement to have marginalized itself by behaving like a bunch of rabid man-haters. They don't identify with it anymore. Most women love men and love to be sexy and girly and prefer things like sappy romantic comedies and playing with babies. They are able to go to any schools they want, practice any profession that doesn't have extremely tough physical demands, work in or out of the home (and more often, both), live with their boyfriends, pick their own husbands, divorce freely, flash their goods on Girls Gone Wild without reproach, make babies naturally or artificially and abort babies. Feminists would have you believe that simply because there are still conservatives who disagree with some of these behaviors, that women are still repressed. It's not enough that we are free to do these things, they should be explicitly condoned.

Talk about ideological tyranny.