Feminist Conservatives

An article in the Houston Chronicle is titled "Oxymoron of 2010: feminist conservative." The author is Beverly McPhail, a Houston writer specializing in women's issues and a social worker. In this article, McPhail argues that successful women on the political right are mis-labeling themselves as "feminist conservatives." Some examples of these women are Sara Palin, Sharron Angle, and Christine O'Donnell. McPhail claims that "female conservative" would be a more accurate term because feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression which is not the agenda of female conservatives. Feminists are committed to long term goals of creating a world of complete equality, including sexism, racism, homophobia, classism,ect. McPhail believes that while female conservatives feel that the battle for women's equality has been won, feminists are still fighting and pointing out where the deck is still stacked against women. She also states that "Female conservatives seem to only identify with like-minded and somilarly positione women, while feminism has long included diverse women including women of color, poor single mothers, lesbins, and married female CEO's." She ends by asking female conservatives to stop calling themselves feminists because they are giving feminism a bad name. I think the author's intended audience are leftist Democrats who agree with her opinion against conservatives. McPhail has made valid points about feminism, however it seems that she only said the good facts about feminism and only the bad about conservatives. It seems to me that she is a feminist who was offended that these conservative women also used the same term to describe themselves. There is no reason that someone can't believe in equality while having conservative values.