Les ateliers de l'éthique The Ethics Forum A Classification of Feminist Theories

In this paper I criticize Alison Jaggar’s descriptions of feminist political theories. I propose an alternative classification of feminist theories that I think more accurately reflects the multiplication of feminist theories and philosophies. There are two main categories, “street theory” and academic theories, each with two sub-divisions, political spectrum and “differences” under street theory, and directly and indirectly political analyses under academic theories. My view explains why there are no radical feminists outside of North America and why there are so few socialist feminists inside North America. I argue, controversially, that radical feminism is a radical version of liberalism. I argue that “difference” feminist theories – theory by and about feminists of colour, queer feminists, feminists with disabilities and so on – belong in a separate sub-category of street theory, because they’ve had profound effects on feminist activism not tracked by traditional left-to-right classifications. Finally, I argue that, while academic feminist theories such as feminist existentialism or feminist sociological theory are generally unconnected to movement activism, they provide important feminist insights that may become important to activists later. I conclude by showing the advantages of my classification over Jaggar’s views.


RÉSUMÉ
Une analyse critique de la description des théories politiques féministes révèle qu'une classification alternative à celle de Jaggar permettrait de répertorier plus adéquatement les différents courants féministes qui ont évolués au cours des dernières décennies. La nouvelle cartographie que nous proposons comprend deux familles de féminisme : activiste et académique. Cette nouvelle manière de localiser et situer les féminismes aide à comprendre pourquoi il n'y a pas de féminisme radical à l'extérieur de l'Amérique du Nord et aussi pourquoi il y a si peu de féministes socialistes en Amérique du Nord. Dans ce nouveau schème, le féminisme de la «différence» devient une sous-catégorie du féminisme activiste car ce courant a eu une influence importante sur le féminisme activiste. Même si les courants de féminisme académique n'ont pas de rapports directs avec les mouvements activistes, ils jouent un rôle important dans l'énonciation et l'élaboration de certaines problématiques qui, ensuite, peuvent s'avérer cruciales pour les activistes. Nous concluons en démontrant que cette nouvelle classification représente plus clairement les différents féminismes et facilite la compréhension de l'évolution du féminisme et des enjeux qui ont influencé le féminisme. A CLASSIFICATION OF FEMINIST THEORIES Alison Jaggar's 1977 paper "Political Philosophies of Women's Liberation" has had an enormous impact on English-speaking feminist philosophy. In it, Jaggar laid out three feminist positions which were represented in the feminist movement in the 1970s: liberal feminism, classical Marxist feminism and radical feminism, plus two developing positions, lesbian separatism and socialist feminism. 1 Liberal feminists, according to Jaggar, believe in the basic justice of the liberal state, but they think liberal principles have not been applied fairly to women. Liberal feminists support goals like paid maternity leave, equal opportunity in education and employment, reproductive choice and (at least private) daycare centres. Marxist feminists believe, along with Engels, 2 that the oppression of women results from the institution of private property, and thus that women's oppression will end only when private property is abolished. Women's goal should be to become workers, and to fight alongside their brothers to end the exploitation of labour under capitalism. Radical feminists, Jaggar says, believe that women's oppression is "causally and conceptually irreducible to the oppression of any other group." 3 The radical feminist slogan "the personal is political" -the claim that personal life is politically structured -expresses radical feminists' belief that "men systematically dominate women in every area of life," 4 and thus that radical (from the Latin radix, "root") changes in male-female relations are necessary for women's liberation. Lesbian separatists argue that the best response to male supremacy is the creation of a separate, matriarchal, society. 5 And finally, socialist feminists combine the best of radical and Marxist feminist analyses, according to Jaggar. They accept the radical feminist claim that "the personal is political," and they accept the Marxist feminist critique of the family under capitalism. But they reject what they consider to be radical feminism's exclusive focus on the subordination of women under patriarchy and classical Marxism's exclusive focus on the exploitation of workers under capitalism, in favour of a feminist analysis that focuses on the exploitation of women under capitalist patriarchy. 6 Jaggar's categories have become standard among English-speaking philosophers and other theorists as a way of characterizing feminist theoretical positions, and they have been added to by her and by others. They now include many forms of feminism in addition to the initial five: existentialist feminism, postmodern feminism, Black feminism, multicultural feminism and psychoanalytic feminism, among others. 