There are, and have been, many kinds of feminism. One convenient starting point for feminist theories - though she had precursors - is the 18th Century Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote an admirable 'On the Rights of Woman'.

Since then there have been many feminists, of many kinds and motivations, although in Europe and the U.S. one historically understandable reason for women to be interested in furthering the rights of women is that women for a long time had fewer rights than men, and were also, for example for Biblical reasons, considered to be inferior to men, and to be divinely ordained to be a man's 'helpmeet' rather than equal, both in law and in religion.

Though I can sympathize with quite a lot of the earlier feminism and feminists - such as Emma Goldman, who was an admirable and brave character and also a prominent anarchist - I can not sympathize with the modern feminism that arose in the late 1960-ies, and soon turned into a combination of theoretically very woolly and confused postmodernism and a practical totalitarianism, rather reminiscent of racism or George Orwell's sheep in 'Animal Farm': 'Two feet bad! Four feet good!' or in modern feminist terms as I experienced them 'Cunts and tits good! Cocks and balls bad!' ('you macho patriarchical pigs!'), and also often an adjunct to political lesbianism, at least in the academic and university circles where I met these crusaders for a career in the name of feminism.

And as I indicated: Two things which really apalled me in much of modern feminism, and convinced me that women on average are neither more intelligent nor more moral than men (whereas I, being a male hetero-sexual, tend naturally to admire and like women more than men, all on average, and with personal exceptions), are the incredibly fanatical totalitarianism of much of modern feminism, and the fact that the whole movement has panned out to help a small percentage of women, usually already descendant from privileged upperclass families, to get some privileged job males had, and forced a large percentage of lower- and middle-class women into becoming wage-slaves under capitalist working conditions, supposedly 'to emancipate' them, though it factually worked out so as to divest them from rights they had, such as being able to take care properly of their own children, instead of having to work as wage-slaves in factories or menial jobs for meagre payment, and to earn money to send their children to care-takers, so they might work and be 'emancipated', say as a seamstress or cleaner.

Also, it is a sad comment on the average intelligence of female feminist academics (though it is undoubtedly neither better nor worse than the also far from perfect or enlightened average male academic intellect) that so much of modern feminist theory ended up as some form of highly pretentious utterly loony Postmodern 'Theory' - and whoever can swallow that and believe it, might as well have a prefrontal lobotomy, for this stuff is both incredibly boring and unreadable; extra-ordinarily pretentious; and without the least intellectual or indeed emancipatory merit. Though yes: It has helped a few postmodernistic mystery-mongering women - say: Ms. Judith Butler - to highly paid academic jobs. And that is the only 'good' postmodern feminist 'Theory' has done, besides intellectually darkening and confusing the minds of many well-meaning but none too bright female followers of the postmodern nonsense.