Standpoint theory is an explicitly political as well as social epistemology. Its central and motivating insight is an inversion thesis: those who are subject to structures of domination that systematically marginalize and oppress them may, in fact, be epistemically privileged in some crucial respects. They may know different things, or know some things better than those who are comparatively privileged (socially, politically), by virtue of what they typically experience and how they understand their experience. Feminist standpoint theorists argue that gender is one dimension of social differentiation that may make such a difference epistemically. Their aim is both to understand how the systematic partiality of authoritative knowledge arises-specifically, its androcentrism and sexism-and to account for the constructive contributions made by those working from marginal standpoints (especially feminist standpoints) in countering this partiality.
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