Academic Feminism and Pop Feminism

Feminism divides broadly into two cultural cohorts: Academic feminism (more intellectual), and pop feminism (less intellectual). These make opposing ends of a polarity, with a continuum stretching between them.

Feminism as a whole needs both the academic and the pop cohorts. The academic cohort is needful so that feminism will have an intellectual vanguard -- so that the snake will have a head, in other words. 

The pop cohort is needful so that the vanguard ideology will be demographically incarnated in numbers -- so that the snake will have a body, in other words. 

Sophisticated ideas originate from the academic cohort, and trickle down to the pop cohort by the process of popularization.