Feminist metaphysics

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Feminist metaphysics aims to question how inquiries and answers in the field of metaphysics have supported sexism.[1] Feminist metaphysics overlaps with fields such as the philosophy of mind and philosophy of self.[1] Feminist metaphysicians such as Sally Haslanger,[2] Ásta,[3] and Judith 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.

non-binary
people.

Social constructionism

The theory of the

Existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir argues in her seminal work The Second Sex that, although biological features distinguish men and women, these features neither cause nor justify the social conditions which disadvantage women.[3]

She was the first

gender abolitionist thinking.[10]

Later theorists would challenge the commitment to the pre-social existence of sex, arguing that sex is socially constructed as well as gender.

sex/gender distinction is a form of mind–body dualism that still relies on essentialism.[8]

Lesbian feminist Monique Wittig argues that the division of bodies into sexes is the product of a heterosexual society.[11]

There is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses. It is oppression 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.[12]

— Monique Wittig, The Category of Sex

This is expanded by

post-structuralist perspective, Butler criticizes the dependence on a pre-discursive sex upon which gender would be constructed, instead proposing gender as a performative doing.[13]

Psychoanalysis

In This Sex Which is Not One (1977),

phallocentric elements.[14] Irigaray contends that women can cultivate a sense of identity and sexuality without needing to conform to phallic ideals, and that the female body is multifaceted and constantly evolving.[14]

Performativity

On Butler's hypothesis, the performative aspect of gender is perhaps most obvious in drag performance, which offers a rudimentary understanding of gender 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".[15]: 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".,[15]: 24  and that "[t]he critical promise of drag does not have to do with the proliferation of genders... but rather with the exposure of the failure of heterosexual regimes ever fully to legislate or contain their own ideals".[15]: 26 

According to Butler, gender performance is only 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.[15]: 29  Moya Lloyd suggests that the political potential of gender performances can be evaluated relative to similar past acts in similar contexts in order to assess their transgressive potential: "Even if we accept that there are incalculable effects to all (or most) statements or activities, this does not mean that we need to concede that there are no calculable effects."[16]

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".[17] 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.[17]

Female energy

Feminist theologian Mary Daly proposed in her remarkable work Gyn/Ecology (1978) the existence of a feminine nature that should be defended against "male barrenness".[18] "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."[19]

Janice Raymond had Daly as her advisor when writing The Transsexual Empire (1979), in which she states: "It is not hard to understand why transsexuals want to become lesbian-feminists. They indeed have discovered where strong female energy exists and want to capture it."[20]

Realism versus nominalism

In the context of feminist metaphysics, the

Elizabeth Spelman identified in the 1980s a predominance of realism in Western feminist theory, which she accused of overlooking the differences between women.[21] Nominalism has since become the hegemonic view.[21][22]

See also

References

  1. ^
    OCLC 224325075
    .
  2. ISSN 0029-4624
    .
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-90-481-3782-4
    .
  4. S2CID 143867213
    .
  5. ISBN 9780231149594
    .
  6. ^ Bettcher, Talia. Power, Nicholas; Halwani, Raja; Soble, Alan (eds.). "Trans Women and the Meaning of "Woman"". The Philosophy of Sex: 233–250.
  7. S2CID 111381570. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on 27 February 2020.
  8. ^
    ISBN 9780253208620
    .
  9. OCLC 165408056
    .
  10. ISBN 978-90-481-3782-4
  11. JSTOR 466245
    .
  12. ISBN 978-0-8070-7917-1
    .
  13. ISSN 0038-0261
    .
  14. ^
    PMID 11619828
    .
  15. ^
    doi:10.1215/10642684-1-1-17
    .
  16. S2CID 145251297
    .
  17. ^
    ISBN 9780415097833
    .
  18. JSTOR 3174166
    .
  19. ISBN 978-0-8070-1511-7
    .
  20. ISBN 978-0-8077-6272-1
    .
  21. ^
    ISBN 978-90-481-3782-4
    , retrieved 2024-03-06
  22. ISSN 1527-2001
    .

Further reading
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