Her own practice weaves a web of understanding between those polarities, with gender as her chief point of departure. Her position, moreover, is dynamic, not static, and emerges developmentally in succeeding chapters of the book. Her critique establishes this common ground chiefly by articulating key feminist theories that challenge widely held beliefs about the procedures for defining and attaining knowledge. Often, she integrates feminist theory with what is useful from such non-feminists as Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Code is especially effective in adducing what is useful in traditional philosophy, wasting little time attacking what is not useful, except in establishing the ways that what counts as knowledge has traditionally been defined so as to exclude women.
Men define the norm for defining knowledge.
These and other ideas about gendered knowledge, and Code's debunking of claims for gender-neutrality, are familiar in women's studies. In fact, Code's careful documentation of these ideas makes the book very valuable as a bibliographic guide to scores of feminist essays over the last twenty years. But they are not new ideas, and Code's contribution is more one of synthesizing than of formulating a procedure or practice for the feminist epistemology she sees as a desirable goal. Her accomplishment is to prepare a site for this new epistemology, lay groundwork for the paradigm shift needed for re-visioning the world in ways that no longer contribute to political oppression of women and other devalued groups. Objectivity is overemphasized in inquiry.