difference

Although increasingly employed with reference to ethnic, class, and age divisions within social groups, the term ‘difference’ was initially used by ‘second wave’ feminist writers, who defined the term politically, seeing it as a polarity both between women and men and among women themselves. Kate Millett and Shulamith Firestone viewed women's differences from men as a principal manifestation of women's oppression by men. Others see the term as referring more to the fact that women have a different experience of work, love, and family, indeed a different psychology, from that of men. It is also used in the negative sense of social exclusion and subordination, although radical feminists such as Mary Daly see it as a positive phenomenon, difference as a cause to embrace and celebrate. Black feminists such as Audre Lorde have attacked the misleading universalism of feminism and stressed the deep differences existing between women at all levels, especially with regard to access to scarce resources and power, as a result of ethnic differences and divisions based on class and sexual orientation. In recent years there has been a growing multiplicity of women celebrating differences, but some argue this results in a loss of homogeneity in the women's movement, while others point out that the politically neutral notion of difference to a great extent disguises social inequality -both between women and men, and among women themselves.