Feminist Perspectives on the Self (https://plato.stanford.

edu/entries/feminism-self/)
First published Mon Jun 28, 1999; substantive revision Wed Feb 19, 2020
The topic of the self has long been salient in feminist philosophy, for it is pivotal to questions
about personal identity, the body, sociality, and agency that feminism must address. Simone
de Beauvoir’s provocative declaration, “He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the
Other”, signals the central importance of the self for feminism. To be the Other is to be a non-
subject, a non-agent—in short, a mere thing. Women’s selfhood has been systematically
subordinated or even outright denied by law, customary practice, and cultural stereotypes.
Throughout history, women have been identified either as inferior versions of men or as their
direct opposite, characterized through their perceived differences from men; in both cases,
women have been denigrated on the basis of these views. Since women have been cast as
lesser forms of the masculine individual, the paradigm of the self that has gained ascendancy
in Western philosophy and U.S. popular culture is derived from a masculine prototype.
Feminists contend that the experiences of predominantly white and heterosexual, mostly
economically advantaged men who have wielded social, economic, and political power and
who have dominated the arts, literature, the media, and scholarship have been taken as
universal and ideal. As a result, feminists have argued that the self is not only a metaphysical
issue for philosophy, but one that is also ethical, epistemological, social, and political.
Responding to this state of affairs, feminist philosophical work on the self has taken three
main tacks: (1) critiques of dominant modern, Western views of the self, (2) reclamations of
feminine identities, and (3) reconceptualizations of the self as (a) a dynamic, relational
individual beholden to unconscious desires and social bonds and (b) intersectional and even
heterogeneous. The feminist reconceptualizations of the self have challenged standard
philosophical models for their biases and shifted the discipline toward recognizing selfhood
as a relational, multilayered phenomenon. This entry will survey both critical and
constructive feminist approaches to the self.

 1. Critique of Classical Approaches to Selfhood

 2. Reclamation of Feminine Identities and Women’s Status
 3. Reconceptualizations of the Self
o 3.1 The Dynamic and Relational Self
o 3.2 The Intersectional and Multiplicitous Self
 4. Conclusion
 Bibliography
o Comprehensive Bibliography
o References
 Academic Tools
 Other Internet Resources
 Related Entries
1. Critique of Classical Approaches to Selfhood
Modern philosophy in the West championed the individual. Extending into contemporary
moral and political thought is the idea that the self is a free, rational chooser and actor—an
autonomous agent. Two views of the self dominate this milieu: a Kantian ethical subject and
a utilitarian “homo economicus”. Nevertheless, these two views differ in their emphasis. The
Kantian ethical subject uses reason to transcend cultural norms and personal preferences in
order to discover absolute truth, whereas homo economicus uses reason to rank desires in a
coherent order and to figure out how to maximize desire satisfaction with the instrumental
rationality of the marketplace. Both of these conceptions of the self minimize the personal
and ethical import of unchosen circumstances, interpersonal relationships, and biosocial
forces. They isolate the individual from its relationships and environment, as well as
reinforcing a modern binary that divides the social sphere into autonomous agents and
dependents. For the Kantian ethical subject, emotional and social bonds imperil objectivity
and undermine rational commitment to duty. For homo economicus, it makes no difference
which forces shape one’s desires, provided they do not result from coercion or fraud, and
one’s ties to other people are to be factored into one’s calculations along with the rest of
one’s desires. For these prevailing conceptions of the self, structural domination and
subordination are thought not to penetrate the “inner citadel” of selfhood. The multiple,
sometimes fractious sources of social identity constituted at the intersections of one’s gender,
sexual orientation, race, class, age, ethnicity, ability, and so forth, are ignored. Likewise,
these conceptions deny the complexity of the intrapsychic world of unconscious fantasies,
fears, and desires, and they overlook the ways in which such dynamics intrude upon
conscious life. The modern philosophical construct of the rational subject projects a self that
is not prey to ambivalence, anxiety and depression, obsession, prejudice, hatred, or violence.
A disembodied mind, the body is peripheral—a source of desires for homo economicus to
weigh and a distracting temptation to the Kantian ethical subject. Age, looks, sexuality,
biological composition, and physical competencies are considered extraneous to the self.
Yet, as valuable as rational analysis and free choice undoubtedly are, some feminists argue
that these capacities do not operate apart from the phenomenon we call the self. As such,
feminist philosophers have charged that dominant views of the self as rational and
independent are fundamentally misleading. Although represented as genderless, raceless,
ageless, and classless, feminists argue that the Kantian subject and homo economicus mask a
white, healthy, youthfully middle-aged, middle- or upper-class, heterosexual, cisgender male
citizen. On the Kantian view, he is an impartial judge deliberating about applying universal
principles, while on the utilitarian view, he is a self-interested bargainer wheeling and dealing
in the marketplace.
It is no accident that law and commerce are both public domains from which women have
historically been excluded. It is no accident, either, that the philosophers who originated these
views of the self typically endorsed this exclusion. Deeming women emotional and
unprincipled, these thinkers advocated confining women to the private domestic sphere where
their voices could be neutralized and even transformed into virtues, in the role of empathetic,
supportive wife, vulnerable sexual partner, and nurturing mother. Associated with bodies
rather than minds, women were tasked with the maintenance of their own bodies and those of
others in a gendered division of labor (Rawlinson 2016). The division of values along binary
gendered lines has historically been associated with the valorization of the masculine and the
stigmatization of the feminine. The masculine realm of rational selfhood is a realm of moral
decency, principled respect for duties, and prudent good sense. However, femininity has been
associated with a sentimental attachment to loved ones that spawns favoritism and
compromises principles. Likewise, femininity is associated with immersion in the
unpredictable domestic exigencies of the private sphere, while the masculinized self appears
as a sturdy fortress of integrity in the public domain of dutiful citizenship. The self is
essentially masculine, and the masculine self is essentially good and wise.
Some feminist philosophers modify and defend these conceptions of the self, taking issue
only with women’s historical exclusion from them and claiming they should be extended to
include women. However, the decontextualized individualism and abstraction of reason from
other capacities inherent in these two dominant views trouble many feminist philosophers and
have led them to seek alternative perspectives on the self. Many claim that the misogynist
heritage of the Kantian subject and homo economicus cannot be remedied simply by
advocating equal selves for women. Rather, these very conceptions of the self are gendered.
In Western culture, the mind and reason are coded masculine, whereas the body and emotion
are coded feminine (Irigaray 1985b; Lloyd 1984). To identify the self with the rational mind
is, then, to masculinize the self according to entrenched stereotypes. Far from being
apolitical, this conception of the self perpetuates neoliberal inequalities by teaching women to
value economic success and social independence in a way that requires the continual
exploitation of other, less privileged, women (Oksala 2016; Arruzza, Bhattacharya, and
Fraser 2019).
The philosophical preeminence of the masculine over the feminine rests on untenable
assumptions about the transparency of the self, the immunity of the self to social influences,
and the reliability of reason to correct distorted moral judgment. People grow up in social
environments saturated with culturally normative prejudice and implicit bias, even in
communities where overt forms of bigotry are strictly proscribed (Meyers 1994). Although
official norms uphold the values of equality and tolerance, cultures continue to transmit
camouflaged messages of the inferiority of historically subordinated social groups through
stereotypes and other imagery. These deeply ingrained schemas commonly structure
attitudes, perceptions, behavioral habits, judgment, and compassion or empathy despite the
individual’s conscious good will (Fischer 2014; Sullivan 2001 and 2015; Valian 1998;
Collins 1990). As Kate Manne elaborates, misogynist norms skew empathy in favor of men
in what she calls “himpathy” (Manne 2019). These norms also render societies more likely to
believe the testimony of those who are privileged and to diminish the perspectives of those
not considered objective, rational knowers (Fricker 2007). As a result, people often consider
themselves objective and fair while systematically discriminating against “different” others
(Piper 1990; Young 1990). Such prejudice cannot be dispelled through rational reflection
alone (Meyers 1994; Al-Saji 2014). In effect, then, the conception of the unbiased rational
self countenances “innocent” wrongdoing and reinforcement of the social stratification that
privileges an elite whom this conception takes as paradigmatic.