7 I've been somewhat uncomfortable with Jaggar's descriptions of the various positions since I first read her paper in the late 1970s. My initial concern was personal: according to her descriptions, I'm a socialist feminist. Yet I've been a long-time activist in feminist movements in both the US and Canada, and I know I'm a radical feminist, not a socialist feminist. I look like a socialist feminist according to Jaggar's descriptions because I'm a socialist as well as a radical feminist. But many radical feminists are also socialists: Charlotte Bunch and Robin Morgan were both part of the non-aligned left in the US (that is, not aligned with particular socialist parties), and Catharine MacKinnon uses a Marxist methodology in her work. 8 Because Jaggar defined socialist feminism as a view that combines the best of radical feminism and socialism, it appears that any radical feminist who is also a socialist must be a socialist feminist. Nor did she distinguish between those whose socialist beliefs are Marxist and those whose socialist beliefs are non-Marxist, as mine are, along with many other socialists in the non-aligned left in North America. What makes me a radical feminist rather than a socialist feminist is not primarily my non-Marxist socialist beliefs, however. I'm a radical feminist because, first, I believe that personal and sexual politics are central to the oppression of women (notice: "central to," not "the sole cause of "), and second, because most of my feminist activism has been in the violence against women movement. While Jaggar's work since her original paper has discussed the importance of sexuality to the radical feminist analysis, 9 she seems unaware that violence against women has been the central focus of radical feminist analysis and activism since the late 1970s. 10 My second concern was geographical: the more I looked, the more I was puzzled by the fact that virtually no one calls herself a radical feminist outside of the US and Canada, and virtually no one calls herself a socialist feminist inside the US and Canada. I've seen the odd Australian and even British feminist identify as a radical feminist, but they're few and far between, and I've never seen a non-English-speaking feminist identify as a radical feminist. 11 Radical feminism appears to be (and is recognized by at least some Europeans as) a uniquely North American phenomenon. 12 In the US and Canada socialist feminists are a rare breed, and almost all of them, like the majority of socialists in the US and Canada, are academics. Outside of the US and Canada virtually all feminists are also socialists, so the adjective "socialist" is redundant and therefore not generally used by activists. 13 My third concern was with the proliferation of feminisms without adequate discussion of their relations to each other. As the various feminisms multiplied in the literature, it became increasingly obvious that a single feminist could hold more than one position: a Black feminist might be radical politically and might occasionally be a feminist postmodernist (think of bell hooks) 14 ; a socialist feminist might also be a lesbian feminist who uses feminist psychoanalysis (think of Monique Wittig or perhaps Luce Irigaray). 15 The relations and distinctions between the categories seemed increasingly muddy as the forms of feminism proliferated.
In this paper, I propose an alternative classification that I think more accurately reflects the multiplication of feminist theories and philosophies. While there are still identifiable liberal, radical and socialist feminists in the women's movement today, we need a better way to reflect the fact that the same feminist often holds several other compatible theoretical positions. I suggest the following classification: first, a division of feminist theories into activist and academic theories, followed by a subdivision of each category -activist theories into positions along a political spectrum and "differences" feminisms, and academic theories into directly and indirectly political analyses. Thus we get the following arrangement of feminist theories: Jane Mansbridge defines "street theory" as "the fluid and continually evolving body of meanings that feminists think of when they ask themselves, 'Am I a feminist?' . . . Talking and acting creates street theory and gives it meaning. Reading keeps one in touch and continues to make one think." 16 Jaggar's categories, which map feminist views that "provide the basis for a theory and a practice that will liberate women," 17 fall under the political spectrum division which, along with "differences," comprises the "street theory" category. I believe this classification represents activist positions more accurately than either Jaggar's division of feminist perspectives along political lines in Feminist Politics and Human Nature, or Rothenberg's and her later classification of feminist theories according to "lenses" through which to view women's subordination. 18 I agree with Jaggar's position in Feminist Politics and Human Nature that what I'm here calling "differences" feminisms have not developed separate political theories, but I think they have developed separate forms of feminist activism, guided by their own feminist perspectives. My classification also includes academic feminist theories that Jaggar doesn't discuss but which many other feminist theorists and philosophers do, such as feminist existentialism and feminist postmodernism, as well as other academic feminist theories such as feminist metaphysics and feminist science studies that are usually (and unjustifiably, in my view) left off lists of feminist theories.
These categories aren't exclusive. While a feminist can only identify with one of liberal, radical, Marxist or socialist feminisms, she can identify with as many of the other kinds of feminist theories as she finds politically useful, personally applicable and/or intellectually congenial. The different classifications are meant to organize the proliferation of feminisms in a politically and theoretically defensible way. As I'll discuss below, the distinction between street and academic theories is not always entirely clear-cut, nor is the distinction between directly and indirectly political analyses. But while the categories shade into each other, they're distinct at their cores. In what follows, I'll spend most of my time on the two street theory divisions, political spectrum and "differences," and discuss the academic classification only briefly.

STREET THEORIES
By "street theories" I don't mean to exclude theories that have academic status, or theories elaborated and defended by academics. Street theories are theories that feminists read and appeal to in formulating their goals and practices. A great deal of feminist street theory is written by non-academics, especially from the early part of the "second wave" of feminism, when many feminist activists were suspicious of and even hostile to academics. 19 But some feminist activists are also academics, and some of them write theory that's used by other feminist activists. Thus "street theory" refers to the uses to which a theory is put, not the profession of the theorist.

