What passes for feminism by some feminists is liberal political ideology. That seems to be the overriding theme among the (liberal) feminists whose articles or columns are posted on this board.
I am curious as to what you mean by "what passes for feminism"? I'd need to see how you define feminism to really comment on that.
However, as Simone de Beauvoir documented in her classic "The Second Sex", a woman's position in society, throughtout history, and throughout different cultures including ancient cultures, was directly correlated to her reproductive choices. Yes, they had birth control many hundreds of years ago! And abortion!
You see everything through the blur of "republican" "democrat". However, anthropologically speaking, conservative, or traditional, societies (ie; socities which placed emphasis on the woman being the nurturer and the man being the hunter gatherer), held women in low esteem, and they did not play a large part in the power structure of even a village. Whereas, a liberal culture, or a non-traditional society (ie: a society which considered women to be the wisepeople of the village) women had access to the medical knowledge of what were considered wisewomen and could prevent pregnancy and terminate them.
So that is the basis, and what we see that has happened in our culture, is that the traditional gender roles have been mainly adopted by the conservative or republican party, who by no coincidence, brag about their "traditional values". and that the non-traditional role models, have been adopted by the liberal, or democratic party, which brag about their commitment to keeping women in control of their reproductive choices. So it would be very hard to make a case for conservative, or, traditional feminism, though some have tried, they have failed intellectually, for the simple reason that they address it emotionally (I submit to my husband and my lord and I am proud of it! as the crowds cheer), but will not and cannot address it culturally, historically, or anthropologically.
Even liberals have a very narrow view oftimes, of feminism. One of the biggest sticking points, is working women vs stay at home women. This has been going on since Betty Friedman wrote The Feminine Mystique. Really, what Friedman did, though ground breaking at the time, was address the problems of a particular, and pretty elite class of women - white women with a college education who were forced by our culture to stay at home and raise children, or, felt forced to conform to that. She never addressed class, and she never addressed race. To address those issues you had to go to de Beauvoir, and then, to black feminist intellectuals, who wrote extensively on the subjects.
Still today, both liberals and conservatives do the same thing. We see it with Palin. The arguement reverts to the old one of, should a woman work or raise her children? She can do both! some yell. Whatever. The point is, that's a debate revolving around the elite of our society; women who have a choice. It's a bullshit debate which is why I rarely if ever even address it. What possible connection could Palin's life, with 5 children and working as a governer, have to the woman with 5 kids, or hell, 3 kids, who has to work or her kids dont eat?(and don't kid yourself, many of these are married women, we no longer live in a one paycheck society, though even when we did, only a certain class did, back then though, the middle class was able to survive on 1 paycheck, today, not so much) Well, the answer is, she has nothing to do with them. She's got money, she's in the elite, she has staff, she has people taking care of her children.
This is why, true leftist feminism, addresses poverty, race, and class. Because poverty is an issue that directly affects women, and their status in society. Whereas liberal feminism oftimes gets bogged down in the "stay at home vs working mom" bullshit and wastes their time.
And conservative feminism, concentrates itself on...ummm, well, I'm sure they're doing something.