The nullification of women’s selfhood was once explicitly codified in Anglo-European and
American law. The legal doctrine of coverture held that a woman’s personhood was absorbed
into that of her husband when she married (McDonagh 1996). Assuming her husband’s
surname symbolized the denial of the wife’s separate identity. In addition, coverture deprived
the wife of her right to bodily integrity, since rape and other forms of physical abuse within
marriage were not recognized as crimes. She lost her right to owning property, controlling her
own earnings, and making contracts in her own name. Lacking the right to vote or serve on
juries, she was a second-class citizen whose enfranchised husband purportedly represented
her politically. Although coverture has been rescinded, vestiges of this denial of women’s
selfhood can be discerned in recent legal rulings and in contemporary culture. For example,
pregnant women remain vulnerable to legally sanctioned violations of their bodily integrity
and legal autonomy, especially if they lack race and class privilege (Bordo 1993; Brown
1998). Selflessness remains the pregnant woman’s legal status. Moreover, the stereotype of
feminine selflessness still thrives in the popular imagination. Any self-confident, self-
assertive woman is out of step with prevalent gender norms, and a mother who is not
unstintingly devoted to her children is likely to be perceived as selfish or even a welfare
“fraud” and to face severe social censure and deprivation of social services (Sparks, 2015).
Complementing this line of argument, a number of feminists argue that the very ideal of an
independent, rational self has invidious social consequences. To realize this ideal, it is
necessary to repress inner conflict and to police the rigid boundaries of a purified self. Alien
desires and impulses are consigned to the unconscious, but this unconscious material
inevitably intrudes upon conscious life and influences people’s attitudes and desires. In
particular, the feared and despised Other within is projected onto “other” social groups, and
hatred and contempt are redirected at these imagined enemies (Kristeva 1988 [1991]; McAfee
2019; Scheman 1993). Misogyny and other forms of bigotry are thus borne of the demand
that the self be decisive, invulnerable, and unitary together with the impossibility of meeting
this demand. Worse still, these irrational hatreds cannot be cured unless this demand for self-
mastery is repudiated, but to repudiate it is to be resigned to a degraded, feminized self whose
concerns are not taken seriously. Indeed, all-too-often women’s protests are dismissed as
those of a hysteric or killjoy (Ahmed 2017). Far from functioning as the guarantor of moral
probity, the fictive Kantian self is the condition for the possibility of intractable animosity
and injustice.
A further problem with the traditional modern views from a feminist standpoint is that they
fail to furnish an account of internalized oppression and the process of overcoming it. It is
common for women to comport themselves in a feminine fashion, to scale down their
aspirations, and to embrace gender-compliant goals (Irigaray 1985a; Bartky 1990; Babbitt
1993; Cudd 2006; Beauvoir 1949 [2011]). Feminists account for this phenomenon by
explaining that women internalize patriarchal norms: these norms are integrated into the
cognitive, emotional, and conative structure of the self. Women may contribute to their own
oppression without realizing it. At times, warped norms may even lead women to question
their own sanity through a process that Kate Abramson terms “gaslighting”. A gaslighted
woman may lose her sense of self to the point where depression and grieving is appropriate
(Abramson 2014). Once embedded in a woman’s psychic economy, internalized oppression
conditions her core desires. To maximize desire-satisfaction, then, would be to collaborate in
her own oppression. Homo economicus’s equation of fulfillment with desire-satisfaction is
unable to get out of this bind.
Finally, in dominant conceptions of the self, no one seems to be born and raised, for
caregivers and birth mothers are driven offstage (Irigaray 1985b; Baier 1987; Code 1987;
Held 1987; Willett 1995 and 2001; Kittay 1999; LaChance Adams and Lundquist 2012). The
self appears to materialize on its own with a starter set of basic physical desires and rational
skills. No one’s powers ever seem to deteriorate or change in different contexts. Since
dependency and vulnerability are denied, all affiliations are assumed to be freely chosen, and
all transactions freely negotiated. The repudiation of caregiving underwrites the voluntaristic
illusion of independence that characterizes the Kantian ethical subject and homo economicus
—and it is no coincidence here that caregiving has traditionally been women’s work.
Alternative virtues, such as care, love, tenderness, spontaneity, and interdependence are
registered as defeats for the “Man with the Plan” rather than aspects of resilient selfhood and
a fluid sense of agency (Baier 1987; Koziej 2019). The mother cultivating a “social erotic”
between herself and her infant through the dance of affect attunements (Willett 1995 and
2001), like the lover embracing the unexpected, transgress rigid modern norms of selfhood.
Feminist critique exposes the partiality of the ostensibly universal Kantian ethical subject and
homo economicus. These conceptions of the self are: (1) androcentric because they replicate
masculine stereotypes and ideals; (2) sexist because they demean anything that smacks of the
feminine; (3) masculinist because they help to perpetuate male dominance; and (4) elitist
because they perpetuate other associated biases, including heterosexist, transphobic, racist,
ethnocentric, ableist, classist, and, arguably, speciesist biases (Haraway 2008). While the
latter dimensions of these prevalent conceptions of the self are outside the scope of this
article, these problems cannot be disentangled from the larger critique and efforts at
reconceptualizing a self that do not duplicate the modernist Anglo-European structures of
dominance.
2. Reclamation of Feminine Identities and Women’s Status
These oversights necessitate reconceptualizing the self in at least two respects. To account for
features of the self that have been traditionally overlooked, such as interdependence and
vulnerability, the self must be understood as socially situated and relational. To account for
the self’s ability to discern and resist ingrained cultural norms, the moral subject must not be
reduced to the capacity for reason. For many feminists, to acknowledge the self’s dependency
is not to devalue the self but rather to value vulnerability (Code 2011), as well as to call into
question the supposed free agency of a self that implicitly corresponds to a masculine ideal.
Yet one might worry that revaluing dependency risks perpetuating derogatory views of
women as victim and men as agents and/or entrenching a gender binary that divides values
into masculine and feminine. A focus on dependency and care may additionally risk
conflating women with mothers and nurturers in what Patrice DiQuinzio has called “essential
motherhood” (1999). Arguing that moral virtues truly have no gender, Mary Wollstonecraft
regards “feminine” virtues as perversions of these true virtues and laments women’s
conscription into a bogus ideal (Wollstonecraft 1792). Similarly, Simone de Beauvoir labels
women under patriarchy “mutilated” and “immanent” (Beauvoir 1949 [2011]). Socialized to
objectify themselves, women are said to become narcissistic, small-minded, and dependent
on others’ approval. Excluded from careers, waiting to be chosen by their future husbands,
taken over by natural forces during pregnancy, and busy with tedious, repetitive housework,
women never become transcendent agents. For Beauvoir, they often resist the burden of
responsibility for their own freedom.
This portrayal of women as abject victims of the patriarchal family has been challenged and
modulated in contemporary feminist philosophy. We shall review three major reclamation
strategies: (1) revaluing the traditionally “feminine” activities of mothering and other modes
of social bonding through the development of care ethics and eros ethics; (2) rethinking
autonomy by moving beyond the two traditional models described above; and (3) reclaiming
sexual difference through a symbolic analysis of female identity.
Feminists argue that pregnancy, birth, and mothering reveal important features of the self,
even for humans who do not have these experiences themselves. Two overlapping
philosophical approaches—an ethics of care and an ethics of eros—have revalued the
significance of the mother in ways that bear on the issue of the self. Both traditions
emphasize that pregnancy and/or mothering reveal that agency is frequently co-constituted
and dynamic. The care tradition varies among those who aim to value dependency work
and/or reconceptualize autonomy so that autonomy and dependency are compatible (Gilligan
1982 and 1987; Ruddick 1989; Kittay 1999; Held 2006; Lindemann 2014). Care ethics
emphasizes the value of care work and character virtues that reflect vulnerability. An ethics
of eros draws from traditions of “othermothering” and emancipatory discourses of generative
libidinal drives and/or cultivating a social eros of connection (Collins 1990; Irigaray 1993;
Willett 1995, 2001, 2008, 2014, 2019; Lorde 2007). Social bonds may reflect a dynamic of
kinship, political solidarity, or community engagement outside the nuclear family paradigm
(Collins 1990; Nzegwu 2006). This tradition of eros foregrounds complicated modes of
interdependency that spiral out of the autonomy/dependency binary and emphasize thick
networks of social belongings. An ethics of eros emphasizes the revitalizing affects of
preconscious energy and connectedness, and their creative potential for political subversion
and communal practices. Here, the self is a multilayered phenomenon with a dynamic set of
roles and interconnected desires.
