Evidence of Experience - Joan W Scott

I read this Evidence of Experience article detailing Samuel Delaney, The "apprehension of massed bodies" gave him (as it does, he argues, anyone, "male, female, working or middle class") a "sense of political power": what this experience said was that there was a population-not of individual homosexuals ... not of hundreds, not of thousands, but rather of millions of gay men, and that history had, actively and already, created for us whole galleries of institutions, good and bad, to accommodate our sex. [M, p. 174 She later states: "Experience is not a word we can do without, although, given its usage to essentialize identity and reify the subject, it is tempting to abandon it altogether." I have to reread this again as I did not quite fully get it, I will reread it this week.