OOM, I am a non-feminist, an anti-feminist even, but I don’t disagree with what you wrote. Our insular society has to create superfluous fences and precautions around the obligatory base tenets for the same reason that every other human society does; because the letter of the law will disintegrate if left up to the average individual. Sure, if everyone was as honest about their motives and thought out as you are we wouldn’t need to stigmatize feminism, but that simply isn’t the case. People generally do what makes them feel good while putting in just enough thought as to avoid doing something that will sit uncomfortably on their conscience. There surely are situations in which a woman (or a man) is given natural abilities or characteristics that empower them outside of their accepted social sphere of influence; that’s where you will find the rebbetzins who started beis yaakov movements, or lehavdil, became prophetesses or judges in Tanach. The problem lies in the fact that the vast majority of people do not have the Torah hashkafa to know whether what they are doing is a mitzvah or a pritzus geder, and so we, as a society, have to dissuade the average person from breaking out of the norm because 99 times out of 100 people will lack the knowledge, seichel, and daas Torah, and they will do the wrong thing even though they think they are doing a mitzvah. -IMHO
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