Historically, the relation between mother and child was either excluded altogether from
philosophical discourse or taken as mere preparation for a full expression of ethical selfhood.
Prevalent Western views commonly invoke a tale of early dependency on the family followed
by the eventual achievement of autonomy through narratives of separation and acquiring
virtues of self-determination. In contrast, feminists in the care ethics and eros traditions
revalue the mother-child relationship as a way of figuring the interdependency of the self.
The infant’s development of creative communicative skills through affect attunement and
face-to-face play explains the lifelong intensity of social bonds (Willett 1995, 2001, and
2014; Welsh 2013). Alternative traditions of maturation may feature instead a multiplicity of
social roles, practices, and connections. Hilde Lindemann argues that caregiving exhibits key
features of what she calls the practice of personhood of knowing when and how to hold and
let go of parts of others identities (Lindemann 2014). Patricia Hill Collins offers glimpses of
an erotic ethics of interconnectivity in her characterization of the fluidity of “othermothers”
for black American communities (Collins 1990). Collins cites Audre Lorde’s distinct
rendering of the term “eros” as not primarily sexual or narrowly maternal, but rather as an
energetic drive that oppressive systems attempt to appropriate, but which may be regenerated
through creative social practices. Cynthia Willett, expanding upon critical traditions of eros,
argues that the laughing mother provides a subversive complement to the long-suffering, self-
sacrificing maternal ideal (Willett and Willett 2019), while Mary Rawlinson advocates the
generativity of mothers as an alternative to the proprietary notion of the modern self
(Rawlinson 2016). Because all people are cared for by an adult or adults, and every
individual is shaped by this emotionally charged interaction, the self is essentially formed in
and through its relations with its caregivers (Chodorow 1981). For Chodorow, the rigidly
differentiated, compulsively rational, and stubbornly independent self is a masculine
defensive formation—a warped form of the relational self—that develops as a result of
fathers’ negligible involvement in childcare.
Caring for a child involves a range of activities governed by a distinct set of values:
protecting and caring for a fragile existence and expanding the sense of self while
acknowledging the limits of one’s power and the unpredictability of events, being sensitive to
the other’s very different viewpoint, and learning to love while struggling against traumatic
social conditions, inadequate social services, and invasive governmental and medical
interventions (Collins 1990; Brown 1998). The practice of motherhood calls upon a wide
range of interpersonal, political, and reflective skills that go well beyond the deliberative
reasoning that dominates traditional view of the self. For instance, the ability to empathize
with others and imaginatively reconstruct their unique viewpoints is vital to moral wisdom,
but ethics that base moral judgment on an abstract conception of personhood marginalize this
skill (Meyers 1994). Care and eros ethicists revalue that which is traditionally deemed
feminine—feeling, intimacy, and nurturance—in order to reclaim the venues traditionally
associated with women and to open up a broader way of conceiving of the moral self.
Some feminists seek to rebalance autonomy with care, while others do away with autonomy
altogether. For some, autonomy is an androcentric relic of modernism (Jaggar 1983;
Addelson 1994; Hekman 1995; Card 1996). Others assert women’s need for autonomous
self-determination (Lugones and Spelman 1983; de Lauretis 1986; King 1988; Govier 1993).
Mothering itself frequently involves the need to carve space and time away from one’s child
(LaChance Adams and Lundquist 2012). It may also involve a reclamation of spirited
independence in the “fearless fighter” role that women reclaim as part of a maternal ethos in
some cultures and/or oppressive conditions (Nzegwu 2006; Lorde 2007). In this vein, a
number of feminists present accounts of autonomy that do not devalue the interpersonal
capacities that are conventionally coded feminine (Mackenzie 2014 and 2017; Nedelsky
1989; Meyers 1989 and 2000; Benhabib 1999; Benjamin, 1988; Weir 1995). In feminist
accounts, autonomy is not conflated with self-sufficiency and free will, but rather is seen to
be facilitated by supportive relationships and to be a matter of degree (Friedman 1993).
Feminist accounts also stress the autonomous individual’s need for constructive feedback and
the co-creation of selves with others (Brison 2002 and 2017; Cavarero 1997; Alcoff 2017;
Ahmed 2017). A feminist view opens the space for considering autonomy an ongoing and
improvisational process of self-discovery, self-definition, and self-direction, rather than
endorsing a set of desires and goals chosen exclusively by the individual (Meyers 1989 and
2000).
In addition to caregiving practices such as mothering, some feminists have attended to the
potential of pregnancy for reconsidering autonomy and independence. Additionally,
pregnancy draws attention to a uniquely intimate embodiment of self-other imbrication. Iris
Marion Young argues that pregnancy is a testament to the split subject or self. For Young,
pregnancy disrupts the integrity of the body. In pregnancy, the boundary between self and
other breaks down, and one experiences one’s “insides as the space of another” (Young
1990). In contrast with Young, Gail Weiss suggests that pregnancy allows us to re-envision
the integrity of the body: instead of positioning the pregnant body as a breakdown of the
traditional unified self, pregnancy reveals that bodily integrity is always already fluid and
expansive (Weiss 1999). As Talia Welsh points out, the experiences of those who are
pregnant reveal that selfhood is neither unified nor genderless (Welsh 2013). It may even be
that pregnancy offers a “metaphysically and phenomenologically privileged” situation for
investigating the interrelation between self and other (Rodemeyer 1998).
While pregnancy affords opportunities for positively demonstrating the multiplicity of the
self, it may also shed light on the violations that women face in patriarchal societies. Young
points out that the interventions of obstetric medicine into women’s bodies alienate women
from themselves through pathologizing their conditions, subjecting women to invasive
medical technologies, and rendering women passive in the birthing process (Young 1990).
The devaluation and surveillance of black and brown pregnant bodies, such as in state-
induced abortions, call for greater empowerment of women rather than an automatic praise of
vulnerability (Brown 1998). In the last few decades, medical technologies, such as
sonography and fetal and neonatal surgery, have sometimes faced those who are pregnant
with wrenching choices that test their agential resilience and capacities to care (Feder 2014;
LaChance Adams and Lundquist 2012). Jennifer Scuro suggests that all pregnancies involve
a death within the self because all end in an expulsion of the other’s body from oneself
(Scuro 2017). All pregnancy thus dislodges presumptions of the self-possessed subject. At the
same time, this expulsion of the other is not always a birth—pregnancy sometimes ends in
miscarriage, when it does not end in abortion—and so pregnancy should be dissociated from
childbirth.
As is evident from this analysis of pregnancy, feminist theories of selfhood frequently
combine philosophical analysis with social critique and the testimony of lived experience.
The latter has an especially long history within phenomenology, where feminist philosophers
have been describing women’s experiences for the past century. Because phenomenology as
a whole strongly emphasizes the body and first-person experience, it fits methodologically
with many of the goals of feminism. Specifically, phenomenological theories of embodiment
emphasize the agential nature of the lived body, resisting traditional conceptions from
philosophy that make the body the mere instrument of the mind. At the same time, feminist
phenomenologists resist the abstract nature of traditional phenomenological methods. For
feminist phenomenology, different selves are differently positioned in ways that matter, and
cannot be abstracted from their social roles into a transcendental domain of inquiry. This
stands in opposition with classical phenomenology, which tended to promulgate a
universalized notion of the ego that elided differences between bodies. Early women
phenomenologists, such as Edith Stein and Gerda Walther, frequently analyze how
traditionally feminine-coded values such as empathy and community play a part in women’s
everyday lives and moral development (Stein 1996; Walther 1923). Most influentially,
Simone de Beauvoir argues that the human condition is ambiguous: experience involves
“immanence”, or embeddedness within one’s historico-cultural and interpersonal situation,
and “transcendence”, or radical freedom with respect to one’s choices and future. While all
humans shared this condition according to Beauvoir, she claims that women have been
overwhelmingly associated with immanence, and thus have not been encouraged to claim
their own freedom (Beauvoir 1949 [2011]). This means that their selves are generally
overdetermined by their situations and contexts—what biology and others claim them to be.
