I feel like the anti-chick lit issue is similar. As far as I can tell the thing that unites chick lit is that the main character is a girl. And sure often it's a middle class, twenty something, white girl but again, I don't think that is a function of the label. I find book labelling (from a bookstore perspective, rather than a dewey decimal or other cataloguing perspective) morbidly fascinating. Why is Pat Booth in Fiction but Jennifer Crusie is in Romance? And then there are people like Alesia Holliday and Linda Howard and Kay Hooper who have books in both Romance and Mystery and - depending on the store, Fiction too. (Holliday also has books in YA, but under a different name). And why is Christine Feehan in Romance and not Sci Fi? But anyway, the label or section marker is really just a starting point. Sure, I don't spend a lot of time in the History section, so if your book got shelved there chances are I won't see it but that's why books are all over the store these days. That's why there's an information desk. That's why there's kiosks and stuff. And honestly, if your story is about a woman, being called chick lit or women's fiction or whatever today's heading of choice is, is not inaccurate. (We won't even talk about what happens if your story is chick lit about a guy.) So, feminist, chick lit author - it's all good.
Okay, it turns out this is not new, and Sars has spoken eloquently on the feminist label rejection issue here: http://www.tomatonation.com/youare.shtml