Nurayan’s discourse of epistemic privilege was at once effective and engaging but also gave reason to pause. While in agreement about the roles of the insider and outsider ( I think the discussion of denial of theory production and taking it a step further, denial of access to models of abstract, conceptual thinking, is a crucial one to have), the problem arises in how to define an insider and how to define an outsider. Who is the oppressed? And who is the one providing comfort? Bringing in Crenshaw’s piece, when there is such intersectionality of experience and people have so many identities, how does one proclaim the identity of the oppressed? And drawing from the beginning section of Wylie’s piece, if the women’s movement is essentially “women in movement” as Wylie, I think, so nicely describes it, and there are so many categories and definitions of feminism, who determines who is an insider and who is an outsider? Can one encompass both positions?

In a different vain, I think it was also incredibly poignant to juxtapose readings about science and emotion, as both concepts, given equal attention and weight, come out seeming equivalently important and crucial to a feminist understanding, when one or both is so often dismissed as irrelevant or antithetical or damaging to feminist ideology. This then begs the question, what other arenas or structure might we too readily dismiss? And thinking about structures, in the beginning analysis put forth by Wylie, she poses the question of “just how important sex/gender structures” are “compared with other structuring principles. So, how important is the gender structure when weighed against other structures? Should there be a hierarchy?