It’s unfortunate that the writer takes a shallow angle on this, because there’s actually an interesting question about whether there is such a thing as conservative feminism. And I think is, or could be, in some of the ways Western feminism would interact with more conservative cultures – the debates over whether a woman choosing to wear a hijab counts as feminism springs to mind.

But a woman fighting for fewer freedoms for women is never feminism, and there’s a reason that libertarian women aren’t usually welcomed into feminist ranks: Asking the government to stay out of it got us to where we are now, or at least where we were, and that never lead to increased freedoms for women.

Especially if you’re going to define feminism as a question of whether women have power, then feminism even more so means advocating for policies that would increase that power to help redress the imbalance that lead us to this point in time. If libertarianism made an effective argument in favor of less government intrusion leading to more power for women, then feminism would welcome that conservative aspect of its philosophy. But that doesn’t happen, hasn’t happened, and won’t happen, because conservatism and libertarianism has never lead to increased power for marginalized groups.

The lack of intervention proposed by libertarianism is always a benefit to those in control, to those with power, to the status quo, and it’s through outside intervention that power is redistributed¹. Advocating against that redistribution is antithetical to what feminism is about. It’s not that feminism has banished conservatism from its movement; it’s that conservatism has nothing to offer feminism.