What the hell is Conservative Feminism, and what is the Left doing to enable it?

How's about that for a horribly cliche 2005 magazine article title?

I hope this makes sense by the time I've finished writing it.

Amp (from over at Alas, A Blog commented on my last post, asking me what made me think that the CWA (Concerned Women for America) was a feminist organisation. I never responded to the comment because it was something that required more thought than I had time for last week. Once this had been given enough thought, it also seemed to require a full post.

I had a poli sci prof who held firmly to a concept called "conservative feminism." I am not entirely convinced that this was a theory supported by anyone else - in the academic community or otherwise - which held that because we live under patriarchy, any action/organisation which unites women and/or tries to make their views as women heard in the patriarchal marketplace of ideas is by nature a feminist action/organisation. This lead to the necessity of having the term "conservative feminism" to describe women who's views didn't fit within the rubric of more typical, 'left-wing' feminism, by virtue of being against things like abortion, same-sex marriage, children outside of marriage.

(The CWA, as one of its primary points, stands against the UN having any control over the US government's policies on anything, yet they want God* to have dominion over the country and bring it back to its Biblical values.)

This idea of "conservative feminism" seems logical enough. Which is unfortunate. It's unfortunate because it buys into the post-modern narrative break-down which allows all perspectives to have equal value in the so-called ideas marketplace. It's unfortunate because that's the bad version of moral relativism. And that's unfortunate, because it means that we're allowing conservative feminists to argue both sides of the moral relativism coin, and they're getting away with it.

I also took a Feminine & Feminist Ethics class back in my poli sci days. Feminine ethics (or the "ethics of care") are based on that whole woman/mother thing, whereas feminist ethics are based on that whole feminism/the personal is political thing. There is a necessary distinction.

The CWA and organisations like it are able to couch feminine ethics in the guise of feminist ethics because the left has allowed feminism to be broadened so extensively to end its post-1970's demonisation that we willingly allow third-wave feminism to include anything that a woman believes, solely because she is a woman.

I think this is a fundamental error. First of all because it undervalues the contributions of non-women. Secondly, it inhibits the rare but often necessary unification of third-wave feminists.

However, this is redeemed for the time being because the CWA would never call themselves feminists.

*God def. All powerful being who is in favour of the war in Iraq