ABSTRACT
Mr. Levin suggests that ideology "has several meanings", but that he'll use it to refer to a consciously held set of political beliefs. To understand ideology as unconscious is quite different from viewing it as a consciously-held belief that can be put on and put off at will. In revealing that a category as apparently "natural" as gender is socially constructed, feminism critiques the most fundamental assumptions of Western epistemology, and at most radical, people make common cause with Marxist and certain kinds of post-structuralist critiques. A fundamental premise of feminist scholarship is that the perspective assumed to be "universal" that has dominated knowledge, shaping its paradigms and methods, has actually been male and culture-bound. The fact that feminists are being discredited, erased, has everything to do with the backlash our achievements, such as they are, have provoked.