For Beauvoir, women should reassert their transcendence through productive projects.
Beauvoir thus puts an existentialist spin on both phenomenology’s emphasis on situation and
some feminists’ reclamation of autonomy. For Beauvoir, “woman” is a category imposed by
society; women’s selves, then, are also in large part imposed on them by society, and women
would do well to fashion their own selfhood through claiming their freedom. Yet this
freedom is always co-determined in situation with others.
In recent decades, feminist phenomenologists have further investigated the living body as a
site of selfhood that both reflects cultural norms and can provide a site of resistance to them.
Taking inspiration from Beauvoir’s claims about ambiguity, feminist phenomenologists
undertake a wide range of investigations into dimensions of women’s bodily existence. Iris
Marion Young, for instance, has drawn attention to the way that women’s bodily modes of
expression reflect cultural norms of immanence and objectification (Young 1990). Sandra
Bartky shows that women are encouraged to take themselves as sexual objects, which
alienates them from their lived bodies and encourages them to see their bodies and selves as
passive (Bartky 1990). The phenomenology of embodiment is thus not separate from nexuses
of social power (Oksala 2016). At the same time, phenomenological attention to conditions
such as pregnancy (described above) may illuminate a more positive side of the fractious
nature of women’s selves: the self, here, is multiplicitous. Conflict among roles is constitutive
of the self, and it is especially salient among women in patriarchal societies (Weiss 2008).
Latina feminist phenomenology has been particularly active in recent decades in
reconceptualizing this multiplicitous self, as we will see in greater detail in the following
section.
Feminist phenomenology also emphasizes the way that sexual violations trade on the
interdependent, vulnerable, and gendered nature of the self. Sexual violence is taken by many
feminists not merely to be one form of physical violence among others, but rather to be a
denial of self (Cahill 2001; Brison 2002). The body for phenomenology is the dynamic site of
the self, and can only be reduced to an object under oppressive social conditions (Beauvoir
1949 [2011]; Cahill 2001). As such, sexual violence cuts to the very heart of the self. Rape,
for instance, alters selfhood (Cahill 2001; Brison 2002; Alcoff 2017).
Phenomenology is not the only site of feminist philosophy that underscores the body and
resists the mind/body dualism characteristic of modern notions of autonomous selfhood. The
contemporary fields of affect theory and new materialism have pushed feminist conceptions
of embodiment and selfhood even beyond a recognition of situated relationality, sometimes
arguing for a radical rupture of the self/other distinction. Sara Ahmed and Teresa Brennan
suggest that affects and emotions neither go from the “inside out” nor come from the “outside
in”; rather, emotions may be found within the very atmosphere of the social (Ahmed 2004;
Brennan 2004). Ranjana Khanna sees affects as openings onto the other both “within” the self
and beyond it (Khanna 2012). For feminist new materialisms, the body is not an individual
expressive whole (as it remains in phenomenology); rather, the body is a “sexually
preconstituted, dynamic bundle of relations” (Braidotti 2006) that is interconnected with the
environment through intensities and flows (Grosz 1994). Feminist materialism often positions
itself in contrast to poststructuralism because of the former’s emphasis on the material body,
but both of these approaches underscore the radical heterogeneity, or even nonexistence, of
the self. And the new materialist focus on the body, following the “cyborg” theory of Donna
Haraway, suggests that biological bodies are not set in opposition to technology; rather, they
are densely imbricated. Feminist materialism seeks to dislocate identities and focus on
becomings (Braidotti 2016).
New materialism in particular has been influenced by the work of poststructuralist Luce
Irigaray, who draws on the imagery of the female body to offer an alternative to masculine
models of autonomy. Irigaray plays off the symbol of the vaginal lips to figure a mode of
selfhood in which the body is always already two, a self-touching organism that is
multiplicitous (Irigaray 1985b and 1993). Through this gesture, Irigaray reclaims the
association of the feminine with the body in the face of masculine dreams of separatist
autonomy. Through her strategy of “mimesis”, Irigaray utilizes the very stereotypes that have
been used against women in order to undermine them: she plays on the traditional conception
of woman as the “other”, the mere body, the passive “mirror” of the male subject. She depicts
an erotic love of self that affirms difference within oneself and allows the self-differentiating
subject to connect with others. She also resists the very idea of identity as presuming a
unified, phallocentric model of selfhood (Irigaray 1985b).
These and other reclamations of female identities have prompted a number of significant
reconceptualizations of the self as relational and multilayered.
3. Reconceptualizations of the Self
3.1 The Dynamic and Relational Self
As we have seen, many feminist philosophers argue that it is a mistake to hold that rationality
alone is essential to the self and that the ideal self is transparent, unified, coherent, and
independent, since they discern misogynist subtexts in the atomistic individualism of the
Kantian ethical subject and homo economicus (see section 1). While some feminists argue for
a relational model of autonomy, others reject the narrative of separation from the maternal
sphere as an overarching framing device for maturation. Drawing upon multicultural and
global sources, they see this narrative arc as falling short of the complex dynamics of a
multilayered, interconnected self that may grow through sustained interactions through its
community rather than in decisive breaks from them. In this section, we take up new
conceptions of the relational self. These conceptions involve novel contributions to the
philosophy of selfhood, sometimes drawing on frameworks from traditions such as
poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, narrative theory, and local knowledges. Feminist
philosophers gravitate toward these approaches to understanding selfhood because they do
not share the drawbacks that prompt feminist critiques of the Kantian ethical subject and
homo economicus. None of these approaches regards the self as homogeneous or transparent;
none removes the self from its cultural or interpersonal setting; none sidelines the body.
Taking a psychoanalytic approach, Julia Kristeva maintains that infants gradually develop
autonomy from their caregivers, but complicates this narrative by transposing the classical
Freudian conception of the self and its distinction between consciousness and the
unconscious into an explicitly gendered framework (Kristeva 1980; Oliver 1993; McAfee
2003; Miller 2014). For Kristeva, the self is a subject of enunciation—a speaker who can use
the pronoun “I”. But speakers are neither unitary nor fully in control of what they say because
discourse is bifurcated. The symbolic dimension of language, which is characterized by
referential signs and linear logic, corresponds to consciousness and control. The semiotic
dimension of language, which is characterized by figurative language, cadences, and
intonations, corresponds to the unruly, passion-fueled unconscious. All discourse combines
elements of both registers. This contention connects Kristeva’s account to feminist concerns
about gender and the self. Since the rational orderliness of the symbolic is culturally coded
masculine, while the affect-laden allure of the semiotic is culturally coded feminine, it
follows that no discourse is purely masculine or purely feminine. The masculine symbolic
and the feminine semiotic are equally indispensable to the speaking subject, whatever this
individual’s socially assigned gender may be. Every self amalgamates masculine and
feminine discursive modalities.
Like the unconscious in classical psychoanalytic theory, the semiotic decenters the self. One
may try to express one’s thoughts in definite, straightforward language, yet because of the
semiotic aspects of one’s utterances, what one says carries no single meaning and is
amenable to being interpreted in more than one way. In Kristeva’s view, this is all to the
good, for accessing the semiotic—that which is conveyed, often inadvertently, by the style of
an utterance—kindles social critique. The semiotic gives expression to repressed,
unconscious material. According to Kristeva, what society systematically represses provides
clues to what is oppressive about society and how society needs to be changed. Thus, she
discerns a vital ethical potential in the semiotic (Kristeva 1983 [1987]). Since this ethical
potential is explicitly linked to the feminine, moreover, Kristeva’s account of the self
displaces “masculine” adherence to principle as the prime mode of ethical agency and
recognizes the urgent need for a “feminine” ethical approach. At the same time, Kristeva’s
questionable-subject-in-process seems for some to enshrine the very gender dichotomy that
causes women so much grief. The association of the woman/mother with the unruly and
ambiguous semiotic may obscure the rich affect attunement and preverbal dialogues between
caregivers and their socially-oriented infants (Willett 1995). Kelly Oliver’s interpretation of
Kristeva resists some of these more gendered components of Kristeva’s view and expands
upon the relational self as a capacity for a loving sense of “response-ability” to otherness and
difference (Oliver 1998). For Oliver, the self is fluidly defined by its openness to others.
