The United States

America is the social, political, and economic setting for the author's experience and analysis. She argues throughout the book that America's culture is fundamentally sexist, and prejudiced in favor of the economically advantaged and the economically driven, of the mature and the heterosexual, and controlled by those who see power as both a means and an end. This complexity of oppressions, the author suggests, is the true system against which feminist movement must struggle and which it must cause to change at a fundamental, systemic level.

Margin and Center

Within American society, the author suggests, there are two broadly defined groups of people: those who live according to the rules set in place by the system (the "center"), and those who live outside those rules (the "margin"). The author's theoretical assertion throughout the book is that feminist movement is a movement from margin to center...