 The critique of the concept “woman.”  Feminist postmodernists have criticized many of the leading feminist theories of gender and patriarchy as essentialist (Butler 1990, Flax 1990, Spelman 1988). Essentialism here refers to any theory that postulates a universal, transhistorical, necessary cause or constitution of gender or patriarchy. Feminist postmodernists object that, in claiming that gender identity is one thing or has one cause, such theories convert discursively constructed facts into norms, difference into deviance. They either exclude women who don’t conform to the theory from the class of “women,” or represent them as inferior. Critiques of feminist theories by lesbian women and women of color reinforce skepticism about the unity of the category “woman” by highlighting intersectioning identities of gender, race, class, trans/cis, and sexual orientation. The faultlines for fragmentating the category “woman” are thus other identities along which social inequalities are constructed.