 This critique of “woman” as a unified object of theorizing entails that “woman” also cannot constitute a unified subject of knowing (Lugones &amp; Spelman 1983). The theories of universal gender identity under attack are ones in which the authors, white middle class heterosexual women, could see themselves. Critics claim that the authors fail to acknowledge their own situatedness and hence the ways they are implicated in and reproduce power relations—in this case, the presumption of white middle class heterosexual women to define “the standpoint of women”—to speak for all other women. Feminist standpoint theorists, who claim an epistemic privilege on behalf of their standpoint, thereby unjustifiably assert a race and class privilege over other women. This lesson applies to subaltern feminist standpoints as well. The assertion of a black feminist standpoint, for example, objectionably essentializes black women. Once the postmodernist critique of essentialism is granted, there is no logical stopping point in the proliferation of perspectives.