http://tomatonation.com/?p=677

Cheers,
Ann

You raise a good point with your question, and I unfortunately do not have a ready answer. Let me answer your question by skirting it:

I’m not sure I would call myself a conservative law professor, in part because the fellows I normally blog with at truthonthemarket.com are far more conservative than I. My sense is that *they* should be called conservative law professors, as opposed to me. Yet perhaps, if asked, they would not define themselves as “conservative,” but, rather, they might label themselves libertarians…. Which is a longwinded, indirect way of answering your initial question. I cannot help but wonder if my view of the label of “feminism” is less relevant than the view of 50 people on the street who are surveyed.

In a related vein, I clerked for Jim Oakes, 2d Cir., who sat in Brattleboro, VT. Prior to becoming a judge, he was an elected politician – Republican. Believe you me, he was like *NO* Republican I had ever met, and his views when I clerked for him were far, far from even the left fringe of Republicans. A Vermont Republican is very different from a Virginia Republican.

So it is interesting to hear that your intuition is that a feminist is one who believes there are profound problems with the current gender equality situation that need addressing. I would agree with your definition, though I wonder if it is too narrow. (Even if you believe there are not profound problems, perhaps you can still be a feminist. Although maybe a true feminist would say that if you do not believe there are problems, you have your eyes closed and therefore cannot be a feminist.)

Interesting, all of this. Labels and taxonomy are not easy to sort out.