In contrast with the revaluing of motherhood and/or femininity that Kristeva and others
undertake (see section 2), poststructuralists, critical race theorists, and trans* feminists have
been vocal about the heterosexist and binary assumptions in some feminist conceptions of the
self, as well as their inattention to other forms of difference among women. In the face of
this, many feminists have offered accounts of the self designed to accommodate a wider
range of differences. The earlier work of poststructuralist Judith Butler maintains that
personal identity is an illusion (Butler 1990). The self is merely an unstable discursive node,
and sexed/gendered identity is a “corporeal style”—the imitation and repeated enactment of
norms, frequently ones that are demanded by cultural contexts. For Butler, psychodynamic
accounts of the self such as Kristeva’s camouflage the performative nature of the self and
collaborate in the cultural conspiracy that maintains the illusion that one has an anchored
identity derived from one’s biological nature (manifested in one’s genitalia). Such accounts
perniciously conceal the ways that normalizing regimes of the state and culture deploy power
to enforce “natural” sexed/gendered bodies together with “unnatural” bodies, obscuring the
arbitrariness of the constraints that are being imposed in order to deflect resistance to them.
The solution, in Butler’s view, is to question the categories of biological sex, gender, and
sexuality that serve as markers of personal identity. Sex, gender, and sexuality are at the very
“core” of self-identity, because self-identity is constructed through modes of power. Thus,
resistance may be developed in enacting one’s identity differently, through unorthodox
performances and parodic identities: the construction of identity is a site of political
contestation. Butler’s more recent work continues to emphasize the relationality of the self
through its dispossession by the very discursive structures that call the self into existence
(Butler 2005).
Butler is also a major contributor to feminist theories of narrative identity, one of the most
important strands of contemporary feminist theories of the self. Feminist narrative views of
the self are prominent in both Anglo-American and Continental traditions of philosophy.
Adriana Cavarero promulgates the “narratable self” as an alternative to the self-constituting
subject of traditional philosophy (Cavarero 1997). This self does not have a premium on self-
narration; rather, others may actually have a better handle on one’s own self. For this reason,
narrating oneself must occur within a communal, political context. Subjectivity is necessarily
inclined toward others (Cavarero 1997). Butler, in part drawing on Cavarero’s views,
suggests that the self is constructed in an ongoing fashion through giving an account of itself
to others (Butler 2005). Linda Martín Alcoff combines poststructuralism with a hermeneutic
approach, declaring that social identities are relational and core to narratives of the self
(Alcoff 2006). Memory has long been seen as a locus of self-identity, and narrating one’s life
story is crucially linked with memory. Yet feminists contend that narration and memory are
relational, often involving communal social practices (Brison 2002; Campbell 2003). Rather
than promulgating an ideal of self-knowledge, which presumes a fixed self that a reliable,
rational knower discovers at the core of everyday life, feminist narrative theorists advocate
self-cultivation within contextual practices. Here we see again that for feminists, the ontology
and metaphysics of selfhood are inseparable from ethical, social, and political domains.
This is also the case for strands of queer and trans* theory as they intersect with feminist
approaches. For trans* theorists, metaphysical questions about identity operate within
dominant discourses that frequently perpetuate violence and transphobia, as well as within
queer and transgender subcultures that redefine gender and sex identities in a dynamic,
collaborative fashion (Bettcher 2014, 2016, 2017a, 2017b). Trans feminist Talia Mae
Bettcher pushes back on narratives of trans identity that are modeled on liberal individualist
models of selfhood, such as the idea that a trans individual might have been “trapped in the
wrong body” and, after coming out, may let their core true self come to the surface (Bettcher
2014). Bettcher contends that the idea of a true gendered self at the core of a person
overlooks the ways that gender and sex are created by culture (Bettcher 2014). It also tends to
entrench mind-body dualism, whereas movements such as phenomenology have shown that
gendered embodiment is a very feature of selfhood. In this vein, Bettcher argues that sexism
and transphobia trade on a presumed hierarchy where one’s “proper” appearance, or clothed
appearance in public, is taken to be subordinate to one’s “intimate” appearance when naked.
For Bettcher, these two forms of appearance are in fact on par, since both are culturally
constituted.
Trans* feminist accounts frequently underscore the relationality of the self, including the
potential that others have to define us. If others did not have such power, internalized sources
of psychic discord such as gender dysphoria, and the desire that many trans* folks express for
recognition or “passing”, would be difficult to explain. It would also be difficult to explain
transphobia: as Alexis Shotwell and Trevor Sangrey argue, cisgender individuals’ resistance
to recognizing trans* identities hinges on the fact that trans* gender expression affects
cisgender identity (Shotwell and Sangrey 2009). Shotwell and Sangrey draw on the feminist
theory of selfhood put forth by Brison to develop this argument. And, while the relational
constitution of gender identity within a given culture is a cause of transphobia, some queer
and trans* feminists hold that it is also the basis of self-transformation. Specifically, Kim Q.
Hall points out that queer crip communities affirm transforming oneself through transforming
one’s bodies. These creative transformations occur within “the context of communities of
support and recognition” (Hall 2009). They frequently involve the desire for intersubjective
recognition, where body modifications may be undertaken in order to foster a relatively
continuous sense of self (Rubin 2003). This further demonstrates the way that public
identities are not removed from an interior sense of self, as liberal individual models tended
to assume. This continuity, however, need not rely on the narrative of a “core” interior self
that is merely seeking validation from a public. Instead, intersubjective self-fashioning may
reject an interior/exterior dichotomy to begin with, following arguments such as Bettcher’s
above. They also follow feminist phenomenology in disrupting the presumed binary between
nature and culture in bodily comportment (Salamon 2010; Heyes 2007; Hale 1998). Although
discussions in trans* theory and queer theory often do not occur within a feminist context, the
emphasis on lived embodiment, first-person authority, and the relationality of selfhood
frequently found in these discourses both draw on and contribute to feminist discussions of
selfhood in crucial ways.
3.2 The Intersectional and Multiplicitous Self
Over the past several decades, biosocial, intersectional, and phenomenological layers of the
relational self have increasingly gained prominence. Intersectional theories of selfhood
brought forward by African American feminists note that stratifications of social identities
such as gender, race, and class do not operate in isolation from one another (Williams 1991;
Crenshaw 1993). Rather, these identity modalities interact to produce compound effects. As
such, the individual is an intersectional self, or even multiple selves, where structures of
subordination but also of agency converge (Moraga and Anzaldúa 1981; King 1988;
Crenshaw 1993). Intersectional theory aims to capture those aspects of selfhood that are
conditioned by membership in subordinated or privileged social groups. Accenting the
liabilities of belonging to more than one subordinated group, Kimberlé Crenshaw likens the
position of such individuals to that of a pedestrian hit by several speeding vehicles
simultaneously, while María Lugones likens their position to that of a border-dweller who is
not at home anywhere (Crenshaw 1991; Lugones 1992). As a “world traveler”, Lugones finds
herself shifting between Latinx and Anglo-American worlds. She offers the image of a
“curdled self” to indicate the heterogeneity of selfhood in such conditions (Lugones 1994).
For Gloria Anzaldúa, the mestiza is a central figure for understanding a new kind of self with
an ambiguous, fluid identity: the mestiza experiences a sense of constant in-betweenness that
fosters unique modes of meaning-making. As such, intersectional border-dwelling can be a
model of positive identity that registers the multiplicitous nature of the self (Anzaldúa 1987;
Ruíz 2016; Alarcón 1991 and 1996; Barvosa 2008; Ortega 2016). Border-dwelling selves are
frequently ill at ease in the world, but this need not be a disadvantage; rather, it may offer a
unique lens for interpreting the fractious nature of the self as well as the possibilities for
resistance to oppressive social norms.
Some feminists are comfortable rejecting the unity of the self altogether and suggesting that
persons are comprised of what Edwina Barvosa calls a “wealth of selves” (Barvosa 2008).