A. POLITICAL SPECTRUM
The first subdivision of street theories places the theories on two spectra, a liberal spectrum and a socialist spectrum. I'm not talking about feminist positions yet, but only the dominant political positions held by citizens of various countries. In the US and Canada, almost all the political possibilities are variants of liberalism, ranging from free-market liberalism to neo-conservatism to social conservatism on the right, to state capitalism in the centre, and liberal egalitarianism and democratic socialism on the left. There are genuine socialist or socialist-like possibilities in the US and Canada (especially the New Democratic Party in Canada, which has been part of minority governments at the federal level, and has led provincial governments in several provinces). But for complicated historical reasons that I'll pursue below, Marxist forms of socialism have never caught on in a big way in either country. Socialist positions in North America tend to be based on radically egalitarian versions of liberalism.
I'm asserting that socialism is compatible with liberalism. I distinguish here between socialism as an economic system, like capitalism, and Marxism as a political-philosophical system, like liberalism. All Marxist theories are socialist, but all socialist theories are not necessarily Marxist. Nor are all liberal theories necessarily capitalist; there's nothing within liberalism that's necessarily incompatible with socialism. Since liberals claim that everyone is both free and equal, a liberal can consistently claim that equality is as important as freedom, and thus can advocate some (non-Marxist) form of socialism. Here I'm using "liberal" and "socialist" in their North American rather than their western European senses. In western Europe, liberalism is usually understood to entail a particular economic system, capitalism, and thus is considered to be opposed to socialism; socialists focus on the fact that their theories are more egalitarian than liberal ones. In North America, on the other hand, liberalism is usually understood in its political-philosophical sense and thus is opposed to other political-philosophical theories such as Marxism. On this view, liberalism is compatible with significant redistributions of wealth, including not only welfare-state liberalism but also forms of socialism that guarantee both liberty and equality.
Political views are more varied and complicated in most of the rest of the world. In western Europe, the dominant views include variants of both liberalism and Marxism. There Marxism and other forms of socialism remain viable political alternatives to liberal capitalism even since the fall of the Soviet empire. Throw in a smattering of fascism on the right and Leninism and Trotskyism on the left, and we have a much broader political spectrum than exists in North America. What's important for my purposes, though, is that radical politics in western Europe since the nineteenth century have mostly been variants of socialism, particularly Marxism, which speaks to European history and experience. To be a radical in western Europe is, almost without exception, to be a socialist. While political situations are even more complicated outside of western Europe, Marxism and socialism remain live alternatives in most of the rest of the world, alongside liberalism, neo-liberalism, and homegrown forms of political organizing, especially religious forms. Once again, where they remain live alternatives, Marxism and socialism tend to occupy the radical end of the political spectrum in most of the world, whether on their own or in combination with local political analyses.
Why does no one identify as a radical feminist outside of the US and Canada? Feminism is, by and large, a radical movement, and almost everywhere in the world, to be a radical is to be a socialist. Radical feminism, however, is a politically radical non-socialist view. Radical feminism is generally recognized as a distinctly North American form of feminism by feminists outside of North America. So while there are politically radical feminists on other continents, they don't identify as radical feminists because that label has a North American meaning. Since political radicalism almost always entails socialism, everyone who would be a radical feminist outside of the US and Canada just looks like a socialist feminist to us.
Why are there so few socialist and Marxist feminists in the US and Canada? Because, for complicated historical reasons (in fact, historical materialist reasons), there are hardly any socialists or Marxists here. Radical politics in the US and Canada are generally variants of liberalism; most people who would be Marxists or other socialists in most of the rest of the world are liberals in the US and Canada. Pretty radical liberals, mind you -I think there's still radical potential remaining in liberalism 20 -but not Marxists. Most socialism in North America is a home-grown form like that of Edward Bellamy and Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the US 21 , and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (the precursor to the New Democratic Party) in Canada. These are analogous, I think, to the socialisms of Robert Owen in Britain and Charles Fourier in France. 22 Marx pejoratively described all non-Marxist forms of socialism as "utopian," and most contemporary socialists (including Jaggar) appear to unthinkingly accept the same view. I think a more accurate label, at least in some cases, would be liberal socialisms. That is, the socialisms of Bellamy, Gilman, Owen, Fourier, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and much of the non-aligned left in North America start with the liberal premise that people are, or at least ought to be, free and equal, but emphasize the egalitarian aspects a great deal more than most liberals have been wont to, on social as well as economic fronts. Not only are such views not necessarily utopian, but parties with non-Marxist socialist beliefs form or have formed the governments of many countries (especially the Scandinavian countries of Europe). Class, that central Marxist category, means a very different thing in Europe, India and China, for example, than it does in the US or Canada. In the US and Canada, "class" is pretty nearly identical with "income"; poor people are working class and the underclass, most people are middle class (regardless of their relation to the means of production), and a few very rich people are upper class. In Europe, class means a lot more than income. There "class" is related to your history -to your pedigree, to put it crudely. To be upper class is to be able to trace your ancestry to the lords and ladies, the earls, dukes and kings of the feudal regimes. Middle class people can trace their ancestries to the artisans and tradesmen of the feudal regimes, to the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie of early industrial capitalism. And working class people trace their ancestries to the peasants and serfs of the feudal regimes, to the poor workers of early industrial capitalism. Class is even more complicated in South America, Africa and Asia, where it's cross-cut by racial divisions, ethnicities, caste and colonialism. In much of the world, Marxism speaks to those who live the contradiction between global capitalism's hollow promise of expanded spheres of freedom and unequal social positions left over from feudalism, colonialism and other hierarchical systems.
