Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation:
The same sameness and difference or a different sameness and difference?
Peter Kwan
The sameness and difference debate in Feminism (especially Legal Feminism) is well known, and most would agree that those in the difference camp currently lead the debate at least in the legal academy. I submit that the racial and sexual orientation sameness and difference debate manifests itself as a debate between assimilation and separatism. With race, although it is less clear which camp dominates the overall racial discourse, at least the more progressive racial thinkers seem to be veering toward the separatist camp. However, in the scholarship concerning sexual orientation, the sameness and difference/assimilation or separatism debate is only now emerging and those in the discourse seem all over the map even among the progressives as evidenced in the area of same-sex marriage. If there are similarities and dissimilarities between the sameness and difference discourses within Critical Race Theory, Feminism and LGBT Studies what are they? So what?