María Lugones influentially argues that “world-traveling” is a modality of moving between
mutually exclusive selves that appear within different contexts (Lugones 2003). Barvosa
advocates striving to unify these mutually exclusive selves through a self-integrative life
project (Barvosa 2008). Mariana Ortega takes issue with both of these positions because they
advocate an ontological pluralism: one individual is comprised of multiple selves (Ortega
2016). For Ortega, this position is untenable, because it fails to account for the fact that a self
must have some unique identity. In order to do justice both to the uniqueness of the self and
to its multiplicity, Ortega argues that selves are ontologically singular but existentially plural.
Persons, for her, are characterized by a singular multiplicitous self with various facets that are
always in the process of becoming. Ortega utilizes phenomenology in order to argue that the
self experiences an existential continuity over time, even as its roles and identities may be
incommensurate in various contexts.
Theories of the multiplicitous self resonate with Lorde’s “sister outsider” and Collins’
“outsider-within”, which, in contrast with W.E.B. DuBois’s well-established account of
“double consciousness”, develop a multitudinous identity in connection with others. This
identity is not primarily oriented around the black/white divide prominent in DuBois, nor in
modern theories of autonomy, but instead around multiple roles and sources of energy,
kinship, and and community. As we saw above, proponents of the intersectional self credit
multiply oppressed people with a certain epistemic advantage in virtue of their suffering and
alienation. Thus, black women are acutely aware of racism within feminism and sexism
within the struggle for racial justice. Their intersectional positioned selfhood makes such
insight virtually unavoidable.
While intersectional theorists bring forward race, class, ability, and other socioeconomic
markers as central to psychical-historical locations of agency, power, and connectivity, a
number of feminists are increasingly paying attention to somatic and organic factors in
selfhood. In addition to the revaluing of embodiment in affect theory and new materialisms
mentioned above (section 2), Catherine Malabou points to mental ailments such as
Alzheimer’s disease to press upon poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theories of selfhood
(Malabou 2012). Diseases with a physical basis challenge any conception of subjectivity
located exclusively in the psychic continuities of conscious and/or unconscious life as posited
by psychoanalytic theory. Malabou reinterprets Derrida’s deconstructive self as punctured by
experiences of alterity through a non-reductive neurobiology of trauma and brain injury.
Injured selves may experience radical discontinuities or lose entirely aspects of their former
selves. The resulting picture of the self is a multilayered nexus of relations with psychic-
historical and somatic-organic strata. Her work makes clear that feminist philosophies of the
self cannot ignore the biological sciences.
Willett combines this turn to biological and psychological studies of affect and social
emotions with Africana, Latina, and other feminist traditions of the interconnected self. As a
social species, the most basic drives and affects of the human self are prosocial, not
narcissistic or hedonistic. Maturity does not require abjection, repression, or traumatizing
discipline for social cooperation. The capacity for love, friendship, and cooperation with
social groups characterizes humans as a biological species. One consequence of the biosocial
drives, as we have seen, is the rejection of the autonomy narrative as the primary or exclusive
goal of self-development (Willett 1995, 2001). The self matures through enhanced capacities
and desires to form social bonds, not severance from a source of dependence (typically
portrayed as the mother, the body, and/or the animal world).
Another consequence of this intermingling of the biological with the social is that
intersectionality theory is now extended to include mixed-species communities (Haraway
2008; Midgley 1983). This eco-feminist extension of eros ethics follows from the re-
centering of ethics on affects and eros rather than on the rational capacities that mark human
superiority and separation from other animal species. Willett discerns four strata for
envisioning connections across human and nonhuman selves, corresponding to modes of
social bonds: 1) subjectless sociality, 2) affect attunement, 3) biosocial network as livable
place or home, and 4) compassion and the visceral (gut) conscience (Willett 2014). These
four layers reveal that social affects such as laughter or panic transfer from one creature to
another, whether from an adult to an infant or within a community of birds, as well as
emphasizing that visceral feelings shared among creatures are a key source of moral
response. The biosocial layering of selfhood reclaims maternal relationality as more than a
mechanical instinct for humans and any number of other animal species. The affect-laden,
relational self cannot transcend through reason its social embeddedness in a complex politics
of in-group/out-group markers. As we saw above (section 2), rules appealed to by
autonomous selves do not guarantee unbiased decisions. Thanks in large part to feminist
critiques of traditional models of selfhood and ethics, views that emphasize the relational
nature of the self and its heterogeneous features are moving to the center of ethics. At the
same time, feminists offer a wide range of methodologies and conclusions with respect to this
relational self that are sometimes in conflict, reminding us that the work of feminist
philosophy is far from finished.
4. Conclusion
As this article attests, there is tremendous foment and variety within the field of feminist
work on the self. Yet, in reviewing this literature, we have been struck by a recurrent theme:
namely, the inextricability of metaphysical issues of the self from moral, social, and political
theory. Feminist critiques of regnant philosophical theories of the self expose the normative
underpinnings of supposedly neutral metaphysics. Feminist analyses of women’s agential
capacities both acknowledge traditional feminine social contributions and provide accounts of
how women can overcome oppressive norms and practices. Feminist reconstructions of the
nature of the self are interwoven with arguments that draw out the emancipatory benefits of
conceiving the self one way rather than another. There is nothing surprising, to be sure, about
the salience of normative concerns in feminist philosophizing Still, we mention it because we
believe that feminists’ attention to sociopolitical concerns leads to fresh questions that enrich
the philosophical understanding of the self. Moreover, we would urge that this forthrightness
about the political viewpoint that informs philosophy s a virtue, for overlooking the political
suppositions and implications of esoteric philosophical views has led to considerable
mischief. It is precisely the failure to acknowledge that the question of the self is not
narrowly metaphysical that has led to philosophy’s implicit modeling of the self on a male
subject, a tendency that feminist perspectives on the self seek to remediate.
Bibliography
Comprehensive Bibliography
In the interests of concision and readability, the present essay mentions only some of the
representative works on the feminist literature on the self. These cited works are collated in
the Bibliography which appears in the next section of this essay. However, the feminist
literature on the self is vast. Lisa Cassidy, Diana Tietjens Meyers, and Ellie Anderson have
put together a comprehensive bibliography of this literature; it attempts to cite all of the
books and articles that are relevant to the present entry. This comprehensive bibliography is
linked into the present essay as the following supplementary document:
Comprehensive Bibliography of Feminist Perspectives on the Self
Readers are therefore encouraged to pursue additional references by following the above link.
References
The following works are cited in the entry.

 Abramson, Kate, 2014, “Turning Up the Lights on Gaslighting”, in Philosophical

Perspectives, 28(1): 1–30.
 Addelson, Kathryn Pyne, 1994, Moral Passages: Toward a Collectivist Moral
Theory, New York: Routledge.
 Ahmed, Sara, 2004, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, New York: Routledge.
 –––, 2017, Living a Feminist Life, Durham and London: Duke University Press.
 Alarcón, Norma, 1991, “The Theoretical Subject(s) of This Bridge Called My Back
and Anglo-American Feminism”, in Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano
Literature, Culture, and Ideology, Héctor Calderón and José David Saldívar (eds.),
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 28–40. doi:10.1215/9780822382355-005
 –––, 1996, “Conjugating Subjects in the Age of Multiculturalism”, in Mapping
Multiculturalism, Avery F. Gordon and Christopher Newfield (eds.), Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 127–148.
 Alcoff, Linda Martin, 2006, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self, (Studies in
Feminist Philosophy), New York: Oxford University Press.
doi:10.1093/0195137345.001.0001
 –––, 2017, Rape and Resistance, Malden, MA: Polity Press.
 Al-Saji, Alia, 2014, “A Phenomenology of Hesitation: Interrupting Racializing Habits
of Seeing”, in Living Alterities: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race, Emily Lee
(ed.), Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 133–172.
 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 1987, Borderlands: The New Mestiza/La Frontera, San Francisco:
Spinters/Aunt Lute.
 Arruzza, Cinzia, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser, 2019, Feminism for the 99%:
A Manifesto, London and New York: Verso.
 Babbitt, Susan, 1993, “Feminism and Objective Interests: The Role of Transformation
Experiences in Rational Deliberation”, in Feminist Epistemologies, Linda Alcoff and
Elizabeth Potter (eds.), New York: Routledge, 245–265.