We can explain the failure of Marxism in the US and Canada in historical materialist terms -that is, in Marxist terms. According to Marx, socialism and communism would arise out of industrial capitalism, which in turn arose out of feudalism; this was the historical materialist progression of political economic forms. 23 The problem with this analysis for the US and Canada is that we lack a feudal past. Britain was already an industrial capitalist country when it colonized North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thus in those countries that lacked pre-existing feudal arrangements -particularly those countries where Europeans virtually wiped out the native populations, as they did in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand -capitalism arose in different ways. In these former British colonies, race plays many of the same functions that class plays in countries where capitalism arose out of feudalism. That is, race -particularly for those of African descent in North Americaplays the "pedigree" function (remember the "one-drop" rule in the US, that decreed that a person with a single drop of African blood was black). It's no accident, I think, that Marxism attracted some of the brightest radical African American activists such as Angela Davis and Cornel West, because of the close analogies between race and class. 24 While race and economic status are closely allied -darkerskinned people make up a disproportionate part of the poor in the US and Canada -, they're not identical. The combination of racism, sexism and capitalism in North America requires that radical politics develop a different analysis of domination and liberation than Marxism provides.
Marxism and other forms of socialism remain viable in most of the rest of the world because Marxism speaks to the feudal past (or present). Spain was still largely a feudal country when it colonized the Americas, and so the Spanish conquistadores set up neo-feudal colonies in the Americas. In Central and South America feudal systems are interlaced with complicated racial systems and some of the greatest gaps between rich and poor in the world. 25 Marxism remains relevant because it addresses the concerns of a reified underclass that cannot hope to attain political power or equality under current circumstances. In Africa, colonizers exploited existing feudal systems, or fanned the flames of existing hostilities between different peoples to set up neo-feudal systems (for example, the British systematically preferred the Tutsis over the Hutus in what is now Rwanda and Burundi). There too Marxism speaks to the lived experience of people whose oppression is based on inherited characteristics, whether natural or social. Radical politics need a different theoretical foundation from Marxism in at least the US and Canada. Such politics are being developed by theorists such as bell hooks, Michael Walzer and Catharine MacKinnon, but they're radical forms of liberalism. 26 Now, I know that Catharine MacKinnon would deny that she's working within a liberal framework, even a radical liberal framework. 27 Feminism has not created wholly new political forms of organizing and theorizing, however. Instead, feminists in various countries work with and within the existing political forms -which include both liberalism and Marxism in much of the world, but mostly only liberalism in the US and Canada. The radical forms of feminism, radical and socialist feminism, have developed liberalism and Marxism, respectively, in novel directions. For example, while MacKinnon's work on equality has developed the Anglo-American common-law tradition in radical directions, her analyses must be at least compatible with liberal legal and political systems, or they would not have been adopted by American courts in precedent-setting cases on sexual harassment, and by the Canadian Supreme Court in its interpretation of s. 15, the equality section, of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 28 MacKinnon's equality analysis is undoubtedly radical, but accepting it requires a radical revision of liberal political and legal theories, not an entirely new theory.
One final point: in my view, not only is radical feminism in the US and Canada analogous to socialist feminism in western Europe, but liberal feminism is analogous to what Jaggar calls classical Marxist feminism. 29 That is, we can think of a spectrum of feminisms within both liberalism and Marxism, ranging from more mainstream views (liberal and classical Marxist feminisms) to more radical views (radical and socialist feminisms). This allows us to explain why there's so much more second-wave radical and socialist feminist theory than there is liberal and classical Marxist feminist theory. Liberal feminism and classical Marxist feminism are simply liberalism and Marxism applied to women. Most of the theoretical issues there already have been worked out, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for liberalism, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for Marxism. Radical and socialist feminisms, however, make much deeper internal criticisms of liberalism and Marxism that require developing the theories in new directions. Radical feminist theory has developed from the early radical feminist claim "the personal is political" (that is, that personal life is politically structured), and from Millett's description of the relation between the sexes as political. 30 Thus the family and sexuality are sites of political conflict for radical feminists; the liberal state must be convinced to foster, or at least not hinder, radical feminist ends. New theory is necessary to work out the implications of these radical feminist insights. Socialist feminism has taken its own route. It has raised the Marxist category of "reproduction" to a level equal with that of "production," and it has argued that Marxists must examine patriarchy alongside capitalism -that is, capitalist patriarchy, the particular form of patriarchy that exists in the late industrial capitalist societies that followed feudalism. Here too new theory must be developed to work out the implications of socialist feminists' insights and to get the state to respond. Mainstream liberal and classical Marxist feminists don't need to write theory, because most of the work already has been done. New feminist theory is almost exclusively a radical project.

