- There's a certain idea where people downplay others' opinions and viewpoints by saying that only a certain group can understand the experiences that they go through. --- “For Said it is both dangerous and misleading to base an identity politics upon rigid theories of exclusions, ‘exclusions that stipulate, for instance, only women can understand feminine experience, only Jews can understand Jewish suffering, only formerly colonial subjects can understand colonial experience.’” I agree with Said’s critique, but I reiterate that while I, too, critique the use of essentialism and identity politics as a strategy for exclusion or domination, I am suspicious when theories call this practice harmful as a way of suggesting that it is a strategy only marginalized groups employ. - bell hooks in [[Teaching To Transgress]]