Feminist metaphysics aims to question how inquiries and answers in the field ofmetaphysics have supportedsexism. Feminist metaphysics overlaps with fields such as thephilosophy of mind andphilosophy of self.[1] Feminist metaphysicians such asSally Haslanger,[2]Ásta,[3] andJudith Butler[3] have sought to explain the nature of gender in the interest of advancing feminist goals.
Another aim of feminist metaphysics has been to provide a basis for feminist activism by explaining what unites women as a group.[4] These accounts have historically centered oncisgender women, but philosophers such asGayle Salamon,[5]Talia Mae Bettcher[6] andRobin Dembroff[7] have sought to further explain the genders oftransgender andnon-binary people.
Feminist metaphysicians have significantly influencedsocial ontology by developing tools to critique and understand social realities.[1]Social constructionism emerged in feminism as a response tobiological determinist claims of female inferiority.[8]
Existentialist philosopherSimone de Beauvoir argues in her seminal workThe Second Sex that, although biological features distinguish men and women, these features neither cause nor justify the social conditions which disadvantage women.[1] Beauvoir rejects explanations based onbiology,psychoanalytic theory andhistorical materialism, advancing instead aphenomenological investigation influenced byMaurice Merleau-Ponty.[9] Thedistinction between sex and gender infeminist theory is commonly attributed to Beauvoir.[10]
Later theorists would challenge the commitment to the pre-social existence of sex, arguing that sex is socially constructed as well as gender.[8][11] ForMonique Wittig, the division of bodies into sexes is the product of aheterosexual society.[12]
There is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses. It isoppression that creates sex and not the contrary. The contrary would be to say that sex creates oppression, or to say that the cause (origin) of oppression is to be found in sex itself, in a natural division of the sexes preexisting (or outside of) society.[13]
— Monique Wittig, "The Category of Sex"
This is expanded byJudith Butler inGender Trouble. Drawing onpost-structuralist theory, Butler criticizes the dependence on a pre-discursive sex upon which gender would be constructed, instead proposing gender as aperformative doing.[14]
Judith Butler's theory ofgender performativity can be seen as a means to show "the ways in which reified and naturalized conceptions of gender might be understood as constituted and, hence, capable of being constituted differently."[15]: 520 Drawing fromJ. L. Austin'sspeech act theory, Butler suggests that gender is performative, meaning it comes into existence through repeated social practices, gestures, and discourses that reinforce norms of masculinity and femininity. This repetition creates the illusion of a stable gender identity, but Butler emphasizes that these performances are neither voluntary nor fixed; rather, they are shaped by cultural expectations and can be subverted through alternative performances.[16] Other influences includeFriedrich Nietzsche,Michel Foucault, andJacques Derrida.[16]: 581
On Butler's hypothesis, the performative aspect of gender is perhaps most obvious indrag performance, which offers a rudimentary understanding ofgender binaries in its emphasis on gender performance. Butler understands drag cannot be regarded as an example of subjective or singular identity, where "there is a 'one' who is prior to gender, a one who goes to the wardrobe of gender decides with deliberation which gender it will be today".[17]: 21 Consequently, drag should not be considered the honest expression of its performer's intent. Rather, Butler suggests that what is performed "can only be understood through reference to what is barred from the signifier within the domain of corporeal legibility".[17]: 24
According to Butler, gender performance is subversive because it is "the kind of effect that resists calculation", which is to say that signification is multiplicitous, that the subject is unable to control it, and so subversion is always occurring and always unpredictable.[17]: 29 Moya Lloyd suggests that the political potential of gender performances can be evaluated relative to similar past acts in similar contexts.[18] Conversely,Rosalyn Diprose lends a hard-line Foucauldian interpretation to her understanding of gender performance's political reach, as one's identity "is built on the invasion of the self by the gestures of others, who, by referring to other others, are already social beings".[19]: 25 Diprose implies that the individual's will, and the individual performance, is always subject to the dominant discourse of an Other (or Others), so as to restrict the transgressive potential of performance to the inscription of simply another dominant discourse.[19]
Ásta acknowledges the strengths of Butler's metaphysics of sex and gender, but raises concerns about the role of biological constraints in the construction of sex.[3] She proposes a “conferralist” framework, where both sex and gender are socially constructed but subject to different constraints.
Thepsychoanalytic elaboration of sexual difference has been particularly influential in feminist theory. It asserts thatmasculinity andfemininity are deeply rooted in our psyches, developing alongside mental agencies such asdesire andrepression.[20]
Écriture féminine is a concept from psychoanalytic French feminism that emphasizes the connection between women's writing and their bodies.[21] French feminists argue that Western thought suppresses female experiences and reinforcesphallogocentrism, and propose deconstructing language through women's distinct bodily experiences.[21]
InThis Sex Which is Not One (1977),Luce Irigaray seeks to create a psychoanalytic narrative that incorporatesLacanian ideas while challenging its phallocentric elements.[22] Irigaray contends that women can cultivate a sense of identity and sexuality without needing to conform to phallic ideals, and that the female body ismultiplicitous.[22]
Feminist theologianMary Daly proposed in her workGyn/Ecology (1978) the existence of a feminine nature that should be defended against "male barrenness".[23] "Since female energy is essentially biophilic", she writes, "the female spirit/body is the primary target in this perpetual war of aggression against life. Gyn/Ecology is the reclaiming of life-loving female energy."[24]: 355
Janice Raymond had Daly as her advisor when writingThe Transsexual Empire (1979), in which she states: "It is not hard to understand why transsexuals want to becomelesbian-feminists. They indeed have discovered where strong female energy exists and want to capture it."[25]: 110
The concept was recently revisited bySheila Jeffreys in her approach to lesbian feminism: "The rush of female energy that is present inwomen-only spaces is also a lesbian energy, for it creates a women-loving high."[26]: 59
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In the context of feminist metaphysics, theproblem of universals led to a division betweengender realists andgender nominalists.Elizabeth Spelman identified in the 1980s a predominance ofrealism in Western feminist theory, which she accused of overlooking the differences between women.[27]Nominalism has since become the hegemonic view.[27][28]
Feminist debates surroundinggender essentialism, particularly in the 1980s and early 1990s, centered on the question of whether there are any shared characteristics common to all women that unite them as a group.[29]
Philosophically,essentialism is the belief that things have essential properties, properties that are necessary to those things being what they are. Recontextualized within feminism, essentialism becomes the view that there are properties essential to women, in that any woman must necessarily have those properties to be a woman at all.[29]: 138
Linda Martín Alcoff identified two primary responses to this "identity crisis" in feminist theory:cultural feminism andpost-structural feminism. Cultural feminism asserts that feminists have the exclusive right to define and evaluatewoman. In contrast, the post-structuralist response rejects the possibility of definingwoman altogether.[23]
Many leading feminist thinkers of the 1970s and 1980s rejected essentialism, arguing that universal claims about women were often false and served to normalize privileged forms of femininity.[29] However, this rejection posed a challenge to feminist politics, and in the 1990s an "anti-anti-essentialist" movement sought to reintroduce some form of essentialism as a political necessity for feminism.[29]
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