B. "DIFFERENCES" 31
Here we focus on the differences and divisions between women that exist in a given society. If the hegemonic "standard" in North American feminism is a middle-class, white, heterosexual, able-bodied, Anglophone Christian woman, then in this sub-category we get feminisms from the Others: poor women, women of colour, lesbians/ bisexuals/ transgendered/ transsexual/ queer women, women with disabilities, women from various ethnic and national groups 32 , and Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and other women of faith. Here we have women who have found it necessary to pose Sojourner Truth's "ain't I a woman?" question to other feminists. The question addressed by "difference" feminists is, how does male domination look from various Othered perspectives within the dominant society, and how can these insights be woven into feminist theory and practice? The standard tactic of feminist editors has been to place at least feminists of colour at the radical end of the political spectrum. 33 But feminists of colour span the range of mainstream-to-radical positions, just as white feminists do. 34 While in a sense it's always politically radical to ask the "ain't I a woman?" question, this elides the differences between the positions of, say, Flo Kennedy (civil rights activist and feminist, a founder Morrison. This is equally true of the other Othered feminists, such as lesbian feminists (Adrienne Rich and Judith Butler hardly share the same position on the political spectrum 36 ) and feminists with disabilities (Susan Wendell and Shelley Tremain don't have the same views of disability issues 37 ). It's mindless to assume that every Othered feminist is necessarily politically radical simply because she's an Other. Who counts as a Black/ lesbian/ Jewish etc. feminist? While at first glance it might seem that these labels apply to individuals of a socially denigrated race, sexuality, religion, etc., we get a very different picture if we apply the labels to feminist theories rather than individuals. A theory is a set of beliefs and arguments supporting those beliefs; a person does not have to possess any particular social or natural characteristics, other than a minimal cognitive capacity, to share those beliefs. Patricia Hill Collins argues in Black Feminist Thought that, while Black women intellectuals must be the first to articulate Black feminist principles, after the initial theory has been laid out, anyone can accept and contribute to it: anyone, including non-Blacks and non-women, can be a Black feminist. Collins acknowledges the apparent cognitive dissonance involved in calling someone who is not Black or female a Black feminist; she says bell hooks suggests we avoid this awkwardness by "shifting from statements such as 'I am a feminist' to those such as 'I advocate feminism.'" 38 (The current term among activists today for a non-X who advocates an X position is "ally.") "Differences" don't clearly map onto a mainstream-to-radical or right-to-left spectrum. A feminist might be mainstream or radical, and also a feminist of colour, a feminist with a disability, a feminist of faith, a queer feminist, a poor feminist, and/or a feminist of some ethnic or nationalist stripe. Notice the "and" in the "and/or" of the previous sentence. In the political spectrum category, each feminist occupies a single point on the spectrum. She's liberal, radical, classical Marxist or socialist -more mainstream or more radical; each feminist occupies only one of these positions. In the "differences" category, on the other hand, a feminist will occupy many different positions. She'll identify with one or more ethnicities or nationalities, one or more "races" or colours, perhaps a faith (most faiths don't permit more than one identification), one or more dis/abilities, sexualities, economic statuses and so on. The "differences" category is multi-dimensional in a way that the political spectrum category simply is not. (We can think of "differences" as existing in n-dimensional space, where n is the number of "differences" that have achieved theoretical voice in a particular country.) There are, of course, feminists who don't identify with one or even any of these dimensions, particularly those who are on the more privileged end of the scale. A white feminist may find her "race" transparent to her, 39 a heterosexual feminist may take her favoured status for granted, an able-bodied feminist can fail to see the many ways in which the world is constructed for those who are able-bodied, a member of the ethnic and religious majority may not notice that holidays and cultural patterns fit her ethnic and religious background, and so on. That's because one of the greatest privileges is not having to be aware of one's social location with respect to a particular axis of discrimination; that lack of awareness frees up a great deal of mental energy.
"Difference" feminist theorists have shown that male domination (and dominance in general) is always multivalent -that is, male dominance never exists on its own, but is always combined in a complex chemistry with "race," sexuality, ethnicity or nationality, ability/disability, etc. Kimberle Crenshaw calls this an "intersectional" analysis, which discusses the complex ways that "differences" are mutually constructing. 40 Thus we can say that male domination is always "raced," has a sexuality, an ethnicity or nationality, an ability or disability, a faith, and so on. "Difference" theorists have taught us that "differences" always matter, and that they are always multifaceted.
Feminist theorists in the "differences" category have had profound effects on feminist activism. Some feminist groups have organized around a particular "difference" or set of "differences." For example, the Combahee River Collective, a group of Black lesbians active in Boston in the 1970s, authored the widely-read and reprinted "Combahee River Collective Statement" 41 and worked on issues such as reproductive choice, sterilization abuse and violence against women, especially racialized violence. In Canada, the DisAbled Women's Network/ Réseau d'action des femmes handicapées writes policy briefs, makes videos, educates and advocates for better lives for women with disabilities. 42 Feminist groups not specifically organized around "differences" have, to a greater or lesser extent, adopted the criticisms and analyses of "difference" feminists. For exam- ple, most violence against women organizations in Canada have adopted explicit anti-racism/ anti-oppression (AR/AO) principles in the last few years, and have moved to make themselves accessible and friendly to women who are doubly or multiply oppressed because they are Native, women of colour, disabled, queer, immigrants and/or poor. While feminist organizations' implementation of AR/AO practices is varied and imperfect, their practices are much more inclusive than they were twenty or even ten years ago. The analyses of "difference" feminists have been the impetus for this change.
