There is no better example of modern feminism in action than Kellyanne Conway. Sure, she may have recently suggested that mothers shouldn’t take jobs in the White House, but those are just words. Look at her actions; look at her life!

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Conway is the first woman in US history to have led a successful presidential campaign. While liberal feminists were bemoaning Hillary Clinton’s failure to smash the final glass ceiling, we all seemed to conveniently ignore Conway’s own glass-breaking. She may have helped get a racist misogynist elected, but does that really detract from what she, a woman, has achieved?

Nor can Conway’s achievements be dismissed as the result of nepotism; she is a self-made woman who founded her own successful business. And despite her comments about mothers in the White House, she ran Trump’s campaign (and her business) while being a mother to four children. Aren’t these all the hallmarks of the fabled “woman who has it all”? Shouldn’t Conway be held up as a feminist icon no matter what her politics are?

So goes the logic of a certain long-running conservative argument, anyway. Feminism has been co-opted by liberals, the reasoning continues, and successful conservative women are silenced by the left. Liberals simply cannot deal with the fact that conservative women have chosen to define feminism in their own way and so they tear these women down. However “rightwing feminism” is still feminism.

And you know what? This argument is absolutely right. But only because modern “feminism” has become so depoliticized that it is basically meaningless. Feminism may as well be a brand of breakfast cereal: there are so many varieties available today that you’re able to pick and choose whichever flavor you find most palatable, whether that’s Conservative Capitalist Crunch, Body-Positive Berry or Anti-Abortion Apple.

Of course, there’s no such thing as a “perfect” feminist and there’s no one right way to be a feminist. But that doesn’t mean there are infinite right ways either. You aren’t simply a feminist because you choose to call yourself one. Feminism means fighting for the equality of women. And that means all women: rich women, poor women, white women, black women, brown women, queer women, disabled women, etc. It doesn’t mean fighting for the empowerment of yourself and people like you.

Liberals often dismiss “rightwing feminism” as an oxymoron because it focuses on individual achievement over structural change. However, this is precisely what mainstream liberal feminism does. Take Sheryl Sandberg’s bestselling book Lean In, for example, beloved by many liberal feminists.

Lean In ignores structural inequality to focus on the “ambition gap”. Women can be equal to men if they work hard enough, the thinking goes. Feminism goes hand in hand with capitalism, according to this logic, usefully disregarding all the ways in which capitalism helps create the socioeconomic inequality that perpetuates gender inequality.

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Liberal feminism as practiced today seems to focus largely on issues of your right not to wear makeup or your right to wear a bikini whatever your size. It worships heroines like Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer who are preoccupied with their individual issues and who display a worrying lack of interest when it comes to the intersection of feminism and racism.

Of course beauty standards and body positivity are important, and of course they feed into feminism. But it seems like liberal feminism has distracted itself with the personal while bypassing the political. It has abdicated any responsibility when it comes to effecting real structural change.

Mainstream liberal feminism has more in common with the politics of conservative women like Conway than it would like to admit. Perhaps instead of simple knee-jerk outrage about her comments around working mothers, we ought to take this opportunity to remember that the apparent contradiction Conway represents – a successful woman fighting to dismantle women’s rights – isn’t entirely the preserve of the right.