This second criticism is put forcefully by Iris Marion Young, who detects adenial of ‘difference’ in republican attempts to establish a ‘civic public’:This ideal of the civic public …excludes women and other groups defined as different, because its rational and universal status derives only from its opposition to affectivity, particularity,and the body.… In so far as he is a citizen every man leaves behind his particularity and difference, to adopt a universal standpoint identical for all citizens, the standpoint of the common good or general will.