pursuit of her own passions and preferences and her social responsibility for making decisions that do not contribute to women's sexual oppression under conditions of institutionalized male dominance.
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I have contended that the perspective of the "view from somewhere different" is an epistemological framework that provides a way of thinking and talking about women's sexuality that captures the dynamic between the personal and the political within and among women. Such a framework recognizes the strengths of a feminism that situates women's sexuality within a cultural ideology that devalues and subordinates women to the advantage of men. Yet it is also a framework that advocates raising our consciousness of this ideology as a first step in the pursuit of women's sexual creativity and power, which along with women's freedom from sexual subordination would allow individual women to determine for themselves how sex and sexuality figure in their lives.
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This perspective informs a sexual ethic of care respect that recommends treating women and men as the agents and defining subjects of our sexual experience in actively caring communities of both shared and conflicting interests. This ethic recommends a general application of the principles of care respect to our sexual lives at the same time that it encourages persons to regard sexual relationships as uniquely confounded by the politics of gender. My contention is that sex is not merely a matter of taste, because sex is such an effective tool for the harassment, humiliation, and abuse of women. Power and control are moral issues; thus, our moral sensibilities must be engaged to examine those specific and unique ways in which systemic gender hierarchies turn a woman's sexuality into a vehicle for her oppression and the oppression of women as a class. A sexual ethic of care respect from the "view from somewhere different" is designed as a guide, but not a decision procedure, for considering the meaning, value, and practice of the sexual lives of persons who may be very differently situated from one another. Thus, the "view from somewhere different" can provide a context and a legitimacy for a variety of sexual experiences, preferences, and desires in both women and men and can provide feminists of diverse theoretical backgrounds with a common frame of reference from which to advance our dialogue in women's sexuality. This advance is essential if we wish to represent ourselves as offering constructive voices in different women's lives instead of the unacceptable extremisms often disseminated by feminism's detractors.
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This means that we will have to become more comfortable with conflict in the absence of clear resolution and accept compromise or consensus only when it is understood that consensus does not require stasis or sameness. It is much easier to fall back on the "view from nowhere" or the "view from somewhere better," because neither requires the energy and effort of "world"-traveling. On the other hand, being all things to all people is an impossible task not lost on critics of the "view from everywhere.'' However, from the "view from somewhere different," living with partial coalitions or uneasy alliances need not be divisive, when consensus is not the ultimate goal and when conflict resolution can be oppressively elitist and dismissive of difference. As Raymond Belliotti writes:
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 | | Rather than regretting the loss of fixed foundations and authoritative trumps of reason, we should revel in increased opportunities for freedom and collective deliberation.
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