Each "difference" is also both unique and analogous. That is, while, for example, "race" or "sex" cannot be reduced to "class" (despite the best efforts of some Marxist theorists), the categories do share certain similarities. There's a civil rights aspect to each of the "differences," a goal to end the subtle and not-so-subtle negative legal and social distinctions attached to "difference." In Canada, for example, the federal government recognizes four "equality-seeking groups": women, members of visible minorities (the Canadian government's term for people of colour), Native people, and people with disabilities. Members of those groups have convinced the majority of Canadians (and thus the federal government) that their demands for recognition and equality ought to be met. 43 Many feminists consider other groups to be equality-seeking as well: members of ethnic and national groups, colonized people, lesbian/ gay/ bisexual/ transgendered/ transsexual/ queer people, and so on. At minimum, these groups advocate greater equality for women who are doubly or multiply oppressed.
Despite a common commitment to equality, however, there's still significant diversity between the "differences." No "difference" can be reduced to another, and while there are analogies between the forms of oppression and their remedies, each equality-seeking group still needs distinct strategies for combatting inequality. For example, Linda Martín Alcoff canvasses several feminist strategies and three non-feminist strategies for dealing with white privilege in "What Should White People Do?" 44 While there are clear analogies between white privilege and other forms of privilege, different strategies are necessary to undermine each form of privilege. We might use the "white awareness training" or "race traitor" models that Alcoff discusses as ways of thinking of male privilege, heterosexual privilege, English language privilege or any other form of privilege, but they must be adapted, not adopted without modification. The same can be said for dealing with the various forms of domination. When bell hooks invites everyone to love blackness in "Loving Blackness as Political Resistance," 45 we can think about what it means to "love femaleness," "love Chineseness" or "love queerness," but in each case we must develop unique strategies for overcoming the social and cultural derogation of each form of dominance.
"Differences" maps vary from country to country, because each creates different Others. Ethnic groups and groups with national aspirations will be included in some "differences" maps. For example, Québecoise feminists in Canada have articulated a distinct feminist voice; not only does language differ, but male domination looks different from a Québecoise position, given the dominance of Anglophones and the existence of Québec as a distinct society within Canada. 46 The religions represented within feminism will vary, and feminist faith positions will be articulated more or less fully within a particular country. In principle, all religions should be represented in a "differences" map of any country, because feminist perspectives exist in all religions. In practice, however, only some religions will be strong enough in a given country to have a distinct voice among the feminist activists of that country. Jewish feminists in the US, for example, have articulated a distinct feminist position 47 , whereas the position of Hindu or Sikh feminists is less clearly articulated in the North American context. The situation is different in India, which has by far the largest feminist movement in the world, and is also one of the most multicultural and multi-faith nations in the world; presumably there Hindu and Sikh feminist positions are clearly articulated. Othered races vary from country to country, and are constructed differently in different countries. The Canadian government distinguishes Native people from people of colour; the South African apartheid regime separated blacks from "coloured" people; in the UK, "black" is used the way "people of colour" is used in the US. Indigenous peoples may be the majority (Africa) or a small minority (Canada and the US), and different situations will demand different feminist responses. People of colour may have been transported unwillingly (African slaves in the Americas), or may have come willingly (the south Asian diaspora); different histories will require different forms of feminism. Class matters more or less in different countries. It matters a great deal in Europe, and so working-class feminism has a distinct voice there, largely through Marxism. It matters rather less in North America, so the literature is rather less. 48  disabilities and lesbian/ bisexual/ transgendered/ transsexual/ queer feminists may or may not have found their voices in some countries. But every society has its dominant and Othered feminists, and this sub-category represents their voices.
To represent the whole of feminist street theories, we must include the voices of feminists who belong to dominant groups; they too describe what male domination looks like from their perspectives. Since their voices and perspectives tend to dominate, however, they're already well represented in the political spectrum category.

