The act of passing usually refers to the ability to be taken for a member of a social category other than one's own. The very term, like the practice, is viewed negatively in most studies of ethnicity. But in other areas of cultural studies, most prominently in queer theory as it has emerged from poststruc­ tural feminism, the notion of passing-together with its associated concepts, masquerade and mimesis-has become a crucial theoretical tool (e.g., Butler 1990, 1993; Silverman 1992). Indeed, this difference in perspective is one of the fundamental divisions between multicultural feminist theory and those strands of feminism that focus primarily on sexuality.