Conservative Feminism is Not an Oxymoron

Hannah Sternberg / March 11, 2011

Hillary Clinton will be feted this Friday at a “world summit” event hosted by Tina Brown, the editor in chief of  Newsweek. This week Brown relaunched the magazine with a cover story featuring Hillary as one of the “150 Women Who Shake the World.” Clinton and other public figures such as Christiane Amanpour and Nancy Pelosi as well as pop culture icons like Mia Farrow and Susan Sarandon own the message on strong women. They embody the identification of so-called “women’s issues” with left-leaning politics. But conservatives don’t have to relinquish the banner of feminism to liberal ideology.

The primary (and most literal) dictionary definition of feminism is “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.” However, in popular ideology it has unquestionably been superseded by its secondary, connotative definition, “organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.” “Interest” has been broadly interpreted to mean virtually any liberal agenda. This has led to the frequent claim that for a woman to be conservative, she betrays her sex; there is no such thing as a conservative feminist.

Such a political philosophy belittles women. It assumes that women lack the intellectual capacity to choose their own views; their opinions on everything from abortion to the economy must be prefabricated by the liberal thought machine. It is also a distasteful blow to the idea of individual self-determination: what a person is, is more important to liberals than who a person is. Individuality is undermined by group identification. The political movement that purports to defend “equal rights” for women begins by asserting that the female half of the population is born into their ideology and is not permitted to deviate from it. (more…)