This article is part of the Featured section and originally ran with illustrations and a lot of graphic-intensive layout. You can see how the article originally looked in print here.

I know what you’re thinking when you  read the title. A rant about how working  women have destroyed the nuclear family.  Or as Pat Buchanan wrote in a 1983  syndicated column, “Rail as they will  about ‘discrimination,’ women are simply  not endowed by nature with the same measures  of single-minded ambition and the  will to succeed in the !ercely competitive  world of Western capitalism.”

This is not what I am saying. I fully support  feminism and its impact on the world.  I appreciate the fact that I am not expected  to pop out kids and cook a pot roast for my  husband.

However, the oppression of women is not the  only form of oppression that exists. How could  it be? Social problems ranging from gender bias,  racism, religious intolerance, poor education or  socio-economic inequality are interconnected. To  privilege one over another is a mistake.

It is so easy for white, afluent women, in which I include  myself, to overlook this. I have the gift of cultural  capital. Literacy, access to information and a supportive  environment all contribute to my ability to understand that  oppression of white, afluent women is still alive and that  even something as simple as thinking my vagina smells  bad is a type of oppression. As a result, I am able to stand  up in room full of strangers and declare that my vagina  smells like roses, as is done in “The Vagina Monologues”  of which I participated in my first-year.

I think that “white girl feminism” is still relevant. Eating  disorders and rape still occur regardless of class or  race, thus feminism cannot die.

Yet, identity and ideology don’t exist in a vacuum.  I am a feminist because I have cultural capital, not  because feminism is the highest and most true ideology.  Don’t assume your support of feminism, or  any belief for that matter, for this reason. There  is always a reason.

Here is my challenge to you: self-examine.  Understand yourself and where  you’ve come from. When you start see  why you believe the things you do,  identifying other forms of oppression  in your life will be easier.  Your feminist attitudes are a  great place to start.