Nineteenth-century Frenchwomen authors. Free-loving flower children. Angry women protestors defending their rights with neon posters and hateful words. All those images spring to mind at the mention of feminism. Conservatism, however, brings up another list of images, most prominent among them a picture of a 65-year-old grandmother, wagging her finger at wayward young women. Now try to imagine a conservative feminist. Do you find it difficult? The two words just don’t seem to merge.

So picture me. I am a conservative feminist woman. I am not 65, I don’t have children, and I don’t hail from the Bible Belt. I am a 23-year-old, professional, single female living in Los Angeles, California. I am independent and successful, the natural heir of the feminists who have gone before me. But when I look around me today, I am troubled by some of the consequences of feminism as it is popularly conceived.

For the record

I am not here to vilify feminism, nor am I here to further the us-versus-them mentality that has arrested any civilized discussion on this topic. However, I am here to discuss the fact that we, as women, will be held fully responsible for the futures we are creating for our daughters, just as we are living in the full flowering of decisions made by our previous generations.

Where did we come from?

Many of us would be surprised to know that there have been three prominent waves of feminism in our country’s history. The first taking place around the birth of our nation when we penned a declaration promising that “all men are created equal,” and women wondered where that left them. We must not also forget women’s suffrage also riding this wave. The second wave took the stage in the 1960s as a backlash to the “Trapped Housewife Syndrome” of the 1950s.  “Women’s liberation entered the lexicon; bra-burning became a fashionable pastime, and women demanded the right to choose. It was a time of extremes. Women no longer wanted to be associated with the home front, didn’t want to stay quiet, and certainly didn’t want anyone to tell them what they could or could not do with their bodies. As the second wave of Feminism transitioned into the third wave in the mid 1980s, women spent their efforts responding to the perceived failures of the second wave. It is important to note that this feminist critique of society sprang from real grievances, however, perhaps its main thrust was misguided and had unintended consequences for women. Third-wave feminists believed that the second wave focused primarily on upper-class white women and neglected to address other important aspects that truly separated women from men and society.

What do we make of this information?

The feminist debate draws out many conflicting definitions of a fulfilled woman. If a woman desires to work, then she doesn’t really want to be mother. Yet, if a woman desires to be a mother, then she doesn’t really understand what it means to be a woman. And thus, women have divided themselves into many camps, and in the process, forgotten that what unites them is greater than that which separates them.

I spent twenty years living the life that three waves of feminism made possible for me. I was freethinking, free speeching, and free sexing my way through life. I have lived on the east coast, the west coast, and the middle lands, and I have heard every opinion, every story, and every cliché. However, rather than the “freedom” I was promised, I realized that I, along with many of my fellow sisters of the cause, had just shackled ourselves to a speeding train careening for a cliff. We have been so concerned with shedding our old limitations that we now stood exposed without a clue of how to clothe ourselves. Our feminist forebears never desired us to be men, they desired us to have equality with men; because they understood what so many of us have forgotten, that as women we possess very unique qualities that our families, society, and the world desperately need.

A picture of the modern woman…

Society tells us, in not-so-subtle terms, that beauty only comes in a certain size, that sex can be casual, yet we all need to be porn stars in the bedroom. We are told that we must be aggressive when it comes to our needs, mainly because we have the power to do so. We are told that we can have sex like men; we can masturbate like men, but that at the end of the day, we don’t even really need men. They are the enemy, the unnecessary evil that we must put up with. We don’t need them physically, we don’t need them emotionally, and we certainly don’t need them financially. This is the model of the ideal woman, the liberated woman. Yet, how do we reconcile recent studies that show it is the sexually liberal women that are suffering the most? It is the women that engage in the low-investment “hook-ups” that are left feeling emotionally vulnerable. What about the women who have increasing numbers of partners, that are left feeling degraded and exploited, and so they continue in this behavior hoping to numb a feeling that never goes away. When did we start trading our bodies for a nice romantic dinner? Is this not just a more socially accepted form of prostitution? Money spent, in return for sexual favors?

Do we not understand?

We, as women, carry the human race on our shoulders. We can see the world in a way that men cannot. It is because of this that we make incredible leaders and incredible CEOs. Do we know that truly being a woman means truly knowing ourselves? This means respecting ourselves, demanding that we are worth more than society tells us. Violence against women, domestic violence, sex trafficking, and teen pregnancy are not a new phenomenon, and yet some are still on the rise. However, it is arguable that women empowered to claim both their equal dignity and their femininity would help heal society of these evils.

Desiring to be feminine, to be soft, to be tender, to be a mother, to be a CEO, to be independent, to be outspoken, to be passionate; these are not identities worn to the exclusion of one another; they are all part of what it means to be a woman.  We can be feminine feminists. We can have it all. But perhaps we’ve been operating under the wrong assumption of what “all” really is. We are dangerously teetering on the edge, and someone needs to pull us back. We hold the keys to unlocking femininity at its greatest, but are we Women enough to do so?