ACADEMIC THEORIES
We can distinguish feminist street theories from academic feminist theories; the latter, like the former, is divided into two sub-categories. The first contains philosophical-theoretical positions that professional feminist philosophers and feminist theorists from other disciplines have used to analyse women's position, but that are generally unconnected to movement activism; the second contains philosophical-theoretical work in which feminist analysis is applied to particular academic disciplines and sub-disciplines. I call the first sub-category directly political analyses; it includes feminist theories such as existentialist feminism, feminist phenomenology, psychoanalytic feminism, feminist postmodernism and feminist political theory and philosophy, which use philosophical-theoretical positions to analyse the condition(s) of women. Simone de Beauvoir, Sandra Bartky, Juliet Mitchell, Judith Butler and Susan Moller Okin, among others, have shown us how fruitful this work can be. 49 I call the second sub-category indirectly political analyses; it includes feminist theoretical approaches that apply feminist insights to issues within the traditional academic disciplines, such as feminist ethics, feminist metaphysics or feminist sociological theory. Virginia Held, Lorraine Code, Dorothy Smith, Patricia Hill Collins and Gerda Lerner, among others, have pioneered feminist perspectives within their disciplines. 50 While of course all these positions are political -any feminist position is necessarily political, including feminist history of philosophy -they're not directly connected with feminist activism. We don't see childcare collectives made up of existentialist feminists, pro-choice rallies organized by psychoanalytic feminists, postmodern feminists working for better working conditions for women in the sex trade. Someone might challenge my separation of street theory from aca-demic theories, and certainly I'm not trying to deny that feminists with these positions have been and are activists, or even that their philosophies inform their activism. (For example, existentialist feminists have had strong ties to Marxism and feminist activism in Europe, and of course both liberalism and Marxism are activist as well as academic positions.) Rather, my claim is that these philosophies and theories don't inform the on-the-ground work and identities of the vast majority of feminists. The writings of feminists on the political spectrum and the work of "difference" feminists, on the other hand, have a significant influence on feminist identities and activism. (In my experience, radical, socialist and "differences" feminists read a lot of feminist street theory. 51 Classical Marxist feminists tend to stick largely to works by Marx and Engels, while liberal feminists tend not to read theory.) I don't mean to imply that academic feminist theories won't affect activism in the future, however. Christine de Pizan argued for the equal dignity and worth of women centuries before there was an organized feminist movement. Mary Wollstonecraft's ideas had virtually no impact in her time, but in the long run they were revolutionary. Simone de Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex nearly two decades before the second wave of feminism, but there's no doubt that her analysis contributed to the re-birth of a large-scale feminist movement. Some feminist academic theories may become more widely influential in the future (most feminists are social constructivists without knowing anything about social constructivism as a theory, and many "difference" feminists owe a significant debt to postmodernism). The activist-academic distinction is perhaps analogous to the pureapplied distinction in the sciences: applied sciences such as engineering change the world, but without pure science the applied sciences would stagnate. Similarly, feminists use street theories in their daily lives, but academic theories provide impetus for new feminist theorizing. Pure science and academic feminist theories are also worth pursuing for their own sakes, as is philosophy; knowledge has intrinsic as well as instrumental value.

CONCLUSIONS
In classification of as many subspecies as possible. Rather, I seek a sound methodology to provide the basis for a theory and practice that will liberate women." 52 But isn't "taxonomic classification" just what I've done here? What difference does my classification make to feminist theories? My answer here is divided into three parts: the political spectra, street theory in general, and academic feminist theories.

A. LIBERAL, RADICAL, MARXIST AND SOCIALIST FEMINISMS
First, I've explained why no one calls herself a radical feminist outside of North America and why only a very few people call themselves socialist feminists within North America. Radical feminism is a peculiarly North American phenomenon, a radical but not (necessarily) socialist version of feminism. Almost everywhere else in the world to be a radical is to be a socialist, so feminists who are radical outside of North America just look like socialist feminists to us; and since radical feminism is so strongly associated with American feminism, feminists who are radical outside of North America don't call themselves radical feminists. Socialist feminism is rare within North America for the same reasons that socialism is -because, for complicated historical reasons, Marxism (the most common form of socialism, at least prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union) does not speak to the experiences of most North Americans.
Second, I've argued that liberal and classical Marxist feminisms are analogous, as are radical and socialist feminisms. Liberal and classical Marxist feminists accept the basic tenets of their respective theories, but think the theories haven't been applied correctly to women. While liberalism and Marxism did require modifications to include women, most of that theoretical work was done in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a result, contemporary liberal and Marxist feminists don't tend to write theory. Radical and socialist feminists, on the other hand, believe that both society and the background political theories -liberalism and socialism, respectively -require radical revision to accommodate women as women, rather than as men in drag. Since much theoretical work remains to be done, radical and socialist feminists have produced the bulk of contemporary feminist theory.
Third, one of my more controversial claims is that radical feminism is a radically egalitarian version of liberalism. Here I'm using liberalism in its political-philosophical sense, as a political theory in which all people are assumed to be free and equal, not in the pejorative sense often used by radicals, in which liberals are considered to be people who want the world to be fairer, as long as it doesn't cost them anything or make them uncomfortable. If radical feminists aren't liberals in the political-philosophical sense, though, we need to ask what political theory radical feminism falls under. Clearly not Marxism, and it doesn't fit any other version of socialism. Nor (with the exception of MacKinnon) have radical feminists claimed to be producing a wholly new form of political theory.
