My personal experience with feminism has been fairly limited. I've read a little Susan Brownmiller, Mary Daly, and Betty Friedan. One of my favorites was a book by Naomi Wolf (don't remember the title now), and it was fantastic. She did an excellent job of illustrating how women get systematically screwed by the system, and how images of women in the mainstream media are extremely one-sided (the highest goal is to become supermodel thin and glamorous and all that) and often destructive.
Around the same time, I read Intercourse, by Andrea Dworkin. I found it disturbing. She argued that sexual intercourse was inherently violent to women. Catherine McKinnon makes a similar argument against pornography - that it is a form of violence against women (just like rape) and should be banned. I find this strain of feminism alarmingly authoritarian and a little too willing to find 'patriarchy' (I hate that word - what's wrong with exploitation and/or oppression?) under every rock.
So here are my questions. Is the term feminism well defined? It seems like many feminists have conflicting viewpoints. Are there simply many different flavors, all sharing some common beliefs? If so, what is the stuff everyone agrees on? Or is a comment like 'Feminism stands for X' always misleading because feminism can't be so easily tied down?
Brett