Gendered patents affect all of humanity – obscure plurality

At some point, standpoint theory shades into a third set of critiques that challenge not only the terms by which science is conducted, but the motivations and social role that science performs.101 Such “postmodern feminist” theory examines the position of the scientific enterprise in the modern social and cultural milieu.102 Feminist scholars in this camp charge that gendered science produces not merely bad data, or incomplete knowledge, but constitutes a fundamentally oppressive social construct that serves to obscure the plurality of human experience.103 On this view, the scientific endeavor, and the technological applications that follow from scientific discovery, assumes a coherent and unitary view of reality that lends itself to control and domination. The implication is that because the assumptions and ideologies on which science are based are culturally pervasive, and because those assumptions and ideologies are gendered, a society based upon the scientific enterprise will systematically disadvantage women and other subordinated groups.104