What else could ground it? We might see radical feminism as a radical version of deliberative democracy, or as a radical form of democracy such as participatory democracy. Democratic theory is only a partial political theory, however. There are places where it clearly doesn't apply (the family, hospitals, firefighting), there are things the state should guarantee regardless of public opinion (public education, civil and political rights, workplace and highway safety laws), there are other things the state should forbid regardless of public opinion (the tyranny of the majority, hate crimes), and there are decisions that a democratic people ought not to be allowed to make (invading another country without provocation, polluting the oceans). Democratic theory needs to be supplemented with other theoretical premises to become a whole political theory -which brings us back to liberalism, Marxism or some other political theory. Radical feminist criticisms and goals assume a pretty thick base of liberal commitments, in my view. When we argue that many things we perceive as "natural" (such as gender roles and preferences) are in fact socially constructed, that "women's work" really is work, that rape is an assault in which sex is used as the weapon, we're basing our claims on the equal humanity of women, on the value of women's work and on our rights to the equal protection and benefit of the law. Nussbaum says these are Kantian liberal claims; 53 while I think a Millian liberal would agree, they're still liberal claims. They require that we radically revise liberalism (by, for example, re-thinking what we mean by "private"), but not that we wholly reject it. On my classification, political spectrum and "differences" feminisms are all street theories. However, I've removed "differences" feminisms from the political spectrum category and placed them in a category of their own. The analyses of "difference" feminists range across the political spectrum in much the same way that the analyses of feminists from dominant groups do -their views are mainstream or radical, and they're grounded in liberalism, Marxism or some other political theory. My view differs from the view expressed by Jaggar and Rothenberg in Feminist Frameworks. They claim that liberal, classical Marxist, radical, socialist and multicultural feminisms view the subordination of women through different "lenses": liberal feminism through the lens of gender, classical Marxist feminism through the lens of class, radical feminism through the lenses of sex, gender and sexuality, socialist feminism through the lenses of gender and class, and multicultural feminism through the lenses of race, gender, class and sexuality. I think this view is doubly wrong. First, it puts multicultural feminism at the most inclusive end of feminist theories. While in general "difference" feminists are more likely to include other "difference" analyses in their work, this isn't necessarily true of them all. "Difference" feminists too make mistakes and omissions. They're sometimes racist, ableist, heterosexist or culturally imperialist. One of the most striking characteristics of theories by most American feminists, including "difference" feminists, is how very American they are, how they assume that their particular experiences as Other are universally shared. Second, Jaggar and Rothenberg's view implies that feminist theories can be placed along a spectrum, ranging from the most conservative (liberal feminism) to the most radical (multicultural feminism). But multicultural feminists span roughly the same mainstream-to-radical spectrum that feminists from dominant groups do; some of them identify with the Combahee River Collective or the Lesbian Mothers' Defence Fund, but some of them identify with the National Action Committee on the Status of Women or the National Organization for Women.
My classification includes "difference" feminist theories as street theories, but places them in a separate group. The analyses of "difference" feminists have had a significant impact on feminist theories and practices, but that impact doesn't translate into traditional leftcentre-right or liberal-socialist distinctions. "Difference" feminist theorists have made feminist analyses more inclusive without making them more left-wing or socialist.

C. ACADEMIC FEMINIST THEORIES
Finally, my analysis includes many important feminist perspectives that Jaggar excludes, but that other feminist theorists and philosophers have included in their discussions. 54 While I agree with Jaggar that academic feminist theories are unlikely to provide road maps for the liberation of women, they still provide important insights into women's condition, women's contributions to history and theory, the ways we've been excluded from history and theory, and the theories that have been used to keep us in subjection.
My analysis of feminist theories allows us to see how a feminist theorist can be politically moderate or radical, at the same time that s/he is both a member of any number of equality-seeking groups besides women and a practitioner of one or more academic methods. I've suggested that we classify feminist theories into two general categories, street theories and academic theories, and four sub-categories. Jaggar's view leaves some things unexplained, and the multiplication of feminist political perspectives has only clouded the issue. I hope in this paper to have brought some clarity to the various forms of feminism. 32. As I understand the discussion among multicultural theorists, the difference between ethnic and national groups focuses on history, language and institutional completeness. That is, an ethnic group consists of immigrants from one country to another country, such as Italians or Japanese in Canada or the US. A national group, on the other hand, consists of entire peoples who were forcibly or voluntarily included in a state, who have a history, language and culture distinct from the mainstream in society, and whose society is institutionally complete (that is, a person can live her entire life -socially, educationally, economically, religiously, etc. -within that national culture). Thus the Québecois in Canada and the German-, French-and Italian-speaking peoples of Switzerland are nations within multinational states.
43. This has had political consequences for each of these groups. For example, when section 15 (the equality section) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into effect in 1985, the federal government provided funding for several years to one representative organization from each of the equality-seeking groups to examine the Charter and bring challenges to it based on section 15. Of course, as the federal government has adopted an increasingly neo-liberal agenda since the 1990s, the equality-seeking groups have received less and less attention and funding. Québecoise feminist press whose many publications indicate that feminism is in much better shape in Québec than it is in the rest of Canada and the US.