Tell me what it is that I don't know about you, that I myself did not experience from ages 9 to 28.

You've borrowed the term `epistemological privilege' from liberation theology. In its mature form it means that I must have personally experienced what it is like to be homosexual to understand gays. I have.

The term `epistemological privilege' in its adolescent form it is little more than `victim stance epistemology.' I learned that term from Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, a Christian psychologist who although a feminist rejects the woman-as-victim view of feminism. Two gay authors explain the goals of using such a term:

The purpose of [gay] victim imagery is to make straights [heterosexuals] feel very uncomfortable -- gays should be portrayed as victims of prejudice. Straights must be shown graphic pictures of brutalized gays, dramatizations of job and housing insecurities, loss of child custody, public humiliation, etc. (Kirk and Madsen)

2 September 1996. Copyright information is available.