 Baier, Annette C., 1987, “The Need for More than Justice”, Canadian Journal of
Philosophy, 17(sup1): 41–56. doi:10.1080/00455091.1987.10715928
 Bartky, Sandra Lee, 1990, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the
Phenomenology of Oppression, New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203825259
 Barvosa, Edwina, 2008, Wealth of Selves: Multiple Identities, Mestiza Consciousness,
and the Subject of Politics, College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.
 Beauvoir, Simone de, 1949 [2011], Le Deuxième Sexe, Paris: Gallimard. Translated
as The Second Sex, Constance Borde and Sheila Malovaney-Chevallier (trans.), New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.
 Benhabib, Seyla, 1999, “Sexual Difference and Collective Identities: The New Global
Constellation”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 24(2): 335–361.
doi:10.1086/495343
 –––1992, Situating the Self, Cambridge: Polity.
 Benhabib, Seyla, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, and Nancy Fraser, 1995, Feminist
Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange, New York: Routledge.
doi:10.4324/9780203825242
 Benjamin, Jessica, 1988, The Bonds of Love, New York: Random House.
 Bettcher, Talia Mae, 2014, “Trapped in the Wrong Theory: Rethinking Trans
Oppression and Resistance”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 39(2):
383–406. doi:10.1086/673088
 –––, 2016, “Intersexuality, Transgender, and Transsexuality”, in Disch and
Hawkesworth 2016, 407–427.
 –––, 2017a, “Trans Feminism: Recent Philosophical Developments: Recent
Philosophical Developments”, Philosophy Compass, 12(11): e12438.
doi:10.1111/phc3.12438
 –––, 2017b, “Through the Looking Glass: Trans Theory Meets Feminist Philosophy”,
in Garry, Khader, Stone 2017, 393–404.
 Bordo, Susan, 1993, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body,
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
 Braidotti, Rosi, 2006, Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics, Malden, MA: Polity Press.
 –––, 2016, “Posthuman Feminist Theory”, in Disch and Hawkesworth 2016, 673–698.
 Brennan, Teresa, 2004, The Transmission of Affect, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
 Brison, Susan J., 2002, Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self, Princeton and
Oxford: Princeton University Press.
 –––, 2017, “Personal Identity and Relational Selves”, in Garry, Khader, Stone 2017,
218–230.
 Brown, Wendy, 1998, Manhood and Politics: A Feminist Reading in Political Theory,
Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.
 Butler, Judith, 1990, “Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory, and Psychoanalytic
Discourse”, in Feminism/Postmodernism, Linda J. Nicholson (ed.), New York:
Routledge, chapter 13.
 –––, 2005, Giving an Account of Oneself, New York: Fordham University Press.
 Butler, Judith, and Athena Athanasiou, 2013, Dispossession: The Performative in the
Political, Malden, MA: Polity Press.
 Cahill, Ann J., 2001, Rethinking Rape, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
 Campbell, Sue, 2003, Relational Remembering: Rethinking the Memory Wars,
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
 Card, Claudia, 1996, The Unnatural Lottery: Character and Moral Luck,
Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
 Cavarero, Adriana, 1997 [2000], Tu che mi guardi, tu che mi racconti, Milan:
Giagiacomo Feltrinelli. Translated as Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood,
Paul A. Kottman (trans), (Warwick Studies in European Philosophy), London:
Routledge, 2000.
 –––, 2016, Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
 Chodorow, Nancy, 1981, “On ‘The Reproduction of Mothering’: A Methodological
Debate, part 4”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 6(3): 500–514.
doi:10.1086/493820
 Code, Lorraine, 1987, “Second Persons”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 17(sup1):
357–382. doi:10.1080/00455091.1987.10715942
 –––, 2011, “Self, Subjectivity, and the Instituted Social Imaginary”, in The Oxford
Handbook of the Self, Shaun Gallagher (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press.
 Collins, Patricia Hill, 1990, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consiousness, and
the Politics of Empowerment, Boston: Unwin Hyman.
 Crenshaw, Kimberlé William, 1991, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and
Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and
Antiracist Politics”, in Feminist Legal Theory: Readings in Law and Gender,
Katherine T. Bartlett and Rosanne Kennedy (eds), Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
chapter 4.
 –––, 1993, “Beyond Race and Misogyny: Black Feminism and 2 Live Crew”,
in Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First
Amendment, Mari J. Matsuda, Charles R. Lawrence III, Richard Delgado, and
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (eds), Boulder, CO: Westview Press, chapter 5.
 Cudd, Ann E., 2006, Analyzing Oppression, New York: Oxford University Press.
doi:10.1093/0195187431.001.0001
 de Lauretis, Teresa, 1986, “Feminist Studies/Critical Studies: Issues, Terms,
Contexts”, in Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, Teresa de Lauretis (ed.),
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, chapter 1.
 DiQuinzio, Patrice, 1999, The Impossibility of Motherhood: Feminism, Individualism
and the Problem of Mothering, New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203820704
 Disch, Lisa and Mary Hawkesworth (eds.), 2016, The Oxford Handbook of Feminist
Theory, New York: Oxford University Press.
doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199328581.001.0001
 Feder, Ellen K., 2014, Making Sense of Intersex: Changing Ethical Perspectives in
Biomedicine, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
 Fischer, Clara, 2014, Gendered Readings of Change: A Feminist-Pragmatist
Approach, New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. doi:10.1057/9781137342720
 Fricker, Miranda, 2007, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 Friedman, Marilyn A., 1993, What are Friends For?, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
 Garry, Ann, Serene J. Khader, and Alison Stone (eds.), 2017, The Routledge
Companion to Feminist Philosophy, New York: Routledge.
doi:10.4324/9781315758152
 Gilligan, Carol, 1982, In a Different Voice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
 –––, 1987, “Moral Orientation and Moral Development”, in Kittay and Meyers 1987:
31–46.
 Govier, Trudy, 1993, “Self-Trust, Autonomy, and Self-Esteem”, Hypatia, 8(1): 99–
120. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.1993.tb00630.x
 Grosz, Elizabeth, 1994, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism,
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
 Hale, C. Jacob, 1998, “Tracing a Ghostly Memory in My Throat: Reflections on Ftm
Feminist Voice and Agency”, in Men Doing Feminism, Tom Digby (ed), New York:
Routledge, 99–130.
 Hall, Kim Q., 2009, “Queer Breasted Experience”, in “You’ve Changed”: Sex
Reassignment and Personal Identity, Laurie J. Shrage (ed.), New York: Oxford
University Press, chapter 7.
 Haraway, Donna, 2008, When Species Meet, Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press.
 Hekman, Susan J., 1995, Moral Voices, Moral Selves, University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press.
 Held, Virginia, 1987, “Feminism and Moral Theory”, in Kittay and Meyers 1987, pp.
111–128. Also in Meyers 1997: chapter 32.
 –––, 2006, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global, New York: Oxford
University Press. doi:10.1093/0195180992.001.0001
 Heyes, Cressida, 2007, Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized
Bodies, New York: Oxford University Press.
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195310535.001.0001
 Irigaray, Luce, 1985a, Speculum of the Other Woman, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
 –––, 1985b, This Sex which is not one, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
 –––, 1993, Ethics of Sexual Difference, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
 Jaggar, Alison M., 1983, Feminist Politics and Human Nature, Totowa, NJ: Rowman
& Littlefield.
 Khanna, Ranjana, 2012, “Touching, Unbelonging, and the Absence of
Affect”, Feminist Theory, 13(2): 213–232. doi:10.1177/1464700112442649
 King, Deborah K., 1988, “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of
a Black Feminist Ideology”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 14(1):
42–72. Also in Meyers 1997: chapter 12. doi:10.1086/494491
 Kittay, Eva Feder, 1999, Love's Labor, New York: Routledge.
 Kittay, Eva Feder and Diana T. Meyers (eds.), 1987, Women and Moral Theory,
Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.
