Eric, I agree with your recent message. And I admire your dealing with my attempt at rhetoric. To get directly to your original point, I agree that one runs the "risk of introducing/disguising gendered or other contested values" when one makes decisions to individuate and aggregate. On the other hand, the complexity of economic interaction requires "individuation," in the form of constructing roles, functions, and personifications. It also requires aggregation of a sort that assumes common yet variable characteristics among large numbers of individuals acting in the same role. Such procedures are risky but there is no other way for economists to go about their business. The ultimate question for you, I presume, is what that business is. For me it is the evaluation of arguments favoring or opposing a policy to intervene in a market economy in ways other than those that are necessary to maintain it. Maintenance requires the internal setting and enforcement of private property rights and protection against attack from outside. I argue that one can evaluate most arguments by using the logic that has been developed in the literary form of neoclassical economics, including the law of demand. There is a risk, to be sure. But I think that the risk can be minimized by focusing on the logical evaluation of interventionist arguments. The risk would be much greater if one's aim was to justify a proposal for a better world. HESers, I have found, are not too interested in defining economics. So you are probably correct in your assessment of the discussion of feminist economics, although I have not followed it closely enough to cite cases. But your initial comment was about "economists (as a group)." Pat Gunning