It was a colossally stupid question. Of all the inquiries we should be making of a presidential candidate, of all the questions Michele Bachmann undoubtedly prepared for last week's Republican debates, moderator Byron York asks this: "As president, would you be submissive to your husband?"

Yet, every comment a political candidate makes is subject to scrutiny — and Bachmann provided a doozy when, in describing her career as a tax lawyer in 2006, she told an audience she wasn't all that interested in tax law but her husband told her to pursue it as a career. "The Lord says," recounts Bachmann, "Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands." So Mrs. Bachmann became a tax attorney.

Unfortunately, that's where the story ended. That Bachmann's husband may have pushed her in this direction because he knew she'd be good at it or that Bachmann may have ended up enjoying her career as a tax attorney and thanking her husband for suggesting it in the first place don't matter.

The damage was done: Bachmann invoked the Biblical interpretation of the marriage relationship. That was enough to get the left riled up. How on earth a 21st-century woman could submit to one's husband is grotesque to the naked ear of millions of Americans. The Submission Question unveiled what has become a genuine culture war in America. Not the one between conservatives and liberals — the one between conservative women and liberal women.

For 40 years, this country has endured a social movement that has been relentless in its goals. Women on the left believe the feminist movement is responsible for liberating women from constricted lives; women on the right see things differently. Feminists are consumed with their place in society; conservative women are not. They are especially uninterested in fighting a gender war. That's why the Submission Question could be asked only of a conservative female candidate. It's women on the right, we're told, who want to keep women in their place. Conservative women are anti-woman.

So what to do when faced with a female candidate who's conservative and popular? Why, portray her as a religious nut and a doormat, of course! Indeed, feminists know most women won't identify with that kind of woman. And they're right: they won't. Women on the left don't appreciate that traditional values, even Biblical values, are not at odds with female empowerment. No matter what you think of Bachmann or Sarah Palin, these women have proved this in spades. No one gets to their position by being oppressed or mousy.

For the first time in decades, the liberal feminist establishment is up against something new: outspoken conservative women who undermine the feminist agenda. Conservative women are supposed to stay home! Conservative women are supposed to lead nice, traditional lives: raise a gaggle of children, be subordinate to their husbands and stay out of the public sphere. Why are they asserting their independent minds?

It is a feminist fairy tale that traditional women lack individual identities and play second fiddle to their husbands' demands. And life has changed. Modern women live longer than ever, have fewer children and enjoy technological advances that provide enormous flexibility. They can raise their children at home and still have plenty of time to go out in the world and make a difference — via community work, employment and, yes, even politics.

Despite what feminists teach, women always have pursued this path. Pre-technology and pre-birth control, domestic responsibilities kept women home more. Indeed, the opportunities women enjoy today are not the result of a bus load of feminists shouting for change. Rather, it has been a natural progression — aided in large part by men. It's male engineering, ironically, that has freed women from their former domestic lives.

And that is the reason for the chasm between liberal women and conservative women. Millions of women, Bachmann included, simply don't agree with that sociological assessment. Millions of women don't believe men in America have it made and that women get the short end of the stick. They've always known men and women are equal — equal, but different.

Conservative women know that women's lib was never about equality for women, nor was it about celebrating women who "have it all." (If it were, Bachmann would be hailed as a feminist hero.) The overarching mantra of the feminist movement is that marriage and motherhood hold women back and abortion is an inherent female right. Feminists may package their agenda in something called "choice," but a wolf in sheep's clothing is still a wolf.

That's why Michele Bachmann is so threatening. Not only is Bachmann pro-life, her presence undermines the blood, sweat and tears of an entire social movement that seeks to eradicate traditional gender roles. Feminists hell-bent on achieving faux equality have no appreciation for the concept of submission, which is not to be confused with subservience. The Bible verse to which Mrs. Bachmann referred is not a license for a man to boss his wife around. Indeed, St. Paul implores husbands and wives to be subordinate to one another and commands husbands to "love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her."

The implication that Michele Bachmann is a Stepford wife in disguise was a pitiful attempt to bring down a female conservative candidate who has sinned in the worst way possible: She does not carry the feminist torch. And, yet, she still won the Iowa straw poll.

Perhaps feminism really is dead.

Suzanne Venker of Kirkwood is co-author of "The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can't Say." Her website is www.suzannevenker.com.