 Koziej, Stephanie, 2019, “Towards a Tender Sexuality: From Freud’s Implicit Taboo
on Adult Erotic Tenderness, to the Unexplored Tender Critical Potential of Mitchell
and Perel’s Clinical Practice.”, Psychoanalytic Psychology, 36(4): 342–350.
doi:10.1037/pap0000258
 Kristeva, Julia, 1980, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and
Art, Leon S. Roudiez (ed.). Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez (trans.),
(European Perspectives), New York: Columbia University Press. Translation of
several of her French essays.
 –––, 1983 [1987], Histoires d’amour, Paris: Editions Denoël. Translated as Tales of
Love, Leon S. Roudiez (trans.), New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.
 –––, 1988 [1991], Étrangers à Nous-Mêmes, Paris: Fayard. Translated as Strangers to
Ourselves, Leon S. Roudiez (trans.), (European Perspectives), New York: Columbia
University Press, 1991.
 LaChance Adams, Sarah, 2014, Mad Mothers, Bad Mothers, and What a ‘Good’
Mother Would Do: The Ethics of Ambivalence, New York: Columbia University
Press.
 LaChance Adams, Sarah and Caroline R. Lundquist (eds), 2012, Coming to Life:
Philosophies of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering, New York: Fordham
University Press.
 Lindemann, Hilde, 2014, Holding and Letting Go: The Social Practice of Personal
Identities, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 Lloyd, Genevieve, 1984, The Man of Reason “male” and “Female” in Western
Philosophy, London: Methuen.
 Lorde, Audre, 2007, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Berkeley, CA: Crossing
Press.
 Lugones, María, 1992, “On ‘Borderlands/La Frontera’: An Interpretive
Essay”, Hypatia, 7(4): 31–37. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.1992.tb00715.x
 –––, 1994, “Purity, Impurity, and Separation”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture
and Society, 19(2): 458–479. doi:10.1086/494893
 –––, 2003, Pilgrimages/Perigrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple
Oppressions, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
 Lugones, María C. and Elizabeth V. Spelman, 1983, “Have We Got a Theory for
You! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for ‘the Woman’s
Voice’”, Women’s Studies International Forum, (Hypatia) 6(6): 573–581.
doi:10.1016/0277-5395(83)90019-5
 Malabou, Catherine, 2012, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain Damage,
New York: Fordham University Press.
 Mackenzie, Catriona, 2014, “The Importance of Relational Autonomy and
Capabilities for and Ethics of Vulnerability”, in Vulnerability: New Essays in Ethics
and Feminist Philosophy, Catriona Mackenzie, Wendy A. Rogers, and Susan Dodds
(eds), New York: Oxford University Press, 33–59.
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199316649.003.0002
 –––, 2017, “Feminist Conceptions of Autonomy”, in Garry, Khader, Stone 2017, 515–
527.
 Manne, Kate, 2019, Down Girl, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 McAfee, Noelle, 2003, Julia Kristeva, New York: Routledge.
 –––, 2019, Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis, New York: Columbia
University Press.
 McDonagh, Eileen L., 1996, Breaking the Abortion Deadlock, New York: Oxford
University Press.
 Meyers, Diana Tietjens, 1989, Self, Society, and Personal Choice, New York:
Columbia University Press.
 –––, 1994, Subjection and Subjectivity, New York: Routledge.
 ––– (ed.), 1997, Feminist Social Thought: A Reader, New York: Routledge.
doi:10.4324/9780203705841
 –––, 2000, “Intersectional Identity and the Authentic Self? Opposites Attract!”,
in Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Automony, Agency, and the Social
Self, Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar (eds.), New York: Oxford University
Press, 151–180.
 Midgley, Mary, 1983, Animals and Why They Matter: A Journey Around the Species
Barrier, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
 Miller, Elaine P., 2014, Head Cases: Julia Kristeva on Philosophy and Art in
Depressed Times, New York: Columbia University Press.
 Moraga, Cherríe, and Gloría Anzaldúa, 1981, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings
by Radical Women of Color, Albany: State University of New York Press.
 Nedelsky, Jennifer, 1989, “Reconceiving Autonomy: Sources, Thoughts and
Possibilities”, Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, 1(1): 7–36.
 Nzegwu, Nkiru Uwechia, 2006, Family Matters: Feminist Concepts in African
Philosophy of Culture, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
 Oksala, Johanna, 2016, Feminist Experiences: Foucauldian and Phenomenological
Investigations, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
 Oliver, Kelly, 1993, Reading Kristeva: Unraveling the Double Bind, Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press.
 –––, 1998, Subjectivity Without Subjects: From Abject Fathers to Desiring Mothers,
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
 Ortega, Mariana, 2016, In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity,
and the Self, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
 Piper, Adrian M.S., 1990, “Higher-Order Discrimination”, InIdentity, Character and
Morality: Essays in Moral Psychology, Owen Flanagan and Amélie Okensberg Rorty
(eds), Cambridge, MA: MIT Pressm, 285–309.
 Rawlinson, Mary, 2016, Just Life: Bioethics and the Future of Sexual Difference,
New York: Columbia University Press.
 Rodemeyer, Lanei, 1998, “Dasein Gets Pregnant”:, Philosophy Today,
42(supplement): 76–84. doi:10.5840/philtoday199842Supplement65
 Rubin, Henry, 2003, Self-Made Men: Identity and Embodiment Among Transsexual
Men, Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
 Ruddick, Sara, 1989, Maternal Thinking, Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
 Ruíz, Elena Flores, 2016, “Linguistic Alterity and the Multiplicitous Self: Critical
Phenomenologies in Latina Feminist Thought”, Hypatia, 31(2): 421–436.
doi:10.1111/hypa.12239
 Salamon, Gayle, 2010, Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality,
New York: Columbia University Press.
 Scheman, Naomi, 1993, Engenderings: Constructions of Knowledge, Authority, and
Privilege, New York: Routledge.
 Scuro, Jennifer, 2017, The Pregnancy ≠ Childbearing Project: A Phenomenology of
Miscarriage, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield
 Shotwell, Alexis and Trevor Sangrey, 2009, “Resisting Definition: Gendering through
Interaction and Relational Selfhood”, Hypatia, 24(3): 56–76. doi:10.1111/j.1527-
2001.2009.01045.x
 Sparks, Holloway, 2015, “Mamma Grizzlies and Moral Guardians of the Republic:
The Democratic and Intersectional Politics of Anger in the Tea Party
Movement”, New Political Science, 37(1): 25–47.
 Stein, Edith, 1996, Essays on Woman: The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Freda
Mary Oben (trans.), Washington, DC: ICS Publications.
 Sullivan, Shannon, 2001, Living Across and Through Skins: Transactional Bodies,
Pragmatism, and Feminism, Bloomington, IN: Indian University Press.
 –––, 2015, The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression, New York: Oxford
University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190250607.001.0001
 Valian, Virginia, 1998, Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women, Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
 Walther, Gerda, 1923, “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften (mit einem
Anhang zur Phänomenologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften)”, Jahrbuch für
Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschung, 6: 1–158. [Walther 1923 available
online]
 Weir, Allison, 1995, “Toward a Model of Self-Identity: Habermas and Kristeva”,
In Feminists Read Habermas: Gendering the Subject of Discourse, Johanna Meehan
(ed.), New York: Routledge, 263–282.
 Weiss, Gail, 1999, Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality, New York:
Routledge.
 –––, 2008, Refiguring the Ordinary, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
 Welsh, Talia, 2013, The Child as Natural Phenomenologist: Primal and Primary
Experience in Merleau-Ponty's Psychology , Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Press.
 Willett, Cynthia, 1995, Maternal Ethics and Other Slave Moralities, New York:
Routledge.
 –––, 2001 The Soul of Justice: Social Bonds and Racial Justice, Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
 –––, 2008, Irony in the Age of Empire: Comic Perspectives on Freedom and
Democracy, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
 –––, 2014, Interspecies Ethics, New York: Columbia University Press.
 Willett, Cynthia and Julie Willett, 2019, Uproarious: How Feminists and Other
Comic Subversives Speak Truth, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
 Williams, Patricia J., 1991, The Alchemy of Race and Rights, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1792 [1982], A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, London.
Reprinted, Miriam Brody Dramnick (ed.), New York: Penguin, 1982.
 Young, Iris Marion, 1990, Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays In Feminist
Philosophy and Social Theory, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.