Nowadays, the term essentialism covers a range of metacritical meanings and strategic uses that go the very short distance from convenient label to buzzword. Many who, like myself, have been involved with feminist critical theory for some time and who did use the term, initially, as a serious critical concept, have grown impatient with this word-essentialism-time and again repeated with its reductive ring, its self-righteous tone of superiority, its contempt for “them”— those guilty of it. Yet, few would deny that feminist theory is all about an essential difference, an irreducible difference, though not a difference between woman and man, nor a difference inherent in “woman’s nature” (in woman as nature), but a difference in the feminist conception of woman, women, and the world.