 Both Dillon and Tessman are rejecting ideal theory as an approach to theorizing character. According to Charles Mills, who also rejects it, ideal theory represents the actual as a simple deviation from the ideal that is not worth theorizing in its own right, or it falsely states that starting from the ideal is the best way of realizing the ideal (Mills 2005, 168). The problem is that ideal models abstract away in a problematic way from realities that are crucial to understanding injustice, such as structural domination, exploitation, coercion, and oppression (170). In so doing, ideal theory represents the experiences of the dominant group only, and thus serves their interests (172). But since ethics is supposed to be about how actual people act, and since ideal theory does not reflect the experiences of subordinate groups, it is not the best way of doing ethics. Tessman’s work on “impossible cases” critiques ideal moral theory on the grounds that it fails to capture moral dilemmas which involve non-negotiable moral requirements which are grounded in innate values such as love and life that cannot be unproblematically compromised (e.g., killing your crying baby in order to protect a group from the Nazis) (Tessman 2017). We can imagine feminist cases of this phenomenon, such as killing a rapist in order to protect your dignity.